High Tide

by Inga Abele

  Although, he could just leave. It was always an option. You could leave wherever you were as long as you were alive. Buy cigarettes and a book of matches at the gas station, stop and smoke one halfway across the bridge before throwing the rest of the pack into the river so they can’t tempt him. Then take a right and head toward the small Russian church. Then across the train tracks, where little red and green lights glitter welcomingly in the shallow ravine. And past the tracks he was already almost home. Five kilometers—and his shed. Probably as cold as ice by now. The heat gets sucked out of the shed in no time; it’s no surprise since the walls are so full of cracks that the wallpaper flaps in the wind.

  But it’s nice to get a fire going.

  Open the flue.

  Pile wood into the stove. Pack enough newspapers in the middle. Then light it.

  Close the stove door and regret throwing the pack of cigarettes into the river. It’s nice to have a smoke while lighting the stove. Surrounded by the dark, cool room, where the roaring flames reflect yellow onto the walls and he can see the white puffs of his breath. Regain warmth slowly, along with the floor, the ceiling, the bed and table, along with the bricks and wood. It was all somehow very nature-like.

  Andrejs remembers how Ieva used to do that sometimes at the Zari house. It was too bad he didn’t smoke back then. It would’ve been pretty great with the both of them. One over the course of the entire evening. With Ieva. But they never had anything together.

  But this woman here—she’s a typical woman. He told her how he’d quit smoking and right away she started going on about how good that was, and how she’d have to keep an eye on him so he didn’t pick it up again. That thing all women have, that kind of habit of ownership, they’re supposedly the weaker sex, but they’re all just calculating bitches. They net you with their promises, tie you up, hold you to your word like they’re yanking on the reigns, school you, keep an eye on you, babysit you. Just wait until she wakes up, then he’ll tell her what’s what, tell her not to get her hopes up, not to expect anything. She’ll learn only the things she’s entitled to learn. And give everything else a rest. Prison is his past. And that’s all he’ll say.

  But why is this accounting thing bothering him? Ah, right, because of the photograph. She showed him a photo album—well parts of it, a few photos right at the beginning. And he’d accidentally seen the next page—kids in the prison visitation room, in the corner with the iron swing set. He recognized it right away, even though he’d only seen it a few times since he’d been released. When you’re in the prison you don’t see how pretty it looks from the outside. It’s white. With fences and searchlights. And that strange alarm tone that goes off once an hour. And a swing set in the visitation area. His prison.

  He recognized the yard by its masonry. The kids play on the swing set by the prison while their mother sits in accounting—he decided that’s how it went. Two kids. Two’s always better—it’s always more fun. Now she’s alone, he can tell by her slippers and toothbrush. Who knows if her husband died or left her. Actually, he doesn’t care. She can tell him as much as she wants to. What’s done is done.

  But the handwriting under the photos is familiar. The number two in the year is like a swan with a curled neck. Maybe she was one of the people in accounting who accepted payments for visitations back then? Back when Ieva still came to see him? Who knows why he’s being nagged by memories of that slanted “2”; he probably saw it on some receipt when Ieva came to visit.

  Sweet little accountant. She’s pretty in the pictures, and still looks good now. He told her this. So she wouldn’t be offended that he wasn’t really into the whole pictures thing. What’s done is done. What’s the point of photographs—your eyes never change. You’re not going to love a woman made of paper. But the one resting her head on his shoulder, that’s something else entirely—warm, full-figured, lightly snoring. Very quietly. Andrejs knows she’s asleep. Because in prison you learn to tell by the sound of someone’s breathing whether or not they’re asleep. The rhythm is completely different. Especially the exhale.

  And what says they’ll even get around to talking? He could just ask her straight out about the accounting. But what if he suddenly wants to go home? Or tomorrow morning, even—bail while she’s still sleeping? You can’t force your heart to feel something. Visiting is great, but being home is even better. And if being home is better, then conversation is definitely not mandatory. Burden yourself with excess information. She already managed to talk about a few things while she was seasoning the meat. Show him the photo album. And ask questions. He won’t say anything. What for? For more heartache? It’s pointless and disloyal.

