“No, Serbo-Croat.”
“Where is that spoken? In America?”
“In Yugoslavia.”
“I can read Russian because many of my books are in Russian, but Aunt Hescha told me I was to speak only in Lithuanian. What is spoken in America?”
“A dialect of English.”
“They do not speak Lithuanian?”
“No.”
“Then they will not be able to understand me?”
“You’ll learn English,” I said. “I’ll teach you.”
Her face brightened. Milan asked if it was necessary for us to continue speaking such an impossible language. I assured him that it was. Minna wanted to know when we would be in America.
“Not for a long time,” I said. “First we must go to Riga, in Latvia. They speak Lettish there. Do you know of Lettish?”
“No.”
“It is very much like Lithuanian, but there are differences. Would you like to learn to speak it?”
“Oh, yes!”
“It will be easy for you. By the time we reach Riga, you will speak it correctly.”
“I will speak Lettish?”
“Runatsi latviski,” I said. “You will speak Lettish.” I took her hand. “You see how the words change? Zale ir Zalja – the grass is green. Te ir te¯vs – here is father. Te¯vs ir virs – father is a man. Mate ir plavã – mother is in the meadow.”
“Mate ir plava zalja,” said Minna. Which meant that mother was in the green meadow, and which also meant that Minna was getting the hang of it. We went on talking, and before long I did not translate my little sentences into Lithuanian because she was able to understand them well enough in Lettish. Once she saw the way the nouns and verbs changed slightly, she was able to turn many Lithuanian words into Lettish ones by herself.
The fact that she was a child was enormously helpful. Children are delightful little animals, their minds crisply logical and extraordinarily retentive. They extrapolate and interpolate with ease, they concentrate with uncluttered minds, and they have never learned to make the distinction between work and play, approaching either with the same intent devotion and absorption.
Minna, slipping so readily into the genuine complexities of Lettish syntax, put me in mind of an apothegm of Nietzsche’s: “The true maturity of man is to recapture the seriousness one had as a child at play.” Why they ever lose it in the first place is the mystery.
“Varetu runat latviski,” said Minna, as we reached the outskirts of Riga.
“Yes,” I assured her, “you are able to speak Lettish. And very well.”
Riga is an important city, capital of the Latvian S.S.R. and containing nearly three-quarters of a million people, the greater proportion of them Letts. We abandoned our car in a quiet street near the harbor, and I left the key in the ignition so that anyone who wanted to could carry it still farther away from us. We walked together, Milan and Minna and I, through the streets of Riga. But for the utter lack of family resemblance we might have been taken for three generations of a family: daughter and father and grandfather, meita un tevs un vectevs. We asked directions and found the address I had memorized. We passed the apartment building where Sofija Lazdinja lived and walked a few yards farther to a cafe. We took a table. I ordered bowls of soup for everyone, told Minna to order anything else she wanted. She had never been in a restaurant before and had not realized there were places where anyone might go to order food. She thought it was a delightful idea. I left the two of them there, amused by the thought that they would be quite unable to talk with one another, and went off in search of Sofija.
A directory inside the door of her building informed me that Lazdinja was apartment 4. I climbed a flight of stairs and found a door with a 4 on it at the end of the corridor. I knocked, and the door opened, and I looked at a face I had heretofore seen only in photographs, and I realized instantly why Karlis had fallen so irretrievably in love with her. The form of a goddess, the face of an angel, sparkling eyes, flashing teeth, red lips…
I said, “You are Sofija Lazdinja?”
She said, “No.”
I don’t think I said anything; if I did, I’m sure it didn’t make any sense. I was too busy being astonished. But what she said next was, “I am Zenta Lazdinja. Sofija is my sister. My older sister.”
“One year older!” This from a voice from within.
“That is quite true,” Zenta said mischievously. “Sofija is only a year older than I. You will find this hard to believe when you see her, but it is true. Only a single year older.”
Karlis had not said that there were two of them. Perhaps he had not known. It was almost impossible to believe in the existence of one of them, let alone a matched pair.
“But you have the advantage of us,” said Zenta. “You know that I am Zenta and that my older sister Sofija is within, but we do not know your name or who you are.”
“My name is Evan Tanner. I have come at the request of a good friend of your sister.”
“His name?”
“Karlis Mielovicius.”
A shriek from within. “Karlis!” Another goddess rushed into view, pushed Zenta aside, gripped me furiously by the arms. She was an inch or so taller, a shade more voluptuous in physique, and, as I had been repeatedly advised, one year older. “Karlis!” she cried again. “You come from Karlis?”
“Yes.”
“He is well?”
“Yes.”
“He still loves me?”
“More than ever.”
“But he has found another?”
“No.”
The pressure increased on my arms. “You are very certain of this?”
“Yes.”
“Ahhh!” She released my arms, enveloped me in her own, hugged me to her extraordinary bosom, and very nearly crushed the life out of me. I considered reminding her that I was not Karlis myself, that I was merely his emissary, but for the moment I was unable to say anything at all.
She released me eventually and led me inside. We sat down on a long, low couch, with me in the middle and Sofija and Zenta on either side. And I explained, in a great flow of words, that Karlis wanted her to come to America to be his bride, and that, if this was also her wish, I would do whatever was in my power to take her there.
Evidently it was not something she had to think about for any great length of time. She didn’t exactly say that she would like to come. What she said was, “How soon can we leave?”
And Zenta said, “I am coming with you, of course.”
“It will be some days before we can leave. Perhaps a week, perhaps longer.”
“We can wait. And you may stay here with us, it is safe here.”
“There are others with me. An old man and a young girl.”
“They will stay with us also.”
“And you must not speak a word of this to anyone. It is very dangerous.”
“I understand.”
“And I too.”
“Not a word.”
“No. The old man and the girl, where are they?”
“A few doors away,” I said. “I will fetch them now.”
I hurried back to the cafe. Minna and Milan were at a table where I had left them. The soup bowls were gone – they had shared mine between them, Minna told me – and she was finishing a meal of roast pork while Milan dealt with a meat pie.
I had just enough rubles to cover the check. “We can go now,” I told Minna in Lettish. “We can go now,” I told Milan in Serbo-Croat.
And that, I thought, was going to be a nuisance. Giving everyone directions in a different language and having persons in the party who were unable to communicate with one another could only prove to be a mammoth headache. I’ve always disliked the notion of Esperanto, feeling that a variety of languages makes the world infinitely more interesting, and to me the myth of the Tower of Babel has always had a happy ending. But now I could somewhat appreciate the desirability of a universal language, if only to be dragged out on special occasions. This, certainly, was one such occasion.