Tanner’s Twelve Swingers

Chapter 12

The Russians make dreadful automobiles. The design is adequate, I suppose, if one prefers to regard an automobile as something that ought to be made purposely lacking in aesthetic appeal. But if the object is to produce purely functional vehicles, then the very least they should do is function. Ours did, but barely. The engine knocked, the crankcase leaked oil, and the few modest hills we climbed were an enormous strain on the poor thing. The only good thing to be said for the car was that some poor fool had left the key in the ignition, and I had thus been able to steal it without any difficulty whatsoever.

I was driving west, toward the setting sun. Milan sat on the passenger side, and the small object of our conversation was nestled between us, her head resting gently against me.

“You realize,” Milan was saying, “that this may be the most profoundly stupid act of your life.”

“It may be the last, as far as that goes.”

“You joke, but it is no joke. Every step we take we seem to accumulate more paraphernalia. Chinese puzzles, Polish microfilm-”

“Yugoslav refugees-”

“A valid point, Evan. I am the first to admit that my book and I come under the heading of excess baggage, and you know my gratitude to you. But this is plainly impossible. The girl is just a child.”

“That’s the whole idea.”

“Evan-”

“Damn it to hell,” I said. “They had the kid locked up in a dungeon. Did you see the way she was squinting at the sunlight? Another few years under that kerosene lamp and she’d have been blind as a bat. She’s a bright child, she’s a beautiful child, she wants the things every child ought to be able to have, and how in the name of God could I have left her in that cellar with those two crazy old crones?”

“I know, I know.”

“As it was, I nearly had to brain Hescha to get her to part with the kid.”

“I know.”

“What would you have done?”

“The same thing you did,” Milan said. “Exactly the same, exactly.”

“Then, what’s the point?”

“I just wanted you to know that you are crazy, Evan. I never denied that I too am crazy. Why did you steal the car?”

“Because I am crazy.”

“Seriously.”

“Because I felt like stealing the car,” I said. “Because I’m sick of walking and sick of buses. Because we couldn’t drag Minna down the road or onto a bus anyway.”

“Ah, I thought so.”

“We’ll get rid of the car in Riga if it lasts that far. And then we’ll find out that Sofija is married or dead or whatever, and then you and I and Minna will go to Finland and get a plane for the States. That’s why I stole the goddamned car.”

The car coughed and sputtered, and I cursed it quietly but firmly in Lettish. At my side Minna stirred and blinked. I pampered the accelerator pedal, and the engine purred again. Milan mentioned that there was a dog in the road. I assured him that I was aware of the presence of the dog in the road but thanked him, regardless, for pointing the dog out to me.

Minna said, “Are you speaking Russian?”

“No, Serbo-Croat.”

“Where is that spoken? In America?”

“In Yugoslavia.”

“I can read Russian because many of my books are in Russian, but Aunt Hescha told me I was to speak only in Lithuanian. What is spoken in America?”

“A dialect of English.”

“They do not speak Lithuanian?”

“No.”

“Then they will not be able to understand me?”

“You’ll learn English,” I said. “I’ll teach you.”

Her face brightened. Milan asked if it was necessary for us to continue speaking such an impossible language. I assured him that it was. Minna wanted to know when we would be in America.

“Not for a long time,” I said. “First we must go to Riga, in Latvia. They speak Lettish there. Do you know of Lettish?”

“No.”

“It is very much like Lithuanian, but there are differences. Would you like to learn to speak it?”

“Oh, yes!”

“It will be easy for you. By the time we reach Riga, you will speak it correctly.”

“I will speak Lettish?”

“Runatsi latviski,” I said. “You will speak Lettish.” I took her hand. “You see how the words change? Zale ir Zalja – the grass is green. Te ir te¯vs – here is father. Te¯vs ir virs – father is a man. Mate ir plavã – mother is in the meadow.”

“Mate ir plava zalja,” said Minna. Which meant that mother was in the green meadow, and which also meant that Minna was getting the hang of it. We went on talking, and before long I did not translate my little sentences into Lithuanian because she was able to understand them well enough in Lettish. Once she saw the way the nouns and verbs changed slightly, she was able to turn many Lithuanian words into Lettish ones by herself.

The fact that she was a child was enormously helpful. Children are delightful little animals, their minds crisply logical and extraordinarily retentive. They extrapolate and interpolate with ease, they concentrate with uncluttered minds, and they have never learned to make the distinction between work and play, approaching either with the same intent devotion and absorption.

Minna, slipping so readily into the genuine complexities of Lettish syntax, put me in mind of an apothegm of Nietzsche’s: “The true maturity of man is to recapture the seriousness one had as a child at play.” Why they ever lose it in the first place is the mystery.

“Varetu runat latviski,” said Minna, as we reached the outskirts of Riga.

“Yes,” I assured her, “you are able to speak Lettish. And very well.”

