High Tide (17 page)

This is how I'll get lost, she thinks. I'm already lost, disappeared, a rat among rats, a grey cat among grey cats, that alcohol merchant at the Central Market gave me my change because I already belong to a class, I'm one of them, one of the imprisoned, who'll forever feel their scars and pain against the ones who imprisoned us.

Ieva gets into the only taxi waiting on the other side of the station.

“To the prison?” the driver asks, studying her and the bag.

All she has to do is nod.

 

You count my vertebrae when I light the stove. Loved by the touch of your fingers, they ignite one after the other and glow in the dark like embers.

Later I'll walk you to the station and you can warm your hands in my embrace. Dig deep into the ash to the embers, to the spine-like fire.

Look at the stars up there!

So high.

You'll take out a burning ticket.

The train will come, sputtering and cold. There's a terribly cold emptiness under my heart; it counts your steps to the train stairs. Look out the window before your view is blocked by the grey bridges! A cat warms itself by a fire on the platform.

Wave goodbye.

 

“Here's your prison, honey!”

Ieva presses five lats into the fat, hairy paw of the taxi driver and slams the door. She didn't see anything—not the road, the church, the overpass! Not even the pretty sandy clearing before the prison.

There's a new broad, ugly staircase leading to the prison accounting department waiting room, and a large window at the landing. Ieva's silhouette is visible in the sunlight as she heads to the second floor. Everything smells strongly of whitewash.

After that is a long hallway with many doors—all on the left-hand side. The hallway looks robbed and forgotten. Ieva tries every other door, but each one is locked. Only the second to last door opens.

The room is filled with light. The outskirts, clearings, the second floor. A Soviet-era building with gigantic windows. A coffee cup sits on the windowsill; curls of steam rise from the black liquid, feeling their way upwards and forming condensation on the edge of the blinds, backlit by the sun.

Three women raise their heads from where they sit at their desks. One of them is eating a salad from a plastic container.

Ieva says:

“I need to pay. For a visit.”

“Ludmilla!” the women call out.

The one eating carefully wipes her fingers in a paper napkin and opens a ledger.

Coffee steaming away on the sunny windowsill. The smell of mayonnaise from the salad.

The woman by the window turns, takes the coffee cup, blows on it, and drinks. The woman by the door turns a radio knob; a jumble of sounds as the signal jumps from station to station.

Ieva counts out her money for the woman at the middle desk and signs the ledger.

 

Ten or so people are waiting in the prison yard for visitations. A guard comes out to them, loudly calls a name, and the person called goes inside. Ieva and an older woman with two fully-packed plastic bags remain outside. The old woman fishes hard candies out of her pocket, tosses them in her mouth, and grinds them like a horse.

A group of flushed men runs by—young guards in army boots. They run, buttoning up their jackets, their guns dragging on the ground. Ieva watches them.

 

The guard comes back outside and calls Ieva's name. She follows him to the passport window, holds out her passport, but then quickly pulls it back and puts it in her pocket.

She mumbles:

“I… no… I have to go somewhere else!”

A stern-looking officer brings his freckled face close to the glass.

“You're here for a visit?”

“I—just—I'm dropping something off.”

“Next window!”

She goes to the next window, takes off Andrejs's shirt, folds it as best as her trembling hands will let her, and places it on top of the groceries. The official stares in surprise at the half-naked woman in front of her. Let her! Ieva catches a whiff of the bacon. She feels sick.

She pulls her coat on over her bare skin.

Then she rips a page from her notebook and writes: “Everything's over for real now. Ieva.”

 

She walks along the sandy road toward town. Now and then she glances back as if she can't believe it—back at the prison where she's left Andrejs alone. Ieva walks on, letting go of something close with each step she takes, violently cutting the ties that would otherwise take forever to untangle painlessly. She makes it to the merciless core of freedom—traitor!—the chaos of air, fire, and earth. Don't describe it as beautiful, that's what Andrejs would have said, but how else can she put it? That second in which, despite everyone and everything, you take those first steps on your path, in your own moment of being? Because Ieva can't go on lying anymore.

So long, marriage! Take care, church, and the words of the pastor—in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, until death do you part! So long, love—where did you go? Time, come judge me! But no one else is going to do that. I have to judge myself.

And you shouldn't lie to yourself, shouldn't lie to anyone—freedom is always right there with you. You just get up one morning and go.

Freedom is always within arms' reach.

 

The trip home lasts twice as long because she tries not to think about anything. And when you think of nothing, time drags on. The wheels of the train clang, the thick, grainy August air thumps in the open windows, nothing is happening.

Ieva doesn't seem aware of herself or others—she stares at the window. It's growing dark.

Now she's alone. She'll have to figure out how to live on—naked, without Andrejs's shirt. But she wants to put off that train of thought.

People look at her, study her face. People see everything. That's what the species is like.

She puts on her headphones, “Bright Red,” cloaks herself in the icy fringe of the music. One by one, the passengers break down and dissipate, frozen in frosty crescents. All that remains is the darkness, the darkness, the darkness, and the inviting red eyes of the semaphore, so trustworthy and present along the entire road of life.

 

So here are the questions: is time long or is it wide?

And the answers? Sometimes the answers

just come in the mail. And one day you get that letter

you've been waiting for forever. And everything it says

is true. And then in the last line it says:

Burn this. We're in record.

 

Ieva gets out at the Central Station in Riga and keeps walking along the Railway Bridge, crossing the river. Her fingers feel for the Virgin Mary around her neck. No one stops her; she doesn't think about whether or not she's allowed to cross here. She wants to throw the Virgin Mary into the deepest part of the Daugava River. Let the stream weave her into the sand and sediment. The Virgin Mary is most definitely on Andrejs's side, Christ is on his side, and both of them—Mother and Son—look down on Ieva disapprovingly from the heavens.

