The Hidden Letters of Velta B. (40 page)

Through all this, Stanka watched quietly. I think she was in a state of disbelief. None of her tinctures and lotions had beaten back death. She walked backward around the mound. Three times she did this. Then she took a breath, held it. Then let it out. As she did, her breath was not a sigh but a song.

Sweet does the wind blow,

So sweet,

So sweet,

From the garden rows.

It was a Gypsy tune, and Stanka, whose voice usually sounded like gravel being raked with a stick, managed to turn it as soft as a gentle break in the rain. After Stanka had finished, we sang
dainas,
the old ones we hadn't sung in years. We knew these words by heart. They were water over rocks. They were breath in the lungs. We sang our love through time and light and momentary trouble. The clouds hung low, bending to our voices. The water rose to our songs. Our songs carried our tears, and our tears unlocked the quiet ruminations of the fields and stones and soil, and of those who lay beneath stone and soil.

If ever one of us flagged, Rudy raised his crutch, urging us on. You were the only one who did not sing. You were listening. At one point Ligita motioned you over to where she stood. She pointed to her belly. You placed a furry ear on the swell of her stomach; a smile spread across your face.

“She's singing,” you said.

The rain fell flat and heavy. One by one our friends and neighbors dispersed. I did not want to go home. I knew that the mud would be to the top step and the shed was already one meter underwater. Minutes passed. An hour. I did not go to the river; it came to me. I had stood on its banks in sorrow. I had stood on its banks in joy. Now, as it swelled far beyond its banks, it lapped at my feet and I felt divided, confused. We had just sung and it had felt good and right. Now I felt empty, small, and defeated. Over the surface of the floodwater, the storks flew upside down, their reflections shadows wobbling behind them. From the low hills, the dogs barked, but it sounded as if they were swallowing yawns. Only the water from the sky moved as it usually did, rain falling drop by drop, point of proof each. The sky was closing in on us, one liquid bit of pressure at a time.

Mother joined us, one arm around you, her other arm around my waist. With help from Ligita and Joels, Rudy hobbled through the mud toward the stand of birch. “Our world is so small,” Mother said. “Too small and we are so small in it.”

“But we're not invisible,” I said.

“No. We're not invisible, just small. Broken but not crushed. So it would be foolish to cry, wouldn't it?” She pitched her voice toward you, but she was looking at me. A question too burdensome to carry alone. “I have always thought I could draw strength from the river as if I were dipping a bucket in it.” Mother's gray eyes and the river water one and the same color. “I used to believe that strength would rise and fill me. I'm not sure if I believe that anymore.”

She gripped me tightly. We were all feeling broken, but the exact shapes of our ragged edges were in no way alike. This is the peculiar thing about sorrow: it is carried differently from person to person. It is unique and therefore uniquely painful.

The water lapped at our boots; mud crept into my shoes. I was about to suggest we head for higher ground, the hall maybe, when a colossal amount of noise came from upriver. Geese honking, dogs barking, and what sounded like every cow in Latvia bellowing.

“Ahoy there!” Dr. N., about one hundred meters upriver, waved his arms. He stood on the detached roof of his barn, now a barge held afloat by a thick bottom made of hundreds upon hundreds of wine corks. Beside him, Miss Dzelz held an oar. The barge approached: fifty meters, then twenty-five. He'd tethered his cows to the front and rear. Wearing their bright flotation suits, they bobbed beside the roof like enormous yellow buoys. They seemed to understand how ridiculous their situation was, as their chuffing and snorting tipped from simple confusion to bellows of outrage. The barge gently nuzzled the alders. Then it became wedged tightly against the trees.

“Be so kind!” Dr. N. called out. “A little push, please. And then hop aboard.”

The cows tethered to the front of Dr. N.'s floating barn roof lowed and grunted. Ditto for the cows tethered to the back. I looked at Mother. She looked at me. We had two choices: stay where we were and huddle and cling. Or we could step onto the barn roof and head for high ground.

Mother placed a foot gingerly onto a plank, testing it. “It appears something wonderful can come of lavish drinking,” Mother said, as she stepped aboard. The rest of us followed, the rear brought up by the Ilmyens. Joels and Dr. N. pushed against the alders with their oars and the roof broke free. I'd never seen Dr. N. so jubilant. At last—an experiment with tangible, useful results. We were floating, no doubt about it. And the cows, too. Carried along by the river's current, they kicked listlessly from time to time with their hooves as they surveyed the passing landscape.

