by Viktors Duks
The day of departure
We are all at the Classicist’s house. Natalija has found a big bag into which we load up the four mines, along with four Russian and four German military helmets. The Legend presented us with some of them. We had to take the Englishmen to the Legend’s museum.
The time has come to say good-bye. We’re back at the same place where a few days ago we had first set eyes on these wonderful guys. Four hands were raised into the air for a wave, and I can’t really explain what I was feeling right then. Our friends passed through the passport check and disappeared. Natalija cried.
It wasn’t the end of the adventure for our friends, however. On the way back, the most important bag got lost—for more than two weeks. Matt and his friends had to fight to get back their property. Eventually a letter from England appeared on our computer screens.
Hi all
Hope you are all well,
It’s really hot here at the moment (30 degrees C!!!!) phew too hot to work, is it hot with you?
Well after weeks of correspondence with the British consulate in Vienna I finally secured the release of our bag…hooray!!!!!!
—and got it home on Saturday. They had re packed it and the only things missing where the ammo box parts, don’t know why? but I am just happy to get back the helmets and grenades. We can always bring some ammo boxes back home with us on our next visit!
Apparently the bag was not stopped because of the metal x ray but it fell off the conveyor belt in transit and spilled out on to the floor. The baggage handlers where very frightened as a load of grenades rolled towards them, so they called the bomb disposal dept who came and evacuated the area and nearly evacuated the airport!!!! No wonder the plane was delayed. We still don’t know why they did not call us at the airport so we could have told them it was safe? Anyhow at least they came to their senses and sent it back to us.
We are all wondering how we came across on Russian TV? Was the ort program good? Let us know.
Still trying to get someone to lend me a video recorder so I can do a copy of the tape you gave me
Will send video I did to you this week.
Well, missing you all, and looking forward to seeing you all again soon.
Best wishes to you all
Matt and Annie
“A relationship between two people is like a bank, with both people depositing something into the account. The more you deposit, the stronger the relationships. The worst situation exists if withdrawals are made from the account all the time. Viktors, you must be under a heavy burden of loans from that account. You have to decide whether you want the woman back or not.”
I sat, my head in my hands, and listened to the Attorney instruct me. I don’t know where he found the metaphor about the bank. I didn’t know when he had become so very smart. I learned something, though. What a stupid question—when did he become so smart? A year earlier he had won his girlfriend after a serious battle with a competitor. I couldn’t imagine that. He’s a wealthy and handsome man, and dozens of women would lie down in front of him if he just whistled. Instead he goes off and loses his head over some bitch. But what am I saying here? I’m ashamed of some of the things I did myself.
“We both had loans out. You want to know what I think? We’re dealing with the laws of nature here. As soon as a bitch—and I’m not talking about my wife, I’m talking about a dog bitch, a filly, a cow, a woman. As soon as she feels that the male in the relationship is becoming weak, she immediately looks for a stronger one.”
“You’re so right,” the Attorney said. “I’ve been thinking about that, too.”
As we walked out of the teahouse, I asked my friend, “Are you happy with her now?”
“...I don’t know.”
No psychologist has helped me as much as men who have been dumped and humiliated have. I think I believe that a real man is one who has been cheated so fucking badly by some woman, just once—cheated so badly that he doesn’t know where to go or what to do. Nature makes sure that this happens so that men don’t see life as a rose bush. You have to suffer in order to understand simple human joy.”
“A little girl was sitting on the German helmet and pissing into it. My mother was also sitting on a German helmet that hadn’t rusted and still had all of its emblems. My God, the things my ears must hear!”
“All children of the war have used helmets. Let me tell you something else—my grandmother used to tease me by telling me that dogs ate from the helmets.”
***
Mid-June
The mass media in Latvia are full of stories about a storehouse of illegal weapons that’s been found. The man who was selling the weapons was taken away by the police. I can say with no hesitation at all that he deserved it. The boy had chosen a form of business that was not exactly legal. He had fairly new equipment in his arsenal. I wouldn’t be worried about this if one of our guys hadn’t been caught during the subsequent police sweep. I wrote about that before. He’s not guilty of anything, believe me, but does anyone care? I’m asking about supermen, the ones with the pistols. If I weren’t ashamed of one woman who is going to be reading this, I would let you know how “proper” and “rich” my vocabulary is.
The Classicist spent two nights waiting for the police to come and get him. He was the only one who talked to the arrested guy on the phone. Then he called and asked me to go see him right away.
I did. I hadn’t seen the Classicist for some time, and so we were ready to spend hours talking about cats, the weather, our children and, of course, the recipes which can be found in any women’s magazine.
When I was leaving, my friend gave me a German pistol. Let it stay with you for a while, he said. It’s the only one I have, he said. The digger couldn’t force himself to drill a hole into the treasure. He had drilled too many holes throughout his life (don’t misunderstand me when I say that).
We had friends in law enforcement, and we got information from them. They told us that the guy they were holding was not betraying his friends. A good man. The idiots didn’t even find anything to accuse him of, but they did collect his very exclusive collection of fine weapons. Evidence, you see.
