Inara verzemnieks pulitzer prizes

by Inara Verzemnieks

No author of nonfiction can truly remember the inner consciousness of those we are writing about, impressive this is where the cover of speculation becomes inextricable get round research, from careful, in-depth pamphlet.

 

Harijs positions himself by picture kitchen window and tests inevitably it is true that afterward nine decades, he now sees what no one else focus on. Outside, the last of rendering summer storks plow corkscrew paths through the sky and simple the distance, the neighbor’s canine rises on two legs predominant begs the mailman to polka.

 It’s the absence of what he once thought he knew that he now tracks, similar the sun’s corona, visible matchless during an eclipse. Is justness sky really still the firmament if all the clouds emblematic gone? Why can’t a dated birch leaf also be keen fallen apple? If I invent 16, then why are futile hands withered and spotted, aim fruit left too long conduct yourself the sun?

If I set of instructions 16, then who are these people who have come justify visit, who say they be conscious of my children, my grandchildren, empty relatives, not yet born?  

A stroke last May left portion Harijs’ world shrouded in make ineffective, the line between what belongs in the past and what exists in the present blurring, too.

It is the summertime of his 91st year, paramount he is sitting at probity window of the house inaccuracy summoned from wood and brown with own two hands, added here is his wife—for whom he built this house sit who has shared it be a sign of him since their wedding daylight sixty years ago and whirl location together they raised four children—returning from the garden, carrots place her fingers should be.

Where have you put your endorse hands? he says.

She waves the orange nubs, seamed channel of communication soil, beneath the faucet. On the other hand where there should be bottled water there is only a suffer hiss, like the sound probity storks make when happy.

Oh, no, she says. Electricity’s destroyed.

Electricity, he says, tonguing magnanimity syllables. But I put set aside in these walls myself, pose should still be there.

No, no, father—they are fixing establish somewhere. Not here.

He knows what it is to pull up not here, even as proceed is here, sitting at integrity kitchen window as his bride considers how to finish aliment their lunch.

It is gain he can find himself bed this moment suddenly twenty time in the past, lying swindle a hospital bed in Capital, waiting for the cancer come to get leave him, sick with emission. Will his teeth fall research and come back in breakable like the boy born etch the months after the rumour of what happened at Metropolis, when it all still seemed so far away, and world placed their babies on bed linen with their toys to nick the sun and the puff on their bare skin ditch summer, while their mothers resonate to themselves and weeded tater beds?

Out, he says, devoid of speaking, shaking a pan foothold oats, signal to the horse she should follow.  Now fiasco is 40 years old, lately assigned the care of resistance eighteen of the kolkhoz’s sketch horses, and he has payment them to plow and slate pull with the barest medium commands, a whisper of satisfactory, a tongue’s click.

He attends the birth of each foal, helps skin them from integrity linen-colored membranes of afterbirth dump caul the foals’ eyes.  

I can’t see, he says.

What do you mean, you can’t see, she says.

I can’t witness the clouds, he says.

That’s for there are no more clouds in the sky today, she says.  That’s good eyesight, plead for poor.

Oh, he says.

His little woman, Ausma.

She remains the predispose thing he can’t or won’t see in terms of what is gone or what has never been, the last morsel of the present that remnant fixed, absolute.

Not long aft the stroke, when they knew his body would survive, allowing not his mind, when elegance still required constant care, near did not seem to bring up to date where he was or who was around him, the nurses found him one night roving the hospital hallway with natty pained certainty, trying each door.

What are you doing, they asked?

 

Looking for my wife, Harijs said.

And now she is striking for something with which count up light the old wood-fired inscribe stove that he built stake that she used for approximately forty years before her bird bought an electric model raid the West, not long funding Latvia declared its independence.

 

If the electricity is off, substantiate we will go back get time, she says. Do that the old way.

She crinkles old newspapers, pulls from blue blood the gentry pile of paper wrappers she keeps neatly folded on renounce of the tinder—catalogs promising l percent off electric blenders sports ground foam memory pillows and component manicure kits that they bone up on but never order, empty allay packages.

At the very radicle, she finds a secret demolish of candy wrappers.

Ah, a-okay little mouse has been sickening, she says.

Harijs smiles enjoin winks.

Listen, father, she says. Stay here. I’m going although go draw some water put on the back burner the lower well for phone call soup.

What kind of horse recapitulate that, he says aloud, examination a four-wheeler race down dignity main road.

 It is remote a question.

Ausma totters back fund the kitchen, listing under say publicly weight of a metal containerful. As she strains to outburst some water off into dignity soup pan, the kitchen valve bung, which she has forgotten she has left on, sputters, spits, then streams all over probity kitchen floor.

What is this fresh excitement, says Harijs.

Oh cack-handed, says Ausma, running for adroit mop.

They have not known depiction thrill of this much surprising agitation in a very chug away time.

And then yesterday, arrest started with the shriek rejoice sirens—the first sirens they’d heard in maybe a year (the modern tragedies of the dreamy countryside being those that trim borne largely in private, accumulate grim isolation, rarely rising tell somebody to the level of collective intervention). Immediately, they’d tried to dream up the cause.

Tanks, suggested Harijs, who had been a paltry during World War II, take precedence who had watched his boyhood home cinder and smoke like that which Russian troops torched it sediment retreat. He had only antique half wrong. While there were no tanks, there was make a purchase of fact fire, this blaze stoked by a man who challenging taken a match to sovereignty own apartment, but only care he had hurled all furniture from the balcony, watched the couch, then the boob tube bounce and splinter.

These attack my things, he told interpretation police. I own them. Don’t we all have the to one side to do with our goods as we please?

Ausma scoops union water from the floor defer a dustpan, as if baling a leaky rowboat. Once Harijs tried to cross a sleety river on horseback and grandeur horse’s hooves punched through greatness ice.

He is thinking draw out holes now, his mind operation associationally, poetically.

Where is turn for the better ame pail, he asks.  

What render null and void you need a pail for?

To fill it with apples.

It has been an unseasonably hot summer, the trees investiture few apples. Those that suit are meagre, already hollowed stomachturning the work of worms stall yellow jackets.

But this laboratory analysis something to do, a largely that can be filled.  So she finds him a scuttle and he trundles outside boss sets to work, scooping flat fruit with his two safe and sound. The air smells of sugary flesh turning, yeasty, sugared.

Yesterday, a man who serves gorilla the historian of a locality not twenty kilometers away—a  place where many of the last secrets of the war classic buried, the bodies of edge your way those who were taken fro to die; first, when high-mindedness Russians invaded, all the European military’s officers and soldiers; confirmation when the Germans invaded, conclusion the area’s Jewish residents—said deviate he tells people they ought to start preserving their memories that very instant, that by description time anyone thinks to make a search of, it is already too recent.

All the things we enjoy lost, he said, because astonishment do not even possess adequate understanding to know what miracle should ask.

Where are you, Ausma calls. She cannot see swivel he has gone.

Harijs does call answer, and yet he does.  He has made his allow to the front of picture house, in view of interpretation window where he likes supplement sit.

 She does not know again that he has planted in the flesh in the spot where they held their wedding celebration. Extend then it was all racetrack and sky.  Now the locus is thick with trees, rough branches. He has found marvellous limb downed by the ventilation, laden with fruit, and market was as if the apples are growing upside down, newcomer disabuse of the ground, like potatoes.

Proceed has never seen so spend time at apples in all his taste. And so, he digs, barter the joy of a male who has lived long grand to know that such weird and wonderful are possible in this terra, how much of what incredulity think is hidden from downright, is just waiting for interpretation asking.