The Hidden Letters of Velta B. (32 page)

Inside the house silence reigned supreme. For weeks Father would not talk. He'd been exiled from the only place he'd ever felt he could do bodily good. No one would love those stones as much as he did. No one would remember to rake the footprints on sandy gravel outside the cemetery. No one would know how to remove graffiti and other signs of unrest as well as he did. I knew that this is what he was thinking. Mother and I tried to coax him toward happy memories. I reminded Father of the proper cemetery etiquette, beer and whiskey passed to guests at the wake and salted dried peas and beans at the graveside. The peas symbolized the tears before a burial. The beer was a reminder to seek joy. Mother reminded Father of the great care Oskars exercised as he built coffins: he hollowed out a big broad beam of wood. The lid he made by squaring a plank to fulfill the custom: an eternal coffin, a temporary lid.

Every morning Mother read to Father from her newspaper: a ceramics factory in Latgale closed and another sugar refinery had shut its doors. The unemployment rate soared. As she read, Rudy supplied his own interpretations. About the university graduates exiting the country en masse, “No jobs for real Latvians, here,” he said. Rudy referred to the new development outside Rezekne as “shameless land-grabbing by those Krauts and lefse-eating Norwegians.” As he spoke, he'd twist the paper napkins into nooses.

Still, Father would not utter a word.

We decided repetition would break his silence, wear him down the same way water bores though stone. We told stories, our words like string winding around itself into a ball: no beginning, no end, just a steady sound of the human voice. We told of Uncle's proposal for an all-Latvian, all-nude female pro soccer team. It was a suggestion that had made him extremely popular in some circles, less so in others. Rudy told about how Uncle once lured geologists from Finland to a nearby forest, claiming it was full of meteorites. They came in droves, those Finns, and when they saw they'd been duped with pieces of worthless kimberlite, Uncle sold them cell phones and offered them free classes in the art of water witching.

Mother reminded Father of the time Uncle parachuted into a dairy farmer's pasture and scared the cows milkless. The farmer presented Maris with a bill for all the milk the cows should have produced, a slip of paper that Uncle stuffed into his mouth and chased with a glass of milk. We wanted to hear Father laugh. And so we talked and talked while you sat listening to every word we said, turning your ears first this way and that, your ears funnels for sound and your eyelids blinking as if you were silently storing away every word we said.

Father sat in his chair and smoked his pipe. While we talked, blue-gray clouds wreathed his body. If our words penetrated that smoke, we did not know, for his eyes remained fixed on the mantel clock that ticked and sang on the hour. He had willed his tongue to dry up in his mouth, and I wondered, even if he had wanted to talk, if would he be able to.

Seeing him this way twisted my stomach in tight, cold coils.

Mr. Zetsche had done this to Father. Had Mrs. Zetsche known this was coming? Could this be why she rehired me, her way of making amends preemptively. I don't know. And I didn't let her act of kindness diminish my hatred for Mr. Zetsche. It was the first time I really and fully hated someone. A few years earlier after the Pushing of the Swing, I had watched Mr. Zetsche by the oak tree. As he surveyed the frayed ropes of his swing, I had felt sorry for him. Now I felt overwhelmed by an animal sadness, for all this time I had secretly believed that I was above hatred. I realized now that I was not. I was as small and ordinary as anybody else.

For three weeks I hated Mr. Zetsche. It was during this time that I dismantled the phone.
Dismantle
suggests a gentleness to the action. Actually, I ripped it from the wall. I shattered it with a hammer. I threw the pieces into the root cellar and hoped they would turn to mold. Each morning as I went to work, I could hardly look at Mr. Zetsche's horses, which symbolized to me foolish excess and vanity. Mr. Zetsche had two good and fine cars. Father had none, and the closest he would get to a fine and fast machine was the backhoe and now even that was taken from him.

