The woman finally spoke up:
“So this is taking a trip to Riga, to the movies, huh? You could’ve come up with a better idea!”
Andrejs answered curtly:
“This is the fastest way.”
“We could’ve taken the tram like normal people!”
“What a princess! Keep moving!”
The massive train track field was at least half a kilometer wide at this point; electric trains went back and forth, signaling their approach from the bend with a whistle, then coming into sight themselves. A fence ran along the tracks, as did paths worn down by bums and bushes containing piles of garbage — below it all were the wavering city lights and din of traffic.
The train to Moscow slowed down and passed them on its way to the station. Andrejs froze in his tracks. He and the woman looked in the direction the train was going. The last car slowly rolled by.
“What are you looking at?” the woman asked.
He didn’t answer.
Dogs.
Guards who shove you against each other, throw you, toss you like lifeless sacks… But first — dogs, the wild barking of dogs, sinister, horrible… Dogs — the devil incarnate… Cerberuses… Then the soldiers, their boots…
On the ground!
On your knees…
Hands behind your head!.. Move, right, left, we’ll shoot without warning!.. Days and nights of waiting in the half-dark without food, water… Then suddenly a light, shouting, barking, the wind in your face like rye bread, so fresh, so alive and rich… You eat it half-blind, chew it, swallow it — fresh air… Until you’re herded into a new cell, where they de-lice you, re-clothe you, shave your head, and save you from yourself. On the ground!..
On your knees…
Prisoner transport cars.
And, having lost all other characteristics of being human, you’ll latch onto your kind, will remain nailed to your kind.
“What are you looking at?”
“Prisoner transport,” he finally said reluctantly. “You see that last car there on the train to Moscow? The last one’s a prisoner transport car. It gets hooked on at some point — in Daugavpils or maybe Krustpils. When all the passengers get out, a locomotive will come, unhook it and push it onto the side tracks. Maybe overnight. Maybe for a few hours. Maybe they’ll take it right away to Central Prison. Who knows — maybe only the day after tomorrow — to Jelgava or Liepāja.”
This Russian woman had the knowledge of transport cars in her blood; knowledge about where prisoners spent the night before they got put in the stocks, before the sentenced whippings, before being branded with the symbol of shame and exiled to Siberia, when every condemned soul is to be pitied, when you feel compelled to give them a warm sandwich, to drop an apple into their laps, to force your way through the crowd so you, too, can press a coin into their hands.
But she’d lived with that two thirds of her life, and she’d had enough. She didn’t want to deal with it tonight, and launched a rebellion. She whined:
“Let’s go. I’m cold. C’mon, let’s go, good God are you going to stand here for hours? We’ll miss it!”
She walked forward a few steps, then stopped.
“That’s where all your memories are, all your friends, right? Transport cars and shackles, and dogs, and railroads — right? Well go, run, beg them, maybe they’ll let you into that car, huh? That’s where your entire life is, snitch!”
“Shut up!”
“But it’s over now,” the woman said from somewhere behind him, and started to cry.
“What’s over?”
She grew scared and got quiet.
“Don’t cling to any fantasies or hopes! Don’t! You’ll get exactly as much as you need. And leave the rest of it alone! I’ve put prison behind me. And I won’t tell you anything more!”
The woman stood on the tracks in the fall drizzle in her see-through stockings and stupid shoes, and trembled. The wind tore at her jacket, hair, and tugged at her thoughts, she looked so pathetic in her fancy get-up and red lipstick… and so close.
“Sweetheart,” she said, “but it’s over now.”
He spun around angrily and wanted to head back to the station. Ditch this drama and leave, like he’d done so many times before. But he suddenly felt that he couldn’t. It surprised him. He’d told her everything on his mind, but these words suddenly meant nothing, and disappeared like they’d been dropped down a well. Sweetheart, she’d answered, and was still standing there.
And he couldn’t go anywhere.
Strange. What’s left to not experience, he thought sadly.
He turned back around and started to climb down the steep embankment. She stumbled after him, crying out quietly when her foot slipped in the mud, and balanced meekly on one foot like a child when he brought the stray shoe to her and put it back on. Taking each other tightly by the hand, they dove downward, into the bright city.
Father
Several ducks and a goose idly putter along and nibble stalks of grass by the canal downtown. The weather is hot and humid as a greenhouse. A storm shifts tensely high overhead, but it can’t pull itself together.
Monta and Andrejs, having left the apartment, sit outside at the café. Andrejs rubs his thumb over his train ticket — he always buys it ahead of time for the trip home.
Old men play checkers on a bench under the lindens by the café terrace. Squealing children run around the adjacent playground, where the blue and red plastic tunnels, steps, and towers radiate a poisonous heat into the absentminded dust of the city. Punks and National Bolshevisks lounge in the grass in their striped woolen sweaters. But for now, father and daughter have the café to themselves.
Monta tries to inconspicuously wipe the sweat from her upper lip. Andrejs watches the ducks, watches his daughter, does up and undoes the top button of his shirt. As if waking from a trance, they now and then hastily pick up their drinks. The tonic swims with the reflection of the trees overhead and the broken shadows from the straws. Andrejs’s straw is yellow, Monta’s blue. Andrejs has a strong, almost violent mouth set in a darkly tanned face. Monta’s lips are sensual and soft, with traces of red lipstick.
Monta opens her mouth several times without a sound, then resolutely returns her father’s stare with her icy blue eyes. When they’re together there isn’t much use for words.
Some mothers sitting on the long bench by the playground talk about something and then burst into laughter — the sound is sudden and free, like champagne bubbling from a bottle. Monta starts, then bites her straw. Andrejs hears the tiny, delighted squeal of a little boy and turns to wave to him. Monta sees the shadows of leaves chase each other across the aged skin of her father’s neck. She looks up at the sky; it’s sticky, it’s suddenly and completely closed off, blackened by something stifling and dark like soot. But the sky won’t open up for a while still, though the foliage might. Moisture gathers on the lindens from the humidity.
Her father faces her again, reaches across the table and touches the back of her hand, where the heat has drawn up a few bluish veins. Now the yellow-painted fingernail of her index finger traces vertical stripes in the condensation on her glass.
A small, mangy poodle runs into the flock of birds. He seems oblivious to the ducks, but aggressively herds the lone goose. The poodle’s owner, an elderly woman with a pale face and arms crossed behind her back, turns toward the canal and looks at the bright green embankment on the opposite side. Her ankles are swollen beneath light-colored stockings, knotty like a tree stump at the roots.
Right now this woman is alive. The grass along the canal is unbelievably green. It’s as if the thick air is seconds away from unrolling a rainbow over it all. Everything will smell like cool, wet dirt, and air.