High Tide

Riga

Initially Ieva, Aksels, and Monta stay with Ieva’s parents in their two-bedroom apartment in a Khrushchev-era building in the outskirts of Riga. Ieva’s brother Pāvils is studying in America and his room is empty. “It’s a nice room, on the sunny side!” Ieva says in earnest joy as she sits on the floor among the clutter, watching the sun reflect on the rust-colored roof of the building across from them. The room is too small to fit three beds. Monta sleeps between Aksels and Ieva. She often shifts to an angle in her sleep and Ieva and Aksels have to fight to keep from being pushed out of bed.

During the day, Aksels and Ieva look for jobs. Ieva’s mother Lūcija babysits Monta because Monta is still too young to send to kindergarten.

Ieva’s father Pauls still works in an office; despite the changing times, every morning for the past thirty years he stands at the mirror tying his tie, then takes his briefcase and heads to work. He was never in the Young Communist League and has never been a member of the Communist Party — something that’s considered a huge plus in these times. Possibly because the members of the Communist Party who were quick to switch sides are now Pauls’s bosses. A hard-working person will be hard-working no matter where he is. Pauls and Lūcija have never taken sides, unless you count the time Pauls burned his Soviet passport at the Freedom Monument during the Awakening Manifesto. After that Ieva and her father went to vote in the first election of the newly independent Latvia. The officials didn’t let Pauls vote, he didn’t have a passport. I burned it at the Freedom Monument! he had shouted, but they still didn’t let him vote.

“An official is always right,” he later joked about his bad luck.

I’ll place a dream about my Fatherland under my pillow,

one day I’ll meet with it again and be happy,

and sleep as soundly as a baby in its mother’s arms—

even in the suffering of death.

This poem by Jaunsudrabiņš, “For the Deported,” is always written on the first page of Pauls’s day planner. A free Latvia has always been his dream. He was disillusioned rather intensely at a young age — the deportation of his loved ones and the suffering of legionnaires.

Like every child who grew up during the war, the most important thing to Pauls is safety. He doesn’t seek out confrontation, doesn’t alter decisions, is careful with his finances, and always has a little pocket money for Ieva.

“But in moderation! There are sprinters and there are marathoners,” he’d say. “Speed is the death of a marathoner.”

Pauls is a marathoner, but very upbeat. Ieva thinks he could have been a fantastic actor had he wanted to. But even actors have to cross the line now and again, and that was something Pauls could only do in his dreams.

Even the theater pales in comparison to the streets. People don’t go to the theater — what’s happening in the streets is more interesting. The founding and collapse of banks, political parties, governments. Office workers are plucked like reeds by the raging storms of political powers. Many nights Pauls comes home from work completely withdrawn and sits in the small kitchen emptying a half-pint bottle of brandy.

“So I don’t have a heart attack!” he explains. “Today I had to explain again to the new minister why the last one made such a mess.”

Aksels lucks out and gets a carpentry job at the Academy of Music. It’s easy enough. Ieva sometimes goes to visit him in the academy’s basement — to make love, since they can’t at home. They put a blanket down on the floor. The dark vaults are warm and smell of wood glue, and dusk is filled with the sounds of the academy students’ nightly practices.

Ieva isn’t as lucky in finding a job. She diligently looks through the want ads in every possible newspaper. For the most part people are looking for secretaries — young women with a high school education, good Latvian and Russian language skills, and computer skills. English language skills will be considered an advantage. Ieva’s young — she has the necessary education and even understands some English. But she has never in her life seen a computer.

One night Pauls says:

“No problem! Come see me at work tomorrow!”

The next day Ieva trudges up the huge staircase of the Ministry of Finance and watches the young women strut confidently through the plush-carpeted hallways. That’s what a secretary has to look like in the capital — long blonde hair, a thin gold necklace, and an immaculate suit.

Ieva’s father sits her down at his desk. Hm, Ieva thinks, so that’s why he likes his job — the centuries-old oak desk asks no questions and embraces you in its sanctuary, which smells lightly of warm paper and sealing wax.

“Look!” her father says. “This is called a mouse. And that’s the monitor. Did you really not have a computer class in school?”

There were, they did have classes like that, where the teacher sat with his droopy mustache hanging over his desk and made them fill notebooks with writing on the basics of programming, showed them photographs and once took them on a special trip to the teacher’s lounge, where the school’s only computer sat under a cover in a locked cabinet — a real monolith! At least that’s what her classmates had told her; Ieva had been home sick that day.

Now she puts her hand on the mouse and moves it across the desktop. And the movement of her hand is reflected on the monitor: a white arrow moves around the screen. It’s complicated, but at the same time so simple. Something in Ieva’s mind is good at connecting her hand with the screen. Her father teaches her how to boot up and shut down the computer, how to open a new Word document, and Ieva heads home in a good mood. All that’s left to get is a suit, and she’ll be a secretary!

But it’s not that easy.

The first job Ieva gets is in some automobile club owned by twin Armenian brothers. Ieva’s diligent, writes press releases, and handles commercials for the radio and television, issues membership cards. Until one night when she stays to practice with the computer and she notices some flat-out lies. It’s advertised that the automobile club has a couple thousand members, but she can see on the computer — there aren’t more than a couple hundred! The following day she tells Olga, the office manager, a prissy Russian woman with long, buffed red fingernails. It’s just some kind of mistake, Olga says. The next day the Armenians fire Ieva.

Now a bit smarter, Ieva tries out a position at a construction firm. The director, a small and chubby old man, never misses an opportunity to pinch her butt. For a while Ieva pretends not to notice, but one morning when the director asks to recite some poems he’s written for her, she loses it and starts laughing hysterically.

The repercussion comes soon after. The office hosts an associates’ evening — Ieva fills bowls with fruit, lights candles, gets a fire going in the fireplace — if a secretary wants to get her pay on time, she has to be capable of more than working with a computer or speaking English! The director calls Ieva into the room with everyone else and offers her a glass of cognac.

“But you know I don’t drink,” Ieva says.

The next second the director throws the cognac into her face.

Ieva even tries placing an ad—Looking for secretarial work. The next day the phone at the Eglīte apartment rings non-stop with calls from what are basically pimps. A gruff voice breathes into the receiver:

“Are you interested in work over the phone?”

“What kind of work is it?” Ieva asks before she gets what’s going on.

“A certain way of talking over the phone, you understand?”

Ieva understands and yanks the phone cord out of the socket. There’d been no sex in the Soviet Union. Now the city was full of so-called escort clubs — cropping up like mushrooms after the rain. Sex over the phone and in saunas, escorts, strip teases, massages. Once she was approached in the square facing the National Opera by a man with a pathetic droplet of perspiration at the tip of his nose. He’d said:

“Do you want to be a model? You’ve got a great rack and long legs.”

Ieva grows tired, but doesn’t give up. Everyone in this insane city needs a job — but does that mean she won’t find one? Riga swarms like the entrance to a beehive in the spring, and pulls Ieva along with it — young and with her hair in the wind. Each new day brings hope, but each night brings dark defeat.

She applies for a job at an advertising agency. They need advertising agents for the publisher of the largest illustrated magazine. Her interviewing director is a lean, bearded-type in a plaid jacket who dozes lazily in the rays of sun falling across the large desk. Ieva tells him outright:

“Hire me. I’m done with being a secretary who gets cognac thrown in her face.”

The director opens his eyes, smiles, and draws a checkmark next to Ieva’s name.

She goes to training, where she and the other blank canvases listen as a well-rounded and advanced advertising agent lays out the rules of the game and gives them secret tips: how to handle their victims, how to conquer and win a seat at the table. Shamelessness, tactics, obstinacy — he more or less spoon-feeds these things to the silent group.

And then they’re let out into the world with contracts in hand. Their salaries depend on the price of the deals they sign on.

The first place Ieva ends up is in the office of a car dealership. The front room she’s told to wait in has a table, a chair, and a dark glass wall. Ieva walks around the room, looks out the window. Sits down in the chair and thinks — about nothing. The minutes go by; her half hour has already come and gone. She hears quiet music coming from behind the door. Ieva remembers that she’d almost ripped her only pair of stockings that morning. Do they have a run in them now? She stands up, checks her nylons and carefully straightens and smoothes her skirt back down over her thighs.

She’s finally called in. Ieva goes into the adjacent room, and it’s like there’s a small party going on. A low stone table is covered in bowls of fruit and bottles, there’s music playing, and several men in suits are sitting on the leather sofa. One of them asks her:

“So, what did you want to tell us?”

They’re all grinning at her. Ieva turns to face the thick glass wall and sees that it’s only tinted black from the outside. For an entire half-hour, it’s like she’s been in the palm of the collective hand of the men sitting down behind her. Like a live movie on a giant screen.

“Thank you, but I’m all set.” She blushes and leaves the room to the thunderous sound of laughter.

She lucks out at the wedding shop. The store’s management hears her out and has her prepare an ad series for six magazine issues. Ieva’s almost walking on air. Finally, this hopeless running around until her heels are rubbed raw will yield some results! She showers kisses on Monta, Aksels, her mother and father, is up late sketching drafts and coming up with slogans. She won’t say anything at the agency, just show up and drop the signed contract on the table; she has brains, after all, and she’ll come up with a marketing slogan so amazing it could inspire anyone. Your wedding dress — the caress of a silky summer night! A velvety autumn dream! A luxurious wintery mist!

The management at the wedding shop like her suggestions, Ieva is overcome by excitement and the store director just smiles as he looks at this blustery and passionate advertisement agent.

“The way you look right now, I’d marry you myself,” he says. “But first I’ll have to consult with our accountant.”

Forget the accountant! It’s a fantastic offer. Ieva slides the contract over to his side of the table. All the director has to do is pick up a pen and sign it. Still smiling, he watches Ieva float out the door, the valuable piece of paper clutched tightly in her hands.

Yes! Ieva really is walking on air. A five-hundred-lat contract! She’ll finally be able to buy something for herself, Aksels, and Monta. Take a trip to visit Gran by the seaside. Being poor is something you can only deal with for so long. Constant poverty can wear down even the strongest spirit. Ieva dreams of one day going into a store and just buying things. Without mentally tallying her remaining santims.

Back at the agency, she finds Zane smoking in a sunspot in the hallway by an open window. They’d already noticed each other during training. Zane is pretty, with an honest face and honest eyes. She used to be a TV journalist. She looks over as Ieva runs up to her with sparkling eyes and gives her a big hug.

“Good news?” Zane asks.

“A five-hundred-lat contract!” Ieva says proudly.

“Oho! Me, I’m sick of it. I’m quitting. I go to all kinds of companies, see all the people I used to film pieces on, and they all laugh at me when I try to convince them to advertise with us. ‘Do you seriously have nothing better to do?’ they ask. Guess I’ll have to go back to television.”

“Why did you leave in the first place?”

“Lost my husband and kid in a car accident. For two years after that I was totally wrecked. Now I’m trying to bounce back.”

Ieva bites her lip and lowers her eyes. She doesn’t know why, but she feels like the wooden floor of this hall, the color and boards worn down smooth by hundreds of shoes, will stay in her memory for years to come.

The advertisement agency tells Ieva that her contract is worthless. The director’s signature is there, but there’s no stamped seal.

“Did you honestly not know that you also need the stamped seal?”

Ieva remembers the smile of the wedding store’s director. He knew — Ieva’s sure of it.

And it’s true. No one lets her in to see the director back at the store. An elderly, owlish accountant sits at the desk; a cast iron creature with a heart of lead.

“Young lady!” she glares at Ieva sternly over round glasses. “Do you want to bankrupt us? Do the math — do you know how many dresses we’d have to sell to break even on this kind of contract?”

Fine, fine. Ieva doesn’t sleep that night, but she also refuses to give up. All the books say that success is the most important thing of all. And the face of Fortune could turn toward Ieva at any moment — she can’t give up hope.

