My head hung low, I crawl forward. I’ve managed to save myself but I feel like a traitor. I can, of course, console myself that this is the finger of fate or a lucky happenstance, that I was delayed with Tamara. Maybe the Lord had planned to save me, it could be, but it doesn’t become easier because of it. Joyful little Rebecca … what’s going to happen to Boris’s and Hilda’s child? If it hasn’t happened already? There were gunshots, after all … but maybe they aimed in the air only, for a scare … for a short while I can still hope that’s the case.
My thoughts are pulled in all directions—to flee, save my life, or with head held high return home, and what will be, will be? It’s true, who’s to say if there’s anyone really inside. If I flee, it would be good to be dressed more warmly, to change from shoes to boots. I must look inside—there’s a gap between the heavy curtains. Wading half-bent to the window, my heart pounds as my mind once more feels shame. I’m in my own yard, after all, but I’m sneaking around like a thief. I stand up straight and examine the room. I don’t see anyone. What now? Stepping back from the windowsill, suddenly I’m overcome with indifference and apathetic calm! Enough screwing around and jerking about. Slowly I’ll collect my belongings and I’ll head to Kolya’s. Should I jump into the wolf’s jaw just because the others have suffered a misfortune? Would any good come of that?
Walking along the path to the door I notice footprints in the snow, and further on, by the arbor, someone lies face down in a snow drift. Shot and killed … Rūdis!? He was trying to escape for sure, but can one escape a bullet! Just imagining it my legs turn to stone. I’m afraid to look at my friend’s numb cheek, I want to remember him alive, but I can’t leave him there. Placing my feet in the trampled footprints in the snow, I approach the corpse. It’s Boris! His coat shredded to bits, the snow soaked with blood. It’s obvious he was fleeing … for God’s sake, why did you run? Had the Americans showed up again? Jesus, in front of your wife and daughter … oh, how the little girl must have … to envisage Rebecca’s feelings is beyond me.
I take Boris by his arms to try and drag him to the woodshed. I won’t get far this way, I must try something else. I enter the house and take the blanket off his bed. I spread it beside his corpse and roll Boris over on his back. His eyes stare glass-like at heaven. I try to press them shut without success. It can’t be that they’ve already frozen! Should I put coins on the eyelids? Fine, but I’ll do that later. I grab the corners of the blanket and drag it further. It slides much more easily. Having pulled Boris into the woodshed, I lay him down between the stacks of firewood and cover him from both sides with the edges of the blanket. Tomorrow I’ll put you on a sled and pull you to the graveyard.
You’re lucky, Boris, no more terror and grief. Maybe I should hang myself right here beside you—so my eyes don’t see and my ears don’t hear … No, I don’t have the strength to look for a rope and I dreadfully want to sleep. It seems that it doesn’t matter in the slightest—if I live or die. And if it doesn’t matter, why do anything needless. I’ll live, come what may. But you, Boris, sleep. Not knowing if according to Hebrew law it’s a desecration, I still make the sign of the cross. There’s nothing you can do now, Boris, so you’ll have to endure this Christian tradition.
It’s good that you sleep like this, you’re not cold, but I still have to heat up the rooms in the house. I load birch firewood on my left arm and turn toward the yard. A piece of firewood falls on Boris’s stomach. Forgive me, that wasn’t intentional. It seems to me that he lets out a moan, but it’s only the wind, which breaks in through gaps in the woodshed walls. When you’re exhausted you see all sorts of phantoms.
Having thrown down my coat, I shed my suit jacket. I gaze at the bowtie as if it were a foreign body, for it seems that I was at the opera not this evening but a year ago.
TRANSLATED BY MARGITA GAILĪTIS
EDITED BY VIJA KOSTOFF
1 Latvia’s Independence, declared November 18, 1918, was understandably not openly celebrated during the German Occupation in 1941.
