When the Doves Disappeared (25 page)

EDGAR TOOK A MOMENT
to breathe as he stood at SS-Hauptsturmführer Hertz’s door. He could see the soft light of the entryway through the green glass transom. He straightened his shoulders. The tailor had done his work well, and made sure the badge on his sleeve was straight.
OT-Bauführer
. Because of the shortages he would have to make do with a sleeve badge and his employee ID booklet, but what did it matter? He had plenty of reasons to be pleased. He’d waited for this invitation for a long time. Once he was through this door, the whole Empire would be open to him. Men from Baltische Öl and the Goldfeld company would arrive; so would the Einsatzgruppe Russland-Nord, whose activities he’d already researched. When the Germans had retreated from the Caucasus and lost access to the Caspian Sea, their gaze had turned to Estonia. Edgar understood immediately what it meant. They were out of oil. They would never surrender Estonia. Petrochemicals were the future. Baltische Öl’s interests would be prioritized, and although he had never researched the subject, he would start now.

The maid took Edgar’s coat and hat. There was already a cheerful
atmosphere in the room, the Führer’s portrait on the wall slightly askew. Hauptsturmführer Hertz gave him a warm welcome, led him to a room full of guests, and left to look for his girlfriend, who was still in her dressing room. SS-Sturmbannführer Aumeier came over to continue a conversation he and Edgar had begun earlier in the day about a trip to Vilnius and Riga. It seemed an intriguing device had been invented in Lithuania to make processing easier, and they would see it at work at the Paneriai camp. Perhaps something similar could be used in Estland. Edgar told him the system of delegation was progressing well with the police patrols as well as Third Battalion Major Koort. Regulations said that staff members had to maintain a six-foot distance from the inmates; they still needed to discuss logistics. The Sturmbannführer nodded—it was a familiar situation: the SS-Wirtschafter wanted to keep close tabs on certain key sectors.

The door to the drawing room was open, and at first Edgar was too focused on fitting in to realize why the voice of the woman talking with the Hauptsturmführer in the hallway sounded familiar. Then he knew: there was no mistaking that voice, even over the cheerful chatter of the other guests. Edgar glanced at the windows. No, he shouldn’t even think it—but the center window was a large double door. It must lead to a balcony.

He squeezed his way to a corner of the balcony, pressed his back against the stucco, and held tight to the railing with his right hand. The hem of the curtains licked at his shoes from between the doors. He could hear the click of high heels in the drawing room, the squeak of the floor, and that easily recognizable female laugh. There was no way to jump—the apartment was too high up. The guests were going to the table. Edgar heard Sturmbannführer Aumeier mention his name and say something about his needing some fresh air. When the maid came to summon the woman to the phone, Edgar saw his chance. As her footsteps retreated, he slipped back inside, exchanged a few quick words with his host, walked calmly across the carpet, then quickened his steps and found the water closet just as Juudit walked past him into the drawing room. There was a door from the water closet into a hallway, and another from the hallway directly to the entryway, where he found his hat and coat. He whispered to the cook that he’d had a sudden bout of queasiness and had to leave,
asked her to convey his apologies to the hosts for his sudden departure. Later he sent word that they could send a car for him when the rest of the guests were ready for the trip. He felt well enough to travel.

WHEN STURMBANNFÜHRER AUMEIER’S DRIVER
pulled into Roosikrantsi early the next morning, Edgar drew the brim of his hat over his eyes, just in case. After the car came to a stop, the others got out to stretch their legs, but Edgar stayed in the back seat, saying he still felt weak and wanted to nap a little. Between his turned-up collar and his hat brim he saw the maid—the same one who had taken his coat the evening before—dash out to the street and almost collide with the handyman, who was wielding a broom on the steps. The ordinariness of the morning calmed him. The blackout curtains were raised, the smell of fresh-baked bread wafted from the bakery, the horses with their heavy carts clopped toward the commissary, and finally SS-Haupsturmführer Hertz came out, stopped to buy some nuts from a boy who was selling them, came over to say hello to Edgar and the other travelers good-naturedly, and got into his own car. The next moment the door flew open and Juudit ran out in a flowered housecoat that fluttered in the morning wind, and the breeze blew her to Hertz’s Opel Olympia, where she slid into the back seat, and he lifted his hands to her shoulders and caressed her sleep-tussled hair, her ears, with great tenderness. The sight of it blinded Edgar for a moment, flowed through him like he’d accidentally swallowed lye and there was nothing he could do about it, though it ate through him like deadly poison, because in that touch was all the love in the world, everything gentle and precious. The SS-Haupsturmführer was behaving like this right there in front of everyone—the joking boys, the junk sellers, the street sweepers—letting this woman run out into the street to say goodbye, even though the wind pressed her nightgown against her legs, the silk went sliding off her shoulders, and he repaid this exhibition by caressing her ear. Such a measure of impropriety, such a display of intimacy, belonged between the sheets, in the boudoir. Such a gesture was too good to waste on a tart. Edgar had seen how men were with war brides, but this was different. This was a display of something most people have just once in their lives, and many never have at all.

