I loved my father more than my mother, when I was a very little girl. Later, when I had only my mother left, I loved double.
Maybe I adored my father so much because he was not at home all the time, as mother was. He worked on the field, he went out of the house for his duties as a mayor. He went and – returned. It was always the pain of losing and the joy of meeting again him. But maybe, it was just his love for me and his almost frightening strictness and his demands for my behaviour. I respected him till almost a fright, but only almost – I never was frightened to run to him with open arms.

I remember, I played with little pieces of all kinds of materials, the left overs what I could have of the dress materials, what my mother was making or her, and for me: aprons, blouses, summer dresses.

Those little colourful pieces of materials were wonders, the patterns were speaking of strange, unknown world, to me, there was a tobacco brown material with many pointed lines! But there between the buttons, what I had, may be not quite in my possession, but with which I was allowed to play, there was a button from my father’s suit, a small button not green not brown, not grey, with tiny relief lines. I put my little plump palm on it and kept it very quiet, feeling some holiness, some life – my father moving on the path behind the door, may be coming home…

In summer noons, where my father came home from field, from haymaking, really clover farming, he was all wet from the heat, sweating, exhausted, so exhausted that he could not go to the table for lunch, nor go to the river for a swim, (may be it was then, when he poured a bucket of water over his head at our well) and stretched out in the bed. I knew, that I had not to disturb him now with myself. But I crept behind him near the wall in the bed, very, very quietly, stretched out very straight, so as not to touch him, kept so silent as even not to breath and lay there as long as it could be endured, it was very hard to lay so straight, so absolute motionless, to keep all my limbs, my life so quiet, but I did it, tried to do in a kind of sacrifice for him, in love and adoration, only to move nearer to him my nose, or my finger to feel his sweat wettened shirt, his body steaming hot and the little dry leaves and clover buds smelling strong all over his cloth and hair.

There, on the same bed, when he had relaxed sufficient to move and to speak again, I had to repeat to him the verse, what I always was taught. Sometimes I had a new one for him, what my mother had taught me since he was away, and it was then a marvel to have his joy for it, even when it was not yet recited perfectly. I did not realise then, that a great deal of his joy for it, came from my difficulties to pronounce clearly all the words, my speech was not ready yet, I was about 2 years only.

Later, when grown up, I read in his bookkeeping books on the last pages whither all the songs I could recite at age of 2, and ‘second edition’ at age or 2 ½. One or two there were in Russian, of what I did not understand even so much, as from the Latvian. I remember me at his knees when he was sitting on the bedside ready to go, reciting those Russian words I could not pronounce at all, and it made him laugh loud and press me in his hands of joy, when at last it went approximately, and then we were going to present the thing to mother.

Songs I learned also sitting on my grand father’s knee and – riding. But there it was a careless, peaceful plain and happy, sometime a little dreamy event.

All those songs were strange words too. Some very sad, even strangely dramatic to the state of hurting, or frightening, the images, what the poems told, were to powerful, often misunderstood, or overtaking, usually the sad things, what had to pass in the poem, did not pass, and ruled with strange frightful power all over the poem.
That was, when I was a little girl.

I do not feel, that much is changed. It’s changed superficially, it’s changed also inwardly. But thou the changes are not forever, and are not consequent there are feelings, situations, facts of life, where there are no changes. I am the little girl and would like to touch your back, warm from work, tired, but I have to be absolutely quiet. It’s three years now since I love you like that. You know it. And yet – you don’t. You need me, and yet you don’t. You are married. I was married. In my dreams I never remember it. I always dream, i never have been married. I would have to. It’s getting late. Then I wake up and think, yes – I have to get married once in this life, I have to… And then slowly I remember – I was. For 20 years. I have young, grownup children. Yes – I have children. I never dream, that I should have children. I have them. Now I am out of my marriage. I tore away. But I dreamt the same, when I was there, with him. I lay near him and dreamt, I have to get married once…

We lived normally. Except for quarrelling, except for my terrible suffering being a possession of another person, for having nothing my own, not a minute of time, not a thing, not even the children. I never owned children. I never felt – this child is mine. That’s good. That what was good in that marriage. I never, from the first moment, as I gave birth to my first child, I never had the feeling I have, I own a child. I was immensely happy having given life to a child. No it was not that – that I have given life, it was that I was permitted to give the life. I was permitted to have a child in the house I lived, I was permitted to live for him, to care for him as much as I could. From the first moment children were some untouchable, little persons of they own, in my eyes only, of course, and that’s how they grew up my friends. We discussed things.

In my marriage I was deprived of everything. It was a crime, that I loved my mother, that I could have a private thought, that I could thought something by myself. To love the children it was not permitted. To explain a marriage – it’s useless. I even cannot explain to myself, why I never felt married. Mostly of the bases of a marriage I went through. But it’s a sticky thaw {?}, when I get caught in it, I cannot get rid of it. I have to speak some silly untruthful things, to finish it off. To stop it in disgust with myself that I don’t know to say, to know better.

Yes, it was how I started to feel about your back, when I realised, I really am in love with you. I loved your back. I thought tenderly about it, warm and tired in your work you are a bus driver and here in this country, the summers are so terribly hot, you are sweating in your crowded bus, tied at the place, just sitting and turning your bus wheel, and watching the traffic, and listening to the bell to stop the bus, and answer the questions. Every work is hard, that’s what makes the difference between a work and a play.

What made me think so tenderly about your back, might be, the possibility for me to see only your back and to pour on it my disgust sometimes, my anger, for our misunderstandings, to “durt” [stick] my hateful glances in it, and then to feel sorry, ashamed, to look at it mildly and to beg it for the forgiveness. You were tied there at your seat. (And at your marriage, I realised it only later). You could not turn and speak to me. You could lift your eyes and find me in the mirror, and that’s what started it all, and that’s what throw us in painful flames and in delightful flames and never gave a solution, an answer, it gave new life again, it gave complications. We had to avoid the mirrors as much as we could, and yet it was the only way to meet.

Angry, I hated your back, and tenderly begged its forgiveness. I am glad you gave me that thing – to love again a back of a man. When I was married (after all, I was, for nearly 20 years) sometimes my husband asked me to scrub his back, when he was in a bath. Then, it was, when I thought of a crime. I only did not know how. I looked at the living, compact mass, that kept me in prison, that pressed me like iron and stones, that was stronger than all gates, and swords and guns – only living, disgusting, strong, fat, flesh. I was frightened sometimes to put my eyes fully on it, frightened to hate so terribly and to feel so hopelessly dominated by it, only that physical, pitiless strength, what kept me a slave. If only I had the power, I thought, by a miracle, had the power in my bare hands to start a fight like men start the fights among themselves, without a weapon, just hand to hand, person to person. But I had it not, I had to obey, to slave, to go to pieces. My life had to be ruined by that strength of that compact disgusting back. Maybe it was quite a good built man’s back. It was. Maybe it even had a tenderness for me. I never knew it. I felt only it’s pitiless power. Sometimes in contrary, I let my eyes on it, to feel that immense hatred, to drink my forces out of it, may be once to get rid of it.

Between those two extremities how I loved my father’s and how I hated my husband’s back – came you. I never was married, but may be, because of that, because of loving your back, having eyed it tenderly and passionately, I am not left quite out of the life.