[LIECHTENSTEIN]
JONATHAN HUSTON
Moondust
THE ASTRONAUT WHEELS DOWN the sterile white hall under the blur of florescent lights. He inhales through his nostrils. The smell of antiseptic would make most men gag. But not him. He’s calm, his heartbeat and breathing are regular, his blood pressure is normal. A woman stands with her back to the wall. She flashes him a thumbs-up. He likes how her back is straight and she has big white teeth. He feels the pressure building between his legs. She’s too old for him, otherwise he might go to bed with her when he returns. He winks and salutes her the way he does all pretty civilians, and then he forgets her.
The astronaut is hooked up to something: a tube protrudes from his thin, naked forearm and ends in a transparent bag slung around the top of a pole. A clear liquid pumps into his vein, glucose or saline solution, probably to keep him hydrated on the flight. He’s had enough of the prodding and pumping. He’s ready to go. He’s worked hard for this, he’s healthy and strong, and his mind is sharp. He’s rolling down the hall in a chair like a wheelchair to relax his muscles before the flight. He can barely feel his legs. They must be strapped in very tight. He whistles wild blue yonder and wonders why he’s not wearing his spacesuit.
The nurse wheels him into the common room.
“Claire’s here,” the nurse says. A young woman is hunching on the sofa by the coffee table. Her hair is too black to be natural, she has too many earrings crawling up her lobe and helix, and she’s too thin and too young for him, the astronaut thinks. She’s probably still in high school, maybe a freshman in college. Sometimes they’re too old, sometimes they’re too young.
The astronaut isn’t flying to the moon today. He tries to get up from his wheelchair but his legs haven’t moved in years. Okay, he says to himself, you know where you are now. Focus. But who is this girl. He tries to keep an open mind without letting it wander. He can do this.
The nurse parks him and his drip next to the girl and says she’ll leave the two of them alone now. The nurse has gray hair tied up in a bun. She’s got a tough look about her. She’s probably Russian. He smiles anyway as she leaves the common room and the memory of her already dissipates like vapor.
The astronaut stretches out his hand to shake the girl’s. “How do you do,” he says. She must be a young admirer.
The girl doesn’t shake his hand. “Mom says hi,” she says.
The astronaut doesn’t respond.
“Your daughter,” Claire says. “I’m your granddaughter, okay?”
The astronaut doesn’t know what to do with this information. He doesn’t remember the girl. Maybe she comes to visit him regularly, or maybe this is the first time he’s ever seen her and this is an emotional moment in their lives. He doesn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable but he does want to know what she wants. He has a routine for dealing with situations like this.
“Would you like a cookie?” the astronaut asks, gesturing to the floral-patterned saucer perched on the coffee table. Claire shakes her head.
He reaches for a cookie himself. Peanut butter. Not his favorite. He takes a bite and the crumbs fall into his lap. He leaves them there.
Claire takes a cookie after all, but she just holds it in her hand for a moment before putting it on the table, uneaten, next to the saucer. She shifts to the end of the sofa and stretches her legs, letting her feet touch the floor. She’s wearing black shorts and her legs are skinny. It’s summer in L.A., but she’s wearing bulky brown boots. He doesn’t like her boots. Her hair falls over her bare shoulder as she reaches into her red canvas backpack. The astronaut likes her muscular shoulders. They remind him of his own. She should wash her hair.
She pulls out an iPad. He has one of those too. He watches Star Trek episodes in bed and plays a game called Doodle Jump. He loves Star Trek, but he loves Doodle Jump even more: a cartoon creature with a trumpet nose and four tiny legs jumps up an endless series of platforms, higher and hi
gher into the sky, all the way into outer space, using spring shoes and propeller hats and rocket packs to gain altitude. If you’re not careful, the creature falls between the platforms and dies, or it gets eaten by a space monster and dies. The astronaut is pretty good at Doodle Jump and it keeps his reflexes sharp. He’s better than anyone else at the nursing home, except maybe the nurse who wheeled him into the common room today. He’s asked her out, several times, always in vain. She’d be just the right age for him, and he likes her, even though she’s Russian. The device this girl holds in her hands has more computing power than the entire Apollo program. He wonders if she’ll ever fly to the moon. He remembers sharing rainbow ice cream at the pier with a black-haired girl once, but she was a lot younger, or he might have seen it in a movie. He remembers the smell of the sea and the flavor of artificial fruit.
