High Tide (22 page)

Whose hands will you wind up in when you're helpless?

 

From then on time splits—time before Aksels's death and time after it. Text messages received
before
and texts messages received
after.
The date on the packaging of a dried up loaf of bread is
before
, and Ieva shudders even before she's read it, even before she knows what she's read.

 

And what can she do now that she's left alone without Aksels? Hope that some day she'll be overcome by that somber valley to which he took off like a bird with a broken wing? Ieva would know how to die right then and there, but she wasn't convinced that she would die in the same place as Aksels. Ieva looks for Gran's Bible—it was supposed to be the book meant for the times fate separated two people and they needed a guide to find their way back to each other. The Bible was in old print, and nowhere did it explain how to die with another person.

Ieva went to church. The services dragged on, the pastor talked about the rich and the poor, and who had a harder time getting into Heaven than threading a camel through the eye of a needle. Everyone repented their sins together, the pastor forgave them in the name of the Lord, and then fed the hungry in two lines with the body and blood of Christ. Ieva swallowed it all and believed, but no matter how achingly she sang along, cried, prayed, and ate, she didn't see Aksels anywhere in this place. She left while the pastor ground out his last phrases about Christ, whom the pastor obviously loved. What was Christ to Ieva when she loved Aksels? Aksels wasn't here.

Ieva also searched in the forest. In the trees, in the sky. Aksels wasn't there.

He wasn't in the cemetery, either.

He wasn't anywhere.

 

Only in as much as his body lay those few nights next to Ieva, completely dead, cold, and beautiful. And in as much as his soul appeared at 4
a.m.
on a full moon like a thought weaving through the room.

And maybe not even that was true.

Ieva suddenly understood death.

She understood—there simply wouldn't be anything more.

The world would never have another person like that.

 

Somehow she had to live on. Ieva had heard stories about Buddha who, when he saw his first dead body, was unable to go on living and sat under a tree, where he had a revelation that eased suffering. Ieva didn't have a revelation. She burned a few of Aksels's things, put his photos and documents in envelopes, and didn't know which envelope held the meaning of life. The reason to be.

The thread of substance had broken. Ieva continued to exist in body, but only so Monta wouldn't be left alone.

And every now and then she told her daughter a little story about the time when Ocela had still been with them.

 

Tell someone about your dreams.

Always, definitely tell someone about the dreams you've dreamt. Once you undress the dream with words, you'll discover the meaning of it.

Explain the dream using the shortest possible words.

Once you undress the dream with words, you'll see your delusions in the words.

Explain the dream using the simplest words possible.

Be alert.

 

A few years go by, and then one day Andrejs's mother calls her up:

“Dear, if you hold any part of life to be sacred—go visit Andrejs in prison.”

 

Riga

 

 

Initially
Ieva, Aksels, and Monta stay with Ieva's parents in their two-bedroom apartment in a Khrushchev-era building in the outskirts of Riga. Ieva's brother Pāvils is studying in America and his room is empty. “It's a nice room, on the sunny side!” Ieva says in earnest joy as she sits on the floor among the clutter, watching the sun reflect on the rust-colored roof of the building across from them. The room is too small to fit three beds. Monta sleeps between Aksels and Ieva. She often shifts to an angle in her sleep and Ieva and Aksels have to fight to keep from being pushed out of bed.

During the day, Aksels and Ieva look for jobs. Ieva's mother LÅ«cija babysits Monta because Monta is still too young to send to kindergarten.

Ieva's father Pauls still works in an office; despite the changing times, every morning for the past thirty years he stands at the mirror tying his tie, then takes his briefcase and heads to work. He was never in the Young Communist League and has never been a member of the Communist Party—something that's considered a huge plus in these times. Possibly because the members of the Communist Party who were quick to switch sides are now Pauls's bosses. A hard-working person will be hard-working no matter where he is. Pauls and Lūcija have never taken sides, unless you count the time Pauls burned his Soviet passport at the Freedom Monument during the Awakening Manifesto. After that Ieva and her father went to vote in the first election of the newly independent Latvia. The officials didn't let Pauls vote, he didn't have a passport. I burned it at the Freedom Monument!, he had shouted, but they still didn't let him vote.

“An official is always right,” he later joked about his bad luck.

 

I'll place a dream about my Fatherland under my pillow,

one day I'll meet with it again and be happy,

and sleep as soundly as a baby in its mother's arms—

even in the suffering of death.

 

This poem by Jaunsudrabiņš, “For the Deported,” is always written on the first page of Pauls's day planner. A free Latvia has always been his dream. He was disillusioned rather intensely at a young age—the deportation of his loved ones and the suffering of legionnaires.

Like every child who grew up during the war, the most important thing to Pauls is safety. He doesn't seek out confrontation, doesn't alter decisions, is careful with his finances, and always has a little pocket money for Ieva.