  So she’s sleeping. Let her. It’s a nice moment. A couch under him. A woman beside him. The strips of light cast from the wall lamps long and muted. To the right a window, and beyond it darkness and cold. A TV in front of him with the volume turned down. Warmth all around him—not the abrasive, dry heat of a stove, but the soothing blanket of centralized heating.

  It’s his, Andrejs’s moment. A moment of existence. He’s gotten so good at capturing these moments over the past years. He sniffs them out like a bloodhound, extracts them like a pearl diver and brings them to the surface of his consciousness, breaks and grinds them down like a nutcracker. He’s almost happy, dammit—happy!

  He doesn’t need much anymore. The waves that used to crash over him have thinned out. Soon the sky will be visible through them. He’s almost convinced that its dark corners no longer hide any threatening shadows that could bring him suffering. It’s his fate—to spend his entire life as a toy in the rolling waves of life. To do something and only realize it after the fact. Life brings nothing but pain to people who live like that. He’s had enough. It’s nice here, in the shallows. And his memories are within reach if he ever wants to feel something.

  He was also happy back when Ieva still came to see him. But it was a tormented happiness. Kind of like what he feels now, when he replays the scenes of his life over and over, even though he should relax and enjoy the warmth, this moment of existence. Why let yourself sink in the past when you can’t change or undo it? To feel that troubled happiness? Life is life, it has everything; the contents in that pot are so thick that, in the moment something happens, you can’t tell if you’re still happy or not. But only the good things remain in your memory.

  Back when Ieva still came to see him, he would start waiting for her three months in advance. Once you’d shown you were hardworking and could behave, you’d get an extended visit. One visit per season. He’d carefully fill out the request form, put down Ieva’s passport information, and write “wife” in block letters on the line above “relationship.” Back then he had a wife.

  They usually brought Ieva in first. The prison’s hotel room was a long, narrow bedroom with a window at the end of it looking out onto the inner prison wall. Two beds against opposite walls. Two bare, ugly nightstands. No frills.

  She was always sitting on the bed when the guards brought Andrejs in. He liked to think that she sat because her trembling knees would give away her excitement. But maybe she sat so she’d resemble a painting. Because she knew full well—in this empire of ugliness she looked so unnaturally beautiful. Who the hell knows. He was never able to fully understand Ieva.

  He already had the feeling back then that she was slowly pulling away from him, that she was already associating with people who stayed out of trouble. And it was only the prison with the clanking of its hundreds of doors, the jangling of keys, narrow hallways, the spots of light on the guards’ uniforms, Andrejs’s shaved head and large eyes in his gaunt, dark face that fused them together—the way only prison can do.

  When she stopped coming, he spent the next four years entertaining the thought of killing her once he got out. But that lasted only four years, not longer. No emotion lasts longer than four years without support from God. It was around that time he found that book by the stove in the prison boiler room, read it and calmed down. For life.
The only thing he asked of God was to never see Ieva again. Now he’s always on edge whenever he goes to Riga to visit their daughter. Ieva is probably around somewhere. Why shouldn’t she be?

  Just as alive as back then.

  His hands would still be behind his back, even though it had been more than thirty seconds since the guard had removed the handcuffs and left the room. Andrejs grinned like an idiot every time—maybe Ieva didn’t notice, at least he liked to think so. Grinned like an idiot and rubbed his wrists.

  Then—and then he’d rush to the bed and pull her into his lap like a cat, warmth all around and their scents mixed together. They’d sit for a long time, pressed into each other, filling each other’s contours, almost motionless. Breathing each other in.

  And then they’d start to talk.

  Finally Ieva would break free and they’d start to make dinner. Outside would be growing dark.

  Like in that one song—just the two of them, alone in this world—what was that song? It doesn’t matter. There are so many songs like that and all the singers in the world sing about it.