A new store for fancy designer jeans has opened up downtown. Walking down the street, Ieva sees a sign in the window saying they need a sales associate and heads right in. She’s got nothing else to lose.

The store is clean, classy, and quiet. There aren’t many people in the city who have the means to shop here. The sales associate hands Ieva the storeowner’s business card, and Ieva calls him. His voice is calm and polite. He asks her to send a photo first.

If they need a photo, she’ll send a photo. Ieva gets her picture taken for the first time at a photo shop. With the exception of a few pictures from her time living with Gran at the seaside, she has no other photographic proof that this Ieva person has ever existed. She’s pleased with the outcome. Before she sends the photo, Ieva looks at it and wonders what people would say about the girl in the picture if they saw her on the street. Dark hair, a delicate face. Narrow eyes like she’s Icelandic. Ieva remembers Jonsy and decides right then — even if she dyes her hair later in life, she’ll never be like that.

The owner of the jean store apparently liked Ieva’s picture; he calls her the next day. Tells her to come for an interview at Hotel Riga.

The red-carpeted hallways of the grand downtown hotel knocks Ieva’s courage down a few notches. But she gets to the owner’s office and finds him to be good-looking and kind. And all smiles.

“Have you ever worked in sales? Do you have any experience working with a cash register?”

Ieva tells him she’s worked as a waitress, a secretary, and an advertising agent — but never as a sales associate.

“I think I’ll pick it up pretty quickly, and I’ll definitely have the time. No one ever goes into that store!”

The second she says it she bites her tongue. She’s said too much again, and it shows: the owner’s smile is gone, like someone hit a switch inside his head.

“Thanks, we’ll call you,” he cuts the interview short.

They don’t call, of course.

Her job search takes her farther and farther from the glossy center of downtown. One day Ieva ends up in a neighborhood of Jugendstil buildings. She finds a fabric store that needs a sales associate. Ieva gets the job and can hardly believe she’s finally working.

The director, Boris, only asks:

“Have you ever worked at the market?”

“No,” Ieva says.

“Good. The market teaches people to steal.”

That Ieva has zero sales experience doesn’t bother him. Boris even gives her a certificate that permits her to work with a cash register. And learning to use the register is so easy a dog could do it.

They’re a group of several cashiers, and they giggle all the time. There’s a phone on Ieva’s counter, and her duties include answering it the several times it rings throughout the day and explaining that the milking machine store has moved. The director’s apartment and office are above the store. He’s bought a part of this beautiful building; however, the façade is the only truly beautiful thing left about it. It used to house the apartments of Soviet Army officers, but those are now abandoned and have peeling wallpaper, battered stoves, and sawed-off radiators. The following winter is as cold as death itself; the cashiers walk around in fur coats and the loaders’ breaths come out in puffs. They’re brought a shipment of dry firewood once a week, and it’s the unspoken responsibility of the cashiers to bring it up to the fourth floor and into the empty apartment. The director and his wife host parties at their place on those days. Afterwards Ieva heads home in a cold tram, her insides burning with vodka and her skin all tingly. They don’t get Saturdays off, and there are more and more little things to take care of in the stock rooms on Sundays. Shifts from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. are swallowing up Ieva’s time like a giant alligator. Sometimes she sees herself from the side — standing at her counter and using her spare moments to catch her breath and giggle with the other sales associates, who have become like sisters to her. And what do they laugh about? About nothing. It’s exhausted, meaningless laughter. They’re young, true, but work devours youth. Who does Ieva give up her days to? Her daughter barely knows her and sees her only late at night. Ieva’s mother complains about her health and that it’s hard for her to babysit Monta. The worst is that Ieva sees Aksels less, too.

Who does she give her time to? The store manager? What did he do to deserve such a valuable gift? The girls say nothing. Doesn’t matter which corner of Latvia they’re from — they watch what they say. It’s hard to find work. The director knows this and doesn’t pay them much.

Ninety lats a month for Ieva and almost the same for Aksels still isn’t enough to look for their own apartment. There’s no time to look, anyway.

One night as Ieva gets off the tram and heads home through the mess of drizzle and car headlights, she’s stopped by a pedestrian. Ieva looks at the face in front of her and her eyes suddenly connect with familiar features.

“Andrejs!” she cries out.

For a split second she feels nothing but pure joy. She even almost throws her arms around his neck to hug him. But Andrejs’s hunched shoulders and hands stuffed deep into his pockets quickly remind her of some things from the past; things that are near and dear, but at the same time as disgusting as an amputated limb now teeming with disease.

“What’re you doing here?” she asks, surprised.

“Waiting for you,” he answers and looks around for a place to get out of the rain. They go stand under the roof of the newspaper kiosk. Cars splash down the muddy road in front of them, tires blend snow with water, pedestrians jump over puddles.

“This is for Monta,” he hands her money. “Take it, just don’t spend it on that jackass.”

Ieva takes the money and counts it mechanically. Sixty lats. Andrejs is holding a business card in his calloused fingers. Ieva puts it in her purse. Her husband’s telephone number. Like a secret she has to hide from her lover, the thought comes to her.

“Have you been out to Zari?”

“I drive out now and then. Nothing’s changed.”

Ieva remembers the quiet forest surrounding the pasture. Even when they’re all dead and gone, the forest will be just as silent.

“So, how’s your little genius doing?” Andrejs sneers. “Do you read books at night, too?”

“More and more,” Ieva fights back tears. “Why did you even come if you’re just going to be mean?”

“How can I not be? What a love. Actually your mom called, said you’re not doing good at all. But that’s none of my business anymore. See ya,” he says, and heads off into the night.

Ieva trudges past storefronts. Her tears mix with the rain; no one will notice in this wintery mess. Everything’s messed up, nothing’s as she’d hoped it would be. So many useless quotes written in letters to her brother. Books are something different, something removed from real life.

Ieva doesn’t understand why she’s stopped in front of a bookstore. Very strange. It seems so long since she’s read something. Doesn’t even read newspapers anymore, only the bits of articles used as kindling for the stove in Boris’s office.

In spite of Andrejs she goes into the bookstore and slowly browses the shelves. Books have always been there, within arms’ reach, she realizes. They don’t impose themselves. Just wait.

She picks one up at random — Roberts Mūks. Eastern Religions — Meditation — Cyclical Time. Picks it up and opens it.

Cyclical time.

Ieva has no idea how long she’s been standing and reading. She doesn’t understand the text, only barely grasps what it’s about. The book is about something that has absolutely nothing to do with her life at that exact moment: the fabric store, money, her daughter getting sick, cold trams, cheap sausages, and bankrupt banks. But strangely enough, the text moves her, as if it was being read by someone whose existence Ieva wasn’t even aware of.

She quickly buys the book. It doesn’t matter that the money was meant for Monta. Ieva can skip her own dinner tonight. It’s only a few lats, yet at the same time — a fragile inspiration, swirling over the black streets like the Northern Lights.

Back at home, Ieva traps her mother in the bathroom. Blackish foam churns in the washing machine; her mother picks articles of clothing from the foam in a trance-like state and tosses them into the bath to be rinsed. The washing machine is probably as old as Ieva, and it’s finally broken down. When you turn it on it just churns and churns…

“Mom, why did you call Andrejs and talk to him about me?” Ieva confronts her mother in a threatening whisper.

Her mother looks at her. At this moment she is an old, ancient woman. Ieva’s heart even skips a beat. Her mother says:

“It’s late. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“No, now! I’m living in your apartment, I’m grateful, but all I ask is that you never butt into my business again!”

Lūcija straightens up with the last of her strength and presses her fists into both sides of her lower back. The front of her robe is dark, soaked with water. The bathroom is as narrow as a test-tube — full of damp steam and the ineffective hum of the washing machine motor — an uncomfortably small space.

“Then pay me. What’s that look for — you think it’s not hard work? Then find someone who’ll watch your kid for free from morning to night.”

Ieva is so shocked that she starts to sputter:

“And I thought… out of kindness… that you guys…”

“We’ll never not support you, even if it would mean living in a box ourselves. But it’s not easy. It’s not easy.”

Ieva considers what she’s heard. It’s not easy on her mother, she has to admit to that. But — it’s not easy for any of them.

“Listen, Mom,” she finally says. “You’re right, but I don’t get what that has to do with you butting into my life. I asked you a specific question — why did you call my husband?”

Lūcija gets angry and plunges both hands into the mouth of the washing machine, throws the clothes into the bathtub with such force that water splashes up onto the walls.

“Because you need money! You have only one set of clothes, and if you weren’t able to dry them overnight you’d have to go to work naked!”

At that moment Aksels sticks his head into the bathroom.

“I’m really sorry, but could I get in here for the toilet? Oh, Ieva, you’re home, too? Great!”

They give each other a kiss and then Ieva and her mother go into the hall. As soon as Aksels is behind the closed door, Ieva whispers harshly:

“Thanks for your great advice, but I don’t need it!”

Her mother calls after her:

“Take the money from Andrejs if he gives it. Monta is his daughter, too! Don’t be so prideful!”

Life on Pērnavas Street ends with her mother’s relative from the countryside who can no longer take care of himself.

One Sunday Ieva notices a gaunt, nearsighted old man in large horn-rimmed glasses wandering the apartment with a cane. Monta has just woken up and is riding her tricycle around in reckless circles and getting stuck in the narrow doorframes. She rides into the old man’s legs and honks her horn. He starts to shout, spittle flying, and bangs his cane against the floor.

“Don’t run me over! Don’t run me over!”

This repeats several times. Ieva kisses Aksels and goes into the kitchen to make coffee. Then, hair disheveled and half-asleep, she takes her mug and goes to stand in her parents’ room. Her mother is sitting at her desk reading the Nature Calendar, her father is watching Formula-1 on TV.

“Morning! Who’s the old guy in our apartment?”

“Oh him! My grandmother’s brother, Uncle Alfrēds. He has high blood pressure and sought refuge with us.”

Ieva takes a long drink of coffee and thinks Uncle Alfrēds’s blood pressure is probably not going to drop while he’s here.

“Where is he staying?”

“Here. For a week already, if you haven’t noticed.”

Her mother points to a mattress next to the bookshelf.

Her parents watch her closely. Ieva senses what they want to say. Another of Uncle Alfrēds’s moose-like bellows comes from the narrow front hallway.

Ieva picks up Monta, tricycle and all, and goes into her room. Aksels is still asleep, his bare arm slung over his eyes.

“Let’s go for a walk!”

“Don’t want to.”

Ieva dresses Monta, then suddenly says:

“We can’t stay here anymore, Aksels. Think about it.”

She and Monta go to the park, where there is an abundance of fresh air, sun, and pigeons. Ieva is jealous of the pigeons. Everything for pigeons is always higher and freer.

Ieva watches Monta swing and thinks about Andrejs. That Monta is his daughter.

Monta is Andrejs’s daughter.

Andrejs’s daughter.

Suddenly she gets an idea — she finds a phone booth and calls Andrejs:

“Hi! Can you lend me two hundred lats?”

Silence on the other end. Then:

“What for?”

“That’s not important. Can you help me or not?”

“Of course I can. When have I ever not helped you?”

With a secretive smile, Ieva buys a newspaper on the way home that’s filled with ads for apartment rentals. She’ll tell Aksels that the money was an unexpected bonus.

Their next home ends up being a long communal apartment on Blaumaņa Street. Aksels has gradually made friends with the eccentrics of Old Riga, and this apartment is the ghostly mirror of their world. It houses all types of people and it’s a miracle if they can stay in their own rooms for more than a few minutes.

It’s right in the center of Riga, and from the outside the building looks pretty respectable. But if the odd passer-by were to look at it longer, he’d see its hidden bruises and open wounds. The stone balcony of Ieva’s and Aksels’s fourth-floor room slopes dangerously low like a droopy lower lip. A small birch tree growing through the cracks in the balcony scatters reddish leaves right onto the sidewalk. The beautifully carved stone faces under the building’s eaves are crumbling and eroded by moisture.