 

The Railway Bridge.

Riga shines evenly on both sides.

A black river down the middle. No sweet little Daugava here, friends. It's a massive current, wide and threatening.

It's raining.

 

Trains move in both directions on the bridge. Ieva presses closely against the rail when they go past. The conductors look at her in surprise.

Over the middle of the Daugava Ieva sees a dark figure walking toward her. She slows her pace and crosses to the other side of the bridge. The figure crosses, too. It turns out to be a uniformed Railway Bridge guard with a nightstick on his belt.

“Your permit, please!”

Ieva answers:

“Permit? I don't have one.”

The guard orders:

“Then you have to go back! You can't walk on this bridge.”

Ieva looks over his shoulder, the river once again throws the rushing sound of her own blood back into her ears.

“No walking?”

The guard is annoyed:

“No! Like you're from another planet… No one can walk on the Railway Bridge. Turn around! And fast. Otherwise the police will get involved.”

Ieva goes back, and on the way she rips the Virgin Mary from around her neck and throws her over the rail into the water. Ieva falls into the wet grass next to the bridge supports and pounds the ground with her fists. Why can't she live to honor this beautiful, thick grass?

 

A thought suddenly comes to her that has her immediately on her feet.

What if she's?…

Pregnant!

 

She trips and stumbles as she moves and only now realizes that she's completely frozen, hanging around the bridge with just her jacket and no shirt, and in a downpour no less!

She buys a pregnancy test in a 24-hour pharmacy and races across the wet sidewalks to Fanija's apartment. The city smells like it never has before.

Thank God she's at least able to be alone tonight!

 

Ieva goes quietly into her room, closes the door, and opens the window. The coolness of the mud in the courtyard rises up between the buildings to meet the night sky. It's so rare she gets to be alone. She melts with the dimly glinting creases in the curtain.

Morning. She has to wait until morning.

She sighs heavily and undresses, puts on a soft cotton t-shirt, and falls asleep clutching Monta's big stuffed bear.

 

A yellow-green and bright sun shines through the maple tree and draws a shifting, trembling design on the staircase. Fanija opens the bathroom door on the landing. Ieva stands and studies the pregnancy test, which slowly reveals a single line.

Fanija speaks:

“Ieva, I already told you to make sure to put the key back. I couldn't get into my bathroom all day yesterday!”

Ieva answers:

“I'm sorry.”

Fanija asks:

“What's that?”

Ieva:

“A test. I'm not pregnant.”

Fanija tries to understand the situation, then dismisses it with a wave of her hand and says:

“So no miracle, then.”

Ieva asks:

“Miracle?”

Fanija answers:

“Sure. It would've been a little angel sent to the rescue. But no.”

She continues:

“You know, it's been two years since my son disappeared—I told you once already—he went out one morning for milk and just never came back… yes, Ieva, let's go… and you know, after that a large bird landed on my windowsill and tapped on the window a few times, clearly, slowly, with a pause between each one! And then I understood! I understood everything!”

Ieva offers Fanija her arm, and they slowly head back up the well-worn stairs. Fanija continues:

“Thank you, thank you! That bird, you know, it tapped maybe three times. And, quite frankly, I understood. I've already waited two years. I have to wait one more, Ieva. My son'll return in a year. A miracle, right? But I understood.”

Ieva asks:

“How old are you now, Fanija?”

Fanija answers, a bit short of breath:

“Eighty-four, Ieva. I'm bored of waiting and paying a pretty sum for this apartment, but what can I do? Think about it! But I'm doing well. I found a fifty-santim coin on the stairs today. How d'you like that?”

As they go up, Ieva listens to Fanija's words, understands what she says, and asks questions. But at the same time she feels with every cell in her body how much she misses Monta's smell and face, the dog's energy, her mother's unsolicited advice, the playground and store, shopping and trains, and the sky—wide open one morning and closed the next.

And she manages to see Andrejs—it's a tenth of a second, a scene from her memory of one spring morning at the Zari house—maybe it's the flicker of the sunspots underfoot that triggered it? Ieva remembers a similar morning with sun, she sees Andrejs, how he looks as he stands in the apple orchard next to the stone rubble of the barn, where all the trees are blossoming. There's a chainsaw at his feet and, as he looks at the twisted sweet cherry tree in front of him, he says to it:

“Your turn.”

The tree looks back at him.

He picks up the chainsaw and checks the gas level.

He glances at the neighboring tree, a maple sapling.

“Don't look so smug. You're next.”

At that moment Ieva calls to him:

“Leave me the maple.”

Andrejs looks intently at Ieva, who is kneeling in the shade under a silver yew-tree, and reminds him of a large, talking bird.

“What do you need it for? It's not even a fruit tree.”

“Leave it. Please.”

Her voice sounds so strange.

And that tree is still in the yard today. You can touch it if you want.

Ieva sees this scene and immediately forgets it because her phone rings; it's her boss calling to tell her that they ended up finding another intern to take her place, she causes too many problems—her kid is sick, she's got to go who knows where to see her husband. Got it, thanks. Ieva manages to think it's the hand of fate. She has to find a school, she wants to study something. Before she gets completely lost in the fray. And she has to finally go see a doctor. How much longer can she lose weight and walk around feeling sick to her stomach if she's not pregnant? And at least she paid this month's rent in advance; she's got an entire month—she's rich with time!

Then a thought rips through her mind like a bullet: that it hasn't been made official in any church, that anything could happen, and that this book called her life is still without an ending—it's not good and it's not bad, and yet—it's her life, this uninsured, death-bound expedition, this unrepeatable morning full of pigeons and the shadows of trees, the sun, and Fanija's stories. Full of future get-togethers and laughter. This book—the privilege of reading it is hers, and hers alone.