[online translation of a section of Prom no mājām in Būs skaista diena.]
Away From Home
And then, the simplest, but the hardest dream of all, near the threshing barn: I am going down the road from the courtyard to the river. I hear voices, stop – they are all there! My dear ones, my home folk. Like a fog, they move in a crowd, coming from their tasks, approaching… I hurry to meet them, but they go into the barn. I want to get there, too, be with them! I’m already at the barn door, but the door is closed.
I know — there is a window on the other side of the barn. I hurry around the corner of the barn, (it is hard as it is in dreams, if you want to get somewhere by your own will) but I’m now behind the barn. But the barn’s window is missing. The barn is just a wall of large, heavy, logs, tightly pressed on top of each other, grey as if covered with spider webs, already sunken into the ground, where a few rare green cereal stalks have transplanted themselves from the nearby field. Closed, deep, unshakable silence.
[Fragment written in English by Erna. The handwritten text has been only slightly corrected for comprehension.]
[Original English]
“The most competition between two men, and their hardest fight for one woman takes place when the two men are brothers.”
It’s almost so as if one has to compete and maybe might be concerned by himself. Thats what happened to Terry Walker exactly, he had to capitulate really to himself, not even to his brother. He had no brother. He had a nice girlfriend Anne Clarke. He thought about her lately very much and seriously. Quietly and with warmth. He had almost decided. No, actually — he had already decided that they will stay together and Anne knew it, they both were happy, but patiently ready for what will come.
Terry had a good responsible job in a large office and had recently bought a nice knew flat from a colleague who left for an other state. Terry preferred the magnificent harbour view from the flats wide windows, to the garden, what they could have in a suburban house. They — Terry thought, for Anne was already in, in all his future plans.
The flat had no phone but Terry had asked for it and prepared to wait for it, when suddenly he had it sooner then expected. Terry was delighted and phoned Anne still gulping his morning coffee.
“Excuse me please being so early,” he said.
“Who is speaking” asked Annes voice.
“An admirer of yours,” said Terry and so it started. If [whether] it was the new phone, Terry’s excitement, the coffee on his tongue or the unusual time, but Anne did not recognise his voice. Really, he had not phoned her often, as they worked in the same building. Terry went through the room where Anne was sitting at her typewriter, every morning.
“And I will send you roses” Terry said and put the receiver away. Then he laughed at himself and Anne. And at the situation that she was puzzled who he was.
Terry hurried to office and on the way ordered the roses for Anne.
They came by tea time. Terry saw Anne surprised , confused and blushing, and carefully putting the long stems roses in a glass she had found.
Terry went to her to steal a kiss and met a puzzled look. Then it occurred to him, that she did not know yet who send the roses and who had spoken to her. And in the morning, she thought — it was somebody else. Somebody. And suddenly Terry felt this — somebody. Felt this someone between Anne and himself.
Terry spoke about the weather and the pictures they had planned to see, but did not speak about his knew phone nor the roses. At 5 they left, together happy as usual.
And later sat shoulder to shoulder in that pictures, and still later kissed under the jakaranda tree who hided the neon lamps light, at Annes house door.
But still he did not speak about the phone and the roses.
He did not do it three weeks. But he phoned her almost every morning and got permission to phone her in the evening. Or so it came out, because he was starting to talk much — this somebody at the phone, about whom Anne had not told him a word. She often seemed worried and he was waiting for her to speak, for it seemed to him, she wonted to speak, about this somebody.
But she did not.
She did not.
And somebody grew bigger an bigger. And more nasty. He said to Anne things, that Terry never did. He told to Anne opinions just opposite of those, Terry had spoken to Anne. He doubted judgments of events and things that Terry had said to Anne. He was cheerful when Terry had been sad, he was romantic, when Terry had ben just simply practical. He should not be jealous on that somebody, on himself. Instead he should be more convinced of himself, for Anne could not resist him in any form, he came in her way, even so — un known. He — Terry had not to be jealous or furious or unhappy — it would be nuisance. And it was, because he was jealous and, furious and unhappy. They hardly kept going together.
