Wisdom and Spirit. Ed. Jane Gurski, photography Christopher J. Beeger. Bethany Lifeline. Bethany Care Society. 1995. Calgary, Alberta, Canada. ISBN 0-9699593-0-3

ERNA DZELME

When Erna Dzelme visits her homeland for the first time in over fifty years, she may just go in disguise. In Latvia, she will pretend to be an elderly lady without a unique history, with nothing special to distinguish her. Perhaps she will fool people, perhaps not.

She considers disguising her identity because those who know her there – and many do – will suggest that she do poetry readings, performances, and book signings. That’s because Erna is an accomplished writer, whose poetry and letters are well known to Latvians in many countries.

Born in Latvia in 1906, Erna was trained as an artist and pianist. She only began writing after she settled in Australia, where she struggled with two young children and life on a hot and dusty farm. Her husband scoffed at her artistic pursuits so Erna wrote. Writing is something she could do privately, in stolen moments.

Erna has had many books published, some containing short stories, several more containing poetry. Today she reads literature in English, French, German, Russian and Latvian, and plays the piano when she can. Recently her work took on greater meaning when the break-up of the USSR allowed her books to be distributed in Latvia. Now that Latvians have read her work, and have been delighted with it, Erna is also delighted, because she believes them to be her true audience.

Erna cherishes the memories that she brought with her from Latvia. In fact, her pen name, ‘Kikure’, is the name of the family farm on which she grew up, and which burned to the ground many years ago. Erna worries about the pilgrimage to Latvia, not only because of the publicity that might surround her visit, but also because she knows how much that landscape has changed.

She also worries about her people. The free market is something Erna experienced a long time ago in Australia. In Latvia, though, the struggle to survive and operate successfully in a free market society has only just begun.

With or without a disguise, the important thing is this: that Erna Dzelme will have the chance to witness again the landscape that has helped shape her poetry for decades.

I feel as though I must once again
harness the old bay
and return home
from my long sojourning.
– Erna Kikure

Robin Wheeler is a Calgary freelance writer and editor with a love for local history (currently manifesting itself in the renovation of a very old house). In the past year she has written advertising, feature articles, scripts, and technical manuals, and has spent many hours visiting with older adults who tell fantastic stories of days gone by.

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Erna Dzelme is a very interesting person, an internationally recognized writer, a wonderful mother, a strong and intelligent woman, a wise and charming elder, who has led a full and complex life on three Continents.

She was born in Latvia in 1906. She trained as a musician (piano, which she still plays daily) and a visual artist. She made her living in Latvia as an artist and teacher. She travelled and studied in Europe.

Her life has been disrupted by two World Wars. In 1919 her father was shot by the Bolsheviks. Her mother never remarried. She ran the family property and brought up her two small daughters on her own. In 1941 her sister and her three small children were taken to Siberia by the Russians to spend the next 18 years there in prison camps. Erna never saw them again and her sister has recently died.

I was born in 1942. In 1944, our family had to leave Latvia and went to Germany as refugees or “displaced persons” to live in migrant camps. My sister was born there, m grandmother (Erna’s mother) died there.

In 1949 we emigrated to Australia to begin again in migrant camps. Later, my father bought a small farm. Life was very difficult and the farm produced very poorly, because we did not have any real knowledge of that kind of farming in that kind of different climate etc. My mother tried to continue her artwork, but my father would not let her. She turned to writing in secret, in a few odd spare moments. She found a mentor in one of the most respected Latvian writers who lived in Australia. Her work gained recognition and began to be published. Recently, two books of the correspondence between Erna and her mentor have been published.
And so on and so on. There is much to tell.

When my sister and I married, we travelled and have lived and worked in Europe and now I am in Canada. In the past 25 years Erna has spent her time travelling back and forth to live with one or the other of us. She continues to write and be published. In 1992 she was awarded the Janis Jaunsudrabins prize, a biennial international literary award, a kind of Latvian “Nobel prize” for her achievement.

