When the Doves Disappeared (18 page)

“You must let me see you home, Miss. You can’t walk outdoors in your stockings. Do be so kind, Fräulein. Or if you would grant me the honor
of stopping by my place, I can ask my maid to fetch you some shoes. I live quite close by, on Roosikrantsi Street, on the other side of Freiheitsplatz.”

WHILE JUUDIT WAS FALLING
in love in Café Kultas, Roland was dodging snorting horses’ tramping hooves, soldiers of the Wehrmacht, and graceful mademoiselles clutching handbags. He made his way around the movie posters that he couldn’t bring into focus at the Gloria Palace; the cafeteria with its display window that made his stomach growl, where the servers flourished their scissors over customers’ food coupons; the street vendors, errand boys, steaming piles of horse manure, and straight city backs; and past the suspicious gaze of the porter at the Hotel Palace. As dusk fell among mere shapes, among his own thoughts, the cars with cold blue eyes, he stumbled into a young woman who let out a screech, and all the while Juudit was on her way toward love.

JUUDIT GAVE THE MAID
her coat and gloves. She took the rags from her feet herself—indignity had its limits. She was shown directly into the drawing room, although she tried to resist, and her feet left wet smudges on the patterned parquet floor. She reddened, more from embarrassment than from the chill, and as the German left to look for something to warm her up, she picked the rags up off the carpet and shoved them under the armchair. The man had wrapped the dishcloths around her feet, with the help of the waitress at the Kultas, and tied a piece of packing twine around them, paying the café for them, in spite of Juudit’s protestations. She was mortified by the repairs in the toes of her stockings, which stood out even in the dim light of the café, every single stitch. The reinforced toes hadn’t shown at all under the wrappings, but here in the drawing room the chandelier was mercilessly revealing as Juudit tried to curl her feet up and hide them. In a flash a basin of steaming water appeared before her, and next to it some mustard plaster, towels, and slippers with feather tassels, which stirred in a draft of air, on the toes. A handwarmer and a hot water bottle were placed on the sofa. The gramophone played Liszt. Juudit didn’t ask how the German valet was going to conjure up the promised shoes. Her lips were numb, though the room was warm, and she hardly dared to
peep at the man as he came back carrying a crystal carafe and glasses. She shut her eyes and impressed his face into her mind; it wouldn’t be right to forget such beauty. A tremulous pulse throbbed against the handkerchief in her shirt cuff, the handkerchief’s monogrammed
J
rubbing against her skin—a
J
without a surname. The man set the tray on a low table, poured some wine into the glasses, and turned his back so she could take off her stockings. Juudit understood the gesture but didn’t know how to respond. She picked up the glass and drank the wine like water, greedily, to help her remember how to be a woman. In her marriage bed all of her attempts to behave like a woman had ended in shame; she didn’t want to remember those moments, so she drank more wine, brazenly poured for herself from the carafe and drank. The man turned his head a little, hearing the clink; his sideways glance locked on Juudit’s startled eyes, and his eyes were no braver than hers, no more elegant than Juudit’s frozen hand reaching to take hold of the top of her stocking.

WHEN HE GOT OUT
of bed in the morning, Hellmuth carefully covered Juudit with a goosedown quilt, gently tucking it around her feet, but Juudit threw off the cover and let the soft air of the room caress her skin. She lowered her feet onto the carpet, pointing her toes like she was putting them into a bath; she stretched her arms, bent her neck, the air pouring over her skin like new milk. The fuel shortage had made her greedy for warmth. But she wasn’t ashamed of it, of walking around naked on the thick carpet, of being alone in a room with a man she’d met only yesterday. The aroma of real coffee drifted into her nostrils, though she still smelled of liquor. They had drunk recklessly, for the pleasure of it. Or maybe they did it to cover the awkwardness of what they saw in each other.

The clatter of Russian prisoners of war in their wooden shoes could be heard outside. Hellmuth put Bruckner on the record player and asked her to come with him to the Estonia Theater that evening.

Juudit climbed back into the bed and pulled the cover over her legs.

“I can’t.”

“Why not, Fräulein?”

“Frau.”

Hellmuth was handsome in his uniform, beautiful to look at. He went to the mirror to put his Ritterkreuz on his collar.

“I would like to,” she added.

“Then why can’t you, my lovely Frau?”

“Someone I know might see me,” she whispered.

“I’m asking you.”

Hellmuth came and stood beside her, snapped open his cigarette case, and lit a cigarette, staring at his hands in such a way that she could tell he was as afraid of saying the wrong thing as she was.

“Pardon me, but may I have one, too?” Juudit asked.

“Of course. Forgive me. I can see I’ve been in Berlin too long.”

“What do you mean?”

“You look so young. In Germany smoking is forbidden for anyone under twenty-five.”

“Why?”

