Soviet Milk

by Nora Ikstena

the golden, tender calm of October, alternating with forebodings of a long period of darkness. It’s a kind of boundary month, at least in the climate of this latitude, where seasons change slowly

Having witnessed my father’s physical suffering, I decided to become a doctor. I’m not sure I loved him. Sometimes I felt sorry for him. Sometimes I hated him because I suspected that his self-destructive gene was deeply implanted in me and that with time it would grow and strengthen, no matter how hard I fought it.

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.

Despite these absurdities, my mother continued to raise me as an honourable and faithful young Soviet citizen. Yet within me blossomed a hatred for the duplicity and hypocrisy of this existence. We carried flags in the May and November parades in honour of the Red Army, the Revolution and Communism, while at home we crossed ourselves and waited for the English army to come and free Latvia from the Russian boot.

I disappeared for days so I wouldn’t have to feed my child. My milk was bitter: the milk of incomprehension, of extinction. I protected my child from it.

Her hands and clothes smelled of medicine, which was my mother’s usual fragrance. That smell, along with her touch, awakened in me a love I had not felt before: love for my mother.

But medicine had outpaced Jesus. Everything was explicable and understandable. There was no need for faith. And Jesus had been prohibited. In His place, we were to believe in a real ‘lotus-land’ – that is, in Communism, under which everything would belong to everyone and euphoria would reign. For the time being, nothing indicated that this had been achieved.

I walked out into the corridor and drew into my lungs the familiar smell of disinfectant and medication. I was banished from my paradise. Prison would have been my redemption. Nothing made sense any more.

My mother would tell me strange stories, things no one had ever told me before. She said that we had once been free. I didn’t understand. We’d had our own nation. But we have our own nation, I protested: the Soviet Union. Before it was only Latvia, my mother said. Her face took on that familiar, fearful grimace. There was only Latvia, she repeated, without the Russian lice, which won’t live in their own homeland but crawl all over us. In our school there were two classes of Latvians and one of Russians, and we got along well. Why lice?

And I wasn’t afraid of my mother, only terribly worried about her. And I knew it would be like this until death separated us.

Lenin had also turned his back on the Orthodox cathedral, which had been converted into a planetarium. It was a civilized gesture, as if he knew nothing of the distant lake in Siberia where, on his orders, hundreds of Orthodox priests had been drowned. Yes, God doesn’t exist. I had already confirmed that. But there is a heaven and there are stars. And I had been driven out of my paradise.

Jesse – I wanted to interject into this whispered flood of words – Jesse, do you even realize what that means? There’s no mystery, there’s no divine will. Nor is there any freedom – either to be born or to die. This medical manipulation proves that.

So–o–oviet Latvia, may she live for ever. May she brightly in the Soviet wreath shine. I didn’t understand the next verse, which proclaimed our comradeship with the sublime Russian nation, which would conquer our enemies. Who were our enemies?

There was no joy here. I was counting the seconds to when this solemn parade with all its rallying cries and songs would be over.

Holding him by the nape of the neck, my step-grandfather said, ‘Old chap, we all have to live in a cage. Get used to it.’

Rosie busied herself gathering shavings to make a nest. Bambi showed no further interest in her. The former freedom fighter was unrecognizable.

He was gobbling his own children, and with relish. My grandmother pulled Rosie’s nest out of the cage, along with the rest of the squeakers. During the night they all died and, after a few days, so did Rosie. Gradually Bambi returned to his old ways. He lived for his free time outside the cage.

Where to bury him – under the apple tree or the jasmine, or simply by the fence – for the crime of devouring his children? Without a grave mound. Maybe I was to blame for his death. Most likely he died of his yearning for freedom. But had I sentenced him unjustly? How can one eat one’s children and then die from yearning for freedom?

‘But why did he eat his children?’ I asked my mother. ‘Probably he was saving them from being caged,’

Freedom had been dangled before me in the form of studies in Leningrad. I hadn’t known how to deal with it. For this I’d been sent into exile in this stifling room at the ambulatory centre.

The reality was this: we were alive. Mundane things shaped our days, the days became weeks, the weeks, months, the months, a year.

‘Doctor, do you believe in God?’ she asked. ‘I still haven’t had the opportunity to meet Him,’ I repeated. An odd sensation gripped my stomach. ‘What a pity. It’s one of the most beautiful meetings in life. Love and fidelity for a lifetime. A friend who always supports and forgives you.’

Thou, who hast given birth to the Healer, heal my soul of yearning and sinful passions. Tossed in life’s storms, lead me to the port of penitence. Save me from eternal fire, the evil worm and hell.

It was another world. I hadn’t thought of my mother at any point on the journey. She had disappeared as if wound up in a ball of yarn that rolled away into the distance.

‘I’ve an odd name,’ she said. ‘Jesse. It was given me by my foster mother in the orphanage. I’ve always struggled with this name, although I work as a charwoman.’

I wanted to talk about our Latvia being mocked by the Soviet Union and Germany, about refugees, about executions and deportations to Siberia, about the ones who remained and were silenced, as we, the third generation, were already silenced. I wanted to talk about my mother, who lived in a desolate place in the country because she could not live two lives – and could not accept a life of mockery, as Latvia had been mocked.

We stood outside the church. He told us about the people who had built and cherished it, who had come here to pray, to christen their children, to hold weddings and funerals. About the bell-ringer, who had gone deaf from the ringing, about the minister, whom the bell-ringer had betrayed, and about the altar painting that had disappeared.

A mute church bell hung above us. We all looked up. ‘See,’ our teacher said, ‘the bell had its tongue torn out. It can no longer ring.’

I saw how a cage had materialized around her, how she had shrunk and mutated into a hamster devouring its child. It was so real and horrifying an image that I felt sick. There was a numb silence in the classroom.

‘Freedom or death!’ then fell silent, glancing at me with guilty eyes. ‘Jesse, don’t treat her like a brainless child,’ I said. ‘And, really,’ I added, ‘all of us are the living dead here.’

It seemed to me that since I was born I’d been trying to get my mother to connect to life. As a helpless infant, as a child of limited understanding, as a fearful teenager, as a young woman. And she always seemed to be striving to turn out her life’s light. So we struggled – always ending in stalemate. Although one day the light would be extinguished for ever.

But my mother didn’t leave her room. She didn’t leave even when Jesse and I, crying with happiness and helplessness, told her that she had to join hands with people throughout our three Baltic countries who wished to be free. We would form a living human chain in which every person had their place. Every one of us would become part of that causeway of human beings, extending our hands to each other, and no one would be able to destroy us again.

One sunny October afternoon, we lived and breathed nothing but the People’s Front Congress. The people demanded the return of their mother – the land of their birth. My grandmother and step-grandfather didn’t hide their tears of joy. In the evening Jesse telephoned. She couldn’t talk. Tears stifled every word. My mother had died. I had to hurry back immediately.

On the kitchen table under the wan lamplight, my grandmother unwrapped the tiny parcel. It was a baby’s first shirt and bundled within it was a horseshoe with a couple of nails. So that the infant would be lucky in life. It belonged to my mother, once the tiniest of tiny infants. And the horseshoe was a lucky one that my grandmother had found for her on the war-ravaged road, so that her life might be peaceful.

Jesse clutched her head and said, ‘We really will be free. Why couldn’t she listen to my words?’

Soviet Milk,