Erna has always been keenly interested in the world around her, in whatever part of the world she happens to be. She observes it with much insight and writes about it, no about nostalgia for the past or for her lost homeland. Until recently, her work could not be sent to Latvia. That has now changed for which she is very grateful, as she feels her true audience is there, in contemporary Latvia. She reads current literature in English, French, German, Russian and Latvian. Her pursuit of contemporary ideas has been quite remarkable and has made her a valuable friend to us and to many much younger. It has also meant she has been an intelligent and insightful supporter and best critic of our work and that of others in the fields of art, literature and music.

If all goes well, we plan a family trip to Latvia next spring and will take Erna with us to revisit her “home” for the first time in more than 50 years.*

One of her books, Artava, has two essays on her work in English, one by me, the other by Austra Hart (Australia). It also includes drawings, which complement but do not illustrate the text, by my sister. It was designed by Nelson Vigneault (Canada).

Erna’s acknowledgement of the contributions by Austra and Nelson:

Special thanks go to Austra Graudiņš for her contribution, sincerely and ably given in willing response to a request made at unreasonably short notice.

To Nelson Vigneault go admiration and appreciation for his generosity in sharing his time, skill and talent. This volume results from his vision of a possibility and his perseverance in the belief that “it is worth it to make it happen.”

— Inese Birstins, 1994

* Dzidra, Nelson and I did go to Latvia in 1995. Unfortunately, Erna’s weakened health did not allow her to go (she had suffered a stroke 1993.

Growing up, we were afraid of dad. He was a harsh disciplinarian, but he was not unfair. He did give us the strap, but rarely, and as I said, with formality, not in sudden control. He did abuse animals, but did not use physical force on people. His was mental, psychological cruelty and abuse. He ruined mum’s life, not letting her do any of her art or writing, was jealous and paranoid of any independence that she might have, from friends to professional associations. It was extreme.

This is a comment from an email from Ruta Mūsiņš (Alīse’s daughter, I met her in 2013 and 2017 — Alīse corresponded a lot with her sister Anna, who corresponded a bit with dad. Ruta is judging dad from the letters her mother and her aunt exchanged, where sometimes Anna also sent one of dad’s letters on to her sister Alise):  4.4.2015. “Your father was a strange man, basically unhappy, in fact actually sick. If I reflect on my relatively short life with the German, there are some similarities.” (Ruta was married to a German man for a while.)

Dzidra and I sided completely with mum, we were in her “camp”. I am sure that that did not help matters at all. I remember once saying to mum, when I was about 14, that I knew “what would save dad: if we showed him some love and affection”. She was surprised at my assessment. However, none of us was capable of doing that. We submitted and hated.

And, although I did not understand it at the time, I do not think that mum was entirely innocent. Their marriage was not for “love”. She had had other replies to her ad — that sort of way of meeting was not unusual, especially but not only during war time, when a lot of men were away and life in general was uncertain. I suppose current online dating services are a new, somewhat similar version, without the problems of war! For whatever reason, she chose him — and yes, he was charming, good looking, well-dressed, etc. He has always been careful in dress, elegant, with a good physique and posture, charming in manners, never coarse — a ladies’ [plural intentional!] man. She was despairing of ever getting married, she was already 35 — but more than anything, she was despairing of ever having children, and at that time, 35 was already getting to be quite late — it still is a bit late these days too.

However, when she had me, dad accused her of using him just to have a child — and to some degree she agrees in her account of their argument over me and the song, where he left and did not come home that night and she felt that she did not care if he never came home. I am sure that in most of their disagreements, she probably made sure that Dzid and I were “on her side.

I remember an argument they had in Fellbach, where he accused her of never having appreciated any gift he gave her, of throwing them back in his face at the beginning of their relationship. I can imagine that as true, can imagine that she expected him to know what she might like and being contemptuous of his “lack of insight or taste”… I do not think she had a very realistic idea of men/marriage, etc., perhaps understandable, since her father was shot when she was not yet 13 years old and her mother did not remarry. She had a few old fashioned ideas about the behaviour of women in romantic situations, such as the “right” to slap a man’s face, if he insults her, a woman’s “right” to play the coquette and flirt in the company of men, etc. etc. Apart from all these quirks, I do think they were seriously mismatched — but to my shock (naive! I thought they both hated each other too much) I discovered from her diaries later, that they had sex to the end of the time together, reluctant on her part, but to be endured because of the man’s “right” in a marriage.  However, there was never any physical force involved. They apparently had sex in the afternoon, when we were in school. Mum, Dzid and I shared the one bigger bedroom in the house, dad slept in a small converted veranda room — he went there for a “nap” after lunch and left the door partly open when he was in the “mood” — mum would mostly go to him, but sometimes did not.

