When the Doves Disappeared (11 page)

“Are you all right, Rosalie?”

The plate moved.
No
.

“Did you come to a violent end?”

The plate moved.
Yes, yes
.

“You didn’t do anything to yourself, did you?”

The plate moved.
No
.

“Do you know who did this to you?”

The plate moved.
Yes
.

“Do you know where he is?”

The plate remained motionless.

“Rosalie, are you still there?”

The plate didn’t move in either direction, just stirred a little.

Mrs. Vaik came over and whispered that I could present my question. Before I had a chance to open my mouth, someone on my right got up quickly and backed toward the door, trembling and chanting the Lord’s Prayer. Lydia Bartels sagged toward the floor.

“No!” The shout came out of my mouth. “Rosalie, come back!”

Mrs. Vaik sprang to her feet and pushed the trembling creature out of the room. The door slammed, a lamp was lit. Lydia Bartels had opened her eyes. She pulled her shawl tighter around her and stood up, only to sit down again in a chair. Mrs. Vaik started to shoo the people out of the room. I was so shaken I didn’t care that everyone in the circle was staring at me. Some of them looked disappointed that the séance had been interrupted before their turns had come; others’ expressions told me that even those who didn’t know Rosalie would be talking about her after this. I stayed at the back of the group, leaning against the wall, where shadows from the lamp were dancing, then slid down to sit on the floor. I blinked and noticed myself staring at a forbidden photograph of former president Päts, shoved behind the bureau.

“You have to go now,” Mrs. Vaik said.

“Bring Rosalie back.”

“It won’t work now. Come again next Thursday.”

“Bring her back now!”

I had to know more. Someone had told me that a tramp had been seen following the women in the village. I didn’t believe it, or the talk about Russian prisoners of war who served as laborers in the homes there. There weren’t any at the Armses’ place; it would have sent my mother around the bend to see Russians around or hear their language, although I had tried to convince them to take some on. The farm needed workers; the man of the house had a wooden leg, and I wasn’t enough help on my own. But the prisoners were watched by guards. The Germans weren’t.

“Listen to me, young man. These sessions are very difficult. The spirits suck away all Her energy, because they have no energy of their own. It’s impossible to hold a séance like this more than once a week. Can’t you
see how tired she is? Come into the kitchen, I’ll get you something hot to drink.”

Mrs. Vaik brewed some grain coffee and poured half a glass of pungent liquor. I knew that she worked as a midwife, even for the bastards, and that she had bound the wounds of the men who went into the forest. If I couldn’t get help from her, I would be lost.

“I’ll pay you to bring Rosalie back. I’ll pay anything.”

“We don’t summon the spirits for money. Come back next Thursday.”

“I can’t come here again—I’ve been seen. I have to find out who did this. Otherwise I’ll have no peace. And neither will Rosalie.”

“Then you’ll have to find him yourself.”

Mrs. Vaik’s gaze was as firm as a knot in a gut cord. I stared at the mousetrap in the corner of the kitchen. My hands, accustomed to activity, twitched under the table. I gulped from the glass so frantically that I knocked my teeth against the rim. The pain in my head sharpened, but I couldn’t shake the fear that I wouldn’t be able to contact Rosalie again and these women could. I’d also acted against Rosalie’s wishes. She said that you shouldn’t summon spirits into this world, that they should be left in their own realm. But I didn’t care. I’d left the ways of the church behind, they weren’t my ways anymore. The church hadn’t accepted Rosalie as one of its own.

Mrs. Vaik went to look at the mousetrap by the cupboard, took a mouse out, and threw it into the slop bucket.

“Was it any relief to learn that Rosalie wasn’t at peace?” she asked.

“No.”

“And yet you wanted to know. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come here. We’re only intermediaries. What comes of the knowledge, what it has to give, is not our responsibility. You didn’t want to know anything about your father, though.”

I stared at her. She slowly shook her head, looking me straight in the eye.

“On the train. He was an elderly man. It happened the moment he got on the train to Siberia. But you probably already guessed that.”

