The matches

@ Novella written by Džena Andersone, 2021

@ Translated by Christopher Moseley, 2024

Džena Andersone / Jen Anderson /

Raivo threw the car door wide open and hurled the empty beer bottles right there on the ground. With one hand he was trying to light a cigarette, with the other he was feeling in his pockets, searching for his wallet. The cigarette was damp, the half-empty lighter wouldn’t obey him. The little wheel of flint was worn out, it didn’t want to turn, the expected spark didn’t jump up. Raivo tossed the lighter onto the seat next to him, put the cigarette behind his ear and turned the radio up louder.

“Got any matches?” Raivo turned to Andrejs, who was sleeping behind him. “Come on, get up, why are you sleeping?”

Through the open door of the car January drove the snow in, receiving in turn the numbingly loud music that rolled out of the speaker and poured onto the discarded bottles in the snow next to Raivo. With difficulty Raivo pulled open the zipper of his leather jacket; his fingers were frozen and didn’t want to obey, just like the lighter. He turned the rear-view mirror toward himself, drew his face closer to it and started to examine himself, as if trying to recall something. The mirror stared at him with grey, metallically cold, alert eyes, in which the winter morning sun was reflected as a little white disc, like a nitroglycerine tablet. With frozen hands he started to rub his face and temples, his fingers slid through his blond hair. Carefully, so as not to dislodge the cigarette behind his ear.

The morning had only just begun, his head hurt, everything in it was thundering. A hangover was coming on, and that couldn’t be allowed. Now he needed to light up, take out a couple of beers, so as to be able to drive on. He had to get to his quota. Definitely had to reach his quota. Thoughts were rushing around in Raivo’s head. He couldn’t stay here in some dump, in the middle of nowhere. And it was definitely no good at all to be driving around the world on the second day of a new year, when all sorts of patrols and other shit could be on the road. The only thought that warmed his heart was of the canisters of Belarusian diesel lying in the boot. They could be passed on to somebody in the town, and then for a moment he wouldn’t need to be afraid, to scheme, he could simply relax, After that he would think what to do next. He couldn’t show up in Latgale for a while now. He’d have to ease off a little, lie low in the shadows, so that it would all die down. Then later he could move on. There was nothing else for it now but to head off to his native Kurzeme coast.

Raivo breathed in deeply, remembering the sea at Staldzene, the hot white summer sand. His heart turned a somersault. It’s the hangover, just the hangover. Dammit, why does the lighter have to stop working now? Yesterday there’d been a lot of drinking, and the day before and probably the day before that, but that didn’t matter.

If you can’t remember something, then it didn’t exist at all, thought Raivo, and at the moment he was deeply indifferent to yesterday and tomorrow, he was only worried about the here and now. He had never worried much about the future or the past, he lived for the day and looked at things realistically. Raivo never regretted anything; a sense of guilt was alien to him. He didn’t torture himself with self-reproach. You are how you fight back, and nothing more – he used to repeat that to himself. At this moment Raivo was only thinking about how to get to civilisation, to some town, away from these eternal fields and empty spaces that seemed to have no end.

Having checked the inner pocket of his jacket and found nothing there, Raivo climbed out of the car, spat in the white snow, did up his zipper, walked around the car and opened the rear door, where a small, rumpled form was deeply asleep on the back seat. Raivo grabbed the sleeping person by the shoulders, turned him on his back with one movement and then dragged him by the armpits out of the car. Almost soundlessly Andrejs toppled into the thick snow. Startled out of his alcohol-saturated sleep, he woke up, sat up halfway and looked dumbly at Raivo.

“Well, slept enough? Any matches? Come on, have a look, you had some yesterday on you!”

Raivo kicked the snow, aiming at Andrejs’ face. Andrejs tried with one hand to repel it, with the other sought a point of support to get to his feet. Turning around on all fours, his face came quite close to Raivo’s feet, which were clad in black army lace-up boots, and then he realised that he himself was wearing only socks, and his shoes were somewhere in the car. He had to hope they were.

“Raivi, wait, stop, please, stop!”

Andrejs tried to get to his feet, stretched his arm upwards, expecting help. Raivo slapped him across the palm, pulled him a little towards him and then forcefully pushed back into the snow. Raivo noticed Andrejs’ socks and started to snigger.

“If you don’t stop lolling around on the ground straight away, we’ll be playing doggies!”

He reached into the car for one of Andrejs’ sneakers, grabbed it and raised it ready to throw. Andrejs quickly leapt to his feet and began begging like a child: “Now Raivi, stop, really, don’t fool around, this is not funny…”

To the accompaniment of the rumbling music from the car, the dirty old sneaker was flying over the glittering white covering of snow like a stray bird in winter, until it finally found lodging, silently falling into a snowdrift.

A lump was strangling Andrejs’ throat, he felt the tears rising. They were so deceitfully close that they irritated his nose and they would immediately start falling from his eyes. It was good that there was snow, good that he was already wet; Raivo wouldn’t notice anything. At any rate Andrejs started wading in his socks through the snow after his sneaker. The tears mingled with the snow, which had melted on his hot flesh and was now trickling under his clothes. His small, delicate form in the middle of the field looked insignificant, the black windcheater was several sizes too big, it dangled over his puny shoulders, and the jacket’s sleeves were too long. From behind he looked like a scarecrow.

Andrejs’ blond head was dejectedly bent downward. He walked rapidly with tiny steps. His feet were freezing, he wanted to find the sneaker quickly and get back into the car. Andrejs was afraid that Raivo had some other game like that to play. But what he feared most was that Raivo might leave him here in the middle of the field on his own and drive off. Or leave him later in some other place, where Andrejs wouldn’t be able to manage on his own, wouldn’t know what to do, and he’d be taken back to the children’s home. That he didn’t want at all, definitely not.

Andrejs was prepared to put up with anything that Raivo did, all his sneering, cursing, stupid jokes, obscenities, absolutely everything, as long as Raivo left him alone and he wouldn’t have to go back. Andrejs would do whatever Raivo said, he’d be patient, obedient. He had to put up with two years. Only two years. In two years’ time Andrejs would be eighteen, and then he’d be a completely free man and able to live his own life. But now he had to endure it and, as the tears flowed, he had to wade in his socks through the snow after his sneaker.

Raivo watched Andrejs with contempt; he looked something like a real clown. How can he be so clumsy and slow, thought Raivo, spitting once again, slamming the half-open car door on Andrejs’ side, climbed inside, turning down the boring music, taking the only remaining cigarette left behind his ear and, turning it over on his fingers, started to blast on the horn. In the car were wisps of blown snow; there was no heating, the snow didn’t melt, but lay calmly on the seats and the front panel.

Andrejs finally found his wretched sneaker, which, being old and faded, looked so useless in the majestically white snow, as if cut out of a newspaper and glued onto a collage as an alien element. Andrejs clutched the show he had found under his arm and, stumbling and tripping, no longer feeling his toes, ran back to the car which, solitary and just as useless as his sneaker, stood in the middle of the snowy field, stridently tooting. Breathlessly he ran up to the car and tried to open the door. His fingers were freezing, they slid along the handle; the door wouldn’t open. Raivo had locked it. Andrejs started beating on the driver’s window.

“Open up, this is no joke, please! Raivi!”

Raivo wound the window halfway down.

“You find matches?”

“What? What matches?” Andrejs was stamping in the snow. “Open up, I’m cold, please!”

“You had them on you, look for them, go on!” Raivo leaned back in his seat.

Andrejs started fumbling in all his jacket pockets, until finally he felt a little box. They were souvenir matches, made of thick cardboard, held together on a single tablet. You could pick off the matches one at a time and, by dragging them along the side of the box, light a flame. On the matchbox was the name of a guest-house: ‘The Clocks’. Andrejs didn’t want to remember the guest-house, but, relieved by the discovery, handed the matches to Raivo.

Raivo opened the box.

“Ha, only three left.” He winced. “Well then. If I can finally light my ciggie now, you can get in, but if not, you’ll and find me a light. That clear?”

Raivo smiled coldly, and his grey eyes became narrow and fierce. Raivo closed the door and stayed in the car alone; Andrejs’ expression bothered him as he stood outside. This pipsqueak needed a bit of training – for protection, not much, just enough. Andrejs would come in handy for him later on in town; it wasn’t for nothing that he was wearing himself out here with this kid. It wasn’t for nothing he’d pulled him out of that hole.

There’s nothing better than having someone in your debt. Then you can have them work off your help to them according to a proper programme, pull on them with every string like a marionette. And Raivo knew how to do that.

Good, get to work then. Raivo turned the music up louder, put the cigarette between his lips, pulled off one match and quickly scraped it along the box. The match caught fire, flared up and just as quickly died away. Raivo flicked it away. The match flew off and struck the car window. Without looking at Andrejs, Raivo ripped out a second match and slowly, with eyes closed, dragged it along the rough panel of the box. It struck a little flame, then flared up some more and lit up Raivo’s face. He lit the cigarette, breathed the smoke deep into his chest, held his breath a little, and only after a while did he let it out slowly through his nose. The cigarette smouldered, the ash fell onto Raivo’s arms. He opened the window and let out another puff of smoke.

“So. If you want to keep going, go off and have a piss, so you don’t spoil the car, because soon there won’t be any more stops.”

Andrejs was stamping from one foot to the other.

“But I don’t want to right now, I don’t need to.”

“Don’t go on about it – I’m not your nursemaid! Remember what you did to that bed? Stank like a pig-sty. Off you go, quick, I need a smoke and a drink and now I want to get going! Get ready for us to get at least to some town by this evening.”

Andrejs wanted very much to get into the car, and, not knowing what to do, he stamped on the spot, and then went off behind the car and turned his back, to relieve himself right there in the snow. It started snowing again, but he no longer had any tears, he was all cried out, and he was now looking indifferently upward.

Andrejs knew how to close himself off, not think about what was happening. Everything going on now has nothing to do with me, I’m not here at all, I feel nothing, I only sleep. Andrejs had since infancy always known how to hide within himself when anything happened that caused him alarm, fear or humiliation. At such moments he recited the alphabet in his head. For example, when the big lads in the dormitory pushed a pail of piss on his head in the toilet.  Sent author sample up to here 13.7.2023

If it was very horrible – such as when his roommate, little Raimonds, hanged himself on the metal head of the bed with a girl’s panty-hose – Andrejs was helped by numbers. One hundred and twenty-one, one hundred and twenty-two, one hundred and twenty-three… He’d seen that in some cartoon, in which nestlings who were afraid of a thunderstorms, took cover in the nest and counted, one, two, three, until the storm passed over.

This skill had come in handy for Andrejs more than once – when someone hit him, or when someone else was hit and he was afraid. Then he screwed up his eyes and began counting in his mind. That helped, because the numbers would start to get mixed up, and in order to rearrange them in the right order in his head, he had to start thinking about figures, and then he couldn’t think about what was going on around him. Everything was forgotten, the numbers raised him somewhere into the air, put him on a sort of invisible shelf. Looking down from above, Andrejs counted, while his body was crawling along the ground somewhere or squeezed into some dark corner. Now too this skill was useful for him. Fifteen, sixteen, soon it will all be over, eighteen…

Raivo arranged the mirrors in the car, looking backward once more, and noticed Andrejs, who with his huddled back loomed in the reflection. The sight was disgusting and laughable at the same time. Raivo pressed on the horn again. Andrejs flinched. He’s not pissing in his hands yet, thought Raivo, turned away, finished his cigarette, threw the butt out the window, started the car, pressed the clutch.

Andrejs was huddled in the back, where, curled up into a little, guilt-ridden bunch, resembled a pile of black rags. It was cold, uncongenial in the car, the seat was damp, smelling of spilt beer, cigarettes and sick. Andrejs noticed on the floor the same kind of box of matches that Raivo had handed to him a moment ago. Andrejs picked it up. The same ‘Bells’. The box was almost full. Only one match had been torn out. Andrejs stuffed the find in his pocket. After that he took off his wet socks and pulled the sneakers onto his bare feet.

“Well then – ready at last? Dawdled enough? Right, off we go I’m going to tear the roof off if I don’t get something to drink!”

Raivo slammed the door, stamped on the gas pedal and turned up the music. The dark blue car started to move through the white snow, feeling its way uncertainly as if seeking the road. The snow-covered field lay behind them, slowly receding, becoming ever more blurred, blending in with the grey sky, until finally disappearing from view altogether.

                                                                                    ***

Andrejs was freezing; he had gone to sleep on the back seat of the car, with his knees tight against his chin, and curled up so small that Raivo couldn’t even see him in the mirror. The car slowly clawed its way through the snow, trying not to lose the snowbound road, which had not been cleared for a week or more. In spite of the cold and the unbearably loud music, which seemed to be assaulting him on all sides, even into the dirty gaps in the torn seat, Andrejs managed to doze off. He was always trying to sleep if he only had the chance, because he could never be sure whether the next time to sleep peacefully would be soon. Sleep was a privilege, not a guaranteed right.

Andrejs slept half-dozing, and in his dream he saw summer: a hot sunny day, with a river flowing through it. He often had this dream. When he was still a little boy, the dream seemed to be brighter, more defined; now, as the years passed, it was paler, more distant, yet it never went away. In the dream there was always the same scene: Andrejs standing by a river, preparing to swim across it, but as soon as he took off his shirt, the river vanished and he woke up. Instead of the river he saw the opposite corner of the room in the dormitory, in which one of his roommates was sleeping.

Andrejs had forgotten the names of these roommates, but maybe he had never known them. When Andrejs was small, he didn’t even know his own name. He found that out in the children’s home, when everyone started calling him Andrejs. In the place where he lived before that, no-one mentioned his name.

Only a few memories remain for Andrejs of the time before the children’s home. Sometimes it seems to him that nothing else had existed before that. Sometimes there flashes through his memory a room with dark green, tightly closed curtains. From the room one can see a kitchen, where people are sitting at a table talking loudly.

Andrejs doesn’t understand their talk, nor does he see the people’s faces. He can’t even get closer for a look, because he can’t get out of his bunk bed, so he is standing upright and holding onto the edge. The only thing Andrejs sees is a woman sleeping in a bed. She is sleeping, facing the wall, so the boy doesn’t see her face.

Those are the only memories of the time before the children’s home. Andrejs regrets that he doesn’t remember anything else. He would so much like to recall to memory the smell of the place, he would like the green curtains to be opened just once, but no. His brain is incapable, and nothing more swims to the surface from the depths. Most of all Andrejs regrets that he doesn’t remember that woman’s face. If just once she had turned toward Andrejs, he would certainly remember it.

Sometimes, to conjure up the dream, Andrejs didn’t even take off his shirt, but tried to run into the water fully clothed. But nothing helped. As soon as he got to the smooth surface of the water, the dream broke off, the river disappeared and wakefulness surprised Andrejs sharply and bitterly, like the night watchman in the dormitory catching him smoking in the shower cubicle.                     

Andrejs had understood long ago that he didn’t like waking up. Neither from dreams nor without them, he just didn’t. If it were in Andrejs’ power, he would sleep and sleep endlessly, never and nowhere waking up and getting up, sleeping like that woman in the room with the green curtains.

Someone in the children’s home had told him that there is a kind of lethargic slumber where a person just sleeps and sleeps. He is alive, but never gets up. Then Andrejs realised that that would be his greatest pleasure – to fall into such a sleep, have dreams, not go anywhere, not do anything, not look for anything.

Andrejs is only sixteen years old but it seems to him that he’s already a hundred years old. That is how tired he is. Andrejs feels like the frozen earth at the beginning of March after a long winter. He’s always freezing; it’s a kind of incomprehensible cold inside his body and head. It’s always, always cold, sleep comes, and a feeling of constant emptiness in his belly. It isn’t hunger, Andrejs knows that. He can eat a lot and often, but there is no way he can eat his fill so that the emptiness and cold disappear. Eating doesn’t help.

