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.
All of this meant that we had gotten rid of the Bolsheviks. I put down the copies of Sakala and picked up Järva Teataja. An announcement bordered in mourning on the front page made me raise my hand to my temple, although my hat was already on the table. “In memory of all who fell for Estonian freedom, with deepest sorrow …” In the newspaper, freedom had a black border. In my mind, it dripped red blood. I let the others rattle on and suddenly I realized that they were already living in a free country. As if the war had never happened. As if peace were already here. Edgar had stepped into the new era in a moment. Could it really be over? The hiding, the living in the woods, could it all be behind us? Did they already believe the promise that soon our houses would be given back to us, that I could go and get my girl with the smiling eyes, that we would soon be married? Would we be sowing vetch for the cows by next year, stacking the timothy hay? Would I be walking the Simson family fields with the harrow again, my feet bare, the rich dirt between my toes, my gelding balking at the job like he always did? The grass was a long way off when you were harrowing, so the gelding had never liked the job, but he was always lively when he pulled the hay stackers to the barn or hauled the sheaves of rye to the threshing, and in the evening my smiling-eyed girl would make me some real coffee, and take off her apron, and it would have a bit of hay stuck to it, and her eyes would be as bright as vetch blossoms. Edgar would finally leave, and he’d build his own home and take care of his wife, and I wouldn’t have to listen to his endless chatter anymore. Maybe the people who’d been sent to Siberia would be able to come home, maybe the Soviet Union could be forced to let them come. Maybe my father could come home.
I’d made a record of every smoking ruin and unburied body I’d encountered, with either a house or a cross, even if I couldn’t find words for all those lifeless eyes, those corpses swarming with maggots. I would find people who could use my notes, and then my own paltry contribution to freeing the country wouldn’t bother me anymore. It wouldn’t matter that I wasn’t with the Green Captain’s troops or Captain Talpak’s company when they freed Tartu and Tallinn. Soon it would be time to rebuild the country. This was the beginning. I was about to ask the mail girl what officials I should contact to give them my information about the destruction wrought by the Bolsheviks. And at that moment, I realized my foolishness. The German army would nab me immediately to fight in their ranks, and Edgar, too, though judging by the stories he was telling he didn’t seem to understand the situation. The war wasn’t over. I wouldn’t be sowing vetch next summer, wouldn’t hear the ripple of Rosalie’s laughter in the evening. The Bolsheviks’ retreat had blinded me, made me as shortsighted as a child. I cursed myself. I watched the mail girl jump up and dance with the older Andrusson boy while Karl played the accordion, and I had a sinking feeling. I was sure that the old Russian draft announcements pasted to the walls would soon be replaced by German ones.
Reval, Estland General Region, Reichskommissariat Ostland
WHEN JUUDIT FINALLY dared to leave the apartment, she stopped at the front door first, to listen. The sounds of war had vanished, they really had. She adjusted her collar and bent her arm at a right angle to hold her purse, her glove hiding the tension in her clenched fist. Her first steps over the cobblestones were tentative, broken glass still crunched underfoot. She couldn’t seem to find the right way to walk down the streets of the capital, as if she’d left it behind in the world that had vanished. The town rushed toward her at the first street corner in a flood of baby carriages, stray dogs that seemed to have appeared from nowhere, laughing ladies, German soldiers playing harmonicas and winking at her. She caught her breath and blushed, but she’d hardly had a chance to recover from the embarrassment when the hum from the post office spilled over her, bank doors opening, delivery boys running down the street, and as she was stopped in her tracks with astonishment, a young scamp selling pictures of the Führer grabbed her by the sleeve and she couldn’t see any way to get rid of him because the proceeds went to people whose houses had burned down, and of course the young lady wanted to help homeless families, and she stuffed the picture into her purse and bent her arm again as she walked past the movie theater. Suddenly she heard a bang, a truck going by carrying a load of bricks, and she jumped, bent over double, but it was the sound of rebuilding, not war. An urchin at the corner laughed at the lady who was frightened by a truck, and Juudit, red-faced, straightened her hat. Tallinn was blooming with Estonian and German flags tangling in the wind. The Palace Theater was being quickly rebuilt, a crowd of kids already gathered to marvel at the movie posters, even t
