High Tide

Andrejs’s Religion

Outside it’s rainy and incredibly windy.

The woman moves into the kitchen and begins to season the meat.

Andrejs sits down at the corner of the table.

“What are you looking at?” she asks.

You can’t really know anything these days. This is only the second time they’ve met, and he’s kind of quiet. But his eyes are like razors — sharp, cutting. She could easily use them to slice the roast.

“What I’m looking at? Just looking.”

“Everyone looks for different reasons.”

“I’m not everyone. I’m Andrejs.”

“Pass me the fillet knife.”

“Which one’s that?”

“With the threaded cord.”

Andrejs hands her the knife, she cuts the roast. It’s raining outside. You can’t really know anything. These days.

But she’s a woman, a real woman. Seasoning a roast in front of him with garlic and herbs. She wants to cook it tomorrow in his honor.

He can’t look away.

A woman is a real home. Food. Children. Holidays. And shelter. Happiness.

“What are you looking at?” she asks again. She should stay quiet, the idiot. She’ll ruin the entire night with her questions.

“You’re cutting and cutting,” he answers.

“I’m done,” she says and wipes her hands on her apron, then takes it off and hangs it up. “Now what?”

They go to watch TV, but Andrejs wants her to just take off her panties already.

Outside is rainy and cold. And all the while Andrejs feels the woman next to him. He feels as if he’s the only one in the world who understands what a woman is. She doesn’t even get it herself. Look at her head dropping onto his shoulder. She’s dozed off.

At that moment, Andrejs is visited by Ieva. By memories of her.

Violently, as usual.

An awful fate.

But still — it was his fate, too.

He’s a little unsettled by the Black Balzam he drank for warmth and courage — just 100g of Balzam.

He glares at the TV, then at the woman asleep next to him. The movie of her life projects itself under her eyelids. It’s fascinating and sad to watch that kind of movie.

In his consciousness, his life separates itself into two lives. Though technically into one — at the Zari house with Ieva, plus his time in prison. He doesn’t call the prison he’s now locked up in “life.” It’s a strange waking state where he thinks about life, remembers it, but doesn’t actually live it. The whole time there’s this distance, this space between him and existence. Right now he has a woman, the woman has average breasts, an apartment, and a roast, and obviously some feelings for him. But all he can do again and again is chase his own memories. Somewhere hides the thought that it would be possible to organize them all onto a shelf.

A stupid thought. Because these memories don’t do anything but unleash insanity and the feeling of being ripped open. The desire to drink, get drunk, get away from yourself. Memories go around in his head like on a carousel and drive him even deeper into the cage that is his body. They strengthen and cement one-of-a-kind people like Andrejs: thirty-nine years old, divorced, one daughter, fifteen years in prison for murder, released early for good behavior, saving him five years’ time, during which he just worked in the same town the prison was in. Hasn’t even gone more than a kilometer from the barbed wire fence. Alright, so he’s crossed a few sand lots, closer to the highway. His carpentry shop is right here, everything is right here — a shack heated by a wood stove and with an outhouse behind the sheds. A dirt-colored building, dirt-colored porch, dirt-colored scenery behind moldy blinds. All the brambles and raspberry bushes and clematis — nature’s colors. Clothes, the neighbor’s dog, the never-ending spring or fall, who knows. A dusty steppe between the highway and a ditch.

But what’s that flame, like a wandering ship between the blinds every day and night? It’s his prison. The powerful searchlights, the thick stone walls, the tangled network of barbed wire — it all glows white, even in the fog, even in blizzards beyond the distant field. Andrejs’s prison. His prison.

The black swan.

He looks to the window. This is the woman’s apartment on the other side of the river, he doesn’t see the prison when he looks out — just the town and a church.

Not good.

He is overcome by awe, he has goosebumps.

What is he without prison? He hasn’t been away from it in so long that it seems like he never left.

He’s comforted by the thought that he doesn’t have to go far. He could leave right now if he wanted to. Push the woman’s head off his shoulder, put on his jacket and go. Cross the bridge, cross the river. He’d stop in the middle for a smoke. It would be nice, a nice breeze over the middle of the river — cool, wide. Free.

Andrejs’s doctors don’t let him smoke. His hand hurts; his right shoulder, knees, and heart all hurt. The doctors told him to quit smoking. To cut back. He went to three doctors in a single day, so as not to waste his time — otherwise all you do is go from one clinic to the next. And that’s where you’ll stay.

He didn’t cut back, but quit the very same day. Then the doctors said worse things could happen if you quit cold turkey. Your body has grown used to smoking. Your body will be stressed and deprived. Fine, let his body stress out a bit. He never liked smoking anyway. It’s just that those were the years, those detached years, where if he hadn’t smoked he would have completely fallen apart. And that isn’t just some kind of saying or, what did they call it — a metaphor? — no. He would have fallen apart. Literally. Because during those years, not having a cigarette was like not having a watch. A cigarette an hour. If he was awake, of course. But the closer he got to being released, the less tired he was. Tick tock, tick tock.

He had once asked Ieva in disgust: Why do you smoke? She said it was to calm her nerves. Back then he had thought she was sick. Then he got sick himself. Was for fifteen years.

And Ieva. What about her? She’ll always be Ieva.

But the woman next to him is asleep. She’s tired. Smells of spices. She’s an accountant at the prison, probably. He hasn’t asked her. She could be over fifty years old, but she looks good. Maybe she works at the prison. Everyone in the area does. So he can say he’s spent a lifetime together with this woman in the same prison. Him in the cell and her in accounting.

Let her sleep. They’d first met last holiday season at his neighbor’s house. Andrejs had helped him dig a cellar and had been invited to the big New Year’s dinner. He’d thought it over for a long time, then ended up going so he wouldn’t be some completely uncivilized jerk. And she was there — a relative or friend of the hosts. Andrejs noticed her immediately, maybe because her eyes were dark, heavy, like from a secret. But no, there was no outer indication of sorrow — she smiled and joked, and the men at the end of the table where she sat drank twice as much liquor as those at the other end. It was her doing, getting them all riled up. Oh, Demeter, fruitful earth! he had thought.

At midnight Andrejs had pressed a ladle with melted tin into her hand and said, “Pour my New Year’s fortune.” Who the hell knows why he had her do it. Maybe he was drunk. Then again maybe not, he doesn’t like to drink. But she had laughed and taken the ladle, tipped the melted tin into water — poured a sort of bitter fortune. You couldn’t make anything of the result; the tin whistled as it hit the water, then there was the flash of her plump hands, a splash, and her laughing eyes, but the piece of metal she fished out left an unpleasant impression on him. Smooth arcs of tin, like a naked person with a bowed head as if in mourning. He’d grown sad. Incredibly so. He’d taken his naked fortune, put on his leather jacket, and gone home. She had said she felt responsible.

But at the market today — they’d been so happy to see each other again. Genuinely happy. Andrejs was out looking for a new yardstick since his old one broke the day before yesterday, and the tape measurer was sometimes impossible to keep steady. But instead he bought a pork hock and left with this Demeter, who was now sleeping soundly against his shoulder. Tomorrow is his name day. He hadn’t imagined he’d be spending his name day in a strange place. Life’s funny like that.

Although, he could just leave. It was always an option. You could leave wherever you were as long as you were alive. Buy cigarettes and a book of matches at the gas station, stop and smoke one halfway across the bridge before throwing the rest of the pack into the river so they can’t tempt him. Then take a right and head toward the small Russian church. Then across the train tracks, where little red and green lights glitter welcomingly in the shallow ravine. And past the tracks he was already almost home. Five kilometers — and his shed. Probably as cold as ice by now. The heat gets sucked out of the shed in no time; it’s no surprise since the walls are so full of cracks that the wallpaper flaps in the wind.

But it’s nice to get a fire going.

Open the flue.

Pile wood into the stove. Pack enough newspapers in the middle. Then light it.

Close the stove door and regret throwing the pack of cigarettes into the river. It’s nice to have a smoke while lighting the stove. Surrounded by the dark, cool room, where the roaring flames reflect yellow onto the walls and he can see the white puffs of his breath. Regain warmth slowly, along with the floor, the ceiling, the bed and table, along with the bricks and wood. It was all somehow very nature-like.

Andrejs remembers how Ieva used to do that sometimes at the Zari house. It was too bad he didn’t smoke back then. It would’ve been pretty great with the both of them. One over the course of the entire evening. With Ieva. But they never had anything together.

But this woman here — she’s a typical woman. He told her how he’d quit smoking and right away she started going on about how good that was, and how she’d have to keep an eye on him so he didn’t pick it up again. That thing all women have, that kind of habit of ownership, they’re supposedly the weaker sex, but they’re all just calculating bitches. They net you with their promises, tie you up, hold you to your word like they’re yanking on the reigns, school you, keep an eye on you, babysit you. Just wait until she wakes up, then he’ll tell her what’s what, tell her not to get her hopes up, not to expect anything. She’ll learn only the things she’s entitled to learn. And give everything else a rest. Prison is his past. And that’s all he’ll say.