There’s no door code to get into the stairwell, so it’s used by both bums and cats as a place to sleep. Their apartment starts with a large kitchen, which, among people looking for something to eat, is cluttered with old appliances — a gas stove, a pile of rusted radiators, and broken refrigerators. The kitchen is always full of people and they use the broken appliances as tables. A long hallway leads into the body of the apartment. It’s accented by cement beams, almost like a windpipe with rings of bone leading into the stomach of a sleeping beast. There are nine rooms across from each other — the last door is the bathroom, with a shower and toilet.

“There is nothing new, we can only try to coordinate our lives with everything that has existed since the beginning of time,” Ieva sits in her room reading Roberts Mūks. She likes this time and everything it brings with it — like a tumultuous river that overflows with silt during the rainy season. She likes the birch tree on the balcony and the high ceilings. Andrejs’s money was also enough for two beds. Aksels made two pretty bookshelves at the carpentry shop. And then there was the old Continental typewriter that had been waiting for them in the empty room — like a gift — apparently left behind by the previous tenants. Ieva puts a sheet of paper into the black frame and slowly types out letters with one finger. Vowels and consonants, with and without the diacritics. Capital letters. Lowercase letters. She explores the typewriter like a traveler in a new country. Only Ieva has nothing to write about. Might as well copy Mūks. Ten times: “There is nothing new, we can only try to coordinate our lives with everything that has existed since the beginning of time.”

She copies Mūks and then starts to form her own, simple sentences: “The fir tree is growing.” “Monta is growing.” “Monta is my daughter.” “Aksels and I will be together forever.” And she’s fascinated by how the words, once they’re typed out, suddenly take on a public format. Whether she wants them to or not. Accidentally or on purpose. Like a carpentry shop turns a fir tree into a sample display door. So that’s the hidden secret of writers! They just write with a typewriter! Put their words into a concrete format. They command words.

In the meantime, Monta explores the apartment. She goes into each room, and the residents of each room eventually bring her back to her mother. It becomes a reason to have a cup of tea and start up a conversation. Their neighbors include art and philosophy students, punks, the singer of an underground band and her boyfriend, a German-language instructor, and provincial poets.

The most interesting person to Monta is Ilmārs, who lives in the eighth room.

Ilmārs is an antiques dealer with an inclination for photography. In his spare time he hangs around the apartment in his sweat suit and drinks a lot of green tea, which is why you’ll almost always run into him in the kitchen. He has a ruddy, goatish face, grey beard, and watery green eyes. Rubbing his bare belly, which always pokes out from under his short T-shirts, Ilmārs inflicts listeners with horror stories from the lives of the Riga elite.

He brings Monta back to Ieva and gushes in appreciation at the typewriter.

“Oh, you’re a poet?” he whispers and brings Ieva’s hand to his lips. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Ilmārs.”

Ieva explains that the typewriter had already been here, but Ilmārs shakes his head in disbelief. He’s never seen it before. From that moment on Ieva was carved into Ilmārs mind as The Poet. In other words — a Muse.

“Come,” he says. “I’ll show you what life is! All you’ll have to do is write it down.”

He puts his finger to his lips and leads Ieva into the dim hallway. Germanic shouts come from the half-open door of one room — some boys are watching a documentary on Hitler. The shouts mix with passionate and heavy breathing; the singer and her boyfriend are probably having sex in their room. Ilmārs motions for Ieva to listen at another door — the Art Academy students are fighting, a plywood stool splinters against the door and Ieva escapes back to her room.

“You didn’t even see the bathroom — an extremely fascinating creature spends all morning sleeping in there!” Ilmārs calls after her in disappointment.

Some time later Ilmārs brings home and gives his Muse an Ērenpreiss-brand bicycle. Incredibly old and heavy, but in working condition.

“Extremely valuable! An antique!” Ilmārs boasts.

She keeps the bike down in the courtyard, locked up with an iron chain to a maple tree. Dragging it up and down the stairs would be suicide. The bike opens up an entirely different Riga to her; it glides easily and lightly, relaxing the hectic streets, smoothing the nervous lines in the city’s face. The bike reminds her of an old coal iron or the first pair of skis in the world — broad, substantial things that would let life could coast along without change. The stores, cafés, people, even the sky and the trees, even the river is wide open — all because Ieva herself is open. Her thumb poised, ready to ring the bell. Her lips ready to smile, her heart ready to answer.

Monta starts attending kindergarten. She’s still little, but they have no other choice — Lūcija refuses to take her, says it’s still too tiring for her to babysit.

It doesn’t seem like kindergarten bothers Monta too much. She’s a social soul and very independent, the kindergarten teacher says to Ieva with a reassuring smile. She has cause to smile — Pampers have finally secured the market in Riga. The teacher won’t have to change any more cloth diapers. Even Monta is dropped off at kindergarten with a stack of Pampers in her bag.

Sometimes Ieva stops by the cast iron fence and watches the kids play in the green oasis set in the middle of the muddy, cobblestoned city. So loud and happy, as if the world were without war, sadness, defeat, and victory… They’ve only just come into the world, but have such wise eyes, such age-old stares. But with all the bitter memories extinguished in their mothers’ wombs. Like freshly washed clothes bleached and dried in the sun and wind, they’re once again ready for fun and games, fun and games…

God help me understand what a child is — and that I have one.

This is what Ieva prays for from the other side of the fence.

She knows full well that it’ll come to her sometime later in life. She’ll find out.

For now it’s all the same: work or home. Work or home. She doesn’t get any of it.

Now, of course, she’s got a different job. Boris and Ieva never had the same idea of a work schedule. During the time they moved to the new apartment, Boris felt Ieva was asking for too many days off.

So it’s without worry that she goes to the Central Market to find work. They always need sellers there and they work in shifts. She even gets days off! It’s a luxury in this madness. And what’s more, their apartment is fantastic! They have their own life — it is what it is, but it’s their own.

And Pampers aren’t the only thing that have taken the city by storm — the first cellphones have arrived as well. Als, the owner of the mandarin orange stand, ceremoniously presents her a giant Benefon, a brick with an antenna. So I can always get a hold of you, he says. After only a few minutes of use the receiver heats up like an ember and electric jolts start to course through your brain.

Ieva’s parents also have cellphones. Ieva takes a black permanent marker and writes her mother’s number directly over the kitchen sink. They have a great relationship now. But when was it not great? Love is the foundation of everything; it just gets forgotten sometimes in the commotion of the day. Even a mirror fogs over if you look too closely into it; the image becomes distorted.

Aksels has grown very secretive. He’s stylish, he likes taking risks, he’s polite and brave — all reasons why he’s eventually gained the respect of the Old Riga party-crowd. Strange, almost underground literature-type books start showing up in the apartment — Indian mystic Osho’s Diamond Sutra or Perfection of Wisdom in a black hardcover, ridiculously battered Russian-language copies of Castaneda, Kerouac, Hesse, Camus, Flannery O’Connor. Some nights he gets home very late and brings a loud group of people with him. Ieva joins in, why not?

They smoke marijuana.

Everyone smokes marijuana.

Ieva tries it, too.

At first nothing happens. Ieva laughs and takes a deep hit, never skipping her turn as it’s passed around. After a while she realizes that even when she’s not laughing, all the muscles in her cheeks are tensed. She tries to fight it, but can’t. Her head feels clear and filled with happiness, and she’s the reason why. Her body stops listening to her brain. The room does the same — the walls aren’t listening to the ceiling, and even the door has bowed out like the ribs of an animal.

With a silent scream Ieva runs into the stairwell and crouches down by the banister. Down below is a roaring, smoldering abyss that reaches for her little by little like waves in the sea. The walls are crashing in on her from the other side. Peace and safety exist only in the cramped space where she’s crouched. When Aksels comes to get her, she murmurs in terror:

“Don’t! Don’t touch me!”

You can’t mix alcohol with weed, Aksels tells her matter-of-factly later on. Some people react that way. From then on Ieva is always hesitant to smoke up.

Ieva also discovers something much worse and more ruthless than weed — jealousy. As she sits at home with Monta in the evenings, she tries to imagine what Aksels is doing out in Old Riga. With his friends. Ieva knows he’s with his friends, but why so late?

Oh, Aksels says, I ran into so-and-so — well you don’t know them anyway! What’s the point in explaining?

One Saturday, when Monta is at her grandmother’s, Ieva heads to Old Riga. Aksels and his friends usually hang out at the bar M6; she goes in, but it’s dead and quiet. The only people there are Aksels and some extremely drunk girl. They’re sitting at the massive wooden table; Aksels turns around suddenly and addresses Ieva — Hey! It’s too late to run, she’s been spotted.

Aksels widens his eyes in surprise.

“What’re you doing here?”

Then he introduces them:

“Dace! Ieva!”

And he orders Ieva a drink.

Ieva slowly takes off her jacket and doesn’t know how to act. Aksels just smiles, then goes to chat with the bartender. She can tell by how he walks that he’s either had a lot to drink, or a lot to smoke. Dace turns her whitewashed face to Ieva. She has a shaved head, black liner around green eyes, and ears full of silver studs.

“He said,” Dace whispers secretively, “that I have horrific eyes. Do I?”

Ieva doesn’t respond. She can see that Dace is excited and concerned by what Aksels has said.

Aksels comes back, packs a small amount of weed into his bowl, lights it, and immediately passes out. The bartender whistles patiently and piles bananas in a bowl.

Dace has to get going. She muscles on her leather jacket, kisses the sleeping Aksels on the cheek, and leaves. She has long, deer-like legs that end in black lace-up boots. She has a free gait. Ieva definitely doesn’t. If only Ieva knew herself, she might know what kind of gait she has. Right now she doesn’t know anything about herself.

Except that she has become addicted to Aksels. It’s a terrifying revelation. She leaves him in the bar asleep, dead to the world, and sprints through the streets toward home. As she runs she shoves people out of the way, apologizes, trips, and wonders — what’s it like to be a man? To have a spear instead of a cave? With which to invade caves meant for spears, acquire them, inhabit them, conquer them, and then move onto new conquests. How, for example, how can you tell another human being they have horrific eyes? And to say it in a way that makes the other person ignite like a brush fire and burn so long that the point of ignition bursts straight forth, breaks through the layers of blood and bone. What does it feel like to have a spear instead of a cave?

Time is slowly running out — at least that’s what it feels like to Ieva. She sometimes confronts Aksels when he comes back home toting an entire group of Daces, or when he doesn’t come home at all.

“You get some rest,” Aksels says. “Don’t worry about me.”

“How can I sleep when we live together, but you’re never home? Maybe we should live separately.”

Aksels laughs:

“Don’t be stupid. I can’t live without you! Come out with me at night if you want to be with me.”

“You’re the one being stupid. How can I go out? I have Monta.”

At the end of the summer Aksels becomes a punk. He finally finds his religion. Where there used to be all sorts of music at home, even the stuff brought in by Aksels — Laurie Anderson’s “Bright Red,” Nina Hagen, Boris Grebenshchikov, Tsoi, Odekolons, Brian Eno, Nine Inch Nails, or even good old Pink Floyd — now they’ve all been replaced by the Sex Pistols.

A September evening flutters over the city streets like a starched linen sheet. Ieva puts on “Yesterday” by The Beatles. Piano and vocals. Clarity. Music that lets you exist without having to touch the ground.

When Aksels gets home he takes the cassette out and throws it behind the bed.

“Why’d you do that?”

“It’s shit.”

“Why…”

“Listen, let’s cut the small talk. Come here, I’ll tell you about Sid and Nancy.”

