My life divided into parallel worlds. After school I worked hard on my homework for the next day, but in the evenings I listened to my grandparents’ stories. They knew so much.
Up to the first autumn break I got excellent marks in the new school. My average mark in school was exceeded only by our school’s wunderkind. A mathematician and an honours student, no one could compete with him. I admired his quick mind. Indeed, I came to trust him so completely that I wanted to share my parallel-world stories with him. I wanted to talk about our Latvia being mocked by the Soviet Union and Germany, about refugees, about executions and deportations to Siberia, about the ones who remained and were silenced, as we, the third generation, were already silenced. I wanted to talk about my mother, who lived in a desolate place in the country because she could not live two lives – and could not accept a life of mockery, as Latvia had been mocked. I wanted to share all this but I didn’t. I obeyed my step-grandfather, who knew what he was talking about.
During the autumn break I went to my mother’s. Jesse met me at the railway station. Her face showed distinct signs of anxiety. I hadn’t seen my mother for almost three months.
‘It’s a vale of tears,’ Jesse said as she walked beside me. ‘She now goes to the ambulatory centre only a couple of times a week. The rest of the time she is slowly self-destructing. I try as hard as I can, but nothing works. I clean the house, but she doesn’t let me into her room. It’s good that you’ve come.’
My mother was lying in bed in a heavy bathrobe. Scattered around were books, ashtrays, half-eaten apples. The small bedside table was loaded with coffee mugs, and half-empty pillboxes lay littered beneath it.
She smiled slightly when I entered.
‘So you’ve come, city girl,’ she said as she lit a cigarette.
The air in the room was stale. I opened the window.
‘Mamma, look what I’ve brought. Pears, a persimmon and edible chestnuts. Do you remember? The Central Market is full of them, and they’re not so expensive now.’
My mother touched the yellow pears and the flame-coloured persimmon.
‘They’re probably very fragrant,’ she said. ‘But I can’t smell them.’ She inhaled apathetically.
‘I’ll stay with you for the whole week. Get up,’ I said. ‘We have to clean this room.’
My mother submitted like a child. She sat in the kitchen while I tidied her room. In the evening I heated a large tub of water. I helped her to wash and scrubbed her back. I brushed her tangled hair and cut her toe-and fingernails.
‘I do pull myself together a couple of times a week. I have so little strength. I don’t want anything,’ she said. ‘Jesse tidies this and that.’
‘Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, could you bake an apple cake?’ I diverted my mother’s thoughts. ‘We have to celebrate our birthdays.’
During the days that I was at my mother’s, she livened up somewhat. She listened with interest about my new school, about our evening stories, about the wunderkind with whom I wanted to share some stories but refrained.
‘Mamma,’ I said, ‘I didn’t believe what you said. Now I know, you were right about Latvia.’
‘You’re a smart girl,’ my mother said.
We invited Jesse to our birthday celebration and to share our apple cake. She came in her best clothes, her hair prettily curled.
At our festive table Jesse took out a small box. It was the only gift she had been given by her foster mother in the orphanage. She wanted to give it to us.
‘Open the box,’ Jesse said to me.
I opened it. Inside was a gold ring, a bit of candle wax and a dried twig.
‘Jesse, aren’t you sorry to give it away? It was a gift to you, after all,’ I said.
‘It was freely given. I freely give it away,’ Jesse said, laughing.
We sat late into the night, talking nonsense. I looked on as my mother returned to life. Jesse was happy here with us.
‘Now it will be like this for ever. She’ll come during school holidays, sometimes on weekends. Sometimes, when she’s busy at school, she won’t come. When she falls in love, she’ll come even more rarely. This is how itwill be now, Jesse.’
‘You’ve been in bed for three days in a row. Get dressed. Let’s go for a walk.’ Jesse never lost hope that I’ll be able to crawl out of my hole.
‘Cigarettes and books have torn you away from real life. Those damned pills too,’ Jesse mumbled, gathering mugs and ashtrays.
‘They make it easier for me, Jesse,’ I said. ‘If only for a moment, I’m in another world.’
‘What’s wrong with this world?’ Jesse asked. ‘Tell me what’s wrong with it? In the mornings the sun dawns, in the evenings it sets. The days pass peacefully. We don’t have serious ailments, we’re not starving. We have our homes.’
‘Jesse, when you talk like that, I almost start to believe you.’
‘Admit it, admit this truth,’ Jesse continued. ‘Then you’ll be free for once.’
‘But Jesse, I’ve never been a slave to them – the cigarettes, the books and the pills.’
‘Truthfully you’re not?’
‘I’m not, Jesse. This is why I feel free.’
A little offended, Jesse left my room. I heard the clattering of dishes as she washed them in the kitchen.
I forced myself to get dressed and we went out for a walk. It was a tranquil November, the kind that stirs an ache for the past. We walked in silence along the river in the direction of the kolkhoz fields. Beyond them lay the meadows. Hardly anyone went there any longer, maybe only in the summers to gather herbs for tea and wild flowers. But Jesse and I liked it here. The meadows led back to the overgrown riverbank, where bulrushes browned and shimmered, touched by the first frost.
‘Look,’ said Jesse, ‘they’ve not turned to fluff, they’vejust frozen.’
‘Jesse, what shall I do? My soul is sorrowful enough to die. It’s frozen,’ I said, looking on as she touched the bulrushes.
Jesse was silent. The river was silent in front of our very eyes. The overcast sky was silent.
We walked back home along the path by the river. Jesse walked in front. I followed in her footsteps. Suddenly she stopped and turned around.
‘For God’s sake, pull yourself together,’ Jesse said.
Jesse then started telling me about the orphanage, where boys had tied her to a post, a rough post thick with splinters. They had tied her almost naked, in her skimpy undershirt. They made her say, ‘Better that I hadn’t been born!’ Jesse had stayed silent; as if her mouth was full of water, she’d stayed silent. But they had yelled, ‘Say it, you freak, say, “Better that I hadn’t been born.”’ But Jesse had kept silent, as if she had a mouthful of water. Then the boys had thrown stones at her. They’d hit her legs, her face, her arms. And they had continued to yell, ‘Say it, say it: “Better I hadn’t been born.”’ But she had suffered and in silence. Not once in her life had she said those words. Then she had lost consciousness.
When Jesse finished speaking, she turned and went on her way. I continued to walk in Jesse’s footsteps.
Returning to Riga after spending the autumn school holiday with my mother, I was still uneasy about her. It was a comfort knowing that Jesse was with her. Not wanting to worry my grandparents, I told them that everything was more or less fine, that my mother was now working less and resting more, something she deserved to do long ago. I said we had had a wonderful time, that we had baked an apple cake, celebrated our birthdays, roasted potatoes on coals in the wood stove, and that I had breathed good country air and the days had flown by.