by Inga Abele
But, Ieva says, fuck all of that. Precisely because on that night with Aksels at the balcony door, Ieva cries. She cares fuck-all about the movies. Even if hordes of gorgeous, magnificent actresses had pornographically poured their tears, snot, and spit in front of the camera, knowing that the lens was capturing every movement of even the tiniest movement of the muscles on their faces—even then, Ieva would have cried one more time. All she thinks about is how someone wants to take the heavy, slumbering head in her lap away from her.
Of course anything can happen in life, but not all because of some shithead black guy! Not because of that idiot Ningela, who puttered around behind the counters at Polārs, wrapped in her sickly-sweet renditions of Indian perfumes. Not even because of the bar itself—the shittiest of all bars, the dregs of the Āgenskalns barrel, that dump. Spending time in there, no matter the season or time of day, always gave you the overwhelming feeling of sitting deep underground. Or rather—at rock bottom. The stale smell of cigarettes, worn-out couches, a TV somewhere in the background soundlessly playing MTV while the audio system up front blasts something entirely different… The stale, cigarette-like regulars, who call themselves artists or life artists, but who are really just broken clocks, each bullshitting and babbling about the time they were actually meant to stop in.
All she wanted to do was buy some weed from Ningela’s daughter, but that black shit had come out of nowhere and thrown Aksels down onto the ice. Well, and then his hip got banged up, and then misfortune quickly started to fester. It’s so stupid! Not like this, not like this—Ieva begs as she cries, her tears rolling down her face in the dark and into Aksels’s hair.
The next morning Ieva cries differently, but again about Aksels. Then the next night about something else entirely, but still about Aksels. But on the next night—she doesn’t even cry anymore, just sits thinking nothing, shot up on diazepam, and grinding her teeth. Making a game of it, tensing and relaxing the muscles in her jaw. This is acclimation, you get there without even realizing it. And already thinking ahead. Thinking ahead. It’s a horrible betrayal. To think ahead about Aksels. Who’s left on the side of the road like a broken clock, while the tram whips past and carries her farther away. Away.
Ieva says:
“But what do you mean—don’t let them take me?”
Aksels smiles crookedly:
“Remember Sid and Nancy?”
Aksels’s idea slowly crystalizes in Ieva’s mind, and when it finally hits her it scares her beyond reason. Her eyes go wide:
“You want—ME to?”
“Yes, you. Who else? Listen, Ieva, I haven’t lived long, but I’ve lived how I’ve wanted. Seriously. And I want to die how I want.”
Ieva leaves the room and slams the door.
“Forget it! What are you thinking? I’m not capable of murder!”
The pain wakes Aksels up in the middle of the night. He’s convulsing like he’s been thrown on high voltage wires. After he takes all the medication he can, he lies limp and moaning. Ieva changes his sweaty shirts and sheets, four sets over the course of the night. They’re soaked through.
Toward morning Aksels says:
“Please, shoot me with a shotgun. From fifteen paces.”
Ieva cries.
“I can’t shoot you like some animal!”
“Please. If you love me.”
Ieva screams:
“Then I’ve never loved you!”
Aksels screws up his face. Maybe it’s a smile. He stares at the ceiling and says:
“Make anarchy your mother. Create as much chaos and confusion as is in your power, but don’t let them take you alive.”
Ieva presses her hands over her ears.
Eventually Aksels convinces her to drive out to the countryside.
Sid and Nancy in room 100 of the Hotel Chelsea. An eternal secret only for the two of them. This time Sid will die. Sid fills Nancy’s head with words, about how he wants to lie down by the birch trees at the far end of the pasture, where the first buttercups of summer always bloom. No one will know. It’ll be their secret.
Ieva has never been able to imagine this kind of helplessness, hasn’t even been able to feel it. She doesn’t want to accept Aksels’s illness. She should, because there’s no way out—no way out! There are moments when Ieva’s mind blazes magnificently clear and fierce like a newly sharpened knife. She understands that there’s no way out, just a life continued without Aksels.
Life hasn’t asked for Ieva’s thoughts on any of the coldhearted things it has to offer. It is what it is. And that’s that. She’s never wanted any of it. Aren’t they fantastic, elegantly sadistic gifts for a single person who has nerves, feelings, a mind, and heart? How can she accept all of them, she doesn’t have enough hands! Generously, lavishly, life—thank you for showing me your real face so soon.
If all this was about her, Ieva would care less. But the life of one person, a whole person, stands before her. Like something untouchable has caressed her, something flowing out from an icon and through the stained glass windows of a church.
She has to accept it.
Crystal clear winter days hold steady in the skies, blue as seals with numbers on their haunches, slowly digesting time, my forehead is hot, Ieva thinks, thinks, thinks. She can’t think of anything.
Ieva senses that she could find salvation in faith, and watches the sky. Sunsets are amazing, but nothing more. The sky is silent.