  But the feeling was so rare. It was like the world had just been created. And they were the first two people in it.

  Two people protected by a barbed wire fence, dogs, and guns.

  It had been so beautiful. As if Andrejs even understands anything about words, anything about the word “beauty,” for example, because no one ever really taught him the meaning of words. Everything he knows he knows from observation. Jesus!—who was going to teach words to a farm boy like him? “Get lost!” or “Take ’im, he’s in the way!”—behold, his lesson. Ieva added the word “beauty” to his vocabulary later, but she spoke differently; she was his Gospel. She would even read aloud to him at the Zari house. Books. At night! Before going to bed—like for a kid.

  But that’s just how she was: she’d spend the day thinking and talking to herself, and at night she’d look for answers in books and even read aloud to him. And why not? It’s tough when you live out in the country, surrounded by black woods. Where the darkness quickly thickens in the snowless winters, and you can hear the constant rush of the ocean from the north. You could go crazy. But they had their little room and their large bed, and the yellow-painted light bulb hanging bare above them. And Ieva reading out loud to Andrejs. He’d warn her ahead of time that he’d fall asleep. That kind of reading reminded him of his mother’s lectures. Ieva was his Gospel, his mother—the Law. The only time his mother could hold him when he was little was at bedtime; the rest of the time she could neither control him, nor find him. Skis, a shotgun, a hunk of bacon, and his dog—that’s all he needed.

  True, when Ieva read Knut Hamsun to him, he didn’t fall asleep so quickly. The woods, a dog, a girl. The dog shot dead in honor of the proud girl. Andrejs understood all of it, there was nothing to discuss.

  There was also—who was it again—Trygve Gulbranssen, Beyond Sing the Woods. Another Norwegian writer. The woods, darkness, horses, and the proud Christina. And everything carried this sense of a larger, more respectable life. It was natural.

  How beautiful, Ieva had said.

  Beauty!

  To her, the greatest beauty could be found in the thing Andrejs hated the most—some kind of statement or phrase. She’d read those phrases over and over again and almost tremble with joy.

  Ridiculous.

  Why spend so much time digging around words? Outside there was real life, the woods, a tractor, livestock, and most of all—a husband. Andrejs gave up so much for them to have a life together: his skis, his shotgun, and even the woods. Because they had to make ends meet, save money. But she just re-read sentences. What’s the big deal, he’d often ask, it’s a nice sentence, so move on! But it’s not something real. It was better to steer clear of fantasies, awful things that they were.

  Like that novel The Idiot, which Ieva found particularly beautiful. Jesus Christ! The definition of boredom.

  When she opened that book, he’d fall asleep without the tiniest hint of regret. Dostoevsky could mess with your mind, and let him, but you were responsible for paying attention and drawing that line when the time came. Andrejs remembers what the book looked like: a Soviet era publication with a bluish-grey canvas cover, with a really stupid-looking cherry red picture at one corner of a man and woman with tiny waists caught up in dance. Ieva was pregnant then. He remembers what she looked like just as well as he remembers the book. The soft skin of her round stomach, the silky, soft triangle at its base and her breasts, hard and protruding like the horns of a stag, and with large, dark tips. None of that tiny waist crap. At that time all Ieva would eat was sprats with rye bread. The effects of the pregnancy were like that—she’d make him run into town for sprats if there weren’t any in the fridge, even if it was the middle of the night. Downed them with rye bread like a madwoman. Lost a lot of weight. The doctors warned her, but nothing helped. She was stubborn.

  They made love each night, and sometimes afterwards Ieva would read aloud.

  It all happened in that one year—falling in love, a child, turning eighteen, a wedding, the collapse of the Soviet Union—boom! An entire lifetime over the course of twelve months. Ieva cried. The whole year. It’s no surprise Monta grew up so sensitive. If anything she’s neurotic, because Ieva spent the entire year crying. Pregnant women shouldn’t act like that, he’s convinced. Even if the empire collapses.