Terry visited Anne almost unexpectedly about the time when he — somebody had announced a phonecall. Terry getting nervous when the clock came nearer the time, when the phone had to ring. Terry started to fight for his own rights, started to fight with himself, he was kind to Anne, tried to be more sensible and more interesting and more intelligent in his words to Anne, as he has been as somebody. And felt how hard it was, to compete with the strange image he himself had formed in Annes mind. She was confused, doubtful and only half with him and then she was frightened — the ring will come when Terry will still be there, she said she had a headache she would like to have a walk, she took Terry out of the house. She seemed to be happy for a while, then her mood changed again — she kissed Terry goodnight and run back in the house.
Terry went home. The hour was later than he had announced his phone call to Anne. But he still did not touch the phone. What had he to do? Had he lost Anne? How was it possible? He could not lose her to himself, the man who phoned Anne for 2 weeks now, charmed her by his wits and personality — it was himself. Anne took him for somebody else — Anne was interested in somebody else.
Lat at night he rang, and Anne did not refuse talking. He was short. He asked for a date. Tomorrow night. Anne accepted.
“On town halls steps I will wait for you. For you to recognize me — I will read the Morning Herald. Good night — Darling.”
[incomplete page — may belong here or elsewhere]:
…had Anne told about things Terry had said — he does not know anything.
O, Anne was confused and unhappy, almost miserable the clung sometimes to Terrys heart. But strangely enough — Terry seemed not to know how to help her. Anne had to decide herself — should’n she?
Or — may be not? He had no right, to accuse Anne for being untrusty, she did not encourage that somebody of phoning her, only somehow she could not forbid it. He was so persistent.
Terry was guilty himself he knew it. But — could not stop it either.
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[Fragment on P&O ship Orsova’s notepaper]
This is the pure, white paper that urges me to write. But I am empty. No thoughts. No dreams. No hopes of any kind. Just — go ahead. What’s nice — is — this constant going. We pass, we go over oceans, all round the world. Not on the map. Round the real world. You cannot see or feel that it’s round. But the very poor geographic knowledge what I have got, has told me — it’s round, and so for me it’s round, and I don’t feel the grandiosity, the greatness of it. I don’t feel anything at all. It’s about the same, as if I would sit at the table, look in the map of all the oceans and said to me — I am crossing the Indian Ocean now — Heavens! Maybe I had to be put alone in a little boat and be sent out in the sea!… Still that constant moving is something. And — the water under you is about 3 miles deep. HA?
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[published in Būs skaista diena (It Will be a Nice Day)]
Rabelais, Moliere, Ronsard, Proust
Travel notes from France about the famous castles of the Loire
[introduction missing]
…the town [Chinon] where her fame began. Here she met France’s uncrowned king, Charles VII; here she got her first fighting strength, from here she set out for her first, shining victories. Joan’s imprisonment and death at the stake belong to another castle, another town…
Chinon. Joan of Arc’s street, old fashionedly narrow, leads up to the old township, to the corner, where there are three unbelievably old houses. In one of these Joan stayed, awaiting her acceptance into the [castle].
Out in front, a stone courtyard with an old well, with the stone on which she set her foot, dismounting from her horse. There exists much older human dwellings, but nowhere has the past, history pressed forth more strongly than here. The ancient buildings’ heavy beams’ roofs, supports, embedded downtrodden paving stones — it is all a tangible legend. The impression is unexpectedly strong, but it touches, settles in the consciousness in a strange manner, individually, in its own place, and already in that moment it is felt, that it won’t be able to be put into words — not to oneself, nor to others to be retold.
Behind this Joan of Arc’s corner, a house, where lived Rabelais, is unable to stir much. Besides, there is rebuilding work being carried out — cement and pipes try to secretly modernize the ancient streets. And there, further up, grown together with earth, with the hill far up rises the fortress wall. Here yet is a place where one can glance deeper into the times of Rabelais. He lived also elsewhere: Langeais, in the little town, standing on the old castle’s drawbridge and looking down on the town’s winding streets, it seems that all the cafes, all the boarding houses and yet again all sorts of other places and things — everything is named after Rabelais, but it is fairly obvious that the old name has been attached to new things; almost pathetically, comically…
We drove several days backwards and forwards across the Loire from one bank to the other, from township to township, from castle to castle.