He did sometimes spank us, usually with his belt on our bare bottoms — but very rarely (I remember only 2 occasions, but there may have been more) — and, as I said before, they were very formal procedures. However, he was very strict, critical, demanding complete obedience with no argument, furious when disobeyed or when we did not manage to do something “correctly” and made mistakes — totally terrifying to us. However, mum did say that she respected him as a parent, that she found his basic values as a parent to be sound.

We hated him because we were afraid of him and because he was nasty to mum — he always insulted her, told her she was worthless, criticized and humiliated her, etc., etc., But the worst part of that was that he was so paranoid about her having any bit of life that he did not control that he destroyed her as a person — she became ill, we encouraged her to leave, she left secretly one afternoon, with a small suitcase, walking a mile to the bus stop to catch a bus to town to catch a train to Sydney, with not enough money in her pocket to even catch a cab to somewhere. She did not have anywhere to go, but managed to get a room at a charity hostel… Dzid and I were terrified that he would come home and find her gone and go after her before she got to the bus. Mum had tried to stay on the farm until Dzid finished school (I was already away at university) but when her health failed, her doctor told her to get out of there or she would be dead. So, poor Dzid was left alone to cope and cook and do her schoolwork and milk the cow and… and… and… Later, he got a housekeeper — there were several of them — they kept changing, since they were not prepared to put up with his demands and rages. Dzid did not have a happy time of all that.

One of dad’s methods of control over mum was to never let her have any money for herself. He also tried to control her correspondence, so she had to get a secret mailbox in town — where I collected her mail on the way home from high school. She used a pseudonym for her bits of writing that were published in the Latvian paper, because she was afraid that dad would find out that she had something published — he read the paper.

Although he did not beat her, we were afraid that one day he would get mad enough and start. When he later bought a shotgun — he said it was because foxes and goanas (a big Australian lizard) that were stealing eggs and hens from the sheds, I was terrified that I would come home from school one day and find that he had shot her. I even told one of the teachers who knew our family…

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Some other extracts from Ruta’s emails to Inese:

22.12.17. [I gave her my book about mum.] “Thank you for the letter and pictures of your mom’s work. That way I can get to know her better and I will always be horrified at how crazy her life has been with Jānis. For such an artist to become a farmer, in circumstances like that, in a strange land, etc. How much did you, both daughters, have to suffer. Yes, sometimes things are so complicated.

20.2.2015. “The brother, Peter, lived most of his life in the house of his mother-in-law in Cesis. While still in Riga he was drinking a lot, his wife Elza was a nurse. They had no children. At one time when Peter was working in a marsh, or somewhere similar, he was injured in an accident and from then on he was disabled.  I can remember what an effort it was for him to raise his glass to his lips. I remember that they kept arguing even when I was there visiting. HOW SAD ALL THAT IS, isn’t it?

I do not know much about my grandfather, except that he was a farmer’s son, he drank, but my grandmother was a proud woman, she did not make friends with relatives. She had a very difficult life.
My mom was a teenager when she learned about her father’s death. Their life took place in Smiltene, around Smiltene. I once tried to understand in which cemetery in Smiltene he was buried, but in vain.”

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Anna’s letters to her sister Alīse — [I do not have most of the dates, so I do not know exactly when they were written or in what order. I have numbered them just to separate one letter from another.]

1. My dear sister you ask how is Erna, I don’t know. Inese has already said that Erna’s health is not very good. She lives with Dzidra. Inese says she had to divorce because John always told Erna that she was stupid and called her all kinds of other names in the presence of the children. Inese said she couldn’t bear to see her mother suffer. She said she had already started hating her father, and for Inese’s wedding, Inese had seated them together at the table at the restaurant. As soon as John arrived, he took his table card and swapped it with another and didn’t sit next to Erna. I forgot to ask if they had already been divorced, I suppose yes. Inese said that Erna had become so insecure that she could not open her mouth, the daughters couldn’t watch and that was the only solution – divorce. I told Inese that I would correspond with John and try to persuade him to take Erna back. Inese was happy about it but I not so much.

