Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Leaving Latvia. Late afternoon. Late October.
November 14, 2111

I received an email from Agnese. It was unexpected. Usually we communicate through short messages on the mobile telephone. She writes that she has lost her credit card, which is why the email by computer.

I met Agnese seven years ago when she was twenty. She came to my apartment with two other young women, who I had met in my countryside neighborhood and tried—with little success--to persuade to go back and finish high school. I was just discovering the effects of poverty and alcoholism in the Latvian countryside and was determined to try helping at least some.

The poverty (by western urban middle class standards) was understandable. It did not shock or surprise me. I have always liked to know the ways of the so-called lower or underclass. I feel that there have been times in my life when I was there myself.

In Latvia there is much of what I call “subsistence poverty”, a kind of tradition left over among the Latvian kolhoznicks and subsequently from subsistence farming days.

In subsistence circumstances, the walls of the room may not see paint for decades and the bed seldom has bed sheets, but there is a blanket, wood for the stove, porridge with milk, a dog or a cat, and “krutka” (moonshine) for the father. After the children can walk, the mothers often look for odd seasonal jobs–like digging for potatoes—to supplement family income.

Though the Soviet government insisted that children go to school (there were truant officers), apparently the system did not care if rural children learned more than the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Teachers favored and tended to pay attention mostly to the children of party officials. This is why the young of the majority of the people were “into” music, usually a band from Moscow imitating western rock.

Agnese, too, had missed out on her last three years of high school. She claimed that this was due to “a most difficult time” for her family. [Her sister had been sick with meningitis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meningitis ; her brother had fallen out a window and nearly broken his back; her father had turned to alcohol.] She also had a cosmetic problem with her teeth: one had grown over the top of two others and was slightly protruding from under her upper lip.

From the looks of it, Agnese had been trying to hide her cosmetic problem since a child. The facial muscles on the left side of her face had drawn that side of her face, especially her upper lip, slightly downward.

As I remember it, I suggested then and there that she return to school in return for my paying the dentist to fix her teeth. Agnese agreed. She became, so to speak, my Pygmalion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVmU3iANbgk , and I was about to find out what George Bernard Shaw’s play romantized in real life form.

Here is Agnese seven years later, writing to me from England, where for the last two years she has worked in a factory packing chicken legs for supermarkets. The letter (here edited and abbreviated) is sheer delight with, all the same, profound bathos and concerns on my part. Agnese writes:

"Greetings, dear one! I am presently babysitting three children, who are watching soaps. Yesterday, I lost my credit card, which is why I cannot call you on my mobile.

Here is what is happening with the new arrivals from Latvia.

[Explanation: About three weeks ago I drove the common in law wife of Agnese’s brother with her and his four children to the Riga airport, whence they took a flight via Ryanair to London. The adults and two of the children had been in England before, but had returned to Latvia. Unfortunately, nothing has changed in the unemployment picture here, the are salaries low, and public transportation is infrequent, which makes getting to a job and getting back is a great problem. They therefore scrounged up the money and—even in the midst of Europe in financial and economic chaos—flew back to England.]

My brother’s wife will begin to work in our factory. My father will fly in from Latvia to baby-sit the children. They have found a place to stay at a boarding house. Fortunately, they do not have to share the toilet.

The good news for me is that I will again be back in my own room, where I will be able to better rest and do what I have to do. School is in the first place; drawing in second; and quiet and relative freedom is third. The baby does not stay quiet, but kicks about in my stomach even at night. I suspect that he (?) will be like me, who could never sit still, and had to be in motion at all times. As you know, I could never stay in one place longer than two days.

I realize that this was not easy for you, but perhaps it was interesting, because you never knew what came to my head and what I will do next. Now I am experiencing the same thing: I never know what the baby will do, what he is thinking of, and whether his kicking is because he is unhappy or perhaps because he is happy. I am no longer alone, and I have to think for two. I hope you understand that I did not listen to some of your advice, because I did not understand myself. Somehow, I believed that I knew better than you.