A few years ago the older boys in the boarding-school had brought alcohol to the dormitory. It turned out that alcohol helps to fill the emptiness. At first there was a flood of warmth through the body, after that the emptiness somehow shrank, shrivelled, hid away closer to the backbone. It was a shame that you couldn’t get alcohol all the time, because when it was over the cold became even more intense, and the emptiness spread out so much that it seemed that it would tear his stomach apart from inside and he would roll out right there on the dormitory floor.

In a dream Andrejs was standing by a river, not moving. He tried not to breathe either. Carefully he placed one foot behind the other in the damp sand. He saw the river, the opposite bank, the green birch-grove over there. Then he drew a deep breath and started running. After just a moment Andrejs woke up, and beyond the car window he saw the ghostly white sky, the colour of cheap paper; it had flattened itself against the glass and was observing him with a cold glassy stare.

                                                               ***

Andrejs had woken up, but didn’t move. He simply wanted to continue sleeping and not do anything. He glanced cautiously at Raivo, who was tightly clutching the steering wheel. Raivo was half as old again as Andrejs, and he had also been raised in the same children’s home. Raivo, though, had long since torn himself away from there, into his own big new adult life.

Andrejs envied Raivo and wanted to be like him. Raivo was tall, broad-shouldered, with blond hair. Most of all Andrejs envied Raivo his courage. Raivo was not afraid of anything. Completely unafraid of anything or anyone. To anyone he could look straight in the eye and say what he thought, hit them straight in the face and maybe even kill someone if there was a need. Andrejs was convinced of that.

Andrejs was of slight build, but, living with his perpetual cold and emptiness in the belly, had shrunk even smaller. He was fearful, didn’t want to be noticed, and therefore spoke little, tried not to rise up and draw attention to himself. Too much attention at the boarding school cost him painfully. If you weren’t prepared to fight till you bled and broke your bones, it was better to be quiet and unobserved. Andrejs was like that. Even now he was struggling to sleep on the rear seat quietly, without moving, so as not to draw Raivo’s attention.

Andrejs closed his eyes and thought about the boarding school, about his narrow bed with its brown checked blanket, which was probably still quietly waiting for his return, about the Christmas tree, which stood alone in the big hall of the teaching block, and about the many little things that had made up his whole life these past ten years. Andrejs was expecting that something in his heart would be compressed, would tingle, but it all remained calm, as if nothing had happened. He felt within himself a huge, ominous emptiness, so great that you could throw a basketball into it.

During the Christmas holidays those who had relatives or foster-families didn’t have to stay in the boarding school. Andrejs had nobody, at least he didn’t know of anybody, so he spent the holidays in the children’s home along with his fellow sufferers, whom everyone had abandoned and who didn’t know how to pretend to be better than they actually were, so as to cajole some soft soul to give them a chance of at least some holiday time in a family circle, even a strange one.

From the latest foster-parents who had taken on Andrejs he had run away four times. Three times they searched for Andrejs, drove after him, led him back home, but the last time they gave up on him completely. They couldn’t understand what it was he was lacking. Andrejs himself didn’t understand that either. He didn’t want to stay in a big, strange house where other children lived. It was hard for him, he felt superfluous - that he didn’t deserve all this.

He was afraid to eat strange food, because he didn’t know how much to take. All the time it seemed to him that sooner or later he would have to pay for it all. He didn’t know how to behave, what to say at any moment. Andrejs had to be thankful that he was given this opportunity, but it was unbearably hard to live with the constant sense of guilt that he couldn’t show pleasure.

He silently envied those children who learned to take sincere pleasure, or to skilfully appear to, showing attachment to their foster-parents, sticking close to them, and clinging to their necks on parting like close relatives.

Andrejs couldn’t do or understand any of this. One thing he did understand, or rather felt quite clearly, was that he wasn’t like the others. He was completely different like a foreign body, superfluous and disturbing like a splinter stuck in a finger. He didn’t believe anyone who claimed anything else. Nobody did claim that, at least not so often that he would doubt it and question his differentness and superfluity in the world.

The older Andrejs became, the more strongly he felt his difference from the other children in the home, from the carers, the foster-parents and all the other people on this planet whom he’d chanced to meet in his life. Something invisible separated him from the rest of the world and didn’t let him approach it.

He occupied his own world somewhere outside of time. Empty and silent. It had to be silent, because only in silence could he hide and remain unobserved. In the empty and silent world there were some more or less perceptible slivers of the past, scattered into an unclear future as in a thick fog, impenetrable even to lanterns and to lighthouses. In the empty, silent world, time had stopped. Some unseen hand had stopped it. The hands of the old clock on the wall were broken, twisted together with the slivers of the past and sunk in a dense mist. Over everything, like a damp and mouldy padded blanket, lay the illusion of the present.

He was a living person who wasn’t living, but only acting out a programme released by the big ones. Only the big and the strong release the programmes and set out the terms in the lives of little people. Andrejs eats, sleeps, breathes, gets up, studies, does everything he is made to do, everything provided in the programme. He doesn’t doubt or question the truth and the necessity of it. Andrejs has never felt life, joy, pleasure. He doesn’t have the happy gene. There are no days when he’s happy or joyful, these feelings are alien to him. Undefined disturbances to development, neglect of schooling – it says on Andrejs’ medical card.

Raivo, who had little interest in developmental disturbances or neglect at the children’s home, on one of the occasions when he went to the boarding school to deliver alcohol for the boys, offered Andrejs the chance to come with him and do some work. Right away, he had said. At the time everyone flinched – no-one had enough courage. They were not so afraid of fleeing the boarding school as of going off with Raivo, who knows where, who knows why. Actually everyone who knew Raivo had a sense of what sort of treatment he would offer, and it was easier to pretend not to know or understand anything.

The glass is always half full, Raivo would emphasize. At least in my case, definitely, he would snigger. Andrejs was afraid of Raivo, afraid to say No. So the ‘treatment’ was meted out in such a way that Raivo, at about eleven in the evening of the same day, when the duty staff had gone to bed, turned up at the children’s home. Andrejs was waiting by the fence. When he heard the car’s horn, he crept over the wall, and off they both went.

Raivo drove on to some sort of rural house with dark windows, handed Andrejs some spotted working gloves, made him take off his shoes and helped him to climb up the annexe. After that everything was easy. Through an opened ventilation window Andrejs slipped into the house, opened the big window, and through it handed out things that Raivo thought were valuable. Andrejs didn’t know, and was afraid to ask what Raivo was going to do.

Raivo had his own car, in which he would drive around in the daytime studying the surroundings, the people, their houses. Raivo always knew where and when he needed to drive, which houses were unattended for the moment. The reward for the work was contraband cigarettes or alcohol, which Raivo poured into small mineral-water bottles.

It’s barter, Raivo grinned. He was happy to give it on credit too; he liked to have someone in debt. Boarding-school boys knew that alcohol and cigarettes could be bought from Raivo for cash, if they managed to cadge some from a foster-parent or take it from their unguarded purses. But drinks and smokes could also be worked off, by driving with Raivo to distant villages and stealing. With girls it was different. If they wanted to get something from Raivo’s shop, the pay-back could happen right there in the car, not driving far and not risking that they’d be caught in the act. Raivo didn’t turn anyone down. If he really didn’t fancy one of the girls, he knew where to take her to settle the bill differently.

In his not very long but eventful life Raivo had managed to be behind bars twice: the first time, when he was still a minor, for stealing, and the other, a little more fully grown, he did time for robbery, and by now he had many friends in various circles. No-one dared to complain or accuse Raivo about his methods, because then he would punish not only the objector, but everyone else in the boarding-school who was expecting his weekly visits.

To leave the whole school without smokes and booze for a month just because you weren’t satisfied with Raivo’s manners – that was tantamount to suicide. Raivo could stuff a mutineer in the boot of his car, take him to an abandoned house, of which there were dozens in the district, lock him in a barn or a cellar and leave him there for a couple of days.

Children escaping from the home were not a rarity, so yet another disappeared teenager didn’t cause anyone any alarm. Having wandered around the local centre, or if one of them had got further, the town, after three or four days they were all brought back, accompanied by either a policeman or a doctor. At that time and in that place all this didn’t matter much. Besides, Raivo himself didn’t always have to get his hands dirty at all, he only had to call out the name of the one who caused the cut in supplies, and the whole group had to deal with the poor wretch.

At the children’s home, everyone was afraid of everyone, and no-one trusted anyone. If someone had to be punished, everyone was automatically the judge and the executioner, because no-one wanted to be the guilty party, and no-one wanted to be even close to such a person, so great was the fear of contagious guilt. There were no such problems with the girls. As long as Andrejs remembered, only once or twice had Raivo had to take one of them away to a remote bit of forest, remove her shoes and leave her on the road in the autumn night. After walking twenty kilometres barefoot on a country road until she got back to the dormitory, the consequent punishment from the carers and the boycott by her roommates for incorrect thoughts were as nothing, and everything went on as before.

Andrejs recollected the last day before the start of the Christmas holidays, when Raivo had arrived at the boarding school bringing alcohol for the boys. As on the other occasions, as if in passing, as if for a joke, he offered Andrejs the chance to come and do some work. This time, though, the offer was different.

“Stuff this shit! No point wasting away here. Koroče, ir štelle, now you can come with me properly. Properly, understand? You won’t have to come back to this shithole!” Raivo, leaning back on the car seat and blowing puffs of blue smoke through his nostrils to the roof, expounded. “Believe me, as soon as you’re eighteen, those whores will kick you out of here and no-one will give a damn. You think they’ll give you a flat? Shit no! I’m still waiting for that fairy-tale even now! There isn’t one, there won’t be! Don’t be an idiot! No need to think about what others want. Just think about yourself. Koroče, see.” Raivo turned serious. “Either you grab all your rags now quickly, and we slip away, or you can fuck off. And you know I won’t be back before April. Koroče, do what you want – it’s my job to offer, yours not to accept. You’ve got exactly three minutes, while I smoke another ciggie!” Raivo lit a new cigarette from the still-burning previous one, switched on the radio, sat back comfortably in a chair and started staring out of the window.

At that moment in Andrejs’ head, overwhelming the undefined developmental disturbances, the neglect of schooling and all the other vague substances of his brain, thousands of thoughts clashed, like electric charges. Raivo knew Andrejs’ weak points. It was hard for Andrejs to decide anything and impossible to decide anything quickly. After a moment Andrejs’ brain focused on three points which revolved in his head like glittering hoops.

The first and biggest was the sudden possibility, so long dreamed of, of getting away from the children’s home and not returning – now, immediately, never coming back, ever. The second was the fear of what would happen when the teachers and the director found out that he’d gone. For good. Fled. This thought caused an unpleasant tingling in his stomach, something was clenching his belly. But the third thing, which pierced his pit of his stomach like a spear, cutting off his breath, was the horrifying sense that Raivo might drive away now for three or four months or even six, taking with him the chance of getting away from the boarding school in the near future.

Other thoughts shot through his head too – about how he could explain Raivo’s departure and prolonged absence to the others. And how he could say No to him now. And maybe this was only a joke and Raivo was making fun of him. And how contemptuously Raivo would look at him. And what Raivo would tell the others. And what Raivo would do after that. And how he would now remain on his own in the boarding school for three weeks, while the others were visiting their foster-families. And so on, and so on.

“You’re not joking? This is for real – yeah?” Andrejs forces out, with bated breath. “I… I just have to get my bag, I’ll be right back!”

Raivo hadn’t yet finished his cigarette, when Andrejs, breathless, with an old rucksack in one hand and a nondescript-looking carrier-bag in the other, rushed to the back seat of the car. Completely out of strength, he sank down prostrate, and only when the car had wound its way along the dark forest road and climbed up onto the highway did Andrejs jump up. He had left his boots under his bed in his little room at the dormitory, almost new boots of dark brown leather, bought for his by his last foster-parents. Andrejs was sorry about the boots. They were good, expensive, he had never had any like them before. Andrejs had spared them. Today, too, he hadn’t put them on. But what was the use now? Andrejs sighed and moved his toes, which were freezing in the sneakers.

His new life had sneaked up on Andrejs from behind like a big snake. It had assaulted him quite silently, wrapped up his whole body, slipped into his brain and completely taken him over. Freedom was so sudden and unexpected that he seemed to have fallen asleep and be dreaming.

Andrejs closed and opened his eyes, but everything was right there. Here and now, Andrejs recalled. This must be the first time that Andrejs felt alive, completely alive. He was here now. And for this life he was thankful to the one whom he feared, whom he despised and admired at the same time.

Andrejs gazed at Raivo, whose broad shoulders covered almost half the window. Raivo, silent and looking straight ahead stiffly into the darkness, was steering the car. Speeding past the window were blue-black spruce-trees; every now and then a star would flash somewhere, forest on both sides of the road, dark and calm, looking down on the two lonesome travellers who, like stones plumbing the depths, were rushing toward their new life in the beautiful, cold winter night.

                                                                                   ***

Andrejs was wide awake, but behind closed eyes he was trying to glimpse the daylight in his head, so as understand his location, if not in space, then at least in time. Raivo was in charge of their shared space, and Andrejs had no say in that. It was the second of January, the middle of the day. Everything seemed unbelievable, as if happening to someone other than him. Nothing bad had happened today, and nothing good either. A dream had just dissolved, taking with it a calming river. A heavy and unpleasant feeling – as on every occasion after waking- started to slowly fill the emptiness in Andrejs’ stomach, which only yesterday had been warmed by alcohol. In Andrejs’ head this morning’s incident with the sneakers was starting to lose its bitter taste; it was getting smaller, starting to gradually recede, becoming unreal, until it merged into the mosaic of incidents in the rest of his free life, no longer rising into the foreground.

“You’re sleeping all the time!” Raivo turned toward Andrejs, speeding up his return to reality.                      

Andrejs sat up and, feeling guilty, started to justify himself: “There’s something wrong with me, Raivi, my head aches and I think I’ve got a temperature.” He rubbed his forehead.

“Don’t rave on, that’s no temperature, it’s an ordinary hangover.” Raivo wound down the car window and turned off the radio. “Yesterday you were acting like a pig! If you can’t hold it, don’t dirty your mouth.”

While Andrejs had been sleeping off the strangled mess of tears and the remains of the hangover in a deep slumber, Raivo, having spent several wakeful hours on the road, happened to find some pep pills in his inside jacket pocket, which made him feel pleasantly alert, energetic, and full of new ideas. Therefore the puny little boy there behind him wasn’t able to spoil this wonderful day for him. Yeeeah!

Raivo’s booming headache disappeared somewhere, and the raw, dull pain through which he crept in a labyrinth of sickly hangover, melted with the snow which was, bit by bit, being blown by the wind through the open window of the car. With shining eyes Raivo looked at himself in the mirror. For one moment it seemed that he saw his own image in it, shattered into sixty-four frames as on a chessboard. The feeling was illusory. All of this moment, along with the past few days, was converted into a long, stretched illusion, sometimes interrupted by a sleep that was like unconsciousness, and a painful awakening that followed. Raivo didn’t think about it, he wasn’t bothered by it. The chess he perceived in the mirror recalled to his memory the New Year celebration that didn’t happen, at ‘Pulksteņi’, ‘The Clocks’.

                                                                                       ***

It was the thirtieth of December. A week had passed since Raivo had taken Andrejs from the boarding-school. After the exhausting driving around, the wandering, a few petty thefts, Raivo decided that they had to rest, get some sleep, eat and drink properly, and force somebody to pay for it all.

