They met in winter at a dance at the community center. The entrance was swarming with people. Breaths steamed in the cold air, everyone was entertaining everyone else with exaggerated jokes. The main hall of the center was like a hot and sparse clearing. Couples sat at tables lining the walls, a disco ball hung spinning from the ceiling, and a local ensemble played on stage.
Nobody danced. Well, of course not; it was only ten, and the guys hadn’t downed enough liquid courage. Around midnight they’d start to shake and thrash in the center of the dance floor like they were possessed.
Ieva stood around for a while, grew bored. She headed toward the exit. There was a fan by the wall, humming and blowing out the colorful streamers tied to it. And of course, it also blew up Ieva’s lightweight skirt. She stepped back, smoothing the cloth back down.
She looked up. And right into Andrejs’s eyes.
It was kind of like meeting the stare of someone you love intensely, but haven’t seen in a long time. Like the eyes of a brother.
And that’s why Ieva avoids Andrejs. Sex with a brother! She doesn’t think incest is a good thing.
This strange feeling in the noise and chaos of the party only lasted a second. The long, distorted shadows of the spotlights, the sound of the fan, twirling skirts, music, other people — it all faded away to make room for a pair of very familiar eyes. She didn’t see his face, his build, or his clothes. She saw nothing but his eyes. And everything life had in store for her was in those eyes.
Then the stranger stepped aside to let Ieva pass. She lowered her gaze and obediently walked out.
Now she was no longer bored, or cold. She had to wait for that official one o’clock point when everyone else would be wasted, but the unfamiliar boy would be looking for her. Ieva doesn’t know how she’s absolutely certain that he has to come look for her. She only didn’t know him. She didn’t know anything — where was he from that she’d never seen him before? If he’s drunk when he finds her, she’ll run away. She’s got at least that much sense left.
He found her in a little over ten minutes. Took Ieva by the elbow with his large, warm hand and led her to the center of the dance floor.
No one was dancing, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore. What was important was that Ieva was dancing with the stranger. She could think of a few times when a hopeful beginning had turned into a complete catastrophe.
This wasn’t one of those times. They moved a little in one direction, and then the other, before they both suddenly spread their wings and took off across the creaking linoleum floor.
After a good half-hour the two of them ran outside — to throw snow at each other and cool down.
After that they spent half the night standing in the quiet hallway near the spare rooms like two horses standing neck-to-neck. He had his hands wrapped around her waist and was digging his strong chin into the hair next to her ear. At first Ieva was worried that she was sweating through her white sweater, or that her face was too flushed, but he just breathed into her hair and said nothing, and Ieva slowly relaxed, unwound, blossomed.
“You smell like cookies,” he said, his voice thick. Ieva nodded. Before the dance she’d secretly taken a packet of vanilla powder from Gran’s hutch and sprinkled the fine, snow-white powder into the material of her sweater.
And then they were kissing, their lips hot and eager.
“Let me go!” she suddenly rushed down the hallway, feeling agitated. She didn’t smell like vanilla anymore, but like something even warmer and gentler than vanilla.
In the bathroom she turned on the cold water, rubbed her cheeks and looked into the mirror.
What now, Ieva?
She could still feel his breath in her tousled hair.
Best to go back and dance.
His name is Andrejs. He’s from the inland, not from the seaside families.
He’s almost ten years older than she is. Lives at the Zari house, which belonged to his grandfather and which he got back after the Awakening. Before Ulmanis, the property still belonged to Baltic Germans. When Mother Germany called her children back home before World War II, the Baltic German quickly sold the property back to Andrejs’s grandfather, and then boarded a ship with the rest of his household to never again return to this marshy corner of the world. Back in the collective farm times, the Zari house was home to a cotton workshop.
After the dance, Andrejs walked Ieva home. It was an endless night, both wonderful and terrible, as if she’d been injected with something, a paralyzing substance — velvety black, volatile.
He told her he’d been in the army, fought in Afghanistan, but that he never wanted to talk about it. She shouldn’t think the worst — but there had been a situation where four men had lost their lives on account of him.
His friends.
Men he had known very well.
It’s not even possible for people in this country to comprehend that place, he said. He’d had a good instructor at officer training in Viljandi who started a lecture on Afghanistan with the following comparison: If there were a spring not too far from your house, and your house had no running water, what would you do?
Carry it with a bucket, someone had answered.
Eventually put in a water main, was another reply.
So, the instructor had emphasized, you’re going to a country where people have carried and carried water from springs to their homes for thousands of years because that’s what their fathers and grandfathers did. As far as the water main goes, you can forget about progress. It’s not a country of progress, it’s a country of traditions. That’s something you’re going to have to experience for yourselves.
And Andrejs had experienced it. He watched how a local grandfather passed a hemp pipe to his son, and then to his grandson. Accustomed to drugs from a young age as if it were bread. No drinking, though; alcohol turns a person into an immoral creature.
But — enough about that.
That’s that, he’ll tell her once and then no more! Sorry, but he’ll say it right now — he wasn’t going to talk about it.
Ieva shrugs — if not, then fine. Only there was no reason to get so worked up about it.
Andrejs used to live with his parents on the outskirts of Riga and worked as a car mechanic. Then they got back his grandfather’s property and he didn’t have to think twice — since the Awakening, everyone was rushing back to the countryside to renew, rebuild, and reconstruct. As the only son, this was also the path Andrejs had to take.
They’d kiss under the big ash in the Zari yard — it seemed that this ritual was important to Andrejs, to kiss Ieva right under the ash tree. The house itself was in bad shape. The cotton workshop had left behind its dark, sooty imprints on the walls. Like a person who wakes up from a restless night with a face full of pillow marks. The half crumbling staircase in the middle of the house, the tattered wallpaper fluttering in a draft. But Andrejs was hopeful — he had a tractor, the Zari house, and fifty hectares of Kurzeme land.
On a beautiful June evening Andrejs pulls Ieva down next to him in the apple orchard. They kiss as usual, but after a while a strange tension spreads from Andrejs to Ieva. She looks into the clear, clear eyes of her boyfriend.
Andrejs asks:
“What’s with you?”
Ieva looks away.
“I want it to happen now.”
Ieva sees the leaves against the sky. They’re blue.
Then she closes her eyes. After a bit she feels Andrejs’s excited breathing above her.
“It’ll be alright,” he murmurs.
Two currents struggle within Ieva. One is holding back, the other rejoicing — finally, it’s going to happen! Since the time the fire first awakened in her, it’s been suffering and waiting for release.