They lie down on the bed very close together — shoulder to shoulder, breathing in unison — and for the umpteenth time Aksels tells the punk legend about Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, the blonde, curly-haired Nancy. The punk Romeo and Juliet. Monta is right there, crawls up and settles between them and quietly twirls a strand of hair around her finger. She also listens to the nightly story about that day in October, when in room number 100 of Hotel Chelsea the police arrested Sid for the murder of Nancy, stabbed to death with a hunting knife.

“When he was let out on bail on February 2nd, he overdosed on heroine. And since then, February 2nd has been Sid Day. He once said: Make anarchy your mother. Create as much chaos and confusion as is in your power, but don’t let them take you alive.”

“Anarchy in the UK” is playing, washing like waves over their still bodies.

Aksels calls Ieva his Nancy, but she’s not a real Nancy. She has too broad of a horizon. For example, try as she might, she can’t understand why Tsoi, or The Beatles’ “Yesterday” have suddenly become complete shit this fall.

“It’s like you’ve switched on some kind of tunnel vision,” she tells him. “I can’t do that.”

Dace understands Aksels a lot better. She’s also become a true punk — wears black, torn fishnet tights, short skirts with studs and a red silk blouse. Aksels and Dace can talk about the things that interest him because Dace doesn’t respond critically.

One warm, dark evening Ieva rides her bike home from work and suddenly notices them in a crowd. They’re high, drunk, doped up on something else, and are staggering down the sidewalk, leaning against each other for balance, and holding hands as passers-by move out of their way.

Ieva holds her breath as she follows them, slinking after them like a tiger — slowly, secretly, but her heart threatens to hammer a hole through her ribcage. From this perspective it’s clear that Aksels and Dace are a real couple — two Riga punks, not some MTV punk wannabes with their rich parents’ credit cards in their wallets and CD players clipped onto their belts. Not some bored and spoiled dumbasses who stand in the streets at night drinking beer in their tattered leather jackets, but spend the mornings sitting in offices in white button-down shirts drinking coffee — no. They’re real street punks: unshowered, shaggy, young, and wonderful. It’s like they’re on the edge of a blade, always on teetering on the fence, and their gentleness is their fearsome cries in the face of the world, and their challenge is the timid call to see how full of love and strength they are — useless invitations!

They stop by some hedges and Aksels disappears into the dark to pee; Dace waits under the wind-rattled streetlight — a delicate, black gravestone for Aksels’s and Ieva’s love. Ieva stops torturing herself, gets back on her bike and rides home. An hour later Aksels and Dace show up, along with a few friends they met on the way, Ieva makes tea, breathes in the smell of the weed, and when Aksels passes out Dace tells her:

“Do you know what he said to me today? I asked if he’d kill me if I asked him to, and he said no — never!”

Dace cries, smears mascara down her cheeks, tears at her tights with her black-painted fingernails. Ieva says nothing, just thinks. She’s suddenly become very calm — of course, my dear, that’s how it has to be because I’m his Nancy. In spite of everything, I’m his Nancy.

So sometimes Ieva finds Aksels in the bar by himself, they have a drink, talk in the basement of M6, and then Aksels looks intently at her and says:

“I look at you and you know what I think? I want you, I want you so badly, always.”

He’s high and distant, he doesn’t use tissues when he has a runny nose, just turns away, pinches his nostrils and blows, he’s a real punk, and Ieva isn’t even disgusted by it. He’s real. That’s the thing — Aksels is very real.

He gets on the bike, Ieva walks next to him in a wild, flower-printed dress. It’s evening, and Brīvības Boulevard is full of people, busy with cars. Aksels rides in the street, isn’t able to keep his balance, swerves dangerously, and rides in circles. Buses line up behind him, forming a chain, but don’t honk their horns. People look back at them and shout — a punk on a bike, look! And Ieva is next to him in her flowery dress and orange flats on her feet.

Such a peaceful evening, filled with happiness.

Aksels asks Ieva to dye his mohawk red and black. He sits on a stool in the middle of the room and looks at the birch tree outside. His hair is beautiful: light and slightly wavy. Ieva can’t dye it.

“Think it through! It’ll look bad on you.”

“Who tells a punk what he can or can’t do?”

Aksels winds up in a bad mood and comes home the following night blackout drunk. His hair is a stiff, black crest. He slurs that Dace did it for him.

“Where did she do it?”

“At the carpentry shop!”

At the carpentry shop! Ieva hasn’t been there in the longest time. Maybe Dace lives there now! That’s why Aksels only ever comes home toward morning.

Insane jealousy, spite, and exhaustion crash simultaneously down on Ieva like sudden blindness. She can’t see anything anymore, nothing real, no future, and no light at the end of the tunnel.

Aksels explains:

“Stop freaking out! It doesn’t matter because I only love you, you’re my Nancy. Everything else is just something secondary.”

Before he falls asleep he reaches for Ieva, forcefully grabs her thigh, latches onto her like a bear clawing into her side, tearing at her, then he mumbles something and passes out. Ieva watches his exposed face, unveiled by sleep, deformed by drinking. Then she watches the flies circling the light bulb above the bed.

Outside the rain is coming down hard.

When Ieva was little, Gran was always fighting the flies — she’d put screens in the windows, go after them with a fly swatter, and poison them with chemicals from a black and white mister. Here the window facing the street is always open, you can watch flies in their natural state. They congregate in the room, dance, listen to “Love Kills” by the Sex Pistols, and then disappear as quietly as they came.

Ieva checks on Monta in her bed, straightens the blanket, goes to the kitchen. Right now it’s mostly empty. A strange guy is sitting in his underwear on a stool by the wall — he has his arms wrapped around his body and his legs crossed. The curve of his ribs sticks out on his back like sharp swords under his thin skin. Probably some student. Ieva searches the shelves for a bottle of red wine — and she finds one, thank God! The white wine is always the first to go.

“Ahoy! How’s it going?” Ieva asks the guy.

“Can’t complain,” he answers.

Ieva nods to him, pours him a generous glass of wine. There’s no further conversation. Ieva drains the remainder of the bottle in one go.

She goes back to her room, turns on the small wall lamp and looks at the remains of Aksels. With anguish in her face, she gets a pair of scissors and cuts off his mohawk. The black, foreign pieces litter the pillow. After that she opens the scissors wide and resolutely drags them across the veins of her left hand.

Odd, there’s almost zero pain. Only that horrible anxiety where you feel like a bowl with a crack in the side and the contents dripping out. The awareness that hangs in the chamber of your skull like a bat flapping its wings wildly — soon enough it will be washed away, too. Solder it shut, sew it up, fix the hole! — her brain screams. Ieva looks at her arm — it’s such a thin arm. With such important blood. She would’ve never thought that blood itself was the content. And when it drops to the ground, you can’t gather it back up again.

Then that warning, hot throbbing starts up in her ears, throat, temples — who knows where it comes from. The last thing she remembers is the half-naked guy in the kitchen and his terrified expression when she wakes him up to hand him her cellphone, pointing to the phone number on the wall above the sink and repeating: Mom! Mom!

Her left arm was so tightly bandaged that it felt like it was made of wood. They gave her a small pill and, when she woke later that night, she felt she had grown distant from herself. On the second morning they gave her two even smaller pills, and she crashed down onto the bed like she’d been knocked out. But her conscience wandered the ceilings, sadly observing its reflection down there on the mattress. Time dragged on like a giant rubber band, people came, undressed her and put her on a gurney, covered her with a blanket. Gave her a shot of something. Riding through countless, light bulb-lit tunnels, she felt she was exhausted to the point of death. They wheeled her off to the side; listening to the surrounding activity, the rustle of the greenish-grey cloth, she wants eternally peaceful sleep. But it’s not possible because her essence was removed from her and broken apart. Then they brought her under lights, there were several people who cut into her bare arms — all she could see were their eyes. These eyes were calm, but she was so tired. It took them a long time to find her vein and they told her it was alright to scream because it would definitely hurt, but she was so tired that she wasn’t able to tell pain from non-pain. It didn’t worry her anymore. Her only and slightly hazy desire was to reconnect with herself, to become whole again. Instead, someone gripped her face between strong hands and looked into her eyes, saying: Your heart is going to start beating faster now and you’ll get dizzy, and then you’ll fall asleep — can you hear me, Ieva, Ieva, Ieva?

One face slowly solidifies in the fog. It’s her brother, Pāvils.

He’s shaking her by the shoulder.

“Pāvils? How’d you get here?”

“I’m visiting on vacation. And you’ve scared the crap out of me my first night back.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“I’m happy you’re alive. They had to redo the surgery — they hadn’t stitched the tendons up the right way. You — when you do something, you do it with such drive that not even a team of doctors can deal with it!”

“You’ll stay in Latvia?”

“We’ll see. We’ll have time to talk about it. Rest for now.”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

Monta didn’t see any part of what happened. When Ieva gets back home, she’s loving and gentle as she hugs her mother’s neck. Aksels has changed, too. He’s grown more serious, darker. It doesn’t suit him.

“Hey,” Ieva says. “Cheer up! It had nothing to do with you. I just got lost in something.”

Aksels doesn’t smile, but hugs her tightly and shudders as if he’s fighting to hold back tears.

“Aksels, love, please, be like you were before,” Ieva begs, terrified. “I won’t do it again.”

Aksels is never the same after that. Some time later Ieva learns from his friends that Dace died. Overdosed on some kind of unknown pills. Had a heart attack.

Ieva’s own heart feels a small twinge. What was she to you, Aksels? And what am I? I’ll never know. The heavens are silent.

Aksels has become more of a homebody. Plays with Monta, reads to her, even takes her to kindergarten. He doesn’t cut his hair into a mohawk anymore, lets it grow out thick and light and short. It’s an almost unbelievable transformation, but Ieva hopes it’s for the best. If only she didn’t have to see the look in his eyes — even more hopeless than before, almost indifferent, and simultaneously shy. As if he’s waiting for fate to take away his final plaything.

The Bus

Ieva and Aksels head to the bus stop for Riga early one morning. An icy wind tears over the countryside. Aksels picks up Monta and buries her face in the warm crook of his neck. He never has mittens, Jesus! The cold is merciless, the first warning to all living beings that winter is on its way. Ieva looks back and sees his frozen, bare, and bluish hands locked around Monta. And she is grateful.

They wait at the crossroads where four roads come together. The sky is black, the land around them is covered with a light dusting of snow. Their fatherland. From the leeside of the hill they can hear the roaring of fir trees in the gully by the stables. Ieva wants to hold onto this sound forever and can’t believe she’s leaving.

A lone milk truck rounds the bend and turns into the driveway of the Branku house. A dog barks, milk cans clank, the glare of sunlight, the squeaking of the milk cistern lid. Then the milk truck comes into view again and slowly drives off up the hill. Again there is darkness and wind. The road to the Zari house stays empty. There aren’t any more cows or people; not a single living sound can be heard coming from there. Only the grass will grow up through the threshold come spring.

Finally, a pair of headlights reach out from the pine forest and a bus approaches the crossroads. The driver has picked up a lot of speed, but sees them and tries to brake. The bus slips along the road like a giant fish and eventually stops a ways down from where they’re standing.

They hurry toward it. The door opens. Warmth. Tickets. A few sleeping passengers.

The driver gives them an apologetic look over the rims of his glasses.

“It slides like it’s on ball-bearings. This is my first time on this route.”

They drive through the village, where cows will roam the streets in the morning fog in summer.

Then the turn by the lake, where the shoemaker Mārica’s house stands. When the shoemaker died, he’d given his blessing for the house to be turned into a točka—a trade-house for distilled spirits.

In the darkness, the headlights of the bus reveal a thin old man on the side of the road hugging a white rucksack and a crumbling pretzel to his chest. The bus driver brakes hard again, and this time he succeeds and stops right in front of the old man.

The doors open.

A dirty parka, a bare and absurdly skinny neck, a drooping mustache, and a red nose. Surprised at the unexpected attention, the old man stands staring like a fox caught red-handed in the henhouse.

