“The children in Germany are dying from hunger. A lot of these men have children. You don’t understand it yet, but you will once you have your own kids hanging on your skirt.”
Her eyes fastened on Juudit’s middle. Juudit lifted her hand to her waist and cast a glance at the china cabinet, the row of empty tins for the soldiers waiting on the shelf—they couldn’t send their families their own provisions, but other food was allowed. There was a scurry at the edge of the room and Juudit saw a mouse run behind her suitcase and another one follow right after it. She pressed harder against her belly and Anna continued her lament as she pulled open cabinet drawers filled with chocolate for the soldiers. Leonida had been bringing chocolate, along with a five-liter churn of hot soup wrapped in a wool scarf, to the guards shivering on the antiaircraft platform they’d built on the roof of the school. The guards were more alert once they’d had a little chocolate.
“Those soldier boys don’t have anything to give in return, a few ostmarks perhaps. I’ll get by all right, but those children!”
If Juudit hadn’t desperately needed the supplies, she would have gone right back to Tallinn. Everything Anna said seemed to point to Juudit’s worthlessness. She decided not to care. She wouldn’t come back—but then what would she sell? She had to find some other way to make a living. Her stenography and German weren’t enough, there were too many girls whose fingers knew their way around a typewriter better than hers did, too many young women looking for work. But nobody made moonshine in town. When she left Johan’s house, she’d left behind all of her husband’s things, and she regretted it now. But there was no point in hankering after his brand-new overshoes and winter coat. Her mother had said that she would reclaim Johan’s house when they returned to Tallinn. She couldn’t do anything with the place now, the house had suffered too much damage from the Bolsheviks, and no one knew where Johan had stashed the ownership documents. But Juudit had to think of something. Something other than tins of lard and moonshine. Because she wasn’t coming back here, and she couldn’t survive on German aid packages alone. Juudit still held her arm to her middle. Anna’s furtive glances at her waist made her want to protect it, although there was nothing to protect. What was going to happen when her husband came back? Juudit was sure he would insist that Anna live under the same roof with them, always watching her, making sure she made his fricadelle soup the right way. In town, you could make it practically every week, after all.
The tension created by Anna’s pointed comments broke when Aksel came to fetch his slaughtering knife and toss his work gloves on the stove to dry. The scent of wet wool spread through the kitchen, the lamp’s flame flickered. The hog had been hung up in the shed the day before and Aksel had slept there all night with one eye open for thieves. Rosalie came in from the cowshed, and when the others went to get the meat, Juudit took her hand and wouldn’t let go.
“Has something happened that I don’t know about?” Juudit asked. “You’re all acting so strange.”
Rosalie tugged away, but Juudit wouldn’t let her go. It was just the two of them in the yard—Leonida had gone to tell the others what size pieces of meat she wanted. They could hear her voice from the shed, pushing its way between them. Juudit’s chapped lips were tight.
“No,” Rosalie said. “It’s just that Roland has come home, and it feels so bad to be able to see him when your husband’s still at the front. It isn’t right. Nothing’s right.”
Rosalie freed her hand.
“I’m not the only woman with a husband at the front, Rosalie. You don’t need to worry about me. If you only knew …”
She didn’t continue. She didn’t want to talk about it with Rosalie. Not now. “Are you having trouble with Anna?” she asked.
Rosalie’s shoulders relaxed at the change of subject.
“Not at all. She does housework and small chores, washes the cheesecloth, all the sorts of things children usually do. It’s a great help. Roland has one less thing to worry about, knowing that his mother’s well taken care of. Come on, they’re waiting for us.”
Rosalie hurried into the shed. Juudit took a breath. The evening was quiet. Too quiet. She followed Rosalie. Soon she would get away from here and the train would be jostling her bony knees. She just had to wait a little longer, long enough to fill her tins with lard and hide a bottle or two on a moonshine belt under her skirt. Juudit didn’t try to talk to Rosalie anymore, just laid the pieces of meat in a row on the block. Leonida and Anna carefully picked out the best pieces for the bottom of the salt barrel—for summer—then the side meat for gravy, the back meat for frying, the leg meat for Easter, the tail to be packed a little closer to the top, for sauerkraut soup in the winter. The women made so much noise recounting all the village news that no one took any notice of Rosalie and Juudit’s silence.
