Time is slowly running out — at least that’s what it feels like to Ieva. She sometimes confronts Aksels when he comes back home toting an entire group of Daces, or when he doesn’t come home at all.
“You get some rest,” Aksels says. “Don’t worry about me.”
“How can I sleep when we live together, but you’re never home? Maybe we should live separately.”
Aksels laughs:
“Don’t be stupid. I can’t live without you! Come out with me at night if you want to be with me.”
“You’re the one being stupid. How can I go out? I have Monta.”
At the end of the summer Aksels becomes a punk. He finally finds his religion. Where there used to be all sorts of music at home, even the stuff brought in by Aksels — Laurie Anderson’s “Bright Red,” Nina Hagen, Boris Grebenshchikov, Tsoi, Odekolons, Brian Eno, Nine Inch Nails, or even good old Pink Floyd — now they’ve all been replaced by the Sex Pistols.
A September evening flutters over the city streets like a starched linen sheet. Ieva puts on “Yesterday” by The Beatles. Piano and vocals. Clarity. Music that lets you exist without having to touch the ground.
When Aksels gets home he takes the cassette out and throws it behind the bed.
“Why’d you do that?”
“It’s shit.”
“Why…”
“Listen, let’s cut the small talk. Come here, I’ll tell you about Sid and Nancy.”
They lie down on the bed very close together — shoulder to shoulder, breathing in unison — and for the umpteenth time Aksels tells the punk legend about Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, the blonde, curly-haired Nancy. The punk Romeo and Juliet. Monta is right there, crawls up and settles between them and quietly twirls a strand of hair around her finger. She also listens to the nightly story about that day in October, when in room number 100 of Hotel Chelsea the police arrested Sid for the murder of Nancy, stabbed to death with a hunting knife.
“When he was let out on bail on February 2nd, he overdosed on heroine. And since then, February 2nd has been Sid Day. He once said: Make anarchy your mother. Create as much chaos and confusion as is in your power, but don’t let them take you alive.”
“Anarchy in the UK” is playing, washing like waves over their still bodies.
Aksels calls Ieva his Nancy, but she’s not a real Nancy. She has too broad of a horizon. For example, try as she might, she can’t understand why Tsoi, or The Beatles’ “Yesterday” have suddenly become complete shit this fall.
“It’s like you’ve switched on some kind of tunnel vision,” she tells him. “I can’t do that.”
Dace understands Aksels a lot better. She’s also become a true punk — wears black, torn fishnet tights, short skirts with studs and a red silk blouse. Aksels and Dace can talk about the things that interest him because Dace doesn’t respond critically.
One warm, dark evening Ieva rides her bike home from work and suddenly notices them in a crowd. They’re high, drunk, doped up on something else, and are staggering down the sidewalk, leaning against each other for balance, and holding hands as passers-by move out of their way.
Ieva holds her breath as she follows them, slinking after them like a tiger — slowly, secretly, but her heart threatens to hammer a hole through her ribcage. From this perspective it’s clear that Aksels and Dace are a real couple — two Riga punks, not some MTV punk wannabes with their rich parents’ credit cards in their wallets and CD players clipped onto their belts. Not some bored and spoiled dumbasses who stand in the streets at night drinking beer in their tattered leather jackets, but spend the mornings sitting in offices in white button-down shirts drinking coffee — no. They’re real street punks: unshowered, shaggy, young, and wonderful. It’s like they’re on the edge of a blade, always on teetering on the fence, and their gentleness is their fearsome cries in the face of the world, and their challenge is the timid call to see how full of love and strength they are — useless invitations!
They stop by some hedges and Aksels disappears into the dark to pee; Dace waits under the wind-rattled streetlight — a delicate, black gravestone for Aksels’s and Ieva’s love. Ieva stops torturing herself, gets back on her bike and rides home. An hour later Aksels and Dace show up, along with a few friends they met on the way, Ieva makes tea, breathes in the smell of the weed, and when Aksels passes out Dace tells her:
“Do you know what he said to me today? I asked if he’d kill me if I asked him to, and he said no — never!”
Dace cries, smears mascara down her cheeks, tears at her tights with her black-painted fingernails. Ieva says nothing, just thinks. She’s suddenly become very calm — of course, my dear, that’s how it has to be because I’m his Nancy. In spite of everything, I’m his Nancy.
So sometimes Ieva finds Aksels in the bar by himself, they have a drink, talk in the basement of M6, and then Aksels looks intently at her and says:
“I look at you and you know what I think? I want you, I want you so badly, always.”
He’s high and distant, he doesn’t use tissues when he has a runny nose, just turns away, pinches his nostrils and blows, he’s a real punk, and Ieva isn’t even disgusted by it. He’s real. That’s the thing — Aksels is very real.
He gets on the bike, Ieva walks next to him in a wild, flower-printed dress. It’s evening, and Brīvības Boulevard is full of people, busy with cars. Aksels rides in the street, isn’t able to keep his balance, swerves dangerously, and rides in circles. Buses line up behind him, forming a chain, but don’t honk their horns. People look back at them and shout — a punk on a bike, look! And Ieva is next to him in her flowery dress and orange flats on her feet.
Such a peaceful evening, filled with happiness.
Aksels asks Ieva to dye his mohawk red and black. He sits on a stool in the middle of the room and looks at the birch tree outside. His hair is beautifuclass="underline" light and slightly wavy. Ieva can’t dye it.
“Think it through! It’ll look bad on you.”
“Who tells a punk what he can or can’t do?”
Aksels winds up in a bad mood and comes home the following night blackout drunk. His hair is a stiff, black crest. He slurs that Dace did it for him.
“Where did she do it?”
“At the carpentry shop!”
At the carpentry shop! Ieva hasn’t been there in the longest time. Maybe Dace lives there now! That’s why Aksels only ever comes home toward morning.
Insane jealousy, spite, and exhaustion crash simultaneously down on Ieva like sudden blindness. She can’t see anything anymore, nothing real, no future, and no light at the end of the tunnel.
Aksels explains:
“Stop freaking out! It doesn’t matter because I only love you, you’re my Nancy. Everything else is just something secondary.”
Before he falls asleep he reaches for Ieva, forcefully grabs her thigh, latches onto her like a bear clawing into her side, tearing at her, then he mumbles something and passes out. Ieva watches his exposed face, unveiled by sleep, deformed by drinking. Then she watches the flies circling the light bulb above the bed.
Outside the rain is coming down hard.
When Ieva was little, Gran was always fighting the flies — she’d put screens in the windows, go after them with a fly swatter, and poison them with chemicals from a black and white mister. Here the window facing the street is always open, you can watch flies in their natural state. They congregate in the room, dance, listen to “Love Kills” by the Sex Pistols, and then disappear as quietly as they came.