In Meung, there is the 14th century poet — Jean de Meung’s statue, in a park named after him. The plainest of statues, out of grey stone, has been fashioned the poet’s standing figure, in his old-fashioned garb down to the ground, a small cap on his head, a rose in his hand, hanging by his side. In some ways a very statuesque statue, very poetic and very alive. There close by, in Meung’s church, as though growing out of it, the prison tower, where imprisoned was the poet Villon.
In the large, well-kept and fancy Chenonceau palace, its owner, Mrs. Dipen’s children’s teacher was for a time Jean Jacques Rousseau. For his sake, during the revolution, the palace was spared. After the death of Henri II, his beautiful, clever Diana was taken from this palace to another smaller palace. In Blois castle, Henri III executed the Duke of Guise. In all the castles, with few exceptions, battles of death and intrigues took place. At present in Blois Castle there is being held Napoleon’s honoured exhibition. Now, to gaze pleasantly at the unlovely paintings, large and small — from the past age — drawings, engravings, in bone, wood, coconut shell, steel, enamel, bronze, glass, etc.
From inside and outside, one must wonder at the enormous wooden stand upon which, Napoleon’s wide brimmed hat was kept, amusing to see the famous war leader’s everyday items — clothes, various hats, pipes, tobacco pouches, dishes, etc.
Yes, the old well of Chinon, which was touched by Joan of Arc, glorifies history, these insignificant, everyday things draw history’s glory into everyday life, for in both cases, we are led tangibly close to those happenings whose reality always seemed almost unbelievable.
Two palaces — the huge one in Chambord and the small one in Talcy remain the most beautiful impressions on my mind. In Chambord the road to the people opened for Molier’s work, almost accidentally — so the story goes. Staying in Talcy was Ronsar[d], living and writing poetry for the castle caretakers daughter, Cassandra — his first love.
In Chambord there is a huge Renaissance fantasy building, in the centre of the forests and fields of a huge park. It is the result of Francois I life long ambition, created for hunting, amusements, sports and pleasure. Now, in the evenings they are holding Son et Lumiere performances. In the afternoon, when we have decided to attend the performance, there is a downpour; in the evening the clouds do not disappear, but rather bank up on one edge of the sky, distantly rumbling and shedding russet. A bit sombre, but it is a fitting backdrop to the castle and the performance — nature’s exhibition. People seat themselves on the lawn behind the wide well spaced shrubs, and listen to and observe the lighting up of the castle from inside and our — its disappearance into darkness — and its re-emergence into light, towers and towering chimneys (a total of 360), its transformation into frightening, or proud faces; a single window, door, flight of steps, a terrace, suddenly appearing, together with the loudspeakers transmission of sounds — the clatter of hoofs, the rumbling of carts, knocking on doors, the sound of footsteps up the stairs, horses, dogs, men’s voices, and the actors’ spoken text, stoking up the story. The watching children freeze when in the tower there appear evil greens; yellowish, horned heads breathe red fire, evil spirits hold the princess captive, but the prince’s voice is commanding, persuasive and soft, lights become golden and rosy, and the princess awakes…
We have with us a bottle of wine, and we pass it around. This sitting with it in the darkness, on soft grass, with the rumbles of thunder, with the play of lights and distant russet, with memories which unpreventably flow on to one from surrounding meadows and forests — is a strange mystery, varyingly real and unreal, painful and pleasurable; take from it great mouthfuls — just like from the wine bottle, and its taste is so clearly felt an yet so elusive, vague, indecipherable — her it appears thus — there elsewise.
The following morning we left our resting place by the Loire, the sloping, pebbly bank, with osier bushes, with wet flowers, such, as used to bloom at home, but here they are sunk amid grass, together with grapevines.
