When the Doves Disappeared - Couverture souple

Western Estonia, Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union
 
We went to Rosalie’s grave one last time and placed some wild- flowers on the grassy moonlit mound. We were silent for a moment with the blooms between us. I didn’t want to let Juudit go, which is why I said out loud what a person shouldn’t say in that situation:
 
“We’ll never see each other again.”
 
I could hear the gravel in my voice, and it brought a gleam of water to her eyes, that gleam that had often knocked me off balance, welling up and sending my rational mind lightly afloat, like a bark boat. Rocking on a stream that flowed from her eyes. Maybe I spoke bluntly to dull my own pain, maybe I just wanted to be cruel so that when she’d left she could curse me and my callousness, or maybe I yearned for some final declaration, for her to say she didn’t want to leave. I was still uncertain of the movements of her heart, even after all we’d been through together.
 
“You regret bringing me here,” Juudit whispered.
 
I was startled by her perceptiveness, rubbed my neck in embarrassment. She’d given me a haircut just that evening, and it itched where the hair had fallen down inside my collar.
 
“It’s all right. I understand,” she said.
 
I could have contradicted her, but I didn’t, although she hadn’t been a burden. The men had insinuated otherwise. But I had to bring her to the safety of the forest when I heard that she’d had to flee from Tallinn. The Armses’ farm wasn’t a safe place for us with the Russians advancing. The forest was better. She’d been like an injured bird in the palm of my hand, weakened, her nerves feverish for weeks. When our medic was killed in combat, the men finally let Mrs. Vaik come to help us, us and Juudit. I had succeeded in rescuing her one more time, but once she stepped out onto the road that loomed ahead of us, I wouldn’t be able to protect her anymore. The men were right, though—women and children belonged at home. Juudit had to go back to town. The noose around us was tightening and the safety of the forest was melting away. I watched her face out of the corner of my eye. Her gaze had turned to the road that she would leave by; her mouth was open, she was gulping the air with all her strength, and the feel of her breath threatened to undermine my resolve.
 
“It’s best this way,” I said. “Best for all of us. Go back to the life you left behind.”
 
“It’s not the same anymore. It never will be.”

Excerpted from When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen. Copyright © 2015 by Sofi Oksanen. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.