“What are you looking at?” she asks.
You can’t really know anything these days. This is only the second time they’ve met, and he’s kind of quiet. But his eyes are like razors—sharp, cutting. She could easily use them to slice the roast.
“What I’m looking at? Just looking.”
“Everyone looks for different reasons.”
“I’m not everyone. I’m Andrejs.”
“Pass me the fillet knife.”
“Which one’s that?”
“With the threaded cord.”
Andrejs hands her the knife, she cuts the roast. It’s raining outside. You can’t really know anything. These days.
But she’s a woman, a real woman. Seasoning a roast in front of him with garlic and herbs. She wants to cook it tomorrow in his honor.
He can’t look away.
A woman is a real home. Food. Children. Holidays. And shelter. Happiness.
“What are you looking at?” she asks again. She should stay quiet, the idiot. She’ll ruin the entire night with her questions.
“You’re cutting and cutting,” he answers.
“I’m done,” she says and wipes her hands on her apron, then takes it off and hangs it up. “Now what?”
They go to watch TV, but Andrejs wants her to just take off her panties already.
Outside is rainy and cold. And all the while Andrejs feels the woman next to him. He feels as if he’s the only one in the world who understands what a woman is. She doesn’t even get it herself. Look at her head dropping onto his shoulder. She’s dozed off.
At that moment, Andrejs is visited by Ieva. By memories of her.
Violently, as usual.
An awful fate.
But still—it was his fate, too.
He’s a little unsettled by the Black Balzam he drank for warmth and courage—just 100g of Balzam.
He glares at the TV, then at the woman asleep next to him. The movie of her life projects itself under her eyelids. It’s fascinating and sad to watch that kind of movie.
In his consciousness, his life separates itself into two lives. Though technically into one—at the Zari house with Ieva, plus his time in prison. He doesn’t call the prison he’s now locked up in “life.” It’s a strange waking state where he thinks about life, remembers it, but doesn’t actually live it. The whole time there’s this distance, this space between him and existence. Right now he has a woman, the woman has average breasts, an apartment, and a roast, and obviously some feelings for him. But all he can do again and again is chase his own memories. Somewhere hides the thought that it would be possible to organize them all onto a shelf.
A stupid thought. Because these memories don’t do anything but unleash insanity and the feeling of being ripped open. The desire to drink, get drunk, get away from yourself. Memories go around in his head like on a carousel and drive him even deeper into the cage that is his body. They strengthen and cement one-of-a-kind people like Andrejs: thirty-nine years old, divorced, one daughter, fifteen years in prison for murder, released early for good behavior, saving him five years’ time, during which he just worked in the same town the prison was in. Hasn’t even gone more than a kilometer from the barbed wire fence. Alright, so he’s crossed a few sand lots, closer to the highway. His carpentry shop is right here, everything is right here—a shack heated by a wood stove and with an outhouse behind the sheds. A dirt-colored building, dirt-colored porch, dirt-colored scenery behind moldy blinds. All the brambles and raspberry bushes and clematis—nature’s colors. Clothes, the neighbor’s dog, the never-ending spring or fall, who knows. A dusty steppe between the highway and a ditch.
But what’s that flame, like a wandering ship between the blinds every day and night? It’s his prison. The powerful searchlights, the thick stone walls, the tangled network of barbed wire—it all glows white, even in the fog, even in blizzards beyond the distant field. Andrejs’s prison. His prison.
The black swan.
He looks to the window. This is the woman’s apartment on the other side of the river, he doesn’t see the prison when he looks out—just the town and a church.
Not good.
He is overcome by awe, he has goosebumps.
What is he without prison? He hasn’t been away from it in so long that it seems like he never left.
He’s comforted by the thought that he doesn’t have to go far. He could leave right now if he wanted to. Push the woman’s head off his shoulder, put on his jacket and go. Cross the bridge, cross the river. He’d stop in the middle for a smoke. It would be nice, a nice breeze over the middle of the river—cool, wide. Free.
Andrejs’s doctors don’t let him smoke. His hand hurts; his right shoulder, knees, and heart all hurt. The doctors told him to quit smoking. To cut back. He went to three doctors in a single day, so as not to waste his time—otherwise all you do is go from one clinic to the next. And that’s where you’ll stay.
He didn’t cut back, but quit the very same day. Then the doctors said worse things could happen if you quit cold turkey. Your body has grown used to smoking. Your body will be stressed and deprived. Fine, let his body stress out a bit. He never liked smoking anyway. It’s just that those were the years, those detached years, where if he hadn’t smoked he would have completely fallen apart. And that isn’t just some kind of saying or, what did they call it—a metaphor?—no. He would have fallen apart. Literally. Because during those years, not having a cigarette was like not having a watch. A cigarette an hour. If he was awake, of course. But the closer he got to being released, the less tired he was. Tick tock, tick tock.
He had once asked Ieva in disgust: Why do you smoke? She said it was to calm her nerves. Back then he had thought she was sick. Then he got sick himself. Was for fifteen years.
And Ieva. What about her? She’ll always be Ieva.
But the woman next to him is asleep. She’s tired. Smells of spices. She’s an accountant at the prison, probably. He hasn’t asked her. She could be over fifty years old, but she looks good. Maybe she works at the prison. Everyone in the area does. So he can say he’s spent a lifetime together with this woman in the same prison. Him in the cell and her in accounting.
Let her sleep. They’d first met last holiday season at his neighbor’s house. Andrejs had helped him dig a cellar and had been invited to the big New Year’s dinner. He’d thought it over for a long time, then ended up going so he wouldn’t be some completely uncivilized jerk. And she was there—a relative or friend of the hosts. Andrejs noticed her immediately, maybe because her eyes were dark, heavy, like from a secret. But no, there was no outer indication of sorrow—she smiled and joked, and the men at the end of the table where she sat drank twice as much liquor as those at the other end. It was her doing, getting them all riled up. Oh, Demeter, fruitful earth!, he had thought.
At midnight Andrejs had pressed a ladle with melted tin into her hand and said, “Pour my New Year’s fortune.” Who the hell knows why he had her do it. Maybe he was drunk. Then again maybe not, he doesn’t like to drink. But she had laughed and taken the ladle, tipped the melted tin into water—poured a sort of bitter fortune. You couldn’t make anything of the result; the tin whistled as it hit the water, then there was the flash of her plump hands, a splash, and her laughing eyes, but the piece of metal she fished out left an unpleasant impression on him. Smooth arcs of tin, like a naked person with a bowed head as if in mourning. He’d grown sad. Incredibly so. He’d taken his naked fortune, put on his leather jacket, and gone home. She had said she felt responsible.
But at the market today—they’d been so happy to see each other again.