High Tide

by Inga Abele

  The Ancient Greeks knew that the gods were immortal, and told immortal tales. Once he’s placed in time, a mortal isn’t able to think of an immortal tale, much less tell one. A person’s existence winds around birth and death like a ribbon around two magic wands. He was curious to see how they’d solve the issue of immortality—if a story has a beginning, but no middle or end, what kind of skeleton is the meat of the story holding on to? If a god isn’t moved by his own death to act, then what does that god think about? It turns out—the gods think of nothing but power. The principle of power classifies existence under immortality.

  Andrejs took the book. He tucked it under his shirt instead of throwing it into the furnace. And at night, he read about Odysseus by flashlight:

  “After many days traveling they came to a place where thick osier bushes and tall poplars hid the entrance to the underworld; the travelers pulled the ship ashore and stayed to guard it. Odysseus went on alone. When he came to the entrance of Hades, he proceeded as Circe had instructed him: he first poured the libations of milk, honey, wine and water, then, to draw out the ghost of Teiresias, killed a black ram and spilled its blood into the pit he had dug in front of the entrance. A swarm of ghosts appeared at the pit to drink of the warm blood, but Odysseus kept them at bay, so that he may first hear the ghost of the graying Theban augural Teiresias, which was slowly approaching the pit.”

  Andrejs thought of Aksels. If Andrejs had a blood-filled pit at the entrance to the underworld like that, then Aksels would definitely be lurking by with a ravenous stare.

  “Then Odysseus’ mother neared the pit; she had died of grief in her son’s absence.”

  Andrejs thought of his own mother. When Ieva stopped coming to see him, his mother slowly took her place. But that was completely different. His mother brought him a bag filled with bacon, eggs, onions, black tea, and cigarettes, made him dinner and then fell asleep exhausted from the work. In the evening she’d wrap up her hair, kiss her son once on both cheeks, and cry when they parted the next day.

  Her visits to her son in prison were like visiting a ready-made recreation center.

  She’d quickly tell him a few important pieces of news—what was new, who had died—and then was quiet.

  “Then Odysseus’ mother neared the pit; she had died of grief in her son’s absence.”

  Andrejs thought of his mother’s large, overworked hand as it hung over the side of the bed, where she slept like a log facedown on the pillow.

  “Then Odysseus’ mother neared the pit; she had died of grief in her son’s absence. She told Odysseus that his home in Ithaca was still amass with relentless suitors for Penelope, who faithfully awaited the return of her husband, but that his son, Telemachus, was too young and weak to drive the suitors away. Old Laërtes, who grieved the fate of his son Odysseus, had left the city and was living in the countryside among slaves.”

  Andrejs thought of his father. His father didn’t care about Andrejs’s fate. Maybe a quiet ache smoldered somewhere deep down in him. The rest had been eaten away by a lifetime of hard work. He knew how to take good care of his tractor—but never of himself. His father hadn’t let himself want anything for a long time. Not his son, not his future, not even his past.

  His father’s two great thoughts:

  —you have to live the life you’ve been given;

  —a person lives and works, and then one day he’s clocked from behind with a shovel and pushed into a grave.

  “Old Laërtes, who grieved the fate of his son Odysseus, had left the city and was living in the countryside among slaves. In winter he sleeps on the ground by a hearth, and in warmer months sleeps in an orchard on a bed of soft leaves.”

  And yet. Andrejs’s mother had said his father had been getting soft in the head with age. He was supposedly dried up and fragile as a bird, and cried a lot. He’s on his way out, that’s why he’s grown as brittle as shortbread, laughing through his tears.

  He doesn’t want to experience that, wouldn’t be able to watch it. This abusive, hard, and spiteful man who didn’t have a heart—a crier?

  Anything but that.

  Once, his mother came with a secret. Unlike the other times, she was kept awake by an unusual restlessness. She sat on the bed, chewed the hard candies she’d brought for him, swung her leg back and forth, and watched him as he smoked by the window. Outside it was a hot summer afternoon.

  Andrejs looked back at her and finally asked her straight out:

  “What?”

  His mother blushed, wiped a handkerchief across her forehead, then spoke rapidly:

  “Ieva came to visit.”

  Andrejs sat backwards on a chair and drilled his stare into his mother’s lowered eyes. She glanced up at her son and grew frightened, understanding that she had to quickly finish saying what she’d started:

  “She’s a big deal now, been to all kinds of schools, has a car. She went up to Dad, and he flung his arms around her neck and cried, told her she would always be welcome in our home. But I… I couldn’t just stand there… Eh, and how could I, I had to say it, told her she’d damned and betrayed my son, left him to rot, and for her to keep far, far away from my house, or I wouldn’t be held responsible for my actions!”

  His mother grew red in the face as she spoke, and gestured wildly as if trying to push the image of Ieva away from her:

  “But about your girl, I told her she could hide her wherever she wanted—when Andrejs gets out of prison he’ll see his daughter, no doubt about it!”

  Andrejs turned back to the window. Mom, you’re lying, I know you too well—he could have said it. You know you love Ieva, he could have told her. But he said nothing. Outside a cat walked along the carefully raked strip of sand.

