Life Stories

By Nora Ikstena

I have written Life Stories virtually in the space of one breath -- these stories have been imagined in such concentration, that I had to free myself from them. They came so naturally, that I am very happy to have returned to the short-story format. It seems to me that in these eight stories each individual and different life is so strikingly intense that it was not possible to place all into one novel … Also in terms of style, I searched and found a different approach to each of the stories. I wanted to express myself more clearly and more simply.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guernica
• Release date: Mar 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781550716702

Nora Ikstena

Nora Ikstena was born in 1969 in Riga, Latvia. She studied at the University of Latvia before moving to New York. On her return to the Baltics she helped establish the Latvian Literature Centre. She published her first novel, Celebration of Life, in 1998 and has written over twenty books since. She has won numerous awards, such as the Order of the Three Stars for Services to Literature and the Baltic Assembly Prize. Soviet Milk, her most recent novel, won the 2015 Annual Latvian Literature Award (LALIGABA) for Best Prose.

Book preview

2013

Contents

The Orange

Still Life with Death

Amaryllii

The Son

Naģe

The Shame of Gaveiki

Elza Kuga’s Old Age Dementia

The White Handkerchief

The Orange

It is a cold winter night. They have turned on several electric heaters in their three room flat in one of the city’s apartment buildings. The heating system alone does not suffice. When the children get up in the morning to go to school, they squabble over who will get into the bathroom first, because it has the largest radiator and is always the warmest. If one fills the bathtub full-blast with hot water, then steam rises and it is very like a sauna. After almost suffocating from the constantly turned on gas stove in the kitchen, they had changed over to electric heaters. It is more expensive of course, but the air is better.

The children are asleep; the dog is snoring away on a doormat in the narrow corridor. Her husband has not yet come home. Leaning against the pantry door in the dark kitchen, Ada gazes at the winter skies through the flowers of ice frosted on the windowpane. The refrigerator hums now and then in an otherwise total silence. It is so long since she has seen these flowers of ice. Probably the last time was in her childhood, when they – three children, her mamma and papa – lived in one room in a factory workers’ barrack. With her breath or the tip of a finger, she could melt a hole in the flowers of ice. Jack Frost rattled the corners of the wooden building. The fire in the woodstove burned and in her cosy and warm den of a bed Ada and her sister beat up on their little brother. He always had to suffer because mamma dressed him in the hand-me-downs of the two girls. Dressed in a girl’s double breasted coat with its two rows of buttons, he sat, always somewhat dirtied on the barrack steps and ate his afternoon snack with a spoon from a tin bowl. Mamma wanted the boy to grow big and strong so, when she put him to bed, she crammed his mouth so full of cottage cheese. He would wake in the morning like a hamster storing nuts – with cottage-cheese puffed cheeks.

Ada opens the small ventilating window and lights up a cigarette. How abnormally bright the stars are! Even in the warmth of the kitchen, looking through the flowers of ice, she can sense how cold it is. In the winter more than ever she would like to be at her mother’s in the country. She hates the trolley buses, on which she has to commute to work. People in their winter clothes are twice as fat, sullen and ill-tempered, especially in the mornings. The air is hot and smelly. If she is pushed into a seat by a window, then she freezes. It is even worse going on the bus with the children, because then she must worry all the time, that someone might step on them or crush them. It is cold in the office. They have begun to warm themselves drinking Balsam liqueur. She very much likes the taste of coffee with Balsam. From somewhere, one hears the never-ending sound of old, used up heating pipes breaking down. One can break one’s neck on the street; in some places there is only a narrow path tracked between the road cleared for auto traffic and gigantic heaped mountainsof snow. Ada understands that these are the grey mundane dues paid for freedom, acquired relatively peacefully. There were, of course, sacrifices, but there was also an undeniable and unforgettable euphoria.

