High Tide (11 page)

“Such lavish thank yous. And thanks for that!”

“You going to call Laura over?”

“Yeah. Laura, honey!”

“Laura!”

“Laura, sweetie, we have to go, say bye-bye to Auntie Ieva!”

“Bye-bye!”

“Bye, Laura, you lively little girl! Laura is beautiful.”

“Yep.”

“When Monta was little, she used to always say that too—yep.”

“Little kids are whole. I already said it, but take care of yourself. Go see a good psychologist.”

“That would just be more schooling, not the truth. It's not a solution.”

“Truth doesn't exist. But somewhere there's a solution. And you'll find it. You've earned it. Don't look so creepy. Life is good. You're good. Everything's good.”

“Thanks, brother.”

“Bye!”

“Bye!”

 

“Pāvils!”

“Yeah.”

“Be honest—do you think I avoid taking responsibility for my life? But that someday I'll learn how? Someday I'll get back into myself? But you know I can't rush it, it has to happen on its own.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Yes.”

“You make everything sound so unrefined. Everything that's secretive and beautiful, everything that makes sense.”

“You can do so much with words. Lie a lot. Embellish. Make mistakes. It's a giant avalanche that crashes over you if you so much as move a word. It starts to roll and picks up other words along the way, and there you have it! You can't even lie with words—but that's giving it too much meaning. Pointlessly passing the time instead of doing something.”

“For example, going to elections. To vote.”

“Right, for example.”

“Rake the yard. Take off nail polish. You're naïve.”

“Call me what you want. But I have my convictions.”

“And that's why I respect you. Thank you for that.”

“Are you back inside yourself when you say that? Where's the thank you coming from?”

“The universe.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire… Laura!”

“She's getting antsy.”

 

“Go. And God bless!”

“What an old-fashioned farewell! But I'll gladly accept it.”

“Do you think God is in one piece?”

“Everyone knows that God is a trinity. At least the Christian God. I don't know. They're stupid word games. See, at times form is enough. To live together. People live together, so there has to be some sense in it. Raising children or writing dissertations, novels, cookbooks, screenplays, even making pancakes! Earning money. Spending it. Expressing an opinion. Fighting for something. Something like that, right?”

“Exactly. Alright, I'm going.”

“Go.”

 

“Hang on! How come you thanked me for being quiet for a while during lunch? Were you observing me?”

“No. I wasn't doing anything special. We were sitting. Talking. Time was passing. That's almost the only thing that still brings me joy. The fact that time goes on. Cars drive down the street. It's about to rain. Ducks are nibbling the grass. Nothing makes sense, but the water keeps flowing. Beautiful.”

“Beautiful.”

“Tell me, Pāvils—are you in one piece?”

“I don't think about it. And I won't. This illness could be contagious.”

“Sorry.”

“Don't worry about me, I don't have that much free time. I can't afford to.”

“What?”

“The same as before. Don't look at me in such a scary way.”

“You can tell Laura not to do that. But not me.”

“Don't smoke!”

“Hm. Take care. Write your dissertation.”

“Thanks. You take care, too.”

 

“Pāvils!”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“Yes. You love me, the earth, the light, slugs, these tiny green leaves here, you love the past and present, children, strange, old and mean women, horrible fates, wavering stares, new buildings, the sea, clouds, God, and goddesses. Total chaos. It's impossible to love you because you love too much. You love, and at the same time don't know how to, you don't know what love is. You're afraid of life and death, and you desire both of them. You celebrate sadness without really knowing what sadness is. You advertise joy without feeling it. You advertise an empty life without knowing what life without nothing is. Lower your barriers, sis. A dog only becomes a dog when you fence it in.”

“I don't have barriers. Aksels was a barrier. And he was taken away from me.”

“Maybe you'll get him back.”

“He's dead, remember, Jesus!”

“Is there life after death and/or love?”

“There are people who are meant to have only one great love in their lifetime. How do you save yourself for the next one?”