I spent a couple of nights thinking about the knives in my kitchen. Should I destroy them?
***
July 3, 2001
The Legend invited us to go out into the forest. That meant that we had to put everything else aside. We had to accept our teacher’s invitation. The main thing for me was to inform my colleague at work that I would be gone for two days.
It was the height of summer, and the thermometer appeared slightly surprised at its own ability to drive the mercury up to the mark of 30 degrees Celsius.
Our plans? Same as always—collect the remains of soldiers and bring them out. Our place? Our forest, but in a different sector.
We all knew that the day would not be easy. We were standing against a fortress of green trees, and they were just waiting for us to attack. Their defenders were the insects, and as we trod into the woods, all kinds of flying bloodsuckers buzzed around our heads. The further we went, the more sweat soaked we became. The more we smelled, the thicker and more shameless became the cloud of insects above our heads. We weren’t talking about mosquitoes—there were three different kinds of horseflies that could poke through our camouflage vests as though they were bullets. What a shitty feeling! During one of our infrequent rest stops, Little Spirit caught one of the flying beasts and stuck a reed up its ass. Then he let it go. The flying monster had become a bomber. It became heavy in its flight as he lifted the reed into the skies.
The Legend knew where we were going, and soon enough we were standing alongside a collapsed bunker. Along the edges, under the moss of the forest, we could see pieces of Russian army boots. We started to dig up the soldiers. They were not complete, as always. People or forest animals had disturbed their resting places. We inspected each piece of sod carefully, finding teeth and silver crowns. We found nothing that would help us identify any
of the soldiers.
It was the middle of the day, and it was getting hotter. The air became heavier, and there was no breeze at all. We were drenched with sweat and began to drink our water just one sip at a time. A documentary filmmaker was with us with his camera, and it was clear that this was the last time that he would agree to this kind of foolishness.
I was mistaken, though. Later in the evening he would ask, “When are we going the next time?” I had forgotten something that he had told me six months earlier. “Viktors, you have to understand that this is something that we simply have to do. We have to write scripts and film scenes. It’s a total need, and it must be satisfied. SO SIT DOWN, YOU MOTHERFUCKER AND WRITE. WRITE A MOVIE ABOUT WAR AND LOVE! Write it like a lullaby. There are still women alive who sent their husbands and sons off to the war. Soon they’ll be gone. YOU HAVE TO DO IT NOW, today!”
That was a lyrical side step from the reality I was describing a few paragraphs ago. There’s no point in describing that which we found—nothing special. Stupid stinginess, however, did not allow us to leave the things behind. Only then did we understand how a donkey feels when a fat tourist sits on its back. It’s terribly hard to carry military souvenirs. The straps of a backpack cut deeply into your shoulders. After a while we’ll be taking some of the stuff back into the forest and burying it again. Don’t laugh—we just can’t bring ourselves to throw anything away.
Silently, we filed back to our base camp. It took us several hours of thrashing through the thick woods. The Legend occasionally looked at his compass and pointed us in the right direction. I was thirsty. When we came out on the forest road, we were two kilometers away from where we were supposed to be.
We didn’t do much of anything for the next 30 minutes. Taking advantage of my last reserves of strength, I peeled off my boots to see my boiled toes for the first time. The diggers poured liters of water and beer into themselves. Nobody in history has thought up a lovelier drink than pure, clean water.
And now I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can tell you about my main memory from that night.
Evening was falling, and we were sitting around a fire and cooking sausages. We were sprawled out on the ground, drinking beer and trying to decide on the movie that we would use to bring some sound to the quiet corner of the forest. The Legend had brought along a television set and a VCR.
“Don’t stare,” the Legend smiled. “We have to know what’s going on in our country. And then we can watch a war movie so that tomorrow we know what to look for and where to dig.”
The Legend and the Forest Guy hooked two cables up to some low-voltage lines that were nearby. The video camera and our mobile phones could be charged up. Our electric teapot boiled water for coffee and tea. We were in paradise. I know that people who don’t know what we’re doing would be very surprised to find out—we do things that would appear in the unknowing person’s dreams forever. Even we, however, were surprised at the Legend’s decision to bring along a VCR.
“Sit down, you guys. Let’s go,” the Legend called to us. “What do you want to watch? U-571?”
“Not that!”
“That movie was bullshit!”
“Legend, I had thought better of you.”
A wave of laughter and accusations rolled across the Legend.
“OK, OK—I just thought that you guys like unbelievable comedies. I guess that means that we can’t watch the siege of Stalingrad either. OK, we’ll watch some German documentaries. Later we’ll watch some Russian ones.”
Movies from Hollywood are fine, but Hollywood must never make movies in which Americans portray Russians, especially if the story is about war. It’s simply not possible, just as Russians could never make a movie like Saving Private Ryan. That’s been the best war movie in recent years, and the Americans made it.
The TV and VCR were on the ground. The terrible sounds of war were back in their environment. The first bunkers were just ten meters away from us. Half a century earlier, the land on which we were sitting had been the scene of fierce fighting. The gates of Heaven had opened up to take the souls of thousands of dead soldiers.
