by Nora Ikstena
‘Drink, child,’ she said, like the youngest of all the witches in my fairy tales.
‘Drink, child,’ my mother repeated. ‘Drink,’ she said again, sensing my increasing resistance.
‘Well, then. When I die, then you’ll see!’ Crying and almost gagging, I drank the warm milk. My tears added salt to the milk. I gulped it down so that the battle would be over.
In the evening my mother gave me a signed letter addressed to my teacher, requesting that they not force me to drink milk. My fury melted into gratitude.
The next morning, the familiar nausea had disappeared. Visions of milk no longer obsessed me instead of continents, stamens, catheti and hypotenuses. At lunch, no one put a glass in front of me. But I tasted a little of my neighbour’s milk. It was the same milk that I couldn’t stand, but I could drink it or not. I had gained a little freedom.
*
Often my patients had not made a choice to have a child or not to have one. Whether for lovers who refused to accept a pregnancy or husbands who didn’t want the burden of more children, the exhausted women capitulated. They were ready to endure inhuman abortion pains without anaesthesia. And opposite them in the corridor sat another endless line desperate for children – but a child wouldn’t come no matter how hard they tried.
In the long hours of waiting outside my consultation room the women sometimes managed to bare their hearts to one another. It was all the fault of men, asking women to give up their child, or not allowing them to get pregnant. Yet men themselves were indifferent. They considered this part of women’s world. And Soviet medicine would take care of them.
I sat in my country ambulatory centre in the narrow room with its dilapidated wood stove, its ancient gynaecological chair and suspect examination instruments. This was Soviet medicine.
I often thought of Serafima, now no more than a vague image from a world whose door was unconditionally closed to me. Once she came to me in a dream and said that she had lost her child after all. She had the same lovely face but her eyes were closed. She spoke with her eyes closed. I woke in a cold sweat. And I tried to comfort myself that maybe it meant exactly the opposite, as quite often happens with dreams. White is black and black is white. Life is death, death is life. The narrow corridor of the small ambulatory centre, where my women sit day after day in a never-ending queue, is proof of that.
It was an ordinary late afternoon. Countless incomplete patients’ record cards lay on my chaotic desk, along with a half-drunk cup of coffee, an ashtray and a number of microscope slides with smears which were to be packed up and sent to the nearest city lab. A lamp with its quivering light, a pile of firewood by the stove, an oilcloth screen and a narrow leatherette couch. The familiar, annoying sound of a knock at the door.
I knew what I would see when I opened the door. They would continue to sit and wait. Patiently, eternally, with no end in sight.
After a short pause I opened the door. There it was – the long line of waiting women, and at the end of the line, her knees carefully squeezed together, with her school bag on her shoulders, sat my daughter. She had come to meet me.
Thus she sat there, not realizing what this queue was for. Nor that sooner or later she too would have reason to join the others. Nor that no one, including me, knew how she would fare in the queue or if she would choose it for herself. She had braided her hair herself and clumsily tied blue ribbons in it.
Patiently she awaited the end of my working day. We locked up the ambulatory centre and went home. ‘It will be cold at home,’ said my daughter. ‘The dog will definitely be sleeping in my bed.’ It had iced over and the snow crunched under our feet. ‘Let’s go to that hill where we can see the sky over the river,’ she said suddenly. I lit a cigarette. All around was silent and dark. Somewhere a dog began to bark. We walked through the old graveyard. ‘Now it’s safe,’ she said. Among the grey and black tombstones glimmered white grave mounds. The moonlight shone at a slant and the shadows thrown by the cedars lay across the blanket of snow. ‘Now it’s safe,’ my daughter said again, and took my mitten-clad hand.
The hillside began beyond the graveyard. The snow came up to our knees. There were no other footprints or visible path. Short of breath, I stopped halfway. I lit a cigarette. She stopped to wait for me. Then she started to trudge in front, creating footprints for me to walk in. My daughter walked vigorously in front of me, her braids covered with hoarfrost and on her back her school bag swinging to and fro.