Reval, Estland General Region, Reichskommissariat Ostland
THE MURMUR FROM the Town Hall Square carried into the room in the Hotel Centrum, car horns and the shouts of newsboys framing Edgar’s erect posture as he stood in his dark suit in front of the wardrobe mirror. Fervent but controlled, he raised his arm, counted to three, let it fall, then repeated the gesture again, counting to five, then to seven, checking the angle of his arm, making sure that it was straight enough and that his voice was energetic enough. Would he remember to leave enough space between them for the salute? He hadn’t been using the German salute when meeting his contacts; they were unofficial meetings and meant to be inconspicuous. This situation was new, he was unfamiliar with the protocol. His arm might cramp, or tremble. He’d secretly practiced a little in the woods, too, when he had the chance, taking care to remember from the outset that Eggert Fürst was left-handed. It was inevitable that it would make his salute a little more uncertain, a little slower to rise from the shoulder. The name had sprung into his mind back on Staffan Island when he was getting ready to return to Bolshevik-controlled Estonia and he’d had to hastily make some Soviet identification papers for the boys. He’d remembered a man named Eggert Fürst from Petrograd, born into an Estonian family, a childhood friend of one of his old colleagues in the Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Edgar couldn’t have found a better identity for his purposes: Eggert’s background couldn’t be investigated on the other side of the border, and he wasn’t likely to run into the man’s family on the street. All he had to worry about was keeping his own family quiet—and if he did ever respond to the name Edgar, it was close enough to Eggert that he could always say he had misheard. The original Eggert Fürst, a stranger to him, might not have been so distinct in his mind except that a colleague in the commissariat had taken the man’s death from tuberculosis particularly hard, and Edgar had spent many nights keeping him company, going through old letters and childhood memories. It was easy to copy the curve and slope of Eggert Fürst’s handwriting. And as far as forcing himself to use his left hand instead of his right, he’d known how to do that since he was in gymnasium. As he calmed his tense nerves with some cream-filled biskvii from room service, he was thankful for his old schoolmate Voldemar, who had needed so much help with his homework. He still remembered the boy’s expressions and gestures, his clumsiness with a fork, the bulky mitten tied to his left hand to stop him from using it in secret. They’d made up more than one song to tease him about it. It wasn’t absolutely necessary for Edgar to use his left hand, but the key to success was in the details. When he’d signed in at the hotel registry, he had even picked up the pen with his left hand first, then switched to his right and laughingly said something about old habits to the hotel clerk, and made a couple of jokes about left-handers for good measure, and when the porter brought him his freshly steam-pressed suit, Edgar gave him a generous tip with his left hand.
Edgar licked bits of frosting from the fingers of his left hand and continued practicing in front of the mirror. He was starting to feel satisfied with his new self—he’d aged just the right amount in the past few years; he wasn’t a young pup anymore. One of the men who’d
been with him on Staffan Island was already working in the office of the mayor of Tallinn, and several others were building their reputations in other countries. Edgar didn’t intend to settle for less. Quite the opposite.
He practiced a little longer, then sat down at the desk and went through the papers he was planning to bring to German security police headquarters in Tõnismägi. Edgar’s list of communists who had written for the newspaper Noorte Hääl was perfect, and that had taken a bit of work. They’d found the bodies in the prisons and the cellars of the People’s Commissariat without any help from him, but SS-Untersturmführer Mentzel had been tremendously pleased with the information Edgar handed over about less obvious locations where the executed had been buried. And Edgar had already given Mentzel a catalogue of his former colleagues at the Commissariat for Internal Affairs back when they’d met in Helsinki.