“They probably imagine it affects reproduction.”

Juudit blushed.

Hellmuth grinned. “I didn’t object to being transferred to Ostland, because I thought that at least I would be allowed to smoke in my office. The Reichsführer has forbidden smoking at work, as well, but I’m hoping that he can’t keep his eye on me when I’m this far away. Smoking is of course forbidden in government offices. There’s a permanent campaign against passive smoking.”

“Passive smoking?”

“Nonsmokers’ being subjected to others’ tobacco smoke.”

“That sounds crazy,” Juudit said, then was embarrassed again. “I don’t mean to judge.”

“The Reichsführer just wants the best possible fertility; he’s worried about the degeneration of the race, which is something I, too, should fight in every way I can.”

HELLMUTH LIT
another cigarette and put it to Juudit’s lips, and Juudit didn’t know what made her more dizzy, the cigarette or the gesture with which he offered it. She didn’t want this morning to ever end. Her head was still filled with the dew of night, her curls heavy with it, and when he
looked into her eyes she could feel that all the while, under the tinkle of talk, their hearts were moving toward each other, and the idea of doing anything to stop that movement was impossible.

“There are more and more restrictions all the time, so we should get as much joy as we can while it’s still possible. Smoking is already prohibited in theaters in Riga; soon it might be in Estonia, too, although no one is enforcing these rules yet. But I have to go. Duty calls. Will I see you tonight at the Estonia? It might be our last chance to enjoy a cigarette together as patrons of the arts.”

He winked and there were sparks of something in his eye—and in those sparks, promises.

Reval, Estland General Commissariat, Ostland National Commissariat

T
HE GERMAN
I’d chosen left Café Kultas alone. I watched his officer’s cap receding, his short cape flapping, and I hurried inside. I didn’t see Juudit anywhere. When I asked the young waitresses if they’d seen a lady fitting Juudit’s description, they looked at me suspiciously and shook their heads. For the next few days I made one phone call after another to her apartment on Valge Laeva Street. She didn’t answer. I was starting to worry. Finally I asked Richard, our contact in the B4 section of the political police, to search for a woman named Juudit Parts and learned that she had been courted by a German, someone I’d never heard of, but an SS-Hauptsturmführer, no less. I digested this news, swallowed my disappointment, then found out the Jerry’s address. I relished the idea of sending my men after Juudit, frightening her. I would jump in front of her when she least expected it, show her I knew her comings and goings, the exact time she’d stepped out with her Jerry to the Nord or the casino. I imagined the look of shock on her face, how her head would sink into her fox collar, how her mouth, painted with lipstick and deceit, would disappear into the fur. It eased the stinging inside me. But I didn’t live out my fantasy because from what I could learn about him, he was a better catch than the German I’d chosen, and I didn’t want anyone in our
ring to pay extra attention to Juudit. It was safer not to mention her name again. I would follow her myself, and when I’d gotten a good grip on her I wouldn’t hesitate to squeeze as hard as I could, to make it clear that she had no choice but to cooperate if she didn’t want her husband to know about her exploits, or the German to hear about her deception. I would never leave her in peace.

Reval, Estland General Commissariat, Ostland National Commissariat

R
OLAND MANAGED
to find a room on Roosikrantsi so he could stalk Juudit whenever he could get away from his work at the harbor. He’d secured the job with papers surreptitiously obtained by Richard in the B4 office, and his days at the harbor were long. He left for work before Juudit was probably even awake, and came back to his building late at night. He received no replies to the notes he slipped under the door of the apartment on Valge Laeva—she rarely even went there, had moved to a different world whose doors were closed to Roland—and weeks went by before he saw her again, her scarf flapping as an Opel Olympia picked her up at her door. All Roland could do as the car and the boisterous group that packed itself inside sped away was stare helplessly after it and make a mental note of the names of the people leaving the building: General Commissar Litzmann and the ubiquitous, bleating Hjalmar Mäe. Once he caught a glimpse of Commander Sandberger himself coming out of the place. Juudit’s German had important guests, and many of them came and went after dark, some even using the servants’ entrance. The background information on these men that Richard had pilfered from B4 wasn’t pretty.

GERDA’S GIGGLE COULD
be heard from the Opel all the way upstairs. Juudit, holding Hellmuth’s hand, sat down beside her, and they drove straight into the liquid sunset. After they’d enjoyed a bottle of champagne and the ladies’ coiffures had been dampened by a summer rain, they’d decided to move on from the Shore Club to the lively tables at Du Nord. Hellmuth thought Du Nord had a better cook, and better Riesling. Juudit was so grateful for Gerda, who didn’t judge her, and in whose company she could show how much in love she really was. When they were sitting alone together on the divan in the Du Nord powder room putting on lipstick, Gerda turned to Juudit and said, “I assume you’ve taken precautions?”