Silence.
Andrejs’s hand moves and rests gently on Ieva’s chest.
“You’ve gotten pretty fragile. Like a skeleton.”
Ieva laughs.
“Like a skeleton!”
“Don’t do that. Eat more. You’ll get ugly.”
Silence.
Ieva says:
“I’ve got to save up. I’ve eaten nothing but water for a while now. It’s got nutrients in it, too, for real. Just have to get used to it.”
Ieva’s eyes in the darkness. Andrejs also pretends to sleep.
Then she suddenly sits upright in bed.
“Something was here! In the dark. Something evil! What’s that noise?”
After a brief silence Andrejs answers:
“The alarm outside.”
Ieva shouts:
“No, no! Here! There was something evil moving around in here.”
The massive May moon fills the window — an agitated red, and completely dead. The air is alive and pulsates with the chirping of crickets.
“This is a prison, Ieva. And you’re sleeping next to a murderer, by the way. Or did you forget that?”
Ieva leans on her arm and looks into his face. The moon shines through her eyes, her forehead is white in the glow.
She says:
“Stop reminding me all the time! I’m sleeping next to a person. That’s how I want to see it.”
Andrejs doesn’t know what to say, and just waves her off like he would a fly. Ieva sinks back against the pillow and continues:
“We have a daughter. A daughter, Andrejs.”
“I want you to bring her with some day.”
“She’ll never, ever set foot in here!”
Morning. Ieva lines dishes on the shelf. All that’s left on the nightstand is a watch. Outside it’s pouring rain and thundering. Andrejs sits on the bed, smoking nervously.
She sits across from him and picks at the corner of the blanket. He gets up and starts pacing the room.
He says:
“They’ve forgotten. It’s already five after.”
Ieva forces a laugh:
“That would be just perfect — to forget about us in prison!”
Andrejs asks:
“How’ll you get to the bus stop? It’s pouring and cold — take my shirt.”
Ieva pulls the shirt on over her dress.
He says:
“Just think, my shirt’ll be free in a few minutes.”
There’s a knock at the door.
Andrejs looks at Ieva.
“Everything that’s happened, and prison — but I haven’t turned into some kind of animal, Ieva. You hear me?”
A guard with a wide, official face comes in.
They’re taken away.
Prison hallways.
A maze of hallways, the door that opens and shuts with a bang. For a brief second they’re able to see each other through the glass door.
The prison gate.
They return Ieva’s passport.
She steps out into the rain, right into the core of it, this mess of intoxicating freedom, water, and sand. It won’t even let her breathe in — just exhale. Endlessly exhale as she looks back at the white fence, then back out toward the city and the future, which slowly but surely draws closer through the slanted torrent of water from the heavens.
The moon can do amazing things, her mother had said.
Ieva snaps back from the window when she hears the station announced over the speakers, her stop. She turns the Virgin Mary pendant from Andrejs over in her fingers, and then she’s on the platform. Dingy piles of leaves litter the concrete under the green benches, stray cats laze about, and everything is surrounded by a slow, small-town calm.
This is how I’ll get lost, she thinks. I’m already lost, disappeared, a rat among rats, a grey cat among grey cats, that alcohol merchant at the Central Market gave me my change because I already belong to a class, I’m one of them, one of the imprisoned, who’ll forever feel their scars and pain against the ones who imprisoned us.
Ieva gets into the only taxi waiting on the other side of the station.
“To the prison?” the driver asks, studying her and the bag.
All she has to do is nod.
You count my vertebrae when I light the stove. Loved by the touch of your fingers, they ignite one after the other and glow in the dark like embers.
Later I’ll walk you to the station and you can warm your hands in my embrace. Dig deep into the ash to the embers, to the spine-like fire.
Look at the stars up there!
So high.
You’ll take out a burning ticket.
The train will come, sputtering and cold. There’s a terribly cold emptiness under my heart; it counts your steps to the train stairs. Look out the window before your view is blocked by the grey bridges! A cat warms itself by a fire on the platform.
Wave goodbye.
“Here’s your prison, honey!”
Ieva presses five lats into the fat, hairy paw of the taxi driver and slams the door. She didn’t see anything — not the road, the church, the overpass! Not even the pretty sandy clearing before the prison.
There’s a new broad, ugly staircase leading to the prison accounting department waiting room, and a large window at the landing. Ieva’s silhouette is visible in the sunlight as she heads to the second floor. Everything smells strongly of whitewash.
After that is a long hallway with many doors — all on the left-hand side. The hallway looks robbed and forgotten. Ieva tries every other door, but each one is locked. Only the second to last door opens.
The room is filled with light. The outskirts, clearings, the second floor. A Soviet-era building with gigantic windows. A coffee cup sits on the windowsill; curls of steam rise from the black liquid, feeling their way upwards and forming condensation on the edge of the blinds, backlit by the sun.
Three women raise their heads from where they sit at their desks. One of them is eating a salad from a plastic container.
Ieva says:
“I need to pay. For a visit.”
“Ludmilla!” the women call out.
The one eating carefully wipes her fingers in a paper napkin and opens a ledger.
Coffee steaming away on the sunny windowsill. The smell of mayonnaise from the salad.
The woman by the window turns, takes the coffee cup, blows on it, and drinks. The woman by the door turns a radio knob; a jumble of sounds as the signal jumps from station to station.
Ieva counts out her money for the woman at the middle desk and signs the ledger.
Ten or so people are waiting in the prison yard for visitations. A guard comes out to them, loudly calls a name, and the person called goes inside. Ieva and an older woman with two fully-packed plastic bags remain outside. The old woman fishes hard candies out of her pocket, tosses them in her mouth, and grinds them like a horse.
A group of flushed men runs by — young guards in army boots. They run, buttoning up their jackets, their guns dragging on the ground. Ieva watches them.
The guard comes back outside and calls Ieva’s name. She follows him to the passport window, holds out her passport, but then quickly pulls it back and puts it in her pocket.
She mumbles:
“I… no… I have to go somewhere else!”
A stern-looking officer brings his freckled face close to the glass.
“You’re here for a visit?”
“I — just — I’m dropping something off.”
“Next window!”
She goes to the next window, takes off Andrejs’s shirt, folds it as best as her trembling hands will let her, and places it on top of the groceries. The official stares in surprise at the half-naked woman in front of her. Let her! Ieva catches a whiff of the bacon. She feels sick.
She pulls her coat on over her bare skin.
Then she rips a page from her notebook and writes: “Everything’s over for real now. Ieva.”
She walks along the sandy road toward town. Now and then she glances back as if she can’t believe it — back at the prison where she’s left Andrejs alone. Ieva walks on, letting go of something close with each step she takes, violently cutting the ties that would otherwise take forever to untangle painlessly. She makes it to the merciless core of freedom — traitor! — the chaos of air, fire, and earth. Don’t describe it as beautiful, that’s what Andrejs would have said, but how else can she put it? That second in which, despite everyone and everything, you take those first steps on your path, in your own moment of being? Because Ieva can’t go on lying anymore.