Driving through the township of Moree’s narrow, winding streets, leafing through road maps, to discover — where the road to Talcy could be. Then we notice at the roadside, above a rose bush, a simple sign: “Follow the roses to Talcy Castle.” It was an incredibly delightful moment! Navigating is confusing, always one must note carefully all tracks and turnings and here — the roses took it upon themselves to show us the way. Driving and observing the red rose bushes, here on the right, here on the left, we wound our way out of the township onto the white highway, and continued thus for eight or nine kilometres — at each distance of 50 or 100 yards — roses to the right and after the next 50 or 100 yards — to the left. On the edges of fields, of meadows, behind tall grasses, behind roadside gravel, by the first harvesters, by the first wheat stacks — everywhere the roses catch our attention and beckon us, and we are sure that we won’t lose our way. It is a carefree, lighted and gentle part of the journey. Fields here seem almost Latvian — various crops and vineyards which look from the distance like potato fields, for these are the low vines.
Then we again pass the first few houses of some township, and soon find ourselves at the castle. The round, stone cobbles, the front of which has already been strewn with brown chestnut leaves; through the lower chestnut branches can be seen the castle’s walls, across the tops of the chestnuts — the castle tower. The entrance leads through a very thick wall; the walls are old, the castle was built in the 1600’s on 12th century fortifications. From the outside almost only this fortification is visible, but within the courtyard we are immediately struck by the appealing old French style. The stone well, stairways, the gallery with arcades; inside, friendly rooms with tableware, furniture, various bits and pieces and dilettante works, handcrafts — portraits and drawings on the walls; really provincial, gay and homely. Here you could live with friends; in big castles, it seems, you can only live with society, in the bedrooms included. And even here, in this castle, there is also — a queen’s bed. Katrina Medici often stayed here with the lord of the castle, her relative, Salvati.
Downstairs is his cellar with old wooden presses, juice kegs, grape vats, wine scoops. Wine was made for personal use, each year a little different.
The castle’s keeper and tourist guide is a short, round, limping Frenchman. On this morning, we are the castle’s only visitors, and he warms to taking us everywhere and showing us everything, but his speaking all the while remains soft and delicate. To this castle belongs the romantic love story of the poet Ronsar[d], the lord of the castle’s daughter, Cassandra. Ronsar[d] wrote poetry about roses, but Cassandra later married some de Muset, and from this family arose the poet Alfred de Muset.
“Behind the main courtyard, behind lime and elm, there is a pigeon tower for 3000 pigeons,” says the small Frenchman. The guide book says 1500 pigeons, but does it really matter? Ronsar[d] wrote a poem for one single pigeon, one dove. Later the keeping of pigeons in such numbers was forbidden by law, for the birds completely laid waste to the farmers fields.
We drove out of Talcy slowly, as if we had been touched by some sort of magic. Not wanting to leave, wanting to stay — but there is nowhere… In the castle courtyard young Frenchmen busy themselves, arranging seats, stairs, stage, for some play to be performed in the evening.
We must drive to Chartres, and beyond that, by the other, small Loire, we must seek out Illiers — Marcel Proust’s childhood world.
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[Erna’s own reworking in English of part of story “Karš” included in Unpublished prose]
War
It was the middle of winter before the spring, when the World War 2 ended. The men were fighting (killing each other) in the extended front lines, battlefields, it seemed — all over the world. The women, wherever they were, did go on caring for life and lives — helping each other, saving the lives.
I, a young mother then, was in Berlin, ruined, after its first big bombing. My 2 1/2 years old girl was left back in Jegerndorf, Sudetenland on border of Czechoslovakia, in a hospital, (9 hours by flyer [express] from Berlin). My girl had pneumonia and middle ear infection. She was not even in a children’s hospital, they were overfilled. She was in a women’s ward, her cot put near the bed of a young woman, who had a light mental breakdown — she had lost her little girl. And she promised to look after my girl. (It was winter, we could not take the child in the ordinary, unheated train.)
“We will send you a telegram, when the child will be able to leave the hospital,” they said. (Who said? Who promised? The nurses? The woman. Yes — the woman.)
In Berlin we spent most of the nights in the cellars and listened to the radio, read the papers and did not know a thing out of that — what was going on, what happened with the promised victories. But everything was going to pieces and the front was moving westwards, the air attack alarms kept us in cellars and the ruined Berlin were filling with refugees from the East.
