High Tide

by Inga Abele

  Then the day comes: her life is halfway over and she’s walking through the woods on a fall morning. The golden asp leaves rustle around her, the earth exhales coolly, and the sky is as blue as her boyfriend’s eyes. And her life is half-over and, now and then, something will happen as time goes on. For example, there have been a lot of births, a few deaths, there will be something that will ache in her over her entire life, something she will never be able to fix, something she will have to dismiss—and so on and so forth. She walks through the woods and feels that she’ll soon reach that critical point when the cup will be full, and when the handle breaks it won’t go unnoticed. The cool glass of the milk bottles from her childhood and the triangular tetrapacks with the word MOLOKO on them—she can’t forget those either. Or the piles of the newly-freed country’s money in suitcases, her first real paycheck—an entire roll of colored paper—frozen kidneys and peed pants, her first time with a boy she would never see again, her first time in an airplane, her first time abroad and seeing strange things. The person you slowly but completely left because he was fading, even though he begged you to stay. Your heart’s betrayals, your wild, spiteful spirit and brief moments of respite, your contracts with your conscience, your father and mother, and your travels near and far, when you fell in love with cities, the sky, or entire regions of uninhabited land.

  Love doesn’t always have to be about people, no, not necessarily. You can fall in love with a city, its many smells, how quiet it is under the snow. Small and large streets and the dusk in the glowing windows that awakens a desire in you, when you stand in the streets with your eyes glazed over simply from wanting to experience every imaginable life, everything behind those windows. You want to tear them from the walls and place them in your chest simply because you know and understand it all. Simply because you love these blinds, curtains, shades, the fraying bits of carpet behind the flowerpots against the walls and windows. A quick or fancy dinner, cats on windowsills, and boiling pots in kitchens. And how calm he is when he comes home from work. And how she tilts her head for him to kiss her cheek. Here is your victory, your life in these basic, little things that everyone will gulp down until the end of time like they’re dehydrated and, when they’re drunk from it, roam along the courtyard walls, craving only that eternal shift between night and day. The shade and a nap on a striped couch while he makes you tea. A moment within yourself in the cozy warmth, when the hands of the clock don’t stab at your dry, tired eyelids like steel knives. You’ll crave the solitude of an old woman, her cat, her parties, and bed full of crumbs from the grandchildren, especially in November, and inside is bright and cozy while outside it’s dusky and cool, and a little freezing. Outside where you stand with your only heart and life in your chest, knowing it all—but how?—and loving, loving, loving it.

  But there is only this moment in the present, this excessive, ruthless sense of awareness, and the acrid scent of the earth.

  Why do I walk around with an orchestra playing in my head?

  And she starts to crack like a pine tree. Her bark peels—layer by layer, falling off in flames. The forest breathes and grows, stands modestly, doesn’t try to prove anything, just exists. She knows the forest is perfect, but the forest itself doesn’t know that. Existence asks too much of a person, too much of this complicated structure, this ball of nerves with a heart, brain, and eyes—how can it forget? It’s an endless struggle, a whirlwind of activity, tendencies, thoughts, instincts, responsibilities—and if not those, then at least the slightest inkling of them now and then. Lifting your hand to change channels on the TV, taking the grilled cheese out of the toaster oven or just running the red light at a packed intersection. Or like when you get back home after being abroad for a long time and, as you look out onto the silky reeds under the sliding shadows of clouds, you ask yourself—who’s the one seeing all this?

  Or when you’re in a new place and get word that your mother has died. I don’t want to hear it, your tired, scarred, cynical heart cries. Your heart doesn’t want any more pain. But something inside you trembles, shivers—a tiny, significant dream right before you wake up, or the screech of an animal as loud as an overworked motor—and you get the piercing realization that your next breath could never come. But it does, and you’re simultaneously thrilled and inexplicably disappointed. Because the question of the heart remains. If someone was once close to you, very close, and is now dead, and you imagine their heart, which you’ve never seen, but can pretty well imagine—and why shouldn’t you—as a once functional, but now stiff, immobile shell at the bottom of a grave. And you try to imagine what the heart is doing down in that grave. Has it cultivated a soul, that sought-after pearl, or not? Most likely not. There isn’t a pearl down there, no archeologist has ever found a pearl in place of a heart. It’s unheard of. Maybe you yourself are the pearl, the fruit and creation of this strange life, but the sudden stillness of the heart, the coup of that flesh, which you possibly loved more than your own, can drive you insane in its stillness and assimilation to the earth. And the decomposition of the heart, its imperceptible transformation into earth and worms, soil, roots—it hurts you, and you’re ready to dig it up out of the dirt, bring it into the daylight, this useless thing that has no spark, no movement, no echo. It’s an obsession.

