Lone Star

by Paullina Simons

  The Freedom Monument, the factory that made Stolichnaya vodka, streets and streets of art nouveau. They toured inside the Opera House, up and down the marble stairs, but were not allowed to stop to get a schedule of events. Gregor said there was no time, not if they wanted to see the Orthodox Cathedral—which under Soviet rule had been used as a planetarium—or the famous Riga Hostel. (“Why do we have to see that?” “And why couldn’t the hobo you dragged in yesterday stay there instead of with us?”)

  “Do you know how much blood has been spilled on Latvian soil?” Gregor asked, but rhetorically; he didn’t even wait for his own answer before launching into a comparison of Lutheranism and Catholicism and a discussion of the magnificent Tower of the Holy Spirit.

  He had no need to stop for food or a drink, and was irritated when the girls cried bathroom break and vanished for twenty minutes into an adorable hidden alley with little shops that sold summer dresses. They each bought something flash, but had to roll it up and hide it in their backpacks so Gregor wouldn’t yell at them. He was worse than Chloe’s mother.

  On and on and on, stories about Old Town and Riga Castle and what used to be a vibrant and active Jewish quarter, “the way it was in Vilnius and Warsaw and Krakow and Trieste.”

  “Where the hell is Trieste?” Chloe whispered.

  “There are no Jews anywhere,” Gregor said, “that’s my point, because they’re all dead. Especially in Poland. Though to answer your question, Trieste is in Italy. That’s how far down the destruction of the Jewish population extended. I used to be a tour guide in Krakow and Warsaw. I know those cities well. If you go to Krakow, by all means stop by Auschwitz, but you should also try the salt mines if you have time, and Oskar Schindler’s enamelware factory. That’s a must-see in Krakow. Even more than Auschwitz probably.” He told them stories and historical anecdotes, legends, lies, myths and provocations, how the riverbeds dried up and that’s why the tram line now ran through what used to be a river.

  “In Riga?”

  “No, in Krakow. I was talking about Krakow.”

  You know what they didn’t get?

  Silence.

  You know what else they didn’t get?

  Peace and quiet.

  And you know what else?

  An ice cream. A cherry strudel. A conversation among themselves. A potato pancake. A fifteen-minute rest at a table in Livu Square. But they did, however, receive a lecture on Livu Square as Gregor stormed past it. “There was no square here before the war,” he said, “but one of the bombardiers leveled three city blocks, and suddenly opened up this lovely area. After the war, the city council decided to leave it and rebuild around it. Isn’t it wonderful? You can sit, browse the local painters, have a coffee, listen to the musicians, but not now, ladies and gentlemen, now we must hurry, no stopping.”

  He bored them into submission with his staccato Germanic delivery and four hours later still had not shut his trap. When he talked, he demanded complete silence and would not let them interrupt or move until he stopped spouting whatever nonsense it was he was spouting. “Can I just have your attention, please, for two more minutes until I finish?” All eyes had to be on him, and he invited no questions. “Ask me questions as we walk to the House of the Blackheads, but please, walk quickly,” he said.

  He finally abandoned them just after three, and even then reluctantly. As soon as he left, they ran screaming to the meandering park enfolding the Riga Canal, got drinks, food, ice cream, found a green slope to perch on, spread out on the grass under the trees beside the calm and languid water and spent a blissful hour ragging on Gregor.

  Though Blake also found it hard to shut up about Johnny. “What kind of a pseudonym is Johnny Rainbow? Like, what’s he hiding?”

  “Do you think it’s not his real name?” said Hannah.

  “Of course it’s not. It’s so dumb and fake. He probably thinks he’s being clever.”

  “Blake, give it a break,” said Chloe. “Gregor was much worse. Let it go.”

  “She’s right, man,” said Mason. “Let it go. Johnny was an okay dude. I know you didn’t think so. But we did a nice thing for someone. Because of us, he had a place to sleep and he didn’t get robbed. That’s it. It’s over. Let’s talk about tomorrow and Gdansk. How long do you think it’ll take us to get there?”

  “And most important, is Treblinka near Gdansk?” Hannah asked.

  The four of them stared at the map, spread out in front of them on the grass like a picnic blanket.