I was waiting for a telegram, walking restlessly through the bombed Berlin. After a month, I got a letter — the child was recovering, soon will be able to walk around. Soon? How soon? And where, how near was already the Eastern front? I went to the railway station of the East, listened to the whispering of the crowd that rushed out of the overfilled trains. …”They are coming! They are coming swiftly now… They will be here soon…”
Terrified I ran from office to office trying to get a permission to have a train ticket to Bransdorf. “Against [near] the front line? Impossible…” I was sent from one half-ruined place to the other. At last I was standing in a long queue, at a door from where some people came out with travelling permissions, but mostly empty handed, crying, swearing, wringing their hands.
“There is no hope,” was the sentence to be heard for hours. But the people crowded to the door. The queue moved slowly. At last I was in, behind the door. There was only one office worker in the room, a woman.
She listened to me, then said:
“You have to have a telegram. From this letter you have, one even does not know know if the child is yours…”
“How?… Why?..It’s my child…”
She was annoyed, impatient. Then I understood — there was constant desperate cheating, telling false stories. [How] to get to the truth, of what every one of the hundreds of people had [presented]?
I begged. I talked.
“Well, I will speak to the boss,” she said and disappeared behind a closed door. Then came out of it again and waved me away — “NO.” In a sudden panic, that her hand will push me out of the room, I grabbed the table with both hands, and felt that my face, all my body changed. Maybe I had a mad look in my eyes, because she looked at me for a moment, then without saying a word, disappeared again behind the boss’s door. And came out again and started to write the permission papers for my train ticket. Trembling of love and gratitude for her, I was searching in my handbag, found 2 little half crushed cigarettes, put them before her on the table.
“Sorry I have no more. When I come back I will bring you my ration…”
“You should not,” she said.”But thanks for those, I am a smoker…”
The hospital was still there. My little girl recovered and had tried her first steps out of bed the same day. Frightened weeping silently she clung to me and would not let me out of the grasp of her little hands even for a moment. Matron and the nurses allowed me to sleep the night in the hospital, to share the bed with the child.
Our train was next morning.
“It is the first flyer [express] from East to Berlin,” they said. We should not miss it, or we could be left without home and money, and cut [separated] away for ever from my husband, and my old mother.
Next morning my girl was dressed in all her warm clothes and bundled up in a heavy woollen blanket. I lifted her high over my head to hold her firm, the nurses [showed] me the nearest way to the station, about 20 minutes to go [walk], wished us good luck — told us to hurry, to look out for the air attack alarm.
It was a crisp winter morning, the sun was sparkling in the snow covered streets. All was calm and we arrived in the station safely.
The station was crowded and the message was — the train will arrive 200 percent full. It was not to be expected that some of the passengers will get off the train in Jegerndorf. There was a first aid women’s help squad, women who were to help the women with children to get in the train or to stay and not be trodden over. They all were engaged already. But still — I got a young girl, about 15, for my guard.
The train arrived — all doors and windows locked closed, hundreds of faces looking down at the hundreds of faces looking up to get in. The crowd was so tight, one could not move around much, what[ever] carriage happened to stop opposite you, that was your fate and destiny. Through the window a woman was beckoning to me — next to the closed door opposite, meaning that she will try to push open the door as much as I could could get in with the child. But she kept the door locked, as 2 men had already jumped on the steps and tried to bang the door open with their heavy travelling bags. The woman from the inside looked at me. The train was still standing. My guard girl tried to talk to tje men, but with no luck, of course. The door stayed locked. Then, she shouted to me ,”Stay here. Wait for me,” and ran away.
Soon she returned with a sturdy policeman who grabbed the two men by their coats and pulled them off the steps. The next moment the door opened, just half, and I with child was pulled behind it. And the train started to move. I hurriedly turned my face to the window to look back and caught a glimpse of the smiling girl. How much I needed that short moment, to thank, to express my gratitude to the human being whom I will never see again, and who had done so much for me.