he adults stopping to look at them as they passed, and Juudit got a glimpse of the little red smile of a German actress and Mari Möldre’s long eyelashes. The merriness of the crowd played around Juudit’s ankles and she felt like she’d stepped into a movie herself. It wasn’t real. Still, she would have liked to join in, keep walking with no destination and never go home. Why not? Why couldn’t she? Why couldn’t she participate in the joy? You couldn’t smell the smoke from the fires anymore—at least not here; it was still coming in the windows of her apartment—and she sniffed the air, which carried a smell like freshly baked buns, until she was dizzy. The town wasn’t destroyed at all. The Russians must have been so busy burning the warehouses and factories and blowing up the Kopli armored train that they didn’t get around to the homes. She kept walking, looking for new evidence of peace, and passed the Soldatenheim, where young soldiers stood casually chatting, and their eyes fastened on her lips, and she sped up, averting her eyes from a woman putting up a big poster of “Hitler, the Liberator” in the window of the button shop. Juudit looked around for something more, greedy to see more people who seemed to have forgotten the last several years. Tallinn was suddenly flooded with young men. It annoyed her. There were too many men. She wished she were home, had a sudden, pressing desire to get back there. She quickly bought a newspaper and also snapped up a copy of Otepää Teataja that someone had used as a lunch wrapper, and she stared for a moment into a café where she had once known the buffet girl by name. Had they already gone back to work, or did the café have a new owner and new employees? She had sometimes gone there in the past to enjoy a pastry, meet her friends, but now her wedding ring was tight around her finger under her glove. Near the hospital, Wehrmacht soldiers were snaring pigeons. One of them noticed her and smiled, the others urged him to keep working. “Dinner’s on its way!”
JUUDIT COULD SEE a crowd of boys from far off gathered in front of her building marveling at a DKW with a plywood chassis parked on the street. The boys weren’t a problem—they wouldn’t ask her about her husband—but next to them stood her talkative neighbor. Walking past her might be awkward. The woman grabbed Juudit’s arm and clucked, “Are they going to make all the cars from plywood now? What’s next?” Juudit nodded politely but the woman wouldn’t let go, wanted to share her astonishment at rail lines being fitted for steam engines, the coal generators. “Can you imagine? Trams that run on wood! The Germans think of everything!” All the way to the courtyard Juudit could hear shreds of the woman’s talk behind her, gradually shifting to talk of her husband’s return. She had to pull herself away rather rudely. She hurried up the stairs. She could hear the phone ringing from the hallway. It was still ringing when she came into the kitchen, but she didn’t answer it, just as she hadn’t answered it the day before. She hadn’t dared. She hadn’t opened her door, either, although there was a knock. Instead she’d peered out the window at the blue will-o’-the-wisps of German flashlights, frightened by the strange shadows, the clack of wooden shoe soles, the dimmed car headlights swerving, shouts in German. There was no doubt of the Germans’ final victory. The papers said that Lenin’s remains had even been evacuated from Moscow. Juudit spread the newspapers over the table, made some grain coffee, and lit one of her last papirossis to brace herself for the news, but there was still no mention of anyone returning home. Instead the papers encouraged readers to send in jokes about the days of tyranny, and published lists of all the new grocery prices. Emmental cheese, 1.45–1.60 Reichsmarks; Edam, 1.20–1.40 Reichsmarks; Tilsit, 0.80–1.50 Reichsmarks. Yoghurt, 0.14 Reichsmarks. A grade 2 goose without giblets, head, wings, or feet, 0.55 Reichsmarks/kg. She should go get some food coupons tomorrow, register for them at the nearest shop, stand in line, tugging at shoulder pads that would never stay put, just like she used to. Her neighbor had been lodging some relatives from Tartu with a flock of children, their noise seeping through the walls and reminding her of the family life she didn’t have and never would have. Her ruined life was reverting inexorably to the way it had been before her husband left. All that was missing was his return.
