When the Doves Disappeared (26 page)

“That’s as it should be,” Parts said. “People can eat in the communal dining room. Who really needs a big kitchen?”

Conversation.

Their first in months.

She looked at him and reminded him that they were at home and it was just the two of them. Parts concentrated on arranging leftover pigs’ feet on a plate, careful not to touch his wife’s shopping bags, not picking the cake box up from the floor. He swallowed his disgust at her thick toenails poking in the air, swallowed the question of how her childless friend had acquired her new apartment—did she have a lover? His chances for an uninterrupted evening were dwindling. Maybe he should give her the brown envelope from the Office now—money always calms women down. Her breath smelled like a pharmacy. That was nothing new. But as he walked past her, he noticed a slight smell of dry shampoo, and her hair
did have an unusual lightness about it. As if she wanted to impress on him that she was in her right mind.

“Why are you talking to me?” Parts said, emphasizing every word.

She flinched, her bluster peeled away, and fell silent. The ash on her cigarette grew, the coffee cup shook in her hand, and Parts closed his eyes, didn’t say anything. There were only a few unbroken cups left in the coffee service, which had, after all, been a gift from Auntie Anna. He remembered what had happened the last time. His wife had laughed, said it didn’t matter, they didn’t need a whole setting, since they never had any guests.

“They were so happy with the new apartment. It’s no wonder. Everybody’s getting on with their lives and careers, starting families, happy families, but for us this could be our last day in Tallinn. You behave as if you don’t even realize that.”

Parts looked his wife in the eye for the first time in years. Her once beautifully open eyes had been swallowed by flesh. Pity stepped into the kitchen and scraped the scales from Parts’s irritated words. His voice softened.

“I don’t intend to ever go back to Siberia. Never,” he said.

She turned on the radio.

“Are you sure? I listened to the Ain-Ervin Mere trial on the radio, and all the programs about it. I went to the Officers’ House, too, and watched the beginning of the performance outside. You people no doubt knew exactly who was there, but I put on a scarf and sunglasses. Look for me in your photos—I’m sure you’ll have plenty of them.”

Parts sat down. The radio blared and his wife lowered her voice so that he had to read her lips to understand what she was saying.

“Why in the world did you go there?” he asked. “Mere wasn’t even there. He’s in England, and they’ll never extradite him.”

“I had to. So I would know what it was like. What it sounded like, what it looked like.”

She lit a new cigarette—the old one was still smoking in the ashtray. The shout of the radio made the smoke and ash dance.

“For heaven’s sake, it was just a show trial! Ain-Ervin Mere wouldn’t agree to keep working with us, that’s all!”

“So he made a mistake. Are you sure you won’t?”

Parts was taken by surprise, and hissed, “Mere was an important agent. I’ve never been a man of any significance. They don’t arrange theater like that for little people.”

“What if they’re looking for just those kinds of people, as a warning to others? You’ve already been convicted once of counterrevolutionary activities. Or do you think that testifying in the trial made you a hero for all time?”

Her elbow shoved the grocery bags again. An orange fell out of one. It rolled into the hallway. Parts wondered if he should tell her more about the book project. No. She would enjoy the rewards once it was written, but there was no need to tell her what the Office’s plans were, or the part the book would play. He poured himself a cup of the grain coffee she’d made and sat down at the table. She slid the ashtray back and forth. Ashes flew into his cup. He swallowed the surly words that rose to his throat.

“I don’t want to be next,” she said. Parts twisted the radio knob louder. “We got some new girls at work. One of them immediately had to leave. They didn’t tell us why, but Kersti knew that her father was in the German army. I wait every day for the time when they come for me. I’ve been waiting ever since the Russians returned. I know they’ll come.”

PARTS WOULD WAIT
one more moment before he began to type. He would wait for his wife to empty her bottle, and while he waited he would suck on the bones of the pigs’ feet. He wiped his fingers, unlocked the cabinet, and took out the journal. Could his wife know what Roland had really been up to after the rift between them? Anna and Leonida had passed on in the years when Parts was in Siberia, but had Roland been in contact with them, the careful Roland? Mothers always know something. The phonograph in the living room started playing Bruckner. The weak feeling brought on by his wife’s rare exchange of words with him was spreading. He lowered his fingers to the keyboard and pursed his lips. He could still go back to her, pick up the orange that had rolled into the hallway, peel it for her, take her hand, ask her to tell him everything she remembered, say to her: Let’s rescue each other. Just this once let’s blow on the same coal. There wasn’t much time. She could help him find Roland. She might remember details that he didn’t, might be able to guess
things he couldn’t, places Roland might have gone, people he might have contacted. He could show her the journal. She might recognize the handwriting, too, or even the people mentioned. What if she held the key to his questions about Roland? This could be the right moment. Maybe she was frightened enough, finally ready after all these years. Why else would she bring it up, tell him she’d gone to watch Mere’s trial? Was it a sign that her pride had finally crumbled? Had her desperation destroyed it, or was it the realization that no one but Parts could protect her future? Why couldn’t he take that small step, take her by the hand? Why couldn’t he trust her even that much, this one time?

