Inga Abele - High Tide

Fanija sinks into her thoughts. Ieva waits. Until Fanija finally stirs, like she’s wriggling out of a bog of memories.

“You’re not in the least bit similar to him, but there’s still something… a gesture… a look, when you come in.”

Ieva looks at the veins on Fanija’s hands. Ieva doesn’t have time to wait.

She says:

“I want to pay in advance.”

Fanija looks at her blankly. Old people can sometimes suddenly flare out mid-sentence — like a candle that’s been tipped over. Ieva puts her money on the table.

“For the room.”

Fanija nods, but Ieva doesn’t know what for. She backs up toward the door.

“I’m going now. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m going to visit my husband.”

As she reaches the door, Fanija speaks, surprising her.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Ieva, I find you incredibly nice. Just remember to always put the bathroom key back in its place. I don’t have a spare.”

Ieva, Monta, and Dārcis stand in the front hallway of the apartment. Monta leans against the wall and holds Dārcis by his collar. Ieva puts on the necklace Andrejs gave her — the Virgin Mary hanging from a woven cord. We’re all set to go with our collars on, Ieva thinks.

“Let’s go!”

And they go.

She drops her daughter and the dog off at Pērnavas Street, where Monta is quick to fish her mother’s white guinea pig from its sand-filled aquarium and drop it on the ground — much to Dārcis’s barking delight and the guinea pig’s mortal fear. Ieva listens through her mother’s complaints and suggestions, then heads back into the street after a wash of goodbye kisses from Monta. She puts on her headphones and turns on her CD player, listens to Laurie Anderson’s album “Bright Red.”

Remember me is all I ask

And if remembered be a task forget me.

This long thin line. This long thin line.

This long thin line. This tightrope made of sound.

This music is like a frosty glaze forming over an oppressive heat. Over life’s distorted faces, broken-down by the black ice of passion, over the fire-filled bodies, markets, sales, weddings, births, and funerals. The music climbs over the dusty streets and freezes these things in moments, echoes, reflections. It fits in perfectly with Ieva’s own Ice Age.

She turns the volume up as far as it will go and shrinks into a corner of her world. Her mother just told her, “Read your life like a book, and with pleasure! It’s your privilege and yours alone.” Ieva skips ahead few tracks and watches as the city shifts in crystalline arcs.

All of these faces, her species. Ieva is able to participate when the music plays, to once again breathe in the air so many others have breathed for millions of years.

Watch your life as if it’s a movie — with an aching.

You had that rusty old car

And me I had nothing better to do.

You picked me up. We hit the road.

Baby me and you.

We shot out of town

Drivin’ fast and hard

Leaving our greasy skid marks

In people’s back yards.

We were goin’ nowhere.

Just driving around.

We were goin’ in circles.

And me I was just hanging on.

In the Central Market Ieva breaks through the hundred-headed mass and thinks about Monta. Her soft, silk-like skin, her clear eyes, the warmth so newly ignited in her heart! The way she looks along at the road ahead.

Stay with Grandma, be good, don’t give Grandma any trouble! Mommy’s going to go see your father. To visit.

For now Monta doesn’t have any questions. It’s what has to be done, obviously the entire world works like this. Mommy has to go see Daddy, who Monta doesn’t remember. She doesn’t know where he lives; all she knows is that she has to wait for him to come home. A priori love. She has to wait for Daddy like she has to wait for Santa Claus. But even Santa comes around more often — once a year.

Now and then Monta throws out a question that’s like a slap in the face — she asks Ieva about Aksels. She still remembers Aksels.

Where’s Ocela?

Ocela’s in Heaven.

There’s no use waiting for Ocela.

Ieva fills her prison-visiting bag with things from the Central Market. Black tea, the simplest kind, loose, granulated if possible. Bacon. She spends a lot of time looking at the hanging hunks of pig meat at the stand; she’ll miss the train if she doesn’t hurry. But she has to hope the bacon will be the real thing, smoked in alderwood, not chemically dyed brown. An entire kilogram of onions. Herbs, cheese, mineral water. Candy — thin, chocolate-filled wafers coated with a sugary glaze.

And the most important thing — cartons of cigarettes. She won’t buy them at the store, but at the market pavilion at the intersection where they’re cheaper. Where under-the-table merchants with raw and weathered faces shout into the crowd: Spirt, vodka, sigareti! Ieva gives one of them twenty lats, takes the cigarettes, and waits for her change. The man turns his back to her, as if she didn’t even exist.

When he starts to walk away, Ieva grabs his sleeve.

“What do you want, lady?”

“Ten lats.”

“You nuts?”

The man swears and shakes Ieva off, but as he turns to leave his eyes flick to the opening of her shirt above her breasts.

Ieva automatically brings her fingers to her chest.

The tin pendant Andrejs had given her, the Virgin Mary on a woven piece of string. Warm from her body heat. The merchant most likely has a similar one around his neck — and if he doesn’t, then someone he knows definitely does. A pendant made in prison. A class marker.

The man mumbles something, gives Ieva her ten lats, and then they’re parted by the flow of marketgoers. You don’t touch your own. Don’t screw over your own. Who were you planning on cheating? One of your kind? Have you completely lost it?

Eagle bites the weasel.

Weasel bites back.

They fly up to nowhere.

Weasel keeps hangin’ on.

Together forever.

And me? I’m goin’ in circles.

And if I open my mouth now

I’ll fall to the ground.

Ieva pushes her way out of the pavilion. The sweat-drenched stench makes her dizzy, nauseated. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply through her mouth. Beads of sweat form at her temples.

She just has to get through it.

Summer has finally relaxed the muscles of its face.

If it rains, it’s torrential, sudden and unruly. If it’s sunny, the light is open and raw. The fields are cleared and filled with scavenging birds and dust clouds.

Ieva settles in the diesel train with her bag like she’s planning on being there for life. For four hours she stares out the window, as if she could absorb the future through her pupils from the mute lips of the scenery outside.

The moon can do amazing things, her mother had said.

Ieva remembers the last time she visited Andrejs.

He’d given her his shirt.

Ieva remembers herself in the prison’s hotel room, in front of a female guard. They stand face to face, both silent and with feet slightly spread apart.

Ieva unbuttons her dress.

For a moment their eyes meet. The female guard looks down. She puts her cool hands on Ieva’s shoulders, then slides her fingers down over Ieva’s collarbone, around her bra, and down her ribs.

Thighs.

Knees.

Ankles.

As she stands Ieva looks down at the wellspring at the back of the guard’s head where her dark hair forms a small whirlpool. The axis of the skull, Ieva thinks offhandedly. Children are born with open wellsprings, and then the skull grows shut. Then they build schools, churches, and prisons. Someone has to do it.