Sitting in the cold car, which had been driven quite close to the frozen Daugava river, drumming his fingers on the steering-wheel, Raivo reviewed the list of his debtors in his mind, remembering everyone who owed him something. Then he picked out those who were not only in debt, but had otherwise behaved in ways that Raivo didn’t like. After that he matched their names with their possible locations and the approximate distance in kilometres. Raivo’s face was concentrated as before a high-jump or a long-jump; he narrowed his eyes to stare at the frozen white river.

“Bingo!” Suddenly he dashed his fist against the car’s ceiling. “’The Clocks!’ Yo-ho! Why didn’t I remember that before? “The Clocks”, mate! At last we’ll get what we should!”

“What clocks?” asked Andrejs. “How far away?”

“’The Clocks’ is a sort of hotel, a roadside schmotel, see, something between a guest-house and a whorehouse.” Raivo was excited about this unexpected gift from his own memory. “This hovel, koroče, belongs to a guy’s dad, a family business by the side of the road. This guy and I happened to be doing time together one time, you know how it is. He was a rookie, first time in. We buttered him up there, it was a barter exchange. We papuks money for him and sent paiku, we divided up everything nicely: he’d give us cash, we’d give him security, so that no-one nelien, no-one could touch him. Everything štokos, and nobody would grass!” Raivo went on. “But this was the deal: since he’d be the first to be released, once every two weeks he’d send us ciggies from outside and there’d be money in the account. Well, that’s the system, you know, mate. The guy hit his chest with his fist, swore he’d never forget, give his last shirt, and all that other shit.”

Raivo was stirred up as he talked. He finished his smoke, started the engine and started turning the wheel to get out onto the road. The car wouldn’t obey. It sank in the snow.

“Well, koroče, this fuflaks went through the gate, ku-kū! Ar galiem! Damn it! Come on!” Raivo tried to engage reverse gear.

“We wait a week, two, a month – nothing! This time it might as well not have happened. Really.”

Raivo pressed the clutch and the accelerator; the car roared, digging itself deeper into the snow.

“At the end of the day, nothing’s come of this. Absolutely zilch. When I was going out, I dug myself into my ģēlās, so aplikos with jobs that I completely forgot about this fruktu!” Without taking the cigarette from his teeth, Raivo lets smoke out through his nose, continuing to turn the wheel this way and that. The car doesn’t budge from the spot, the wheels turn, cutting smooth indentations in the snow.

“But that’s nothing! This little debt will now be written off!” Raivo scoffed. “Pushed dolbanijs! By hook or by crook, he’ll give back all the money anyway,” Raivo hummed, thrusting great clouds of smoke into the freezing air. [Ričuraču, make it rhyme]

“What’s going on here?” Raivo forced the door open and got out of the car. Going round the back, he opened the boot and took out a spade. “You just sitting there?” he shouted, spitting out the butt.

Andrejs got out of the car quickly and started hopping from one foot to the other in the cold.

“Get over here!” Raivo tossed him the spade and, rummaging in the boot, pulled out some bits of planking.

Andrejs started digging the snow away from the rear of the wheels. Heaving, Raivo tried to shove the car out, rocking it from all sides. Andrejs placed the planks in the spots he had dug out. Raivo finally managed to get the car moving. He rubbed his hands gleefully, sat down at the wheel and, without closing the door, lifted the car jerkily out of the snow. Raivo whistled and got out.

Andrejs was standing knee-deep in snow with the spade in one hand and some sort of wooden pike in the other.

“Come! Let’s get going!” Raivo waved blithely. Andrejs started to drag himself out of the snow. Raivo noticed his sneakers.

“Mate, you don’t go in those! They won’t do, we’ll have to get you some boots. You’re like some hobo, a complete deadbeat. When’s your birthday?” Raivo looked at Andrejs’ feet.

“Twenty-eighth of January,” replied Andrejs, opening the boot.

“Oho, kruta, we’re in the same month! Mine will be the twenty-third.” Raivo ran both hands through his hair. “You know what that means?”

“That it will be soon?” guessed Andrejs, carefully placing the spade in the boot next to an old blanket and a fire-extinguisher.

“Yes, but you don’t understand!” Raivo zvaigāja. “It means we have to get presents. Birthday presents. And we don’t have to wait ten or twenty days to get hold of them.”

“But how?” wondered Andrejs. He closed the boot and sat down on the back seat.

“This way! We’re going off now to get presents! Right now! We have to get them before the happy New Year. Well, why are you lounging on the back seat – come and sit up front! Today you’re going to be the DJ, so look for some good music in this box.”

Andrejs abandoned his usual place and sat in the front. In two hops, Raivo was in the car and slammed the door.

“Off we go! We’re off to ‘The Clocks’, to our Santa Claus. You know, mate, if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain goes to Mohammed.” A smirk settled on Raivo’s face.

He took a match out of the box, put it in the corner of his mouth and started chewing it. “Shove it into the player!” Raivo belted up and pressed the accelerator vigorously.

The car roared and lurched forward, leaving Christmas-tree-shaped ornaments behind it in the snow. This day was promising to be damn good.

                                                                              ***

Raivo’s blue car stopped at a largish white two-storey building with a brown roof and a terrace built onto the front, whose awnings were decorated with several brands of beer. On one side of the central façade and on the back wall of the building was the sign: CLOCKS MOTEL. The letters were huge, painted red, like the big printed letters in a child’s primer. On the other side of the façade and on the wall at the other end were similar huge letter, only in green, written in a column: HOTEL. BAR. SAUNA.

The motel was separated from the highway by a few century-old linden trees which, white with their snow covering and stretching their branches out in all directions like giant hands, were like trees of life. From the outside the motel appeared well cared for.

Right next to the motel on the edge of the highway stretched out a stonemason’s workshop, demonstrating to passers-by tens, maybe even hundreds, of headstones in various colours, with and without inscriptions. The large stone plaques and obelisks, although covered in snow, were clearly visible, quietly staring at the travellers with their black marble and red granite eyes, as if reminding them that they’d better not go fast on the road and slow down.

The stonemason’s workshop was a one-story structure like a barn painted bright red, in contrast to everything around it, including the ‘Clocks’ next door. In the little space between the motel and the shop there was a bold inscription: HIGHEST QUALITY MEMORIALS AND BORDERS OF NORWEGIAN GRANITE.

Raivo, appearing not to notice the workshop, wound down the car window and lit up. “Ding-dong, we’re here!” He laughed, rubbing his hands together and pressing the car’s horn several times.

The little path leading to the motel entrance was snowed under, not yet cleared today. The parking area next to the guest-house was almost empty. Two lonely cars of indeterminate colour stood there, half-hidden under a thick coating of snow, at the corner of the yard. Nothing had been driven there for ages.

No-one opened the door, and the motel seemed to be empty. Around the window-frames and the eaves of the roof strings of Christmas lights had been put up, but they weren’t lit, and in the cool winter air they cast stiff arcs like the rigging of an abandoned ship.

Raivo pressed the horn once again and kept it pressed. The shrill sound cut the torpid air.

After a moment the entrance door opened and a man’s figure appeared on the threshold. He was young, with blond curly hair, quite a tall build with somewhat hunched, upturned shoulders. With one hand he was holding his jacket tightly, not buttoned up and open at the chest, and with the other hand he clutched the door-handle firmly, like a staff. With round blue eyes he stared at the arrivals.

“We’re closed until the end of the week,” the man said loudly. “The sauna’s working only after the holidays.”

He was already about to close the door when Raivo flung his butt in the snow and rapidly opened the car door.

“Ivars, Ivars, Ivaryoshka!” Raivo called out cheerily. “It’s good that you’re closed. We can celebrate in peace, in the house style, as they say.”

Raivo was glad to stretch his numb back after the long time sitting in the car. “Happy new year! So pleased to see you! Extra good! Now come to daddy, give us a kiss!”

Raivo spread out his arms theatrically, as if about to embrace the man frozen in the doorway. The man addressed as Ivars pulled himself together as if waking up, let go of the handle, came outside, closed the door behind him and took a few steps forward, sinking almost up to his knees in snow. He no longer clutched his jacket either, it flapped freely around his form like a flag raised on a mast, which might fly off high into the sky at the first opportunity. Ivars moved his arms up and down helplessly, as if wanting to say something, but not a word emerged from his half-open mouth.

“Mohammed! Your mountain has arrived!” Raivo sneered, going closer to his host. “Andrejs, come, I’ll introduce you to our Father Christmas!”

Andrejs climbed out of the car uncertainly.

“Shush, shush!” Raivo put a finger to his lips. “Don’t say anything, anything at all. Leave it all to me, okay?”

Andrejs had come closer to Raivo. Ivars, immobile, stared at Raivo and Andrejs. Or rather, at Andrejs’ sneakers.

“Andrejs, let me introduce Ivars, our Santa. You might memorise the name, because who knows, you might meet him some time,” Raivo said aloud. “But now we’re going to spend this weekend together, because Ivars has got us some presents. Haven’t you, Ivars?” Raivo turned toward the wooden Ivars.

“Ivars, this is Andrejs – he’s got a birthday coming soon, in January, and I have too, if you haven’t forgotten.” Raivo smiled. “But you don’t forget anything, do you, old chap?” Raivo slapped Ivars jauntily on the shoulder so that Ivars sank even deeper into the snow.

Andrejs listened, not knowing what to say. Ivars was scared to even move.

“Well, why are we standing here? Why all the glum faces?” Raivo rubbed his hands. “Where’s your Dad, your Mum? Aren’t you going to introduce me to your family? Eh, Ivars?”

“My parents don’t live here in the winter,” says Ivars falteringly. “During the season –“

“Oho, so you’re the only lord and master here, you’re the boss,” Raivo interrupted him. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s go inside, gentlemen! Let’s lay the table, kill a piglet.” He started laughing full-throatedly. Not expecting an answer or an invitation, Raivo went past Ivars with a brisk step and headed for the entrance. “Andy, lock the car!” he called to Andrejs as he stood on the threshold.

Andrejs waded over to the car, closed the window, took out the key from the ignition and shut the door. When he turned to go into the guest-house, the motel door was wide open and Raivo had already disappeared indoors. Ivars was still standing in the snow, looking at Andrejs, as if wanting to say something.

Andrejs was trembling inside. He felt that this didn’t promise anything good. Andrejs had known Raivo a long time and knew that he could act in two ways – quickly or protractedly. In these situations, of the rapid variety, as soon as he gets out of the car, he abruptly strikes your face, without any words, not asking anything at all. The blow is heavy, but Andrejs knows from experience that that is preferable to Raivo starting on his long opera. Then no-one can predict the scenario. Raivo may spend a long time poking fun at a person, and that is much worse than hitting them.

When Andrejs had almost reached Ivars, Raivo appeared on the threshold again.

“Well, how long do I have to wait?” he bawled. Both Andrejs and Ivars, as if in a speeded-up video, started hurriedly wading toward the motel, lifting their feet high, as they were still sunken in the thick snow. On the threshold both started to shake and brush the snow off their clothes.

“You’re a shitty host, Ivars,” said Raivo. “What, no shovel? You can’t clear snow, or what?”

“No, we have one, we just don’t clear it during the holidays, as there’s no-one here,” Ivars starts mumbling.

Raivo said nothing, just looked contemptuously at Ivars and finished a cigarette, with a flick sending a still-burning match in Ivars’ direction. Ivars pretended not to notice it.

From the tiled lobby of the motel, in which low benches were lined up along the wall like sauna sweat-shelves, they all went into a largish, uncomfortable-looking room, whose floor was diagonally divided into two parts, forming large equilateral triangles. The triangle of the floor that was closer to the entrance was covered with the same tiles as the lobby, and on it was a large black sofa of artificial leather, which was torn in places. One side of the sofa boasted an artificial palm, and the other a large electric stove. Evidently the purpose of the stove was, as the electric fire crackled, to create a sense of homeliness and warmth. Yet it was unable to create either one or the other, because, being in an odd place, almost by the exit, it seemed superfluous and shameful.

Another triangle of the floor was covered by planks, and it was densely packed with mainly imitation-leather armchairs, piled one against another, reminiscent of a second-hand store. In front of the armchairs a low oval table graced the scene, covered with a wine-red polyester tablecloth. Over it hung a chain-encrusted, dusty five-branched chandelier.

Along the walls, here and there, stag-horns were screwed into place for decoration, and among them, probably finding its last resting-place, was also a large wall-clock in the form of a ship’s wheel. It had stopped, with both of its hands pitifully lodged on the six. There were also several windows with tightly closed gold curtains, decorated with stylised Egyptian Pharaoh images. The view from the window remained hidden. The indoor ensemble was completed by an undistinguished white door in the far corner diagonally opposite the entrance.

Ivars was still shuffling along a tiled triangle, trying to detain Raivo.

“I’ll bring you a beer and something to eat right away,” he said. “You can relax here.” He waved toward the armchairs. “There’s a television too; there must be a remote somewhere,” – Ivars started to talk more quickly, fearing that he might be interrupted at any moment and be unable to say what he had to.

Raivo turned toward Ivars, and Andrejs noticed in his eyes the same little flares as in the electric stove – cold and burning at the same time.

“You thick or something? What’s up with you?” he asked. “Didn’t you understand what I first told you? We’re staying here for a few days. Hullo, you there – don’t you get it yet? You’re telling me to sit in the lobby?” With his fist Raivo slammed one of the decorative stags’ horns. With a hollow crash, the horns separated from the plaster wall and fell on the floor. Raivo kicked them with his foot and set off straight across the whole room toward the white door.

“This isn’t a lobby, it’s a fireplace room.” Ivars had slightly recovered himself and started justifying himself, as if still trying to stop the unstoppable.

With a huge sweep, Raivo forced open the door in the corner of the fireplace room, then turned to Ivars and clapped his hands loudly three times. “Bravo, matey! Look what Santa Claus was trying to hide! Snow-White’s cottage!” He gave a whistle of delight.

Raivo vanished behind the white door, and Ivars rapidly followed him. Entering the room, which Ivars had tried to protect from so many unexpected guests, a whole new scene opened up before Andrejs’ eyes. It was a substantial-sized hall. Along the perimeter of which were placed little tales with soft chairs. In the middle of the room was a huge green billiard table, the kind that Andrejs had seen only in films.

Attached to one of the walls was a dart-board, and on the opposite wall was affixed a chessboard, as a testimony that the motel guests in this hospitable institution were given the advantage of different kinds of entertainment and games.

At the very end of the hall was a bar counter, lit up by New Year lights and decorated with big pink crepe-paper tassels. On the rear mirrored wall of the bar, rainbows glistened, reflecting the coloured labels of many bottles of drinks. There was no sign of any food, but the refrigerator at the end of the counter looked promising. Just catching sight of the huge silver-coloured refrigerator, Andrejs realised how hungry he was.

In the background a radio could be heard, over which Raivo yelled, and Ivars was part of the general scene like a piece of a puzzle. Andrejs looked at the refrigerator and only by chance happened to see with his peripheral vision, on a high chair by the bar, one leg crossed over the other, a girl of indeterminate age, while an older woman was bustling around on the other side of the counter.

As soon as Raivo had opened the door to the bar-room, he noticed the two whores. The older one was washing something in the sink, while the younger one was stretched on the chair with a half-empty glass in her hand. See now, Raivo thought to himself – just what I expected. The old madam was already sizing up Raivo, who came straight over to them. The young girl was of tall build, with long thin arms and legs like a stick insect. She had an unseasonably short sleeveless dress, coloured a mixture of earth and sand. Hair of the same colour, piled high and sprayed with lacquer, stood on her head like a crown.

“The landlord doesn’t generally like smoking in here.” The older one, with wet hands, slid an ashtray along the counter toward Raivo.