Riga is an important city, capital of the Latvian S.S.R. and containing nearly three-quarters of a million people, the greater proportion of them Letts. We abandoned our car in a quiet street near the harbor, and I left the key in the ignition so that anyone who wanted to could carry it still farther away from us. We walked together, Milan and Minna and I, through the streets of Riga. But for the utter lack of family resemblance we might have been taken for three generations of a family: daughter and father and grandfather, meita un tevs un vectevs. We asked directions and found the address I had memorized. We passed the apartment building where Sofija Lazdinja lived and walked a few yards farther to a cafe. We took a table. I ordered bowls of soup for everyone, told Minna to order anything else she wanted. She had never been in a restaurant before and had not realized there were places where anyone might go to order food. She thought it was a delightful idea. I left the two of them there, amused by the thought that they would be quite unable to talk with one another, and went off in search of Sofija.

A directory inside the door of her building informed me that Lazdinja was apartment 4. I climbed a flight of stairs and found a door with a 4 on it at the end of the corridor. I knocked, and the door opened, and I looked at a face I had heretofore seen only in photographs, and I realized instantly why Karlis had fallen so irretrievably in love with her. The form of a goddess, the face of an angel, sparkling eyes, flashing teeth, red lips…

I said, “You are Sofija Lazdinja?”

She said, “No.”

I don’t think I said anything; if I did, I’m sure it didn’t make any sense. I was too busy being astonished. But what she said next was, “I am Zenta Lazdinja. Sofija is my sister. My older sister.”

“One year older!” This from a voice from within.

“That is quite true,” Zenta said mischievously. “Sofija is only a year older than I. You will find this hard to believe when you see her, but it is true. Only a single year older.”

Karlis had not said that there were two of them. Perhaps he had not known. It was almost impossible to believe in the existence of one of them, let alone a matched pair.

“But you have the advantage of us,” said Zenta. “You know that I am Zenta and that my older sister Sofija is within, but we do not know your name or who you are.”

“My name is Evan Tanner. I have come at the request of a good friend of your sister.”

“His name?”

“Karlis Mielovicius.”

A shriek from within. “Karlis!” Another goddess rushed into view, pushed Zenta aside, gripped me furiously by the arms. She was an inch or so taller, a shade more voluptuous in physique, and, as I had been repeatedly advised, one year older. “Karlis!” she cried again. “You come from Karlis?”

“Yes.”

“He is well?”

“Yes.”

“He still loves me?”

“More than ever.”

“But he has found another?”

“No.”

The pressure increased on my arms. “You are very certain of this?”

“Yes.”

“Ahhh!” She released my arms, enveloped me in her own, hugged me to her extraordinary bosom, and very nearly crushed the life out of me. I considered reminding her that I was not Karlis myself, that I was merely his emissary, but for the moment I was unable to say anything at all.

She released me eventually and led me inside. We sat down on a long, low couch, with me in the middle and Sofija and Zenta on either side. And I explained, in a great flow of words, that Karlis wanted her to come to America to be his bride, and that, if this was also her wish, I would do whatever was in my power to take her there.

Evidently it was not something she had to think about for any great length of time. She didn’t exactly say that she would like to come. What she said was, “How soon can we leave?”

And Zenta said, “I am coming with you, of course.”

“It will be some days before we can leave. Perhaps a week, perhaps longer.”

“We can wait. And you may stay here with us, it is safe here.”

“There are others with me. An old man and a young girl.”

“They will stay with us also.”

“And you must not speak a word of this to anyone. It is very dangerous.”

“I understand.”

“And I too.”

“Not a word.”

“No. The old man and the girl, where are they?”

“A few doors away,” I said. “I will fetch them now.”

I hurried back to the cafe. Minna and Milan were at a table where I had left them. The soup bowls were gone – they had shared mine between them, Minna told me – and she was finishing a meal of roast pork while Milan dealt with a meat pie.

I had just enough rubles to cover the check. “We can go now,” I told Minna in Lettish. “We can go now,” I told Milan in Serbo-Croat.

And that, I thought, was going to be a nuisance. Giving everyone directions in a different language and having persons in the party who were unable to communicate with one another could only prove to be a mammoth headache. I’ve always disliked the notion of Esperanto, feeling that a variety of languages makes the world infinitely more interesting, and to me the myth of the Tower of Babel has always had a happy ending. But now I could somewhat appreciate the desirability of a universal language, if only to be dragged out on special occasions. This, certainly, was one such occasion.

But as we left the cafe and proceeded to Sofija’s apartment house Milan said that the food tasted good to him.

I nodded. And then did a monumental double-take because what he had said, word for word, was “Man garsho bariba.”

I looked at Milan, who was smiling shyly, and at Minna, who was simply beaming. Esperanto would be unnecessary from now on, as would Serbo-Croat. In a few days the little minx would have him speaking Lettish.