Only Joels understood. He lived in the world of music; if one instrument fell silent, he noticed its absence. And if another instrument produced sour or false notes, this, too, he noticed immediately. But he was not an alarmist. He set about studying the situation—that is, me—and one night as we lay in bed, he regarded me carefully.

“The depth of a person's hatred is the measure of his or her limitations.”

I rolled to my side away from Joels.

“Inara, do not hate that man.”

“Why not?” I fumed.

“It disrupts consonance and continuity. It will consume you, and nothing will purge it but a greater consuming fire.”

“How do you know this?”

Joels ran his hand through his hair. “Because I've hated before.” Then he closed his eyes. He was a believer in the restorative powers of sleep. Sleep, he had explained more than once, makes everything new: the stones in the river, hues and shades of color, our words, and even the letters in the scriptures once a year are renewed in sleep.

Now, as I had then, I laid my ear on his furry chest. A steady rhythm of wet percussive beats throbbed in an even pattern. Sleep, I believed, was the time we each make a quiet music. How beautiful his heart and the music that it made. I think of that as the moment something inside me changed. I felt gratitude for Joels, the fact of his being there. Gratitude that I could feel gratitude and recognize how I felt.

Joels shifted his shoulder, pushing me off. Then he began to snore. Yes, I was grateful and awed that, given his circumstances and mine, he had chosen me. Now he rolled to his side and his breath whistled through his nose. I could feel something solid and elemental shifting in the bed of my heart. I would love this man whose love I could not match or understand, a man whose love for me was better than my love for him. And, even if it killed me, I would take his advice: I would not let loyalty for Father feed my stupid hatred. Father, after all, had not uttered a single word against Mr. Zetsche.

In the morning I followed Ligita in to work. We did not talk as we let ourselves in the back door. Though we'd both been working for the Zetsches since Easter, three months now, she still did not talk to me—not about Rudy or her chores for Mrs. Zetsche. Instead, she held her cell phone to her ear and pretended to talk. I happened to know she let her contract with the phone company lapse, but I also knew how important it was to keep up appearances, especially if that was all you had.

We stamped our feet on the grate and took off our shoes. From down the long ash-wood hallway came the footfalls of very small feet. Then Mrs. Zetsche.

“Inara.” Mrs. Zetsche gripped one hand in the other. “Ligita.” I had never seen her so distressed. “Please.” Mrs. Zetsche gestured toward her chairs grouped around the table she only used when she was expecting fine company.

Ligita and I sat beside each other in plush straight-backed chairs with ball-and-claw feet while Mrs. Zetsche sat opposite us at the end of her very long well-polished table. She bit at her lip, tugged at a lock of hair. She put her hands on the table, spread her fingers, and looked at them for a moment.

“Girls, this is so terribly difficult, because you know how I feel about the both of you.”

I looked at Ligita. Beneath her angry maroon bangs, Ligita looked at me. Mrs. Zetsche's feelings for us were of the utilitarian sort: she liked us as long as there were no discernible marks or blemishes anywhere in or around her minimansion.

“I've been counting the silver and silver-plated serving pieces. You know the ones?”

We nodded.

“Well, I'm three short. And I wouldn't have even mentioned it, except last month I was short four pieces. I'm not making an accusation, you understand, merely an observation.” Mrs. Zetsche studied me carefully.

“I understand,” I said.

“You and Ligita are the only hired help who have keys to the back door.”

“We would never steal from you, Mrs. Zetsche,” Ligita said at last, her voice pitifully thin, and yet there was a discernible trace of defiance. Ligita would go away from this encounter determined that it was she, not Mrs. Zetsche, who had been wronged by this theft.

Mrs. Zetsche's chin trembled. She plucked at her sleeve and a handkerchief flew to her eyes. She was crying openly. “I know it wasn't you, Inara. Or you, Ligita. But this is so troubling. Because, you see, there's just been so much happening to us of late.”