“Hi, ladies!” Raivo stood by the bar, shoving the proffered ashtray toward him. “For the next two days I’m going to be the landlord here, okay? Not too much movement, and it’ll be all right, that’s the main thing.” He patted the younger one on the thigh with his hand.

“Well, well.” The older one turned off the water and started wiping her hands on a towel of the same indeterminate colour as the younger woman’s dress. “As you say, sir.”

Raivo also sat down at the bar, examined the room around him, making a mental note of how much all this might have cost. His thoughts started to dart to the upper floor of the guest-house. How many rooms might there be there? From his sense and experience, at least four, with two toilet facilities between them, there would have to be. He couldn’t work out whether Ivars had any cash at all. Maybe his old mate, the idiot, couldn’t be entrusted with anything more serious than keeping the whores. But what the hell, one step at a time, Raivo thought to himself. The main thing now is not to rush it. He had to relax, uncouple himself from everything, then filter it, what and how. He won’t be on his own anyway. The old hag looked peaceful. How old was she – fifty, sixty? You can never tell, that job takes its toll of the decades. The main thing is, she’s peaceful. The young one was calm too, for the moment, but a narco, you could tell it from her eyes. Bags. That’s bad. Var sacelt haju uz līdzenas vietas. But that’s enough. Not for the first time. I’ll roll it out. Good, she’s at least friendly, with a dumb sort of expression. What the hell!

Raivo stretched his back and felt tiredness. His whole body was stiff, tense. His arms and legs were as heavy as iron. Raivo usually dismissed thoughts of tiredness, he didn’t like that feeling. He wanted to always be strong and lively, but now this strange room and the odd company around him sucked out all his energy. The more malleable and impressionable Andrejs had placed himself next to the refrigerator, looking at Raivo with pitiful calf’s eyes. Ivars the half-wit was standing as if rooted to the spot by the billiard table, waiting for Raivo to shout some command or order. It was all so repellent and stupid that Raivo wanted to lash out at these mugs around him, but he didn’t have the strength. Some sort of inner energy was lacking. Raivo closed his eyes, shook himself. Then he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and clapped his hands.

“So, where’s lunch? Get that refrigerator open! Where’s the beer, where are the snacks? Chop, chop!” Raivo started impatiently banging the table.     

Andrejs didn’t have to be told twice. Within a few seconds the whole contents of the refrigerator was laid out on the table. Ivars brought a whole crate of beer. That wasn’t from the refrigerator, but now, in winter, after so many tortuous hours in the car he could even drink it like that. A pleasant warmth initially slid into his stomach, but after that it filled his whole body. Gradually the iron heaviness began to vanish from his arms and legs. The old girl disappeared into the kitchen somewhere, to cook sausages on the electric grill, and after a moment a fatty, salty smell filled the whole place, tingling in the nostrils and stimulating the appetite. It didn’t matter what they wear eating.

“What’s your name?” Raivo turned to the young girl.

“Liene,” she replied indifferently, looking at herself in the mirror through the coloured drink bottles against the glass in the bar.

“So, Ivars, what have we got here? Why so feeble? Where’s the whole harem?” Raivo pointed toward Liene.

“We’re not working at the moment, not enough people in winter,” Ivars explained. “Liene and her aunt and I are just looking after the place, that’s all.”

“Ah, so you’ve got a sort of family business here, mate,” Raivo sniggered. “But I’m thinking: why so few whores – where are the rest? Turns out you’re having time off.”

“Not quite – the girls are working in town during the holidays, there are more customers there. Liene and her auntie live here – they’re renting a room.”

“Nice set-up, Ivars! Daddy arranged it all, business is booming, Auntie’s cooking the borshch, the other one’s on the game when she needs it, it’s all rolling.” Raivo couldn’t stop laughing.

“No, Liene isn’t at it any more.” Blushing, Ivars rapidly gulped down a beer, trying to rinse away the fear that is breaking out on his brow along with the sweat.

Liene, indifferent to everything that was going on, opened another bottle of beer with her teeth, lit up a smoke and started fiddling with the radio buttons, switching between stations in a search for some more upbeat music.

“I’m going to teach you one important thing, little friend, and never forget it: there aren’t any ex-whores or ex-cops or ex-drinkers in this world! Understand, dummy?” Raivo continued. “That’s how it is. Now you’re going to share with me, aren’t you, mate?” He poked at Ivars. “You’ve got to share, brother, got to share everything. Remember what you promised?”

Ivars hung his head. His jacket was slung on a chair. Under his grubby shirt a beer-gut was visible. His pale, freckled arms lay flabbily on the table, turning a green glass bottle in his pink fingers.

With the beer and the grilled sausages some liveliness returned to his body. Raivo slapped Ivars on the shoulder again and briskly got to his feet.

“You’ll warm up those saunas, yeah, mate?” He waved at Ivars. But you, Andy, make sure that everything’s nice. Rustle up some snacks, some salads, from the kitchen, yeah? Quick about it!” Raivo screwed up his eyes at Andrejs.

Raivo lit up, took the beer-bottle from Liene’s hand and put it on the counter. Then he took Liene by the hand, lifted her off her chair and waved upwards. The girl didn’t resist, with practiced step she set off through the bar to the kitchen, showing Raivo the way to the wooden stairs that led to the upper floor of the motel. Their footfalls on the creaking stairs were swallowed up by the music flowing from the radio waves and, together with the cigarette smoke, soon filled the billiard-room to the ceiling.

                                                                                       ***

The sauna was well heated, steam was rising off the shelves, it all smelled like a pine-forest and something else that Andrejs had never sensed before. He didn’t know a name for it. With two switches dripping with hot steam, he beat Raivo’s body, lying on the ledge. 

Andrejs had never done this before; he’d only seen it done in films. At least it seemed to him he had. He raised the switches high above his head, as if whipping the air a little, and then lightly, almost gently, starting from the feet, moved the switches upwards to the thighs, then across the back, more slowly, more attentively, admiring the tattoo of a church, whose two large cupolas with crosses on their spires symmetrically pointed over the shoulder-blades, merging in the middle of the back in the image of the Mother of God.

After that Andrejs moved with the switches along the arms, stopping a little at one shoulder, on which, through a lattice, twined a large black tulip, then at the other one with a dove, looking somewhat sadly through a small window.

Raivo’s body was well-formed, proportionate, with not many tattoos on it, but those few that were there Andrejs liked very much. He admired them as works of art, forgetting his task of thoroughly scrubbing this body, battered by life but well preserved, to let it relax and gather its forces for new tasks, new struggles. When Raivo was tired of the beating and all the soot accumulated in his flesh and soul over the past year had drained away in the effluent of the steam-bath, he got to his feet, rubbed the tips of his burning ears, went outside, and with a huge splash, jumped into the pool right beside him, which in essence was a largish tub. Andrejs observed him for a while, feeling how much he envied this big, loud person his ability to be so free.

Having stepped out of the pool and wrapped himself in a white sheet like an ancient Roman, Raivo returned to the barroom. The radio was still on there; Liene with her beer-bottles, her garlic toast and ash-trays had moved to one of the little tables near the billiards. The old one was sitting opposite her, almost asleep. Ivars was nowhere to be seen.

Raivo picked up a bottle of beer from Liene’s picnic place, with the base of his hand knocked the top off it right there on the table and walked on, barefoot, past the billiards and dart-board. Only now did he notice the chessboard, quite out of place in this scene, which someone had condemned a harsh and unjust punishment, having it nailed up in this eerie place, where hardly anyone was likely to even play draughts.

Raivo stopped, pushing chairs out of the way with his hands, went over to the wall and, without letting go of the beer-bottle, started to pull at the checkerboard. It transpired that this, like the deer’s antlers by the fireplace, was only stuck to the wall with rubber glue or something similar. Raivo took a big gulp from the bottle, put it on the floor, and smashed it on the board with a blow from below. With a light crackle the chessboard came off the wall. Raivo, not letting it fall on the floor, held the board in the air for a moment, turned it on all sides, then with a hollow smack slammed it shut, put it under his arm like a squared book, picked up the beer-bottle from the floor and with the same brisk step went in search of Ivars.

He didn’t have to go far. Having opened the white door in the corner, Raivo caught sight of a body that was stretched prostrate on an imitation-leather sofa next to the stove. Ivars was drunk and had gone to sleep. He was lying on his back with his head tilted, his mouth half-open, snoring loudly. Raivo came up to him and nudged him on the shoulder with his bare foot. The snoring continued. Then Raivo drank up the rest of the beer, flung the empty bottle onto the sofa next to Ivars and went back to the bar.

Liene and her aunt hobbled to their room next to the kitchen, clutching and propping each other up. One old, the other young, both drunk and repellent. Raivo stopped. Andrejs? Where had he got to? It was all becoming more and more annoying.

Raivo pulled open the door of the steam-bath. Andrejs had arranged the sauna whisks and was now calmly sweeping away the extra water that had spilled into both rooms.

“Leave that alone, let’s go! Let them sort it all out” Raivo waved the chessboard at Andrejs. Andrejs turned off the light and followed Raivo. They went past the kitchen, the two women’s room, and climbed up the creaking stairs down which Raivo had come a while ago.

The second storey revealed to the view a long, narrow and dim corridor, lit at both ends by pale, half-dead globes screwed into standing lamps with lily-shaped shades. On both sides of the corridor were several doors to the rooms. The floor was covered by a red carpet, on which footsteps could not be heard. The carpet was thick but dirty. Raivo could feel sand sticking to his feet. When they had got to the very end, Raivo pushed open one door.

“This is Ivars’ room. At least that’s what the whore said.” He laughed and pushed the switch. A ceiling lamp lit up, illuminating a large and cluttered room, more like a warehouse, because it was stuffed with furniture, boxes, food packaging – everything that might be useful to a company such as ‘Clocks’ with such a broad profile.

The room was square-shaped, located at the far end of the building, and it had a huge window, hidden behind a thick red curtain, like the tablecloths in the stove-heated room. Raivo threw open the curtain and, perhaps for the first time in his life, faced an exhibition of gravestones. Marble memorial plaques, not yet inscribed, stood in the brilliant white snow, looking like chess pieces. The lantern in the motel courtyard and the street-lamp on its post lit up the whole place well, looking like a silent and snow-covered museum. Raivo closed the curtains firmly with a shudder.

“These are just idiots here.” He started picking up things which were piled up in a corner on a desk by the window, all over the floor, all over the room. The premises looked as though a second-hand shop had been merged with a grocery store and created this degeneration. Raivo knocked everything on the table off it in disgust.

Hundreds of little soluble coffee packets, bales of napkins, bunches of pens, playing cards – old and new, with and without packaging -, some sort of binoculars, menthol tablets… he poured all of them onto the floor along with old-fashioned watches, books, birds’ feathers of unknown origin, juice cartons, chewing gum. Raivo almost stumbled over crates of beer, which, full and empty, were jumbled together. Tossed over them were towels and blankets, still new, in their packaging.

All around there were piles of dishes, some already broken. Red-and-white striped mugs were lined up on the floor alongside old typewriters, which were crammed against chairs piled up on each other. Wherever a person had set foot here, everywhere there were shoes and bits of jogging gear spread helplessly across the floor. Dumb-bells, balls and fishing-rods stood against the wall, guarding their Babel like sentinels. Collections of soaps and shampoos were arranged in wash-basins and, thrown on top of one another, formed unstable towers, threatening to collapse at the first clumsy movement.

Between the desk and the untidy bed, which could hardly be seen under the mountains of washing, biscuit packets and the collection of beer-bottles, there calmly stood a small, quite stable safe, which made Raivo’s heart beat faster. The safe was locked. Having patted its door as he had done with Liene’s thigh, Raivo rubbed his eyes and went to the cupboard stored amid the chaos.

Raivo put the chessboard on the floor and started rummaging on the shelves, looking for a suitable garment. Most of the items looked dubious. It seemed to Raivo and clean clothes were thrown together with the dirty. Everything was crumpled up, mixed with smoking detritus, which sprinkled from broken cigarettes, covered the whole cupboard. Raivo tipped its whole contents on the floor. Hidden in the far corner of the upper shelf was a black shirt. Raivo took it, rummaged a little more in the heap of rags, pulled out a few garments and showed it to Andrejs on the beer-crate.

“Take this, and the ciggies too. That’s all for me, let’s go! They’ll be heading upstairs soon!” Raivo spat on the floor at the rage quietly lying there, kicked Ivars’ junk aside, holding the chessboard in one hand, and clutching his booty close to him, went out of the room. Andrejs obediently followed him with the beer-crate and cigarettes. A ridiculous house, he thought to himself, but said nothing aloud, only switched off the light and carefully closed the door.

Raivo opened the door of the next room and sighed with relief. The room, although painted in a slapdash way, was fortunately empty and without any superfluous goods. On the bright red walls somebody had stuck large white paper flowers like lilies. The wall at the end by the door was mirrored. From ceiling to floor it was one huge mirror. Raivo was slightly astonished, looking at himself at full height, still wearing a sheet around his hips. He went closer to the strange wall and looked carefully at himself. Satisfied with what he saw, he put the chessboard on the bed, like a huge solitary ship, covered with the customary piece of wine-red cloth, and drifted to the middle of the room. Carelessly tossing Ivars’ clothes that he found in the room onto the floor, Raivo lay down on the bed.

 “You’ll sleep there.” He waved his hand at a small white sofa that stood in the corner of the room to the right of the entrance door. “Give me the smokes and the rest.”

Andrejs put the beer-crate down beside the bed. The room was depressing, the blood-red walls pressed in on him from all sides. The chandelier on the ceiling threw out a harsh white light which reached into every corner of this sinful place. Luckily, by the sofa there was a small wall-lamp, in the dim night light of which he could shelter from everything and everyone.

Raivo opened two bottles of beer from the crate and handed one to Andrejs. Andrejs lay down on the bed with all the clothes and the bottle in his hand, and peace finally stole over his whole body.

Raivo assembled a whole mountain of pillows by the headboard, settled down half-lying and lit up.

“Know how to play chess?” he asked.

“No, only draughts.”

“Pfff…” Raivo snorted. “Any fool can play draughts. I asked you about chess. But you, useless, you’ve got no idea.” Raivo shoved the board to one side of the bed.

“Andy, why are you such a wimp, why?” Raivo drank half the bottle in one gulp. “Were you born like that or did you get that way in boarding-school?“ With unfeigned interest he stared at the little dark silhouette on the white sofa, which from this angle looked more like a comma than a person.                   

“I don’t know why you think that. I don’t know how I was born,” said the comma in the corner of the room.

“Well, look, you don’t know, again. Doesn’t matter what you’re asked or told, you don’t know. I want to work out why you’re so slow all the time. Were you like that when you were small? You remember your old folks, something at least?”

“I don’t remember, don’t remember anything from that time. I’ve lived in a children’s home all my life, I probably didn’t have any oldies.” Andrejs didn’t like these questions.

“Everyone has oldies, you weren’t dropped in a cabbage-patch by a stork, you know.” Raivo started guffawing again. “But that’s shitty, that you don’t remember your mummy, that’s really bad.” Raivo drank up the remaining beer, put his cigarette-but in the empty bottle and opened up another one.

“I only remember the children’s home, I just remember our teachers, just that, nothing else.” Andrejs slowly sipped the pleasantly bitter drink.

“You know, mate, if you can survive without a mother, without oldies, you can do anything.” Raivo finished one more cigarette. “I’m telling you, seriously. Anything. You’re an idiot if you don’t want to understand that. Until you know your own strength, you’ll go through life like a začmors.” Raivo let the smoke out through his nose, rising to the ceiling in the half-light and forming ghostly faces on it. “As long as you’re waiting and praying for something all the time, nothing will come to you. I tell you – really. You’ve got to take everything for yourself, don’t wait for anything. Only what you can take is what belongs to you. All the rest is empty shit.”