Tallinn, Estonian SSR, Soviet Union

In 1943 Mark thought of a way to make some money. Because some of the Hitlerist crowd understood that Fascist Germany would lose, many of them already had a backup plan—to make it to the West, where they could sabotage the opposition to the Third Reich and continue to spread Hitlerism. With the help of some fishermen friends, Mark started assisting these good-for-nothings with their insidious plan to escape to the naively welcoming West. Because he’d been a celebrated athlete during the days of bourgeois Fascism in Estonia, his face was well known and he was admired, so it was easy for him to make contacts. He asked to be transferred from Tartu to Tallinn. He had already proved his ability in the Hitlerist intelligence service, so the Tallinn Fascists welcomed him. He found an apartment where he could conduct Fascists to wait for transport by boat. The apartment belonged to his fiancée’s mother, a woman who had betrayed her people with a Fascist officer—

P
ARTS LOWERED HIS WRISTS
to the table and wiped his damp neck with his handkerchief. His wife’s heels had started up again, like a pounding rain, but the text was nevertheless flowing well. Word choice was tough, though. Lover? Fascist female? He shouldn’t use the word “whore,” it was too strong—in poor taste, in fact. A woman in an intimate
relationship with an SS officer? A Fascist Estonian woman in an intimate relationship with an SS officer? A woman who adored Hitler and was in a filthy relationship with an SS officer? A Hitlerist bride? An occupation bride? Or would “Hitler-loving war bride” be the most elegant choice?

Parts thought about his wife’s nature, her friends in her younger years, his deceased mother-in-law, and tried to find the precise phrase. His wife would no doubt have been able to think of something. He remembered the childish hope that had kept him alive until he returned from Siberia—the hope that their shared past in a country that was becoming something new would form a foundation for their union, that they would understand each other in a way no one else could. They were starting from a good place. His wife hadn’t divorced him, although many others had divorced while their spouses were in Siberia. He hadn’t received a single letter from her, but she had sent packages—as many as were allowed. His store of hope had a strong foundation, and during the Ain-Ervin Mere testimony he had even wondered whether he ought to bring her with him on the kindergarten visits. She could have given presentations on her husband, the heroic witness, thanked the Red Army for saving his life; they could have posed for photos with the children, she holding a bouquet of carnations. Maybe the Office would have seized on that idea if they’d had children of their own, or maybe the Office had been conscious of his wife’s past, and didn’t think she was appropriate for kindergartners. It was for the best. Her breakdown had been quite sudden.

Parts considered himself experienced enough to understand the primitive instincts that sometimes possessed his wife, and he had once suggested to her that she could find a companion, get a bit of contact with younger men. It would have had a calming effect, given her other channels for her drives and emotions, at least allowed him to work in peace, but she had reacted by shutting down. This upset him. Contrary to what she imagined, he knew from experience how helpful it could be to act on these cravings, how it made a difficult life more bearable, if not exactly delightful. At the camps he’d quickly learned how the law of the jungle asserted itself in that world—the animal instincts. Some of the other boys were let into the criminals’ barracks because they had beautiful faces; Parts had to demonstrate his unusual skills to be let in, but once he was accepted, life became manageable. No one dared to come and get him there, to take him
to the woods or the mines, and he’d set up an exchange with the doctor for Vaseline, since, like the criminals, the doctor, too, needed a forger. But he’d put those crazy times behind him now, drowned those memories out of his mind like unwanted kittens thrown in the river; the sweaty clutches on his neck had faded into the lost longings of the past.

Parts had discussed his wife’s situation with a doctor, who said his suspicions were probably correct. An empty womb had almost certainly caused her unstable condition—she might be infertile. He recommended seeing a specialist. Parts hadn’t dared to suggest that to her, although according to the doctor, barrenness could be a cause of personality disorder. If she’d had a child she might have had something else to focus on during the trial, and her collapse might have been at least partly averted. Besides, they could have given a child a good life; the house would have made the child an eligible prospect, as would Parts’s respected position. He certainly wouldn’t have minded having a little fellow around. He’d even done what he could to effect such an outcome with several attempts at conjugal activity, until he’d retreated to the sofa bed, and finally dragged the sofa into his office. It was rough going, presenting himself as a normal family man without having any offspring, and communicating with the Office staff would have been easier if they could have socialized with other families; in fact, it would have made his job go much more smoothly if he had a child he could show the world. He should talk to the Office about it. He’d heard from one recruit who had been turned when the Office arranged an adoption for him in only a week.

He’d given up his walks along the Pirita because of the children. There were always too many laughing toddlers, the irritating hum of tops, paths blocked by baby carriages and children taking their first wobbly steps. Once he saw a father flying a kite with his son, the kite a perfect hourglass against the blue sky. Parts lifted his face to the breeze and slowed his steps. He would have liked to have a son to tell stories to, stories like how Alexander Fyodorovich Avdeev had shot down the celebrated Walter Nowotny over Saaremaa. Alexander had been a handsome man, like all pilots, and his plane, a Polikarpov 1-153, was like a beautiful seagull, but its gull’s wings were poor ones and the Polikarpov was discontinued. His son’s eyes would go wide with wonder, he would want to hear more, and Parts would tell him about the time he flew a
Polikarpov and the plane had gone into a steep nosedive. His son would hold his breath with excitement, and Parts would recount how he might have crashed into the ground if he hadn’t kept a cool head and pressed the side rudder with his foot to shift the spin in the opposite direction, how the spinning stopped but his head reeled, making him feel like the plane was still spinning, which was perfectly ordinary, a challenge for any pilot. That’s what he would have said, and then he would have patted the boy on the shoulder and promised that they could go later and buy some airplane stickers and asked: Shall we fly the kite some more? And the boy would nod, and then they would look up together and see how the kite had risen.