2. I cannot get anywhere with John. He just tells me not to mix in things that I don’t know anything about, it’s totally useless to try achieve something with John, I feel sorry, dear sister, about this thing with Erna.

3. My dear sister, I don’t think I’ve sent you a letter from John. I will put it in this letter. I don’t often write to John, if there is a letter, it’s like I don’t feel like replying. I’ll write to you the contents of the letter he wrote to me on 7/12/64 for Christmas: I wish you a Merry Christmas. I wish God would enlighten your mind as much as possible and help you manage your days. Janis. Sister, what would you reply to such a letter. I don’t believe he was trying to achieve anything bad with such a letter, maybe his thoughts weren’t bad, but on paper, such words sound bad, insulting. That’s why I just didn’t answer. When you read the letter I am sending you, you will understand me, my actions. I hope that you will receive this letter, write if you receive it, so that I know. Dear sister, what else can I write to you about our brothers. We get no great pleasure. John is frustrated with his life and does not admit his mistakes, only looking for blame with others. And Peter’s drinking has ruined his life and that of Elza [Peter’s wife]. Peter has a very serious illness, like opium, which consumes a person … in a mental and corporeal state with Peter …

4. … and is Peter not improving a little, or is he still carrying on with drinking. Poor Elza, and what does dear Janis do? Does he have a decent job and is he a decent person? How difficult it is for children who have to grow up and fight without the help of their father, without the advice of their father. How terrible it is for parents to have children and then divorce and ruin their children’s lives and take away their family life, a real warm family home, one really has to have heartfelt pity for them.

5. My dear sister, do not worry about our brother, who knows nothing about [your?] present life and circumstances…….
Inese just now said herself that she used to cry and suffer because of her father’s sternness, but now says her father was right and she is grateful.

6. Dear sister, what you write to me about Peter greatly pleased me. May God grant that he will get better and God will help him. You can write to John, though. However, I have not yet replied to the two letters I sent you. Sister, I think John is not aware that he is doing anything wrong. He thinks and feels differently – he lives by calculation and we sisters with heart and feelings.

7. My sister, I haven’t heard from John for a long time, I think it’s more than a year that I have no news. I have not written myself, it is difficult to keep in touch from such a distance, because everyone has their own life, their own interests. I have a bad conscience, but from that distance, giving advice to John is impossible and hard to do in a letter, and I’m a lazy writer, you already see that, dear sister.

8. … and that medicine from the big bottle is something Peter needs to drink every day, it strengthens his nerves, and Peter really needs it so much.
…
Don’t worry and don’t freak out about Peter, he is truly is a poor thing with all his pain and suffering, a real bundle of nerves, dear sister, don’t hold it against him. Sister, such is the fate of both of us, we both have already suffered and worried a lot because of our brothers, both Peter and John. Just think of all that Peter has already ….

9. Dear little sister, I will send you a letter from John so you can read it yourself. I am sorry for him, but I cannot help, because how can I look for a woman for him, pull her away form her family, relatives and friends, and send her to an unknown foreign place. I can’t do it so irresponsibility, I just don’t want to and I can’t and it’s against my heart’s conviction. [The “woman” he is looking for is someone to be a housekeeper for him and Dzid after mum left — he must have asked, if she knew anyone who would want to come to Australia from Germany.]

10. …. and try to live it as much as possible, as our mum always said, what you don’t want you to be done to you, don’t do it to others. My dear sister, what can I tell you. John hasn’t written a letter to me, I don’t know why. Maybe I have offended him somehow, I don’t know. I’m not a great writer myself. In any case I will write again and if he does not answer me then I will see further. Perhaps because John holds it against me that I didn’t let him take much part in my sorrow. He tried to give me advice and I took it badly and felt hurt. [I don’t know what “sorrow” she is referring to, but perhaps it is the death of her husband — I do not know when that was.] I once wrote to him to write to me about the difficulties he had to deal with, or his daughters, instead of just boasting with the whole letter filled with songs of praise. Maybe it offended John.