“Yes, probably, I suppose.” Andrejs had drunk up his bottle and put it precisely on the floor by the wall. He felt peaceful and in a way free, all his worries had vanished somewhere. Making his sleeping-place more comfortable, he lay down and after a few minutes was fast asleep.

Raivo smoked in silence, then got up, and opened the window, through which the needle-sharp December air rolled in. Not wanting to go anywhere outside, he relieved his bladder through the window. Then he flicked his cigarette into the black night, and the empty beer-bottles flew out with it, falling with a soft thump into the snow beside the motel.

Raivo turned out the light by the sofa, cast an eye over his sleeping companion and lay down diagonally on his back across the whole big bed. The chandelier above Raivo’s bed stared mutely at the figure lying in the dark, who at that moment resembled a crucifix with outstretched arms.

Raivo closed his eyes, and a moment before falling asleep, remembered the safe next door. He stroked his face with satisfaction. For a moment he could remember himself when quite young. Just for a second, and then he fell into a deep, dark sleep, just as firm as commitment to check out the contents of the mysterious safe in the morning.

                                                                       ***

Raivo’s childhood ended when he turned eight. There was only a week left before the end of second grade when he was left alone in the world. That year there was a hot and steamy spring. In the very middle of May. The yew was in bloom, the lilac buds were opening. Every corner of the yard was filled with yellow dandelion heads, every little spot on the grass. Everything in nature gave off a scent and was ready to blossom, cats snoozed lazily in the shade of bushes, buzzing bees moved in the apple-blossoms, and the sparrows literally went mad, resounding to eh world their endless joy of living from the first ray of sunlight until dusk.

In parks and courtyards people sat idle on benches, tasting life in the refreshing spring like the cool waters of a fountain. Children ran everywhere. The little ones went to play games, the bigger ones played ball. Life was quivering and resounding in the air. People went unhurriedly about their daily course, everything seemed peaceful and calm. In every movement there was expectation of imminent summer, holidays, excursions to the country. The heart of the city beat mild and hollow. Nobody on this wonderful sunny May afternoon paid attention to the little blond boy who was running home from school. Raivo lived in a red brick house. The flat was on the ground floor. In three jumps he ran up the steps and knocked on the green wooden door.

“Mummy, I’ve lost my key! Mummy!” The boy knocked vigorously on the door, with one hand feeling around his neck, when in the morning the key had been hanging on a string.

Behind the door he could hear his mother’s rapid, light steps. After a moment the door opened, Raivo entered the flat. In the corridor it was pleasantly cool. Mother crouched down; Raivo press a kiss on her cheek. Mother’s dark brown hair cascaded in great waves over her shoulders; it was damp and smelled of shampoo. Mother smiled, but her large greenish-grey eyes were sad.

“Wash your hands quickly and go inside; I’ll be right there.”

A moment later Mother brought a bowl of roast potatoes from the kitchen.

“Have a bite and relax, okay? After that we’ll watch a film. We won’t go anywhere today, we have to stay at home.” Mother lowered her eyes. “Valdis is angry today, so be quiet, okay? Tomorrow everything will be all right, then we’ll go for a walk, eh? I’ll collect you from school, and we will, we definitely will.”

Mother got up and went to the window. Raivo, hanging his head, picked at the potatoes with a fork. His appetite had vanished; something was compressing his stomach. Raivo knew what would happen if Valdis was angry. That meant that Valdis had been drinking and something very bad could be expected. A year had passed since Valdis had become Raivo’s stepfather.

Raivo didn’t know his real father. Mother had said that he died when Raivo was quite small. When Valdis turned up in Mother’s life, everything in their family changed. For the first time in his life Raivo found out what it means to be afraid, really afraid until you feel sick – such a panic that the spasms in your stomach give you diarrhoea. What hatred means is something Raivo found out later. Now he was only a little boy, afraid of his stepfather.

Valdis was a wiry man of medium build with an eternally red-skinned face. By day he worked in construction, but in the evenings he tamed Raivo’s mother and tried to make a man out of Raivo, as he liked to say. Valdis would punish Raivo for every trifle. If Valdis was in a bad mood, for a mark in his journal or for an unmade bed, he would hit Raivo with a belt so that dark bruises and long purple lines would remain from the buckle on his shins and back for a couple of weeks. That was why last summer Raivo didn’t go swimming in the sea, because someone might notice it.

Nor did Mother go, because Valdis found shortcomings in her behaviour too. Then Mother would wear sunglasses, behind which she hid the blue-black traces of his blows. This went on once every two or three months, but when Valdis drank, more often.

Because of Valdis Mother left her job. She used to work as a clerk in the post-office. Sometimes she would take Raivo with her to work, where the boy silently observed how deftly Mummy dealt with packages and letters, attaching colourful stamps and some white papers. Raivo liked to watch his mother working. It turned out that Raivo was the only one who took Mummy’s occupation to heart. Valdis didn’t like her talking with other men at work; it shamed him. So, giving in to Valdis’ promises to provide for the family and wanting to show her faithfulness to Valdis and reduce her future husband’s jealousy, she left work. Now Mummy was at home all the time, and Raivo was afraid for her all the time. Mummy was of slight build, delicate, child-like. My mummy is Thumbelina, Raivo had written on a drawing from his first class which the pupils prepared for their mothers as a Mothers’ Day greeting.

If Valdis contrived to get him and his mother in the same room, then Raivo saw that Valdis hit Mummy. She fell down on the floor, but Valdis pulled her up as lightly as a doll and hit her again. Raivo screamed, trying to protect his mummy. That enraged Valdis even more, and with one blow he slammed Raivo against a wall-unit or a desk so that the boy no longer dared to utter a sound. If Raivo managed to escape from the flat or hide on the loggia, he waited for Valdis to calm down and for Mummy to come looking for him in the dark. If he hadn’t managed to escape from the flat before Valdis started to block his path, he would hide in the cleft between the wardrobe and the bed, shrinking himself so small that Valdis, in his drunken rage, might not notice Raivo, or might even forget his existence.

Sometimes the boy hid in his room, where he slid under the bed, clutching his ears tightly with both hands, so as not to hear what was going on in the next room.

Perhaps this evening won’t be so terrible, Raivo hoped. The fear receded a little and he quietly stood in a corner of the room. Finally he had eaten, done his household chores, Mummy put on a film for him and busied herself in the kitchen with the washing-up.

With the first bangs on the door, Raivo’s fears poured out all over the narrow little room like black tar. Mummy ran with her son into his room.

“Raivītis, be very very quiet. Sit here, okay? Don’t upset anything, yeah?” She kissed Raivo quickly on the brow, and without looking back, ran barefoot out of the room, closing the door firmly behind her. Raivo sank onto the floor in the corner by the bed. At first he could hear only the calming noise of the television, then interrupted by banging on the street door.

Mother didn’t unlock the door, putting off the moment when everything around her would turn evil. For a moment silence reigned, only the television could be heard. There was a commercial break. Then suddenly Raivo heard something he had never heard before. The panes in the big room were shattered with a deafening boom. The big windows of the loggia split. One, two, three…

Valdis had smashed them all and broken into the flat. After that Raivo heard many different noises, which were hard for him to understand and distinguish, listening through the palms of his hands clasped over his ears. He sensed that one of the last pieces of furniture was being broken; in the wall-unit the crockery not already smashed was being demolished.

When the noise increased, as if approaching Raivo’s room, he slid with lightning speed under the bed, crawling into the furthest corner, where he curled up small, a tiny ball. The door of the room burst open, Raivo could see only Valdis’ work shoes with their metal toe-caps, and Mother’s bare feet. Valdis was roaring like an animal, shouting words whose meaning Raivo didn’t know yet. Raivo saw his mother falling and Valdis pulling her up. This was repeated several times, until Mother fell once again, Valdis stopped for a moment, and a strange sound could be heard – he had broken the decorative cover plate on the side of the sofa. With the broken board he started beating the face of the woman lying on the floor. At first she tried to avert it, screaming, but the rain of blows to her head continued so long that she fell silent and no longer moved anywhere.

Raivo looked at his mother, who was now lying quite peacefully on her stomach, her face turned toward him. Her long brown hair was wet through, soaked red, stuck to the unnaturally white skin of her neck, the grimace of pain slowly vanished, and only her large, grey-green eyes stared fixedly at her son.

In the background the television could still be heard, the commercial break had ended, the familiar signal heralded the start of the evening news bulletin. Valdis threw the board on the floor, and Raivo saw his feet shod in work-boots receding and vanishing from the room.

Raivo doesn’t remember how long he and his mother lay there, waiting for Valdis to either fall asleep or leave the flat. It must have been a long time. Slowly, quite slowly, it became ever dimmer until it was completely dark.

In the half-light Raivo had difficulty distinguishing his mother’s silhouette. The pale light in the reflection of the television screen diffused the darkness and poured tar into it. Raivo heard the television, heard the evening’s film beginning and ending, shown after the news bulletin, many commercial breaks, the nightly news, the sport, the weather. Raivo heard everything, but he didn’t hear the street door slamming, didn’t hear Valdis roaring.

He couldn’t understand where he had got to. Perhaps he was sitting in the kitchen and had fallen asleep, which often happened. Raivo couldn’t summon the courage to go and check. He just had to wait. Raivo was trying not to think why Mummy was lying so long and not even trying to get up. Raivo could no longer discern Mummy’s eyes, but he silently hoped that Mummy had gone to sleep. His legs and back had gone quite numb, but his fear of creeping from under the bed was much stronger.

Slowly, so as not to make the floorboards creak, Raivo turned on his back and continued to wait. He thought of going to school tomorrow, and after that Mummy would come to fetch him, waiting at the gate under the linden trees. After that the two of them would go to the park, maybe Mummy would buy an ice-cream or a big candy-floss, and then they would go to the swings. Tomorrow was Friday, Mummy would allow him not to do homework, because there were two free days ahead, two marvellously long and sunny May days. Raivo was looking forward to tomorrow.

Tomorrow arrived, but it was quite different to what Raivo had imagined as he lay under the bed on the dusty floor. Raivo recalled little of what remained from the time that began on that next day and lasted the following years, until he became what he is now. That night, lying under the bed, Raivo acquired a marvellous talent that would serve him the rest of his life. That was the power to drive out of his memory everything that he didn’t like, that disturbed or hurt. From his childhood Raivo remembers Mummy only smiling, remembers her long soft hair like Thumbelina’s on the cover of a storybook, and her grey-green eyes.

Raivo has no photographs of his mother, because the people who found him hiding under the bed and then led him off to his new life didn’t take any of Mummy’s things with them. Everything, absolutely everything, probably Mummy too, remained in the flat with the green door. Raivo only had time to pick up his rucksack in the corridor, because he thought he had to go to school. He didn’t yet know that he wouldn’t be finishing second class that year.

When Raivo was taken out of the house, he noticed that there were many strangers in the rooms, writing something down, taking photographs and going through Mummy’s things. Passing the kitchen, Raivo saw Valdis sitting in the kitchen in the morning sunlight amid a sea of sparkling glass shards. Two men were standing beside him, saying something. Valdis was still wearing his work shoes. Unlike the other times, not only his face was red, but his hands too. Valdis was stained all over with something red. Raivo couldn’t see any more. He didn’t notice Mummy anywhere.

At the time Raivo didn’t yet know that he would never again see the only person he had ever loved in his life and would remain the only one who had ever loved Raivo. He would come to understand that much later, after ten or fifteen years. And likewise that he must never get used to things, places and people. That is the foundation on which one can safely rebuild oneself. Don’t cling to anyone, love only yourself, because you are the only one with any significance.

Having grown up a bit, Raivo had thought that he would like to ask Mummy why she never called for help, why she let herself and him be injured. Later even these questions became unimportant and insignificant like anything else in Raivo’s life that wasn’t connected to some pleasure. Nothing in this world could ever surprise Raivo again, amaze him, because he had seen everything, experienced everything. There was no longer any unanswered question that would interest him. What remained, solely and only, was hatred – deep, persistent, uncompromising hatred, thanks to which Raivo grew up, survived the boarding-school, fought for his status in prison, learned how to gain power over others.

The fact that power must be taken by force he understood in his very first week in the children’s home. Mummy wasn’t there, and nothing worse could happen any more. Everything had happened. Everything had ended. Raivo was ready to die rather than ever allow anyone else to injure him, even with words, to say nothing of daring to beat him. Raivo no longer expected anyone to raise a hand against him. Now he was the first one to give a smack in the head to anyone who turned up in any situation that posed a threat.

More than anything he couldn’t stand was the fact that he was once small and puny and let anyone take advantage of him. Now he was disgusted by weakness in all its manifestations. He was ashamed of himself, ashamed of his past, ashamed that he had hidden under the bed from a drunken cretin.

Raivo remembered that there had been so many opportunities on those loud evenings when Valdis yet again wallowed drunkenly on the kitchen floor until he fell asleep there, and his solicitous mother, herself just beaten up, covered her weary husband with a blanket, “so he won’t catch cold, because it’s still frosty at night”.

On such an evening he only needed to take the potato peeling knife from the kitchen drawer right there, and with one rounded movement cut his throat. From one ear to the other. Like a pig. He wouldn’t even comprehend it. Later on Raivo had dreamed of this hundreds of times and relished the dream. Waking up, he would feel a purely physical enjoyment. The mere idea that he would thrust a little knife into Valdis’ fleshy red neck below the ear, where the jugular vein starts, gave him an erection. After that he’d just have to split the cartilage of the throat, and that would be all. In fact the work of two seconds. One, two. Two seconds. Mummy would now be alive. Raivo trembled at the memory of it. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that again. Never. He mustn’t be weak. Never. He mustn’t be cowardly. Never. Never. Never.

                                                                               ***

Andrejs was the first to wake. Raivo was still asleep, his arms stretched out, but on his stomach, with his face on the pillow. The edge of the sky visible through the window was dark blue, with a yellow stripe in the top corner. It was snowing outside. Probably a snow-cloud had got stuck right here above the guest-house. Andrejs felt sated with sleep. He silently got up and walked out of the room.

Raivo heard an audible click as the tongue of the door-handle struck against the metal plate, shutting it. He’s gone for a piss, thought Raivo, rolling onto his back and trying to work out what the time might be. Judging by the half-darkened silent window, no more than eight. Raivo sat up in bed. He was not one of those late sleepers. He liked to0 get up early and go to bed early. Probably a habit. A routine.

Raivo opened the window wide, clutched with both hands at the snow that had fallen on the sill and rubbed his face and head thoroughly with it. The snow melted, dripping onto the floor and his bare feet. Without closing the window, half-naked, wrapped in a towel opened a bottle of beer and had a smoke. Then he sat down on the bed and watched the dawn rising. The last morning of December threw handfuls of dry snow into the room, turning into wisps in contact with the warm air and falling onto the floorboards. Raivo liked winter and snow. They reminded him of ice-cream and offered satisfaction.

Today he had to find out about the key to the safe and the chess pieces, Raivo thought. That would be a lot, on a holiday like this.

He blew out smoke with pleasure. Raivo got up, put on the clothes abandoned by Ivars yesterday, ran his hand through his snow-soaked hair and set off to face the new day.

Downstairs he found Andrejs sitting on a stool, eating straight from the refrigerator. Andrejs was hungrily stuffing his mouth with some sort of sandwiches. He was doing it so fast that he didn’t even notice the foil stuck to the bottom of the bread.

“What are you doing? Can’t you put your grub on the table in the normal way?” Raivo slammed the refrigerator door with his hand and screwed up his face in disgust, having noticed a bit of bread fallen on the floor. “Get rid of your deadbeat ways!”