But why is this accounting thing bothering him? Ah, right, because of the photograph. She showed him a photo album — well parts of it, a few photos right at the beginning. And he’d accidentally seen the next page — kids in the prison visitation room, in the corner with the iron swing set. He recognized it right away, even though he’d only seen it a few times since he’d been released. When you’re in the prison you don’t see how pretty it looks from the outside. It’s white. With fences and searchlights. And that strange alarm tone that goes off once an hour. And a swing set in the visitation area. His prison.

He recognized the yard by its masonry. The kids play on the swing set by the prison while their mother sits in accounting — he decided that’s how it went. Two kids. Two’s always better — it’s always more fun. Now she’s alone, he can tell by her slippers and toothbrush. Who knows if her husband died or left her. Actually, he doesn’t care. She can tell him as much as she wants to. What’s done is done.

But the handwriting under the photos is familiar. The number two in the year is like a swan with a curled neck. Maybe she was one of the people in accounting who accepted payments for visitations back then? Back when Ieva still came to see him? Who knows why he’s being nagged by memories of that slanted “2”; he probably saw it on some receipt when Ieva came to visit.

Sweet little accountant. She’s pretty in the pictures, and still looks good now. He told her this. So she wouldn’t be offended that he wasn’t really into the whole pictures thing. What’s done is done. What’s the point of photographs — your eyes never change. You’re not going to love a woman made of paper. But the one resting her head on his shoulder, that’s something else entirely — warm, full-figured, lightly snoring. Very quietly. Andrejs knows she’s asleep. Because in prison you learn to tell by the sound of someone’s breathing whether or not they’re asleep. The rhythm is completely different. Especially the exhale.

And what says they’ll even get around to talking? He could just ask her straight out about the accounting. But what if he suddenly wants to go home? Or tomorrow morning, even — bail while she’s still sleeping? You can’t force your heart to feel something. Visiting is great, but being home is even better. And if being home is better, then conversation is definitely not mandatory. Burden yourself with excess information. She already managed to talk about a few things while she was seasoning the meat. Show him the photo album. And ask questions. He won’t say anything. What for? For more heartache? It’s pointless and disloyal.

So she’s sleeping. Let her. It’s a nice moment. A couch under him. A woman beside him. The strips of light cast from the wall lamps long and muted. To the right a window, and beyond it darkness and cold. A TV in front of him with the volume turned down. Warmth all around him — not the abrasive, dry heat of a stove, but the soothing blanket of centralized heating.

It’s his, Andrejs’s moment. A moment of existence. He’s gotten so good at capturing these moments over the past years. He sniffs them out like a bloodhound, extracts them like a pearl diver and brings them to the surface of his consciousness, breaks and grinds them down like a nutcracker. He’s almost happy, dammit — happy!

He doesn’t need much anymore. The waves that used to crash over him have thinned out. Soon the sky will be visible through them. He’s almost convinced that its dark corners no longer hide any threatening shadows that could bring him suffering. It’s his fate — to spend his entire life as a toy in the rolling waves of life. To do something and only realize it after the fact. Life brings nothing but pain to people who live like that. He’s had enough. It’s nice here, in the shallows. And his memories are within reach if he ever wants to feel something.

He was also happy back when Ieva still came to see him. But it was a tormented happiness. Kind of like what he feels now, when he replays the scenes of his life over and over, even though he should relax and enjoy the warmth, this moment of existence. Why let yourself sink in the past when you can’t change or undo it? To feel that troubled happiness? Life is life, it has everything; the contents in that pot are so thick that, in the moment something happens, you can’t tell if you’re still happy or not. But only the good things remain in your memory.

Back when Ieva still came to see him, he would start waiting for her three months in advance. Once you’d shown you were hardworking and could behave, you’d get an extended visit. One visit per season. He’d carefully fill out the request form, put down Ieva’s passport information, and write “wife” in block letters on the line above “relationship.” Back then he had a wife.

They usually brought Ieva in first. The prison’s hotel room was a long, narrow bedroom with a window at the end of it looking out onto the inner prison wall. Two beds against opposite walls. Two bare, ugly nightstands. No frills.

She was always sitting on the bed when the guards brought Andrejs in. He liked to think that she sat because her trembling knees would give away her excitement. But maybe she sat so she’d resemble a painting. Because she knew full well — in this empire of ugliness she looked so unnaturally beautiful. Who the hell knows. He was never able to fully understand Ieva.

He already had the feeling back then that she was slowly pulling away from him, that she was already associating with people who stayed out of trouble. And it was only the prison with the clanking of its hundreds of doors, the jangling of keys, narrow hallways, the spots of light on the guards’ uniforms, Andrejs’s shaved head and large eyes in his gaunt, dark face that fused them together — the way only prison can do.

When she stopped coming, he spent the next four years entertaining the thought of killing her once he got out. But that lasted only four years, not longer. No emotion lasts longer than four years without support from God. It was around that time he found that book by the stove in the prison boiler room, read it and calmed down. For life. The only thing he asked of God was to never see Ieva again. Now he’s always on edge whenever he goes to Riga to visit their daughter. Ieva is probably around somewhere. Why shouldn’t she be?

Just as alive as back then.

His hands would still be behind his back, even though it had been more than thirty seconds since the guard had removed the handcuffs and left the room. Andrejs grinned like an idiot every time — maybe Ieva didn’t notice, at least he liked to think so. Grinned like an idiot and rubbed his wrists.

Then — and then he’d rush to the bed and pull her into his lap like a cat, warmth all around and their scents mixed together. They’d sit for a long time, pressed into each other, filling each other’s contours, almost motionless. Breathing each other in.

And then they’d start to talk.

Finally Ieva would break free and they’d start to make dinner. Outside would be growing dark.

Like in that one song — just the two of them, alone in this world — what was that song? It doesn’t matter. There are so many songs like that and all the singers in the world sing about it.

But the feeling was so rare. It was like the world had just been created. And they were the first two people in it.

Two people protected by a barbed wire fence, dogs, and guns.

It had been so beautiful. As if Andrejs even understands anything about words, anything about the word “beauty,” for example, because no one ever really taught him the meaning of words. Everything he knows he knows from observation. Jesus! — who was going to teach words to a farm boy like him? “Get lost!” or “Take ’im, he’s in the way!”—behold, his lesson. Ieva added the word “beauty” to his vocabulary later, but she spoke differently; she was his Gospel. She would even read aloud to him at the Zari house. Books. At night! Before going to bed — like for a kid.

But that’s just how she was: she’d spend the day thinking and talking to herself, and at night she’d look for answers in books and even read aloud to him. And why not? It’s tough when you live out in the country, surrounded by black woods. Where the darkness quickly thickens in the snowless winters, and you can hear the constant rush of the ocean from the north. You could go crazy. But they had their little room and their large bed, and the yellow-painted light bulb hanging bare above them. And Ieva reading out loud to Andrejs. He’d warn her ahead of time that he’d fall asleep. That kind of reading reminded him of his mother’s lectures. Ieva was his Gospel, his mother — the Law. The only time his mother could hold him when he was little was at bedtime; the rest of the time she could neither control him, nor find him. Skis, a shotgun, a hunk of bacon, and his dog — that’s all he needed.

True, when Ieva read Knut Hamsun to him, he didn’t fall asleep so quickly. The woods, a dog, a girl. The dog shot dead in honor of the proud girl. Andrejs understood all of it, there was nothing to discuss.

There was also — who was it again — Trygve Gulbranssen, Beyond Sing the Woods. Another Norwegian writer. The woods, darkness, horses, and the proud Christina. And everything carried this sense of a larger, more respectable life. It was natural.

How beautiful, Ieva had said.

Beauty!

To her, the greatest beauty could be found in the thing Andrejs hated the most — some kind of statement or phrase. She’d read those phrases over and over again and almost tremble with joy.

Ridiculous.

Why spend so much time digging around words? Outside there was real life, the woods, a tractor, livestock, and most of all — a husband. Andrejs gave up so much for them to have a life together: his skis, his shotgun, and even the woods. Because they had to make ends meet, save money. But she just re-read sentences. What’s the big deal, he’d often ask, it’s a nice sentence, so move on! But it’s not something real. It was better to steer clear of fantasies, awful things that they were.

Like that novel The Idiot, which Ieva found particularly beautiful. Jesus Christ! The definition of boredom.