  But her thoughts have peeled away; at least that’s done with. She takes a hesitant step away from the lee side of a pine tree and moves forward. Sand mixed with black soil, so loose that she sinks down into it up to her ankles. A firebreak freshly tilled in the anticipation of forest fires. There won’t be any more fires. Her thoughts have peeled down to the moist, living pith. Down to her being, to the present, free of the past, the future, genetics, ancestry and contemplation, from high school certificates and notices from detention centers. It suddenly seems to her that this spiritual peace is thievery. Like an unending and painful embodiment of others’ lives—it was such a deep hole, but now it’s just a thick layer: the woods, the road, and the sky. That has to be proof of suffering, she wants to shout, but falls quiet. And if that ends up being the only chance to keep going? Stoop down and grab a handful of your shadow along with the sand—nothing but the woods, the road, and the sky. And you. A thickening of matter, an accidental obstacle to the sun’s rays, a being without genes, without ancestors, without a past, or a future. An observer, someone who has seen one or two of the most beautiful moments of her life in nature. There aren’t many of these moments, but there are some, and she can’t stop thinking about them. She thinks she’ll even remember them in her final hour, like fog snaking through the city on a sweltering summer morning. The movements of fog animals in the empty city streets, when the mist slips its tendrils into the ancient river valley. Movement without movement. Or when the first snow falls on the lake in the forest. A black, clear mirror that glitters endlessly, a disappearing curtain of white, an army of snow, billions of flakes that cease to exist as soon as they touch the clean, black void.

  Yes, but was there ever ugly scenery in the woods? Wasn’t the darkening sky every fall evening when, if you were able to persuade yourself to stop for a few seconds in a clearing to see a pair of ravens fly off with a low “craw-craw,” to see the white jet trails of a plane in the gleam of the setting sun turn redder and redder, and the fine lace of the north-facing treetops grow mysteriously blacker and blacker against the rich yellow sky… wasn’t that beauty? Just like the concentrated color of an expanding sunset before the night thickens, before the earth sinks into itself—there’s no sign of the ideas the wind carelessly sowed where the forest stands in the crisp, wintery stillness, immersed to its roots and tips in a meditation only it can know. A beauty for itself, yet simultaneously meant for her to see. Meant for her, a single body so small in this large clearing. And the glimpse of life that finds her in that moment is rapid and just as insignificant as a train whistling as it leaves an empty station. An essentially unnecessary gesture, a superfluous signal without an addressee; because there isn’t anybody
here, just the surge of tracks from horizon to horizon and the inky wall of frozen spruce trees, along which the train carries its cry and the warm electric glow of its windows.

  She once read, though who knows where: You’ll fall from grace more than once, but it’s okay. It boggled her mind and she thought it over for a long time. It seemed to her that someone was playing a sick joke. What she saw as a sin was nothing more than a lesson to someone else? She couldn’t believe it, but at the same time felt the tiniest hope that this sentence could take responsibility for its words. And what was sin, what kind of word was it? As someone once told her, like the greatest Dostoevsky novel in its both satanic and holy natures, sin was not what people called upon when chasing murderers and thieves to the gallows, oh no, that was another, much more brutal matter, undeserving of that fine whisper of a word “sin”. Sin, he’d said—look into your heart, look at the momentary shivers of hate, desire, pride, envy, gossip, and jealousy that are born in it—that’s sin, locked up in your heart’s emotions, the same heart that also has forgiveness and the eternal balance of peace hidden in it; look at the agitated surface of your blood and you’ll have something to confess to—it doesn’t matter to whom, a priest, the sea or the Holy Mount Kazbek; measure how level your heart is and you’ll find that it’s not the other person you hate, but rather what he provokes in you, your dishonest desires and weaknesses. That’s what you hate, not him, he’s not at fault; he’s like a child, how could he be at fault? But these ripples of resistance coming from your heart are yours, they have your eye color and your facial expressions, not yet put into words or to use. Your heart hides sin in its thoughts. Then suddenly this—you’ll fall from grace more than once, but it’s okay. Get up and move on. Don’t make the same mistake twice. If only she could graft this thought onto her body, like cultivating a double-blossom flower in hopes for a thriving species.

  You have to be the most careful when driving in the car, yes, of course. That is, if you can even look up. Oh, secret… locked chest of time… serious and melancholy expression… impossible closeness. A bowl that cannot be filled even when there is too much, a cup that cannot be emptied—human! If you consider how many gears need to fall into place for even a shadow of intimacy, a figment of intimacy, an imitation of intimacy to be possible… But if it’s true intimacy, the immensely aching, desperate attempt to overcome time and bodies and to make out the darkest chasms within each other? Then to be able to look each other in the eye after all of it—isn’t that a miracle? And when you’re in the car you see the right side of his face. The right side is supposedly from God. So it’s the best one. The first one to be lost in war. But it’s also the most beautiful, without a doubt. And the road itself is beautiful, as is the destiny of the landscape rushing by to flash and reflect in your face and eyes, to change.