He shoved Andrejs aside and started pulling everything out of the refrigerator that there was. His appetite arose unexpectedly. Raivo took a packet of eggs and went to the kitchen to look for a pan.

Andrejs had now had his fill, or almost, he wasn’t sure yet. He had eaten standing up, as quickly as a deer wandering in a wheatfield. He picked up the bread that had fallen on the floor, blew invisible dust off it and greedily put it in his mouth.

A moment later Raivo appeared from the kitchen with a pan in his hand. Steaming in the pan were overcooked scrambled eggs. Raivo walked past Andrejs and put the pan down on the table.        

“Give me the bread,” he commanded, greedily plunging a fork into the contents of the pan.

Andrejs put a loaf of white bread he had begun in front of him.

“There’s potato porridge here as well.” Andrejs pushed towards him a largish tin dish with a pale mass of potatoes.

“I don’t eat potatoes.” Raivo shoved the dish away. “My potato quota is broken.” He laughed. “When you spend ten years of shovelling only potatoes into yourself every day, it pulls you upwards, just take a look.”

“I don’t care what I eat,” replied Andrejs, putting the cold dish of porridge in his lap.

“Heat it up at least, don’t spoil my appetite.” Raivo waved toward the kitchen.

Andrejs got up sluggishly and silently padded into the kitchen.

This is really driving me mad, thought Raivo. But fuck it, the main thing is not to take it to heart.

Having noticed Ivars’ silhouette emerging by the stove-room door, he felt a strange relief. Ivars looked like an old crumpled rag.

“Good morning!” Raivo greeted him heartily. “Well, moins, you’ve got a face like an izdirsta krizdole! Yesterday these beers you rūgto lēji klāt? Or is your organism weak, can’t hold štimi? Eh?”

Ivars didn’t reply, and, bent over at a strange slant, went over to the bar, where he pulled from under the table four bottles of dark brown ‘Satan’ and put them on the counter.

“You’re not going to throw up?” grinned Raivo. “Eighteen degrees proof like nothing for this žļurgai.”

Ivars slowly found the bottle-opener which was hanging attached to a string by the bar counter, opened the bottle he desired and started pouring into his open mouth the almost black liquid, virtually not touching his lips with the neck of the bottle.

“Really, I’m going to be sick from you.” Raivo turned away. He finished his hearty breakfast, swept up the breadcrumbs in his hand and poured them into his mouth. Getting up from the table and shaking himself like a cat after eating, he took away the pan and tossed it onto the bar counter next to the ‘Satans’. Raivo took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and, flicking it open against the edge of the counter, sat down at the table.

“Where did you put those chess pieces?”

Ivars, stupefied from yesterday and stunned by the fortified beer, looked at Raivo uncomprehendingly with wide eyes, already so round, looking like tin buttons.

“What?”

“The pieces from the chessboard – where are they? You stuck the board to the wall, but where did you put the pieces?” Raivo looked witheringly at Ivars, not taking his eyes off him, and with every moment he felt Ivars’ cowardice, weakness, powerlessness and obtuse submission. He wanted to assault this beaten creature, who didn’t even have enough brains to look after his father’s property in a normal way, right between the eyes with a bottle. Raivo clenched his fists.

Ivars was starting to realise something, looking at the wall, where only yesterday the chequered square was serving its sentence; he shook his head and screwed up his eyes. 

“There are no pieces, no. We threw them on the bonfire at Midsummer.” He took another sip from the bottle.

“Once an idiot, always an idiot.” Raivo picked up the matchbox from the counter, with its label carrying the motel’s name, had a smoke, and tapped a couple of times with the box on the table-top. “Right, let’s get down to business. What’s in the safe?” Holding his cigarette with three fingers, he pointed upwards.

“What?”

“If you start closing up pajolīti who doesn’t understand a thing, you’ll be pissing red. Understand?” Raivo put the empty bottle on the table and, leaning forward a little, bored an icy stare into Ivars.

Ivars lowered his eyes and fixed them on the floor. He would sell his father and the whole hotel for the chance at this moment to be transformed into an ant or a handful of sand and disappear among the floorboards somewhere into the dark underfloor world. Coldness radiated through his body from his feet to his belly. It was a feeling of jumping into icy water.

Raivo looked at Ivars silently. If only this creep would bring us all some New Year cheer, he thought. It will be dull if he has to flinch now and hit at him so early in the morning. Bloody idiots all around! Without taking his gaze off Ivars, Raivo clenched his left fist. With his right hand he flicked a butt into the empty bottle and quickly got to his feet. Ivars shrank to half of his actual size. From this movement Raivo felt something like a hot wave in his head. He put both hands in his pockets, so as not to start beating up this pajolīti straight away. Calm, calm, slowly – Raivo stopped himself. If this bastard makes me lose my patience, it’ll all go to pieces, so breathe in, breathe out, calm, calm… With a huge effort Raivo controlled himself. Just wait for this idiot to say something stupid again!

Ivars wasn’t looking at Raivo. He seized the courage a take a beer-bottle, to calm himself somehow.

“Raivo, old mate, there’s no money, there really isn’t, nothing in that safe either, as I told you. Now, in winter…”

“Let’s go!” Raivo slammed his hand on the back of Raivo’s chair. The chair crackled. Raivo headed straight for the kitchen. Ivars got up slowly and followed him. Going up the stairs, Raivo noticed Andrejs sitting in a corner of the kitchen with an empty bowl in his hands. Raivo stopped.

“You’ve been gobbling for a whole hour. What’s wrong with you? You going to bang your head here all day? Uncle Ivars and I are going off to look at the presents; meanwhile you’re going to make me some tea. Just normal now, everything štokos, okay?” Raivo commanded.

Andrejs nodded his head and got up so quickly that the tin bowl and the spoon fell to the floor with a loud clatter. Raivo said nothing more, only inhaled deeply through his nose and climbed up the stairs. Ivars, looking neither to left nor right, followed him like an adjutant.

The upper storey greeted them both with the same bleak corridor and half-finished lamplight. Raivo strolled off to the very end of the corridor and stopped.

“Well, sir, get on with it, faster! Why so frail?”

Ivars came up to his own room, opened the door, pressed the electric switch. A cold white light, just as in the reception area of a hospital, lavishly lit up the repulsive room. Nothing had changed. Raivo flinched at the stink dominating the room, which seemed even more disgusting this morning.

“I know you’re a low-life and a tosser, but that you’re such a pig, that’s a real surprise. Aren’t you revolted at sleeping in shit? Raivo kicked aside the little stool, which flew with a bang into the corner of the room, on its way overturning an empty bottle of kohortu. Raivo threw open the curtains and the window. Then he sat down on the table and lit a cigarette. Through the window icy cold air flooded into the room.

Ivars stopped in the middle of the room. He was wearing boots, and in these he stamped into the floor the piled of discarded rags, coffee and serviette packets. Through the open window Ivars noticed the gravestones. The sky had taken on a pinkish tinge, like cranberry mousse if it’s whipped for long enough. Bright bronze rays of sunlight bored into the smooth surfaces of the marble tablets. In this scene hopelessness merged with eternity. Ivars turned aside. It was cold. Puffs of minus-fifteen-degree air rolled into the room through the half-open window. Raivo sat on the table in a fully unbuttoned black shirt, smoking and spitting on the floor.

“I… I… I didn’t have time. I’d got sick, that’s why all this –“ Ivars started to whirl around. “Raivo, I do know about the debt, I do remember… sorry, I…”

Raivo rapidly jumped down from the table. “Open up! Open that box up right now! Where’s the key?” He took two steps toward Ivars.

Ivars stepped back to the bed.

“Yes, right away, I just have to find it here… I put it somewhere, I don’t remember… I rarely open it, there’s nothing in it…” He started groping along the safe, along the bed, lifting the pillows, putting his hand under the mattress. Squatting by the bed, like a large insect he crawled among his piles of things, slowly feeling through everything, as if trying to recall something. When Ivars had crawled through the piled heap of possessions on the bed for the sixth or seventh time, Raivo went right over to him, pulled up Ivars’ shirt with his left hand, and with the right one stubbed out his cigarette on his back. Ivars shrieked at full volume and, wresting himself from Raivo’s grip, jumped to his feet, but, stumbling on the boxes of beer, reeled back over the cupboard, almost breaking its door.

“You’ve got exactly one minute to get that safe open,” Raivo stated in a metallic voice, sitting back on the table. Sent to DA (complete text so far) 14.5.2024

Ivars pulled out a pre-war typewriter that had been shoved under a chair, and from its side, like a conjuror, took out a small round key, shaped like a screw, with many denticles which flared out in all directions like the bristles of an old toothbrush. Raivo grinned.

With a matter-of-fact movement Ivars put the key in the lock and turned it four times. With a pleasant hollow click, the door opened. Raivo got to his feet to approach closer, but in the next second he caught sight of the barrel of a gun turned towards him. Raivo was stunned. Ivars, holding the weapon tightly in his hands, was aiming it straight at his face.

“Aha, so that’s what you hide in the safe! You have many of those?” Raivo was trying to breathe in as much air as possible through his nose and do it without Ivars noticing.

“Collect that boy of yours and go away!” Ivars tried with all his might not to show fear. His hands were shaking. The harder he held the grip of the weapon, the more they shook. “Now, now, calm down mate, don’t do anything silly, I was only joking. Put down that thing. Put it down. I won’t do anything to you…”

“I don’t believe you, I don’t believe either of you.” Ivars felt that his hands were getting tired, keeping them stretched straight out and tense. “Raivo, go away! You better get out, I don’t want any shit. I’ll pay back the debt later. Now there’s nothing, there really isn’t. The old man left me nothing. Raivo…”

“Okay, okay, just put that weapon down. Can you even shoot?” Raivo watched the way Ivars ceaselessly blinked his eyes.

He’s in panic, and that means he’s unpredictable and might accidentally press the trigger, thought Raivo in a flash. Might that thing even be loaded? Hmm, right now the main thing is that he doesn’t get even more stressed. No, this idiot did mess up my holiday, after all. Raivo exhaled slowly through his nose and, looking at Ivars’ chest, tried to catch the rhythm of his breathing.

“Don’t test me, Raivo, I know you – stop it! Go away! Don’t put me…” Suddenly Ivars yelled at Raivo and lifted the gun higher.

“Okay, I’ll just collect my things, yeah? You won’t mind if I keep this shirt?” With both hands Raivo grabbed the corners of the black shirt and waved them like a pirate with a flag.

“What? Yes.” It was hard for Ivars to concentrate. The window was still open, and it seemed that the temperature outside and indoors had become even. He no longer felt his fingers. They seemed frozen to the handle.

“I took this shirt after the bath, I needed something, you see?” Raivo, watching Ivars started slowly buttoning up the shirt. “You were already asleep; I didn’t go and wake you up.”

Raivo took a step backwards. He felt that everything inside him was boiling. His head filled with blood, it got hot – a moment longer and steam would be coming out of his nose.

“I’ll shut the window, okay?” Raivo slowly climbed over the things that were strewn everywhere. From the corner of his eye he observed Ivars, who was still standing stiff as a post, holding the weapon in his outstretched hand. Raivo clenched his jaw so hard that it seemed that the enamel on his teeth was about to split.

Ivars started slowly coming toward Raivo, not wanting to let him out of his sight. So as not to stumble on his rags, he looked alternately at the floor and at Raivo.

Raivo had already sailed over to the window and was slowly closing it. The gravestones in the white snow cast fine blue-grey shadows. Raivo started to draw the curtain. Then he reconsidered and left it half-open. He turned and started moving away from the window, to get to the middle of the room, from where there was the directest route to the exit. Ivars, his legs widely splayed to preserve his balance, was standing two metres away from the door. Now the main thing is to choose the right trajectory, Raivo thought. He slowly crawled over the beer-crates. One, two – oh, where are the cigarettes? Raivo pulled some matches from his pocket with the guest-house’s label and opened the packet of Bravo. Only two were left. One cigarette he put behind his ear, while he lit up the other. He crushed the empty packet in his palm.

“Great matches! ‘The Clocks’! You should stick that name on the ciggies and the beers!” said Raivo. “That’s business, you know – you’ve got to advertise everywhere, mate!”

Three more steps and he’ll be within arm’s reach. Just don’t hurry now. If I make the slightest mistake, everything’ll be absolutely fucked, thought Raivo. He blew out smoke in Ivars’ direction, as if by chance.

With one hand Ivars wanted to instinctively rub his eyes, which was smarting from the smoke. At the moment when he was holding the weapon with only one hand, Raivo was onto him, and knocked him to the floor with one blow. The gun flew off to one side and landed in a heap of rubbish. Raivo grabbed Ivars by the scruff of the neck and started banging his head against the floor. It was awkward. All the dishes, shoes and rags got in the way.

Ivars tried to grasp Raivo and push him off. Ivars desperately struck out with his feet, trying to release himself from his grasp and overturn the barricade of chairs. Raivo tried with all his might to bang Ivars on the temples, but the blow went askew. Ivars roared and, concentrating all his remaining energy, knocked Raivo on his side, while on all fours, as quickly as possible, he rushed toward the door.

Raivo grasped him by the shirt. The shirt was split and torn, uncovering a fresh burn wound on Ivars’ back. Raivo threw away the shreds that remained in his hand, and with one jump caught up with Ivars, knocking him onto the floor again. Ivars got up and kicked with his foot, striking Raivo on the stomach. Raivo bent double. For a moment it seemed to him that some reeds were looming on the wall. In the next second he understood that they were not reeds, but a whole pile of fishing-rods that had fallen down, hiding dumb-bells and some other sporting equipment. With lightning speed Raivo grasped one of the rods and, without thinking, swiped Ivars on the face. Blood spurted out in all directions, as from a pierced coloured balloon. Ivars fell backwards to the floor. Raivo hit him with the rod a second time and swept a piece of metal aside.

Raivo, exhausted, sat down next to Ivars, breathing as heavily as if he’d run a half-marathon. His heart was pounding like mad. Sweat was dripping from his face and neck, mixed with Ivars’ blood, spattered all over his arms. Raivo reached out for some rags to wipe his face. Only now did he properly observe his helper, a dark blue rod weighing two kilograms which had been hidden behind a chair. Ivars lay in an unnatural position, wheezing. Raivo crawled closer and turned him on his side. So he doesn’t choke on his blood, Raivo thought, only that is missing from the whole programme to finish him off. Cretin! Raivo felt annoyed and disappointed at the same time. The weekend was ruined. His clothes soiled. There probably wasn’t any money either. Raivo spat. All this wouldn’t do. He looked at Ivars’ face again. His nose must be broken. His jaw too, probably. Fuck it! A cretin, a real cretin, fucked up my good mood completely. Raivo wanted to get up, to look for some bottle of water in this hell. He was parched. He wanted to rinse out the alkaline taste that was scraping his throat. Turning to the door, Raivo flinched. In the doorway, his face as white as death, stood Andrejs.

“Are you an idiot, why are you standing there?” Raivo blurted out. “Come in, help me. Shut the door. Where are those women? Sleeping?”

Andrejs had come in search of Raivo to tell him the tea was ready. From the kitchen he had heard strange thuds from upstairs, but he paid no attention to them, because he thought Raivo and Ivars were searching for something and rummaging through his things. When Andrejs came to the half-open door of Ivars’ room, the first thing he noticed amid all the chaos was Ivars’ half-naked torso, spattered with blood and covered with tatters from his torn shirt, lying on a heap of rags and moaning weirdly. Next to Ivars’ body he saw Raivo, who, down on his knees, also smeared all over with blood, was rubbing his hands and spitting to right and left. Andrejs turned cold all over. He was startled at the thought that he was almost wetting himself. At first it seemed to Andrejs that Raivo had killed Ivars. Maybe stabbed him with a knife? Why so much blood? But he seemed to be still alive. From Ivars’ mouth came some incomprehensible sounds all the time. What to do now? Andrejs stood, unable even to move, or say anything.