When she opened that book, he’d fall asleep without the tiniest hint of regret. Dostoevsky could mess with your mind, and let him, but you were responsible for paying attention and drawing that line when the time came. Andrejs remembers what the book looked like: a Soviet era publication with a bluish-grey canvas cover, with a really stupid-looking cherry red picture at one corner of a man and woman with tiny waists caught up in dance. Ieva was pregnant then. He remembers what she looked like just as well as he remembers the book. The soft skin of her round stomach, the silky, soft triangle at its base and her breasts, hard and protruding like the horns of a stag, and with large, dark tips. None of that tiny waist crap. At that time all Ieva would eat was sprats with rye bread. The effects of the pregnancy were like that — she’d make him run into town for sprats if there weren’t any in the fridge, even if it was the middle of the night. Downed them with rye bread like a madwoman. Lost a lot of weight. The doctors warned her, but nothing helped. She was stubborn.

They made love each night, and sometimes afterwards Ieva would read aloud.

It all happened in that one year — falling in love, a child, turning eighteen, a wedding, the collapse of the Soviet Union — boom! An entire lifetime over the course of twelve months. Ieva cried. The whole year. It’s no surprise Monta grew up so sensitive. If anything she’s neurotic, because Ieva spent the entire year crying. Pregnant women shouldn’t act like that, he’s convinced. Even if the empire collapses.

Monta was born while he was away. He’d driven out to the border to clear a forest in Nīkrace. He tore all the way back across Latvia to get back home to the Zari house once he heard the news. He wanted to bring his daughter home himself, in the tractor. Ieva wouldn’t let him, said she wanted to get home by taxi. Again with some kind of fantasy she’d gotten from a book.

When Andrejs met Ieva on the front steps of the hospital holding the baby, it seemed like several years had gone by instead of several days. Ieva looked disheveled and bright-eyed — unfamiliar. She had probably expected a flower from him, but he didn’t have one. She shouldn’t expect something from him that he wasn’t going to give.

He looked at his daughter — cute. He called for a taxi. So be it.

But he fell asleep in the cab. No surprise since he hadn’t slept much the last few nights. A cast-iron stove had smoked away in the loggers’ barracks, and all night there was nothing but charcoal and the howling of the village dogs. Now and then he’d light a cigarette and listen to the snoring of the other workers. The heavy night pressed the smoke down and constricted his chest. But maybe it had been from the excitement that he now had a daughter.

The taxi driver woke him when they were already back at the house:

“Wake up, Dad! You should’ve carried your newborn in yourself!”

The yard was empty. Ieva had already run inside with the baby to hide her tears.

He’d slept through it.

Ieva, of course, was silent for the next few days. His daughter obviously meant nothing to him if he could just fall asleep like that. Did he do it on purpose? Wasn’t he happy? He was happy; he just couldn’t show it on the outside like everyone else.

In his opinion, Ieva’s sadness was a huge cover for how spoiled she was. Both of her parents had worked and her mother had migraines, so they couldn’t keep both Ieva and her little brother. They had sent Ieva off to the countryside to live with her grandmother, but that’s where all hell had broken loose. She hadn’t had real life conditions there, the way he saw it. It was like living in a conservatory. Books. Laziness. The sea. Her Gran did everything for her. And the little princess just lay on the couch, reading — and from the age of four!

Andrejs hated know-it-alls. Smart people. Writers. Who needs them? Fine, everyone can come up with one great thought in their lifetime, a single, strong thought that’s their own. You can’t run on empty, so to speak. Something goes on up there, all the time.

Alright — two great thoughts in a lifetime, like Andrejs had.

Yes, he can count two great thoughts of his. The first is the one he’d love to remind Ieva of, in case she’d forgotten. That, despite everything that’s happened, plus prison, he never turned into some pig.

They say your own people will get it. He won’t explain anything more to anyone else. Those who don’t get it can just drop it. Who needs explanations. He won’t say anything more. It’s such a massive thought and so completely applies to him that chills run through his body when he repeats it to himself and fully realizes it.

The second thought is about life. He’ll tell Ieva about it someday. And she and all her smart people will pale at the idea. Because they’re all liars. Shelves stuffed full with books. Fakes! Because a person can come up with one, two great thoughts in his lifetime, but then there are people who knock out a book a year. It’s obvious to Andrejs that they just make money in the name of boredom. That’s how that world works — the less sense you have, the more others will take advantage of you.

Three thoughts, what lies. Three is impossible.

He’s told Ieva that. She drove him nuts with her talking, pissed him off. He had felt so unprotected, so forced into solitude and darkness, that he had screamed it right into her face — I hate know-it-alls!

She’d screamed back — but I crave knowledge!

A yeller. She’d been consistently raised like that, to be proper and positive. Undisciplined and lazy.

Oh, Ieva. His Ieva. What’s wrong with him!

At times he’s actually pretty scared. Things will just fall into place and this wave builds up inside him. Then he becomes afraid of himself. Something hidden deep within him shifts; something he’s never known and will never know about. At moments like that, both life and death seem trivial, and an intense pain rips through his heart. No, not pure pain, but some kind of twisting, a rope of aching, longing, rage, hope, and dread; it runs so deep that it constricts his entire chest.

He can’t breathe and he’s afraid of himself. At moments like that he’s happy his heart has destined him for loneliness. God forbid someone else has to have this wave crash over them as well. Only Andrejs can bear that weight. He holds this wave like Atlas holds the world on his shoulders.

The woman resting on his shoulder moves. His collarbone must be digging into her cheek.

Andrejs quickly reaches his free hand behind his back to grab a cushion, and tosses it in the corner of the couch. Then he puts his arms around the woman and draws her down with him. There’s a tickle in his chest, and even though this movement lasts maybe a second, he feels like he’s caught a giant fish and is sinking into the depths of the ocean.

The woman mumbles and doesn’t want to lie down, and struggles a bit, the idiot, she probably thinks he’s going to start groping her, but he doesn’t intend to. Alright fine, maybe he thought about it a little, but he’s only human, he can see she’s tired from work, and also from preparing the roast, so let her just sleep. Her cheek presses against his shoulder, a string of drool hangs from the corner of her mouth onto his shirt like a silvery thread.

“Sleep!” he strokes her hair. And sniffs it. Strange. Her scent isn’t really something that would make him want her right now. He sensed that from the start. But he can’t exactly push her away, either. Like there’s a secret flowing through her. That’s a good thing. He likes a woman with a secret.

She makes a noise like a content cat when he strokes her hair, then drifts off again. Makes sense — it’s nice with the two of them together. Close, cozy.

And it’s nice here in the warmth, nice for Andrejs to think about Ieva without interruption. These thoughts always drag him away from wherever he is, carry him through the air and to a strange and enormous house, where it takes a long time to inspect and check all the cellars, intersecting hallways, antechambers, rooms, mansards, stairwells, pantries, attics, guest rooms and hidden passageways, and then clean and catalog them until next time. Tonight he’s just getting started. Until he’s made it through it all. Let this Demeter sleep. There’s nothing left to miss out on. That’s how time works.

Ieva’s visits were beautiful in their slow pace. There was no rush. “We’ll be back tomorrow at ten!” the guards would remind them as they left. And then time would suddenly start back up for Andrejs, whose life orbited a bewitched circle, where the same actions took place every morning, every night, and every year, forever winding up back at the beginning; a life where the mirrors are frozen and always reflect the same image. He had been shunned from time both physically — in prison — and spiritually — within himself.

But then one morning Ieva would show up and time would start again.

Even the guards noticed it because they said they’d be back in the morning to separate them. Andrejs suddenly became worthy of keeping track of time — this body the court had sentenced to age hidden from sight. Something overflowed and pushed out, the floodgates burst open — a powerful torrent rushed forward from 10 am through 10 am the next day, and it took his breath away to see how elastic and shifting time was, how material and flowing it was.

On those days he hated the clock. On those days the clock once more had meaning, and it mocked him as much as it could, like someone born to be a prison guard — someone with tormenting in their blood, someone who makes sure you’ll never forget them.

He and Ieva would sit and exchange unhurried words, they could see the prison wall from the window and watch inmates wander around the yard like livestock, like a dazed flock in bluish parkas or white shirts, depending on what season it was. Sunspots moved across the floor. They talked about neighbors, Ieva’s job, his friends and prison life, their parents, money, and Monta. Andrejs would look at photographs of his daughter, if Ieva had been able to conceal them well enough in her clothes, and say he’d put them in a plastic binder. He had an entire collection of photographs like these hidden under the false bottom of his nightstand.

Andrejs would study how time had changed his daughter’s face. When she was born she had looked exactly like him, like she’d been shaped in a mold, a tiny copy of him, an imprint in dark metal. Then her face started to change, jump from his features to Ieva’s expressions and back again. Of course, a lot depended on the angle of the photo and the lighting, but in the end Monta became Monta. It was impossible not to notice it.

He’d timidly beg Ieva to bring Monta with her. And Ieva would firmly answer that her daughter would never set foot in a prison or ever breathe this prison air.