[Erna on 6 month visit in Australia from Canada]
Wednesday, 29th June, ’83.

Mum and I just had a good day — lunching in the Botanic Gardens, seeing the free concert (a young violinist) at the Conservatorium and then talking for ages about all the exit from Latvia in a coffee lounge in the MLC complex…

So. When first the war came — mum went back to the country — and dad went too.

Out of context: when they arranged to meet, by letter — mum responding to dad’s newspaper ad [the other way around] — he put in his letter that if they catch sight of each other and don’t like the look of each other — or one of the other — they must still go through with the meeting — and NOT run (or pretend that they aren’t the one!) That sort of instruction can only have come from experience on his part of someone having done that to him. And mum says that if she had not had such instructions — that based on her initial reaction to seeing him — she would have “run”. She didn’t like him. But she went through with it — and later still made herself continue and toe the line, denying feelings of dissatisfaction with him.

Anyway — the rumours of Jewish hardships — there were lots of Jews — some in more lower class shop owning groups — others rich and big shop owners. Rumours of them being herded together — starving. Some people gave them food. Beliefs — that they were connected with communism — they were made to wear the stars of David.

Mum’s mother didn’t shop in the Jewish areas — they were known to be great ones for bargaining and taking advantage of unwary shoppers. But some others enjoyed the interactions.

Mum had one “boyfriend” who expressed his anti-Semitism in such terms that “we will wipe them out so hard that you won’t be even able to scrape the remains off the wall with a knife.”

Back on the farm — the Germans had already gone through — and the “war” came when the Russians began pushing the Germans back — so the front line began approaching.

Then the German-extract people were given an opportunity to return to Germany. Some went — some didn’t — the two ugly German daughters [don’t know who they were?] — who had been so retiring, isolated — not integrated — one had asked some Latvian lady known to mum whether the daughter could possibly go & travel by train to Berlin (i.e. wasn’t she too unacceptable — too ugly!!!)
The daughters went — the old father stayed.

Jaša [mum’s brother in law] rang and said — shoe the horses — and for real prepare to leave. He drove all the way from Riga to offer to take mum, grandmother & Inese — (dad seemed to be busying himself among the Germans & not always present). AND MUM DIDN’T UNDERSTAND and grandmother assumed she did understand. And she says if she had understood that he’d come for that — she would have gone — – –

Mum and dad packed 3 carts — (one dad got by some bullying of some neighbour who was staying). They buried much stuff around the place — mum wanted to take a little bound packet of photos — dad wouldn’t let her — too heavy — himself had packed these great balls of leather belts….
Other stuff was bags of oats etc., dried meat, dried other foodstuffs — one roll of mum’s good etchings etc., was allowed….

They drove 20 kilometres to some neighbouring barn — deposited gran & Inese there. Unloaded one cart — went back. Mum tidies up the place, put up her drawings that were still there — they still took a walk around the whole place — almost felt as though there was no danger — should they really go — when they hear the zing of long range bullets. They had even the previous day made love out doors.

They packed the horse — mum still looked back at the house and privately asked it — is this it — will I see you again — and felt no response — an open ended question: Que sera. You choose.
They went back — buried more stuff. In all mum counted 7 barn stopovers.

At some stage one of the carts overturned — she saw the roll of drawings — even was aware of a moment where she could grab them — and yet that choice — that they were HER things, & so DIDN’T matter… …

In one of the places dad would be off among the Germans by day — mum was milking the 2 cows they took with them. Gran & Inny stayed in the house — mum was 1/2 kilometre away in the barn with the horses & cow. She had too much milk — decided to go back to the house or somewhere where there were the German soldiers. Offered them milk — they were still well supplied at that stage — but 2 of them came back with her. Subsequently one returned at some later stage — mum registered a moment of — possible second encounter — she says it would not have been rape — she was attracted too — but she was afraid — & he sensed her fear — and it dissipated into him telling her she (and the situation — the barn, the horses) reminded him of his sister & home. mum remembers it as a poignantly human situation — one where he valued the human being more than any desire to take advantage of the situation.

