When the Doves Disappeared (5 page)

Before Juudit’s wedding, her mother had slipped in some advice between the lines about marriage and its potential problems, but the problems Juudit had weren’t in her mother’s repertoire. She’d had her doubts even during her engagement, and had told her mother in a roundabout way that, contrary to what she seemed to think, Juudit’s fiancé hadn’t made any physical advances at all. Her girlfriends had a quite different experience with their husbands-to-be, who couldn’t wait to get to the
altar. Rosalie, for instance, was constantly hinting at the fiery nature of her dark-browed Roland. Juudit’s mother had smiled at her daughter’s worries, said it was a mark of respect, told her that her father had been just as gentlemanly. Everything would work itself out once they started living together.

So Juudit concluded that she was silly to find it strange. It was a sign of a great love, and she hurried impatiently toward her wedding day, and a room for the honeymoon was reserved at the Shore Hotel in Haapsalu. But putting a wedding ring on her finger hadn’t changed anything. The wedding night was awkward. Her husband entered her, and then something happened. He withdrew, went behind a screen, and Juudit could hear water pouring into a basin, and frenzied washing. Then he settled himself into the other side of the bed, as far from his wife as possible. She pretended to sleep. The next night wasn’t any better. The night after that, he fell asleep on the sofa, and in the morning he acted as if everything was normal. In the daytime they promenaded on Africa Beach and in the evenings they danced at the Shore House like a normal, happy couple on their honeymoon. When they got back to Tallinn, he went to work as an assistant in Johan’s notary office and Juudit concentrated on building a home and feverishly contemplating what to do.

In public he behaved like a model husband, offering her his arm, often kissing her on the hand, and even on the mouth when he was in a playful mood, but his behavior changed as soon as they were alone together. If he didn’t feel any attraction to her, then why had he proposed? Had it all been a lie from the very beginning? Rosalie had introduced Juudit to the Simson family after she got engaged, and at first Juudit hadn’t taken any notice of Roland’s bookish cousin, not until Rosalie told her that he wasn’t quite as bloodless as he seemed at first glance. He was going to be a pilot. Juudit had read
The Red Baron
, and everything she asked him about or wondered over excited the boy in a way that charmed her, and they had many ardent discussions about Manfred von Richthofen. There was something so strange and passionate in his enthusiasm, and Juudit didn’t doubt her choice at all, didn’t doubt that her place was in the stands as he executed an Immelmann turn in the air show. Rosalie praised the match, and Juudit praised Rosalie’s. They considered themselves lucky. In his
letters, Juudit’s betrothed promised to fly her to Paris and London. They both wanted to travel, to see the world. The idea of nothing but air under her feet frightened her, but it was worth it to see the expressions on her girlfriends’ faces when she told them she was going to be a pilot’s wife, a woman of the world, going to buy her gloves in Paris, where the salesgirls shook powder into them before they tried them on your hands. One day her husband might even be in a newsreel, and the audience would sit there thrilled, sighing, some of the women’s hearts skipping a beat. Sometimes it baffled her that a man with such an exciting future was interested in her, of all people, and when they became engaged, he kissed her on the forehead, and she felt a heat inside her so intense that she couldn’t imagine ever having relations with anyone else. And then there were no relations.

