Читать книгу High Tide - Inga Abele - Страница 14

Andrejs’s Religion

Outside it’s rainy and incredibly windy.

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

Andrejs sits down at the corner of the table.

“What are you looking at?” she asks.

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

“What I’m looking at? Just looking.”

“Everyone looks for different reasons.”

“I’m not everyone. I’m Andrejs.”

“Pass me the fillet knife.”

“Which one’s that?”

“With the threaded cord.”

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

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

He can’t look away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Violently, as usual.

An awful fate.

But still—it was his fate, too.

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

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

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

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

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

The black swan.

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

Not good.

He is overcome by awe, he has goosebumps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it’s nice to get a fire going.

Open the flue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just as alive as back then.

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

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

And then they’d start to talk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How beautiful, Ieva had said.

Beauty!

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

Ridiculous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He’d slept through it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three thoughts, what lies. Three is impossible.

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

She’d screamed back—but I crave knowledge!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And if I die?” he asked.

Ieva shrugged.

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

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

Stupid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But she asks—can they talk about Aksels?

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

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

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

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

“And what about you?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

Yes!

Like Croesus, squandering lives.

Total bullshit.

He has to think about it every day.

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

She didn’t say anything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that wasn’t something Ieva needed to know.

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

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

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

Then they probably both finally fell asleep.

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

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

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

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

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