Dr. N. nudged Joels. “Who would have guessed they'd be such good swimmers?”

Beside him, Miss Dzelz grinned. Had it not been for the two of them bathing each other in long looks of love, the situation on the barn roof would have been nothing short of awkward. For there, sitting side by side looking small and forlorn, were the Zetsches. Mr. Zetsche was not wearing his elevated shoes. Mrs. Zetsche did not have her many fine things beside her. It was just the two of them. We could not escape them and they could not escape us.

Mr. Zetsche's gaze slid over us, paused at Rudy, then dropped. He adjusted his hat so that the brim shielded him from our presence. He hadn't been with us at Father's grave; he knew that he wouldn't have been welcome. It pained me to see how clearly he understood this.

Carefully, Mother crossed the roof. She made her way to Mrs. Zetsche and sat beside her. For a long moment, neither woman spoke. In the distance we could see the blue and green and red roofs of barns and houses. A flat land of flattened geometries. Small squares of yellow, the light from within the school and the hall, wobbled downriver.

“Ruined,” Mrs. Zetsche said quietly. “Everything is ruined. The manor house—it's gone.” Mrs. Zetsche was shivering.

“I know,” Mother said, as she took off her own coat and gently draped it around Mrs. Zetsche. How quickly this river erased that great rift between those whom we presumed had too much and those whom we presumed were worthy of having more. We were losing everything together, watching it float and bump and knock along the water. Disaster rendering us equal in our losses. We could not look at them or anyone else with envy. And maybe this was the biggest loss of all: who could we blame now for our troubles?

We drifted past the Arijisnikovs, who sat on their chimney and cheered us on. By this time, the rain had stopped, the clouds had lifted. The darkness above smeared with the dark water. Then lights. Stars. Stars wobbled in the sky; stars wobbled on the inky surface of the water. I had something like a vision then, or maybe it was just a glimpse of insight beyond my ordinary understanding. For a glorious three and a half minutes I apprehended what this all meant. We were collectively being baptized. We were floating above and beyond our ordinary longings, our ugly mistakes, our complicated history. It was all for this moment. And I would be the woman I had always wanted to be: wise beyond my years, sturdy and useful in a way that far surpassed the mere physical limits of my body. Mother would not be weary. Rudy would not be angry. And Ligita. She would have her child, who would be healthy, who would call her mother, who would look upon her with the eyes of love. And you would, at last, have a world worth listening to.

As though you could hear my thoughts, my deepest hopes, you dipped an ear into the water. Could you hear Mr. Zetsche's stallions thundering along the riverbed? Perhaps you were listening to his fine cars, waterlogged and settling into the soft river bottom. Velta's piano played now by pike and eels sliding their bodies over the strings, maybe you heard that, too. Lighter objects—mateless shoes, chessmen, cell phones—they made no noise at all as they swirled merrily downriver.

Ligita sat beside Rudy, her face drawn. She gripped his hand, squeezed it tightly. A contraction. That is when the barge bumped none too gently into the hall. Ligita clutched her stomach. “Uh-oh,” she said.

What happened in the hall? It may seem odd to tell you things you witnessed. But sometimes we can look at a thing and not really know what it is we are seeing. Remember the rocks that harbor galaxies of stars? We can participate in their making and not even know it. The cows, as you may recall, clustered outside the hall, pressing their forlorn snouts against the windowpanes, fogging them with their collective snorts and sighs. Their snug chartreuse buoyancy suits, comfortable enough in water, added girth they could not quite account for nor accommodate. With each attempt to sidle alongside one another or squeeze through the narrow hall door, they bounced and toppled ridiculously.

Ligita's water broke. Her shouts, as sharp as corrugated metal, punctured the close air of the hall. Mrs. Ilmyen, Jutta, Big Semyon, and Little Semyon murmured their prayers, a rustling hush from the far end of the hall. Mother and I held Ligita's hand.

Rudy whispered into her ear, “You're doing brilliantly.” Her pain amplified his; he pounded his fist into his thigh in a series of dull thuds that sounded, you wrote, like a weaver's shuttle thudding across a loom. Every thud was another beat to that measure of his tuneless song.