“And if I die?” he asked.

Ieva shrugged.

And that’s how she was, a straight-up bitch. It was because of her Andrejs was in prison, because of her and that ass Aksels, but see, she made herself to be this noble, white dove who visited him like a dream once a season. But she was absent at the same time. Naiveté—or rather, what was it called again? — immaturity. Exactly.

An immature infant. And a bitch. She comes to prison, but doesn’t breathe the air. That idiocy comes from books, of course. I am what I am, and where I am is where I am. But see — it’s easier to deny reality, to linger in the dream, to pretend, to observe.

Stupid.

Independence and betrayal. The entire breed of book readers are traitors. Because they use words however they see fit, and they’re as sly as foxes. They’ll forever twist the world into something they like better. Everyone else sees black, but they say it’s just the opposite of white. Obviously you can say it like that, too, but it will always be connected to a selfish purpose so tangled it’s sickening.

That was when the fight started. The time when he gave her his shirt as she left because it was pouring outside. May showers — loud and spattering, or in a gleeful disarray.

And she never came again. Just sent back the shirt with a note—Everything’s over for real now. Ieva.

There wasn’t actually a fight. He’d just told her what he was thinking. And suddenly it was over. So their time together had been based on nothing but lies — on lies and silence. But that had been clear for some time.

That time she had showed up kind of disoriented. Like she was in the room, but not.

And then suddenly — she asked if she could talk to him about Aksels.

The trump card. He even swayed a little, he hadn’t been expecting it. They never mentioned things like that. Because, first and foremost, they both had their own version of what had happened.

And second, the walls had ears. All the walls in the Soviet Union had ears; they couldn’t be so naïve to think that a prison that had never been reconstructed would be clean of wire taps.

But she asks — can they talk about Aksels?

And then she just went off with almost no segue — she reminded him of a person up to their knees in seawater and with the tide coming in fast. He could tell right away that she had been holding it back. She’d probably spent those four hours in the train talking to herself.

About how, see, he shouldn’t have shot Aksels. That it had been a kind of neurosis, and now how were they supposed to fix it? That she hadn’t done right by Aksels, but instead turned him into some kind of animal.

Jesus Christ! Andrejs had just looked at her and smiled. If she had been anyone else but his Ieva, he would have yelled back at the top of his lungs. Obviously it had all been a load of bullshit. That scrawny, sickly drug addict, and that whole history and theory they had been drifting on for years like on melting ice. Eternal love. I want to die in your arms. My life and death are yours, and your life and death are mine.

“Ieva,” Andrejs had asked, “tell me the truth — don’t you know that you were both completely insane?”

“And what about you?” she asked.

“I happened to be there. If I had a second chance, I’d do it again.”

First of all, so you wouldn’t. Second, because I hated him. He got on my nerves.

Ieva had jumped to her feet, her face pale, spots at her temples.

“You just don’t get it! So if we really were insane, then you’re sitting in prison because of two complete jackasses? Think about that! You’re wasting your life because of two idiots?”

That was uncalled for, he thought. Then he answered—“Yes!” And what else could he say, when she had him cornered like a rat?

Yes!

Like Croesus, squandering lives.

Total bullshit.

He has to think about it every day.

They both went to the kitchen. Fried some eggs and bacon, carried the pan to the room and ate. Then they went to the second floor TV room, sat next to each other in the soft, red chairs behind the potted palm. At night they made love, and it was good for her. Insanely good for her — Andrejs felt it. Maybe she was seeing someone out there, on the outside, but he didn’t care. For him the sex always seemed secondary. It was like being lazy. The important part was for her to be next to him, for her to feel good, and then he was also able to sink into that whirlpool. That was the last thing. And he’d wash away his anxiety, stress, the sediments of time, wash it all away. Lightning struck and traveled down through the lightning rod, down to Ieva’s world. Then it was a new morning, sparkling and clean. A new page could be turned. A pure, white page, still clean of any marks. That’s what the sex was like for Andrejs, but for her? Who knows.

She didn’t say anything.

That night, toward morning, the light of an unusually bright full moon flooded the room. He tried hard to convince himself that he was asleep, but in reality was laying wide awake with a deathly weight on his chest, hugging the precious body next to him — and then she woke suddenly with a scream.

He wasn’t able to calm her down, even though he was able to pull her into his lap, stroke her hair and her ribcage and knobby knees. She sat there, curled into a ball, and whispered that she’d sensed an evil in the room!

The devil had been in the room. Andrejs rubbed her back and tried to calm her, said the devil didn’t exist, it was something people had made up, but she cried and told him her dream: she and Aksels had been standing high up on a hill, everything was green and happy, and there was a rainbow behind them. But when they had taken each other by the hand, gashes appeared on their palms and blood streamed onto the ground.

Jesus, at that moment Andrejs would have been ready to shoot Aksels ten times over, riddle his dead body with more and more holes, so he would go to hell once and for all. That little shit, that son of a bitch! He was in Ieva’s dreams, even though he was long dead. He stomped around Ieva’s dreams!

Andrejs wasn’t able to fight him, no one can fight in dreams, because you don’t break into dreams, you’re invited in. Andrejs could only hate him — hate him more than he had ever hated anyone else in the world.

And he said this to Ieva — said that at this exact moment she was with a murderer.

Told her not to call it what it wasn’t.

And that she was a bitch if she let Aksels wander freely in her dreams, while she was sleeping with Andrejs. And that this institution, in case she didn’t know, was built for people just like Andrejs, because out of a hundred people who feel hatred, only one will actually pick up the shotgun, and that person is him, and he doesn’t regret any of it.

Ieva had looked at him with such fear, the bluish whites of her eyes glazed over in the moonlight. He could tell by her breathing that what he had said was slowly sinking in.

“You shot him only because you’d learned how to kill in Afghanistan?”

But of course! The shotgun had been right there, loaded, and what’s more — Ieva had handed the gun to him herself. But of course, love! When would he have had another opportunity to get rid of the little bastard who’d ruined his entire life?

But he didn’t say that—because that thought was as wispy as a rose-colored, papery autumn sky — that he had possibly caught himself in his own lies. Now he was saying one thing, but at other times, like when he was sitting in the dust of the prison yard, watching the wind tug at the leaves of the elm trees, and Ieva was so far away at the other end of the world past the barbed wire fences and one hundred twenty-four kilometers of forest, rivers and bogs, or when they made love, he was able to break free of himself, from the biting harness, he felt her contented breathing, and at those moments Andrejs could do the unthinkable — let all the happiness of the world flow into Ieva, because she herself was valuable, because she was worth it. And if she loved that son of a bitch Aksels, then at those moments — even though it was unthinkable — he was able to let himself imagine that she was even allowed to love Aksels. Even Aksels! And at those moments some kind of serpent, vibrant as a Latgalian wool mitten, would hiss into Andrejs’s ear that this was the kind of true love written about in the Bible. A love that didn’t hate, wasn’t jealous, didn’t destroy, wasn’t submissive, just carried you toward the sun — carried, carried, carried you, forever carried you.

But that wasn’t something Ieva needed to know.

He only added that he was the only one who could call her a bitch and, forgive him, but if he hears someone else call her a bitch, he’ll slit their throat.

“You’ve made me your personal swamp,” she said calmly after a pause.

Maybe it was then that she had already made up her mind.

Then they probably both finally fell asleep.

In the morning it was overcast, and the air was full of the bewitching scent of spring buds, but Ieva was unnaturally pale and silent. Even that usually beautiful final hour they had, during which they normally dressed, cleaned up, and wallowed in thoughts of parting, memories and glances — now it was hard as stone. And the guards had forgotten about them.

Once they’d dressed they sat stiffly on the beds facing each other, looking like they had met for the first time in their lives. The time came for them to go their separate ways, but the guards didn’t come. The black tentacle of the clock slowly slid to four minutes past ten, then to ten minutes past ten.

The room grew darker and darker, until finally the black-blue cloud outside broke open with a mighty crack, struck the earth with a blinding thorn, and unleashed a grey downpour. Rain beat against the windows with such force that it rattled the windowsill like a tin drum. Andrejs sprang to his feet and started pacing back and forth across the room, then suddenly took off his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt. It was a violet-colored shirt with dark stripes, possibly the nicest piece of clothing he had ever owned. And he put it around Ieva’s shoulders.

“Take my shirt,” he said, “you’ll get soaked.”

“That’d be just perfect — to forget about us in prison,” she said, letting out a fake laugh and glancing at the clock.

Five more minutes passed. Andrejs thought he was losing his mind.

“Just think, my shirt’ll be free in a few minutes,” he said, just to say something. Just to fill the eerie silence.

The sound of the rain droned on forever, then was suddenly extinguished like a candle that had been knocked over — the guards came in and Ieva and Andrejs both jumped up.