“Can we start now?” Claire asks.
“Sure,” the astronaut says. He’s adjusting to the new situation. He reaches over and picks up Claire’s chocolate chip cookie and eats it. It’s too crunchy, and the chips are too hard. He likes them just out of the oven, fresh and chewy, like his wife used to make them.
“Well, will you look at that,” the astronaut says and wipes the crumbs off his lap.
The astronaut imagines Claire’s a reporter, interviewing him after his moon flight. But he knows it’s been a while since his moon flight. He has a habit of imagining things now, and he doesn’t like it. Sometimes, even when he’s not playing, he imagines he’s that little creature with the trumpet nose, jumping up up up into space and never falling, or he’s on a mission to explore … but now he’s going to concentrate on the task at hand and try to remember, not imagine.
Claire adjusts the iPad cover so she can type comfortably.
“What did it feel like to walk on the moon?” she asks.
“I don’t care what it felt like,” the astronaut says. His words come out much too harsh.
Claire stops typing. She looks patient, as if she’s been expecting this. “I’d still like to know,” she says. “It’s important to me.”
The astronaut softens his tone of voice.
“I don’t remember what it felt like,” he says. “But I remember what I did. I had a job to do.”
Claire stops typing again and picks at a chipped, purple fingernail. She has pale hands with long, thin fingers. He’s seen fingers like this before.
“Mom said you’d say that,” Claire says. “I know this is hard, but I want to get at the inside, even if you’re not used to talking about it.”
The astronaut wants to end this conversation with his unknown granddaughter, call the nurse, and get back to his room to play Doodle Jump. But he doesn’t want to disappoint her. He doesn’t want to disappoint anyone who comes to visit him. He closes his eyes and rummages through the ruins that make up his three days on the moon. He’s told the stories so many times, he can’t sort out his fading memories from all the verbal wallpaper he’s plastered over them. If he remembers anything, he remembers the stories he’s told. He clenches his fist. He feels the arthritis in his fingers and he remembers how hard it was to pick up rocks through his gloves, to wrench them free of the boulders that embedded them. There were a lot of rocks.
He says, “When Carl and I left the command module and entered the LEM, for a moment I—”
“The LEM?” Claire asks. She rubs her fingers against the screen of her iPad.
“The lander,” he says. “One astronaut stayed in lunar orbit while two of us landed on the moon in the lunar module. We called it the LEM. Carl and I collected rocks and set up experiments to figure out what the moon is made of. You should know this.”
“I know what a LEM is,” Claire says. “It just sounded funny when you said it.”
The astronaut doesn’t believe her. He isn’t sure he likes this granddaughter of his. He doesn’t like her attitude, and she isn’t prepared for the interview. This generation will never make it back to the moon, even with all their powerful gadgets.
“Why are you here anyway?” he asks. He’s surprised by his anger and he tries to suppress it. She’s just a girl. He wishes he had a glass of milk to offer her. “Are you sure you don’t want a cookie?” he asks. “The last one’s peanut butter.”
Claire pulls back into the cushions of the sofa. “I want to know what it’s like to be the last person who remembers the moon.”