The driver says:

“Hop on board, sir!”

The old man rubs his knotted, red fingers over his knit cap and then waves them at the bus driver as if in farewell. He turns sideways and continues his way down the path to Mārica’s house, bumbling:

“No, no, I’m headed there, y’see…”

“Pff, you!” The driver shouts and shuts the creaky bus door. “Why’re you hanging out like some ghost on the side of the road?”

The bus drives on and a dark veil once more falls over the landscape. But the dawn has already torn a red seam in the east.

Why am I not going back to the seaside and Gran’s, to the west? Ieva thinks. What’s pushing me in the opposite direction? What will I find there? I don’t know anything.

All I know is that back is back there and forward is up ahead. Right now it’s time for the road ahead. Life’s desires have fermented in my veins and formed strength, much like birch sap will ferment in a bottle to form a champagne that can shoot out even the strongest cork. The time will probably come when I’ll spend summer sitting peacefully in a lawn chair finding joy in the flowers, and I’ll use the long northern winter nights as a black cover, a hiding place, a fen, so I can regrow my clipped wings.

The time will also probably come for low tide. When I’ll skulk back to Kurzeme, to my birthplace — in the dark, along the sandy dirt roads, by smell. Along the seashore, the manure, the blue anemones, the fragrant paths of thundering storm clouds, clutching my last, crumbling pretzel to my chest. And some early morning bus driver will notice me, pull me out of the eternal night with glaring headlights, blind me, stop and open the doors in welcome.

And I’ll say to him — No, no. I’m headed there, y’see.

Keep Your Fingers Crossed for Us, Brother

Pāvil!

Hello, hello, hello! The college that accepted you doesn’t even realize yet how lucky they are!

You’re going to fly for the first time — and all the way to America… Hm… You’re going to starve to death because, if we’re brother and sister, then we have a lot in common, and I can tell you one thing for sure — I CANNOT eat in planes! Hopefully it’ll be totally different for you, you’ll stuff yourself full of hamburgers one by one.

I know you’re getting ready to leave, so I won’t bore you with a long letter. Just one juicy quote — yesterday some of the local women were teasing Roberts when he looked at them: Roberts is so old that the only sexual organ he has left is his eyes. Hoho!

Also — I went to a Student Symphony Orchestra concert, Inguna’s friend played first flute. And in the “style of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue!”

Really, really hope to hear back from you!

— Ieva

P.S. I think Troyat’s Les Eygletière is an awful book. There isn’t a single protagonist! It’s the first time I’ve noticed one missing. Maybe my realization is to the book’s credit?

P.P.S. The meaning behind our initials: I — tension, emotionality; P — shyness, distance, loneliness. Does that fit?

* * *

Greetings, American!

How are you? Are you already placing your hand over your heart when you hear the national anthem?

“When the euphoria of a first meeting fades, you must quickly find a new acquaintance to maintain happiness and so life doesn’t lose its edge. Year after year passes by in smiles and tired jokes, and the road is littered with hundreds of temporarily — for a week or two — amused people.”

As you can see, I’m reading the ocean book again. Doncho and Julia. All alone in their watery wanderings.

If Gran and Roberts were to finally kick me out and I’d somehow have to get through life on my own, I don’t think the results would be good — I’d make it to the bottom of the front steps, and that would be it. I don’t know anything about the world! So many people know what pain is (right now the time is 13:10 and the radio just started to play Dārziņš’s “Melancholy Waltz”—how perfect!), what misfortune is, but they live on and shine, and are happy. I’m spoiled rotten. I have everything, but I’m always depressed. Sad. Brother, it’s awful. I want to understand: what’s wrong with me, who am I, why is this happening?

“. . people are not limited in their abilities, but are rather limited in what they demand of themselves. In a moment of need, or even if we’ve made the conscious decision to, each of us is capable of mustering the kind of strength we never even thought we could possibly possess.”

Hm… It’s a nice thought, I’m waiting for that moment of need. I could even get angry at myself in the end. If I could… The book has answers to all of my questions, and simultaneously reprimands me for them. Because I believe books. Maybe unnecessarily?

“Fear is a product of either nerves that are shot, or a stupid upbringing.”

I don’t want what I immediately write down, but my hand moves like a sailboat across the paper, on its own accord. I think my fear comes from somewhere deep down. From the day Mom and Dad decided to split us up and left me with Gran and Roberts. I can’t imagine a better childhood than what I had. Books, books, books, the sea, and Gran with her muddy boots and white handkerchief in the potato field.

But each time I see Mom and Dad I suddenly feel a horrible emptiness tearing through me somewhere deep, deep down. Like in a desert. I’m not condemning their decision, I know about Mom’s illness and your condition, but I still can’t entirely understand the separation. We’re polite, but say nothing, and I’m really scared that I’m not loved. So be it, I think, it’s not within our power to end it. I’m glad you got in touch with me, and were so sincerely and from the bottom of your heart able to convince me there was no reason to be afraid. The desert sprouted plants. Now you’re my flower, my brother. A wonderful gift.

I hope you’re not tired of reading all these whiny letters — I can’t, I don’t want to, I don’t know how… The only people who I respect are probably you and Gran. And Jonsy, the woman from Iceland who I met on my trip to Sweden. She’s so courageous!

“Man is a curious creation. I’ve observed a close connection between my mood and the wind. Today, with a fresh trade wind blowing, everything in my body rejoices.”

Across the Atlantic with Dju—yaha! Where does one find a trade wind in Latvia?

Write me!

— Ieva

* * *

Hello, my dear brother!

Life is horribly complicated, or else horrible and complicated. I’ve suddenly realized — everything is happening to me and it’s awful. I can’t avoid it anymore, I’m not as flexible as I was as a kid or a teenager, I’m stiff as a pole, and each splash of mud lands right onto my soul. I must be destined to live the life of a lightning rod. Right now I’m just one big compromise. In my mind I want to boss everyone around. Let them call me mentally incompetent! Out of the box and without boundaries. But on the surface I’m so quiet…

. . the meek will be spit out…

Oh but I know, I know already! But I can’t let loose, because I’m not alone anymore.

. . if my life was just mine and mine alone…

My boyfriend is a gloomy person with an entirely wrecked world outlook and with a cruel relationship — scores to settle — with this life. And I don’t understand why this life has chosen him for me. And I agree with him on everything because I don’t have the heart to hurt him (“E tu, Brute?”), I stand silently by him and hope for peace, but… I at least learned one thing during my short time in Stockholm — always look at everything from both sides. A shitty trait! It’ll never let me just be.

. . he who comes first, to him I shall belong, and adorn him with chrysanthemums…

. . a lone crane flies among the clouds, completely alone, without friends it lets out a strange and fearful cry…

Brother, I want to see you so badly! Please, please!

When will you be back in Latvia?

I’ll call you.

— Ieva

* * *

Hello, brother!

I’ve finally worked up the energy to write to you. I got everything you sent — even that lovely little note. I knew I’d write back to you, because I really want to see you, but threshing time ruined a few of my plans. True — you sometimes only need a minute to write a letter, but for me to write to you, I also need to be in the mood.

I don’t know what’s going on! Sometimes I’ve been in the kind of mood where I can’t stay put somewhere for more than three days. Now it’s the same, but with the one big difference being that I’m tied down, can’t get anywhere and feel a huge sense of discomfort.

It’s morning, I’m eating dried plums, looking through the Sudmaliņas journal, and I want to cry. I want Riga and I want Sudmaliņas, I want it to feel like the Baltica-88 folklore festival. I don’t really know, but I suppose you’re having a good time right now. Things in my life have changed, but we’ll talk about that when we see each other.

I am as ever — your Ieva

P.S. I’ll call you all next week in the evening until I get a hold of you.

So I can’t wait, I have to tell you — I’m going to the General Register Office today to register. July 9th. Good God! I’m eighteen years old.

So alright, I’ll just lay it all out: I’m going to have a baby in the fall.

* * *

Hey, brother!

Thank you so much for your letter, which I only got once I was at the Zari house. That’s why I’m writing back late.

I haven’t written anything about myself all fall because the season seemed to stretch on for a lifetime for me. Getting used to a new life is the same as trying on new clothes. The fit is a bit tight in places, and loose in others. No joke, just up until a little while ago my eyes were still wide in surprise — is it really still fall?

As a result of all of it, I’m at the Zari house with Andrejs. We had a hell of a time with the repairs. We’re not that far from Gran, but the wildlife is totally different. Black sand in the forest, grass to your armpits. When there’s a storm the sea doesn’t blow in through the windows, but instead crashes far beyond the wet fields. Gran cried when I left. Roberts has just been crying non-stop. He’s survived the war and Siberia, and still can’t wrap his head around the fact that Latvians once again have their own, independent state. He either cries, or sits with his buddies at the store and discusses Virza’s Straumēni. Roberts gave me a cow for my dowry — Salna. She’s a blue seaside cow, one of Zīlīte’s calves. We put a string around her neck and led her all the way here along the roads through the pine forest. We made it without any problems. Now I have my own cow among Andrejs’s brown cows, I can wrap my arms around Salna’s neck and cry when I miss my old life.

I have to do my own cooking, draw my own water from the well and carry it, light my own stove with damp firewood.

The old collective farm stable is just beyond the orchard. There are still a lot of horses in it. The pastures stretch on until our vegetable patch. Sometimes voices can be heard coming from the old manor, but other than that we’re completely alone.

At first I really missed home. I’d think of Gran and my friends, then go into the woods to cry. But then Monta was born and I didn’t have much time for crying. My daughter is beautiful and healthy, born on the first day of frost. I looked at her, and only when I saw her little face did I understand what a child was. First and foremost — a huge responsibility. A person who will be by my side my entire life. That’s for certain. As is the fact that one day she’ll see me die. But I’m not thinking about that just yet. Old age is the last thing on my mind.

It’s all work, work, work, and then it’s already time for bed. So we can be up by 5 a.m. the next morning.

Alright, it’s already 22:22, pretty late, time for me to go to bed. I’m exhausted.

Write to me, I really need it. Please!

— Ieva

* * *

Brother!

Each letter I get from you is a reason to celebrate. My reply probably won’t be the same for you.

I’m shattered into a hundred tiny pieces, glass shards. The bottom of the pot, black from soot, sometimes seems sweet and white to me, while a glass of milk sometimes pours red as blood. This letter is going to be that same kind of mosaic.

I suppose you’re experiencing some breakage right now, too. I’ll give you one piece of advice, though — don’t drop out of school! Like the sun needs the moon, like a plant needs its roots, like a leg needs a foot, like a star needs its shine, so does every thing and every being need a foundation. Education will give you the foundation you need to stand tall. Once you finish, you can be a romantic, an anarchist, an artist, a mathematician — whatever your destiny may be. But for now, build your foundation and don’t, don’t drop out!

I’ll admit that my hair stands on end when it suddenly hits me that right now I live in a harsh, base, and simple world in which Andrejs and I constantly ask ourselves questions, but don’t bother trying to answer them or even hear them. And there’s no joy in the mirror, in the birds, in nature, they’re all a bunch of lies. The word “joy” itself is a lie.

People like us fall in love with unrealistic people who have a strange glow about them. Because I came to the conclusion — the only reason I like my husband is because he’s my star with his own shine, some kind of special (maybe dark) internal shine. A person isn’t yours, no, it’s their glow or their shine — that’s what’s yours. The soul, not the body! You wrote — how can you like him, you don’t even know what he’s like! Yes and that’s the thing, I don’t know him — maybe that’s why there won’t be any disappointment?

Even if there are others, even if I’m with them, he’ll still be my ideal. And to be with him together in life — it’s the most I could ask for. See, I have nothing to give to the world if I have nothing to give to love.