And Aksels is still here beside her. They have to get ready. Ieva’s forehead is hot. As long as she keeps busy she can stay calm. But when she’s by herself, she cries.
Aksels says:
“You’re too attached. That’s your flaw.”
Ieva’s so offended she doesn’t know what to say. She even blushes.
She cries:
“Flaw! Flaw?”
Aksels says:
“You actually enjoy suffering. You have a thing for it. You’re happy now that you have something to suffer over.”
He says:
“Me, I’m not attached to anyone. There’s no one I’d cry over if they died.”
It’s an unholy nightmare, all of these conversations. Chaos. Lies. Carelessness, fleeing. Pretending the whole time like they’re talking about someone else, not about themselves. Ieva’s bloodshot eyes and the worry that she feels nothing. Everything’s happening so fast.
One night when Aksels has fallen asleep on the couch, Ieva sneaks over to him with scissors. She looks at his face for a moment. Then she gathers her courage and quickly cuts a lock of his hair. She thinks she’s pulled it off, and turns quickly to leave the room. At the door she looks back—Aksels is watching her. He sees her, silently. The only movement is in his eyes as his pupils contract and dilate.
Ieva opens a window.
“What fresh air!”
The air downtown is terrible, but Ieva thinks it’s good enough just because it’s air.
Aksels wants weed.
Ieva doesn’t give it to him, hides it. He gets angry.
Ieva asks:
“Do you even know why you’re dying?”
Topics like these bore Aksels, he doesn’t want to talk about them.
She says:
“You’re dying because you’ve lost your mind. From all this shit.”
Aksels shakes his head.
She says:
“Yeah, you lost your mind. There’s nothing worse than losing your mind. And now you’re dying.”
Aksels says:
“It’s my choice. Give it to me.”
“I’m going to be all alone!”
“You’re only thinking of yourself!”
Ieva’s eyes bulge from their sockets in grief.
“And you’re only thinking of yourself!”
Aksels says:
“Everyone thinks only of themselves. It’s how it should be. Give me the weed. It numbs the pain.”
Ieva calls Andrejs:
“Do you still have that old shotgun?”
&nb
sp; Andrejs says:
“Yeah.”
“Does it work?”
“Yeah. I shot a wild boar with it yesterday.”
“Where are you?”
He says he’s at the Zari house. Trying to saw firewood.
That’s bad, Ieva thinks. Sid and Nancy’s plans are in danger of falling through. But Andrejs says:
“Come on over. I’d like it if you did.”
“Will you help me?”
“Of course. When have I ever not…”
It’s morning when Ieva goes into Aksels’s room and says—Ready? Aksels replies—Ready.
An idea needs time to grow, like an oak needs time to grow from an acorn into a tree.
There’s no reason to worry about being late. At 4 a.m. an invisible caress on her shoulder and a whisper—now! And it begins. The road forward. Or the backtrack. Or something entirely different.
But first you need an idea.
It’s the afternoon of January 14th. Ieva calls Andrejs.
She says:
“Hi, Andrejs.”
He answers:
“Hey, Ieva.”
Silence.
Ieva finally speaks:
“We’ve got a few more things to take care of here, and then we’ll be on our way.”
Silence.
Then Andrejs answers:
“I love you, Ieva.”
Ieva shouts angrily:
“Cut it out, will you! Come pick us up at the crossroad tonight. Aksels can’t walk.”
Ieva’s ready to announce Aksels’s name to the mailman, the police, Andrejs—to anyone, one hundred times and more in a row. Aksels’s name is smooth as a sea pebble that she can turn over in her mouth and caress with her tongue.
“I’ll be there.”
Andrejs hangs up.
Ieva has a brief vision of Andrejs hanging up the phone and looking out the kitchen window. She’s seen it so many times before. Over the wood panel table covered with a white tablecloth; the kitchen is filled with the brilliant light reflected by the snow-covered pine trees, the blueness of the sky, and the glistening sun over the wintery fields. It’s unbearably cold in the kitchen, the winter dust collects on every dark-stained surface and rough wooden shelves.
Even back then, Andrejs never kept the house warm enough when Ieva wasn’t home.
She doesn’t pack anything to take with and dresses for spring, even though outside is a bright January morning. Aksels says something about anticyclones. That they’re mountains, invisible mountains, radiant and bursting with sun—with diamond surfaces.
Surfaces shift, golden ridges collapse and crumble into little ripples in the windshields of passing cars, in window blinds. Yellow sparks melt in the whites of both their eyes. Ieva asks:
“So what are cyclones?”
To Aksels cyclones are the depths of the sea, rolling streams, and fertile dampness.
They’re sitting in the kitchen. Before, Aksels never ate much because he smoked weed. Now he’s nauseated from the pills and drinks just a bit of coffee with milk. Ieva’s nauseated from life. From everything that’s happening. She stopped eating when Aksels stopped eating. Not on purpose, no. Just—it’s the two of them. And in a way Ieva is Aksels. When he stopped eating, so did she. It’s simple, really. Now they’re like bony scarecrows with only a little straw left. Monta is plump and energetic, she knocks over her cup of milk and lets out a squeal.
Ieva says to Monta:
“Why does Monta knock her milk over every morning?”
“No! Mommy knocks milk over every morning!”
“Monta does!”
“Monta doesn’t know!”
“Then Monta has a bad memory!”
“No! Mommy does!”
It’s hopeless to argue with Monta, especially on the mornings she wakes up terribly happy.
Ieva dresses Monta. Monta grows suspicious.
She whines:
“No wool tights!”
Ieva says:
“Monta isn’t going to daycare. Monta’s going to Grandma’s! Grandma has cold floors.”
“No Grandma’s! Spiders!”
It’s strange with Grandma. Sometimes Monta’s happy to go to Grandma’s, but other times she sees spiders when she’s there. Today is a spider day. Monta protests and squirms, but Ieva finally gets her dressed.
Ieva’s also dressed; she turns to Aksels and says:
“I’ll take Monta to my mom’s, and then we’ll go.”
Her voice catches in her throat when she sees his face. How he’s watching her and Monta. He’s caught them being full of life.
In the moment she was dealing with Monta, Ieva forgot. Forgot everything else in the world, Aksels included. She lost herself in the action and became the action herself. The sun plays on the ridged icicles behind the window. Ieva holds Monta’s scarf in her hand and can no longer find words. There’ll be many more scenes just like this one after Aksels has died.
Aksels is sitting in a chair with his bad leg stretched out in front of him and is intently watching Monta. His expression belongs to him and him alone, and God only knows if he’s even aware of what lies behind it. It’s some kind of great vibration, the nature of things, that pulls him in. He watches Monta run through the hallway and for a moment sees the turning of the world’s gears. Like some incredibly old toy, a teddy bear handed down from child to child and loved to the point its worn, plushy seams suddenly burst, spilling dust and stuffing and sand—and you can see that the bear’s voice box still worked, crackling as it forms the words: I love you, you love me, I’m alive, you’re alive…
These words gather in the gap, the distance, the space between them. Aksels touched by death, and Monta touched by life.
And what Aksels has asked Ieva to do—wasn’t it in actuality a childish thing to ask? Wasn’t it something a monarch would ask? Death wanted to take him to that faraway pasture, but Aksels had Ieva, thank God, he had Ieva. He could count on that even in death. And now he will walk ahead like a lord, Ieva will follow behind him leading Death by the reigns, that greyish horse with the dark, ugly muzzle of a hyena, she’ll lead it and saddle it, and Aksels will get up in the saddle instead of being tied up and dragged behind… Aksels will get up in the saddle. Yes, it really was free will.
Ieva calms down and wraps Monta in the scarf. She’s realized that she constantly continues the dialogue in her subconscious—is it right, the thing Ieva’s promised to do?
Like a clock—tick tock, tick tock.
They hadn’t done anything yet. Everything could still change. And yet—nothing could change ever again.
Every few moments there had to be an affirmation, a contribution. And if a moment came and the affirmation wasn’t there, it could only be undone by a hundred other moments that did have affirmations.
It was a massive military draft, and Ieva had been called up.
Ieva says to Monta:
“Give Ocela a kiss!”
Monta goes to Aksels and gives him a kiss. Ieva’s scared—Monta will say something, something that will make him realize he’s seeing her for the last time; today and tomorrow will be the last time for scenes and observations.
“Hurry up, Ocela, she’ll overheat!”
Aksels throws her a surprised look—she’s being pretty harsh! But he immediately understands that it wasn’t out of place. Ieva is organizing his death, that harshness is clearly to be expected, so he says nothing. Ieva doesn’t apologize, not even with a look. Better to be harsh than to break down.
Ieva and Monta head out the door.
That evening Ieva and Aksels go to the bus station. Ieva is ready to say to everyone they pass—hey, look at Aksels! This planet will disappear tomorrow! A star will fall! You can look at him and make a wish, and he’ll make it all come true! Aksels looks at her disapprovingly, as if she’s stupid. But there isn’t even a hint of irony in Ieva as she buys two outgoing tickets knowing full well that she’ll only be buying one for the trip back.
&nbs
p; The bus is warm, narrow, and dark. A strip of tiny blue lights lines the sides of the aisle. Aksels isn’t able to find an empty seat that would let him painlessly position his bad leg. He sits on the raised floor at the back of the bus; rather, he lies down on it and leans on his elbow. The other passengers stare at first, but quickly forget their surprise and doze off. Not a whole lot can be seen in the dark. Ieva crouches down next to him.