We stopped at the brow of the hill. Below us was a small, steep slope, edged with protecting trees. It shone in the white moonlight.
‘Look how beautifully the heavenly bodies shine!’ said my daughter.
Over the river the sky was full of stars. And plumb in the middle gazed the round face of the moon.
Behind us stretched the line of my daughter’s footprints, by which I had climbed up the hill. In front lay a virgin, snow-clad field.
*
It was a school holiday. Everyone was preparing for the jubilee of the Great October Socialist Revolution, which of course nowadays is celebrated in November. That year November had arrived almost unnoticed. I wasn’t able to visit my grandmother and step-grandfather that autumn break. My mother wasn’t feeling well. She only just managed to keep going to work at the ambulatory centre. In the evenings she would be asleep early. All the household chores fell to me. No matter how much I yearned for my grandparents, I would not leave my mother by herself. I had washed and ironed my own white blouse, but I was worried about the hole in my red pioneer neckerchief: it was too small to be mended but still noticeable. I decided to tuck the neckerchief into my blue vest, as if unintentionally. And in the solemn student council line I took care never to stand in the front row. The main thing was to salute properly and yell clearly, ‘Vienmēr gatavs!’ – ‘Always ready!’ And never to forget this rallying song:
Kreiso, kreiso, Left, left,
Kreiso, kreiso! Left, left!
Pašā Rīgas vidū In Riga’s very centre
Piemineklis stalts. A stately monument.
Granīts brūni sarkans, In granite brownish red,
Ļeņins bronzā kalts. Lenin in bronze is forged.
Kreiso, kreiso, Left, left,
Kreiso, kreiso! Left, left!
That morning, my mother sat on the edge of her bed, rummaging through her handbag, looking for her tablets. Sometimes I would help her, picking them out of the lining. This time I couldn’t find anything, so we hunted for them together. My mother looked so helpless. I brewed a strong coffee for her, hoping that it would help. With a large mug of coffee and her first cigarette, my mother revived. She shooed me out to school so I wouldn’t be late.
All the female teachers had voluminous backcombed hairdos. They had dressed up in suits and high heels. Outside, the school flew our great motherland’s flag. We sang the hymn. The first verse was my favourite:
We’ve gained freedom for this land most dear.
Generation after generation born happy we’ll be.
Here our sea soughs, our tilled fields flower.
Here our cities shine, here Riga resounds.
And the refrain, in which the singers dwelt passionately on the first word:
So–o–oviet Latvia, may she live for ever.
May she brightly in the Soviet wreath shine.
I didn’t understand the next verse, which proclaimed our comradeship with the sublime Russian nation, which would conquer our enemies. Who were our enemies?
The third verse and refrain completed the hymn. Mechanically, I fulfilled all the required actions. I sang along with the others, but I was thinking only of my mother. I was filled with foreboding.
Kreiso, kreiso!
I remembered the drawing that my mother had made in our city flat with me sitting in her lap.
Kreiso, kreiso!
The mother with her baby, united by an umbilical cord and their mutual happiness.
Kreiso, kreiso!
There was no joy her
e. I was counting the seconds to when this solemn parade with all its rallying cries and songs would be over. When it was, I would pull on my coat and hurry home. Then maybe a miracle would happen and everything would be OK. My mother would be at work, or maybe at home and waiting for me with roast chicken and apple cake.
Kreiso, kreiso! Left, left!
Vienmēr gatavs! Always ready!
Brīvi! At ease!
Finally! Once out of the auditorium, I raced like the wind to my locker in the corridor, pulled on my coat and rushed home.
My mother was lying in bed as white as a sheet. I couldn’t feel her breath. I pressed on her heart with both hands and blew my breath into her mouth. That’s what we were taught in school with a blown-up rubber doll.
Kreiso, kreiso!’ I cried out, through my tears, and went on trying to breathe for her.
‘Kreiso, kreiso!’
