“Why are you smoking?”
Ieva answers:
“To calm my nerves.”
Andrejs smirks.
Andrejs shows up on time. They’re already waiting in the courtyard. Aksels gets in the back, stretches his leg out on the seat. Ieva sits up front next to Andrejs. She shows him the X-rays — a couple of dark and mysterious landscapes — and the long bones of Aksels’s legs through the fog of flesh. As they drive they pass cars, high-rises, bridges, and streetlamps. The sun is shining again and the fields of snow glitter blue and violet.
Ieva says:
“Can I smoke in the car?”
Andrejs asks:
“Why do you need to?”
The wind whips at the smoke through the open window together with strands of Ieva’s hair, pulling them into the open sky.
Ieva repeats:
“To calm my nerves.”
He asks:
“You really believe that?”
She nods.
Wide, smooth hallways of stone stretch in all directions at the Cancer Research Center like forgotten czarist-era cavalry arenas with their high ceilings. The sun is unbearable. Its destructive power comes through countless windows, its rays of light dancing with tiny particles of dust in the air as people walk past.
The doctor examines the X-rays, shakes his head, and asks Aksels to undress. Aksels takes off his clothes without a second thought; he’s spent most of the last days doing the same thing. Ieva doesn’t budge an inch. When the doctor asks the nurse to shave Aksels’s hip so they can run tests, Ieva takes the razor from the nurse’s hand.
He stands in a spot of sun like a slim, careless being. Ieva kneels down and shaves the front of his hip. The hollow under his hipbone around the ugly, swollen thigh. The fine, unruly hairs burning in the soft light. One by one they fall to the ground, where the cold shadows instantly extinguish them like sparks. Ieva wants to kiss his hips, but her despair has robbed her of feeling, she can’t feel her own face. A minute later they sink a thick needle into his leg. Aksels grabs onto the edge of the table and grits his teeth so hard his lips turn white.
The doctor asks to speak to Ieva out in the hall. He says something about bone cancer, the fastest of the slow deaths. Asks if Aksels has sustained any injuries. Tells her to call in a few days to ask about the test results. He disappears back into his office as Ieva turns to run.
She runs, no, she goes, but the air lifts and carries her until she can’t keep up anymore — galloping from one end of the hallway to the other. The air washes over her and slams into the walls like foam, smearing against the window blinds. Andrejs stands at the window opposite of where she finally stops. Ieva chokes on air, is out of breath, and goes to him. Andrejs looks at her long and hard and says he loves her. Can you honestly not shut up, Ieva says, if only for a second, please, for Aksels… Andrejs can’t. He hurts her with his heavy and endless love even when she’s sobbing and gasping into his sleeve, even when Aksels emerges fully-clothed from the doctor’s office and walks over, his crutch tapping against the cool tile floor. He walks toward the two of them with infinitely drawn-out, long, uneven steps, cool and indifferent, right up to the two of them, who are looking at him as if he was limping straight for Heaven’s door.
Back at home Aksels says to Ieva:
“So what now?”
Ieva answers:
“I don’t know.”
He gets angry:
“You do too! You talk to the doctors, so please, enlighten me!”
Ieva says nothing. Aksels knows. He’s only pretending he doesn’t get it.
He tries a different approach:
“How long do I have left?”
“At most — two months. We have to call back January 15th for the results.”
Silence.
“Hey,” he says. “Don’t let them take me.”
Ieva doesn’t know how it happens, but people acclimate. That fascinating acclimation mechanism when faced with the unavoidable — no, what is she saying — when faced with anything that lasts more than a few hours. She remembers that first night: they’re both smoking on the balcony, and it’s briskly cold. When they sit with their backs against the wall all they can see over the concrete-block railing are the stars, which are truly glowing. Between them is the small birch tree, white with bare branches — it grows on the balcony through a crack in the bricks. Below them is the city center, the laughter of pedestrians scattered over the icy sidewalks like red, crystal apples, and the shining reflections of billboards on the cobblestones. Thank God the Christmas market carousel has quieted down. It’s hard for Aksels to sit, he folds his jacket under his leg and stretches it out toward the horizon. He’s on clonazepam to override the pain and anxiety. He’s pale, weak, with bright feverish eyes, and smokes cigarette after cigarette and rambles on. It seems he’s talking about how important it is for people not to hurt one another. Expands on the topic. And then he’s plowed down by sleep, like slipping into a coma. Ieva drags him back inside. Holds his head in her lap and suddenly hates whoever wants to take this beautiful, warm doll away from her, this doll she can never get enough of. She starts to cry, even though at moments like this tears usually avoid her like she’s fire. Ieva and Aksels love movies, run piles of them through their old Panasonic the way other people run loads of clothes through the wash. It takes away the ability to feel anything. Any time she starts to suffer, she remembers some actor or actress in a similar situation and the way they handle it. Contort their faces while the cameraman mercilessly milks the moment with his lens, drawing out the tears, screaming in terror — she has no doubt that the actors are experiencing instead of acting. But it’s not the actor or actress that drives her crazy, it’s the director and cameraman, and all of these gigantic industries, machineries, the desire to run dry and scan sorrow onto a screen for all to see, to not turn away from the vein that has been brought forth and torn like an oil line. And after that, when something happens to you personally, you’re just not able to cry anymore.
But, Ieva says, fuck all of that. Precisely because on that night with Aksels at the balcony door, Ieva cries. She cares fuck-all about the movies. Even if hordes of gorgeous, magnificent actresses had pornographically poured their tears, snot, and spit in front of the camera, knowing that the lens was capturing every movement of even the tiniest movement of the muscles on their faces — even then, Ieva would have cried one more time. All she thinks about is how someone wants to take the heavy, slumbering head in her lap away from her.
Of course anything can happen in life, but not all because of some shithead black guy! Not because of that idiot Ningela, who puttered around behind the counters at Polārs, wrapped in her sickly-sweet renditions of Indian perfumes. Not even because of the bar itself — the shittiest of all bars, the dregs of the Āgenskalns barrel, that dump. Spending time in there, no matter the season or time of day, always gave you the overwhelming feeling of sitting deep underground. Or rather — at rock bottom. The stale smell of cigarettes, worn-out couches, a TV somewhere in the background soundlessly playing MTV while the audio system up front blasts something entirely different… The stale, cigarette-like regulars, who call themselves artists or life artists, but who are really just broken clocks, each bullshitting and babbling about the time they were actually meant to stop in.
All she wanted to do was buy some weed from Ningela’s daughter, but that black shit had come out of nowhere and thrown Aksels down onto the ice. Well, and then his hip got banged up, and then misfortune quickly started to fester. It’s so stupid! Not like this, not like this — Ieva begs as she cries, her tears rolling down her face in the dark and into Aksels’s hair.