“Your turn.”
The tree looks back at him.
He picks up the chainsaw and checks the gas level.
He glances at the neighboring tree, a maple sapling.
“Don’t look so smug. You’re next.”
At that moment Ieva calls to him:
“Leave me the maple.”
Andrejs looks intently at Ieva, who is kneeling in the shade under a silver yew-tree, and reminds him of a large, talking bird.
“What do you need it for? It’s not even a fruit tree.”
“Leave it. Please.”
Her voice sounds so strange.
And that tree is still in the yard today. You can touch it if you want.
Ieva sees this scene and immediately forgets it because her phone rings; it’s her boss calling to tell her that they ended up finding another intern to take her place, she causes too many problems — her kid is sick, she’s got to go who knows where to see her husband. Got it, thanks. Ieva manages to think it’s the hand of fate. She has to find a school, she wants to study something. Before she gets completely lost in the fray. And she has to finally go see a doctor. How much longer can she lose weight and walk around feeling sick to her stomach if she’s not pregnant? And at least she paid this month’s rent in advance; she’s got an entire month — she’s rich with time!
Then a thought rips through her mind like a bullet: that it hasn’t been made official in any church, that anything could happen, and that this book called her life is still without an ending — it’s not good and it’s not bad, and yet — it’s her life, this uninsured, death-bound expedition, this unrepeatable morning full of pigeons and the shadows of trees, the sun, and Fanija’s stories. Full of future get-togethers and laughter. This book — the privilege of reading it is hers, and hers alone.
January 15th
There’s nothing good about a 200-plus-pound black guy emerging suddenly from the shadows and jumping you. Ieva’s happy for anyone who hasn’t had to experience that.
At first Ieva doesn’t understand what he wants, he just comes at them. In the moment his heavy hand comes to rest on Ieva’s shoulder, when she catches a whiff of his hot breath, acrid from eating Latvian garlic toast, and when she understands the true consequence of trouble — this is the moment he first sees Aksels. Aksels stands next to her in the biting December wind, and the white light by the entrance of Polārs Bar sways, pulling his face from the framework of the night. The black guy immediately shoves Ieva to the side and lunges for Aksels.
Ieva lets them fight. She senses that something awful could happen right then, but god dammit, she can’t do anything about it. Ieva screams out something, but her voice drowns among the sounds of the slush-covered street.
The black guy throws Aksels down onto the ice. The puddles on the sidewalk are frozen over, dark as onyx. Shit, Ieva says to Ningela, the gypsy or Indian woman who materializes in the Polārs doorway. Shit, Ieva says, see what the Āgenskalns neighborhood has become! Blacks and Indians! But Ningela doesn’t understand. Ieva’s speaking Latvian, but Ningela only knows a few words of the language.
Ningela pushes back a few nosy people who flicker like shadows in the bar’s entrance, and then slams the door. Enough, Ningela shouts out at them in Russian, enough! — but the black guy doesn’t hear her. Tell him to stop, tell him that’s enough, Ningela screams, hoping Ieva will put an end to it. The black guy’s boot flashes in the light of the weak lamp. Aksels is there, in the dark, on the ground, on the ice, or who knows where. Ieva grabs a board leaning against the wall and hits the black guy across the back. It stops him for a second, and Aksels manages to get away. It’s what Ieva has been hoping for this entire time, that Aksels would run if anything ever happened. Ieva doesn’t know why he didn’t run when he had the chance that night. Maybe his pride was at fault. Ieva had underestimated him — Aksels, it turns out, isn’t someone who runs.
It’s only when Ieva slams the board into the black guy’s back that Aksels clambers awkwardly across the ice and into the darkness. Right then his fate was already sealed, he just didn’t know it yet. Ieva takes off after him.
Then she yells at Ningela for a while longer from the darkness at a safe distance, while Ningela stands on the steps of the bar, her white slippers reflecting a weak glow in the never-ending curtain of snow. Ieva understands enough of what Ningela is saying to know people think Ieva and Aksels snitched to the cops. That the cops busted them for 30 grams of marijuana. That Ningela’s daughter was arrested and that they now blame Ieva and Aksels. Ieva doesn’t know who told them that bullshit. While Ieva and Ningela are shouting at each other, Aksels stands behind Ieva, she feels him against her back — his mute presence, his support. The black guy leans against the front of the bar, short of breath and seething, spitting dark drops of blood from his split lip onto the white snow. He pulls a joint out of his shirt pocket. A third of it has already been smoked, and he slowly and calmly lights it up again. He’s even blacker against the falling snow and the cold glare from the bar. Ieva can smell the heavy scent of weed, even through the mush of snow and rain. Son of a bitch! Where did he come from! Fuck! Ieva and Aksels leave. Empty-handed.
Nothing changes much after the night that black guy kicked Aksels. Ieva goes to work, but Aksels sits around at home. A friend pays back a debt — homegrown marijuana from the countryside, and a bit of cash. Aksels jokes that you can’t have the bad without the good. Every cloud has its silver lining. He says this, Ieva’s pigeon-grey love with a silver lining. This lining shines all around him — in his hair, his skin, fingertips. A glimmering vein around his dark rainbows.
That’s how they spend the last night of the year — pressed close together on a mattress. The first morning of the New Year arrives and Ieva looks intently at his eyes when they open. At how they move, his eyes, at what they look like. It’s so wonderful, life. Liveliness. The life, the liveliness that hides in Aksels.
Aksels doesn’t contemplate life.
Ieva is the first to wake up and watches Aksels closely, resting on her right elbow as he lies half awake. He rubs his forehead, then his face contorts as he untangles himself from his dreams, and his eyes fly open. His eyes search, they’re in the moment, they find Ieva, and they clear. Ieva freezes, afraid to breathe. He looks at her silently for a moment, then smiles and reaches for a cigarette. Nothing out of the ordinary. This is how their mornings start. For two years Ieva has had no greater secret than the man next to her.
A week later he can’t even get up if he’s sitting, or sit down if he’s standing. He says Ieva’s being ridiculous and has her go buy weed. Ieva smokes less so that he can have twice as much. The usual kindness toward everyone and everything that comes from smoking up. The thrilling generosity. Ieva doesn’t say a single negative thing to Aksels. They almost stop talking completely. When they eat dinner, Ieva knows to go get a fork, or glass, or knife, even if he just looks at her. Until he tells her — enough. He’s sick of seeing this warmhearted nurse everywhere, stop it, Ieva! And she stops. And just looks at him with wide, frightened eyes.
She’s scared of how shivers run through her bones when she looks at Aksels. She can’t avoid it. Countless times she’ll go to kiss him, to simply and lightly touch her lips to his; Ieva does this every time he starts to say something, or when he watches TV, or when he quietly smiles to himself. And he’ll impatiently wave her off, but not reprimand her. Aksels knows — if he reprimands her at a moment like that, he’d cut her to the depths of her heart. But he also knows that when Ieva kisses him, she’s trying to hold onto a part of him, and that cuts him a hundred times deeper. I haven’t even gone anywhere yet, he thinks, hope dies last, don’t you know that, dear Ieva? He can’t bring himself to say it out loud.