“Well, come in!” Raivo had now jumped to his feet.

Andrejs recovered himself, came into the room, and quickly shut the door.

“I… I came to tell you that the tea is – I didn’t hear….”

“What are you raving about? He almost shot me dead here! This bastard!” Raivo recalled the safe. Stepping over Ivars’ head and breaking through the labyrinth of things, Raivo opened the door of the safe wider. On the upper metal shelf lay two more suspicious-looking weapons. Home-made, were they? Raivo wrapped a towel, abandoned on the bed, around his hand and poked at them carefully. There was also a handful of cartridges. Shitty creature, Raivo thought. On the lower shelf was a collection of papers. Raivo pulled them out. About twenty I O U’s and some passports. See what a short rein for the whores! Raivo threw the sheaf of papers with disgust on the floor. The last trophy from the depths of the safe was a thick cellophane bag, tightly wrapped, in which he could feel tablets. Raivo rammed the safe with all the force of his fist.

“Shit!” Raivo was more enraged than ever. “What a aplauziens! Old stroķi, discs and debtors’ bugaltērija! Raivo shoved the roll of tablets next to the weapons, kicking the safe door shut, and spat.

“Bring me some clothes! Quick! We have to get out of this hole! I can feel that there’s not going to be anything in this bastard’s office. Where are those women?”

“They’re probably asleep, they haven’t come out this morning.” Andrejs ran off to the next room to fetch clothes for Raivo. A moment later he was back.

“We didn’t have time to wash. There’s nothing clean.” Andrejs put the bundle on the floor.

“Fuck it!” Raivo ripped Ivars’ rags off himself. He opened the bottle of mineral water. “Pour it for me,” he commanded.

Andrejs started slowly pouring the water into Raivo’s hands. Raivo rubbed away the red smudges. The dirty water splashed straight onto the floor over Ivars’ pile of clothes.

“Just yesterday I was in the sauna! Bugger it! What a load of shit!” Raivo wiped himself on a sheet and put on his old, dirty, clothes. Immediately he felt better. Raivo breathed in deeply.

“Andy, at least take the shoes, just look, there’s so much stuff here.  Change them for your summer ones!” He nudged some slippers with his foot.

“I don’t want to.” Andrejs shook his head and looked with nausea at Ivars’ bloody face.

“Don’t talk shit! Put them on when I tell you!” Raivo yelled at Andrejs, suddenly noticing that Ivars was wearing work boots. The same kind that Valdis used to wear. Raivo went over to Ivars and started tearing the boot off one foot.

“Come and help! Come on! You have to wear something on your feet” Raivo managed to pull off one boot. “Are you an idiot or what? Come and take off the other one!”

“I won’t! I don’t want boots from a corpse!” Andrejs started to scream.

“You’re an idiot! What kind of corpse? You’re a living corpse yourself!” Raivo slammed the heavy work-boot straight into Andrejs’ chest. Andrejs tottered.

Ivars was lying peacefully, helplessly, not resisting anything. Blood had been pouring from his mouth, forming a red circle on the floor. Andrejs examined the stain and it occurred to him that it looked like the Japanese flag. He turned away. He was getting breathless.

“As you like, all this gives me the shits! Now we have to get away. But you can stay if you want. I don’t care!”

“Raivi, don’t! Please, I’m not staying here!” Andrejs felt that he was about to cry.

“Then collect all our things double quick, so that nothing’s left behind. Not a hair of ours must stay. And carry it all to the car. The keys are there on my bed. Just don’t make a noise. Put everything in the car and start it up. To warm up the engine. Understand? And wait for me. That’s all! Get going!”

Andrejs nodded and set off for the bedroom to gather up the remaining things.

Raivo looked at the recumbent Ivars. Nothing had changed. He was still snoring unconsciously, bubbling from his neck.

Raivo lifted the blue rod off the floor, went over to the window and opened it. Raising his arm, he tossed the rod as far as he could, in the direction of the gravestones. Like a shot bird, the rod fell heavily into the deep snow. Past it, thought Raivo, can’t even hit a shitty headstone. It’s not my day, it really isn’t.

He closed the window, took another look at the safe, then at Ivars, and left the room, leaving the door open. 

Andrejs was no longer in the next room. All the things had been collected. Raivo took another look, and at the disgusting red walls. He was about to close the door when he caught sight of a solitary chequered island on the bed. Raivo went closer and picked up the chessboard. With a sigh he put it under his arm, went into the corridor and set off down the stairs.

No-one was on the ground floor either. Raivo opened the drawer under the bar counter. Cigarettes, souvenir matches with the ‘Clocks’ label, small change, a few banknotes. Raivo shoved all of it into his pockets. This was so disgusting, so paltry, nothing that he’d been intending had come about. He noisily slammed the drawer shut. He looked under the counter. There were two half-empty crates of strong ‘Satan’. Raivo spat on the floor and went over to the refrigerator. He took a few bottles of lager from it, and headed for the exit.

Andrejs had started up the car, but he himself was standing next to it, stamping in the snow in his summer loafers. He didn’t want to get inside on his own. Andrejs was trying not think about everything that had just happened. He had decided to count in his head till the moment when Raivo arrived. One thousand two hundred and fifty-four, one thousand two hundred and fifty-five, one thousand two hundred and fifty-six… The motel door opened, Raivo came through it at a brisk and businesslike pace. He was carrying bottles in his arms.

Raivo inhaled the cold, clear air deeply. As far as the eye could see, it was all white snow glinting in the sun. How good it would be for them to see the new year in! Ugh, this piece of shit fucked everything up. In Raivo’s chest a deep sense of disappointment was spreading, growing in breadth. He waded over to the car, which waited faithfully for him, letting thick white smoked into the stiff December air. Andrejs, annoying as always, stood staring at the snow. Dull humiliation was more aggravating than if he showed at least some resistance. Raivo tossed the bottles and the chessboard onto the front passenger seat.

“Let’s go and quickly check over those waggons.” Raivo pointed out to Andrejs the two snow-covered cars in the motel’s parking area.

Both of them waded off through the snow, leaving tracks behind them. The cars weren’t locked. Andrejs cleared the snow off them with his hands. The boots opened easily.

“Well, at least there’s something good here,” grinned Raivo, catching sight of several twenty-litre metal canisters of fuel. “We’ll take the lot.”

Each of them took two canisters each and carried them to their car. Andrejs kept trudging through the snow until the last remaining petrol can. Having carefully closed the boots and mentally bidden farewell to them, he walked back. He didn’t see Raivo anywhere. The car was still in place, running.  With all five doors opened it looked like a large blue bizbizmāre, about to fly away at any moment. Andrejs put the load in the boot and closed it.

Raivo remained a moment by the car, watching Andrejs wading back for the last can. Then he lit up and set off back to the motel. It’s not good to come back, not at all, Raivo thought, it’s a bad sign. Having inhaled the smoke more deeply, he opened the outer door, walked quickly through the hall with the electric stove. One more door, then the bar-room, the kitchen, a turn, the stairs, another door. Raivo banged with his palms on the outer one. Nobody opened. He banged louder. After a moment the door opened; a ghostly head appeared in the doorway. Liene’s aunt, or whoever she was.

“Liene’s still asleep,” said the head in a dull and soundless voice.

“We’re going away now. You need to call the owner right away; he’s injured up there.” Raivo waved his smoking cigarette in the direction of the upper floor. “He fell down the stairs. You understand?”

Raivo fixed his cold gaze on the woman.

“Understood.”

“It’s better for you if you understand everything properly.” Raivo blew smoke in her face just as he had done with Ivars. The old woman retreated a little.

“I understand everything. I’ll call him, yeah…”

“Do you remember my name?”

“No, I don’t know you. I know nothing. I haven’t seen anyone here. I understand…”

“Good. You’re sensible. I hope Liene is too.”

“Yes, it’ll be all right. There’ll be no problem with us.”

“Good,” repeated Raivo and, without releasing his gaze, put a hand on her shoulder.

The woman stood immobile, staring into his cool eyes. Yes, Raivo thought, there’ll be no problem with you, nothing’s happened. Raivo released his hand, inhaled smoke and went away. The woman followed him with her gaze.

Raivo remembered that you have to look in the mirror. You need to do it if you’re returning to a place that you’ve just left. It avoids misfortune, they say. Raivo went to the bar, and looked into the mirror behind the backs of the bottles. Looking back at him was a calm, somewhat tired face. What’s happening to me? He didn’t like this ridiculous inner calm. Am I growing old, or going mad, Raivo smirked, but that wasn’t really good. Calm – that’s weakness. In a state of calm you can lose your caution, your attention. You can get distracted. You might not notice something. Let something slip by. Pull yourself together, go on, pull yourself together, Raivo said to himself, and without looking back, took leave of the failed New Year celebration venue.

A moment later Raivo climbed into the car. Andrejs was sneaking in behind him. The car started climbing onto the road. The boot was overloaded with the fuel, the engine was roaring heavily. The windows misted over. Raivo opened a chink of his window for some fresh air. Finally the car was out on the highway. Raivo stopped for a very brief moment, looking at the ‘Clocks’ and the edges of the graves made of Norwegian granite. Two or three seconds. After that, leaving behind any sense of pity, he pressed on the accelerator with all his might. The car squealed and sped away with its two passengers, away from this place, never to return.

                                                                         ***

They saw the old year out at a drinking place, a bit like the ‘Clocks’, by the roadside. Only without the sauna and the handsome apartments. Without any profound name. Everything was simple. On a plank hanging on a chain at the entrance, ‘Guest house STOP’ was clear and concise enough to describe this place and its offerings. What do long-distance drivers need? Only a hot dinner, cool drinks, a shower and a place to sleep, to lay down your exhausted body after the endless long hours of travel.

Raivo remembered New Year’s morning quite hazily. It was lost somewhere between rows of bottles of beer and vodka.

Andrejs didn’t remember anything at all. The film had ended even before midnight. While all the guys, strangers until now, were happily shouting and clinking glasses, Andrejs, standing on his knees in the women’s toilet, was vomiting. He didn’t even understand where he was and what his name was; this new and unfathomable year had started so badly. The last fragment that he remembered was falling onto the tiled floor, when he banged his head painfully and understood that he’d be going nowhere today, sleeping right here.

The first of January was indeed awful, starting in the late afternoon, nursing a hangover and eating unidentifiable remains of snacks. Luckily a few beers were enough to feel better and fall back into a deathly, quite narcotic sleep. Andrejs’ sleep was too deep.

He woke up having wet the bed. It was so terrible that he felt he was about to cry. Raivo was sleeping next to him in the next bed in a little room of six square metres. Andrejs was afraid Raivo would wake up immediately and notice it all.

Andrejs got up and realised to his relief that at least his long trousers were tossed on the floor and hadn’t suffered. Quietly he tried to turn over the dirty foam rubber mattress with the wet side on the bottom. The old sprung bed creaked atrociously. The mattress would be a hundred years old. It poured out sand, lumps and unidentifiable flakes in all directions. The stink was unbearable. 

Andrejs stood barefooted on the dirty linoleum floor and, as the springs squeaked, rolled up the wretched mattress. The more quietly he tried to do it, the louder the iron bed cracked. Finally the mattress yielded, turned over and fell on its mouth like a murdered escapee.

Andrejs glanced at the small, narrow window at the end of the room. Darkness. A few solitary, cold stars. At this moment Andrejs didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be somewhere else: anywhere else. Just not here and now. He’d rather be dead.

He was still standing on the dirty, cold linoleum floor, not knowing what to do. It was repulsive to lie down on the stinking mattress. He wanted to wash himself. Yet the thought of going out into the corridor in wet underpants and having to look for a shower now seemed even more frightening.

“You going to stand there for long?” Andrejs’ thoughts were interrupted by Raivo’s harsh voice. “What’s the stink here?”

Raivo switched on the small fifteen-watt light that was screwed into a ridiculous table-lamp without a shade. The lamp was not on a table but on the floor, because there was no table in this room. Raivo cast a glance at Andrejs’ pale shins.

“You’ve got two seconds to get out of here! Pissed like a calf, but you stand there wondering! Why are you standing there? Go and wash yourself! Find some rags! Everyone’s asleep now, have a look! You want us to be made to pay for this miracle of yours? The owner will smell it out and fine us! A hundred points, I tell you.” Raivo was talking volubly and quickly, trying to wake himself up and get moving. 

Andrejs grabbed his trousers off the floor and disappeared out of the door of the room.

Damn it, damn it! thought Raivo. Why is everything so stupid, why couldn’t at least today be calm? Still that stink, horrible, bad enough to make you puke. Raivo got up, went over to the window, and opened it fully. It was a beautiful early morning outside. The air, clean and pure, started to fill the stuffy and piss-drenched little room. Raivo lit up and started feeling in his pockets. There was no money. None.

We have to vanish from here, while everyone’s still sleeping off their drink, he thought. We have no money, they wouldn’t let us out anyway. Have to smash their faces in if they get the car. Or lift out the fuel cans. Maybe the lot – they’d hit back, pour out the petrol. Well, no, that mustn’t be allowed.

Raivo took one more puff and threw the butt out of the little window. He quickly put on his jacket, took Andrejs’ bag, left in the room, and quietly opened the door. No-one was in the corridor. It was all quiet and dark. It was seven in the morning. The second of January. Opening the door, Raivo crept like a cat to the other end of the guest-house, where there was a shower-room. Andrejs had washed and got a fright. The trousers he had pulled over his bare skin felt uncomfortable. Raivo shoved the bag to him and, with his finger to his lips, commanded him to be quiet and come with him. Like shadows, the pair sneaked to the exit.

Going past the dining area, Raivo halted. He couldn’t resist the temptation to try the door. Raivo pushed the handle. The door opened. In the dark he went at a rapid pace to the bar counter. With a practised movement he opened the drawer on one side. Raivo was seized with a sense of déjà-vu. In the drawer was some petty cash, some paper notes and cigarettes. Only the souvenir matches were missing. Hurriedly stuffing everything in his pocket, Raivo went back to Andrejs. For a moment in the dark Andrejs looked like a ghost.

Raivo shook himself. Quietly he closed the door and headed for the exit. The outer door wasn’t closed, but a small, chain had been placed in front of it. A strange thought process, thought Raivo, unlocking the chain. The owner had probably been so looking forward to the new year that he hadn’t closed anything up. With a sense of relief but with trembling knees Andrejs opened the door of their night shelter. With rapid little steps, almost at a run, they hurried to their getaway car.

Raivo took a deep breath, held it and started the engine. He was afraid that the spark might not jump or something else might happen, but it all went smoothly. From the momentary sense of pleasure his stomach was clenched. Without waiting for the engine to warm up, Raivo slowly pressed the accelerator. The blue car made its way among the heavy long-distance lorries, as they rushed away from this unsafe place. When the car was on the highway, Raivo cheered internally. He didn’t want to show Andrejs his nervousness.

It was a ridiculous sensation – the hangover either hadn’t started or was already over. Raivo didn’t have time to think about that; he wanted to get away as fast and as far as possible. Raivo switched on the radio. Glancing at the mirror, he caught sight of a ghost again. Andrejs was sitting with a vacant gaze, gaping straight ahead. Raivo turned aside and made the music louder. After a moment the ghost disappeared. Andrejs had fallen asleep in the back seat. Raivo lit up and started calculating in his head how far he could drive without stopping for fuel.