  “I don’t see the death camps marked on your Rand McNally masterpiece of Poland, bro,” Mason said.

  “Where is this Treblinka? Does it even exist?” Hannah asked. “Because I want to get it over with as quickly as possible and go to Barcelona.”

  “Gee, really?” said Chloe. “And here I thought you wanted to linger in Poland.”

  “I don’t,” the bleached-blonde said, deaf to irony.

  “Hannah’s right about one thing—we need to be mindful of the time,” Blake said. “We don’t have a day to spare. Barcelona’s a long way away.”

  “Chloe, please, do we really have to go to Treblinka?” Hannah asked. “Wouldn’t you rather go to a beach or a castle than Treblinka?”

  Blake carefully folded the map. Mason carefully studied the folds.

  “Why are you being like this again?” Chloe said after a strained pause. “Yes, we really have to go to Treblinka.”

  Both brothers made clucking conciliatory noises. Everything will be okay, they cajoled the girls. We’ll have plenty of time. And we’ll be together. Isn’t that the whole idea? Chloe and Hannah reluctantly agreed that it was.

  There was uncertainty about distance and trains that affected Hannah, made her uneasy. Chloe could see that. She wanted to tell her friend that everything was uncertainty. Gypsies. Demons. Aurochs and angels. But Hannah wanted certainty. Did Hannah even hear the story Johnny had told them over herring the night before? Chloe recounted it now. He had told it as proof that they should fire Gregor and hire him instead. He said that the Latvians harbored hostility toward the Germans and Russians that stretched back a millennia. So though a sign might say Dogs are not allowed to run wild in all three languages—Lettish, German and Russian—the last two languages would be tarred out. The Latvian thinking was, if a man can’t read Lettish, his dog has an excuse for running wild. They had laughed then, and they laughed again now when Chloe retold it. All except Blake. “I don’t know why you’re telling us his stories,” he said. “Who cares?”

  Chloe tried again. “Johnny also said that if you ask a Lett for directions in Russian, they’ll give you the street name in Russian, but when you get there, the Russian and German will be tarred out.” Blake almost smiled that time.

  He was much happier than he was last night. He pored over the map, tracing the journey ahead of them. Gdansk was but a blip on the northern water, Krakow somewhere south, and Barcelona a distant dot a continent away. “Don’t worry, it’s not really that far,” Blake said to Hannah by way of comfort. “Europe is the smallest continent.”

  “Blakie, don’t kid,” Hannah said. “You’re always kidding. Johnny said Barcelona was really far.”

  “What does he know? You know he’s not really a tour guide?” Blake nodded. “He’s actually a mentally ill homeless person. Last week he thought he was the head of the joint chiefs of staff for the United States Armed Forces. You are so gullible. Wise up.”

  “Oh, because you’re so smart,” said Chloe.

  “Smarter than you.”

  “Really? What about when you decided to borrow your dad’s welding torch to melt the ice on your mother’s Subaru? Do you remember what an epic fail that was?”

  “Define epic fail. The ice did melt.”

  “Yes, and half the car with it!”

  “I didn’t say there weren’t some unintended consequences.” Blake looked so proud of himself. “But God gave man the power of fire. Hence the acetylene torch. It’s a sin not to use the power God gav
e you.”

  “You were grounded for a month.”

  “It was a manly grounding. I was grounded for being manly.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Chloe licked her ice cream, dazed and dreamy, sitting up on the grass with her knees drawn up in her light summer dress.

  “And what about you, genius?” Blake said to Chloe, flicking her leg. “Remember the Nativity play? Gold, Frankenstein and myrrh, you said. Do you remember?”

  Hannah and Mason joined in. Yeah, yeah, we remember that. We peed ourselves laughing.

  “It was elementary school! I was ten!”

  “More like eleven,” Blake said. “And what about when you sang ‘America the Beautiful’ for the Academy talent show? ‘Purple mountain’s magazines above the fruit that’s plain.’ How old were you then?”

  “That was elementary school too. And I was, um, six.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way.”

  “Genius.”

  “You genius,” Chloe said, tickling him. “What about when your father nearly killed you because you decided to carve up his brand-new concrete driveway with the pneumatic chainsaw?”