Finally they were down to one horse and cart (other foodstuffs, etc., had been used up). They went through Riga — mum remembers someone observing them & crying at the sight — that Latvia had come to this…

They went on to some sea port further than Riga [Liepāja — Libau] — and thence sailed to some German port [Gotenhafen]. Then by train to Brandsdorf and Jägerndorf 12 kilometres outside that was a camp (refugee) somewhere near the Czech border.

There the train journey had been freezing — grandmother became ill & so did Inese. They both went to hospitals. Inese went to the Czech one — and she had pneumonia, etc. — and diphtheria broke out — so mum & dad grabbed her — even though they weren’t supposed to and raced her off to the German hospital. She was refusing to eat — but some German lady, whose husband had taken her kid because he was a true German & she was one of those Germans who had come from stock (!!) who’d settled outside Germany — & so this lady was probably just in hospital through a nervous breakdown — she took on the task of looking after Inese — because the German nurses weren’t going to accept her — they had no time. Inny was refusing to eat, etc.

So this lady took it upon herself to coax Inese into eating. She was there maybe a month while mum was still able to visit — but it got so she’d cry so, that after a while mum would just go and look through the curtain so that Inese would not catch sight of her. [This lady apparently wanted to adopt me to replace her missing child — I would have been a German girl then!!]

Inese would have only been about 2. Then some sort of word came from dad’s sister, Anna, that they could go stay with her — so — gran, mum & dad went the 12 hour journey — leaving Inese in the hospital. Finally 2 letters came, saying she was getting better. But mum could hear how people were coming by train from those parts — she knew there would not be much time to go back & get Inese. She went to find where she could get a pass to catch a train back. Some German woman official said — but from this letter we don’t even know if it’s your child. You can’t go — if you can bring a telegram showing evidence that it’s your child & she’s well — you can go & get her. Mum pleaded — the woman got some other official who said “no chance” — & then mum just grabbed hold of the edge of the table — as though not to be moved from there. The woman saw the look on her face — didn’t say more — went into another room — and brought back the pass. Mum — grateful (!) gave her the only 2 cigarettes she had, & promised more when she’d return.

She went & got Inese. When Inese saw her (a month since she’d seen her — or maybe even more) she just clung around her neck & cried & wouldn’t let go — such that the other women were moved — & made mum a bed there so that she could spend the night there & go back the next morning (to Berlin).

Catching the train — it was 200% over crowded — some woman on the train beckoned indicating she was prepared to take mum & child — some 15 yearold young thing took it upon herself to look after mum. The woman on the train indicated she wouldn’t open the carriage door to the huge (either one or two) late men with bulging suitcases who were battering the door & trying to get on the train. Mum says she doesn’t know where the young girl got the policeman — but she did — & he just grabbed the man & suitcases literally by the scruff of the neck and got him out of the doorway — the woman let mum on & the door closed and the train was off.

Mum & Inese had a horrifying 29 hour train journey back to Berlin — the train being held up all the time. But they didn’t even feel like eating the sandwiches they’d been given by the hospital.

Then came notice that things were good in Austria. So — mum, dad, gran & Inese went to Austria.
They had been in an English camp — and while earlier there had been possible movement between the allied refugee camps — some ruling had come preventing this — but still on talk that the American camp was richer with better provisions some 40 families took flight from the English & went to the American camp. There for a while it was good — and I was BORN! It was a brief time of plenty — chocolate milk powder, etc.

However it came to light that our entry (along with those others) had been illegal — that dates had been changed — & that we’d arrived after some cutoff date — so there was a court case (?!) and we were all thrown out [this was part of the screening done in all the camps at some time, people were screened out for various reasons] — returned to German [civilian] territory! Here times were bitter. First we went to some place where there was some cripple with two daughters who complained about our presence (we were farmed out to German families). — So we only stayed there about a week –0 finally, after sleep in a schoolhouse, we got one big room somewhere else [Fellbach]. There was talk that we were all going to be sent back to Russia!

Along the way — somewhere [Fellbach] dad started some sort of shop [black market] — selling sardines and other bits and pieces. He was doing quite well. An incident — at some stage mum was stuck with grandmother & child hard up — and dad was off among the Germans — & he sent her via a German a ring for her birthday. She looked at it in dismay — a ridiculous gesture when they didn’t have enough to eat.

