Inga Abele - High Tide

in which I have to stay.

— A. A.

* * *

Brother!

So — that’s it.

. .

I have to confess to some lies. I try so hard to stay happy! In each letter to you, and in each sentence. I tried to read some books, get lost in quotes — nothing worked. I’m actually doing horribly. I don’t know what to hold on to anymore. Andrejs thinks that I’m creating an imaginary world around me, not living in reality. Maybe the books are to blame? I’ve read books since I was little like I was obsessed, and the words have probably taken their toll on my brain.

What’s happening to us?

I mean — to all of us. It looks like the country has lost its mind. The day before yesterday they liquidated a joint-stock company’s cattle-shed, you should’ve seen it! There are no words to describe it! Everyone rushed out like mad to find the best cow. They drove up in their compact cars and their trucks and fought loudly over the cattle. I saw respectable women, family matrons, tearing at each other’s hair and spitting in each other’s faces. Some men came in with a butcher already in tow to have their cows stunned with a hammer, mounted onto a hook, and skinned right there in the corridor. And there were kids around! I remember the cows’ eyes, placed all in a row like a necklace stretched out on the dusty concrete. I was wading through blood, brother, and that’s no metaphor.

Gran gave up her share for us to have, but I wanted to get out of there. Good thing Andrejs is so calm. “Look for a cow, not at what everyone else is doing!” he said. We noticed a younger cow by the door, greyish with a dark ridge along its back. We wrote its number down in the logbook and said we’d be back in a bit to get it. The poor thing was bucking at the end of its chain in fear from the scent of all the blood. I wanted to put a rope around its horns and get it away from the insanity as soon as possible. Well, but it would be a long way to walk and the baby was asleep in the car. We left that place behind as fast as we could. In the yard out front, a gypsy was tying a calf — ALIVE! — to the sidecar of his motorcycle and then took off down the road, the calf’s head dragging along the ground.

What’s happening to us?

And unfortunately, this morning Aksels asked Andrejs to come out to the horse stables. Aksels works with horses as the stable hand, and there was a horse that needed to be brought to the meat processing plant, but the stable tractor was broken.

I put Monta in the stroller and walked out to the stables. It was amazingly sunny after several days of rain.

And it was that horse!

I’ve already said that the stable pasture ends by our vegetable garden. Once, about a month ago, I was working in the furrows with a pitchfork when it suddenly seemed like a storm had picked up in the pastures. They were trying to break in a black horse. Later Aksels said that this horse had bad blood — the blood of a baron’s horse. Horses like that are so mean that it’s even rare for stronger men to be able to handle them. In order to get a saddle on this black horse for the first time, they’d called in an experienced man from a few districts over. But his expertise didn’t help. The horse had pulled free and was galloping around the pasture like thunder incarnate, kicking up sand with its powerful, shaggy legs. The earth shook. The horse snorted, whinnied, and thrashed, tore at the leather bridle with its teeth. It was like the devil himself had broken out of hell, and the people just looked on helplessly.

In the end the horse slipped and crashed into one of the low iron bars enclosing the pasture.

Right into its own end.

Because, as Aksels told me, when it heaved itself back onto its feet, it broke its lower back. And that was it. They tried to nurse him back to health, but in vain. The vet said the best doctor for any animal is nature. And then I saw the black horse a few times hanging around the apple orchard. He’d been let out to be with the other horses — he was a slow-moving cripple under the blossoming trees. A victim of his pride.

Until he finally lay down under an apple tree and didn’t get back up.

It was a group effort to get him back on his feet and lead him into the stables. Once there he dropped down in his stall, and everyone knew that this time he’d stay down.

What can you do? If a horse dies, it gets taken to the animal cemetery and tossed into a pit surrounded by green grass, thick blue-green fir trees, and black ravens in the branches — so shiny and robust as turkeys they can barely fly. And the giant snowdrops growing over the animals’ graves!

If a horse is brought to a meat processing plant, the farm gets money, and that’s no small matter when the employees haven’t been paid for several months. But you have to take the horse there while it’s still alive.

And I’m sure you understand, brother, that this horse couldn’t just be picked up and carried to the butcher’s truck. They thought and thought, then finally called Andrejs to bring his tractor, and I went with him. And that’s where it all started.

The horse was lying on its left side in the same spot it had been a week before. The men strapped it into canvas belts and chains like a large rock, and Andrejs used his tractor to pull it into the corridor through the opposite window. Then he dragged it outside along the corridor. The horse stayed proud the entire time — kept its head high. It only whimpered now and then. Bits of skin and flesh from its bedsores scraped off onto the cement.

Once outside, it was dragged through the mud to the butcher’s truck and lifted by a scoop into the back. Then the horse disappeared down the lane — quiet, half-raw, and with its head still held high.

At the time Aksels had asked them to sedate the horse. They said no. Andrejs laughed at Aksels, then called him a little shit who was just getting in the way. It was mean. After that I called Andrejs a bad name, almost scratched his eyes out, and then left with Aksels. And with Monta in the stroller. Along the road and away. That night I didn’t even go home to milk the cows. Andrejs drove out to the forester’s house completely drunk, threatening to shoot Aksels. Stase screamed at me to get back to my own house, and take my baby with me if I didn’t want any trouble.

In a word, it was a complete mess. And this entire long introduction is because I want to ask you for your opinion as someone who’s on the outside . What do you think, should I take Monta and run away to Riga to stay with Mom? I don’t see this ending well.

Best — your sister

* * *

Brother, dear brother!

First I have to say a huge thank-you for the money you sent. It was an uncanny move on your part — to pick the day that I have nothing, absolutely nothing at home, and then to send me money. Things have been terrible. That’s why I haven’t written in so long. Andrejs lent our car to a friend, and on Friday night he crashed and flipped it onto its roof into a ditch. Now, to get it fixed, we need a lot of money. We don’t have a car. We can’t go anywhere. If someone were to get sick, there’s no way for us to get to a doctor. Thank God Gran is staying with me right now, helping me look after Monta. But her pension isn’t that big. My horrible husband isn’t worried about the fact that we don’t have anything to eat — everything has to go toward fixing the car.

And then the postal carrier shows up and says: “You’ve been sent money!”

I knew right away, I got such goose bumps, what a feeling! An entire fortune! No one really knows about the money and they’re not going to find out, either. I’m going to use it to get food for Monta. I’m going to ride to the village in a bit on my bike. Little Monta already has it so tough. In Riga I saw a kid her age wolfing down bananas and yogurt, but my daughter only sees turnips and beans…