                                                                              ***

The sun might be at its actual zenith. It might be, but it wasn’t. A thick cloud of snow was piling up over it. The bleak grey sky, like swollen cotton wool, lay heavily over the white ground. The sky seemed to be bending down lower than usual. All of December had seen blizzards. Only this morning had the weather brought relief. The snowstorm was over.

Pale and monotonous, the highway wound through dark, snow-covered spruce forests. For a long time now not a single car had approached them. Not a person in the whole world. Perhaps there really is no-one left, thought Raivo – I have been left alone. Ah well, there is still that bird of unhappiness perched on the back seat.

The rows of snowbound trees on both sides of the road seemed endless. When I’m very old, I’ll build a proper place for myself in a place like this and live there, Raivo mused. I’ll go hunting, fishing. No-one will disturb me, harm me, ride over me. I’ll live a normal, peaceful life without all these shits around me.       

The forest on the right side of the road grew sparser. After a kilometre, a quite large field, surrounded by forest, opened to his view. The field looked somehow awkward. On one side of it was a growth of pines, next to which was a small roadside shop with brown-painted walls and a flat roof. Standing by the shop like a sentinel was a leaning electricity pole. The little shop had two asymmetrical windows, one of them broken, boarded with veneer. Both windows enclosed a funny-looking white door. It looked unnaturally low. Going inside you’d most likely to duck to make sure you don’t hit your forehead, thought Raivo.

Over the door was attached a yellow signboard reading: “Food. Drinks. 00:00-24:00.” By the entrance could be seen a snow-shovel, which probably wasn’t used too often. The path to the shop had not been cleared. A light was burning in the asymmetrical windows.

“At last! Some life!” he said, more to himself than to Andrejs, put on the brakes and started looking for a convenient way in. It was all blocked in. Parking by the shop also looked snowed in. The car felt its way along previously formed ruts and slowly rolled right up to the shop, stopping just a few metres from it. Raivo turned off the engine. Looking in the mirror and stroking his hair, he opened the door.

“Well, you coming?” Raivo climbed out and straightened his back. Andrejs slowly emerged from the back of the car like a dishevelled sparrow from a nest. Raivo was trudging with big strides toward the shop. Andrejs opened the car door, put his frozen hands in his pockets and followed him. His feet were freezing in his sneakers. Feeling the matchbox in his pocket, Andrejs started turning it in his fingers and counting how often it stood vertically on his palm. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…

Raivo was already inside the shop. Andrejs almost stumbled; he didn’t notice the two steps you had to take downwards as into a cellar. The inside of the shop was quite small, narrow. It was crammed with instant food and alcohol. The smell of bread, beer and coffee that could be felt in the air was suppressed by the stink of chlorine, which seemed to come from a water-bucket and rags left beside it at the side of the room. There was no-one behind the counter. The shop was empty and silent.

Raivo cast a disdainful eye over this scene, smirked and kicked aside a floor-cloth. From a crate beside him he took a bottle of beer. Andrejs was still turning the box over with his fingers. Thirty-two, thirty-three…

Raivo, looking for a handy edge to force open the bottle-top, went over to the counter. For opening bottles and unscrewing corks in dens like this they always attach an opener to the surface of the table so that no-one will pinch it.

Raivo leaned over the counter. Literally in that second he jumped away, as if he’d received an electric shock. The beer-bottle fell out of his hands. Strangely, it didn’t shatter, but rolled across the floor. Slowly, with a stiff face, Raivo went around to the other side of the counter. He looked and couldn’t believe what he saw.

On the floor, between the cold window and the food shelf, lay a girl. Her arms were stretched over her head as if she was about to dive somewhere. Her palms, with their childlike fingers, showed that she was quite young. To judge from the unnatural pose in which she lay and from the curve of her right leg, the girl was dead. Her left leg wore a half-length boot. There was no boot on the right leg. The girl had a pale green sweater with a high neckline, over which were pink overalls and an apron. The black skirt was pulled upwards, to reveal torn panty-hose. Her hair was long, dark with a tied ponytail, but now tousled in all directions completely covering the left side of her face, which was turned upwards. The sleeves of her sweater were rolled up to her elbows.

That was why there was a solitary bucket with a rag, Raivo thought. Poor salesgirl! She was lying on a wooden rack, which was covering the concrete floor so that the staff’s feet wouldn’t freeze in winter. Blood had dripped into the chinks between the laths. The lower edge of the window and the shelf were also streaked with red. Her long hair was tangled in tufts in the dried blood. Raivo leaned in closer. Her face couldn’t be seen through her hair. Raivo thought about his mother and understood, more sharply than before, that he hardly remembered her face at all.

“What’s that?” asked Andrejs in a soft voice, not moving from the spot.

Raivo, not replying, looked all around him. Only now did he notice the wires that were hanging down from the counter area, where there had once been a cash register. The small wooden drawers had been pulled out and thrown among the empty packaging. Raivo took a step back and looked into the adjacent room, which was in the corner of the shop, piled up to the ceiling with empty crates.

In a booth a bulb was burning. Things had been strewn across the floor, scattered groceries, broken jars of some sort of instant soup, smashed beer-bottles. The floor was wet, muddy, snow carried in from outside was melted and mixed with the general chaos. Evidently goods had been carried out of here in a great hurry. In the corner where the staff changed clothes a large oval mirror had been hanging. It had left an impression on the dirty wallpaper. The mirror itself, smashed into tiny silvery shards, was all over the ante-room.

Raivo took another look at the dead girl. Why so much blood? Maybe she’d been stabbed in the stomach? He didn’t notice a knife anywhere. Maybe they’d taken it with them? But the hair? No, probably without a knife. She’d been beaten up anyway. Perhaps a murderer – one. No, that couldn’t be. The whole shop had been emptied. He didn’t get away on foot. Must be by car. Probably at least two of them. It couldn’t be otherwise. Bloody hell!

“We’re really in the shit!” declared Raivo in a rather quiet voice.

“What is it?” Andrejs looked uncomprehendingly at Raivo. Then he took a few steps to the end of the counter and leaned forward. Uttering a shriek of disgust, he leapt back as if scalded, stumbled, and bounced against the beer-crates piled up behind him. Andrejs fell full-length onto the floor and started crying uncontrollably. He drew his knees up to his face, turning himself into an unnatural ball. Shaking in convulsions, he wept aloud, every few moments letting out a horribly piercing moan. At first Raivo thought this was an epileptic fit. He started to turn Andrejs on his side, trying to straighten his arms.

“Andrejs! Andrejs, stop!” Raivo shook the small, distracted body. Nothing helped – shaking him, holding him, calming him. Andrejs seemed to be possessed by an evil spirit, which was now convulsing him and forcing terrible inhuman sounds through his mouth.

“Andrejs! Pull yourself together! We have to get away! And quickly! We mustn’t stay here! Somebody might discover us. In the end they’ll unload all this onto us! They’ll be glad we’ve done it for them! Understand? Andrejs!” Raivo screamed.

Andrejs continued crying effusively and rolling across the floor. Raivo grabbed the bucket of chlorinated water, ran out of the shop and tipped out its contents. Then with both hands he shovelled the bucket full of snow, went up to Andrejs and started rubbing it on his face. Raivo took handfuls of the wet snow, put it on Andrejs’ head and stuffed it around his collar.

The flood of tears gradually passed away. Only once in a while did Andrejs breathe in heavily, painfully turning his shoulders and head. His face was red as if after a steam-bath, his whole neck flecked with red spots. Raivo made him sit up with his back against the crates, propped like a rag doll.

“Finished? Let’s go, we’ve got to get out quick!” Raivo was stamping impatiently by the already open door.

“We can’t go! We need to call the police!” said Andrejs, tears still running down his cheeks. “We can’t just leave her alone!”

“Are you crazy? Don’t you understand? The police? They’ll shove this onto us! I know what I’m talking about. No-one will ever believe us. When they go on and find out that we ran away from the children’s home, you’ll be going straight to the maloļetku. Understand?”

“But we can’t. We can’t leave like that. We need to ring up somebody.”

“Who? Where will you ring from? What will you say? Hello, hello, there’s a salesgirl lying dead here behind the counter?”

“Yes, so that someone comes. I don’t know…”

“So they’ll come, and you’ll go down for a few years. Can’t you get it into you? We’ve got a boot full of stolen gas. What am I supposed to say to them? What’ll I say about you? That I just happened to be driving around with an escaped boarder? And then there’s Ivars! What if he’s reported us?”

“Ivars might be dead too!” yelled Andrejs.

“Don’t be stupid! Dead, what? He got a couple of whacks on the nose, and that’s all. They don’t die that easily. Believe me! Andrejs, come on, let’s go, before we’re in even more shit.”

“Go on your own. I’m staying here.”

“What? On my own? Get up! Don’t make me shoot you too! Don’t get me riled!”

“How can we leave her like that?” Andrejs waved toward the counter. “How can we simply go away?”

“Yes, now we’re simply going to get up and go away. We’re going to get in the car and go. And on the way we’ll pray that nobody sees us and the snow will start and cover all our tracks.”

“No. That’s terrible, that’s so terrible! People don’t do that.”

“People don’t do that. But don’t think that we are people. Don’t think of that now! You have to think only about yourself. About getting away and saving your skin.”

“I won’t be able to live with it any more.”

“You will. Believe me! We’re going. You can do plenty more. Not just that. You want to sit in prison for eight or nine years? Maybe even fifteen.”

“No. But why in prison? We haven’t done anything.”

“No-one will believe us. Did people often believe you back in boarding school?” Raivo looked Andrejs straight in the eyes.

“No.”

“You see. People like us aren’t believed! Nobody ever does! Even if you haven’t done anything, they’ll lay it on you anyway. Because it’s easier and quicker that way. Nobody here is interested in justice. Only the result is important. You see?”

“Yes.”

“We live in a shitty world! This is one hell of a shitty world, where nobody’s interested in you. You’re not needed by anyone. Just your own self. Think only for yourself! Understand me?”

“Yes.” Andrejs was sitting with a lifeless expression, only moving his lips like a ventriloquist’s doll.

“You see – good then. We can’t be a comfortable solution for anyone just because ordinary people don’t behave like that. Remember – we aren’t ordinary people. And never will be. Let’s go!” 

Andrejs got up. Once more Raivo went over to the adjoining room, and with his palm switched off the electricity. He also pressed the electricity switch in the wall by the exit. Taking the key from the outer door-lock, he wiped the handle with the sleeve of his jacket. He looked back at the shop premises. It had shrunk even smaller and grown even quieter. Andrejs squeezed past and went outside. Raivo closed the door, wiped the door-handle once more with his sleeve and stuffed the key in his trouser pocket. He looked at the sky. If only a snowstorm would start now!

                                                                 ***

The car reversed out onto the road. Please, just don’t conk out, please! With one hand Raivo held the wheel, with the other he supported himself on the backrest. Half-turned toward the back window, he steered through the snowdrifts. Now just don’t lose the track! He tried not to look at Andrejs, who was sitting immobile, starting dully at a distant point in space and time.

Finally the car was out on the highway. Even from here you could clearly see fresh tracks in the snow leading back to the shop. Damn it, thought Raivo: is this really the end? He pressed the accelerator. The car pulled forward.

In the rear-view mirror the little shop with its flat roof was receding, melting with the snow, vanishing into a mosaic of glass. For a moment the slanting electricity pole was still visible, but a moment later it also disappeared. In the mirror there remained only snow and cold. Still no car came toward them. Where had everybody gone? Raivo tried to breathe slowly. Breathe in, breathe out. Quite calmly. Deeply. Three, four, five times. He felt that his heart activity was returning to its normal rhythm. Nothing had happened. It was all a dream. A film. We weren’t in it. Not about us. We had nothing to do with it at all. Raivo looked in the mirror. His grey eyes were calm and certain. He liked himself. Attaboy. I did it all correctly. Another look in the mirror. Still no car.

The sky had become greyer, thicker, and it seemed that any moment now it would touch the earth. A kilometre, two more, three. The first snowflakes. Then more, even more. A minute, and then it was snowing full force. There is a God, Raivo thought, there definitely is. Oh Lord, how good that a snowstorm has started! And no people. Not a soul. Raivo lit a cigarette.

The smoke tingled the back of his nose calmly and softly. All would be well. Raivo let the window down, pulled the little grey key with his left hand from his trouser pocket, raised his arm and threw it far away. It was done somehow clumsily, obliquely. The key turned over like a silver coin on its side and flew down with the snowflakes to seek out its new home in the ditch by the highway. Raivo closed the window and stepped harder on the gas pedal. He didn’t turn on the radio. Not yet. Raivo smoked and listened to his heart rhythm. It was all good.  

Andrejs was sitting behind him. He had put both his hands in his lap in parallel. His hands lay immobile. They were stretched out straight. They looked like some stranger’s hands. As if someone had placed alien dead arms in Andrejs’ lap. He had numb legs and a stiff back. But he didn’t really feel that. His feet were frozen, but even that was of little importance. Everything was so indifferent. He had no socks, no underwear, he was sitting peacefully and nothing upset him.

If he had to die now, he was quite prepared for it. Ready to accept anything. If Raivo accelerates any more, the car will definitely be caught in a drift and we’ll be killed, Andrejs thought to himself. But he was so very unconcerned that he was not even alarmed when the rear slid slightly against a hill. Andrejs was no longer afraid. If we’re caught and we end up in prison, then so be it. What’s the difference? What does it mean to us at all? Andrejs stared into the white void. For one moment the thought occurred to him that he could open the car door and fall out. Or jump out. He could wait until Raivo increased the speed, and then open the door and jump. It didn’t matter at all what would happen next. Andrejs thought  how it would be. He didn’t feel like moving, and that held him back. Perhaps a little later.

Andrejs stuffed both his dead hands in his jacket pockets. At first he kept them immobile. After a moment his fingers started to move, out of habit. They roved across the dirty lining from one corner of his pocket to the other, and back again. Upwards. Downwards. Once again to both corners. Nothing. There’s nothing. The fingers searched, but didn’t find the little box. The matchbox wasn’t anywhere. Once more he ran through all his pockets, carefully looking at the floor. Nowhere. His thoughts started feverishly darting around like crows during a midnight salute. The matches from the ‘Clocks’ had remained there. In the shop. Must have fallen out at some point. One of those terrible moments. Andrejs’ stomach was compressed so rapidly that for a moment he lost his breath. Sweat broke out, and a painful point started throbbing in his brain.

Andrejs was so very afraid that he didn’t even dare look in the mirror. He was afraid of meeting Raivo’s grey eyes in it. Andrejs buried his head deeper. He put both hands in his pockets. He wouldn’t say anything. No, nothing. He probably should jump out. Really. Definitely. His heart was beating rapidly. He looked out of the window attentively. Outside was snowstorm, the flakes as thick as oat porridge. Andrejs couldn’t see anything through it.

Again he hung his head and thought about the little ‘Clocks’ matchbox, which lay on its own in the terrifying shop, somewhere on its dirty floor. I wonder who will find it, thought Andrejs. Then he remembered the immobile girl, also lying there on the dirty floor. Andrejs felt so sorry for her that the tears started to well up again. Very soon they would be pouring treacherously onto the car’s filthy seat. Andrejs shut his eyes. He had to pretend that he was asleep. Slowly he hunched up against the cool window and pulled his knees up to his chin. Then he shut his eyes and started mentally counting. He had to count until he fell asleep. Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight…

Raivo was looking straight ahead, tightly holding the wheel, thinking about the next day. Just like that time, many years ago, hiding under the bed. Raivo turned on the radio, but set it down quite low. Something had changed. He couldn’t quite grasp what it was. But this feeling was good. So he had to be very quiet and calm, so as not to scare it away. The sky was still cloudy, and the snowstorm was gathering force with every moment. We’ll have to get to town quickly, thought Raivo. It’s a little scary to be quite on your own in the world.