Andrejs obediently put his hands behind his back; there was the click of the cuffs, the jangle of keys, Andrejs at the door, her profile outlined by the flash of lightning, and then she was by him, close, close, a kiss, more like a bite in its desperation, warmth, her scent, the guard prying her fingers from Andrejs’s shoulders: “Your time’s up, ma’am!” Andrejs goes, turns a few corners down the hall, he knows which doors have glass windows, Ieva waves, hurries behind them, the fluttering of shirtsleeves and the hem of her white dress, she waves, her face, then another corner, then emptiness, the zone, and the storm.

The prison yard and silence, then it’s over.

Your time’s up.

And yes, after that at the next visitation time he waited for her in vain. All he got was her note: “Everything’s over for real now. Ieva.” And the shirt.

The hastily folded material still held her smell and the softness of her breasts. She had been here! She left a duffel bag with the shirt and the note. Stood in line some fifty meters away, shit, nothing between them but walls and guards — but he’d sensed nothing! His senses were deadened, she’d been here, but he hadn’t grown anxious, hadn’t moved, hadn’t felt anything — like an old camel, like a rundown Arabian horse whose nose can no longer sniff out water.

He hadn’t even dreamt of her.

Oh misery, godforsaken!

He hadn’t been prepared for the worst — for Ieva to leave him halfway, alone in prison. In the end it was betrayal; they were both up to their necks in the same shit. And then this!

She knew him too goddamn well, that was a fact. He’d carry his sentence until the end. But how could love so quickly turn into searing hate?

“Everything’s over for real now. Ieva.”

And the shirt.

But in living with Ieva, you had to be prepared for something like that. Naturally.

He wasn’t ready. He’d spent four years of his remaining sentence planning revenge.

Prison had become his home. And what’s to keep him from coming back home if he’s got a good reason? He had decided to erase Ieva from the face of the earth.

And then there was that unforgettable fall day — icy moisture dusted the skies, mud splashed up over his shoes and the frost bit through to the bone — the day Andrejs had wound up at the furnace.

Bound stacks of paper were brought to feed the zone’s boiler-room furnace. Leftover magazine issues, failed books, educational materials. And on that day, a blue, cloth-bound book of Ancient Greek myths for high school courses was lying among the frozen clumps of sawdust. Almost without reason, but mainly driven by curiosity and laziness, Andrejs smoked a cigarette and read a page in the book, then found himself unable to put it down.

There! He dug his unshaved chin into the collar of his down jacket. If only Ieva would come see him again, he’d read this book to her — there was no clearer way to say it. What Andrejs’s people referred to as love was complete bullshit. Talking nonsense by candlelight.

The Ancient Greeks knew that the gods were immortal, and told immortal tales. Once he’s placed in time, a mortal isn’t able to think of an immortal tale, much less tell one. A person’s existence winds around birth and death like a ribbon around two magic wands. He was curious to see how they’d solve the issue of immortality — if a story has a beginning, but no middle or end, what kind of skeleton is the meat of the story holding on to? If a god isn’t moved by his own death to act, then what does that god think about? It turns out — the gods think of nothing but power. The principle of power classifies existence under immortality.

Andrejs took the book. He tucked it under his shirt instead of throwing it into the furnace. And at night, he read about Odysseus by flashlight:

“After many days traveling they came to a place where thick osier bushes and tall poplars hid the entrance to the underworld; the travelers pulled the ship ashore and stayed to guard it. Odysseus went on alone. When he came to the entrance of Hades, he proceeded as Circe had instructed him: he first poured the libations of milk, honey, wine and water, then, to draw out the ghost of Teiresias, killed a black ram and spilled its blood into the pit he had dug in front of the entrance. A swarm of ghosts appeared at the pit to drink of the warm blood, but Odysseus kept them at bay, so that he may first hear the ghost of the graying Theban augural Teiresias, which was slowly approaching the pit.”

Andrejs thought of Aksels. If Andrejs had a blood-filled pit at the entrance to the underworld like that, then Aksels would definitely be lurking by with a ravenous stare.

“Then Odysseus’ mother neared the pit; she had died of grief in her son’s absence.”

Andrejs thought of his own mother. When Ieva stopped coming to see him, his mother slowly took her place. But that was completely different. His mother brought him a bag filled with bacon, eggs, onions, black tea, and cigarettes, made him dinner and then fell asleep exhausted from the work. In the evening she’d wrap up her hair, kiss her son once on both cheeks, and cry when they parted the next day.

Her visits to her son in prison were like visiting a ready-made recreation center.

She’d quickly tell him a few important pieces of news — what was new, who had died — and then was quiet.

“Then Odysseus’ mother neared the pit; she had died of grief in her son’s absence.”

Andrejs thought of his mother’s large, overworked hand as it hung over the side of the bed, where she slept like a log facedown on the pillow.

“Then Odysseus’ mother neared the pit; she had died of grief in her son’s absence. She told Odysseus that his home in Ithaca was still amass with relentless suitors for Penelope, who faithfully awaited the return of her husband, but that his son, Telemachus, was too young and weak to drive the suitors away. Old Laërtes, who grieved the fate of his son Odysseus, had left the city and was living in the countryside among slaves.”

Andrejs thought of his father. His father didn’t care about Andrejs’s fate. Maybe a quiet ache smoldered somewhere deep down in him. The rest had been eaten away by a lifetime of hard work. He knew how to take good care of his tractor — but never of himself. His father hadn’t let himself want anything for a long time. Not his son, not his future, not even his past.

His father’s two great thoughts:

— you have to live the life you’ve been given;

— a person lives and works, and then one day he’s clocked from behind with a shovel and pushed into a grave.

“Old Laërtes, who grieved the fate of his son Odysseus, had left the city and was living in the countryside among slaves. In winter he sleeps on the ground by a hearth, and in warmer months sleeps in an orchard on a bed of soft leaves.”

And yet. Andrejs’s mother had said his father had been getting soft in the head with age. He was supposedly dried up and fragile as a bird, and cried a lot. He’s on his way out, that’s why he’s grown as brittle as shortbread, laughing through his tears.

He doesn’t want to experience that, wouldn’t be able to watch it. This abusive, hard, and spiteful man who didn’t have a heart — a crier?

Anything but that.

Once, his mother came with a secret. Unlike the other times, she was kept awake by an unusual restlessness. She sat on the bed, chewed the hard candies she’d brought for him, swung her leg back and forth, and watched him as he smoked by the window. Outside it was a hot summer afternoon.

Andrejs looked back at her and finally asked her straight out:

“What?”

His mother blushed, wiped a handkerchief across her forehead, then spoke rapidly:

“Ieva came to visit.”

Andrejs sat backwards on a chair and drilled his stare into his mother’s lowered eyes. She glanced up at her son and grew frightened, understanding that she had to quickly finish saying what she’d started:

“She’s a big deal now, been to all kinds of schools, has a car. She went up to Dad, and he flung his arms around her neck and cried, told her she would always be welcome in our home. But I… I couldn’t just stand there… Eh, and how could I, I had to say it, told her she’d damned and betrayed my son, left him to rot, and for her to keep far, far away from my house, or I wouldn’t be held responsible for my actions!”

His mother grew red in the face as she spoke, and gestured wildly as if trying to push the image of Ieva away from her:

“But about your girl, I told her she could hide her wherever she wanted — when Andrejs gets out of prison he’ll see his daughter, no doubt about it!”

Andrejs turned back to the window. Mom, you’re lying, I know you too well — he could have said it. You know you love Ieva, he could have told her. But he said nothing. Outside a cat walked along the carefully raked strip of sand.

Having unloaded the weight on her heart, his mother fell asleep quickly.

Outside it was a hot summer afternoon.

He had found his religion in the Ancient Greek myths. He read about Scylla and Charybdis, about the Cyclops Polyphemus and the nymph Calypso, about the suffering of Prometheus, and the courts of Hades. Andrejs, who spent his days and nights with murderers and thieves: he read and understood.

A son who, instructed by his mother, took a sickle and castrated his own father, whose blood mixed with sea foam to give birth to the goddess of love. A father who, terrified of the power of his own sons, swallowed them whole. The Graces, muses, and Moirae — almost every prisoner had his own; distance, isolation, and desire raised them above the gods. Zeus was Andrejs’s favorite. Thirsting for knowledge and afraid of losing power, this guy had swallowed his first wife, which was what his mother had wanted. “Zeus swallowed wise Metis, in doing so both eliminating an heir and gaining Metis’s wisdom.”