And in the end I’ve kind of “lucked out,” my grasp on life isn’t as complicated and refined as yours. I can only be amazed by how you express yourself, the picture you sent of yourself, and feel sorry for myself. I can tell you that you are one of the rare wonders I know of. You absolutely have to finish what you started, absolutely.

There’s a forester’s house not far from Zari, where this odd woman named Stase lives. You can probably tell from the letter that I’ve been to visit her a few times. She scares me, but I’m drawn to her keen mind and her opinions. Each time I promise myself that I’ll never talk to Stase again, but I quickly forget, and it’s deathly boring around here. My husband isn’t big on languages, we talk about planting, cows, mechanics, but sometimes whole days pass where we don’t speak a word to each other.

Stase has a son, Aksels, who’s our age.

He’s a bright guy and — sort of peaceful. The last time I sat with Stase until midnight and Aksels walked me home. It’s funny, at the gate he watched after me until I went into the house — and then I felt guilty because of Andrejs, who’d stayed home with our daughter. It’s the first time I’ve felt like that. Strange. And SO WHAT!!! — as Jonsy, my Icelandic friend, would say. What was that look for when I told him I’d been to visit Stase and Aksels? Can’t I have friends?

I asked Gran once if she’d ever had friends. She answered — what do you mean, friends, I had family and didn’t have time for friends. Maybe what she meant was that guilty feeling, when each new person you talk to essentially uses up words meant for your husband? But can there ever be fewer words?

If something here doesn’t make sense to you, then let me just say that I don’t even really get it. It’s simple: I’ve gotten to know our neighbors, that’s all. That’s what I’ll tell myself and that’s how it is!

In closing I’ll write something that I keep rereading with my husband in mind.

God bless you!

— Ieva

* * *

That I want thee, only thee — let my heart repeat without end. All desires that distract me, day and night, are false and empty to the core.

As the night keeps hidden in its gloom the petition for light, even thus in the depth of my unconsciousness rings the cry — I want thee, only thee.

As the storm still seeks its end in peace when it strikes against peace with all its might, even thus my rebellion strikes against thy love and still its cry is — I want thee, only thee.

— R. Tagore

* * *

Holy shit, brother, I’m 18 years old! But is that a reason for us to cry?

I can’t bring myself to say goodbye to you yet.

Speaking of Aksels.

Aksels has a lot of books in that forester’s house. And he’s read all of them.

Andrejs has read maybe one or two in his entire life — and it was probably an instruction manual for laying a brick stove. At first I used to read to him a lot — don’t laugh, it was before we’d go to bed — and he’d always fall asleep after the first paragraph.

Aksels gave me a strange story to read. I’ll write it down for you and then burn it afterwards, because I want to think only of Andrejs and don’t want to keep strangers’ letters in the house. I’ll probably burn it! Yes, probably! No doubt! And if this sentimental piece had some kind of value! I don’t know where he got it, if he copied it out of some book or came up with it on his own. But read it for yourself:

The star said it had already figured as much. And then it cried on my shoulder, probably melted bits of frost left over on its lashes from that other time. It said that it had been to see a poor poet living in an attic room. The poet often prayed to the star in the pale moonlight — he was ragged, voracious, and impassioned. And the star had gone to him. In the literal sense. In the way that only stars can go to people. But the poet? The star now sobbed more bitterly. The poet had stood bewildered — so grey, grey, grey.

“How,” he had asked, “can you truly be so cold?”

“How,” he had asked, “are you not a planet, but a little star?”

“And tell me, star, what am I to do with you?”

The star said it had already figured as much. It went and lay down on the Milky Way and, focusing all its concentration internally, exploded. Hundreds of poets saw this and said to themselves: “Oh! A falling star!” And a hundred poems with a hundred different descriptions of stars were born.

I went to see that poet, to the high windowsill up in his attic room, and looked down. And there he lay, having already frozen as he fell. The star had wooed the poet. It didn’t bask in the light of adoration, but instead came and looked directly into his eyes.

People will be unintentionally destroyed by the wandering stars in their lives.

I’m waiting for mine…

* * *

Hi, my dear!

Do I even need to say that your letter gave me another fantastic emotional high? This morning Andrejs tells me — you got a letter, get excited! I went to the house immediately, put on some music — and what a relief it was to read your letter…

The way in which the prophecies come true on the ideas circulating in the skies above us at any given moment is so strange. We’re on the same wave, brother. I read your letter and feel like all of it is happening to me. Even though I dare to say we live in absolutely different worlds. At least in an external, physical sense.

You’ve grown up taking care of your spiritual life. I’ve mostly let mine drift, which I sometimes regret.

Who knows how we’re supposed to live? There isn’t a specific formula, and now and then we feel so lonely and unprotected. Especially when we have to make tough decisions.

The weather today is nice, foggy, and warm, sprouts are shooting up out of the earth and birds are chirping in every branch. I can keep the window open and hear how newborn foals whinny loudly in the pasture and search for their mothers.

I also have a man who loves me, a baby that we both love, and we have a house — and peace and safety. They’re wonderful feelings, really. And how he knows how to keep me on a leash with this peace! You could say he’s almost unbreakable in his confidence — run around the world, be wild, do smart or stupid things, but no matter what, you’ll come back to me when you need something real! It’s like that’s what he thinks, and maybe that’s right. Time will tell.

You and only you are responsible for causing problems for yourself.

Always, your Ieva

* * *

Hello!

It’s so superb

to be free of doubt, to not try to hide

flaws behind lace and hopelessness behind laughter

and to one night wager destiny

against everything like a trump card.

There — that’s Amanda Aizpuriete. A fantastic poet, bright personality, and what’s more, she raised four kids.

I said it, wrote it, and am now embarrassed. Is that something that can be said in a single, short sentence?

Next to me is a blue vase with blue cornflowers and yellow marigolds. There was an amazing sunset when I got your letter Saturday evening, but up here, in Heaven, they’re all like that (by Heaven I mean my veranda). The sun was red, the clouds were violet and billowing, and the swallows were singing.

So where can I even begin?

Or rather: should I even?

I’m starting to think that people either take care of all the important things in one go, or else don’t take care of them at all.

— Ieva

Don’t ask me what words

mean. They’re

only words.

. . What are words? Essentially a redundant

cry from the burning house

in which I have to stay.

— A. A.

* * *

Brother!

So — that’s it.

. .

I have to confess to some lies. I try so hard to stay happy! In each letter to you, and in each sentence. I tried to read some books, get lost in quotes — nothing worked. I’m actually doing horribly. I don’t know what to hold on to anymore. Andrejs thinks that I’m creating an imaginary world around me, not living in reality. Maybe the books are to blame? I’ve read books since I was little like I was obsessed, and the words have probably taken their toll on my brain.

What’s happening to us?

I mean — to all of us. It looks like the country has lost its mind. The day before yesterday they liquidated a joint-stock company’s cattle-shed, you should’ve seen it! There are no words to describe it! Everyone rushed out like mad to find the best cow. They drove up in their compact cars and their trucks and fought loudly over the cattle. I saw respectable women, family matrons, tearing at each other’s hair and spitting in each other’s faces. Some men came in with a butcher already in tow to have their cows stunned with a hammer, mounted onto a hook, and skinned right there in the corridor. And there were kids around! I remember the cows’ eyes, placed all in a row like a necklace stretched out on the dusty concrete. I was wading through blood, brother, and that’s no metaphor.

Gran gave up her share for us to have, but I wanted to get out of there. Good thing Andrejs is so calm. “Look for a cow, not at what everyone else is doing!” he said. We noticed a younger cow by the door, greyish with a dark ridge along its back. We wrote its number down in the logbook and said we’d be back in a bit to get it. The poor thing was bucking at the end of its chain in fear from the scent of all the blood. I wanted to put a rope around its horns and get it away from the insanity as soon as possible. Well, but it would be a long way to walk and the baby was asleep in the car. We left that place behind as fast as we could. In the yard out front, a gypsy was tying a calf — ALIVE! — to the sidecar of his motorcycle and then took off down the road, the calf’s head dragging along the ground.

What’s happening to us?

And unfortunately, this morning Aksels asked Andrejs to come out to the horse stables. Aksels works with horses as the stable hand, and there was a horse that needed to be brought to the meat processing plant, but the stable tractor was broken.

I put Monta in the stroller and walked out to the stables. It was amazingly sunny after several days of rain.

And it was that horse!

I’ve already said that the stable pasture ends by our vegetable garden. Once, about a month ago, I was working in the furrows with a pitchfork when it suddenly seemed like a storm had picked up in the pastures. They were trying to break in a black horse. Later Aksels said that this horse had bad blood — the blood of a baron’s horse. Horses like that are so mean that it’s even rare for stronger men to be able to handle them. In order to get a saddle on this black horse for the first time, they’d called in an experienced man from a few districts over. But his expertise didn’t help. The horse had pulled free and was galloping around the pasture like thunder incarnate, kicking up sand with its powerful, shaggy legs. The earth shook. The horse snorted, whinnied, and thrashed, tore at the leather bridle with its teeth. It was like the devil himself had broken out of hell, and the people just looked on helplessly.

In the end the horse slipped and crashed into one of the low iron bars enclosing the pasture.

Right into its own end.

Because, as Aksels told me, when it heaved itself back onto its feet, it broke its lower back. And that was it. They tried to nurse him back to health, but in vain. The vet said the best doctor for any animal is nature. And then I saw the black horse a few times hanging around the apple orchard. He’d been let out to be with the other horses — he was a slow-moving cripple under the blossoming trees. A victim of his pride.

Until he finally lay down under an apple tree and didn’t get back up.

It was a group effort to get him back on his feet and lead him into the stables. Once there he dropped down in his stall, and everyone knew that this time he’d stay down.

What can you do? If a horse dies, it gets taken to the animal cemetery and tossed into a pit surrounded by green grass, thick blue-green fir trees, and black ravens in the branches — so shiny and robust as turkeys they can barely fly. And the giant snowdrops growing over the animals’ graves!

If a horse is brought to a meat processing plant, the farm gets money, and that’s no small matter when the employees haven’t been paid for several months. But you have to take the horse there while it’s still alive.

And I’m sure you understand, brother, that this horse couldn’t just be picked up and carried to the butcher’s truck. They thought and thought, then finally called Andrejs to bring his tractor, and I went with him. And that’s where it all started.

The horse was lying on its left side in the same spot it had been a week before. The men strapped it into canvas belts and chains like a large rock, and Andrejs used his tractor to pull it into the corridor through the opposite window. Then he dragged it outside along the corridor. The horse stayed proud the entire time — kept its head high. It only whimpered now and then. Bits of skin and flesh from its bedsores scraped off onto the cement.

Once outside, it was dragged through the mud to the butcher’s truck and lifted by a scoop into the back. Then the horse disappeared down the lane — quiet, half-raw, and with its head still held high.

At the time Aksels had asked them to sedate the horse. They said no. Andrejs laughed at Aksels, then called him a little shit who was just getting in the way. It was mean. After that I called Andrejs a bad name, almost scratched his eyes out, and then left with Aksels. And with Monta in the stroller. Along the road and away. That night I didn’t even go home to milk the cows. Andrejs drove out to the forester’s house completely drunk, threatening to shoot Aksels. Stase screamed at me to get back to my own house, and take my baby with me if I didn’t want any trouble.

In a word, it was a complete mess. And this entire long introduction is because I want to ask you for your opinion as someone who’s on the outside. What do you think, should I take Monta and run away to Riga to stay with Mom? I don’t see this ending well.

Best — your sister

* * *

Brother, dear brother!

First I have to say a huge thank-you for the money you sent. It was an uncanny move on your part — to pick the day that I have nothing, absolutely nothing at home, and then to send me money. Things have been terrible. That’s why I haven’t written in so long. Andrejs lent our car to a friend, and on Friday night he crashed and flipped it onto its roof into a ditch. Now, to get it fixed, we need a lot of money. We don’t have a car. We can’t go anywhere. If someone were to get sick, there’s no way for us to get to a doctor. Thank God Gran is staying with me right now, helping me look after Monta. But her pension isn’t that big. My horrible husband isn’t worried about the fact that we don’t have anything to eat — everything has to go toward fixing the car.