Suddenly my mother wheezed deeply, and under my hands I felt her heart violently begin to beat again. The wheezes subsided into fairly steady breathing. I threw back the blanket, since she seemed desperate for air. The linen was wet beneath her. I had to change her clothes and the sheet in a hurry, so she wouldn’t catch cold. And I had to fire up the wood stove.
*
This was deeper than sleep, deeper than dreams. It was as if I were gliding through scenes from my life. My mother was ironing a school apron. My stepfather was making paper covers for my notebooks. Suddenly my daughter was wading through a snow-covered field, and I wanted to follow in her footsteps, but I was always too late and missed them. Then my father was cutting down the stand of saplings, and I wanted to run to him, to tell him to come to his senses, but I couldn’t, because it seemed I had no legs.
Serafima appeared in the white light. She was naked and beautiful. Her skin was smooth and glowing, her breasts were supple and round, her legs slim, covered with a light, white down. She was so appealing, so yielding. I went to her and kissed the tiny hollow in her neck. My sense of smell was as acute as a dog’s. I was hypersensitive, as if overheated in the sun. Serafima responded to my kiss, she touched my breasts, they tensed and yielded to her hands. Serafima’s hands were cool and slid easily over my shoulders, arms and thighs. She unwrapped the shawl in which for some reason I had been wound. I was a cocoon, seeing in front of me a beautiful, splendid butterfly – Serafima.
She had half-uncovered me, and I felt a coolness. She embraced me, and suddenly from her flesh to mine flowed a tender wave of warmth. It seemed to wind around me more closely than the shawl. I heard my own heart and pulse, but maybe it was Serafima’s pulse. The two beats mingled together. Gratefully, I dropped to my knees and embraced her smooth legs.
There was neither suffering nor hardship. Life, with all its pitiful daily burdens, was somewhere far behind. Was this dying? Such a sensation of happiness, granted to compensate for all the torment on earth. I wanted this moment to last for ever – the pulse at my temple against Serafima’s legs. But someone with unbelievable strength was pulling me away from her. I couldn’t resist. And Serafima didn’t help me. She stood there splendid and unmoving. But I hung on tightly, ever so tightly, to her knees, her calves, her ankles, her toes, until she slid out of my grasp, because I hadn’t the strength to resist. I slipped away from her. Serafima was left in the white light with my shawl in her hands. Life’s quagmire drew me back.
*
My mother got well quickly. For about a week a nurse from the ambulatory centre came to our house and gave her an injection. Each time the nurse came she sighed profoundly, saying to my mother that she should get on her feet soon because her patients were continually asking for her. My mother’s consulting room was full of sweets and flowers. Should she bring them here for her? ‘No,’ said my mother. ‘Divide them among our colleagues.’
I cared for my mother as best I could. She wrote a note requesting that I be excused from school. In the mornings, sitting on my mother’s bed, we breakfasted together. At midday we ate a lunch that I prepared. Dinner we just had snacks. Mother read to me from her books. From Moby-Dick, of course. ‘Call me Ishmael,’ she exclaimed in a feeble voice before each reading. I didn’t understand the ungodly God-like man, monomaniacal Captain Ahab, and his obsession with the white whale. In my opinion it was a doom-filled book. But it visibly cheered my mother.
My mother’s return to daily life was a good time. She smoked less and didn’t take any tablets, at least in my presence. Her interest in food returned and, probably for the first time, she praised me for the meals I made. ‘Who taught you this?’ she asked, savouring a casserole or sipping a soup. ‘How did you figure this out? Well yes, you’re a big girl now. Are you already thirteen?’
During our leisure time, a schoolmate arrived with news that a monument was being unveiled in our village. Right by the railway station, not far from my beloved embankment by the tracks. It turned out that more than fifty years ago in our undistinguished country station a Russian diplomatic courier had been killed. He had become a hero in Russia, and therefore now also a hero in Latvia. My mother dismissed all this as bootlicking. That was a favourite expression of hers. I had several questions for her. Who and why would someone do that? My mother explained that when Latvia was free, you didn’t have to lick Russia’s boots. ‘Now we have to erect a monument to some dubious spy.’