Un tagad tik sukā mājās… Tas bija latviskais Ineses teiciens… Un tagad tik sukā mājās… Kā dzīve gan mūs staipa un loka un ķeza — man gribas un gribas teikt to neglīto vārdu — tāda viņa ir… [And now just dash for home… That was Inese’s Latvian expression… and now just dash for home…. How life does pull us and bend and twist us — I do want and do want to say those ugly words — that’s just how life is…]
Our 29 hours in the train is a story by itself. One can stand for hours and hours, and I had to. Some soldiers gave us some mouthfuls of water to drink. We had some bread and 2 apples from the hospital; we were pushed into the toilet room, there I could sit with the child on the closed pot. The others were standing. If somebody had to use the toilet — I stood up. The toilet was not used very often, all these things went through [out] the windows, the train was so full that nobody could move. The kids, the bags, even the grownups if desperately needed sometimes in the stations were moved over the shoulders and heads of the standing people. Later, next day (we travelled 29 hours), the train emptied a little, we moved inside the passageway, sitting on the soldiers’ bags. It all went alright. In Berlin the underground train was not bombed and we reached our flat. I gave the child to my husband, as if I had borne it for the second time. But nobody understood that. Nobody ever knows what are the ways how one escapes and survives in the wartime. Net day I rushed to the woman in the office of travelling and put my 3 newly got cigarettes on the table before her. She was surprised.
“I never expected to see you again,” she said.
“But I promised…”
“You should what all here has been promised…”
“But you saved my child??” And I left. A crowd was waiting behind her door.
If it matters, this story happens to be true. The little girl is a grown up woman now and is working in this country, in the Banff Centre.
Sometimes I think of the woman in the office in Berlin, of the girl in the Jagerndorf station, of the woman in the hospital, who had lost her child. Sometimes I would like to reach them, to see them for a moment, to say something. But life is like an ocean — the wave flashes over the time that has been.
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[Part of story “Sakņu tirgotājs” included in Unpublished prose]
The Vegetable Merchant (in Paris)
This little shop was in a gap, in a triangle between the walls of two houses, over which a roof had been built and in front of a wall with a door and a high threshold. On the threshold stood a scale for weighing vegetables with two brass plates that swung up and down as the old vegetable seller shuffled and hopped across the threshold, quickly adding and removing vegetables. How deftly he knew how to adjust the scale, until Maria protested, and that resulted in the cheapness of the vegetables. He knew how to do this work for us and for himself with such agility, kindness and manners that we always liked to go to his shop and watch him rush here and there, digging through the piles of vegetables, scraping the sand from the carrots, polishing the tomatoes, exaggerating everything and he himself became as dusty gray as his hair and mustache.
You can get a glimpse into a city and a nation if you take someone by the hand, press your cheek against a wall that vibrates with the warmth of the sun and the rhythm of people’s breath that has washed it for centuries. Looking at the little vegetable seller, you could catch a glimpse of the hidden face of big Paris for a moment and fall in love with it, like those who belonged to it from childhood loved it.
All big cities are cruel. There was a touch of tenderness in the cruelty of Paris.
When I went to Paris again after ten years, I thought I had to meet the old vegetable seller. Indeed, he was the only person I knew in all of Paris. I got lost, wandered through the streets and found him — he was right there. His shop was no bigger, no smaller.
He was even grayer, more shrunken.
The scales were the same.
I bought some tomatoes.
I have never eaten tomatoes as delicious anywhere else as the ones in Paris. I don’t mean just the ones from that particular old vegetable vendor, but I could say, in general, Parisian tomatoes with oil and onions — if that didn’t shock some people’s ideas about “French cuisine”…
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[Faces]
Often I see faces where there are no faces. Walking in the street I can see faces on the asfalt, on the old pavement, in the leaves of the trees, on the tree trunks, in the clouds of course. To see faces in the clouds that is a little different thing. I would say – it is very common thing, very normal thing. Once flying from Detroit to Kalamazoo I saw dozens and dozens of them. Mostly with painful expressions, very suffering expressions, some screaming, shouting in pain. Some calm of course too. One was with sunglasses. ‘in face’ with sunglasses it would be something unusual, but it was in profile, a big man’s face with really nice sunglasses. Yes – faces in the clouds are a common things.
Faces on walls and carpets in curtains flowerpots – they are different faces. I think – they are specially faces for me. Created for me. Or I – am their creator?