“But in moderation! There are sprinters and there are marathoners,” he'd say. “Speed is the death of a marathoner.”

Pauls is a marathoner, but very upbeat. Ieva thinks he could have been a fantastic actor had he wanted to. But even actors have to cross the line now and again, and that was something Pauls could only do in his dreams.

Even the theater pales in comparison to the streets. People don't go to the theater—what's happening in the streets is more interesting. The founding and collapse of banks, political parties, governments. Office workers are plucked like reeds by the raging storms of political powers. Many nights Pauls comes home from work completely withdrawn and sits in the small kitchen emptying a half-pint bottle of brandy.

“So I don't have a heart attack!” he explains. “Today I had to explain again to the new minister why the last one made such a mess.”

 

Aksels lucks out and gets a carpentry job at the Academy of Music. It's easy enough. Ieva sometimes goes to visit him in the academy's basement—to make love, since they can't at home. They put a blanket down on the floor. The dark vaults are warm and smell of wood glue, and dusk is filled with the sounds of the academy students' nightly practices.

Ieva isn't as lucky in finding a job. She diligently looks through the want ads in every possible newspaper. For the most part people are looking for secretaries—young women with a high school education, good Latvian and Russian language skills, and computer skills. English language skills will be considered an advantage. Ieva's young—she has the necessary education and even understands some English. But she has never in her life seen a computer.

One night Pauls says:

“No problem! Come see me at work tomorrow!”

The next day Ieva trudges up the huge staircase of the Ministry of Finance and watches the young women strut confidently through the plush-carpeted hallways. That's what a secretary has to look like in the capital—long blonde hair, a thin gold necklace, and an immaculate suit.

Ieva's father sits her down at his desk. Hm, Ieva thinks, so that's why he likes his job—the centuries-old oak desk asks no questions and embraces you in its sanctuary, which smells lightly of warm paper and sealing wax.

“Look!” her father says. “This is called a mouse. And that's the monitor. Did you really not have a computer class in school?”

There were, they did have classes like that, where the teacher sat with his droopy mustache hanging over his desk and made them fill notebooks with writing on the basics of programming, showed them photographs and once took them on a special trip to the teacher's lounge, where the school's only computer sat under a cover in a locked cabinet—a real monolith! At least that's what her classmates had told her; Ieva had been home sick that day.

Now she puts her hand on the mouse and moves it across the desktop. And the movement of her hand is reflected on the monitor: a white arrow moves around the screen. It's complicated, but at the same time so simple. Something in Ieva's mind is good at connecting her hand with the screen. Her father teaches her how to boot up and shut down the computer, how to open a new Word document, and Ieva heads home in a good mood. All that's left to get is a suit, and she'll be a secretary!

But it's not that easy.

The first job Ieva gets is in some
automobile club owned by twin Armenian brothers. Ieva's diligent, writes press releases, and handles commercials for the radio and television, issues membership cards. Until one night when she stays to practice with the computer and she notices some flat-out lies. It's advertised that the automobile club has a couple thousand members, but she can see on the computer—there aren't more than a couple hundred! The following day she tells Olga, the office manager, a prissy Russian woman with long, buffed red fingernails. It's just some kind of mistake, Olga says. The next day the Armenians fire Ieva.

Now a bit smarter, Ieva tries out a position at a construction firm. The director, a small and chubby old man, never misses an opportunity to pinch her butt. For a while Ieva pretends not to notice, but one morning when the director asks to recite some poems he's written for her, she loses it and starts laughing hysterically.

The repercussion comes soon after. The office hosts an associates' evening—Ieva fills bowls with fruit, lights candles, gets a fire going in the fireplace—if a secretary wants to get her pay on time, she has to be capable of more than working with a computer or speaking English! The director calls Ieva into the room with everyone else and offers her a glass of cognac.

“But you know I don't drink,” Ieva says.

The next second the director throws the cognac into her face.

 

Ieva even tries placing an ad—
Looking for secretarial work.
The next day the phone at the Eglīte apartment rings non-stop with calls from what are basically pimps. A gruff voice breathes into the receiver:

“Are you interested in work over the phone?”

“What kind of work is it?” Ieva asks before she gets what's going on.

“A certain way of talking over the phone, you understand?”

Ieva understands and yanks the phone cord out of the socket. There'd been no sex in the Soviet Union. Now the city was full of so-called escort clubs—cropping up like mushrooms after the rain. Sex over the phone and in saunas, escorts, strip teases, massages. Once she was approached in the square facing the National Opera by a man with a pathetic droplet of perspiration at the tip of his nose. He'd said:

“Do you want to be a model? You've got a great rack and long legs.”

 

Ieva grows tired, but doesn't give up. Everyone in this insane city needs a job—but does that mean she won't find one? Riga swarms like the entrance to a beehive in the spring, and pulls Ieva along with it—young and with her hair in the wind. Each new day brings hope, but each night brings dark defeat.