  That’s why you’re careful when he offers to take you to Paris—well, maybe not Paris, but maybe to Helsinki, Tukums, Kaliningrad or Lake Baikal. The road shines in his eyes and it’s always beautiful. No one is more beautiful than a person on the road. He’s carefree and pulls you along with him. The road, the beauty, an aching. But hold on to even the tiniest piece of your critical mind. We grow more irrational with every year and, it’s very possible, may someday even understand Russia—no, nonsense, we don’t have to understand Russia, just blaze through it wild and barefooted, doling out their penance. But try to maintain even the tiniest bit of your critical mind, so things don’t totally backfire, so the dark Russian land doesn’t swallow you up. Or at least maintain your belief in yourself. Leave yourself the freedom to wake up the following workday and walk to the lake and back. You won’t really go anywhere; you’ll slump into the trolley or your favorite Rolls-Royce and head off to work. But leave that afterglow of freedom in your mind, that possibility to just go down to the lake—and you won’t have to go anywhere. You’ll be at peace.

  What’s the reason for her restlessness and desire? It’s simple to the point of cliché. She’s once again overcome by this wave and doesn’t know if the wave is crashing over her, or if she’s the wave itself. Respectively, what’s putting her through her paces: destiny or free will? The reason is ridiculously simple, the same reason why she doesn’t like or read those so-called “books on relationships.” They’re garbage and dangerous. As soon as the words “she” and “he” appear on the page she slams the book shut and throws it into the corner with a crash because it’ll probably be the same old story about that maternal instinct that makes women get involved with jackasses. It could just be Ieva’s own miserable experience making her rebel. Because love has once again come down on her, but not a relationship, God no, there’s no sign yet of that swampland called “a relationship.” She’s been overcome by a clean and pure love, and she’d like to reduce this fire to embers as soon as possible, so everything would once again be ruled by calm and the quiet crackle of coals deep in the ashes. This peaceful state is her favorite: cinders on the outside and a quiet movement in the depths, the hidden smoldering of the coals. She likes it, but it’s not possible to burn anything out faster than it’s meant to, life is fire, love is fire, days are sprouts of light on the stem of an evening primrose, light is fire, and time is fire and warmth. And then comes the high tide, then comes the ninth wave and, if you’re the only one who can’t hold her breath long enough to dive to the next low tide, then grab hold of him and soar over it all.

  The reason is so cliché and simple that she’s angry with herself and cries, but she doesn’t want pity. No destiny but her own, no advice, no help. She wants her own experience. Why try to avoid it—so she won’t make mistakes? She needs mistakes, needs them! Fear of mistakes has been stitched into the spacesuits of astronauts and launched off to Mars for years and years. The need to make her own great mistakes surfaced as she trudged through her detached years. She wants the forest and silence, and to see how it’ll all end. And how they’ll start, if they’ll start at all. What she does know is that after the beginning comes the end, and after the end comes the beginning. But whether or not something will outlast her—that she doesn’t know. The most valuable thing she owns is an old Chinese Book of Changes. It hasn’t lied to her a single time. She only turns to this book in rare cases, when it’s no longer possible for her to go on like she usually does. And she’s not looking for keys to the past or future in this book, no. She’s noticed that the most significant thing lacking in a person’s life, and a frightening habit at that, is the ability to be aware of the present situation. She often asks the Book of Changes one question—where am I? And the book has never lied to her, it tells her the place like a well-drawn topographic map: Breakdown.

  Observation.

  Justice.

  Or something else. Defeat turns into assault, structure into debris. And the characters, they’re the same ones you see in your dreams. Now that she’s in love again, she asks the book and the book answers: Swan. It’s the truth. But unfortunately, she’s not a swan when she’s in love. She’s a cat. And the swan never reaches shore. She laughs at herself—look! She’s in love. But does she need it again, she’s so tired and knows all the horrors of it from start to end, like she knows her multiplication tables, so why, and for what? Again with this sighing feeling of existence, this diploma of life. This stream that pulls her forward and makes the pit of her stomach flutter.

  She catches cold so she has time to weigh her options. So she can sit motionless by her kitchen window for hours and watch the landlady, the pigeons, the veins in her hands, the creases at the corners of her mouth in her reflection in the window, her thoughts and feelings, all before she jumps to her feet, calls him, runs and throws her arms around him. Because… is there value in anything without love? Woman has always been and always will be the strength in what’s weak and the great in what’s small, but of her own volition—don’t forget that.

  Outside, coincidentally, is the harsh Baltic seaside climate. When she was little she believed it was the only world that existed. There, by
the sea, three months of sun and nine months of darkness seemed as natural as being in her own skin. The change of the seasons, the velvety tips of budding flowers, drawing sap from birch, or the patter of green, wet leaves against the roof of the house in fall—she was so close to it all, though her head was no higher than the ferns and her fingertips could just reach Gran’s knobby knees. Granddad Roberts sometimes brought his wrinkled face down to hers, coming into view like a piece of brown driftwood the wind had slowly unrolled from a skein of waves. He’d sing:

  Over the fields sweeps

  a low spring wind,

  a violin cries sadly along.

  The violinist plays,

  he once was young,

  the heart in his chest was once full of love…

  And then he’d play the same melody on his silver harmonica.

  Back then Ieva had asked:

  “Granddad, does that mean your heart isn’t full of love anymore?”

  “Always,” he laughed, “my heart is always full of love.”