Usually I see them when I am thinking something, thinking and looking without seeing anything of what is where my eyes are directed. Then suddenly I stop thinking and there is a face looking at me, from the wall, or window pane, or carpet or anything.
Usually they are not harmful and are no specially enjoyable. Sometimes they are annoying, mostly because they do not reveal what they are looking for, what they – want from me.
When I write this a face already has formed itself opposite me on the bookshelf some 10 feet away. It is a stupid, clowny face, one half the other reddish and red beard and a black tie. Two round eyes. Silly animal like expression.
I would have not seen, not noticed that face, if I had not looked on the same point all the time when I lift my eyes from writing. The face is made probably of 2 books with some identical signs – eyes, some shade of the electric light. What makes the read beard – I really cannot guess from here. As I look longer at it – its expression looks more childish and also – more animal like. It annoys me to look at it, but actually it is a not important face.
Still – it is there.
If I would change my direction of my gaze to a different place on the bookshelf – there probably would develop a face.
I really find them only when I look without thinking of that where I look.
One would be at this moment on the little white vase with the blue flower design: a funny fat stupid face. And so on, they are around everywhere.
A very nice face was once in the leaves of the big trees over the yard. It was a moving, expressive nice face. I looked long time at it, made really an aquaintance, made some conversation with it. The nice thing was, that it disappeared, hid itself when the wind blew and returned when wind stopped. In summer the winds there were mild, calmly coming and going like gentle waves.
Once on the path through a forest, actually a part of park, not really a forest – there designed of half melted ice, sand and roots there was a face which I thought was my mother’s face. Down near the path, there was a cemetery. My mother is dead for long time. I though maybe she has come to warn me of something. I knew of what she might warn me. It was hard for me to accept her warning. I loved the silly affair I was falling then in. I did not want to reject it, to stop it, to come out of it. And also – I was frightened – not to obey my mother, not to obey in that surprising, mostly wonderful moment when my mother had let see me her face, had come to me.
I respected and loved her dearly. But what of she was warning me was somebody I also loved, strongly, passionately. I could not really change that. That love was in me without my – powers over it. All I could promise to the face of my mother was – that I will try to be cautious.
The face I saw a couple of days ago – was the most wonderful face I have ever seen. If those faces I was talking here, were more or less like drawings or paintings, like pieces of art – this face was alive, and more than alive.
It is frightening how real and how super real it was. God’s face? It was very human. It was a man’s face. Luminous wonderful eyes, the mostly kind, loving expression. Actually I cannot remember ever having seen a living face with so loving, benevolent expression.
Yes, I was reading sitting at the table opposite the window to our backyard. I took my eyes off the book thinking. I was looking at the high brick wall behind the yard. It was a marvellous wall three stories high, and there is no windows in it. At least the main half of it is pure empty brick. It’s an old long ago build wall. One can see all the different lots of bricks which are build in it. One can see – the building of it has not happened in one day, there people have been working, decided already – it’s high enough, two stories. Hardly there have been enough of the bricks, a darker, a quite dark, almost black line of bricks goes through the wall. The first load of the bricks with what they started had been of more reddish colour, quite strongly red brick.
Then they had another lot a little more grayish, in some patches there they had also different shade of cement – of light green colour. It looks marvellous that little of green among the bricks. Then they have had the third load of bricks reddish again, but not quite so bright as the first lot. Then the wall is already full 2 stories high, and there comes the smaller lot of bricks – very dark bricks. But it makes the wall just more attractive. After the narrow dark part of the bricks up till the last line of the third floor – the bricks are again reddish. But very mild brick read. There are more just a little different shades of bricks, different some grey some greenish cement that keeps the bricks together. Up from the dark line, the wall then goes in a more even colour, up till the roof. There is no roof, only a brightly red line of what? Metal or other building material. All the wall though together with the little colour differences is old brick read.
Against the blue sky the colours live strong and mild and beautiful. It is very alive and very calm brick wall.
All the wall is a quiet brick wall, the differences in colours of the brick loads are noticeable only when one is looking very intensely, searchingly as I have been looking at it for 2 years, mostly sitting at my dining rooms table and reading.