He understood that kind of love, not the whining adoration coming at you constantly as songs on TV and the radio. He’d like to swallow both Ieva and Monta, they’d be in his stomach — Ieva’s wisdom and their daughter’s beauty, everything together in one place, home. He didn’t know how to love, only wildly desire, and it was among the Ancient Greek heroes that he found where he belonged. Here, in prison, there was no shortage of jealous women just like Hera, who murdered her rival’s children and took sleep away from her so she would have to wander the world like a ghost; until Zeus took pity on her and gave her the power to remove her eyes so she could finally rest. There were those like Danaus, who made his daughters kill their husbands. Or those like Tantalus who, in an act of unbelievable arrogance, sacrificed his son and offered his flesh to the gods. And those like Demeter who, distraught by a great loss, blindly ate everything the goddess of fate put before them, even the flesh of others, and not to mention such delicacies as sorrow, desperation, and alcoholism. Here you could find Ares with all his evil forces, whose sons were Terror and Fear, and who found joy in bloodshed.

Andrejs liked the retelling of these stories because they were about a time before anyone had been crucified for the sins of others, and before anyone had been saved.

Prison was the place where priests fished for souls day in and day out like pearl divers — forever looking to take confession. This frightful, shaved, robust, dark-eyed mob, a priori guilty, was the perfect material onto which they could cross-stitch those pearls.

He went to mass and listened, but never for a moment felt in his heart the main thing the priests asked them to feel — the desire to fall at the feet of Christ and call him their Lord and Shepherd, to transfer the responsibility for what they’d done onto their Lord and Shepherd and to beg for forgiveness. Andrejs could fall at the feet of Christ like he’d fallen to the floor next to the dead body of a stranger in a darkened cell. There was no question that Christ had definitely been a regular guy. He could wash Christ’s feet and trim his toenails, like he’d done on more than one occasion for an aging cellmate who had been exhausted to the point of lethargy. But he was unable to feel the most important thing — the desire to shift his guilt onto the shoulders of some Lord. Andrej’s guilt was his business, it was a part of him. Here he stood with his entire life and was completely aware of it. Though it was hazy, he could sense his freedom and responsibility within it.

King Oedipus, having unwittingly killed his father and married his mother, was unable to afford a single indulgence. The curses came true, but there were never any indulgences. No one had ever been crucified for Oedipus. He had to accept blindness as his fate all on his own. He had to accept himself for what he was and stab out his eyes, and wander the road with his walking stick, mourning his fate and that of his children.

In turn the Ancient Greeks were stingy with lessons. There were only two in the entire book — a lot like those real thoughts a person could think of in a lifetime. Both lessons were briefly laid out in a section about Medea and Jason in Corinth.

“But the happiness, honor, and praise they had hoped for never came to their Greece. Her own words came true: ‘Bloodshed begets bloodshed.’”

Medea had murdered her brother for Jason.

The goddess of love, Aphrodite, who gave so much joy and happiness to people, was also often merciless. “Passion that is more powerful than conscience brings the worst kind of evil to mortals.”

Medea had murdered children for Jason.

Andrejs remembers the moment he read those words, down to the smallest detail. His four cellmates snored away in their dark cell, which was hot from the stove and thick with bodily odors. He was lying on a bottom bunk facing the window; outside, a November storm carried a large, white lamp back and forth, so it looked like someone had hung a full moon up by a string and was waving it over the prison wall. The corners of the cell rustled with cockroaches and a draft, and Andrejs’s blanket glowed from the flashlight he held under it. Having finished reading about Medea, he turned a stony gaze upward to the metal bedsprings above him.

The woman was lying there with her eyes open.

Andrejs’s arm had fallen asleep. But to the point where he couldn’t take it anymore. He woke up — or rather, snapped back from his trance-like state of thinking — and tried to pull his arm out from under the woman’s back, and when he glanced at her he saw that she was lying with her eyes open. When had she woken up?

Afraid that she’d say something and interrupt the story, he instructed:

“Sleep some more!”

The woman obediently closed her eyes.

That night with Medea he’d been healed, because he’d finally seen himself from the sidelines. A tall, immobile, idiotic sack under a thin prison blanket.

That night they let him go. Enlisted him in the reserves. He knew that he would never kill anybody again. Not even Ieva.

Something had ended, the passion suddenly broken. Turns out his fate had been hanging at the end of such a fine strand of hair. Now it had matured, fallen out and slipped away. The shedding of an unnecessary skin.

How strange — when love was flowing through him he didn’t need anything, not even his only shirt. He had done terrible things, but they could all be justified. His, Andrejs’s, love.

Now that it had burnt out, he could start anything, though nothing would give him his fill. And he couldn’t imagine what more he could need that would fill the massive space surrounding him.

Andrejs didn’t even try to understand what happened in his brain when he read the story about Medea. Maybe the two things just fell into place — Medea and the release of his own passions — and both of them had nothing else in common but the horrible events over the course of a single night.

Maybe Aphrodite had never meant to be there in the first place? On that night, had the goddess of love ripped the deeply-lodged, festering arrow from Andrejs’s heart, and then disappeared without a trace? Without the core of the arrow his body crumpled like an empty shell.

He remained half way without Ieva, without reason, without a future. He knew that from there on out things would be calm and he would soon be released. He was a broken clock, a defective mechanism — why fight it? They don’t keep people like that in prison.

In truth, he should have stabbed out his eyes that very night.

“Want some champagne?”

The question spoken into the homey darkness scared the hell out of Andrejs because the woman shot it out as suddenly as a flare gun.

She had been lying there with her eyes open again.

He asked:

“Now?”

“Why not?”

They pulled themselves to their feet, turned on the kitchen light and rubbed their bleary eyes. He watched the movements of her plump elbows. The kitchen was small, and the woman filled the space right away. Andrejs liked this — just watching. He was ready to go sit in one of the corners when the woman said:

“Hand me those glasses!”

“Where?”

“On the shelf by your head.”

He turned toward the wall and came face to face with his own drawing. He stared at it for a long time, as if seeing a ghost, and then asked the woman:

“What’s that?”

“Glasses.”

“I see the glasses. But behind them?”

“That? Oh, that. A card.”

Andrejs very carefully took two fragile champagne flutes in his calloused hands and handed them to the woman. Then he took the card leaning against the wall behind the glasses and sat on a stool next to the small table. He studied the yellowed paper as intensely as a war refugee who’s been pulled from the water and given a passport, and who can’t believe this thing could save his life.

The card was drawn with lead pencil on regular notebook paper and then glued to cardboard. Its edges were decorated with barbed wire, which connected at the top in a knot around a red rose. The lettering For Ludmila — Ruslans was separated by a date, in which the number two looked like a swan with a proudly curving neck. The drawing also had the North Star and the aurora borealis. Small lettering at the bottom read: She dreamt that in the Caucasus steppe…

So she wasn’t an accountant! So that’s where he’d seen that handwriting and date before! How could he forget?

Andrejs asked:

“Ludmila?”

“Yes.”

She sat on the opposite stool at the table and twirled a strand of hair around her finger. Like she was flustered, clueless. When she lifted her eyes to meet his, they were bright with tears.

“That’s the last card my husband sent me.”

She wanted to tell him more, but he silenced her with an impatient gesture. He still couldn’t decide if he should go home right away, or later. If he started to talk now, it would mean he wouldn’t go home until later.

But he started to talk. He hadn’t become a heartless monster yet.

“You don’t need to tell me. I drew this.”

The expressions on the woman’s face changed as quick as the wind, chasing after one another like the shadows of falling leaves — while she sat very stiff and straight, her eyes searching his face to figure out what his words could mean.

“Ruslans and I met at the Central Prison Hospital. He was already admitted when I was brought in. We were together for a week, or less, I don’t remember. In any case no more than a week. I was there when he died.”

The woman let out a weak scream, and the tears finally overflowed. She wiped the wetness across her cheeks with the back of her hand. Andrejs handed her a towel, which she immediately bundled up into a kind of squirrel’s nest and hid her face in it. He waited patiently for her to look up again.

“You could say I was the prison artist. I framed photographs by sewing plastic wires around the edges, drew on materials using safety pins and colored thread, etched wood, sketched. Ruslans found out and showed me your handwriting. Asked me to draw a card and write the words like you did. He really liked your handwriting. I recognized it right away, but thought that you worked at the prison as an accountant.”

The woman nodded feebly. She rummaged in a drawer without looking away from him and placed a candle on the table. She burned her fingers with the first match.

“Tell me how he died,” she said, her voice somber.

“He died at night. I was writing a letter to my wife, he was lying down. I thought he’d fallen sleep. Then he suddenly started coughing, ran to the door and banged on it like crazy. All at once, about a bucket of blood spewed from his mouth. And then he fell over. I lifted him a bit and held him, but he had already started with the death shakes. The guards came and took him away.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Don’t worry, it happened quickly. He didn’t suffer. It was over the second he ran to the door. Later the nurses said one of his pulmonary veins had burst.”

More silence.

“But he managed to send the card out. When’s your birthday? Sometime in May, right?”