The astronaut had forgotten that. He’s the last man alive who walked on the moon. He must be really old. When he dies, the last memories of the moon will die with him. But his memories are dying already before he has the chance to. He curses himself sometimes. He tries not to let himself get distracted, not by the television blaring in the corner of the common room or the chatter of his fellow residents, the smell of stale food and disinfectant, the growing pressure in his bladder, his questions about who this girl is across from him, or why he can only remember snippets of anything. He struggles to piece his memories of the moon together now like a broken mosaic. Some of the stones are already lost or crumbling, or cracking and loosening as he speaks, or pilfered from other mosaics stuck in the crevices of his mind. He tries to reassemble the memories that must be half a century old by now. He remembers steel sunshine rippling off fields of blinding dust. He remembers indigo beads of molten lead and orange clumps of clay buried in mounds of powdery graphite. Can that be? He remembers specks of olivegreen crystal strewn over charcoal plains, house-high boulders of basalt and rubble, breccia blasted from craters created by meteorites raining like bombs from the deep black sky, blood-red lava pouring from mouths of ancient volcanoes before they died. Or maybe he read that somewhere, when he was preparing for his mission.
“There were a lot of rocks,” the astronaut says. That’s something he’s sure of.
“Rocks,” Claire says and types something in her iPad that’s longer than “rocks.” She must think he’s an idiot. “Sounds like a buzzkill,” she says.
But in the end it really was all just rocks. He was an Air Force pilot pretending to be an astronaut pretending to be a geologist. If he’d been chipping away at all those rocks, clammed up in a Teflon and Mylar spacesuit in the California desert instead of a lunar highland, breathing artificial air that stank of sweat and stale farts, his fingers and arms hurting so bad from gripping hammers and pounding probes with gloves that barely flexed, he would have called it all a sick joke and gone back to bombing Communists for a living. He still can’t think of anything more boring than geology. This is one thing he has in common with his granddaughter, whose eyes are surveying the craggy, lopsided faces of the other old people in the common room. He doesn’t want to be like them. He hated those rocks. But that was all there was. No water, no air, no fire other than the sun radiating down on them when they weren’t shivering in the shade. He and Carl were a space-age Adam and Eve collecting rocks in a barren garden where even God and Satan never set foot. No new life and new civilizations to seek out. Just rocks and dust as far as the eye could see. And in empty space the eye could see so far: nothing was muted, nothing soft. The desolation of gray hummocks and tan craters and white mountains stretched out before him until his gaze hit the black envelope of the universe, punctured only by the sun and the crescent of a planet so far away. But the planet looked magnificent, like a piece of blue bubblegum hovering right in front of him, wrapped in white cotton candy, as if he could just reach up and pluck it from the sky and put it in his mouth, and he wonders what it would have tasted like if he’d—
“Did you ever feel guilty?” Claire asks.
“Why would I feel guilty?”
“Because of when you came back.” Claire shrugs. “And because it took a lot of money to send you to the moon,” Claire says. “Cold War propaganda while children on Earth were starving, college students were being shot, families being lynched. Vietnam, Cambodia, Nixon. That never bothered you?”
The astronaut never felt guilty about that. He really has to go to the bathroom. “You can’t just alwa
ys fix things,” he says. “Sometimes you have to build things.”
It’s easier for him to reconstruct the moon than the state of the nation fifty years ago or his family. There was no time on the moon to think of family and friends and barbecues and church and football, let alone politics and the meaning of life. No room to think of his wife, waiting for him to return alive, cheering him on in front of the TV screen, cookie dough ready to go. Twenty hours of moonwalks over three days on an airtight schedule left no space to be homesick or to philosophize or wax poetic. There was no time to think of anything other than engineering and geology, trying to remember which rocks were interesting, cleaning off the moondust that gummed up their instruments, trying not to screw up and die. His whole lifetime had been compressed into the only three days of his life that mattered to anyone or that anyone would ever remember. He remembers the stress and his heart racing and painful breaths. And when he got back to Earth he was depleted and confused. Like coming back from a war. He screwed a topless waitress at the Boom Boom Room in Nassau Bay. Now that felt like life for a while, slipping back into living breathing flesh, his body wiry and tough with the heroism only an astronaut can bring back from the moon.
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