Gradually Juudit began to realize she was being foolish. The men wouldn’t all be sent home until the war was over. They were needed at the front. They wouldn’t come running home in one day. Only the deserters who had been stationed in Estonia and nearby areas had returned. If she had answered her phone, opened her door, or talked with her acquaintances, she would have known that. The war had taken away her ability to reason. She’d just seen it in her mind, her husband at the door, a husband she ought to be even more understanding with than before, because you had to be understanding with men who’d been to war. The anxious waiting could go on forever. There was no telling how far away he was. And what if he had disappeared? How long would Juudit have to wait before she could respectably start a new life? Maybe she should have done what the downstairs tenant did, the crime that got her neighbor convicted of counterrevolutionary activities—sign on to work in a ship’s kitchen, sail away, to another country, leave everything, start over, look for a new man in a new place, forget she was ever married. But then Rosalie, or her mother, or someone else in her family, might suffer the same fate as her neighbor.
WHEN THE LISTS of the names of those returning began to appear in the papers, her neighbor put a bottle of wine on the sideboard to wait for her husband’s return. The phone rang morning and night and eventually Juudit had to answer it because she knew her mother would be trying to reach her—and it was her mother, demanding news, saying she’d been asking the men returning if they knew Edgar or Johan, and Juudit couldn’t stop her from calling, but she jumped every time the phone rang, every ring threatening to sentence her to the life she had lived before. But she still had to arrange her days, figure out what she was going to live on. She was stopped many times on the street and asked for food, even just a piece of bread. Out in the country there was always plenty of food. In the country they made moonshine. You could smuggle all kinds of things from the country into town, start up a business. It was her only option, even her mother said so, told her to go to visit Rosalie at slaughtering time, or even better, to stay there. Juudit had to go, even though she knew she’d have to listen to Anna worrying over whether a young wife like her could manage alone in town, and talking about Edgar, her favorite, telling her how special he was, decreeing what they should cook for him when he came home. Anna wouldn’t talk about her own husband. Juudit was almost sure he would never return—Rosalie had told her that the mice had come back to the farm in June, and mice never lie.
ALTHOUGH MOST of the train traffic was transporting soldiers, now and then the boys would pick up ordinary travelers along the way. That was why Juudit dressed up more than was necessary for the difficult journey. The soldiers’ whistles as they helped her onto the train put roses in her cheeks. She had a black-market travel permit in the pocket of her muff, and she smoked her last papirossis even though she was in a public place. The whole way there she worried that Anna would see through her, see right through to her traitor’s heart. Hadn’t she pretended to be a happy wife at the beginning of her marriage? Hadn’t she done her best to look like a normal newlywed? She had, in fact, only fought with her husband once, after a year of marriage and just two attempts at sexual activity of any kind. Juudit had thought for a long time about how to ask him if he’d been to a doctor or even a healer. The words fell with a thud onto the dinner table, in the middle of their cutlets. He was dumbstruck, put down his fork, then his knife, but kept chewing. The silence trembled in the gravy dish. He switched to his dessert spoon. “Why would I?” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“You’re not normal!”
Her chair fell over, the plywood scraping across the floorboards, and Juudit ran to the bedroom, closed the door behind her, pushed a chair under the latch. Their medicines were kept in a box in the washstand, but all she could find there was some Hufeland’s powder. She poured all of it into her mouth, grateful that Johan and his wife were
away visiting relatives.
Her husband knocked on the door.
“Open up, darling. Let’s straighten this out.”
“Come with me to the doctor.”
“Is something troubling you?”
“You’re not a man!”
“Darling, you sound hysterical.”
His voice was patient. He spoke slowly, told her he was going to get her a glass of sugar water, like his auntie had always made when he was little and woke up from a nightmare. It would calm her down. Then they could talk about taking her to a nerve doctor.
JUUDIT MADE an appointment at the Greiffenhagen private clinic. Doctor Otto Greiffenhagen was known for his competence with men’s diseases and his clinic was definitely the most modern one in town. If he couldn’t help her, no one could. At the appointment, Juudit’s voice cracked as she sputtered out her problem.
The doctor sighed. “Maybe you should both come in. Together. Or your husband could come alone, as well.”
Juudit got up to leave.
“Ma’am, there are various preparations you could try. A dose of Testoviron might help, for instance. But first I would have to examine your husband.”
But Juudit couldn’t get her husband to come to the clinic. There would be no Testoviron, no treatment of any kind. She would never fly in an airplane. Not long after that she stopped going to her English conversation group and abandoned the daily French practice she had taken up during her engagement, back when she’d thought that a pilot’s wife needed to be cosmopolitan and keep up her language skills.