Finally she worked up the courage to ask her married girlfriends about intimate matters. She didn’t dare ask Rosalie. Rosalie was still collecting her trousseau and the Simsons were preparing for the young bride to arrive. In spite of the sparks that flew between Roland and Rosalie, the two weren’t in a hurry to walk down the aisle. They wanted everything to be just right. But once Juudit was married, her heart wasn’t in it anymore when Rosalie wanted to talk about her wedding plans. The two of them used to always be talking about wedding hairdos and bridal bouquets, pondering the time when they would both be wives, their letters flying between the Armses’ farm and Juudit’s apartment in Tallinn. Juudit made Rosalie swear that they would take their husbands to Haapsalu and take mud baths together at the spa and try to coax the two men into getting along better—not that there was any trouble between them, but it would be nice if the two of them were friends. After all, they grew up together, so why couldn’t they be just as close as Juudit and Rosalie? At first Rosalie thought that taking a Singer sewing class would be more suitable for a housewife, but then she agreed that maybe she could pay someone to take care of the house for a couple of days, long enough to take a trip, and they could spend time together as two couples. There was always so much work to do in the countryside, you never had time to just visit. Rosalie finally decided that Juudit’s scheme was a good one, but after her honeymoon, Juudit gave up the idea. She was sure Rosalie would see right through her, see that her marriage was a lie, and Juudit didn’t know how
to explain it to her. How could she tell Rosalie that marriage had marked her as inadequate? Rosalie wouldn’t understand. She wouldn’t believe it. No one would.

Juudit didn’t know where to turn. She searched the
Housewife’s Handbook
she’d been given as a wedding gift. Under “marriage,” there was a reference to difficulties that occurred during sexual intercourse. Under
S
, she also found “sexual frigidity,” and an explanation that it usually happened for personal reasons—fear of pain, disgust toward one’s partner, or painful memories. She could tell that the passage wasn’t talking about men, just women. So it was her fault. Many of her married friends said that their husbands seemed to never get enough. One of them talked about tightness. Another said that her husband wouldn’t leave her in peace even when it was time for her woman’s troubles, which was terribly unhygienic, and even dangerous, and another suspected that her husband had a venereal disease. Juudit’s situation was unusual, but she had finally figured it out: gonorrhea, syphilis, chancre. Of course! That had to be it! Her husband was just too ashamed to tell her! She had to get him to a doctor, but how? She couldn’t tell him that she thought he was carrying a disease.

She put down the book. The photograph of the foot of an infant with hereditary syphilis brought back a memory from her childhood—a woman she’d seen once when she and her mother were out walking. Her mother had slowed her steps as soon as she saw the woman, steered Juudit down a different street, and said they could go to the import shop some other time. The woman had a trouble that bad women get, maybe from using the same dishes that a sick person has used. Her mother had been right about that—the
Housewife’s Handbook
said the same thing—but then wouldn’t Juudit have symptoms, too? She could still remember the woman’s face. It was clean, no signs of illness or cocainism, even though when they had been to visit the family doctor he had whispered, “The medical association claims that cocaine sickness in the country has decreased, but the number of psychopaths and neurotics hasn’t decreased, and those are the very people who are carriers. One can only imagine how many of them there must be.…”

The
Housewife’s Handbook
didn’t tell her whether the sickness would affect her husband’s capabilities. She couldn’t bring herself to think any
more about it. Syphilis, the most serious and frightening of the venereal diseases. She couldn’t have such terrible luck. She must be wrong. Her husband’s eyes weren’t red and he didn’t have sores in his mouth or on his legs, or any deformities. And anyway, how could she be sure he had it, that he had kissed bad women, or maybe even done something worse; and if he had, what did that mean? And how could she know whether he’d been to a doctor?

Juudit started examining herself, checking her tongue, her limbs, every day, panicking at a bug bite, the swelling that followed, a pimple on her chin, a callus on her foot, wondering if she’d had sores she hadn’t noticed, if she was in the symptomless phase that the
Housewife’s Handbook
talked about. Everyone had already started dropping hints about a little bundle that was on its way, had started to wonder about it, because they’d interpreted her hurry to get married as a sign that she was in a family way—Anna Simson in particular had whispered about it, knowingly, reproachfully. Finally Juudit got up her courage. She had to know for sure. The doctor was friendly, the visit awkward, even agonizing. It ended with him telling her she had nothing physically wrong with her, no disease.

“My dear,” he said, “you were created to give birth.”

