When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen Read Free Book Online

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 menwouldn’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