  “He’d gone outside the edge! I was helping him. Besides, it’s in the name. It’s a pneumatic concrete chainsaw. It’s a saw that cuts through concrete. I had no choice but to use it.”

  “Because you’re so smart. It has a noise level of eighty-eight decibels. You nearly went deaf.”

  “What?”

  “You nearly went—oh, I’m not playing anymore.”

  Blake laughed and laughed and Mason said and what about the time Blake swung on the zipline he’d just hooked up and crashed into a tree and broke his leg in five places, that was smart, and Chloe was about to get to the chocolatey end of her ice cream cone at the very bottom, her favorite part, and she was murmuring and thinking up something else to tease Blake with, and then she heard someone calling her name.

  Chloeeeee. Chloeeeeeeeee.

  She was wearing a green and yellow dress, floral, cotton jersey, easy on (easy off), elastic waist, no zippers, no sleeves. A neckline. Her breasts were somewhat camouflaged by hibiscus flowers (she hoped!), and her thin arms had burned a little in the Riga sun. She didn’t mind. Better burn slightly here than blister in Barcelona. Her hair was shiny and loose like a hippie at Woodstock, her nose freckled, her lips parched. They had drunk some kvas and Black Balsam, were light-headed, had been trying to sober up, watching parents with their kids on the grass, couples arm in arm on the walkways, young and old, the very colors of life dancing scarlet and blue, everything saturated with muffled music and the whistles of men. For a moment Chloe thought her eyes had caught fire.

  She looked down to the river, at the small wooden boat drifting slowly near the grassy knoll where they were lounging, and there was Johnny at the helm of this craft crammed with tourists. With a microphone in one hand, a camera in the other and a beret on his head, he was waving to them and calling out. “Guys! Hey! Guys!”

  “Ignore him,” Blake muttered. “Maybe it’s not us he’s waving to.”

  Hannah waved back. For a moment, Chloe stood warily. She turned to Blake. “What were you saying about him being a mad general?”

  Hannah had already scrambled up from the grass and walked down to the waterline to hear Johnny better. He was barely ten feet away. Chloe followed her.

  “How was Gregor?” he yelled. He didn’t even have to use a microphone. “You look like you’re still recovering from him.” Happily he turned to his boatful of people. “Ladies and gentlemen, are you enjoying yourselves?”

  A throaty hurrah was his reply.

  “This is my third tour,” he yelled.

  Hannah asked where he got the boat from.

  “Oh, I know a guy.” He grinned. “I’m singing in Livu Square after this. Will you come?”

  From behind, Blake was pulling on the hem of Chloe’s sundress. “Say no, say no, say no.”

  “Stop pulling on me.”

  Johnny turned toward his group and resumed his narration. The canal was quiet, and Chloe could easily make out his low tenor, his perfect diction. “Riga is one of the wettest capitals in the world,” she heard him saying. “It rains or snows in Riga nearly half of all the days of the year. Drought is one of the few climate conditions that Latvians do not experience. So enjoy this rare dry and sunny day, ladies and gentlemen. Please note the white wagtail singing on the elm branch over there. The wagtail is the national bird of Latvia and is one of the most striking birds in the world. Plus it sings beautifully.” Johnny smiled, turning to the embankment. Chloe could almost swear his beaming smile was for her. “Not as beautifully as me, but still quite beautifully.”

  “Oh, so he sings too?” said Blake. “Is there anything this wonderchild doesn’t do? Doesn’t make enough scratch for a place to stay, but oh, sings and gives tours and charters boats.”

  “Maybe today is his first day at work,” Hannah said.

  “What was he doing before that?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “No, thank you.” Blake pitched his voice half an octave up. “The conifer and birch forest covers most of Latvia,” he intoned in imitation. “The rest is low-lying plains. Makes farming difficult because of the drainage problems, but not impossible. Riga has nearly a million people, almost half the population of Latvia, and blah, and blah, and look at how smart I am.”

  “Stop it,” Hannah said. “Let’s hail a cab and go see a castle. Johnny said there were castles all over Latvia, right, Chloe?”