And then the postal carrier shows up and says: “You’ve been sent money!”

I knew right away, I got such goose bumps, what a feeling! An entire fortune! No one really knows about the money and they’re not going to find out, either. I’m going to use it to get food for Monta. I’m going to ride to the village in a bit on my bike. Little Monta already has it so tough. In Riga I saw a kid her age wolfing down bananas and yogurt, but my daughter only sees turnips and beans…

Life here is awful. I feel what’s happening to me — I’m growing old and dumb. And I want to hang myself, too. Especially if the potatoes haven’t been furrowed, if there isn’t any firewood, if the electric stove is half-burned out. I’m going to lose my mind.

But maybe not, because Aksels is here. And the whole time I have this hope in my heart: Riga. Aksels and I might go to Riga in the fall, if Mom and Dad will let us stay with them. And we should be able to find jobs, right?

But at least we have our health, so I can’t complain. Aksels still works at the stables forking hay. I go with him to help. We’ve already brought in around 13 tons. It’s hard work, manual labor. They pay 1.50 lats a day. We still haven’t seen a santim of it.

Gratefully — your sister

P.S.

And I soon grow tired of all the markets,

But they still stay in my memory.

Forward, my dream horses,

Forward, my haggard friends!

Let the headwind count our ribs,

Afterward it can bite us where it wants.

The rain rips us from eternity

And already washes away our footprints.

— M. Melgalvs

* * *

Hello!

I’m writing you quickly and in tears, because the stable owner Austrums was shot dead last night. He showed up at Zari last fall — he’d stopped in to meet his neighbors, say hello, and ask about partnership opportunities. Austrums wanted to build the first golf course in Latvia here. He already owns a hundred hectares, but our field by the corner of the forest with the big pine tree could be of use to him. And we were willing to give it to him — there’s more sand than grass there anyway, and it’s worthless for the livestock. Austrums was very sociable — on the short side, attentive eyes, as easy-going as a strand of seaweed in a current. He invited us to golf lessons, showed us how to swing a club and how to stand. The stable employees were also there — we laughed and made friends with them.

He drove out from Riga every weekend. Built a sauna by the pond — almost everyone from our country’s new government would drive out to drink there Saturday nights. Aksels would grumble about it sometimes — at night the drunk men would go to see the horses and let them into the pasture, then wake up Aksels to help get them back and out of the farmers’ crops! There were problems with the bunch from Riga, but on the other hand — things were active, lively, hopeful! The stables were renovated, the pastures sown with grass, the mass amounts of endless mud gone. There was a sense of hope in the air.

And now — shot dead! Then he was torched in the woods just outside Riga, in his car. Did robbers do it? Or the government? Everyone is stumbling around with sad expressions. No one can believe something like that happened. The first person shot since the Awakening. I can still see him clearly — as alive as a person can be. Those friends of his who spent every weekend at the lake and sat next to him drinking in the sauna, they’re all on the news now shrugging their shoulders and claiming to have never met him in their lives.

There’re rumors around here that the baron cursed his land before he died, so that no one living on it would ever feel happy. But those are just stupid stories—

I’m worried — Ieva

* * *

Pāvil, hey!

You scold me for not writing.

If only you knew.

Oh I don’t even care.

I’ll just give you the facts. Nice and simple. Please don’t be surprised.

You already know about Aksels. Stase was his mother. Was, because the forester’s house burned down. They say she fell asleep smoking. Drunk, maybe. Everyone here has taken up drinking. I don’t even know when it started. But now we drive to Madara every Saturday.

Oh I don’t even care.

What else is there to do here? At least the bar is fun, there are people. Champagne. Boys from the neighboring village drive out here, start fights with the local boys. There’s some kind of strength inside us, it’s crazy, I don’t know, I’ve got a lot of power inside me. There’s nowhere to put it. So we drink. Of course I’m embarrassed. One night I stepped out of the bar to get some fresh air, and I fell onto all fours. I got up and then fell backwards. And then again — on all fours. And then — backwards. Someone helped me up, I staggered to the bathroom to wash my hands, looked at myself in the mirror and thought: Ieva, you?

Gran also gives me disapproving looks, says I’m abandoning my child.

I’ve even started smoking.

Oh I don’t even care.

It’s fun to dance at the bar, to let loose. To drive around from one party to the next. It’s even fun the morning after, I like it. I feel awful, but experience some kind of inner peace.

Stase said it’s suicide. Told us to leave for the city as soon as possible, that we’ll rot alive out here. The countryside is death. That’s the only reason she moved out here, to find death. I thought she was a great woman, just that she’d have these bouts of anger where she’d hit anything that came within arm’s reach.

She was such a smart woman, but kind of — ravaged by life. Ah, whatever, what am I saying, she was herself. Like Jonsy. Stase was Stase. Without any pretenses. Everything she did was spontaneous and her own, she could be terrifying one second and the kindest person in the world the next. But no matter what she was, she was herself. Even the burning was such a Stase type of death. Even as she burned, she lived. The whole fire was awful. When Aksels got back home in the morning, he opened the window. And everything inside just exploded instantly. That’s what happens, if things have already started to smolder, oxygen creates an explosion. Stase was standing and just went up in a column of fire. I don’t think Aksels will ever get over it. He didn’t even go to the funeral, just stayed back in the bushes and glowered at everything like a wolf. His heart is breaking, you know, but Andrejs just laughs. It’s awful.

The times when Aksels wasn’t able to, Stase would go in his place and chase the horses out of the crops and back to the stables when the enclosures were broken. She’d catch the fastest horse and ride it bareback, with just the halter. She’d gallop ahead of them all like some kind of vision, a sorceress! Everyone’s going to remember her like that — with her hair flowing behind her as she rides the fastest horse.

Aksels is living with me at the Zari house now. Everything is so screwed up for me with these men. Aksels and I — how do I put it — well we just couldn’t live without each other anymore, but we didn’t say anything to anyone, didn’t even admit it to ourselves. But Andrejs sensed something, would look at us hatefully, grew even more aggressive towards me, in the end I even cried at how hard-hearted one person could be!

Of course Gran also scolded me, but lovingly. She had seen and knew everything. Now she’s gone back to the seaside. Oh I don’t even care. I’m sick of being the bad guy. It’s better if nobody sees it.

Back then, the three of us would drive around to the bars as a group. Sometimes we’d take other friends with us. And that one time on the way to the bar, a rabbit jumped out of the wheat field right in front of the car. I begged Andrejs to brake for it, but he went after it like a maniac until he ran it down. He even pulled over to throw the carcass into the trunk, so I’d stew it for breakfast. But the rabbit hadn’t been run over, just knocked back into the wheat field — its screams ripped through the quiet of the night. Andrejs was drunk, he couldn’t find it. I got out of the car and started walking home, but he blocked my way and forced me back into the car.

And then — at the bar! Whether it was revenge or a breakdown, I don’t know. More likely it was some third thing.

That beautiful song “Black Velvet” was playing, you know the one. And I went to dance with Aksels. A slow dance. The first time ever with him. I didn’t care anymore. He didn’t either. We only saw each other in this crazy, fucked-up world. It really was more of a breakdown.

And toward the end he kissed me. For the first time.

But I pulled away, recovered, and then saw — guess what? Andrejs’s eyes. He was standing by the wall and watching us carefully.

I panicked! Because everything happened so spontaneously, you know, I still didn’t realize anything, just got scared — for Aksels, for me, for Andrejs. What’s going to happen to us now! And I ran home through the morning fog like a scared little puppy. Barefoot, with my shoes in my hands. Andrejs followed behind me in the car and tried to run me down the entire way. I’d just keep jumping into the ditch and then back out again. It was awful!

Back home Andrejs grabbed me by the back of my collar and shook me. And then he suddenly sat down at the table and started sobbing — please, that I wouldn’t, for the love of God, leave him! That he’d already figured things out about me and that little shit.

I asked him — how could you figure things out if it only just started tonight? Maybe, I said, I hadn’t even known it myself! I said, I now know clearly that it won’t end with Aksels because I love him!

And I love you, he said in a voice I could barely hear.

You don’t know how to love, I answered cruelly. Because at that moment I remembered that half-dead rabbit in the wheat field.

Then he retreated into himself, started selling the livestock and even sold the tractor so he could pay off the bank loan before term. He sold everything, didn’t even leave me the kitchen table. He didn’t talk to me anymore, was acting out of his mind, smoothing Monta’s hair and crying. I was afraid he’d take her away from me.

And well, it was on that same insane morning that Aksels — who’d been left by himself at the bar — slowly made his way home to the forester’s house. The door was locked from the inside, he pounded on it, pounded, then opened the window — he knew which one could be unlatched from the outside. And the entire house went up with Stase in it, with all of Aksels’s belongings. Up in flames.

After the funeral he came to live with us. Yes, there was a time when all five of us were staying at the Zari house. How we made it work, I still can’t explain. No, wait, I can — we didn’t speak. At all. Nobody spoke to anyone else. For a long time it was as if the Zari house was a kingdom placed under a spell. Everything is possible when you don’t speak. The only thing is that you can’t deal with that kind of silence for too long. Then Andrejs went off to work as a car mechanic in Riga, and Gran went back to the seaside.

Aksels and I are going to leave for Riga soon. If we stay here we’re just going to die of hunger. For now we plan on asking Mom and Dad if we can stay at their place. Your room is going to be empty for at least another year. If they say no, we’ll figure something else out.

And that’s all, little brother.

This time — without any quotes.

— Keep your fingers crossed for us — Ieva

Destiny

Ieva walks through the village and cuts down dandelions with a knotted stick.

She doesn’t want to go home.

The head of the village, Sarmis, is a gaunt old man with bright eyes who can’t keep his hands to himself whether it’s in the store or village hall. A slap on the thigh, a tickle to the ribcage, a caress of the shoulder. And when he comes to order smoked salmon from Gran, he always says in a surprised manner — how beautiful Ieva’s grown up to be, a woman, a real woman!

Gran just laughs and sends Ieva to the cellar for mushrooms — Ieva is happy to go, because this strange word “woman” and Sarmis’s bleary stare sends blood pounding to her temples.

But a strange devil moves her to quickly get the mushrooms and hurry back, her hair whipping behind her. Back to sit near Sarmis and to laugh, pretending not to notice him staring. Let him look, Ieva tells herself, nothing bad will happen from just looking. It’s a little scary, but Gran and Roberts are right here. But it’s interesting — what does Sarmis see when he looks at Ieva? She’d like to find out sometime, but it’s not possible to climb into someone else’s skin.

Sarmis is a lesser evil compared to the forester Buliņš. They run into each other along the road and Buliņš speaks ardently. And his words stick to Ieva’s heart like linden leaves — soft and gentle. His speech is sensible, his thoughts clear. Upward, beautiful, magnificent. School, studies, the future. But then Ieva happens to look at Buliņš when he doesn’t expect it. The blue eyes staring at her have the same hungry look as Sarmis!

Buliņš doesn’t let up. One day he comes to see Roberts with a bag filled with canned meats. He just happened to be passing by and decided to stop in to give them a taste! Gran thanks him, Roberts praises him — ground stag with bacon, a real forester’s feast! Gran sends Ieva to bring the empty jars back to Buliņš at the forester’s house, but Ieva refuses. “Just take them,” Gran scolds her, “is that so hard? He had no trouble preparing the meats or bringing them over here, a single man living by himself in a forester’s hut, but so hardworking!”

“I’ve got nothing to do with his troubles!” is Ieva’s unexpectedly curt reply.

