Soviet Milk

by Nora Ikstena

I wasn’t afraid of Uncle Sam, or of nuclear war; I was afraid of my mother.

She would lock herself in the bathroom and howl, while I stood paralysed at the far end of the corridor, her howls shuddering through my young bones, her suffering infinite and incomprehensible, a railing against the injustice of fate, against the inexplicable wreck of a life.

He was lying among words advocating the diversion of rivers, the conversion of churches into storehouses for mineral fertilizers, and the destruction of the literature, art and sculpture of our Latvian heritage. Thus he lay: one of the many who had surrendered quietly, dying in an obscure corner because he could not adjust and swallow humiliation, shame, dishonour and disillusionment. Discarded on the waste heap of our times.

We were destined for a somnambulant existence and condemned to call it life. And I found myself at the heart of this somnambulism. I, one of the rank and file, day after day promoting and pursing senselessness.

In the midst of my happiness, the inscription from my mother’s photo album slipped out: ‘As you grow, may your spirit grow in clarity.’ My mother gave us a look so full of sadness that I grew ashamed of my coltish joy.

She would bark, ‘I am proud of my son. He fulfilled his duty.’ I saw how a cage had materialized around her, how she had shrunk and mutated into a hamster devouring its child.

everything must be accepted with humility, even wire brushes. Then we can regain our strength of soul.