“May second.”

“And what’s this about the Caucasus, if it’s not a secret?”

“He was a really good person,” she finally said.

“I know. So what about the Caucasus?”

The woman thought for a bit.

She dreamt that in the Caucasus steppe—

He lay still, a bullet in his breast…

And yet, I am Ruslan’s now,

And will be faithful to my vow.

Andrejs propped the card against the windowpane so its edges were surrounded by the reflection of the candlelight.

The woman said:

“We liked poetry, like Pushkin’s ‘Ruslan and Ludmila.’ I’d read it to him when our kids were still little. Before he got mixed up in that damn gang and robbed that gas station… He was so surprised that there was a poem like that — about us, he said — just imagine! About us!”

The woman stood and opened the refrigerator. She pushed the champagne toward Andrejs, having suddenly grown very calm. He opened the bottle just as calmly and poured the chilled liquid into the glasses. In the reflection of the flame, the bubbles dancing in the sparkling wine seemed like lonely planets.

Andrejs lifted his glass:

“Well then — to us! To all of us.”

The woman nodded, and they both drank. Bliss — ice-cold bliss.

The woman spoke:

“And yours got better?”

“What?”

“Tuberculosis?”

Andrejs rubbed his cheek. The champagne made him feel very alive.

“There was actually nothing wrong with me. Time was running out. The last thing people had on their minds back then was prisons. There was famine in the prisons, actual famine, unemployment, and insanity. In order to survive I ground sugar into powder and inhaled it. A lot of people did it. And man, the lung spots it would produce on the X-rays! Say what you want, but the food in the hospital was much better. But after a while I started to think I really was sick. Every night the taste of blood in my mouth, at first in my dreams and later for real. You spit and see blood. Every night. Nothing during the day. During the day — powdered sugar.”

They’d emptied their glasses. The woman reached across and poured another.

“But the night Ruslans died… It was like — what’s so terrifying about it, people die! I was in for murder. That’s how it went.”

He said it before he realized what he was saying, and looked at the woman. She looked straight back at him. There was no fear in her eyes, no surprise, no questions, just an unwavering stare.

“But that night he died, it happened so fast. Didn’t even take five minutes. He was alive, and then all of a sudden I was holding him in my arms and everything was covered in his blood. The guards came and took him away. And then it was quiet again. I went back to my bed and found the half-written letter to my wife. I couldn’t finish it, the pen moved around the paper on its own, my thoughts had left me. Just five minutes — and it was like the letter was finished by someone else. Understand?”

He downed the champagne and gritted his teeth. Words, words. The devil had once again urged him to wear his heart on his sleeve. There was no point. He should have left when he had the chance.

“Another drink, artist!”

The woman poured the rest of the champagne. A good woman. A woman was supposed to be like that — warm as a bread oven. He wanted to tell her everything, but it wasn’t possible. There are certain thoughts you should keep to yourself.

“If I can, I’ll recite a poem for you.”

This kind of courage made him break into a sweat. Ieva had always encouraged him to write poetry, but he’d never been good at it. Ieva, on the other hand, was — you could even say that she put everything that happened down on paper. Like photography, but what you could do with photography was still entirely different from whatever prompted words. Write what you felt the moment you opened your eyes this morning, she’d urge him. He sat down with a piece of paper and sighed and complained until he was done. He thought it needed to turn out good if he gave into Ieva’s pushing. But it wasn’t good, he knew so. Ieva thought so, too; she was quiet for some time after she’d read it. “I woke up early, the alarm clock rattled like a chainsaw…” It went something like that, and it wasn’t like it didn’t make sense. What Andrejs saw was nothing like the morning or an alarm clock on the paper, but rather his own useless, Sisyphean battle with language, with words. And this nerve-wracking battle left that particular morning in its wake, that morning — one of many, but so unrepeatable. He hadn’t known how. But now?

— black woods surround you, wipe your forehead

black swamps surround you, stay here and live

the teeth of the white dog cannot reach to bite you

black fields hold their hissing hands out to you

take shelter behind the pine forest, gather dropwort

black swamps surround you, wipe your forehead

your retreat to the ninth breath was not in vain

keep your sorrow behind you, your joy in your arms

there will be a sharp fog when you open your eyes

the teeth of the white dog cannot reach to bite you

the breath and the palm, they will guide you

black woods surround you, don’t cry, but sing…

He had been left alone in the dark expanse and tore the lines from deep within his chest like flaming bullets, like his life depended on it. They died and were born from the death of the last, joined like the links in a chain of logic that only he understood, and they held fast. In it wavered his childhood, moments from the murder, serving his guilt and time, glimmers of Ieva and Monta, of his mother and father, and the black woods — places that, when he saw them, always caused a sharp ache in his heart because you could also love a place to the point where seeing it made your chest feel it was on fire.

Then the poem was over and he snapped out of it, thrown back into the shallows, into a strange kitchen where he’d said too much and, even worse, bared his soul through words.

Because of that third glass! Hadn’t life taught him all good things come in twos? Two cigarettes. Two glasses. Have a third and the rest of the numbers are redundant.

Andrejs rushed out of the kitchen and started pulling on his coat in the dark hallway. The woman followed quietly behind him like a cat and turned on a tiny, yellow wall lamp. She stroked his shoulders, neck, unshaved cheek, everywhere she could touch his skin.

She whispered:

“Such a beautiful poem. Did you come up with it in prison?”

“No, just now. And what about you?”

“Me — what?”

“He’s dead, but you’ve moved on?”

“Yes, slowly. What else can you do?”

“Prisoners. We’re prisoners in this life. Us. Everyone.”

He yanked on the door.

“Unlock it!”

The woman obediently found the key in a basket and put it in the lock. When Andrejs was already on the threshold, she suddenly and quietly asked:

“What about the roast?”

Andrejs hugged her to him. Strange lips like an undiscovered steppe.

Screw the steppes, Ludmila, let’s forget the steppes and our words, you were Ruslans’s Ludmila, but you’ll be my Demeter, the fertile earth herself! Someone discovered us long ago, gave us words hundreds and thousands of years ago. How I ache, how I search for this Giver of Words, I want to shake his hand and thank him for his creation — I sense that we won’t be the ones to give words, that time will grind us down and scatter our dust thrice over a broken field, the goddess Demeter and me, your mortal beloved — but I’d still like to look into the face of the Giver of Words, he is all-knowing! Look into the eyes of the Giver of Words, and finally find peace.

And then came the abyss, she embraced him, absorbed him, took him in and swallowed him like Calypso swallowed Odysseus, while he inwardly longed for the coldness of night, the bridge over the river and his moment of existence, his long-standing sentence of loneliness.

Too tired to object, he quietly prayed to the Lord, and the Lord came over him and he finally grew calm, having sunk his thorn into His hot center.

When he woke up the next morning, he was alone in the room. The smell of the roast and the woman’s singing floated from the kitchen.

It was a harsh morning, misty and cold. They ate. The food was delicious, rich, like her.

He asked:

“Don’t you have to go to work?”

“But today’s Saturday,” she answered.

As if he didn’t know.

“These days some people have to work Saturdays, too.”

“Oh, that. I work in accounting at the prison.”

Andrejs was speechless:

“So you do!”

“When he died in the hospital in Riga, the kids and I left the city. Took a train on a whim, the farther away the better. Got off at the last station, rented an apartment, asked around for work. Turns out this town has a prison and the prison was looking for an accountant. Might as well, I thought! If it’s a prison, it’s a prison. No reason trying to run from your destiny. Nothing wrong with work, either. It’s a good job, stable.”

“Yeah it is,” Andrejs laughed.

“A person’s got to eat. We’re prisoners in this life, you said it yourself last night.”

They watched some TV. There was a commercial for some movie playing at Cinema Riga.

“Would be good to see a movie,” she suddenly said.

“Go to Riga?”

“Why not? I haven’t been to the movies in ages! Or to Riga.”

He was horrified by the idea, but she was already getting dressed and humming. So be it, he thought, feeling very unexpectedly generous.

The woman had dressed up nicely for the event — she’d done her hair and put on makeup, put on a light dress under a short jacket, silk stockings and heels. Like a girl, he thought. It didn’t suit her. But what can you do if a trip like this to Riga happened only once in a while?

The train was full, but they were able to find seats facing each other by a window. Andrejs was embarrassed to look at the woman, her legs seemed too naked for the winter weather, so pornographically, screamingly lewd. This nakedness radiated toward Andrejs and completely unsettled him because something in it was meant only for him, aggressive like a good poem. Oh, Demeter, he thought, staring stubbornly at the reflection of his own dark face in the window, not looking at her once, even though she now and then touched his leg with her shiny, stocking-clad ankle. He even ignored her questions until she grew annoyed and glared straight ahead, the smile gone from her face as she was rocked by the rhythm of the train. Then he could safely scowl at her hair in the reflection in the window.