Her life seemingly is simple. She gets up, prepares breakfast, sees her husband off to work and her children off to school, commutes to work, has a cheap lunch in a café, a cigarette, a coffee with Balsam, commutes home from work, roams through stores, takes the children out from extended day-care, waits for her husband to come home, prepares supper, looks at TV and has quiet sex, so the children do not wake. Saturdays and Sundays they go to the country to one or the other of their mother’s homes. Back to the city with bacon, preserves and pīrāgi, which help to stretch the family budget until the next week. There is a constant lack of money. In the last little while, she suspects her husband has some other interests. Often there is joy regarding the children. Fun and love-filled get-togethers with her brother and sister, and their children. Parties with friends. Drives with relatives to graveyard festivities honouring the souls of the dead as custom would have it. Now and then she has a pain in her side. It perhaps sounds simple. But she very much loves her life. She is delighted with this simplicity. The day-to-day activities, waiting for the holidays. She knows how to motivate people. Since she has not gotten used to complicating anything, she takes her life as it is.

Nonetheless, late in the evenings, smoking and gazing through the flowers of ice at the starlit sky, she gets carried away in her thoughts. She remembers – even though they were always fed and clothed, they lived their childhood and school years very frugally, bordering on poverty. But the factory people were likeone large family. Sincere, generous people without hidden agendas. Simple like her every day. On Saturdays and Sundays, in that same one room relatives gathered from everywhere. They ate, drank, sang. And they felt good, because they had survived the war and deportation. Once her father brought very refined city people to their home. They offered as a gift coffee beans for her mother and said that they would very much like to drink some. Mamma had never seen such beans. She boiled water in the large kettle on the wood stove, threw in a handful of the beans and, in tasting her concoction, did not understand what possessed these people to drink such a thing. Probably they were totally mad – she decided.

After work in the factory, papa used to write poetry in the evenings. In those instances when he went on a bender and played a card game called zolīte with the neighbours, mamma placed herself in the doorway and told him once and for all to stop living in a dream world. His poems rhymed and were very sincere, and he was particularly good at dedications.

Once a very famous artist came to the factory. He was looking for working people to paint. But he saw the teen-aged Ada in the factory yard. He asked for permission from mamma and papa to paint Ada. They didn’t object. The artist stayed for a whole month. Mamma made simple meals for him, which he very much enjoyed. Apparently he had had a great deal of success with his city exhibition of Ada’s portraits. One Saturday he arrived together with his wife in his black Volga car. He had brought along all sorts of housewarming gifts they had never seen before. Drinks, food and clothes for the children. Mamma got very flustered and told them that they had enough themselves. Then the children were shooed outside, because it wastime for adult talk. When they were finished, mamma, flushed red from anger, stood on the doorstep and repeated: "I, ne pasacīsi, I ne pasacīsi – meaning It’s unspeakable! This is what she always said, when she couldn’t find what to say. The artist and his wife left immediately afterwards. When Ada was older, mamma told her that the very fine couple had wanted to take Ada to live with them. That here she was living in poverty and that they promised to lay the world at Ada’s feet. When mamma told this story, she always broke into uncontrollable tears and repeated: I ne pasacīsi, I ne pasacīsi …"

On evenings like this, Ada loses herself in thought, wondering what it would have been like if the artist couple had taken her. But she doesn’t pursue it. She is stricken with qualms of conscience, because just thinking such thoughts would hurt her mother deeply. Her simple, dear mamma, who from her very meagre pension puts money aside for her children and grandchildren, takes care of neighbours poorer than herself and every day feeds the woman next door who is raising her granddaughter on her own.

The children are already fast asleep. The dog comes into Ada’s kitchen and lies down, resting his nose on his paws. Her husband is still not home. Ada’s left side is hurting again, and it occurs to her that perhaps the world would not be the worse if she would no longer be here. Would everything continue as before? She becomes frightened by such thoughts; her heart pounds fast and, to calm herself, she trickles some drops of valerian tincture into a glass of water. During the time that the Russians were here, mamma on the quiet had taken the children to the catholic region of Latgale to christen them in that faith. There people have great respect for the dead, but they don’tspend much time thinking about dying. But why does her left side hurt so?

Ada finally goes to bed, having in vain waited for her husband to come home. She dreams of a gigantic mountain of snow. With her brother and sister, she is tumbling down the mountain, then climbing back up and tumbling down again. In her dream she can even taste the little balls of