“Do you know who your one great love is?”

“I don't.”

“Do you know what tomorrow will be like?”

“I don't know anything.”

“Then stop it. And don't look at me like that.”

An Open Ending

 

 

Surveying
the crowd in the Berlin Art Academy café, she was unable to hold back and asked loudly:

“So that's the end?”

The sea of voices drowned out the sound, but a few people sitting closer to her heard. Elias, from Cyprus, leaned his head of black curls toward her:

“What did you say?”

“So that's the end.”

“Yes, that's the end.”

He smiled over his glasses, his brilliant smile. The Berlin seminar was almost over. Tomorrow—her suitcase and the flight home.

 

Ieva looked around her: Roberta, Neil, Gojel, and Eduardo were at one table. She, Peter, Elias, Barbara, and Marijka were at another. That day the preview of Sybille Bergeman's photography exhibit had taken place in the exhibition hall, and the café overflowed with attendees. They drank coffee, chatted, smoked. Sybille herself was supposed to show up!—the excited faces of those present read. They'd be able to ask her questions. So close they could touch her. Get her autograph and a smile. The way Sybille would use her lens to capture a smile, a caress, the disappearing shadows and lights in the fluctuating daylight. Now they could get these in excess in person and, when parting, even kiss her hand.

The crowd a single, hundred-fingered hand.

 

Peter was discussing something with Gojels and the young architect in the red shirt—what was his name again? Marcelle? Mario?—from Berlin. Next to Peter, the otherwise businesslike architect looked like a baby. Noticing Ieva's fixed, introverted stare, Peter turned toward her and waved a glass of white wine under her nose. She broke free from her thoughts and back into the bustling world around her.

“Isn't 2
p.m.
too early for wine?”

Peter smiled meaningfully.

“I know what too late means, but not what too early means.”

Ieva laughed:

“But I don't know what too late means.”

Peter stared at her for a moment and in his typical careless manner flipped his dark hair over his shoulder. Then he said:

“Yes, it could be that it's too early for you to know what too late means.”

 

The small, dark theater slowly filled with students. How many movies were there left to see—two?

“Peter, please!”

 

Elias's smile! Gojels's, Mario's, and Barbara's profiles. They were all so nice.

Except Peter. When he presented at yesterday's readings Ieva had felt a childish and long-forgotten desire to be protective. He had immediately upset the audience. But those were the rules of the game. Peter had to be edgy by definition. Strange how the truly edgy are rarely crass or confrontational—this type subconsciously calls out for love, sometimes rather violently. Peter was fragile and ironic, there was plenty of love in him, he wanted freedom. “In these bittersweet pages you'll find the fall of a regime and the past two decades of Eastern Europe”—that's what
Rolling Stone
had written about his play. “Simply a polymath vagabond for the needs of New Europe,” Lawrence Norfolk had flippantly added. How could they all place the European label on Peter! Like a bunch of kids who are just worried whether or not they'll be able to hear their mothers calling for them.

In contrast to Germany, people in Hungary had never believed in Communism, so to them the regime was straight-up fact, Peter had pitched during his presentation. Exactly—pitched. With a broad stance, his frail shoulders thrown back, always flipping his dark hair. With an easy smile on his face. Sometimes you want to slap such unshakably ironic people, just to see if they can feel anything.

 

Shows in six of Germany's biggest theaters. His first piece translated into fifteen languages. Multimedia performances with his participation in over twenty countries. A monthly column in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
. He knew how to play his cards right. The kid had scored a ten on his first shot. And he even looked the part. What's more—he looked like a loner who couldn't be really surprised by anything in the world anymore. Often full of a slight disdain. That's what happens to public entertainers. Just like professional party planners hate partygoers.