IT HAD BEEN at the Klaus Kurki Hotel, when Edgar was on leave from his training on Staffan Island, which was why he was nervous now, in spite of all his preparations. Although it was to be expected that the backgrounds of the men who trained at Staffan would come to light sooner or later, the appearance of the SS-Untersturmführer, who knew too much, thoroughly frightened him at first. But Mentzel had given his blessing to Edgar’s new, elegantly invented identity, and given his word that he would keep the matter to himself. They’d become fast friends, and Germany wouldn’t want to lose a good man. Edgar had been satisfied with that. He understood these sorts of transactions. Mentzel obviously thought the information he provided was useful, but still Edgar wondered what the man had in mind for him. He must have a plan of some sort, and Edgar didn’t know how long his supply of information would last.
HIS NERVOUSNESS ABOUT making the salute properly proved needless. No one at headquarters burst out laughing, there wasn’t a trace of mockery on their faces. Mentzel waved Edgar to a chair across from an unknown Berliner in civilian clothes whose manner somehow indicated he had just arrived here in far-flung Ostland. Maybe it was the way he examined the office, and Edgar, or the way he settled into his chair as if he wasn’t sure that a place in the Dienststelle postal zone would even have proper office furniture.
“It’s been quite a long time, Herr Fürst,” Mentzel said. “The Klaus Kurki was such a pleasant place.”
“The pleasure was all mine,” Edgar answered.
“I’ll get right to the point. We’re hoping for a solution to the Jewish question. We already have an abundance of material, of course, but you have more local knowledge. What’s your estimation of how conscious the Balts are of the dangers presented by the Jews here?”
It was an awkward moment. Edgar’s mouth went dry. He’d prepared for the meeting all wrong, that was clear. He’d gone over numerous possible subjects that might come up, but he hadn’t anticipated anything like this. The man in civilian clothes was waiting for his answer. He hadn’t even introduced himself. Edgar thought he must be wondering why he was wasting his time listening to some dimwit’s report, wishing Edgar would just hand them the briefcase and get it over with. Mentzel sat examining his impeccable cuticles—Edgar would get no help from him.
“First it must be said that I’m not really informed about the situation in Latvia and Lithuania,” Edgar said haltingly. “Estonians are very different from Latvians and Lithuanians. In that sense, the Baltic designation can be misleading.”
“Is that so? Haven’t the Estonians mixed with the Eastern Balts as well as the Nordic races?” the unknown German asked.
Mentzel spoke up. “You may have noticed that the Estonians have noticeably fairer coloring. So the Nordic race is dominant. A quarter of all Estonians are of pure Nordic stock.”
“And there are more blue eyes, yes, we have noted this positive aspect,” the civilian agreed. The conversation was interrupted then by another German, apparently an old acquaintance of the Berliner’s, who came into the room unexpectedly. Edgar was forgotten for a moment and he tried to use that to his advantage, to think of what to say, what to do. Lists of Bolsheviks weren’t going to be enough, although that’s exactly what Mentzel had been interested in when they were in Helsinki. Edgar had miscalculated. He would never be invited here again. His career would go nowhere. His focus on the difficulties of his own past had blinded him, made him imagine that all he needed was the identification card under the name Eggert Fürst in his pocket. The racial characteristics of the Baltikum and the basic tenets of Reichsminister Rosenberg’s works on the significance of heredity flitted through the conversation and Edgar tried to think of something to say. He had at least had the foresight to commit the names of Rosenberg’s works to memory: Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten and Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts. But just as he was beginning to fear that he would be asked a question about their contents, Mentzel clearly started to tire of his guests. Edgar hid his relief. He might not have made it through a discussion of complex racial issues. Now he just needed to keep a cool head. He would prepare better for their next meeting, look for people who knew Reichsminister Rosenberg—schoolmates, relatives, old neighbors on Vana-Posti Street, his colleagues from the Gustav Adolf Gymnasium in Tallinn. He would track down someone who would know what kind of person Alfred Rosenberg was, and what plans he had for the land of his birth. Once he’d learned to think like Rosenberg, Edgar would know what kind of information the Germans expected from him, what would interest them. His mind was already clicking feverishly, searching the archives of his brain for the right people, people who knew or might have known Jews who came to Estonia to escape the German pogroms or Baltic Germans who had fled to Germany and returned once the Soviets had withdrawn. There weren’t very many of them.
