“You didn’t even see the bathroom — an extremely fascinating creature spends all morning sleeping in there!” Ilmārs calls after her in disappointment.
Some time later Ilmārs brings home and gives his Muse an Ērenpreiss-brand bicycle. Incredibly old and heavy, but in working condition.
“Extremely valuable! An antique!” Ilmārs boasts.
She keeps the bike down in the courtyard, locked up with an iron chain to a maple tree. Dragging it up and down the stairs would be suicide. The bike opens up an entirely different Riga to her; it glides easily and lightly, relaxing the hectic streets, smoothing the nervous lines in the city’s face. The bike reminds her of an old coal iron or the first pair of skis in the world — broad, substantial things that would let life could coast along without change. The stores, cafés, people, even the sky and the trees, even the river is wide open — all because Ieva herself is open. Her thumb poised, ready to ring the bell. Her lips ready to smile, her heart ready to answer.
Monta starts attending kindergarten. She’s still little, but they have no other choice — Lūcija refuses to take her, says it’s still too tiring for her to babysit.
It doesn’t seem like kindergarten bothers Monta too much. She’s a social soul and very independent, the kindergarten teacher says to Ieva with a reassuring smile. She has cause to smile — Pampers have finally secured the market in Riga. The teacher won’t have to change any more cloth diapers. Even Monta is dropped off at kindergarten with a stack of Pampers in her bag.
Sometimes Ieva stops by the cast iron fence and watches the kids play in the green oasis set in the middle of the muddy, cobblestoned city. So loud and happy, as if the world were without war, sadness, defeat, and victory… They’ve only just come into the world, but have such wise eyes, such age-old stares. But with all the bitter memories extinguished in their mothers’ wombs. Like freshly washed clothes bleached and dried in the sun and wind, they’re once again ready for fun and games, fun and games…
God help me understand what a child is — and that I have one.
This is what Ieva prays for from the other side of the fence.
She knows full well that it’ll come to her sometime later in life. She’ll find out.
For now it’s all the same: work or home. Work or home. She doesn’t get any of it.
Now, of course, she’s got a different job. Boris and Ieva never had the same idea of a work schedule. During the time they moved to the new apartment, Boris felt Ieva was asking for too many days off.
So it’s without worry that she goes to the Central Market to find work. They always need sellers there and they work in shifts. She even gets days off! It’s a luxury in this madness. And what’s more, their apartment is fantastic! They have their own life — it is what it is, but it’s their own.
And Pampers aren’t the only thing that have taken the city by storm — the first cellphones have arrived as well. Als, the owner of the mandarin orange stand, ceremoniously presents her a giant Benefon, a brick with an antenna. So I can always get a hold of you, he says. After only a few minutes of use the receiver heats up like an ember and electric jolts start to course through your brain.
Ieva’s parents also have cellphones. Ieva takes a black permanent marker and writes her mother’s number directly over the kitchen sink. They have a great relationship now. But when was it not great? Love is the foundation of everything; it just gets forgotten sometimes in the commotion of the day. Even a mirror fogs over if you look too closely into it; the image becomes distorted.
Aksels has grown very secretive. He’s stylish, he likes taking risks, he’s polite and brave — all reasons why he’s eventually gained the respect of the Old Riga party-crowd. Strange, almost underground literature-type books start showing up in the apartment — Indian mystic Osho’s Diamond Sutra or Perfection of Wisdom in a black hardcover, ridiculously battered Russian-language copies of Castaneda, Kerouac, Hesse, Camus, Flannery O’Connor. Some nights he gets home very late and brings a loud group of people with him. Ieva joins in, why not?
They smoke marijuana.
Everyone smokes marijuana.
Ieva tries it, too.
At first nothing happens. Ieva laughs and takes a deep hit, never skipping her turn as it’s passed around. After a while she realizes that even when she’s not laughing, all the muscles in her cheeks are tensed. She tries to fight it, but can’t. Her head feels clear and filled with happiness, and she’s the reason why. Her body stops listening to her brain. The room does the same — the walls aren’t listening to the ceiling, and even the door has bowed out like the ribs of an animal.
With a silent scream Ieva runs into the stairwell and crouches down by the banister. Down below is a roaring, smoldering abyss that reaches for her little by little like waves in the sea. The walls are crashing in on her from the other side. Peace and safety exist only in the cramped space where she’s crouched. When Aksels comes to get her, she murmurs in terror:
“Don’t! Don’t touch me!”
You can’t mix alcohol with weed, Aksels tells her matter-of-factly later on. Some people react that way. From then on Ieva is always hesitant to smoke up.
Ieva also discovers something much worse and more ruthless than weed — jealousy. As she sits at home with Monta in the evenings, she tries to imagine what Aksels is doing out in Old Riga. With his friends. Ieva knows he’s with his friends, but why so late?
Oh, Aksels says, I ran into so-and-so — well you don’t know them anyway! What’s the point in explaining?
One Saturday, when Monta is at her grandmother’s, Ieva heads to Old Riga. Aksels and his friends usually hang out at the bar M6; she goes in, but it’s dead and quiet. The only people there are Aksels and some extremely drunk girl. They’re sitting at the massive wooden table; Aksels turns around suddenly and addresses Ieva — Hey! It’s too late to run, she’s been spotted.
Aksels widens his eyes in surprise.
“What’re you doing here?”
Then he introduces them:
“Dace! Ieva!”
And he orders Ieva a drink.
Ieva slowly takes off her jacket and doesn’t know how to act. Aksels just smiles, then goes to chat with the bartender. She can tell by how he walks that he’s either had a lot to drink, or a lot to smoke. Dace turns her whitewashed face to Ieva. She has a shaved head, black liner around green eyes, and ears full of silver studs.
“He said,” Dace whispers secretively, “that I have horrific eyes. Do I?”
Ieva doesn’t respond. She can see that Dace is excited and concerned by what Aksels has said.
Aksels comes back, packs a small amount of weed into his bowl, lights it, and immediately passes out. The bartender whistles patiently and piles bananas in a bowl.
Dace has to get going. She muscles on her leather jacket, kisses the sleeping Aksels on the cheek, and leaves. She has long, deer-like legs that end in black lace-up boots. She has a free gait. Ieva definitely doesn’t. If only Ieva knew herself, she might know what kind of gait she has. Right now she doesn’t know anything about herself.
Except that she has become addicted to Aksels. It’s a terrifying revelation. She leaves him in the bar asleep, dead to the world, and sprints through the streets toward home. As she runs she shoves people out of the way, apologizes, trips, and wonders — what’s it like to be a man? To have a spear instead of a cave? With which to invade caves meant for spears, acquire them, inhabit them, conquer them, and then move onto new conquests. How, for example, how can you tell another human being they have horrific eyes? And to say it in a way that makes the other person ignite like a brush fire and burn so long that the point of ignition bursts straight forth, breaks through the layers of blood and bone. What does it feel like to have a spear instead of a cave?