I didn’t say anything. She was right. Rosalie had mentioned that a mouse had run under Mother’s bed in June, but I didn’t want to listen. Mrs. Vaik’s daughter Marta lumbered into the kitchen and started puttering
at the stove. I didn’t need any extra ears listening, but at that moment I didn’t care.

“Your bride came to a session with a friend,” Mrs. Vaik said. “Marta remembers the night well. There were too many people because some Germans had come unexpectedly and we couldn’t send them away.”

“Rosalie was worried about your father and her friend asked about her brother, and also asked about her husband,” Marta continued. “Only your father appeared.” She swept the scarf off her head and I couldn’t bear the sympathy in her eyes.

“Rosalie never told me about that. She didn’t approve of summoning spirits.”

“She wanted to know,” Mrs. Vaik said. “And once she did know, she decided that it was better for you to have hope.”

I drank another glass of the liquor, but I didn’t feel drunk. A mouse floated in the slop bucket. I had a plan, and Juudit could help me.

AT THE CABIN,
I started making preparations—packing my knapsack, cleaning my Walther, hardening my heart for what was to come and against what had already happened. The whole time, I could feel Rosalie’s little hand on the back of my neck, where she had laid it the last time we saw each other. No one had mentioned her name for a long time and the silence around her was losing its weight. People started to talk briskly about lands and soils and flowering borders as soon as they saw me, leaving no space between sentences for me to barge in with my uncomfortable words. Had the deportations in June made them so timid that they were all willing to shut their mouths as long as the Germans kept the Russians away? The Armses were happy that no one had been taken from them, that only my father and Juudit’s brother had been caught in the Russians’ net, but were they so happy that they would keep quiet even at the cost of their daughter’s life? Were they frightened that it would make the Germans nervous if they pestered them about Simson Farm? Had they decided that Juudit was an unsuitable daughter-in-law because of her brother, because her mother was trying to get Johan’s house back? Had Edgar used his mysterious comings and goings with the Germans to buy Mother protection at the Armses’ place? How far were these people
willing to go? I didn’t know them anymore. I could grieve for my father later, continue my work documenting the depredations of the Bolsheviks to honor his memory, but first I would find the people responsible for Rosalie’s death. It was time for action. The time for waiting was over.

“What are you up to? You’re not thinking of doing something stupid, are you?”

Edgar stood in the doorway like a harbinger of doom, the wind fluttering his coat like black wings. I already regretted telling him what I’d heard on my way to the cabin: the neighbor’s brat had seen a German coming from the direction of the Armses’ place the night that Rosalie left. Or at least a man in a German uniform—it had been dark and the boy hadn’t seen his face. Was it a stranger after Leonida’s tins of lard? I didn’t think so.

“Whoever it is, he’s running free and all you can think about is your business schemes.”

“There was talk of a tramp in the village,” Edgar said. “There’s no telling where he’d be by now.”

“You know very well that’s complete nonsense.”

“You’re blaming all Germans for something that some lunatic did. It’s clouding your reason, making you act like a lunatic yourself.”

Edgar’s voice grated in my ears. I had to stand up, put some wood on the fire, bang the stove door.

“And what good would it have done if Leonida had gone to the police? It wouldn’t have brought Rosalie back.”

Edgar ladled some porridge into his bowl, first with his right hand, then his left. His words squished with the rhythm of his shuttling spoon, his mouth smacking with disapproval as lumps of porridge fell on the table.

“Think about it. What if Leonida had gone and claimed that some unknown German had done something to Rosalie? Where would Anna and Leonida get their extra income if the soldiers started avoiding the farm? They desperately need the money. And you can be sure the soldiers would start to avoid them if these kinds of baseless rumors were coming from their house.”

When he finished speaking, Edgar drew his mouth into a disapproving pout, deepening the curve of his frown.

“Look at yourself,” he said. “And look at me, at Leonida, Anna, our friends. Our lives will go on, and yours should, too. You could at least shave off your beard.”