As if that’s not enough, Buliņš sends them a load of dried pine logs. Enough to cover the yard of their small fishing hut. But it’s such lovely firewood that Gran can only gesture and lift the logs to her nose and breathe in their scent. Yellow, light as a feather, strong as medicinal balsam, with the crisp scent of sap! Roberts, however, points out that burning pine logs clogs up the chimney.

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!” Gran scolds and shakes the two logs in her hands at him. “They could be wet! But they’re dry, chopped! It would be a sin to complain.”

Neither of them bothers to wonder why the forester has suddenly become so generous.

Soon enough Buliņš comes to the house in person, on a night when Gran and Roberts aren’t home. No matter, he’ll just sit in the kitchen until they get back and have a cup of tea. Ieva shrugs, makes him a big mug of tea and goes into the other room. Let him wait!

But Buliņš follows her silently. His hand searches for the light switch on the wall and — click! — the room sinks into darkness. Ieva gets up from the couch and heads toward the door to turn the light back on, she’s stubborn and wants to scold the forester — what is he thinking! — but she runs like a fish right into his arms. He grabs hold of her by the elbows, says nothing, just brings his face to her and tries to kiss her. His eyes glisten in the light reflecting from the snow. Ieva feels like a hypnotized rabbit, because there’s no reason to scream, or tell him off, or to hit him — the guy is being gentle and quiet. Ieva can only murmur — no, no! She lowers her chin, presses it into her chest, then pulls away and runs.

If she was less embarrassed, she’d tell Gran. But Gran is an angel who can’t hear those kinds of things, and Ieva even feels that she herself would become impure from telling those kinds of stories. And in the end she neither likes, nor hates Buliņš.

Ieva wanders down the long stretch of road between the sea and the lake, whacking dandelions with a stick — she scatters their white, fluffy heads, and thinks, thinks. Wracks her brain.

“Hey, Ieva, what’re you looking for?” asks Edvīns, the village driver as he rolls past.

“Yesterday,” Ieva replies and turns her back to him.

“Maybe we can look together?”

“You’re all talk!”

“What can I do, honey, I’ve gotta work! You coming to the bar tonight?”

“Yeah, when pigs fly!”

Edvīns’s friend Armīns leans out of the other window.

“Then come swimming with us at lunch! I’d like to sit you down on my lap!”

“You can hold on to your piece yourself!”

To fall into the clutches of those loudmouths — like a honey pot to a bear! The entire county would know about it by the next morning. Ieva is too proud to let someone go around town bragging — I got Ieva Eglīte!

There is one boy who Ieva likes more than the others, but that’s why she has to stay away from him. Because it’s almost like it’s meant to be, so strangely familiar that it terrifies her.

They met in winter at a dance at the community center. The entrance was swarming with people. Breaths steamed in the cold air, everyone was entertaining everyone else with exaggerated jokes. The main hall of the center was like a hot and sparse clearing. Couples sat at tables lining the walls, a disco ball hung spinning from the ceiling, and a local ensemble played on stage.

Nobody danced. Well, of course not; it was only ten, and the guys hadn’t downed enough liquid courage. Around midnight they’d start to shake and thrash in the center of the dance floor like they were possessed.

Ieva stood around for a while, grew bored. She headed toward the exit. There was a fan by the wall, humming and blowing out the colorful streamers tied to it. And of course, it also blew up Ieva’s lightweight skirt. She stepped back, smoothing the cloth back down.

She looked up. And right into Andrejs’s eyes.

It was kind of like meeting the stare of someone you love intensely, but haven’t seen in a long time. Like the eyes of a brother.

And that’s why Ieva avoids Andrejs. Sex with a brother! She doesn’t think incest is a good thing.

This strange feeling in the noise and chaos of the party only lasted a second. The long, distorted shadows of the spotlights, the sound of the fan, twirling skirts, music, other people — it all faded away to make room for a pair of very familiar eyes. She didn’t see his face, his build, or his clothes. She saw nothing but his eyes. And everything life had in store for her was in those eyes.

Then the stranger stepped aside to let Ieva pass. She lowered her gaze and obediently walked out.

Now she was no longer bored, or cold. She had to wait for that official one o’clock point when everyone else would be wasted, but the unfamiliar boy would be looking for her. Ieva doesn’t know how she’s absolutely certain that he has to come look for her. She only didn’t know him. She didn’t know anything — where was he from that she’d never seen him before? If he’s drunk when he finds her, she’ll run away. She’s got at least that much sense left.

He found her in a little over ten minutes. Took Ieva by the elbow with his large, warm hand and led her to the center of the dance floor.

No one was dancing, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore. What was important was that Ieva was dancing with the stranger. She could think of a few times when a hopeful beginning had turned into a complete catastrophe.

This wasn’t one of those times. They moved a little in one direction, and then the other, before they both suddenly spread their wings and took off across the creaking linoleum floor.

After a good half-hour the two of them ran outside — to throw snow at each other and cool down.

After that they spent half the night standing in the quiet hallway near the spare rooms like two horses standing neck-to-neck. He had his hands wrapped around her waist and was digging his strong chin into the hair next to her ear. At first Ieva was worried that she was sweating through her white sweater, or that her face was too flushed, but he just breathed into her hair and said nothing, and Ieva slowly relaxed, unwound, blossomed.

“You smell like cookies,” he said, his voice thick. Ieva nodded. Before the dance she’d secretly taken a packet of vanilla powder from Gran’s hutch and sprinkled the fine, snow-white powder into the material of her sweater.

And then they were kissing, their lips hot and eager.

“Let me go!” she suddenly rushed down the hallway, feeling agitated. She didn’t smell like vanilla anymore, but like something even warmer and gentler than vanilla.

In the bathroom she turned on the cold water, rubbed her cheeks and looked into the mirror.

What now, Ieva?

She could still feel his breath in her tousled hair.

Best to go back and dance.

His name is Andrejs. He’s from the inland, not from the seaside families.

He’s almost ten years older than she is. Lives at the Zari house, which belonged to his grandfather and which he got back after the Awakening. Before Ulmanis, the property still belonged to Baltic Germans. When Mother Germany called her children back home before World War II, the Baltic German quickly sold the property back to Andrejs’s grandfather, and then boarded a ship with the rest of his household to never again return to this marshy corner of the world. Back in the collective farm times, the Zari house was home to a cotton workshop.

After the dance, Andrejs walked Ieva home. It was an endless night, both wonderful and terrible, as if she’d been injected with something, a paralyzing substance — velvety black, volatile.

He told her he’d been in the army, fought in Afghanistan, but that he never wanted to talk about it. She shouldn’t think the worst — but there had been a situation where four men had lost their lives on account of him.

His friends.

Men he had known very well.

It’s not even possible for people in this country to comprehend that place, he said. He’d had a good instructor at officer training in Viljandi who started a lecture on Afghanistan with the following comparison: If there were a spring not too far from your house, and your house had no running water, what would you do?

Carry it with a bucket, someone had answered.

Eventually put in a water main, was another reply.

So, the instructor had emphasized, you’re going to a country where people have carried and carried water from springs to their homes for thousands of years because that’s what their fathers and grandfathers did. As far as the water main goes, you can forget about progress. It’s not a country of progress, it’s a country of traditions. That’s something you’re going to have to experience for yourselves.

And Andrejs had experienced it. He watched how a local grandfather passed a hemp pipe to his son, and then to his grandson. Accustomed to drugs from a young age as if it were bread. No drinking, though; alcohol turns a person into an immoral creature.

But — enough about that.

That’s that, he’ll tell her once and then no more! Sorry, but he’ll say it right now — he wasn’t going to talk about it.

Ieva shrugs — if not, then fine. Only there was no reason to get so worked up about it.

Andrejs used to live with his parents on the outskirts of Riga and worked as a car mechanic. Then they got back his grandfather’s property and he didn’t have to think twice — since the Awakening, everyone was rushing back to the countryside to renew, rebuild, and reconstruct. As the only son, this was also the path Andrejs had to take.

They’d kiss under the big ash in the Zari yard — it seemed that this ritual was important to Andrejs, to kiss Ieva right under the ash tree. The house itself was in bad shape. The cotton workshop had left behind its dark, sooty imprints on the walls. Like a person who wakes up from a restless night with a face full of pillow marks. The half crumbling staircase in the middle of the house, the tattered wallpaper fluttering in a draft. But Andrejs was hopeful — he had a tractor, the Zari house, and fifty hectares of Kurzeme land.

On a beautiful June evening Andrejs pulls Ieva down next to him in the apple orchard. They kiss as usual, but after a while a strange tension spreads from Andrejs to Ieva. She looks into the clear, clear eyes of her boyfriend.

Andrejs asks:

“What’s with you?”

Ieva looks away.

“I want it to happen now.”

Ieva sees the leaves against the sky. They’re blue.

Then she closes her eyes. After a bit she feels Andrejs’s excited breathing above her.

“It’ll be alright,” he murmurs.

Two currents struggle within Ieva. One is holding back, the other rejoicing — finally, it’s going to happen! Since the time the fire first awakened in her, it’s been suffering and waiting for release.

A massive force tries to break into her, it hurts, she moves away. Andrejs persistently follows her body, as if to say that it’s only in fairy tales that breaking happens without pain. Ieva’s eyes are full of tears, something in her bends like a footbridge over a river, and then gives, breaks.

Then the invisible river throws them ashore — the ground under her hips is hard and real like always. Andrejs lies on top of her, motionless as a rock. Then he kisses her, rolls off, and Ieva’s eyes again see the vibrant blue. A lonely bird circles high, high in the air. Ieva thinks — what is it like for birds? To grow up, love, and fly. So naturally. Does that also hurt?

“Let’s get married, Iev’,” she hears Andrejs’s voice. “No one will find us here. A marsh on one side, woods on the other, let’s live here.”

“I’m only seventeen,” she says.

“I’ll wait.”

It hurts.

Two currents struggle within Ieva, two lightning strikes, two destinies. Until now, her life has always gone according to her plan. Now she feels like a caged animal. She can’t go on living the way she did before, but she doesn’t know how to live any other way and has her doubts.

Exactly when did the first crack form in the wall of this house?

And the discrepancies in the assumed moral obligation of a person’s life?

At times fate gets underfoot like a stray dog, and sometimes it has rabies. It’s great if the cards that fate deals you seem good. But what happens to the simple freedom of your childhood?

They’d already moved into the Zari house, already spent their days and nights together, but at the same time she told Andrejs: Don’t wait for me, I’m not promising anything, I don’t even want to see you anymore! Some sort of insanity came over her. She wanted it to be like before, before she met Andrejs, to live as free as a bird in a tree. She said those harsh words, and her own heart almost broke.

It wasn’t possible to live simply anymore.

Andrejs said nothing in return, but got drunk by himself. Came to see Ieva looking wrecked. The tractor jostled along the road like a horse. Andrejs followed her through the rooms, crying, tearing, swearing oaths. Threatened to drive right then over the ice and into the sea! Ieva had never seen him like that. In the end she took pity on him, lay him down, took his heavy head into her lap, and watched as he fell asleep.

The first time she had looked into Andrejs’s big, green eyes, with their flecks of brown and curious melancholy, she had sensed how cruel fate was, about how she would fight to pull away from it, cower in fear from it. But how she would oddly enough always be subjected to it.

Now, with Andrejs’s head in her lap, she senses that twice as much. How can she escape it? Look at how comfortable he is right now, fast asleep! Does she love him? Supposedly yes. But at the same time she wants to run away.

Where is her freedom?

Even if she cried for help — she doesn’t think anyone would hear her.

She tried to talk about it with Gran:

“What do you think about Andrejs?”

“What’s there to think, sweetheart, he’s a handsome boy, and hardworking at that.”

“But something about him scares me, Gran. People say he’s moody.”

“Well, other people can think about him what they want, but for you he could be gold!”