Inga Abele - High Tide

He’s out of it for a long time, laid out on a brown, pleather couch. His body is wracked by chills, he’s freezing. Ieva covers him, wraps him in a blanket. She sits next to him on a white stool, motionless, while Aksels is broken by the nightmares of narcosis. It’s hell for both of them — Aksels’s convulsions and Ieva’s motionlessness, their mutual isolation. Finally they both come to in the same world; Aksels opens his eyes, but they’re not his own. They’ve switched him out from where he used to be.

Ieva helps him dress. The nurse comes in and hands Ieva his hip X-rays and a referral to the hospital, then anxiously asks them if Aksels doesn’t want to wait here longer for the anesthetic to wear off. They shake their heads “no” almost in unison.

Outside the city has snowed over, ice crystals crunch underfoot, children run around with red cheeks and lips shiny from sucking on icicles. Tires creak, the tram tracks sing, street sweepers clear snow with silver shovels. The sun burns the piles of snow along the sides of the street like fire. No road has ever, nor will it ever, seemed so long as those few hundred meters to the tram stop. Now and then the wind pushes loose bricks of snow from the clubbed branches of the linden trees. Aksels supports himself on Ieva’s shoulder — rather, he’s slumped against it. He feels so heavy, waterlogged. A few times he falls onto a pile of snow and wants to rest there. Ieva doesn’t let him. C’mon, let’s go, she says, c’mon, c’mon! Ieva isn’t thinking of anything, not even the tiniest thought. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.

In truth, Ieva has nothing more to say. She asks Andrejs to take them to the hospital tomorrow. The sun shines brightly as Ieva smokes at the gate of Andrejs’s mechanic shop, and he looks at her with lazy, half-lidded eyes. Of course I’ll help, he says, when have I ever not helped you…

The icy wind blows the smoke back into her face, the contours of her lips are red and raw. You’ve totally wasted away, Andrejs says. Of course, Ieva says and looks away, it’s from the stress.

Andrejs asks:

“Why are you smoking?”

Ieva answers:

“To calm my nerves.”

Andrejs smirks.

Andrejs shows up on time. They’re already waiting in the courtyard. Aksels gets in the back, stretches his leg out on the seat. Ieva sits up front next to Andrejs. She shows him the X-rays — a couple of dark and mysterious landscapes — and the long bones of Aksels’s legs through the fog of flesh. As they drive they pass cars, high-rises, bridges, and streetlamps. The sun is shining again and the fields of snow glitter blue and violet.

Ieva says:

“Can I smoke in the car?”

Andrejs asks:

“Why do you need to?”

The wind whips at the smoke through the open window together with strands of Ieva’s hair, pulling them into the open sky.

Ieva repeats:

“To calm my nerves.”

He asks:

“You really believe that?”

She nods.

Wide, smooth hallways of stone stretch in all directions at the Cancer Research Center like forgotten czarist-era cavalry arenas with their high ceilings. The sun is unbearable. Its destructive power comes through countless windows, its rays of light dancing with tiny particles of dust in the air as people walk past.

The doctor examines the X-rays, shakes his head, and asks Aksels to undress. Aksels takes off his clothes without a second thought; he’s spent most of the last days doing the same thing. Ieva doesn’t budge an inch. When the doctor asks the nurse to shave Aksels’s hip so they can run tests, Ieva takes the razor from the nurse’s hand.

He stands in a spot of sun like a slim, careless being. Ieva kneels down and shaves the front of his hip. The hollow under his hipbone around the ugly, swollen thigh. The fine, unruly hairs burning in the soft light. One by one they fall to the ground, where the cold shadows instantly extinguish them like sparks. Ieva wants to kiss his hips, but her despair has robbed her of feeling, she can’t feel her own face. A minute later they sink a thick needle into his leg. Aksels grabs onto the edge of the table and grits his teeth so hard his lips turn white.

The doctor asks to speak to Ieva out in the hall. He says something about bone cancer, the fastest of the slow deaths. Asks if Aksels has sustained any injuries. Tells her to call in a few days to ask about the test results. He disappears back into his office as Ieva turns to run.

She runs, no, she goes, but the air lifts and carries her until she can’t keep up anymore — galloping from one end of the hallway to the other. The air washes over her and slams into the walls like foam, smearing against the window blinds. Andrejs stands at the window opposite of where she finally stops. Ieva chokes on air, is out of breath, and goes to him. Andrejs looks at her long and hard and says he loves her. Can you honestly not shut up, Ieva says, if only for a second, please, for Aksels… Andrejs can’t. He hurts her with his heavy and endless love even when she’s sobbing and gasping into his sleeve, even when Aksels emerges fully-clothed from the doctor’s office and walks over, his crutch tapping against the cool tile floor. He walks toward the two of them with infinitely drawn-out, long, uneven steps, cool and indifferent, right up to the two of them, who are looking at him as if he was limping straight for Heaven’s door.

Back at home Aksels says to Ieva:

“So what now?”

Ieva answers:

“I don’t know.”

He gets angry:

“You do too! You talk to the doctors, so please, enlighten me!”

Ieva says nothing. Aksels knows. He’s only pretending he doesn’t get it.

He tries a different approach:

“How long do I have left?”

“At most — two months. We have to call back January 15th for the results.”

Silence.

“Hey,” he says. “Don’t let them take me.”

Ieva doesn’t know how it happens, but people acclimate. That fascinating acclimation mechanism when faced with the unavoidable — no, what is she saying — when faced with anything that lasts more than a few hours. She remembers that first night: they’re both smoking on the balcony, and it’s briskly cold. When they sit with their backs against the wall all they can see over the concrete-block railing are the stars, which are truly glowing. Between them is the small birch tree, white with bare branches — it grows on the balcony through a crack in the bricks. Below them is the city center, the laughter of pedestrians scattered over the icy sidewalks like red, crystal apples, and the shining reflections of billboards on the cobblestones. Thank God the Christmas market carousel has quieted down. It’s hard for Aksels to sit, he folds his jacket under his leg and stretches it out toward the horizon. He’s on clonazepam to override the pain and anxiety. He’s pale, weak, with bright feverish eyes, and smokes cigarette after cigarette and rambles on. It seems he’s talking about how important it is for people not to hurt one another. Expands on the topic. And then he’s plowed down by sleep, like slipping into a coma. Ieva drags him back inside. Holds his head in her lap and suddenly hates whoever wants to take this beautiful, warm doll away from her, this doll she can never get enough of. She starts to cry, even though at moments like this tears usually avoid her like she’s fire. Ieva and Aksels love movies, run piles of them through their old Panasonic the way other people run loads of clothes through the wash. It takes away the ability to feel anything. Any time she starts to suffer, she remembers some actor or actress in a similar situation and the way they handle it. Contort their faces while the cameraman mercilessly milks the moment with his lens, drawing out the tears, screaming in terror — she has no doubt that the actors are experiencing instead of acting. But it’s not the actor or actress that drives her crazy, it’s the director and cameraman, and all of these gigantic industries, machineries, the desire to run dry and scan sorrow onto a screen for all to see, to not turn away from the vein that has been brought forth and torn like an oil line. And after that, when something happens to you personally, you’re just not able to cry anymore.