Mentzel started to move toward the door to indicate that the visit had ended.
“If I may trouble you for one more minute,” he said, gesturing for Edgar to follow him.
As they walked down the hallway, Mentzel gave a sigh. “Herr Fürst, did you succeed in obtaining the information I requested? I’ve been eagerly expecting your list.”
Edgar’s relief was so great that he didn’t realize until he’d stepped into the office that he was holding his briefcase in the wrong hand, his right hand. Mentzel didn’t seem to notice his embarrassment—he was focused on the list Edgar had handed him. Edgar parted his lips, trying to get enough oxygen.
“Congratulations, Herr Fürst. We need people of your caliber outside of Tallinn, and the political police B4 section is an excellent post. There’s a lot of work to be done in the Haapsalu Aussenstelle. First report to the B4 Referentur’s office at Patarei. You’ll receive further instructions from them.”
“Herr SS-Untersturmführer …,” Edgar stammered, “may I ask to what I owe such an honor?”
“The most obvious Bolshevik cells have already been cleaned up, but I’m sure you know how important a thorough disinfection is when it comes to stubborn vermin. And you, Mr. Fürst, have an excellent understanding of vermin.”
Then Mentzel turned on his heel and went back into his office, leaving Edgar standing in the hallway. He had succeeded after all.
AS HE STEPPED inside the prison walls of Patarei, Edgar felt dizzy. He was alive when many others weren’t. He would begin familiarizing himself with the Jewish question that very evening. These walls, meters thick, had silenced the screams of thousands of executions. They breathed death, death past and death to come, death that didn’t distinguish between nationalities or leaders or centuries. But his steps rang through the hallways, advancing purposefully toward life. He was well received at the B4 bureau, where he filled out the forms with Eggert’s information, in Eggert’s handwriting, and didn’t see any familiar faces. He felt like he was in the right place. He even got permission to visit Auntie Anna before he started his job in the Haapsalu office. He was told to be prepared for long hours, and that suited him, though he didn’t know yet how to explain the situation to Roland. It would be good to have his cousin along, because his background was so trustworthy, and because Edgar neede
d to keep an eye on him. What better way to do that than to keep him as close as possible? Besides, you should never go into a fight without a wingman. Roland was a closemouthed, reliable type. Edgar knew that Roland wouldn’t blow his cover. Roland didn’t ask a lot of questions. Like when Edgar showed up at his place after he left the Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Getting caught in that bribe had been amateurish. Edgar knew that, and it upset him. But Roland hadn’t pried, he just brought Edgar with him to Finland. He’d had that same weary look on his face that he had when Edgar got caught selling border passes at the Estonian border guard post, where they were both fulfilling their military service requirement. Roland had lied for him, said they’d been told that you had to pay for the pass, and Edgar had avoided going to jail. Roland had felt that Edgar’s discharge from the army would be punishment enough, and he was right. All in all, the risks he’d taken for Roland had proved useful. Without Roland, without his recommendations, without the time in Finland, Edgar wouldn’t have such a trustworthy background, and he would never have met Mentzel. He knew he could count on the family. Rosalie’s mother obeyed Rosalie, Rosalie obeyed Roland, Roland obeyed Auntie Anna—and Anna obeyed Edgar. Auntie Anna had learned his new name so quickly, without asking any questions. It was enough for her to look into Edgar’s eyes and see that he was serious. She was just happy that her nephew, her favorite boy, had returned home alive from the gates of death. All he had to do was assure her that everything was fine and he had a job. Life was good for Eggert Fürst. He would think of a way to get Roland on board. If Roland wouldn’t listen, Anna would find the right words, or she could talk with Rosalie. After all, she wanted a bright future for Roland, too.