  Having unloaded the weight on her heart, his mother fell asleep quickly.

  Outside it was a hot summer afternoon.

  He had found his religion in the Ancient Greek myths. He read about Scylla and Charybdis, about the Cyclops Polyphemus and the nymph Calypso, about the suffering of Prometheus, and the courts of Hades. Andrejs, who spent his days and nights with murderers and thieves: he read and understood.

  A son who, instructed by his mother, took a sickle and castrated his own father, whose blood mixed with sea foam to give birth to the goddess of love. A father who, terrified of the power of his own sons, swallowed them whole. The Graces, muses, and Moirae—almost every prisoner had his own; distance, isolation, and desire raised them above the gods. Zeus was Andrejs’s favorite. Thirsting for knowledge and afraid of losing power, this guy had swallowed his first wife, which was what his mother had wanted. “Zeus swallowed wise Metis, in doing so both eliminating an heir and gaining Metis’s wisdom.”

  He understood that kind of love, not the whining adoration coming at you constantly as songs on TV and the radio. He’d like to swallow both Ieva and Monta, they’d be in his stomach—Ieva’s wisdom and their daughter’s beauty, everything together in one place, home. He didn’t know how to love, only wildly desire, and it was among the Ancient Greek heroes that he found where he belonged. Here, in prison, there was no shortage of jealous women just like Hera, who murdered her rival’s children and took sleep away from her so she would have to wander the world like a ghost; until Zeus took pity on her and gave her the power to remove her eyes so she could finally rest. There were those like Danaus, who made his daughters kill their husbands. Or those like Tantalus who, in an act of unbelievable arrogance, sacrificed his son and offered his flesh to the gods. And those like Demeter who, distraught by a great loss, blindly ate everything the goddess of fate put before them, even the flesh of others, and not to mention such delicacies as sorrow, desperation, and alcoholism. Here you could find Ares with all his evil forces, whose sons were Terror and Fear, and who found joy in bloodshed.

  Andrejs liked the retelling of these stories because they were about a time before anyone had been crucified for the sins of others, and before anyone had been saved.

  Prison was the place w
here priests fished for souls day in and day out like pearl divers—forever looking to take confession. This frightful, shaved, robust, dark-eyed mob, a priori guilty, was the perfect material onto which they could cross-stitch those pearls.

  He went to mass and listened, but never for a moment felt in his heart the main thing the priests asked them to feel—the desire to fall at the feet of Christ and call him their Lord and Shepherd, to transfer the responsibility for what they’d done onto their Lord and Shepherd and to beg for forgiveness. Andrejs could fall at the feet of Christ like he’d fallen to the floor next to the dead body of a stranger in a darkened cell. There was no question that Christ had definitely been a regular guy. He could wash Christ’s feet and trim his toenails, like he’d done on more than one occasion for an aging cellmate who had been exhausted to the point of lethargy. But he was unable to feel the most important thing—the desire to shift his guilt onto the shoulders of some Lord. Andrej’s guilt was his business, it was a part of him. Here he stood with his entire life and was completely aware of it. Though it was hazy, he could sense his freedom and responsibility within it.

  King Oedipus, having unwittingly killed his father and married his mother, was unable to afford a single indulgence. The curses came true, but there were never any indulgences. No one had ever been crucified for Oedipus. He had to accept blindness as his fate all on his own. He had to accept himself for what he was and stab out his eyes, and wander the road with his walking stick, mourning his fate and that of his children.

  In turn the Ancient Greeks were stingy with lessons. There were only two in the entire book—a lot like those real thoughts a person could think of in a lifetime. Both lessons were briefly laid out in a section about Medea and Jason in Corinth.

  “But the happiness, honor, and praise they had hoped for never came to their Greece. Her own words came true: ‘Bloodshed begets bloodshed.’”

  Medea had murdered her brother for Jason.

  The goddess of love, Aphrodite, who gave so much joy and happiness to people, was also often merciless. “Passion that is more powerful than conscience brings the worst kind of evil to mortals.”

  Medea had murdered children for Jason.

  Andrejs remembers the moment he read those words, down to the smallest detail. His four cellmates snored away in their dark cell, which was hot from the stove and thick with bodily odors. He was lying on a bottom bunk facing the window; outside, a November storm carried a large, white lamp back and forth, so it looked like someone had hung a full moon up by a string and was waving it over the prison wall. The corners of the cell rustled with cockroaches and a draft, and Andrejs’s blanket glowed from the flashlight he held under it. Having finished reading about Medea, he turned a stony gaze upward to the metal bedsprings above him.

  The woman was lying there with her eyes open.

  Andrejs’s arm had fallen asleep. But to the point where he couldn’t take it anymore. He woke up—or rather, snapped back from his trance-like state of thinking—and tried to pull his arm out from under the woman’s back, and when he glanced at her he saw that she was lying with her eyes open. When had she woken up?

  Afraid that she’d say something and interrupt the story, he instructed:

  “Sleep some more!”

  The woman obediently closed her eyes.

  That night with Medea he’d been healed, because he’d finally seen himself from the sidelines. A tall, immobile, idiotic sack under a thin prison blanket.

