The beach was already almost empty of holidaymakers. In the dark sky of this southern summer just a few stars shone. The sea was calm, the water lapping lazily against the pebbles, filling the air with a sound like the tinkling of crotal bells.
I thought about my mother and her overheated room at the ambulatory centre. About the endless line of women in the corridor. About her equally overheated room at home. About her daily mugs of coffee and her cigarettes. About the books, the only thing in which she found comfort. And I thought about this endless land, sea and sky, of which even a fingernail’s worth of dirt was denied her. About the grapes, which she would never pluck from an arbour over her head. About the sound of the crotal bells, which she would not hear, and about the love-filled air, which she would not breathe.
I waded into the water up to my ankles. She wasn’t here, yet she was here.
The river was warm as milk. Only late at night could it provide relief from the sweltering heat. The days felt interminable; the short nights brought the balm of darkness. At the end of July the ambulatory centre was closed for a month. I began a long, lonely, senseless time. I lay naked in my shadow-filled room, trying to kill the nights and days.
I couldn’t read. Letters followed one another forming sentences, sliding past my eyes, my thoughts, which lingered elsewhere. Now and then I thought of my daughter, my mother and stepfather. I tried to envisage their happy threesome on the southern seashore. Paradise was there and it lacked for nothing. Now and then I thought of hell and of the Giver of Life – although I had not seen that patient again. I walked to the church a couple of times more, but it was empty and silent.
The Giver of Life. A powerful title, against which the words ‘hell’ and ‘evil worm’ sounded trivial and insignificant. Still, those words were devouring me.
We Soviet doctors all swore an oath to fight for life and health. We swore to avert the threat of nuclear war and to serve our Soviet people and our motherland. Prisyaga, vracha Sovetskogo Soyuza – the Doctor’s Oath of the Soviet Union. The evil worm had eroded the Hippocratic oath, in which, calling on all the gods as witnesses, the young healer promised not to give any woman any substance or means that could result in foeticide, or to turn from virtue and piety either in her life or in her professional duties. And we solemnly swore: if I fulfil and don’t transgress this oath, may I be successful both in my life and in the art of my profession. But if I break this oath or swear falsely, may the opposite come to pass.
The opposite had happened. And I was trapped in the white heat of the inferno.
At last the balmy evening drew me outside. The late jasmine was savagely fragrant. The dog had dug a cool den at its roots. I took a towel, locked the gate and headed for the river. It was worth suffering the day for the sake of this evening walk.
The track led down over the steep, clay bank from which seeped fresh rivulets of water. These fed into the river, mingling with its dark waters and becoming one great flow. The current was deceptive at this point. It suddenly made a turn and could carry you away from the bank. You had to gather every ounce of strength to swim against it.
The fragrance of meadow flowers wafted along the riverbank. The aroma of wild mint blended with meadowsweet and sweet flag.
I sat on a large rock that still retained the day’s sweltering heat. I lit a cigarette. The river was calm, hiding her currents deep down. Mist rose against the pallid light where the sun was setting. The long, senseless day wrestled with a redeeming night.
An aeroplane roared by in the dark sky, prompting both fear and longing. I remembered myself quite young, dressed up, holding my mother’s hand. We were walking down a street when a plane flew overhead and my mother flinched, grabbed me and ran into a courtyard. Then she calmed down and we continued on our way in the city streets. I’d been gripped with a new fear, but also a longing for the distant place that plane was speeding to.
Now at the riverbank, with one day ending and the promise of another, and another beyond that, I felt the same. Like my cigarettes smoked down to ashes, life’s end drew nearer.
I took off my clothes and slipped into the warm river. The river of life – it would absolve me of my sin. It would forgive me for ending the life of a foetus and for undermining the parenthood I had sworn to uphold. May the opposite come to pass.
I returned to my mother’s house at the end of August. Behind me was the miraculous summer at the southern sea. The sun had bleached my hair and I was tanned. ‘You’re shaping up to be beautiful,’ my mother said. My mother, our small dwelling, the garden, the dog – all looked different to me now. Petty and shrunken, grey and dust-covered, but still dear.
‘The summer has been hot. The one saving grace was evenings at the river,’ my mother told me. She examined my gifts: a big yellow quince, seashells, some colourful bits of glass worn smooth by the sea and edible chestnuts. ‘Remember,’ I said, ‘you bought some like these in the Riga market, when you asked me to live with you. I wanted to remind you of their taste.’
Her gaze spoke of utter defeat. Just a bit longer and I would be leaving. I was still swimming in an enormous, clear blue sea, where the waves played their tambourine against the pebbles and promised a wondrous future.
One morning my mother woke me while it was still dark. ‘Get up and dress warmly,’ she said, laying a raincoat and rubber boots beside my bed. My heart leapt in excitement. We were going mushrooming. Lately I hadn’t been able to convince my mother to go to the woods. Usually I went on my own and stayed close to the forest’s edge because I was afraid of getting lost. But now as a pair we’d be able to criss-cross the forest to our hearts’ content. Following close on the heels of the heatwave, the August squalls were the right time for mushrooms. We were united in our conspiracy. We would go wherever the forest paths led: whatever it took to attain a full basket of king boletes.
The day was just dawning as we made our way into the forest. The sky was overcast. A warm mist lay in the meadow. A solitary bird was jabbering away. He dragged his beak along a tree trunk, announcing his presence. My mother and I padded on into the forest, where a mushroom kingdom awaited us. The overcast sky slid open a crack and a feeble sunbeam crept out, then grew stronger. Soon golden light flooded the forest. Dew trembled in spurs of fir, pine, birch and aspen trees and ferns. The spider’s webs sparkled.
We walked in silence, concentrating. Talking could scare them. Beneath ferns, among aspen trees, squatted scaber stalks with chubby stems and deep red caps. Further on, a thick blanket of black leaves concealed ugly green milk caps. Then at intervals along the forest path giant boletes exploded from the soil, surrounded by small slippery jacks, clusters of chanterelles and orange milk caps. Gypsy mushrooms and copper brittle gill buttons lay cradled in the moss. We maintained our silence, though we felt like yelling for joy. My mother’s glasses began to steam up. Eventually she tore them off and put them in her pocket. In a meadow beyond the forest we found white horse mushrooms. These were large, powerful balls lifted by strong stalks, veiled by floating skirts. Our baskets were filling up.
We sat down in the sun at the forest’s edge to catch our breath and rest for a moment. My mother unwrapped some sandwiches. The fragrance of moss beneath us, of the mushrooms in our baskets and the bark behind us, was golden as the sky.
‘I don’t remember how you taught me to differentiate between them,’ I said to my mother.
‘Between the safe mushrooms and the deadly ones?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘how to tell the edible from the poisonous. I don’t remember how that happened.’