Her tiny hand slid a yellow sheet of paper over the polished tabletop. I recognized the flyer—
PATRIOTIC LATVIANS FOR AN ALL-LATVIAN LATVIA
. “Someone keeps sliding these papers under our door.”

I rose to my feet and snatched the yellow paper from off the table. “I'm so sorry, Mrs. Zetsche. It's rubbish—pay it no mind.”

“Just some stupid kids trying to make a point,” Ligita added.

I made my way home, that old stone pushing my shoulders forward. I looked at that sheet of paper and felt shame. What did I know, really, of her troubles? We did not know where they had lived before they came here or under what circumstances they had left. Nor did I have any real knowledge of just how very hard it was to be a foreigner or, at the very least, a newcomer. I thought about Mrs. Zetsche, who had furiously dabbed at her eyes with a scented tissue. What provocation did I have, really, in disliking her so? She could not help who she was or where she was. She could not help it if she had things when others didn't.

Ligita and I found Rudy beside the woodpile where he was exploring the limits of the potato's not so secret revenge. A bottle of Skak-Eternal-Fire-Rear-Naked-Choke stood wedged in between thick pieces of hardwood set out to season. I showed him the yellow paper.

“Tell me you are not involved,” I pleaded.

“Most men are cowards or slaves,” Rudy said.

“Which one are you?” I asked.

Mother, who'd been conveniently hanging laundry, appeared from behind a scrim of wet sheets. With one hand, she led you; with the other, she balanced her basket in the crook between her hip and ribs. Rudy didn't see her approaching. Drink had made him effusive, garrulous, loud.

Rudy shrugged. “We are going back to the land. We are taking back what is ours.” Mother dropped her basket and Rudy startled. Mother regarded Rudy as if he were something alien and slightly dangerous. Mother took another step toward us and leaned her whole body toward Rudy.

“Never will you talk like this.”

Rudy's face underwent a strange transformation. “But he took our ancestral property.”

“No,” Mother said. “We sold it to him.”

It was as if his face were a bowl of still water and she'd troubled the surface with her hands. Whereas his face had been serene, even smug, now his brow lifted, his eyes widened in genuine surprise. Over his face passed a panoply of expressions: alarm, amusement, irritation. At last he settled, a placating smile filtering over his features. “You were coerced, you were manipulated. If we play our cards right, we can still get the manor house back.”

Mother frowned. “Most men grow wiser as they grow older. But, son, I worry for you.”

Rudy's voice hardened. “Think about it. When has Latvia really ever belonged to Latvians? We are smart people and capable people. We have ideas and energy and resources. We just need to come together for a common cause.”

“And what cause is that?”

“The redistribution of wealth to those who need it most.” Rudy grinned. “Imagine a small band of modern-day Robin Hoods.” Rudy pulled a five-lat note from his pocket and set it on top of the remaining laundry in her basket.

Mother glanced at the note. “You are not the son I raised.”

“I am exactly the son you raised. Aren't you the one who said that all the wrong people benefit from the hard work of Latvians? I'm just settling the score.”

Mother's face turned ashen. “Get out of here.” Her voice trembled.

For five very long seconds Rudy stood still. And then, as if he'd been touched with an electrical current, he sprang backward and ran down the lane. We did not even hear his boots crunching on the gravel.

W
HAT IF THE WORLD WERE MADE OF STORY
? What if a bedrock of words girded the ground beneath our feet? What if the sky were a brattice of sound, hum, and hymn holding us in an invisible embrace? What do I think of this, a poem for the newspaper?

I don't know if your grandmother ever received hate mail. Certainly there were heated exchanges, particularly regarding politics or recipes involving carrots. She was not a fan of them, as you may or may not recall. She usually got the last word in with her “Kindly Advices” column.
If you can't say anything nice, then shut up already!
Did people appreciate her labors with the newspaper? Probably not. Her pearls, as Father would say, had been scattered before swine. But I believe she would have been delighted to see how you are reviving her old column and writing something new: “Mishaps with Camels in Kyrgyzstan!”