Tallinn, Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union
THE WIND FROM the cellar of the Pagari building hit Comrade Parts hundreds of meters before he reached the metal doors of the entrance. The same peculiar wind had swept his ankles when he was a young man visiting the building in the first Soviet occupation, before the Germans came. He’d been there to meet his colleague Ervin Viks on matters of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. He remembered how Viks had stepped out of the door to the cellar just as Parts stopped to shake the snow from his overcoat. There were bloodstains on Viks’s cuffs. His shoes left red tracks on the white tile floor. There were all kinds of rumors going around at the time about a decompression chamber located in that cellar. For Parts, that wind was the worst thing about the place. He recognized it now, guiding him with a certainty from the street to the entrance. The Directorate of State Security was the same from one decade to the next. There wasn’t a wind like that anywhere else. It followed you into the elevator and up the stairs, blew straight into Porkov’s office and across the parquet floor, and shook Parts’s carefully constructed confidence as he stepped in front of the captain. Parts could feel the floor, its every contour, through the soles of his feet, as if his new shoes had been switched for the ones he wore in his youth, the ones with steel toe taps and soles so thin that the sand got in and chafed his toes.
Porkov smiled from beneath a picture of the leaders. He was sitting behind his desk with his elbows on top of a folder he’d closed purposefully slowly, slowly enough that Parts had time to get a glimpse of his own picture inside. They spent a moment admiring the charming view from Porkov’s office window onto Lai Street. You could even see the Baltic, and the steeple of St. Olaf’s Church, according to Porkov. Parts squinted. He could just barely make out the tip of St. Olaf’s tower. For a fleeting moment he imagined what it would be like if someday he had an office like this one, his own department, here where the corridors felt like corridors of power, and the wind from the cellar blew on someone else’s ankles, not his. He would let the office workers use the old servants’ elevator and use only the main elevator himself. He would have keys to all the offices, the communications center, the film archives, and the cellars. The messages spitting out of the telex tapping through the night would be his messages. The goings-on of all the citizens. Every telephone conversation. Every letter. Every business. Every relationship. Every career. Every life.
A draft fluttered his pant leg. Porkov cleared his throat. Parts sat up straighter, adjusted his shoulders. The invitation to Porkov’s bright office was a mark of esteem, and he should behave accordingly, and pay attention. A crystal carafe sparkled in the last rays of the setting sun. Porkov poured drinks into Czech crystal glasses, turned on the milk glass ceiling light, and pronounced himself very satisfied. Parts swallowed—they had looked at his pages. Porkov was in a benevolent mood. The honey of Porkov’s praise put Parts momentarily into a sticky state of mind; first he was blushing speechlessly, then stuttering and struggling to make some response.
After a drink he had to pinch himself, remind himself that he must use this to his advantage. He had passed the Glavlit censorship offices at Pärnu Highway 10 on his way home many times and looked up at the windows on the highest floors, wishing, as any man would, that he could go inside to show the progress of his manuscript to the staff there, who would understand its significance, its accuracy. The dream was enough. He wouldn’t actually ever do it, wouldn’t ever see the censors he was supposed to impress. Instead he should try to get in to talk to the publisher located in the same building, and soon after that, the publisher would owe him some money. But these things would happen in their own time—it was wisest to wait until later to remind the people there about the advance. First he had to keep Porkov happy, to earn his trust. Best not to disturb the Comrade Captain’s mood, not sound impertinent when he made his request—he wanted more archive materials to broaden his research.
Porkov was getting tipsy. The bottle was already half-emptied, and as he poured more liquor into it their chat started to skate along doubly well. At first Porkov pretended not to understand Parts’s roundabout question—the flicker of surprise in his eyes was sharp enough that Parts guessed he was exaggerating his drunkenness, just as Parts was. But Parts, too, could put brash behavior down to drunkenness if need be, and with that in mind he forced himself to present his request directly. He let an offended expression show through, mumbled that he was certain he would recognize more dregs of humanity in the archives, that he would be able to identify them. Porkov laughed, slapped him on the back, and said: We’ll see. Have another drink. We’ll see.