Western Estonia, Estland General Region, Reichskommissariat Ostland

W
E TRAVELED FOR
a week through woods blighted with fighting, made our way around seething horse carcasses and bloated corpses, avoiding bombed bridges, trying to interpret the rumble of the destruction battalion bombers. Eventually the forest started to look familiar, restored to health as my longing for home was soothed and we came upon the road to our old mail drop. I left Edgar shivering at the edge of the woods as lookout and approached the house warily, but the dog recognized us from a long way off and ran to meet me. I could tell by the way it scampered around that there was no danger, so I relaxed and, accompanied by the dog, went to the window and gave the knock we’d agreed on. The woman we called “the mail girl” opened the door immediately, smiled broadly, and told me the news: The Bolsheviks were still in retreat, the eastern front was crumbling, and the Finns and Germans were hunting them down at Lake Ladoga. The Russians had doused the woods with oil and set them on fire, but a burning forest wasn’t going to stop the Finnish-German troops! The Andrusson brothers came to the door behind her, and Edgar trotted over when I shouted that everything was all right.

Within a moment the cabin was filled with fun, everyone laughing and talking over each other. It felt far away to me, like I was watching them from a distance. Later that evening we heard yet more promising news, but even though I was gradually beginning to believe my ears, there was still no pounding drum of joy in my chest. I looked at the lines on my hands every so often, and scrubbed them for a long time in the sauna with the Andrusson boys, but still they looked bloody to me sometimes, clean other times. My cousin was already a new man, his posture straightened, the flow of his talk opening up like an uncorked cask, full of stories of his time in flight school, speculation that he might teach there after the war, and assurances to Karl, the youngest of the brothers, that he could be a pilot, too—never mind the broken ankle, Mrs. Vaik’s skill with splints is well known. The sky’s the limit! The Andrussons warmed to these dreams of the future and Edgar got carried away reminiscing about building the seaplane hangar. I didn’t say anything about his sudden manhood, a milk mustache still warm from the cow. I let him rhapsodize. I also didn’t mention that when they built the seaplane hangar he wasn’t even born yet. “Think about it. This border area was already an important defense point for the Russians, even back then,” Edgar said with a flourish. I felt my breast pocket, the loose-leaf paper. The time would come soon. I had already started making a record of events, but every word I wrote felt wrong, like a desecration of my fallen brothers, pitiful whining compared to the deeds I’d witnessed on the front. The things I’d seen resisted being put into words. I could smell the swamp in my boots, see the red lines on my hands. The mark of my pen wasn’t pure enough.

The mail girl told us more news whenever she could get a word in through the constant hum of Edgar’s stories. In Viljandi, at least, the people who had owned farms before the Bolshevik land reforms were cutting the rye, and they were supposed to sell the grain for thirty kopeks to the tenants the Reds had given their property to. In return, the new tenants were supposed to help the original owners with the work, and weren’t allowed to cut any timber except to take the bark off the trees they’d already felled. The managers of the sovkhoz farms had their careers cut short; the manager of the nationalized Kase linen factory had run off with the Red Army and the former owner was running the factory again. Anyone who needed a tractor from the tractor stations could sign up for one.
They had started rebuilding the houses that were burned down by the communists, and you could get assistance for it. The mail was running again. There was good news everywhere, it seemed. I picked up the thin newspapers filled with minutely detailed instructions, adjusted the heart of the lamp’s flame larger. Visitors from farther away had brought several issues of
Sakala
with more decrees concerning the cutting of rye. I wasn’t ready to think about what condition our house and fields were in, or who was harvesting the grain. I became engrossed in the other laws of the new overlords: All tenants were ordered to register. Homeowners were forbidden to rent rooms to anyone who wasn’t registered. All Jews, arrestees, refugees, and communists were to register with their local administrator immediately; all other renters and homeowners were to go there as well to declare their assets. Those who’d come from the Soviet Union were to register at the offices of the local commandant within three days. All Jews were to wear the Star of David. Enforcing this order was the responsibility of the police and police auxiliary. Listening to Russian or anti-German radio was prohibited.