  That night they let him go. Enlisted him in the reserves. He knew that he would never kill anybody again. Not even Ieva.

  Something had ended, the passion suddenly broken. Turns out his fate had been hanging at the end of such a fine strand of hair. Now it had matured, fallen out and slipped away. The shedding of an unnecessary skin.

  How strange—when love was flowing through him he didn’t need anything, not even his only shirt. He had done terrible things, but they could all be justified. His, Andrejs’s, love.

  Now that it had burnt out, he could start anything, though nothing would give him his fill. And he couldn’t imagine what more he could need that would fill the massive space surrounding him.

  Andrejs didn’t even try to understand what happened in his brain when he read the story about Medea. Maybe the two things just fell into place—Medea and the release of his own passions—and both of them had nothing else in common but the horrible events over the course of a single night.

  Maybe Aphrodite had never meant to be there in the first place? On that night, had the goddess of love ripped the deeply-lodged, festering arrow from Andrejs’s heart, and then disappeared without a trace? Without the core of the arrow his body crumpled like an empty shell.

  He remained half way without Ieva, without reason, without a future. He knew that from there on out things would be calm and he would soon be released. He was a broken clock, a defective mechanism—why fight it? They don’t keep people like that in prison.

  In truth, he should have stabbed out his eyes that very night.

  “Want some champagne?”

  The question spoken into the homey darkness scared the hell out of Andrejs because the woman shot it out as suddenly as a flare gun.

  She had been lying there with her eyes open again.

  He asked:

  “Now?”

  “Why not?”

  They pulled themselves to their feet, turned on the kitchen light and rubbed their bleary eyes. He watched the movements of her plump elbows. The kitchen was small, and the woman filled the space right away. Andrejs liked this—just watching. He was ready to go sit in one of the corners when the woman said:

  “Hand me those glasses!”

  “Where?”

  “On the shelf by your head.”

  He turned toward the wall and came face to face with his own drawing. He stared at it for a long time, as if seeing a ghost, and then asked the woman:

  “What’s that?”

  “Glasses.”

  “I see the glasses. But behind them?”

  “That? Oh, that. A card.”

  Andrejs very carefully took two fragile champagne flutes in his calloused hands and handed them to the woman. Then he took the card leaning against the wall behind the glasses and sat on a stool next to the small table. He studied the yellowed paper as intensely as a war refugee who’s been pulled from the water and given a passport, and who can’t believe this thing could save his life.

  The card was drawn with lead pencil on regular notebook paper and then glued to cardboard. Its edges were decorated with barbed wire, which connected at the top in a knot around a red rose. The lettering For Ludmila—Ruslans was separated by a date, in which the number two looked like a swan with a proudly curving neck. The drawing also had the North Star and the aurora borealis. Small lettering at the bottom read: She dreamt that in the Caucasus steppe…

  So she wasn’t an accountant! So that’s where he’d seen that handwriting and date before! How could he forget?

  Andrejs asked:

  “Ludmila?”

  “Yes.”

  She sat on the opposite stool at the table and twirled a strand of hair around her finger. Like she was flustered, clueless. When she lifted her eyes to meet his, they were bright with tears.

  “That’s the last card my husband sent me.”

  She wanted to tell him more, but he silenced her with an impatient gesture. He still couldn’t decide if he should go home right away, or later. If he started to talk now, it would mean he wouldn’t go home until later.

  But he started to talk. He hadn’t become a heartless monster yet.

  “You don’t need to tell me. I drew this.”

  The expressions on the woman’s face changed as quick as the wind, chasing after one another like the shadows of falling leaves—while she sat very stiff and straight, her eyes searching his face to figure out what his words could mean.

  “Ruslans and I met at the Central Prison Hospital. He was already admitted when
I was brought in. We were together for a week, or less, I don’t remember. In any case no more than a week. I was there when he died.”

  The woman let out a weak scream, and the tears finally overflowed. She wiped the wetness across her cheeks with the back of her hand. Andrejs handed her a towel, which she immediately bundled up into a kind of squirrel’s nest and hid her face in it. He waited patiently for her to look up again.

  “You could say I was the prison artist. I framed photographs by sewing plastic wires around the edges, drew on materials using safety pins and colored thread, etched wood, sketched. Ruslans found out and showed me your handwriting. Asked me to draw a card and write the words like you did. He really liked your handwriting. I recognized it right away, but thought that you worked at the prison as an accountant.”

  The woman nodded feebly. She rummaged in a drawer without looking away from him and placed a candle on the table. She burned her fingers with the first match.

  “Tell me how he died,” she said, her voice somber.

  “He died at night. I was writing a letter to my wife, he was lying down. I thought he’d fallen sleep. Then he suddenly started coughing, ran to the door and banged on it like crazy. All at once, about a bucket of blood spewed from his mouth. And then he fell over. I lifted him a bit and held him, but he had already started with the death shakes. The guards came and took him away.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Don’t worry, it happened quickly. He didn’t suffer. It was over the second he ran to the door. Later the nurses said one of his pulmonary veins had burst.”

  More silence.

  “But he managed to send the card out. When’s your birthday? Sometime in May, right?”