As he poured more vodka, Porkov glanced at him again from behind his drunken face, and Parts dried his eyes, let his posture sink into a tipsy softness, pretended to set his glass down and miss the table, and restrained his hand from brushing the dandruff from his shoulder.
“You’ve already been given an abundance of material for your work. It ought to be enough. We have our instructions, Comrade Parts.”
Parts hastened to express his gratitude for their confidence in him and added, “I’m quite certain that the Comrade Captain would be considered a hero in Moscow, should the final manuscript exceed expectations.”
These words brought Porkov to a halt in front of him.
“Of course, you might find something in the materials that no one else has.”
“Exactly. I was, after all, an eyewitness to the crimes of the fascist scum, and would have lost my life if the Red Army hadn’t liberated the Klooga camp. I’ve dedicated my life completely to recording those heroic events and laying bare the crimes of the Hitlerist cancer. I might even recognize the names of the guards. Many of them were nationalists who later became bandits.”
Porkov burst into laughter again, drops of his spit landing in Parts’s glass, and Parts joined in, flavoring his cackle with a touch of shared understanding. Every man in the Comrade Captain’s position hoped for a promotion, and Porkov’s operation was well up to speed. Could he resist a gold-paved road to Moscow? There had been numerous recent books about the escapades of the Hitlerists, and they’d been distributed so widely abroad that Parts knew the operation was considered important. For whatever reason, the Politburo placed an emphasis on these things in Estonia. And that was always a spur to competition.
Porkov filled their glasses again.
“I’m hosting a little evening party at my summer place. Come with your wife. I want to meet her. It’s time we started planning your future. The Estonians are hiding the nationalists, and they don’t realize the danger they’re in. The problem is one of morals. The morals of the nation have to be improved, and it’s clear that you have the talents needed to do it.”
COMRADE PARTS’S STOMACH started to gnaw at him while he was still on the bus. It wasn’t because of the drinks. It was because he was going home and Porkov’s invitation worried him. The Comrade Captain had seemed inclined to grant his archive request, but could he stay in his favor if he refused the invitation? The bright kitchens and clink of dinner dishes in the passing houses depressed him. Two doors down they made fricadelle soup on Wednesdays and macaroni with milk for the children on Thursdays, with meat for the man of the house. They made jam. Parts had a cold stove and a pot of potatoes covered in lukewarm water on the burner waiting for him at home. There were no more cutlets like in their early married years, not since he came back from Siberia, or any berries from the bushes in the yard—his wife hadn’t once spread ashes under them.
But a surprise greeted him at the front steps—sheets on the clothesline, flapping in the wind. He stood for a moment admiring the fluttering linens, the most charming thing he’d seen in a long time, although they ought to have been brought in by this time of day. Still, his wife had done the laundry, at home! Suddenly even her coy habit of hiding her underwear beneath the sheets to dry didn’t annoy him, or the fact that his bath had been empty that morning, or the fact that soaking the linens
for hours in Fermenta was by no means good for them, or that their fight about using the common laundry was about to begin again (he could tell the sheets had been washed in the machines, and they were edged with Auntie Anna’s handmade lace, after all). But what of these small details? Perhaps the situation wasn’t hopeless. Perhaps things were changing for the better. Perhaps they could accept Porkov’s invitation.