The scene replayed in Edgar’s mind again and again—the woman running to the car, getting in, the man raising his hands to her shoulders, stroking her hair and touching her ears. The movements wouldn’t stop repeating, the man’s expression of happiness, of having forgotten everything else, Juudit’s smile that made the cobblestones sparkle with love, the light on their faces. Edgar couldn’t avoid thinking of the two of them in bed, although he didn’t want to know anything about that, Hertz’s hands touching Juudit’s earlobes, her face, Hertz kissing her eyebrows, her nose. There was nothing exceptional about Juudit’s earlobes. Juudit was a simple girl. Beauty was not among her greatest gifts. And she was married. What right did such an insignificant female have to touch the Hauptsturmführer so obscenely, to traipse into drawing rooms that Edgar didn’t dare to enter? What right did she have to walk into the Germans’ world, just like that, without earning it? A woman gets into a car, the light comes on for a few private moments, darkens the day in the street, becomes a lighthouse in a black sea, and the two people inside don’t even notice it, because they don’t see the world around them, they don’t need it, they illuminate each other. The man touches the woman’s ears. The light comes on. Their light.

When he’d worked through these thoughts, Edgar realized that Juudit could be made use of in the beds of the Germans. That time would come. But before that happened, he would go deeper into the job he’d been given, take production inventories, visit his auntie Anna, make discreet inquiries as to what she knew about Juudit’s activities. He had no desire to live in Tallinn now. The muddy camp at Vaivara was his only alternative—he wouldn’t run into Juudit there. For the first time in his life, he hated his wife.

PART FOUR
 

Fascist agents of Germany were cleverly sent to Estonia even before the country was occupied by Hitlerist forces. One of these agents was Mark, whose fiancée absorbed her suitor’s teachings. According to eyewitness reports, Soviet prisoners often saw this woman washing a military coat and shirt, belonging to Mark, that was red with blood. She claimed that Mark had simply been dressing birds for dinner. “It was clear to me, however, that Mark took part in the execution of Soviets,” witness M. Afanasyev says. For the nationalists, murder became an everyday occurrence. After every bloodbath, the murderers arranged drinking parties or orgies, which Mark’s bride also took part in, shaking the plucked-out fingernails of Soviet citizens from her skirts.

—Edgar Parts,
At the Heart of the Hitlerist Occupation
, Eesti Raamat Publishing, 1966

Tallinn, Estonian SSR, Soviet Union

H
IS WIFE SHOVED
the shopping bags piled on the table toward Parts as if she were expecting praise for buying groceries. The viscose lace at the hem of her slip quivered; blue smoke filled the room. Parts put his own purchases on the floor, opened the window, and pushed the rustling hopflower vines aside, keeping his motions steady, though he’d been startled by his wife’s unexpected appearance in the kitchen. What was going on? What did she want this time? When she had on several occasions expressed a desire for more fashionable towels, he hadn’t objected. He’d bought new Chinese terry cloth to replace the linen ones and fought to find Polish toothpaste to put alongside the tooth powder. He’d stood in line for a permit to buy a Snaigė refrigerator, then gone to the back of the requisite three more lines before finally managing to cut to the front to get the next-to-last refrigerator available that day. All of it was his responsibility, because when it came to creature comforts his wife’s job at the railway station was useless. If Parts should happen to want some drier frankfurters, he had to find them himself, making acquaintances at the combine who could get frankfurters before they were even sold to the shops, where they added water to increase the weight. It was useless to dream of fricadelle soup until he had a friend at the meat combine—the
ground meat at the grocer’s was adulterated, sometimes with rat. All this took time from his work, but he did it anyway, for his own comfort and to keep his wife’s fits at bay. How much thinner did he have to stretch himself?

His wife pushed the shopping bags another centimeter toward him, but he didn’t give them a glance. A cold dinner would have to suffice. He wasn’t going to start frying cutlets today, or look at her purchases. He wanted some time in peace, before she started making more demands.

Surprisingly, she opened her mouth, her breath sour, and started explaining that she had spent the afternoon with Kersti, who also worked at the railway station, and that they had gone to such and such a shop, but it had been closed for inventory, and after who knows how many places closed for inventory they’d ended up at a place where a friend of Kersti’s worked, where there was a buzz at the back door, and they’d gotten oranges. She continued poking through the shopping bags and a cake box fell on the floor. Fresh pastilaa, she said, from Kalevi’s. His favorite jelly cakes.

Was it a car she wanted? A Moskvitch cost five thousand rubles. An impossible sum, an impossibly long line for a purchase permit, and he hadn’t received his advance yet.

“And then we went to see Kersti’s new apartment, in a high-rise. The kitchen is a little box. At least we have space to sit and eat, and to cook. She doesn’t, although otherwise the apartment’s very big and stylish.”