She applies for a job at an advertising agency. They need advertising agents for the publisher of the largest illustrated magazine. Her interviewing director is a lean, bearded-type in a plaid jacket who dozes lazily in the rays of sun falling across the large desk. Ieva tells him outright:

“Hire me. I'm done with being a secretary who gets cognac thrown in her face.”

The director opens his eyes, smiles, and draws a checkmark next to Ieva's name.

She goes to training, where she and the other blank canvases listen as a well-rounded and advanced advertising agent lays out the rules of the game and gives them secret tips:
how to handle their victims, how to conquer and win a seat at the table. Shamelessness, tactics, obstinacy—he more or less spoon-feeds these things to the silent group.

And then they're let out into the world with contracts in hand. Their salaries depend on the price of the deals they sign on.

The first place Ieva ends up is in the office of a car dealership. The front room she's told to wait in has a table, a chair, and a dark glass wall. Ieva walks around the room, looks out the window. Sits down in the chair and thinks—about nothing. The minutes go by; her half hour has already come and gone. She hears quiet music coming from behind the door. Ieva remembers that she'd almost ripped her only pair of stockings that morning. Do they have a run in them now? She stands up, checks her nylons and carefully straightens and smoothes her skirt back down over her thighs.

She's finally called in. Ieva goes into the adjacent room, and it's like there's a small party going on. A low stone table is covered in bowls of fruit and bottles, there's music playing, and several men in suits are sitting on the leather sofa. One of them asks her:

“So, what did you want to tell us?”

They're all grinning at her. Ieva turns to face the thick glass wall and sees that it's only tinted black from the outside. For an entire half-hour, it's like she's been in the palm of the collective hand of the men sitting down behind her. Like a live movie on a giant screen.

“Thank you, but I'm all set.” She blushes and leaves the room to the thunderous sound of laughter.

 

She lucks out at the wedding shop. The store's management hears her out and has her prepare an ad series for six magazine issues. Ieva's almost walking on air. Finally, this hopeless running around until her heels are rubbed raw will yield some results! She showers kisses on Monta, Aksels, her mother and father, is up late sketching drafts and coming up with slogans. She won't say anything at the agency, just show up and drop the signed contract on the table; she has brains, after all, and she'll come up with a marketing slogan so amazing it could inspire anyone. Your wedding dress—the caress of a silky summer night! A velvety autumn dream! A luxurious wintery mist!

The management at the wedding shop like her suggestions, Ieva is overcome by excitement and the store director just smiles as he looks at this blustery and passionate advertisement agent.

“The way you look right now, I'd marry you myself,” he says. “But first I'll have to consult with our accountant.”

Forget the accountant! It's a fantastic offer. Ieva slides the contract over to his side of the table. All the director has to do is pick up a pen and sign it. Still smiling, he watches Ieva float out the door, the valuable piece of paper clutched tightly in her hands.

Yes! Ieva really is walking on air. A five-hundred-lat contract! She'll finally be able to buy something for herself, Aksels, and Monta. Take a trip to visit Gran by the seaside. Being poor is something you can only deal with for so long. Constant poverty can wear down even the strongest spirit. Ieva dreams of one day going into a store and just buying things. Without mentally tallying her remaining santims.

Back at the agency, she finds Zane smoking in a sunspot in the hallway by an open window. They'd already noticed each other during training. Zane is pretty, with an honest face and honest eyes. She used to be a TV journalist. She looks over as Ieva runs up to her with sparkling eyes and gives her a big hug.

“Good news?” Zane asks.

“A five-hundred-lat contract!” Ieva says proudly.

“Oho! Me, I'm sick of it. I'm quitting. I go to all kinds of companies, see all the people I used to film pieces on, and they all laugh at me when I try to convince them to advertise with us. ‘Do you seriously have nothing better to do?' they ask. Guess I'll have to go back to television.”

“Why did you leave in the first place?”

“Lost my husband and kid in a car accident. For two years after that I was totally wrecked. Now I'm trying to bounce back.”

Ieva bites her lip and lowers her eyes. She doesn't know why, but she feels like the wooden floor of this hall, the color and boards worn down smooth by hundreds of shoes, will stay in her memory for years to come.

 

The advertisement agency tells Ieva that her contract is worthless. The director's signature is there, but there's no stamped seal.

“Did you honestly not know that you also need the stamped seal?”

Ieva remembers the smile of the wedding store's director. He knew—Ieva's sure of it.

And it's true. No one lets her in to see the director back at the store. An elderly, owlish accountant sits at the desk; a cast iron creature with a heart of lead.

“Young lady!” she glares at Ieva sternly over round glasses. “Do you want to bankrupt us? Do the math—do you know how many dresses we'd have to sell to break even on this kind of contract?”