Parts approached the front door. Liszt came barreling out of his wife’s record player all the way to the yard. At the front steps, the railing trembled under his hand as he took hold of it for support. Hope and the suspicion that he would be disappointed battled in his mind as he took his keys out of his pocket, clicked open the lock, and stepped over the threshold without turning on the light. There was a whining sound from the living room, a light through the glass in the door. A wailing that rose and fell, sometimes fumbling out in words. Still, Parts hoped that the living room door would open and his wife would come to meet him, that it would all be a cheerful lark, but disappointment was hatching like a worm in an onion, the twinge of hope brought on by the laundry in the yard was stubbed out in the overflowing ashtray on the telephone table. He put his Moroccan leather briefcase down beside the trumeau, hung his coat on the rack, and changed his shoes for his slippers. Only then did he feel ready to push open the door, which stood ajar, and face the state his wife was in.
She was rocking back and forth in the beam of orange light from the ceiling fixture, the hem of her coat dress lifted to her waist, her underslip stained, her bloated face hidden by her tangled hair, the record player pounding. A lit cigarette smoked in the ashtray, its tip glowing, a bottle of Beliy Aist cognac was half empty, a mass of striped men’s handkerchiefs wet with weeping lay heaped under the table. Parts closed the door quietly and went into the kitchen. His steps were heavy. The sheets could wait. The smooth meeting at the Pagari building had lulled him into a ridiculous feeling of optimism. He had just hoped, hoped so strongly, that they could go to the party together, as a couple. How stupid he was.
Years ago it had been different. Parts had received a letter in Siberia from Auntie Anna that said his wife was well, was in her care. The knowledge that his wife was all right didn’t stir any emotion in him, although the message was the first of its kind in years. He didn’t know what she’d been doing before the German withdrawal. He himself had been tried and put on a train to Siberia quite soon afterward, and news of his wife hadn’t been uppermost in his mind. But when he’d finally made it to the last leg of his journey back to Estonia, it felt good to have someone to go home to. Anna and Leonida were already gone, as was his biological mother, Alviine, and there were strangers living in the Armses’ house. He had no one else. He found his wife in Valga, in a small but clean flat, its air tainted by the stink from the one communal water closet, which was in the neighboring apartment. The room itself had been orderly, his wife attentive in her sense and her hygiene, nodding slowly as he stressed that if anyone asked about his years in Siberia it would be best to remember that he had been convicted for being a counterrevolutionary and for trusting in the third alternative and in the English, that he’d been given ten years for it, for gathering Estonia’s own troops after the Germans had left, and for his espionage training on Staffan Island. She could certainly tell that to anyone else who’d been to Siberia, and she should remember her brother’s fate.
His wife hadn’t asked any more questions. She had probably wanted to be able to walk safely after sunset, had probably understood why it was important to remember that her husband was a real man of Estonia. Those were dangerous times for anyone who had chosen, or was known to have chosen, any side other than Estonia’s. The Office, on the other hand, didn’t like those who had chosen Estonia. Luckily for Parts, his years in Siberia had hollowed his cheeks into a new shape, and he was hardly likely to run into his old colleagues, who had presumably all been liquidated. It was the beginning of a new, good life. Although the bedroom had never been a place of shared rest for him and his wife, nor of shared passion, they nevertheless learned to share a bed, and their coolness kept the sheets fresh even in the heat of summer. They learned camaraderie, if not quite friendship. Parts hadn’t complained about the new apartment or asked why she had moved there from Tallinn. For someone who’d been in Siberia, there was no point in hoping for better, there was no way to get permission to live in the capital. He just had to take things gradually, let time hollow his cheeks still more, let the nosepiece of his glasses press pits between his eyes, construct a new demeanor. He wasn’t going to make any more mistakes.
After Parts had lived in Valga in complete seclusion for some time, a stranger struck up a conversation on the way home one day. Parts understood immediately what was happening. His instructions were clear: he was ordered to strike up a friendship with the workers in their combine who had returned to Estonia from Siberia, report to the system on their attitudes and their degree of anti-Sovietism, evaluate their potential for sabotage, and keep notes on their reactions to letters received from abroad. He had accomplished this well, so well that he was considered the right person to start a correspondence in the name of a man who’d once come to his house to visit for the evening. Parts understood that his gift with signatures was already known in the Office. Later on he even heard that the graphics and graphology specialist at the Security Directorate was jealous of him.
