It is what it is. A glance and a disarming spark that either happens or doesn’t. And sometimes that spark flares up in a moment shared between two people.
But she doesn’t need that anymore.
Peter clinks his glass against hers. The glass wall of the Arus Hotel restaurant extends along the edge of the river. The restaurant looks out onto the rushing Spree, the dark depths of which catch hold of as many reflections as there are stars in the sky.
He opens a packet of cigarettes and offers them to Ieva. She declines.
As he lights one he idly says:
“I’m not addicted to cigarettes! I just smoke them for pleasure.”
“And pleasure? You’re not addicted to that?”
They laugh again. It’s easy to spend time with Peter because he is so damned confident, so bright and ironic.
And then he grins wickedly.
“I was in Latvia once.”
Ieva asks:
“What did you think?”
“It was five years ago. I was looking for a translator for my book. I only found one Hungarian translator in the entire country — some old guy about a hundred and thirty years old, a complete Methuselah. I flat-out told him not to translate my book, and went on to Lithuania. You’re like an Indian tribe — locked into yourselves, resolved to be withdrawn.”
It’s not exactly flattering. Ieva decides to fight back.
“Writers are more of a tribe,” she laughs. “But you look pretty meticulous. You took care of the translations for your book yourself? You’re your own manager, right? Y’know, Peter, I’d like to know — doesn’t your life as a writer suffer from your life as a performer?”
Peter’s dark eyes narrow.
“How do you mean?”
“I watched you when you read the fragment from your play. You calculate how many smiles each of your jokes will get. And if the audience doesn’t react the way you’re used to, you break down, feel out of place in your own skin. Don’t you become the dependent one, then?”
Check.
Smiling, he draws on his cigarette and leans back in his chair.
“There isn’t any writer’s life or performer’s life. There’s only one life. Mine.”
Then he serves up an unexpected question:
“What about you? I’ve been watching you all week. Are you happy with your life?”
And mate.
Ieva can’t find the words.
“You’re an amazing woman in everything you do. How come whenever you tell a story you always finish it by saying you wish it had been different? Does someone else make your decisions for you? And if not, why don’t you do what you want to do? It just seems that the whole time you’re living this life, you’re thinking about a different one instead. So tell me, are you happy with your life?”
Luckily, Ieva’s phone rings, granting her some time to think of an answer. It’s Monta. Missing her mother and not at all surprised to hear she’s in Berlin. They talk for a good half hour. Screw the roaming fees.
When Ieva looks back at Peter, her doubts have subsided. She won’t stitch black and white together anymore. Only white with white. And black with black. The answer can already be seen in her face when she speaks:
“What was it you asked?”
“Are you happy with your life?”
“Y’know, our Latvian tribe has this poet, Ziedonis, who once said: Happiness is only the order of all things. I’d say that happiness is an open ending.”
“Well put, and even a bit ironic. But how come your eyes look so sad?”
“Because today’s January 15th. That’s all. Let’s take a walk along the Spree.”
Monta
The Temptation of the Fog
The sunset is totally insane, Ieva thinks.
And where are they all going…
Tonight the sunset is pure madness, this is what she thinks.
And what she thinks has no meaning. The word “insane” hasn’t meant anything special for some time now. People shout it in the streets when they want to make others think they still feel something. And she has no clue what madness or insanity really are. Just words.
So we need to get rid of them.
And that orange, flaming eye through the bluish veil of mist and the fragile claws of night reaching for the white, disheveled clouds… Something dramatic was happening there, something strange. Over the woods themselves.
How can you say it, what do you call it, how can you find the words?
She looks again a few moments later — there’s nothing there anymore. It’s extinguished.
That’s a good word — extinguished.
Extinguished.
She looks out a different window. A group of kids runs around the courtyard in the half-dusk and calls for a dog to follow them. It’s always like that — always following them. Her daughter did it, too, step by step. Going somewhere. But she had so wanted to protect them. The dog and her daughter. And everyone else.
There’s no way she can.
Fog settles over the yard.
Maybe she should call these kids inside? So they can smear their muddy fingers on the walls and steps, eat cookies in the dark of the room, at the foot of the bed. So they can squeal and dance among the pillows, secretly play with her lipstick and, one after the other, suddenly grow up.
Like corn kernels exploding high over the midday heat.
When kids grow up, they instantly distance themselves. They become continuous even though, frankly speaking, it seems like just five seconds ago they were nothing more than an orgasm.
There are a lot of little deaths in life. Though no one probably thinks of these fragmentations like that. So what are they called?
She doesn’t know.
Kids glide through their childhoods and continue being continuous.
It’s wrong. Like all the grownups who carry the many lives they’ve lived within themselves, continuing and continuing on.
She could call them in — like recruiting an army — pass out chocolate rations for survival and smile bitterly at them, rewarding them for their nerve to come inside with their muddy shoes. But the dog will probably drop ticks, fat like overripe grapes, and the kids will trample them and smear them over the floor. She doesn’t have time to wash the floor tonight; she has to protect her idea. A kind of basic task, egotistic. She has to be with herself. So trivial! And what’s more — what a sunset! The shouts of the kids in the courtyard. They live in an entirely different world, a world she knows nothing about. That world will blossom when hers wilts. Every moment, thousands of worlds simultaneously blossom and wilt. A moment of chaos in your head — God, when am I going to have time to wash THESE dishes?! What time did he leave? It seems like it’s been forever. But no, just a few hours. Maybe, if she were someone ELSE, she’d be able to take a nap in the middle of the day?…
Where are they calling that dog over to? Where will they wander off to, where will they go with their unkempt, tangled hair and frozen, red hands? Wherever it is, there’ll definitely be some kind of danger: a marsh, quicksand, a quagmire, a steep bank of sweetly flowering, poisonous Daphne bushes or something else equally alluring… Maybe she should protect her daughter, call her in, keep her under her wing? Once upon a time those kids had been her daughter.
At one time she still entertained the hope that she’d be able to protect all of them.
From everything.
But no. It’s not possible. She has to be with her own self tonight. In a completely grammatically incorrect sense. A small task, because the goal is small. She is nothing more to the history of the world than an ant is to Mont Blanc. That’s why it would be best to go, bless the dog and the kids, gather them up, and feed them or something. But her goal is minute, and her suffering will be great, because he who puts others before him is happy — only she still puts herself first more and isn’t even ashamed of it. She’s come to enjoy withdrawing further and deeper into herself. And someday she’ll have to pay for all of it.