There was no snow, and after three and a half hours they stepped out onto the black asphalt of the Riga Passenger Station platform. The wind was biting, and the train’s passengers burrowed deeper into their coats and quickly disappeared into the belly of the station.

“The movie theater’s back this way,” Andrejs said. “Let’s go along the tracks, and then we’ll head down into the city.”

“Why that way?” the woman was surprised.

“No point in wasting money for the tram.”

The woman hesitated. He still couldn’t bring himself to look at her, just leered at her sidelong like a wolf. She was close to tears, trying to keep her jacket closed with one hand and beginning to think something wasn’t quite right.

“Let’s go! It’s not far.”

They started to walk along the side of the tracks. Andrejs in front, hands jammed into his pockets and shoulders hunched forward. The woman behind him, with her exposed, white legs and heels, jumping over the ties and rusted iron of the switches. The wind blew open the slit in her dress and her legs were covered in goose bumps. Her nervous footing caught in the gaps between the ties.

The woman finally spoke up:

“So this is taking a trip to Riga, to the movies, huh? You could’ve come up with a better idea!”

Andrejs answered curtly:

“This is the fastest way.”

“We could’ve taken the tram like normal people!”

“What a princess! Keep moving!”

The massive train track field was at least half a kilometer wide at this point; electric trains went back and forth, signaling their approach from the bend with a whistle, then coming into sight themselves. A fence ran along the tracks, as did paths worn down by bums and bushes containing piles of garbage — below it all were the wavering city lights and din of traffic.

The train to Moscow slowed down and passed them on its way to the station. Andrejs froze in his tracks. He and the woman looked in the direction the train was going. The last car slowly rolled by.

“What are you looking at?” the woman asked.

He didn’t answer.

Dogs.

Guards who shove you against each other, throw you, toss you like lifeless sacks… But first — dogs, the wild barking of dogs, sinister, horrible… Dogs — the devil incarnate… Cerberuses… Then the soldiers, their boots…

On the ground!

On your knees…

Hands behind your head!.. Move, right, left, we’ll shoot without warning!.. Days and nights of waiting in the half-dark without food, water… Then suddenly a light, shouting, barking, the wind in your face like rye bread, so fresh, so alive and rich… You eat it half-blind, chew it, swallow it — fresh air… Until you’re herded into a new cell, where they de-lice you, re-clothe you, shave your head, and save you from yourself. On the ground!..

On your knees…

Prisoner transport cars.

And, having lost all other characteristics of being human, you’ll latch onto your kind, will remain nailed to your kind.

“What are you looking at?”

“Prisoner transport,” he finally said reluctantly. “You see that last car there on the train to Moscow? The last one’s a prisoner transport car. It gets hooked on at some point — in Daugavpils or maybe Krustpils. When all the passengers get out, a locomotive will come, unhook it and push it onto the side tracks. Maybe overnight. Maybe for a few hours. Maybe they’ll take it right away to Central Prison. Who knows — maybe only the day after tomorrow — to Jelgava or Liepāja.”

This Russian woman had the knowledge of transport cars in her blood; knowledge about where prisoners spent the night before they got put in the stocks, before the sentenced whippings, before being branded with the symbol of shame and exiled to Siberia, when every condemned soul is to be pitied, when you feel compelled to give them a warm sandwich, to drop an apple into their laps, to force your way through the crowd so you, too, can press a coin into their hands.

But she’d lived with that two thirds of her life, and she’d had enough. She didn’t want to deal with it tonight, and launched a rebellion. She whined:

“Let’s go. I’m cold. C’mon, let’s go, good God are you going to stand here for hours? We’ll miss it!”

She walked forward a few steps, then stopped.

“That’s where all your memories are, all your friends, right? Transport cars and shackles, and dogs, and railroads — right? Well go, run, beg them, maybe they’ll let you into that car, huh? That’s where your entire life is, snitch!”

“Shut up!”

“But it’s over now,” the woman said from somewhere behind him, and started to cry.

“What’s over?”

She grew scared and got quiet.

“Don’t cling to any fantasies or hopes! Don’t! You’ll get exactly as much as you need. And leave the rest of it alone! I’ve put prison behind me. And I won’t tell you anything more!”

The woman stood on the tracks in the fall drizzle in her see-through stockings and stupid shoes, and trembled. The wind tore at her jacket, hair, and tugged at her thoughts, she looked so pathetic in her fancy get-up and red lipstick… and so close.

“Sweetheart,” she said, “but it’s over now.”

He spun around angrily and wanted to head back to the station. Ditch this drama and leave, like he’d done so many times before. But he suddenly felt that he couldn’t. It surprised him. He’d told her everything on his mind, but these words suddenly meant nothing, and disappeared like they’d been dropped down a well. Sweetheart, she’d answered, and was still standing there.

And he couldn’t go anywhere.

Strange. What’s left to not experience, he thought sadly.

He turned back around and started to climb down the steep embankment. She stumbled after him, crying out quietly when her foot slipped in the mud, and balanced meekly on one foot like a child when he brought the stray shoe to her and put it back on. Taking each other tightly by the hand, they dove downward, into the bright city.

Father

Several ducks and a goose idly putter along and nibble stalks of grass by the canal downtown. The weather is hot and humid as a greenhouse. A storm shifts tensely high overhead, but it can’t pull itself together.

Monta and Andrejs, having left the apartment, sit outside at the café. Andrejs rubs his thumb over his train ticket — he always buys it ahead of time for the trip home.

Old men play checkers on a bench under the lindens by the café terrace. Squealing children run around the adjacent playground, where the blue and red plastic tunnels, steps, and towers radiate a poisonous heat into the absentminded dust of the city. Punks and National Bolshevisks lounge in the grass in their striped woolen sweaters. But for now, father and daughter have the café to themselves.

Monta tries to inconspicuously wipe the sweat from her upper lip. Andrejs watches the ducks, watches his daughter, does up and undoes the top button of his shirt. As if waking from a trance, they now and then hastily pick up their drinks. The tonic swims with the reflection of the trees overhead and the broken shadows from the straws. Andrejs’s straw is yellow, Monta’s blue. Andrejs has a strong, almost violent mouth set in a darkly tanned face. Monta’s lips are sensual and soft, with traces of red lipstick.

Monta opens her mouth several times without a sound, then resolutely returns her father’s stare with her icy blue eyes. When they’re together there isn’t much use for words.

Some mothers sitting on the long bench by the playground talk about something and then burst into laughter — the sound is sudden and free, like champagne bubbling from a bottle. Monta starts, then bites her straw. Andrejs hears the tiny, delighted squeal of a little boy and turns to wave to him. Monta sees the shadows of leaves chase each other across the aged skin of her father’s neck. She looks up at the sky; it’s sticky, it’s suddenly and completely closed off, blackened by something stifling and dark like soot. But the sky won’t open up for a while still, though the foliage might. Moisture gathers on the lindens from the humidity.

Her father faces her again, reaches across the table and touches the back of her hand, where the heat has drawn up a few bluish veins. Now the yellow-painted fingernail of her index finger traces vertical stripes in the condensation on her glass.

A small, mangy poodle runs into the flock of birds. He seems oblivious to the ducks, but aggressively herds the lone goose. The poodle’s owner, an elderly woman with a pale face and arms crossed behind her back, turns toward the canal and looks at the bright green embankment on the opposite side. Her ankles are swollen beneath light-colored stockings, knotty like a tree stump at the roots.

Right now this woman is alive. The grass along the canal is unbelievably green. It’s as if the thick air is seconds away from unrolling a rainbow over it all. Everything will smell like cool, wet dirt, and air.

That’s all in the past, Monta had said — with that accidentally, but firmly dismissing Andrejs’s usual landslide of memories. She keeps drawing her fingertips down the side of her glass. Monta feels guilty. She wants to bring her father out of the cave he finds so comforting. Wants his attention for the physical, flesh and blood Monta sitting across from her father on a woven metal chair. He can’t reach that Monta anymore because he’s still scattered somewhere in the past as Ieva Eglīte’s misplaced object.

She’d be grateful if he’d listen to her selflessly. And he’d listen to her selflessly if he had any room in his heart. But he doesn’t, Monta senses that. That’s what we are, she thinks. A lost love tames the soul and drains it dry.

Why the fuck did you kill Aksels, Dad?

But she’ll never ask him. The question has to do with an entirely different life of his. It would startle him. Maybe he’d feel pain like a snail being suddenly scraped out of its shell with a spoon?

He’ll never talk about it. And it’s his pride and his downfall.

They hug each other reservedly, then draw away and really look at each other. Then Andrejs leaves on the train, suspended by endless silver tracks that never intersect, never intersect.

And a few station stops later, his head drops to his chest as he falls asleep.