BECAUSE OF HIS SKILL, Comrade Parts continued his work with Estonians abroad. He had made a pasteup of a photo of himself with General Laidoner’s insignia to inspire confidence and written a skillful account of how Laidoner had personally given it to him as a mark of respect. The Office was satisfied with Parts’s creative language and his repertoire of carefully constructed phrases. He knew how to avoid being overly specific or going after the Soviet system. Only the most ridiculously naive Estonian living in the West would believe that he could cross the line into opinions about the homeland or otherwise threaten the social order without the blessing of Postal Control.
In just a couple of weeks he succeeded in getting a response to a letter written according to guidelines and sent to a certain Villem in Stockholm. The two had studied together in Tartu, and Villem was delighted to receive a letter from home. The Office opened a file on Villem, Postal Control expedited Villem’s mother’s letters to Sweden, and within a month Parts was whisked to Tartu on a marshrutka transport to establish contact with Villem’s mother. In two months he’d collected enough evidence of Villem’s participation in a spy ring that he was rewarded with a promise that he and his wife could move back to Tallinn. He got a job at the Norma factory and his wife was made a guard at the railway station, with her own chair on the commuter platforms. They finally had the space for a sofa bed, which his wife made up for him every night in the living room. And after all this success, he couldn’t get his wife to Porkov’s party sober. They couldn’t go. They could never go. He would never taste Porkov’s beluga.
THE TURNING POINT in their cool, peaceful coexistence had come in the form of Ain-Ervin Mere’s trial two years earlier for killing Soviet citizens as head of the Estonian division of the German security police. Parts had been summoned to testify as an eyewitness to the horrors perpetrated by the cancer of fascism and he performed the task well, first studying diligently in the training arranged for witnesses on Maneeži Street and then presenting himself as an expert in the courtroom, deploring the accused, masterfully using everything he’d learned, all the while glad that England had refused to turn Mere over to the Soviet Union, since meeting the major eye to eye would have been uncomfortable. His testimony had been strengthened by the radio coverage, his eyewitness accounts of the atrocities at the concentration camp at Klooga were widely written of, and he’d even been invited to a kindergarten to be presented with flowers—the cameras flashing, the radio gushing about how the staff at the kindergarten wept and the children sang.
The Office was satisfied. His wife wasn’t. She had changed radically—she’d started missin
g days at work early; the smell of liquor had seeped into the wallpaper; her appearance, which she had always taken care with before, had fallen away curl by curl, her skin graying as quickly as the women’s hair covered in ash after the bombings. Parts had heard that she smelled of alcohol at the railway station, too, and had once even fallen out of her inspector’s chair. On good days she might energetically begin the housework, as she had today with the laundry, but after the first glass she would forget to open the dampers on the stove or absentmindedly let the tub overflow. Parts got into the habit of checking the dampers several times a day and constantly sniffing for the smell of gas.
Karl Linnas and Ervin Viks’s trial for the crimes at the Tartu camps had added to the problem and made what had been her occasional bouts of pacing a nightly occurrence. He remembered the time he surprised her reading a copy of Ervin Martinson’s book on the trial, her hands shaking, a trail of tobacco-darkened spit at the corner of her mouth, a bubble forming with every agitated breath. He’d snatched the book from her and locked it in his office cabinet. Her voice had been filled with horror: How did he know where he’d be sitting at the next trial, how did he know what all this would lead to, what would happen to them?
SHE MAY HAVE LOST her sense about the Ain-Ervin Mere trial, but Parts had done the opposite. Testifying at the trial had been the beginning of a new phase for him—he took hold of what was offered and turned it all to his own benefit. A career as a witness to the sadism of the Hitlerists, and as their victim, guaranteed a secure future. He might be asked to testify in other cases, maybe even abroad. He was necessary. Why couldn’t his wife understand that?