But Ieva knew that Peter's disdain was purely symbolic. He was used to looking at the world cynically, he shrunk from anything forced on him. Such imposed, positive emotions are usually just for connecting a writer to his audience. Like Paulo Coelho, who went out in front of hundreds of readers at book fairs—and both sides came together in a convulsive overflow of love. Just yesterday Ieva had overheard some students at the café laughing about Coelho—about his habit of drinking freshly squeezed carrot juice with freshly made warm cream. About housewives who, upon meeting him, jump at the chance to tell him about their troubles with their husbands while the author would listen and offer love-filled advice in a fatherly manner.

But Peter's stare was a warning.

Be careful—his eyes seemed to say as they moved over the audience. But not for my sake. I grew up with the dangers of Hungary. So I warn you—be careful for your sake. The audience sat silently and tried to decode this mysterious message called Peter.

In closing Peter read a fragment from his play in English, but the audience sat in icy silence. Then he asked a translator to read the same fragment in German, saying, “Usually I'm used to seeing more smiling faces!” But the people decided he was trying to work them. There were a few older men in the audience who were more directly caught up by the young Hungarian's overt provocation. One person stood up indignantly and shouted—“Stop translating, all Germans understand English!”

Peter answered that understanding and hearing a text are not the same thing. This led to a lengthy discussion. Ieva saw that Peter was growing helpless in the face of aggression.

 

Ieva asked:

“Peter, irony is meant to create distance, isn't it?”

Peter turned his attention to her. He looked at her warily.

“In order to talk amongst themselves, Hungarians were forced to use subtexts—to read between the lines and beyond the jokes. By the 80s irony had become the official language in Hungary. If someone spoke seriously, it meant he sided with the regime—meaning he was lying… It's hard to joke around. If I tell a Russian a dirty Transylvanian joke, he'd laugh for an hour. A Hungarian would laugh for half an hour. A German—for five minutes. It's just that the joke would be foreign to someone born in the Carpathian forest, where everything smells of blood and death.”

“And now, when you travel the world? Do you maintain your cynical view of things?”

Peter shrugged.

“No choice. I grew up with irony. It's my second skin.”

“And distance as well?”

He nodded.

 

Barbara pushed her way through the crowd with a CD in hand. She looked at Ieva, and Ieva smiled encouragingly and waved.

Barbara studied at the Konrad Wolf Academy for Film and Television under director Hans Foses, and Hans practically put the girl on a pedestal. Every time she'd met Ieva, Barbara tried to speak Russian. She gushed about Russia and her dream of traveling to Moscow. Ieva was too lazy to keep reminding her that the Baltics and Russia were two different places.

Once they had talked about Latvia.

“What's Germany to you!” Barbara had cried out. “Compared to the massive area of your country!”

When she saw Ieva's surprised face, she explained:

“I mean the steppes!”

Ieva had laughed, but said nothing. In the eyes of the international community Russia was irrational, but the romanticized idea Germans had of Russia was sometimes even more so.

 

Small and lithe with short-cropped hair, Barbara reminded Ieva of a teenager. Hans said she had style. And her film was amazing, Ieva would see for herself. That's how a director was supposed to act, Ieva thought—like a jackrabbit. White against the pale winter snow and brown against yellow summer reeds. So the world is never closed off to them. So they can get inside a foreign world and observe.

Meanwhile Barbara was presenting her movie:

“Last summer the cameraman and I filmed in Romania—in Bucharest. It was really tough, not so much physically, but spiritually. You'll see… Some scenes were staged—the ones filmed in the youth center—but the rest are documentary. We made friends with the Bucharest street kids. They live in heating ducts. We gave them a video camera and had them film themselves, in their world. For them it was a game, entertainment. For us—it was valuable footage. You'll see… What else can I say? Roll film!”

 

Peter sat down next to Ieva with a glass of wine and whispered into her ear:

“Thanks for the support!”

His shaggy hair fell forward onto her shoulder and tickled her neck. She drew back and laughed:

“Don't mention it! Have you been to Romania?”

Peter simply nodded his head in response.

“Japan?”