Mr. Zetsche, who had not said a word all this time, approached Rudy cautiously. In his hand he held an unlit cigar. He cut the nib. “It's not much, but believe me when I say this: it is all I have.” Mr. Zetsche offered Rudy the cigar. With a trembling hand, Rudy took it while Mr. Zetsche struck a match and held the light as Rudy coaxed the flame, his cheeks working like the leathery folds of a fireside bellows.

Around hour eleven we grew restless. Joels had gone out and milked the cows, no easy feat as they were still fitted in their flotation suits. The Zetsches had drunk their way through an entire tureen of coffee. We had memorized one another's faces. There was no electricity, just the carbide lamps and their sharp smell and garish light.

“What will we do if the water keeps rising?” Mrs. Ilmyen wondered aloud.

“We'll sing,” Joels murmured, and Stanka concurred with a bobbing of her head.

“We sang already,” Big Semyon reminded us.

“We could pray,” Jutta said.

“It can't hurt.” This from Miss Dzelz.

“All right,” Mother sighed. “But please—none of those long-winded Lutheran prayers.”

And through it all, Velta watched in silence. Sky hanging over her head, clouds at her breast: milk of heaven. Her mouth pressed tightly. Not from anger. Not from resignation. But from recognition.
When your life has been as full as mine, who needs words?
Father had said this and she was saying it now. We needed this new life, loud and boisterous and messy, as much as we needed our old lives set in tidy words, written on musical scores, and etched on our faces.
See how quickly this all changes,
her eyes said.
See what a little water can do.

A cry. Low and long. And then another cry. High and jagged. The baby was here.

The river shrank, leaving behind a thick layer of marl, river mud, grass, and ruined heirlooms. You helped the men dredge the river and wrote of their curious retrievals: Mother's typewriter, a wooden spinning wheel, two of Mr. Z.'s stallions. The other three had sunk to their withers in the soft river bottom and there they would have to stay. Mr. Zetsche, it turned out, wasn't kidding when he said all was lost. Their mansion, once so grand and stately, sat reeking and gutted. And this made an occasion for a sort of healing. You heard Mrs. Z.'s almost imperceptible sniffles; you suggested we build their house first. Joels agreed, and he and Rudy went door-to-door collecting volunteer labor.

Young men, old men. Rudy's mates, the Merry Afflictions. Little Semyon. They gathered on a plot behind the hall, the highest elevation in town. One wheelbarrow of concrete at a time—mixed by hand and wheeled by hand amid dew, rain, and dusk—the new minimansion took shape. Smaller than their previous home, this newer one did not have as many shiny porcelains. But it was what we could build and it was what they needed.

Were some of those young men the same ones who'd thrown bricks through the windows, set fire to the Riviera's shops? No one asked; no one needed to ask. This was the water's reckoning, calling us to account. This was forgiveness worked out one stone at a time.

This generosity did not go unnoticed. Mrs. Zetsche stood beside Stanka for long stretches of time during those weeks as slab by slab, beam by beam, a new mansion emerged. It did not escape our notice when, from time to time, Mrs. Zetsche wiped at her eyes—genuine tears. Stanka often stood next to Mrs. Z., offering her dark sunflower seeds and spare tissues.
How many generous people live in this town?
Mrs. Z. was asking herself this, I imagined. I knew the answer: like the little stones at the river's edge, too many to count.

The river moved differently, slower in places where it had once been swift, surging over rocks where once had been still pockets for sleeping eels. We couldn't catch them to save our lives that next year. “Water has its own will,” you said one day, as you twirled a fuzzy gun-barrel cleaner into first one ear canal then the other. The barrel cleaner a gift from Mr. Zetsche. “That's why it is a sin against nature to try to contain it or control it.”

And like the river, you had changed. In the three years following the flood, you grew taller than Rudy and we had to stop calling you Little Maris. You became simply Maris. The muscles in your back and neck thickened, as did the downy fuzz on your ears. Thinking you were the Bear Slayer incarnate, a PR firm lobbied hard to make you the national hockey team's mascot. You were even profiled in a magazine that heralded you as the next presidential hopeful. Joels and I discussed the situation; we'd endured other legends that could not be stifled. We'd saddle this rumor—and many more—and ride it.