There was impudence in his words. He was always a little more obnoxious when he got back from one of his outings. Often he would stay out in the yard striding back and forth as if he were having a conversation with someone, some new acquaintance or whoever it was he went to meet in town. I had told him he should try to find out what had happened to Rosalie, listen for rumors. Somebody must know something. You can’t keep secrets in a small town. I waited for news, but he would always just shake his head when he got back. In the end I stopped believing he was doing anything about it. I couldn’t go to Leonida and Mother’s place, I was afraid of what I might do. Edgar looked in on Mother now and then, and if there was anyone she would talk to, it was Edgar, but he wouldn’t try to coax her into telling him about it, wouldn’t ask for names, for details about who had come to the house, no matter how much I pleaded.

“What if it wasn’t a German? What if you’re making a false accusation?”

“What are you getting at?”

“What if your girl had another suitor …”

Edgar was lying on the floor. The bowl of porridge was shattered. When he opened his mouth, his teeth were bloody. I stood there shaking. Edgar crawled toward the door. I guessed that he was headed for the stable. I stepped in front of him. He didn’t look at me. Fighting had always terrified him. I was afraid I would hit him again, afraid I might beat him to death. I stepped away from the door, lifted the latch.

“Get out of here.”

Edgar crawled out into the yard. I closed the door and went out the back to the paddock and stood watching the stable. Edgar had taken the bicycle. He pushed it toward the road, then stopped. He must have guessed I was watching him from behind the bushes.

“Your girl had a reputation,” he shouted.

He took off at a run, didn’t try to get on the bike—I must have hit him pretty hard.

“Don’t you remember her girlfriend at the distillery?” he added. “The distillery at the manor house? Rosalie started sneaking over there whenever
no one was looking. What do you think she was doing there? She had suitors. Germans as well as local boys!”

I almost went after him, but I tensed my muscles and forced them to hold me still. My heart was full of dark thoughts, blacker than nightmares. I was like a tree blown to bits by artillery fire, limbless, wounded, and the landscape around me was the same. Rosalie, my Rosalie was gone. I would never hear the ripple of her smiling-eyed laughter, never walk with her along the fields, never again plan our future. It wouldn’t fit in my skull, even though the cover of my notebook was filled with crosses for my fallen brothers. They had died in battle. This was different.

ONCE I HAD SENT
Edgar away, I left, too. I took the forged rubber stamps that Edgar had made so cleverly, which I was sure I would find a use for. I hid the gelding in the Armses’ barn. He felt like my only friend now, but I couldn’t bring him with me. I wasn’t going to stop until I got to Tallinn, to the gate of the apartment house on Valge Laeva Street.

I DIDN’T KNOW
if Juudit had already heard, and if she had, what she’d been told. My slicker dripped and in my mind I went through that moment again when Edgar stood in the doorway and Rosalie’s buttercups were scattered across the floor.

When Juudit’s thin form appeared at the street door, I stepped in front of her. I hardly recognized her. She jumped like a nimble bird and I felt a kick in my chest, because every light-footed woman reminded me of my beloved.

“Roland! What are you doing here?”

“Let’s go inside.”

It wasn’t any easier to say it once we were indoors. I fortified my courage by remembering that I may have been a man who’d lost everything, but I was also a man with a plan: to look for the killer and give Rosalie peace. I couldn’t get our fields back, or my father, or Rosalie, but I could blow a hole under my enemy’s feet.

“How did you get here?” Juudit asked.

“I just came.”

“How was the trip?”

“Good.”

“Has something happened?”

I stared into the entryway. A wet ring was growing around my slicker, which I’d tossed over a chair. The words were so heavy that I couldn’t push them out. I sat down at the kitchen table. I had to get her to go along with my plan. It was strange to sit there like that, my hands limp. Talking would have been easier if I’d had a pen to fiddle with or a harness to grease. I rubbed my stubbly chin, ran my hands through my bristling hair. I wasn’t fit for a city lady’s table. Those were the kinds of thoughts that went through my mind—trivialities, so I wouldn’t have to think about the thing itself.

The silence grew heavy. Juudit made a restless movement and although I could tell she wanted to ask me more, she didn’t speak. She started to tidy the already tidy kitchen, moved a box of lard off the table, said that Leonida had brought it for her when she came to sell some at the market in town, to the Germans, to send home to their families.

“You can get anything you want for it. I got two pairs of stockings for two tins. And some egg powder.”