When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen

dropper, squeezed a drop of iodine into a glass of water, and held it out to me. I didn’t want it. She left the dropper and the glass in front of me and started to fuss with a basket of compresses, was already spreading out Billroth batiste and flannel. Her hands smelled of Nivea cream.
    “You look sick,” she said.
    “I have something I need to talk about. With you. I need you to get some information from the Germans. Nothing dangerous. Nothing too difficult. Just a few things.”
    “Roland, what are you talking about? I’m not going to get mixed up in any foolishness.”
    “Rosalie …”
    Juudit’s hands froze.
    “My girl is buried in the ground. Outside the churchyard. No cross to mark the grave.”
    “Rosalie?”
    “The Germans.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The Germans did it.”
    “Did what? Do you mean that Rosalie …”
    I stood up. My forehead was burning like brimstone. I couldn’t get any more words out. Her lack of emotion was like ice-cold well water dashed in my face.
    “Roland, please, sit down and tell me what happened.”
    “Rosalie is gone. There is no Rosalie, except in the heart of the earth. And in my heart.”
    Juudit was quiet. Her eyelids fluttered, a sound like birds’ wings on the surface of a lake. Circles of tears spread across my eyes.
    “She was buried outside the graveyard. The Germans did it.”
    “Stop harping on the Germans.”
    “I have something I want you to do, and you’re going to do it. I’ll come back when everything’s ready,” I said, and I left. Juudit was still muttering. I had reached the ground floor when I heard a slam from upstairs and she ran after me.
    “Roland. Tell me everything. You have to.”
    “Not here.”
    We went back inside and I told her what I knew.
    Juudit’s basket tumbled to the floor, the bandages unwinding like a shroud.

PART TWO
 
    Our purpose is to expose the overseas fascists’ organized efforts to rehabilitate the Hitlerists and their stooges.
—The Estonian State and People in the Second World War , Kodumaa Homeland Publishers, 1964

Tallinn, Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union
    T HE CEILING CREAKED under footsteps on the floor above. A creak of steps to the upstairs washstand, from the washstand to the window, from the window to the wardrobe, and from the wardrobe back to the washstand. Comrade Parts’s tight, dry eyes swept over the ceiling. Now and then he could hear his wife sit down in a chair, the leg of the chair stabbing the floor with a sound like a stab to his forehead. He pressed his fingers against his moist temples, his pounding veins, but his wife’s slippers didn’t stop, her foot just kept tapping in place with a knock that dug into the floor, straining the thick, light-brown paint, testing its cracks, creating an unbearable noise that prevented him from concentrating on his work.
    When the pendulum clock struck eleven, the springs on the bed above screeched, then faded to a rasp. Then silence.
    Comrade Parts listened. The ceiling didn’t sag, the cornice along its edge held firm, the furtive sway of the light fixture subsided.
    The silence continued.
    This was the moment he’d waited for all day, waited patiently, sometimostrembling with rage. But the waiting was seasoned with excitement, a giddiness that he rarely experienced.
    The typewriter sat ready. The light from the overhead fixture glimmered softly on the Optima’s metal case, its glittering keys. Comrade Parts adjusted his cardigan, relaxed his wrists, and curved his hands into the correct position, as if he were preparing to perform a concert, a soldout performance. The piece would be a success, everything would work itself out. Still, he had to admit that when he sat down at his desk his collar always tightened to one size smaller.
    On the roller was a half-written page from the day before with its carbon copy. Parts’s wrists were already poised over the keys, but he pulled them back and laid them on the carefully