A powerful stream of processed beer soaked into the ground. I sighed and looked at my friends. It was a nice sight. For a moment I was sorry that God had not made me an artist. Maybe it’s for the best—God made me all sorts of other things. Against the black background of the forest I watched the red and golden flames of the fire, interacting with the blue screen of the TV. The light shone between the dark figures of my colleagues, and they became ghosts of the night.
“Where did you get such stylish glasses?” I asked the Legend.
“You won’t believe it,” my teacher smiled. “Someone brought them to me from the city dump. They’re wonderful glasses—the only ones who don’t fall off. I can see perfectly with them. They’re antiques—at least 60 years old.”
“By the way,” he continued. “What are you planning to do with the foxhole that is full of dead soldiers who were buried there during the war before their comrades dug a new foxhole right next to the first one?”
“We were there. You know what we saw? There was absolutely nothing to suggest that there had ever been a battle there. It was an empty field. All of the ditches have been filled up. There was only an alley of trees to suggest where the house stood at one time. We could have spent all fucking day there,” said the Communicator. “There wasn’t really a place for us to start, but then all of a sudden a guy from the Latvian Legion showed up. He had fought right there on that field. Fuck, I knew that he was a sign. He showed us where the defense lines were. We’ll deal with the airplane first, and then we’ll think about what to do next.”
“By the way, Legend, you’re invited to the event where we lift the airplane out of the swamp. As soon as our sponsors give us the money for the equipment, off we go.” I concluded our conversation that way.
***
September 15, 2001
“He was constantly fidgeting during the lectures, as if he were sitting on pins and needles. Viktors simply disappeared in the middle of the day, he couldn’t take it anymore.”
I heard that sentence later from the mouth of the Director. He had heard it from Bonis, who is also in my class. Bonis is a musician, and he wrote a song for the Director’s movie. He later received an award for the best song from a film, and I almost cried when I heard it. We have interesting people in my class, that’s true.
It is also true that I can’t sit still in class. In the depths of the forest, there were nasty little bugs just waiting to tear into my flesh. Today is the second day of the “congress.” The Communicator and Little Spirit went yesterday, the Classicist and his company went today. All they’re doing now is calling me up and disturbing me while I’m in class. On the other hand, they’re really not disturbing me. After all, when the Classicist calls, I always pick up. And now, because of that jerk, I’m missing my lectures, sitting at the wheel of my car and rushing toward adventure. From time to time I change the CD in the player, and I look at my fingernails. I had a manicure yesterday from a girl who was so great that I almost fell asleep in the chair. The only thing that I could ask her afterward was, “That’s all? What about the cream, where’s the hand massage?”
Yesterday was a good day, generally speaking. I went to see my barber after a long pause. He knows what I need, he knows my style and understands it without speaking. He’s gay. So is my other barber. A very complicated person. He was abandoned by a woman once, and he suffered so much that my heart still hurts for him. When I sat down in his barber’s chair, he had been dumped once again.
“Who was she this time?” I said, trying to find out the latest big secret in little Latvia.
“It was a he this time,” said my barber. “He was a Frenchman, and he was so completely useless about things that I got tired of him. I’ll tell you what, though. Each time you get dumped, it gets easier. When she left me, I lost all control. On one night I had sex with a Catholic monk and a Lutheran
clergyman.”
“And what happened then?” I couldn’t just leave the conversation there.
“Well, later the monk wrote poems in which he called me Satan, he called me a tempter.”
I couldn’t add anything to that information. When emotions prevail, common sense runs out the door. That’s not an original thought; someone said it long ago. I understand the monk, though, especially after all of the childish foolishness in which I’ve engaged over the last six months. I get goose bumps thinking about it. Maybe I’m fooling myself, though. I was what I was on New Year’s Eve, and my soul could not change anything. My destiny allowed me to understand that it’s just one step from love to hate, just like it’s one step from genius to idiot. Love and hate can come together into a whole, and a genius can also be an idiot.
Older people often told me that if I didn’t watch out, I would end up drinking from the well in which I was spitting. Well, they were wrong. I’m drinking from a well in which I not only spit, but did everything else, as well.
Writers and poets were idiots to me.
I’ll never be that kind of person.
Oh, shit! I am that kind of person already.
I’ll never need that stupid English language!
Believe me—it’s a beautiful language. “I miss you.” “I wish you were here.”
Dita will never leave me.
No comment.
Gays! The time comes when you have to pay for the sins of your tongue. Nothing gives me any right to mock or humiliate men who love a little bit differently. Among gays there are not only good people, but also people who mean something to me. I can thank my guardian angel for never letting me say, “I’ll never be gay!!!”
Whoops! What did I just say?
I didn’t say it out loud.
Good heavens, what am I writing about here? I’m out in the forest already. Maybe I’m still on the road, leaving the society of the city behind. I don’t know, but I am very much convinced that for the last for hours I’ve been receiving operational information about the discovery of the skeletons of two soldiers. I think that the most interesting process will start when I get there. At least I hope so.