“No! Japan is the exception. And I never lie.”

They were both overcome by fits of laughter as the rest of the hall grew silent and suddenly very serious.

 

The movie started.

It was powerful. Even for the students who had learned to emotionally distance themselves from the material used and evaluate a film's professional qualities.

Shaky scenes filmed with a miniature camcorder moved in time with the observer's breathing and heartbeat. Barbara was like a meticulous follower of Dogme 95, the so-called final film manifesto of the 20
th
century presented in Paris in 1995 by Danish director Lars von Trier and his peers. This manifesto, or “Vow of Chastity,” envisaged the creation of works that went against the manufactured glamor of Hollywood by:

–filming only in a natural setting;

–never recording the sound separately from the video, or vice-versa, and without using music unless it was actually in the scene being filmed;

–using a camcorder;

–making the movie colorful and prohibiting special lighting effects;

–forbidding the use of optical tools and filters;

–not having any actions in the movie that were impossible to realistically show (such as murder);

–prohibiting the alienation of time and geographic setting—the movie had to take place in the here and now;

–prohibiting genre movies;

–using only the Academic 35mm movie format (this rule was the first the new group themselves broke, by starting to use digital filming techniques);

–refraining from taking credit—the director's name would not appear in the credits.

 

Everyone knew that von Trier's self-irony was intact, and that the “Vow of Chastity” was more like a parody of a manifesto, but the scandal succeeded. Even though such bans were like a red cloth to a bull, they still encouraged them to consider the level of lies in filmed material: what's colored in by computer, cut out, lit up, made over, and then fed to an audience—like the whole thing had been calculated down to the last teardrop and dollar.

Ieva didn't think there was any need to discuss the topic. Everyone could tell plastic from glass and, if someone liked plastic, it was a matter of preference and knowledge. She enjoyed professional cyber-movies for their stylistic purity, but purity of style could hold your attention for ten minutes, no more. Even mistakes, if there were any, were interesting. In all other ways these movies were unbearably boring and predictable—like the human mind. They're for the viewers' entertainment.

No manifesto can make an artist out of a person. In turn, no artist can strictly adhere to a manifesto if he is truly an artist. Even if it's the one you've written yourself.

 

Barbara is undeniably talented. And she has a good cameraman. A delicate light stretched from the depths of the hall toward the screen.

The scenes revealed what was usually hidden from those who walked the earth—a shelter made of pieces of insulation covered in rags, faces stony from hunger and drugs—all of which light draws out from the darkness, like carving them from nothingness with a rough chisel, the naïve commentary of children. It was a physically visible hell.

The story slowly unraveled, highlighting the main protagonists. One of them was a boy who filmed the underground world. When he himself showed up on camera, people gasped—he was only eight years old, but he constantly smoked while talking to his counselor at the youth center. His opinions were rational and wise like those of an eighty-year-old man. It was terrible seeing this little person, this primordium of all mankind, who was destined to grow up in literal darkness.

But Barbara hadn't made the typical beginner director's mistake—pitying and adding emotion to what could already be seen. She gathered the teenagers and brought them to the seaside, filming their reactions to this never-before-seen element. The camera was and remained an observer. Letting the viewer think for themselves.

The movie also had a proper dramatic climax—it ended with documentary scenes in which some boys in the underground were judging the death sentence on one of their own—for some unclear, but in their belief, unforgiveable crime. A sawed-off barrel is aimed at the captive teenager, who at first squirms like a worm in fear of death, but then stands tall, puts his hands in his pockets and stares in challenge at the person taking aim…

 

. . .
Ieva grows hot, and for a second she thinks she's going to faint. She doesn't know which tiny detail it is that suddenly rips open the storeroom of memories—the accused boy's stance, his sweater, the look in his eyes, or the barrel being aimed at him. But a scene of her and Aksels is there in her mind, clear, clear as day.

 

Aksels!

 

What kind of name is that?

 

It's so common!