When the Doves Disappeared Read Online Free PDF Page A

her about him, had been wrong. The memory of how her newly wed husband would push away the breasts she offered him, push her to the other side of the bed like spoiled food shoved away at the table.
    JUUDIT’S HUSBAND HAD LEFT in the first phase of Bolshevik rule, along with all the other men who fled conscription to hide in the attics of houses and summer cottages, and she had been relieved. She had the bed all to herself. But she remembered, of course, to knit her brow like she should, to pretend to be a wife who was worried about her husband. When he’d been picked up on his way to get food by Chekists in a black ZIS, Juudit had managed to darken her gray eyes with tears, because that was what she was supposed to do. Even then, she was already hoping that it would be his last trip, that’s what those black cars had meant for so many people, and she was afraid of her own wish, afraid of the wild joy in the possibilities the war had brought her. There were no divorced women in her family. Widowhood was her only option if she wanted her freedom back. But her husband’s auntie got news from the commissariat that he’d been sent to the front, and once again Juudit clutched her handkerchief for the sake of custom. She couldn’t tell anyone how much she enjoyed her bed without her husband. She would have liked to have a lover, but where would she get one? It was wrong to even think such a thing. But she did read Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina several times, and although the women in the books didn’t suffer quite the same marital problems that she did, she’d felt a great spiritual kinship with them, because she knew what it was to yearn.
    Before Juudit’s wedding, her mother had slipped in some advice between the lines about marriage and its potential problems, but the problems Juudit had weren’t in her mother’s repertoire. She’d had her doubts even during her engagement, and had told her mother in a roundabout way that, contrary to what she seemed to think, Juudit’s fiancé hadn’t made any physical advances at all. Her girlfriends had a quite different experience with their husbands-to-be, who couldn’t wait to get to thealtar. Rosalie, for instance, was constantly hinting at the fiery nature of her dark-browed Roland. Juudit’s mother had smiled at her daughter’s worries, said it was a mark of respect, told her that her father had been just as gentlemanly. Everything would work itself out once they started living together.
    So Juudit concluded that she was silly to find it strange. It was a sign of a great love, and she hurried impatiently toward her wedding day, and a room for the honeymoon was reserved at the Shore Hotel in Haapsalu. But putting a wedding ring on her finger hadn’t changed anything. The wedding night was awkward. Her husband entered her, and then something happened. He withdrew, went behind a screen, and Juudit could hear water pouring into a basin, and frenzied washing. Then he settled himself into the other side of the bed, as far from his wife as possible. She pretended to sleep. The next night wasn’t any better. The night after that, he fell asleep on the sofa, and in the morning he acted as if everything was normal. In the daytime they promenaded on Africa Beach and in the evenings they danced at the Shore House like a normal, happy couple on their honeymoon. When they got back to Tallinn, he went to work as an assistant in Johan’s notary office and Juudit concentrated on building a home and feverishly contemplating what to do.
    In public he behaved like a model husband, offering her his arm, often kissing her on the hand, and even on the mouth when he was in a playful mood, but his behavior changed as soon as they were alone together. If he didn’t feel any attraction to her, then why had he proposed? Had it all been a lie from the very beginning? Rosalie had introduced Juudit to the Simson family after she got engaged, and at first Juudit hadn’t taken any notice of