I didn’t understand what she was talking about. I had a much bigger task to think about than our enchained Latvia. For the monument’s unveiling I was to recite a stanza from Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem ‘The Boat’, which he had dedicated to the railway station’s hero. Although I was assiduously attempting to learn Russian, reciting by heart was daunting! I begged my mother to help me. So for several days our reading time began with ‘Call me Ishmael’ and ended with my desperate attempts to remember the stanza and my mother’s sarcastic comments:
My zhivyom, zazhatye zheleznoy klyatvoy
We live with a cast-iron oath on our lips
Za neyo na krest, i puleyu cheshite.
For this oath we would give away bullets.
Cheshite, cheshite.
Away, away.
(Mother: Let him go away for once!)
Eto, chtoby v mire bez Rossiy, bez Latviy
So that this world beyond Russia and Latvia
Zhit yedinym chelovechynim obshchezhityem.
Would be a single common abode.
(Mother: This he said well – humanity’s communal flat!)
V nashikh zhilakh krov, a ne voditsa.
In our veins blood, not water.
My idyom skvoz revolverny lay.
We walk through the sound of shooting.
(Mother: Dogs, Russian dogs!)
Chtobi umiraya voplotitsa
So on dying we may become
V parakhodi, v strochki i v drugiye dolgiye dela.
Boats, lines of poetry and other eternal things.
‘Call me Ishmael!’
In a strange way my mother’s comments helped me remember this taxing combination of words and lines, and the pronunciation, which was tying my Latvian tongue in knots. The hardest thing to say in Russian was the term for dormitory, chelovechynim obshchezhityem, which was almost as hard as our Latvian term for narrow-gauge railway, šaursliežu dzelzceļš. My mother began to like this game. She started to teach me to add emotion to my reciting. She parodied a man’s deep voice and soon we were doubled over in giggles. In the end I was heartily grateful to Russia’s diplomatic courier for getting shot precisely at our railway station, and even more grateful to Mayakovsky for giving my mother and me such moments of rare happiness.
I recited my stanza at the monument so enthusiastically that my Russian teacher broke down in tears, while my Latvian teacher hatched a plan to send me to the regional reciting competition.
I skipped home to my mother, splashing through the autumn leaves and loudly crowing, ‘Call me Ishmael! Call me Ishmael!’
My mother wasn’t at home. She was back chained to her ambulatory centre. I happil
y fed the dog, lit the wood stove and began to peel potatoes. I felt a cold draught from Mother’s room, where she had left the window open. An ashtray lay on the bed beside Moby-Dick. In it was a bookmark. More precisely, it was a small piece of paper covered with fine print, torn out of a book. I examined it carefully, because I had never seen it in our house. There were also delicately printed numbers on the page. Beside the numbers eleven and twelve I read the following:
And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, thou art with child and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction.
And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.
*
They were strangely empty days and nights – when she went to stay with my mother and stepfather in the city. The dog wouldn’t leave her room but stayed curled up on the rug under her desk. Everything seemed empty, cold and silent, and I would gladly have spent the night at the ambulatory centre. I never went with my daughter, because I didn’t want to darken their meeting times, which were too brief already.
She usually visited them on Saturdays and Sundays. Time grew particularly burdensome on these days. I felt weighed down, as if I could never be free. Now and then I would go to the ambulatory centre, sit in my office and mechanically fill in the senseless record cards. Occasionally I stayed in bed for hours, smoking and reading, but everything seemed an aimless waste of time. Delivered on Fridays, the Russian medical journals could not cheer me. Soviet medical science was limping forward. Pitifully small advances could be gleaned from it. A façade obscured everything – the senseless party and regime proclamations, intended to demonstrate the regime’s care for Soviet citizens, especially for its mothers and children: