High Tide

by Inga Abele

  Life here is awful. I feel what’s happening to me—I’m growing old and dumb. And I want to hang myself, too. Especially if the potatoes haven’t been furrowed, if there isn’t any firewood, if the electric stove is half-burned out. I’m going to lose my mind.

  But maybe not, because Aksels is here. And the whole time I have this hope in my heart: Riga. Aksels and I might go to Riga in the fall, if Mom and Dad will let us stay with them. And we should be able to find jobs, right?

  But at least we have our health, so I can’t complain. Aksels still works at the stables forking hay. I go with him to help. We’ve already brought in around 13 tons. It’s hard work, manual labor. They pay 1.50 lats a day. We still haven’t seen a santim of it.

  Gratefully—your sister

  P.S.

  And I soon grow tired of all the markets,

  But they still stay in my memory.

  Forward, my dream horses,

  Forward, my haggard friends!

  Let the headwind count our ribs,

  Afterward it can bite us where it wants.

  The rain rips us from eternity

  And already washes away our footprints.

  —M. Melgalvs

  * * *

  Hello!

  I’m writing you quickly and in tears, because the stable owner Austrums was shot dead last night. He showed up at Zari last fall—he’d stopped in to meet his neighbors, say hello, and ask about partnership opportunities. Austrums wanted to build the first golf course in Latvia here. He already owns a hundred hectares, but our field by the corner of the forest with the big pine tree could be of use to him. And we were willing to give it to him—there’s more sand than grass there anyway, and it’s worthless for the livestock. Austrums was very sociable—on the short side, attentive eyes, as easy-going as a strand of seaweed in a current. He invited us to golf lessons, showed us how to swing a club and how to stand. The stable employees were also there—we laughed and made friends with them.

  He drove out from Riga every weekend. Built a sauna by the pond—almost everyone from our country’s new government would drive out to drink there Saturday nights. Aksels would grumble about it sometimes—at night the drunk men would go to see the horses and let them into the pasture, then wake up Aksels to help get them back and out of the farmers’ crops! There were problems with the bunch from Riga, but on the other hand—things were active, lively, hopeful! The stables were renovated, the pastures sown with grass, the mass amounts of endless mud gone. There was a sense of hope in the air.

  And now—shot dead! Then he was torched in the woods just outside Riga, in his car. Did robbers do it? Or the government? Everyone is stumbling around with sad expressions. No one can believe something like that happened. The first person shot since the Awakening. I can still see him clearly—as alive as a person can be. Those friends of his who spent every weekend at the lake and sat next to him drinking in the sauna, they’re all on the news now shrugging their shoulders and claiming to have never met him in their lives.

  There’re rumors around here that the baron cursed his land before he died, so that no one living on it would ever feel happy. But those are just stupid stories—

  I’m worried—Ieva

  * * *

  Pāvil, hey!

  You scold me for not writing.

  If only you knew.

  Oh I don’t even care.

  I’ll just give you the facts. Nice and simple. Please don’t be surprised.

  You already know about Aksels. Stase was his mother. Was, because the forester’s house burned down. They say she fell asleep smoking. Drunk, maybe. Everyone here has taken up drinking. I don’t even know when it started. But now we drive to Madara every Saturday.

  Oh I don’t even care.

  What else is there to do here? At least the bar is fun, there are people. Champagne. Boys from the neighboring village drive out here, start fights with the local boys. There’s some kind of strength inside us, it’s crazy, I don’t know, I’ve got a lot of power inside me. There’s nowhere to put it. So we drink. Of course I’m embarrassed. One night I stepped out of the bar to get some fresh air, and I fell onto all fours. I got up and then fell backwards. And then again—on all fours. And then—backwards. Someone helped me up, I staggered to the bathroom to wash my hands, looked at myself in the mirror and thought: Ieva, you?

  Gran also gives me disapproving looks, says I’m abandoning my child.

  I’ve even started smoking.

  Oh I don’t even care.

  It’s fun to dance at the bar, to let loose. To drive around from one party to the next. It’s even fun the morning after, I like it. I feel awful, but experience some kind of inner peace.

  Stase said it’s suicide. Told us to leave for the city as soon as possible, that we’ll rot alive out here. The countryside is death. That’s the only reason she moved out here, to find death. I thought she was a great woman, just that she’d have these bouts of anger where she’d hit anything that came within arm’s reach.

  She was such a smart woman, but kind of—ravaged by life. Ah, whatever, what am I saying, she was herself. Like Jonsy. Stase was Stase. Without any pretenses. Everything she did was spontaneous and her own, she could be terrifying one second and the kindest person in the world the next. But no matter what she was, she was herself. Even the burning was such a Stase type of death. Even as she burned, she lived. The whole fire was awful. When Aksels got back home in the morning, he opened the window. And everything inside just exploded instantly. That’s what happens, if things have already started to smolder, oxygen creates an explosion. Stase was standing and just went up in a column of fire. I don’t think Aksels will ever get over it. He didn’t even go to the funeral, just stayed back in the bushes and glowered at everything like a wolf. His heart is breaking, you know, but Andrejs just laughs. It’s awful.

  The times when Aksels wasn’t able to, Stase would go in his place and chase the horses out of the crops and back to the stables when the enclosures were broken. She’d catch the fastest horse and ride it bareback, with just the halter. She’d gallop ahead of them all like some kind of vision, a sorceress! Everyone’s going to remember her like that—with her hair flowing behind her as she rides the fastest horse.

  Aksels is living with me at the Zari house now. Everything is so screwed up for me with these men. Aksels and I—how do I put it—well we just couldn’t live without each other anymore, but we didn’t say anything to anyone, didn’t even admit it to ourselves. But Andrejs sensed something, would look at us hatefully, grew even more aggressive towards me, in the end I even cried at how hard-hearted one person could be!

  Of course Gran also scolded me, but lovingly. She had seen and knew everything. Now she’s gone back to the seaside. Oh I don’t even care. I’m sick of being the bad guy. It’s better if nobody sees it.

  Back then, the three of us would drive around to the bars as a group. Sometimes we’d take other friends with us. And that one time on the way to the bar, a rabbit jumped out of the wheat field right in front of the car. I begged Andrejs to brake for it, but he went after it like a maniac until he ran it down. He even pulled over to throw the carcass into the trunk, so I’d stew it for breakfast. But the rabbit hadn’t been run over, just knocked back into the wheat field—its screams ripped through the quiet of the night. Andrejs was drunk, he couldn’t find it. I got out of the car and started walking home, but he blocked my way and forced me back into the car.

  And then—at the bar! Whether it was revenge or a breakdown, I don’t know. More likely it was some third thing.

  That beautiful song “Black Velvet” was playing, you know the one. And I went to dance with Aksels. A slow dance. The first time ever with him. I didn’t care anymore. He didn’t either. We only saw each other in this crazy, fucked-up world. It really was more of a breakdown.

  And toward the end he kissed me. For the first time.

  But I pulled away, recovered, and then saw—guess what? Andrejs’s ey
es. He was standing by the wall and watching us carefully.

  I panicked! Because everything happened so spontaneously, you know, I still didn’t realize anything, just got scared—for Aksels, for me, for Andrejs. What’s going to happen to us now! And I ran home through the morning fog like a scared little puppy. Barefoot, with my shoes in my hands. Andrejs followed behind me in the car and tried to run me down the entire way. I’d just keep jumping into the ditch and then back out again. It was awful!

  Back home Andrejs grabbed me by the back of my collar and shook me. And then he suddenly sat down at the table and started sobbing—please, that I wouldn’t, for the love of God, leave him! That he’d already figured things out about me and that little shit.

  I asked him—how could you figure things out if it only just started tonight? Maybe, I said, I hadn’t even known it myself! I said, I now know clearly that it won’t end with Aksels because I love him!

  And I love you, he said in a voice I could barely hear.

  You don’t know how to love, I answered cruelly. Because at that moment I remembered that half-dead rabbit in the wheat field.

  Then he retreated into himself, started selling the livestock and even sold the tractor so he could pay off the bank loan before term. He sold everything, didn’t even leave me the kitchen table. He didn’t talk to me anymore, was acting out of his mind, smoothing Monta’s hair and crying. I was afraid he’d take her away from me.

  And well, it was on that same insane morning that Aksels—who’d been left by himself at the bar—slowly made his way home to the forester’s house. The door was locked from the inside, he pounded on it, pounded, then opened the window—he knew which one could be unlatched from the outside. And the entire house went up with Stase in it, with all of Aksels’s belongings. Up in flames.

  After the funeral he came to live with us. Yes, there was a time when all five of us were staying at the Zari house. How we made it work, I still can’t explain. No, wait, I can—we didn’t speak. At all. Nobody spoke to anyone else. For a long time it was as if the Zari house was a kingdom placed under a spell. Everything is possible when you don’t speak. The only thing is that you can’t deal with that kind of silence for too long. Then Andrejs went off to work as a car mechanic in Riga, and Gran went back to the seaside.

  Aksels and I are going to leave for Riga soon. If we stay here we’re just going to die of hunger. For now we plan on asking Mom and Dad if we can stay at their place. Your room is going to be empty for at least another year. If they say no, we’ll figure something else out.

  And that’s all, little brother.

  This time—without any quotes.

  —Keep your fingers crossed for us—Ieva

  Destiny

  Ieva walks through the village and cuts down dandelions with a knotted stick.

  She doesn’t want to go home.

  The head of the village, Sarmis, is a gaunt old man with bright eyes who can’t keep his hands to himself whether it’s in the store or village hall. A slap on the thigh, a tickle to the ribcage, a caress of the shoulder. And when he comes to order smoked salmon from Gran, he always says in a surprised manner—how beautiful Ieva’s grown up to be, a woman, a real woman!

  Gran just laughs and sends Ieva to the cellar for mushrooms—Ieva is happy to go, because this strange word “woman” and Sarmis’s bleary stare sends blood pounding to her temples.

  But a strange devil moves her to quickly get the mushrooms and hurry back, her hair whipping behind her. Back to sit near Sarmis and to laugh, pretending not to notice him staring. Let him look, Ieva tells herself, nothing bad will happen from just looking. It’s a little scary, but Gran and Roberts are right here. But it’s interesting—what does Sarmis see when he looks at Ieva? She’d like to find out sometime, but it’s not possible to climb into someone else’s skin.

  Sarmis is a lesser evil compared to the forester Buliņš. They run into each other along the road and Buliņš speaks ardently. And his words stick to Ieva’s heart like linden leaves—soft and gentle. His speech is sensible, his thoughts clear. Upward, beautiful, magnificent. School, studies, the future. But then Ieva happens to look at Buliņš when he doesn’t expect it. The blue eyes staring at her have the same hungry look as Sarmis!

  Buliņš doesn’t let up. One day he comes to see Roberts with a bag filled with canned meats. He just happened to be passing by and decided to stop in to give them a taste! Gran thanks him, Roberts praises him—ground stag with bacon, a real forester’s feast! Gran sends Ieva to bring the empty jars back to Buliņš at the forester’s house, but Ieva refuses. “Just take them,” Gran scolds her, “is that so hard? He had no trouble preparing the meats or bringing them over here, a single man living by himself in a forester’s hut, but so hardworking!”

  “I’ve got nothing to do with his troubles!” is Ieva’s unexpectedly curt reply.

  As if that’s not enough, Buliņš sends them a load of dried pine logs. Enough to cover the yard of their small fishing hut. But it’s such lovely firewood that Gran can only gesture and lift the logs to her nose and breathe in their scent. Yellow, light as a feather, strong as medicinal balsam, with the crisp scent of sap! Roberts, however, points out that burning pine logs clogs up the chimney.

  “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!” Gran scolds and shakes the two logs in her hands at him. “They could be wet! But they’re dry, chopped! It would be a sin to complain.”

  Neither of them bothers to wonder why the forester has suddenly become so generous.

  Soon enough Buliņš comes to the house in person, on a night when Gran and Roberts aren’t home. No matter, he’ll just sit in the kitchen until they get back and have a cup of tea. Ieva shrugs, makes him a big mug of tea and goes into the other room. Let him wait!

  But Buliņš follows her silently. His hand searches for the light switch on the wall and—click!—the room sinks into darkness. Ieva gets up from the couch and heads toward the door to turn the light back on, she’s stubborn and wants to scold the forester—what is he thinking!—but she runs like a fish right into his arms. He grabs hold of her by the elbows, says nothing, just brings his face to her and tries to kiss her. His eyes glisten in the light reflecting from the snow. Ieva feels like a hypnotized rabbit, because there’s no reason to scream, or tell him off, or to hit him—the guy is being gentle and quiet. Ieva can only murmur—no, no! She lowers her chin, presses it into her chest, then pulls away and runs.

  If she was less embarrassed, she’d tell Gran. But Gran is an angel who can’t hear those kinds of things, and Ieva even feels that she herself would become impure from telling those kinds of stories. And in the end she neither likes, nor hates Buliņš.

  Ieva wanders down the long stretch of road between the sea and the lake, whacking dandelions with a stick—she scatters their white, fluffy heads, and thinks, thinks. Wracks her brain.

  “Hey, Ieva, what’re you looking for?” asks Edvīns, the village driver as he rolls past.

  “Yesterday,” Ieva replies and turns her back to him.

  “Maybe we can look together?”

  “You’re all talk!”

  “What can I do, honey, I’ve gotta work! You coming to the bar tonight?”

  “Yeah, when pigs fly!”

  Edvīns’s friend Armīns leans out of the other window.

  “Then come swimming with us at lunch! I’d like to sit you down on my lap!”

  “You can hold on to your piece yourself!”

  To fall into the clutches of those loudmouths—like a honey pot to a bear! The entire county would know about it by the next morning. Ieva is too proud to let someone go around town bragging—I got Ieva Eglīte!

  There is one boy who Ieva likes more than the others, but that’s why she has to stay away from him. Because it’s almost like it’s meant to be, so strangely familiar that it terrifies her.

  They met in winter at a dance at the community center. The entrance was swarming with people. Breaths steamed in the cold air,
everyone was entertaining everyone else with exaggerated jokes. The main hall of the center was like a hot and sparse clearing. Couples sat at tables lining the walls, a disco ball hung spinning from the ceiling, and a local ensemble played on stage.

  Nobody danced. Well, of course not; it was only ten, and the guys hadn’t downed enough liquid courage. Around midnight they’d start to shake and thrash in the center of the dance floor like they were possessed.

  Ieva stood around for a while, grew bored. She headed toward the exit. There was a fan by the wall, humming and blowing out the colorful streamers tied to it. And of course, it also blew up Ieva’s lightweight skirt. She stepped back, smoothing the cloth back down.

  She looked up. And right into Andrejs’s eyes.

  It was kind of like meeting the stare of someone you love intensely, but haven’t seen in a long time. Like the eyes of a brother.

  And that’s why Ieva avoids Andrejs. Sex with a brother! She doesn’t think incest is a good thing.

  This strange feeling in the noise and chaos of the party only lasted a second. The long, distorted shadows of the spotlights, the sound of the fan, twirling skirts, music, other people—it all faded away to make room for a pair of very familiar eyes. She didn’t see his face, his build, or his clothes. She saw nothing but his eyes. And everything life had in store for her was in those eyes.

  Then the stranger stepped aside to let Ieva pass. She lowered her gaze and obediently walked out.

  Now she was no longer bored, or cold. She had to wait for that official one o’clock point when everyone else would be wasted, but the unfamiliar boy would be looking for her. Ieva doesn’t know how she’s absolutely certain that he has to come look for her. She only didn’t know him. She didn’t know anything—where was he from that she’d never seen him before? If he’s drunk when he finds her, she’ll run away. She’s got at least that much sense left.