I am anxiously waiting for the birth of my baby, because then I will be able to return home and to paradise. The reality here is depressing: there are no birds, no ladybugs, nor the rest of nature. It has all died here. The people here think of the countryside as a nightmare. However, I know better, because the countryside made my life happier and I could fantasize freely. I realize that I am writing as if I have become a philosopher. Excuse me for that.

Doors open. Flaps up. One short hop to RIX and on to London.
Give my love to Shokolad [my (our) cat]. Give her a few strokes of love from me. Love, Agnese."
………………………………………..

November 16, 2111

Volodya came by this morning and told me that Sergey had his trial yesterday. Apparently he had refused a lawyer and was going to defend himself. No one knows what the outcome is or whether the trial is still on.

Sergey had come by to visit me just a week ago. He brought me as a present two fresh pickerel. As it happened, I was taking a bath at the time, and he had no time to wait. I did not know at the time that he was awaiting a trial.

When I went to clean the pickerel, I discovered that one was still breathing. Its gills were moving ever so slightly. So, I cleaned only the fish that was already dead.

I put the live one in a bucket of water and drove down to the brook and released it there. One can call me superstitious, but somewhere at the back of my head there is a memory of a story that if one was merciful to wildlife, it would someday return the mercy. This is why I hope that the pickerel has survived and is swimming down the brook toward the lake.

I surely need many mercies. One particularly feels such a need when one is getting old and, therefore, increasingly finds himself alone.

Sergey is an interesting man. His mother is from the Ukraine. She came to Latvia during the Soviet times. She married here a Latvian, who had a daughter by previous marriage. When Tatyana bore a son, the children grew up together and eventually they married each other. They now have two children.

I met Sergey years ago, when he came and offered to sell me a pike. He was supplementing his income (for all I know it was his only income) poaching fish from a nearby lake.

I got to know the man and got to like him, because he was a doer. He kept active. He was determined not to go under and to survive the challenges of “shock” capitalism. In another day, he would have been called “a black marketer”. At the same time, Sergey used to warn me that the local people were cheats, thieves, and liars, and for me not to be so trusting as I apparently was letting on.

Sergey liked motorbikes. The biker who sometimes sped past my slow moving car at what seemed some fantastic speed was him. Later, he would tell me that the biker had been him. I told him that I was impressed, however, “be careful”.

One day, as Sergey was passing some slow moving traffic, he was not so lucky, and to avoid hitting an oncoming car, he had to aim for the ditch. He said he was at the time traveling 200 km an hour.

Sergey survived the accident, but with a ruptured spleen, and other injuries. Because he had no money to pay the doctors, they—so he told me later—were going to let him die. He told me that his lung was filling up with water (perhaps it had been punctured), when he called and asked me to help. I gave him a substantial amount, and his treatment at the hospital improved immediately.

In subsequent years, Sergey went through a training course for guards and became a supervisor of guards at a department store. He was licensed to carry arms, as a result of which (I infer), he started collecting stray munitions. Someone reported him, and the police came to search. They found, so I hear, two pneumatic pistols and some twenty live bullets at his apartment. Of course, I am not sure how accurate all this is.

Kristofers, Laura, Emils, Ance, and mother at the RIX.
 Anyhow, that is what yesterday’s trial was all about. My neighbor says that the maximum sentence Sergey faces is ten years. I hope that that does not happen. The Latvian courts have a tendency to mete out brutally long prison sentences, one’s that are certain to ruin a man’s life. I am not sure how well his wife can pull through, though she also has a license to be a guard, and I have frequently seen her at the store.
……………………………………

Tonight I have two tickets to the Valmiera theatre. They are performing Tennessee Williams play “Orpheus Descending”. I am sure it will be a very surreal experience. I believe that the last time that I saw this play was at the Provincetown theatre or perhaps it was Boston—I have no idea how many years ago now, perhaps fifty. The Latvian title translates as “Orpheus Underground” (Orfejs pazeme).
…………………………………..

No comments:

Post a Comment