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.
The guard is squatting and inspects Ieva’s sandals one by one. One winter, when it was ungodly cold, Ieva had lined her boots with folded newspapers. She remembers the female guard who had unfolded and skimmed over each newspaper in annoyance.
Someone has to do it.
Ieva buttons up her dress.
While she does that the guard prods the loaf of bread with a long needle; then the needle is dragged through the block of butter. The needle is put down and the guard opens the bottle of mineral water, puts it to her lipsticked mouth and tastes the contents.
The guard sits next to one of the nightstands. She methodically opens the carton of cigarettes, takes out each one and puts it back. Dumps the contents of Ieva’s backpack onto the bed.
The guard flips through Ieva’s journal, then tosses it onto the table.
The guard says:
“You can’t bring that.”
Ieva nods. Thoughts are a scary thing — grenades, guns, narcotics.
“They’ll come get you tomorrow at ten,” the guard says.
She gathers up all the items to be temporarily confiscated and leaves. Ieva sits down so her shaking legs don’t betray her, and waits. There’s a knock at the door.
Another guard brings in the prisoner and leaves. The prisoner is dressed up in a suit. He stays standing by the door, grinning stupidly.
He approaches her cautiously, stands for a moment, then pulls her into his lap. Her smooth cheek against the bristly roughness of his.
They lean with their elbows on the windowsill because there’s nothing to really talk about. The window is open and sunlight streams in through the bars. Andrejs moves close to the bars and calls out — kss, kss, kss! A cat is walking along the meticulously raked strip of sand between the prison hotel and the zone fence. The cat freezes, looks up at the window, then walks on with purpose, its tail twitching.
Andrejs turns his head.
“Tell me what it’s like out there.”
Ieva gets flustered.
“I can’t.”
“Why.”
“It all changes so often. You’d have to see it for yourself.”
At some point the room is finally filled with the gentle shadows of twilight. Flies buzz around the final rays of sun over the strip of sand. These rays are so curious, so full of magic and freedom, that Ieva can’t think of anything better than what those flies are doing — dancing for the setting sun. Except the window is barred.
Andrejs hands Ieva an icon stitched into a plastic slip.
“I wanted to give you this.”
Ieva reads it:
“‘Be not afraid! Open your heart to Christ — the Lord…’ John Paul… Do you believe in God?”
Andrejs answers:
“Don’t know.”
Ieva reads on:
“‘Fools — this life was meant to given away, and nothing more…’ To who?”
“What do you mean ‘to who?”
She asks:
“Who are we supposed to give our lives to?”
Andrejs scratches the back of his head.
“Like I know… It was written in a book. Here we call those things icons. I make them myself. Got nothing else to do.”
Night. Light from the watchtower searchlights moves diagonally across the ceiling of the prison hotel room. Ieva and Andrejs lie in bed. Bodies rigid, naked, without touching. It’s hot. Now and then the guard alarm sounds outside.
Ieva asks:
“Where’d you get the suit?”
Andrejs answers:
“From donated clothes. Norwegian.”
“It looks good.”
“Thanks.”