  Monta was born while he was away. He’d driven out to the border to clear a forest in Nīkrace. He tore all the way back across Latvia to get back home to the Zari house once he heard the news. He wanted to bring his daughter home himself, in the tractor. Ieva wouldn’t let him, said she wanted to get home by taxi. Again with some kind of fantasy she’d gotten from a book.

  When Andrejs met Ieva on the front steps of the hospital holding the baby, it seemed like several years had gone by instead of several days. Ieva looked disheveled and bright-eyed—unfamiliar. She had probably expected a flower from him, but he didn’t have one. She shouldn’t expect something from him that he wasn’t going to give.

  He looked at his daughter—cute. He called for a taxi. So be it.

  But he fell asleep in the cab. No surprise since he hadn’t slept much the last few nights. A cast-iron stove had smoked away in the loggers’ barracks, and all night there was nothing but charcoal and the howling of the village dogs. Now and then he’d light a cigarette and listen to the snoring of the other workers. The heavy night pressed the smoke down and constricted his chest. But maybe it had been from the excitement that he now had a daughter.

  The taxi driver woke him when they were already back at the house:

  “Wake up, Dad! You should’ve carried your newborn in yourself!”

  The yard was empty. Ieva had already run inside with the baby to hide her tears.

  He’d slept through it.

  Ieva, of course, was silent for the next few days. His daughter obviously meant nothing to him if he could just fall asleep like that. Did he do it on purpose? Wasn’t he happy? He was happy; he just couldn’t show it on the outside like everyone else.

  In his opinion, Ieva’s sadness was a huge cover for how spoiled she was. Both of her parents had worked and her mother had migraines, so they couldn’t keep both Ieva and her little brother. They had sent Ieva off to the countryside to live with her grandmother, but that’s where all hell had broken loose. She hadn’t had real life conditions there, the way he saw it. It was like living in a conservatory. Books. Laziness. The sea. Her Gran did everything for her. And the little princess just lay on the couch, reading—and from the age of four!

  Andrejs hated know-it-alls. Smart people. Writers. Who needs them? Fine, everyone can come up with one great thought in their lifetime, a single, strong thought that’s their own. You can’t run on empty, so to speak. Something goes on up there, all the time.

  Alright—two great thoughts in a lifetime, like Andrejs had.

  Yes, he can count two great thoughts of his. The first is the one h
e’d love to remind Ieva of, in case she’d forgotten. That, despite everything that’s happened, plus prison, he never turned into some pig.

  They say your own people will get it. He won’t explain anything more to anyone else. Those who don’t get it can just drop it. Who needs explanations. He won’t say anything more. It’s such a massive thought and so completely applies to him that chills run through his body when he repeats it to himself and fully realizes it.

  The second thought is about life. He’ll tell Ieva about it someday. And she and all her smart people will pale at the idea. Because they’re all liars. Shelves stuffed full with books. Fakes! Because a person can come up with one, two great thoughts in his lifetime, but then there are people who knock out a book a year. It’s obvious to Andrejs that they just make money in the name of boredom. That’s how that world works—the less sense you have, the more others will take advantage of you.

  Three thoughts, what lies. Three is impossible.

  He’s told Ieva that. She drove him nuts with her talking, pissed him off. He had felt so unprotected, so forced into solitude and darkness, that he had screamed it right into her face—I hate know-it-alls!

  She’d screamed back—but I crave knowledge!

  A yeller. She’d been consistently raised like that, to be proper and positive. Undisciplined and lazy.

  Oh, Ieva. His Ieva. What’s wrong with him!

  At times he’s actually pretty scared. Things will just fall into place and this wave builds up inside him. Then he becomes afraid of himself. Something hidden deep within him shifts; something he’s never known and will never know about. At moments like that, both life and death seem trivial, and an intense pain rips through his heart. No, not pure pain, but some kind of twisting, a rope of aching, longing, rage, hope, and dread; it runs so deep that it constricts his entire chest.