The dining room is one of the lightest rooms in my little 4 room flat. And from the dining room one door leads outside to the backyard, what I call garden, because I have planted a little lilac bush there.
When I was looking at it thoughtfully after reading it was late afternoon. The wall almost up till the upper part of it, was in the shade, brownish, greyish only one little patch on it was light with reflection maybe from some window somewhere in this side of the yard.
My gaze rested on that mildly pale patch of light. Where did it come from? I did not know, and did not care. I looked at it. And suddenly, yes, pretty suddenly it was a face – a one light cheek, a forehead and two eyes. It all got clearer, more real in a second, the eyes luminated, they vibrated from the mild halflight, with an unbelievable kindness. I could not distinguish the lips, the mouth, but it was there and the more strongly lighted cheek.
The eyes were so alive, that I did not dare to look in them too steady, as one could not dare to look in a very attractive, strikingly attractive stranger’s face.
I looked in them with little intervals. It was a man’s face. I proved it, imagining the face as a woman’s face – but it did not work. It was a man’s face. Strong in a way. The eyes luminous (I could not find another word, they were not really shiny, they were not brilliant, they looked out from a half shade). I was fascinated, happy and a little frightened.
The people here see holy faces, Madonnas and so on. I laugh at them, when I read about that in newspapers. I do not believe in supernatural things.
All those faces that I see, that I so often see, it is only a play of my eyes. I have painter’s eyes, they work by themselves making pictures of what they catch out of the surroundings. Why they make mostly faces, I do not know.
This time it was somehow different. The face on the wall (in the wall, off the wall?) was out of all… Out of what? Out of what is possible.
No, it was not a holy face. Or, was it? The face was very human, its kindness was just the kindness I would like to have from a man, it was – love.
It was unbelievably beautiful, such as love is when you catch a glimpse of it.
I do not know heavenly love…
Did he wear glasses I wondered because of light round the eyes… I did not know what had I to do, what had I to think? To make a message out of it?
Then the sunny reflection faded. The face disappeared.
I did not want to look at the change, of the fear I might see some distorted animal like face in the darkened wall. Why was I afraid of that? I was afraid that my eyes will start their usual play and will make a disturbing features on the darkened remains of the vision.
One cannot beat the reality – next day in the full daylight I searched a little the wall – there were two darker bricks – which had been the eyes of the wonder face.
Good that they were there the two bricks. If they had not been there I would have become too puzzled.
Was there a message in that face? I do not know. Probably… no. I do not know…
But I made a message of it.
There next to that brick wall is another wall, a bright evenly cemented wall with shiny windows. Behind that higher one can see another wall with some windows. No, actually one can see only half, not quite half, only upper part, upper panes, of a window.
Really never before I had understood that that half of the window, was – a window of his house. He lived there.
I do not know his face. We had seen each other only from distance. We have looked so to each other, over other side of the yard, through the gate. Once we smiled to each other, that is – we exchanged a short smile, casual unaware smile. But it stayed in us. It stayed in me.
Then suddenly I knew what the face on the wall said to me. It said – that there high up in the next neighbour’s house was his window, and he could hear me when I was playing in the evenings my old out of tune, good sounding piano. The sounds get upwards. In the summer evenings all my windows and my doors too were open.
So – he sometimes heard me, had to hear me playing. Playing is often the same as talking, very often much open talking as we do talk with words.
The face on the wall told me, that my message was received. Might have been received.
I had not known that. I knew that I had send the message, the longing, the calling, sometimes even very strongly expressed one. But I did not know – how he could get it, how he could hear it. He could not hear me from his backyard, however there was that little garden, with a gate, and there I had seen him. And once we exchanged a short smile. But our houses were not so near to each other, there were other houses, yards and gates. It was only accidently that we managed to see each other.
My music could not find him there over the many backyard fences and gates.
My music could reach him high up there, over the red line of the 2 roofes, through his window.
I even started to think, that it was his face there on the wall. I had never seen him in full face, only his profile with a quick smile once. The smile is not the face. The smile is a flash of light over a face. You could find then the same face only by the smile, by that smile.