  “Oh, well, if Johnny said,” said Blake. “Though there is actually a castle on the outskirts of town that once belonged to Prince Krapotkin. Built in the thirteenth century. Would you like to go there, my lady?”

  “Stop teasing, I’m serious.”

  “Me too.”

  “No, you’re not, you’re eating a sausage sandwich.”

  “That’s just to absorb the Balsam in my gut.”

  “So let’s take a train ride to a castle,” Hannah said. “Chloe, yes?” Hannah’s languorous bones looked reclothed in new linens.

  “No, I want to stay right here and not move until it gets dark,” Mason said, lying on his back, looking up at the clear sky. “I want to see this canal with all the city lights reflecting off the water. I want to see the night light show of a big city. Why does it have to get dark so damn late? I’ve never seen a big city at night. And then I want to step inside an evening cathedral.”

  “Mase, Hannah, stop the circus, you too,” Chloe said. “Up, both of you. No castles, no city. Varda is waiting for us. It’s our last night. She’s making a special dinner.”

  “What, raw ox tongue?” said Mason. “You know, Homer Simpson says there are some things that are not meant to be eaten.”

  Chloe pinched him. “Varda asked me this morning if Johnny would be coming back.”

  “And you said of course not, right?” Blake said. “We’re never going to see him again is what you told her, correct?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But we’ve never seen a castle.” A pale complaint from Hannah. Chloe stared down the river after the vanishing boat.

  “Pumpkin,” Blake said, “this is the beginning of our trip. There are lots of castles in Spain. We’ll see them all. Eye on the prize, baby. Barcelona has human castles,” he went on. “They’re called castells. The people stand on top of one another, sometimes five people tall, and build a castle. We can’t leave Barcelona without seeing the castellers do their magic.”

  “But I want a real castle, Blakie.”

  “How about I take you to the Castle of Cardona, a medieval fortress in Catalonia, would you like that?” He nuzzled her. “So much to look forward to.”

  After a while, they found a bin for their trash and began a slow amble out of Riga. They looped one last time through the Old City before heading to the train station. Chloe could barely move her legs. She was wiped out after Gregor and the Black Balsam. She could have fallen asle
ep on the grass embankment and dreamed of the wooden launches bright with sunlight and wild with wagtails.

  Nearing Livu Square they heard the amplified strands of an acoustic guitar, playing a hyped-up, jazzed-up, rock-out version of a half-familiar pop song. The voice accompanying the music slowed Chloe down, unsyncopated her step. She stumbled over the cobblestones.

  She had heard many buskers around Riga, with harmonicas, guitars, and banjos, with castanets in their hands and beer in their throats. This wasn’t that. This was something else. Hannah and Mason heard it too. Blake’s eyes didn’t leave his Frommer’s guide.

  “What a voice,” Hannah said, her eyes widening. “Let’s go check it out.”

  “Sounds like a concert,” Blake said, glancing up. “There were many in Jurmala yesterday. Listen to the sound. There’s an amp, speakers. Sounds semi-pro. It won’t be free. It’s not in our budget. Besides, like Chloe said, we have to catch a train back.”

  They talked as they walked, pushing past Rockabilly House. Inside Livu Square, all tinged with pink and yellow Teutonic buildings and olive and white spires enclosing brick patios and cafés and cream umbrellas, a vast crowd had gathered in the center on a patch of green near a lonesome pine. Ignoring Blake’s protests, they snaked their way through the tourists toward the music and the voice. The singer was warbling something familiar, but in a new arrangement. It took Chloe another half-verse and the beginning of a chorus to recognize the tune as “Fell in Love with a Boy” by Joss Stone. Except he sang fell in love with a girl. His heart was still beating. He was just looking for something new. Oh, that’s what it is, Chloe had just enough time to think, before the voice demanded she kiss him by the canal even though he knew that love was fleeting —and then the voice climbed an octave or three and soared above the pine and over the spires and the art deco buildings. It lifted and flew across three bridges and to the sea. That’s how strong the voice was, how long it held its note, how far it scaled the limits of humanity. The tone was sunny, a wave of satin, but it brought with it intoxication, impatience, torment. Chloe stopped moving. Rather, she couldn’t take one more step.