Also around then there was somewhere where they got word from Jaša that there would be more famine — whereas in fact the letter came when things were not really going to get worse — the worst was over — but dad got extra scared — & they just had some sort of dried bread that mum had prepared — and dad wouldn’t give any to mum or grandmother. He figured only some would survive — so he fed himself and Inese. I Hate him for that. I Hate him for that. Mum pulled some bits of bread from the sack [seam] stitching at times…..

Anna came from Berlin to visit — dad managed to get bacon & cabbage — mum prepared cabbage, & cabbage & cabbage — it was better than they’d had before. Anna said “but I really need greens” & started finding elsewhere to eat — thinking probably that mum was some sort of dumb wife — not even really comprehending any of the situation at all!

Grandmother got sick — went to hospital — came back — One night some tiff between mum and dad — she pushed him as he was leaving to go out somewhere — he turned in a rage of “You’ll push me??!” and shoved the door back into mum’s face — her nose began to bleed. So when mum went back to her mother with bleeding face, the older woman became distraught and yelled & couldn’t sleep — and mum thinks the landlady rang the ambulance or the police or whatever, that she should be taken to hospital. By which time grandmother was feeling better — and she clung to the wall protesting not to be sent to hospital — but off she was carted — mum again powerless…
Within a few days at hospital she was better. Not sure of the sequence — for at some stage we all went to visit her.

However there came a letter saying that Austra (mum’s sister [in Siberia]) was alive — & mum took that letter & read it to her mother — who right then had a stroke — one side of her face — on side paralysed. She lay in a coma for a few more days — & died.
The way mum can account it now indicates her coming to terms with it.

Moments when they were still travelling through Latvia with carts — gran was still in the woods with hers — mum & dad already further — they hear an explosion behind them during an air raid (?) and the feeling that they must just go on — maybe she’s injured, or the horses are injured — but that helpless feeling by mum that there’s no choice (under the pressure of dad and the whole situation) — that you just keep going. And then she drives safely out of the woods unharmed. Then mum, when they stopped by a stream, fell to drinking at it, she says, like an animal.

On the 14th June,1941, the occupying Russians deported more than 15,400 Latvian citizens to Siberia and Kazakhstan. This was the first mass deportation from Latvia. 

Latvian statesmen, army officers, court and police officers, members of political parties, prominent scientists, writers, teachers, and members of other professions and their families were arrested and deported.

Among those arrested, many were rural residents. On June 14, 1941, women, children and the elderly were deported to a lifelong camp in Krasnoyarsk Oblast, Novosibirsk Oblast and northern Kazakhstan, where they had to work in forestry companies, collective farms, and Soviet farms under the special command of the USSR Ministry of the Interior. More than 1,900 deported Latvian citizens died in the camps.

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In 1941 when Gunta Lāce, my cousin, was 5 years old, her 8yr old brother Zigurds, her 3yr old sister Dzintra, her mother, my Aunt Austra Lāce , and her Grandmother, (her father’s mother) were deported to Siberia. 
From Gunta’s memoirs. (Translation by Dzidra Mitchell).

1936 – 1941
         When I look back across the years, far back, I see my father’s house. I remember the sunshine everywhere, lush nature, work, the hands of my much loved parents. And our – my brother’s and my – little deeds, and misdeeds. But I remember the work more. I do not want to claim there was no mischief, but I have forgotten that.
        I think that my first memory is about moving from the old house to the new one. Mum was carrying the big mirror, and it seemed so funny, I was jumping about, looking at myself, pulling faces, and it was such fun! The old house was left there, under the big trees at the side of the garden, so dark and heavy, full  of shadows and secrets. But the most interesting part was the attic. What didn’t we do there! My brother and I used to climb up the steps at the end of the house in the evening, to rummage around among all the dust and see what we could find. There was a coffin there, covered with a rug. It was probably waiting for my grandmother’s passing, and that did not happen there, for she ended up dying in Siberia.
        Then I remember with my brother organising a burial for a chicken. That was sad. Next to the barn, up on the driveway, we dug out a little grave, lined it with leaves, and as the dandelions were flowering, the little chicken’s resting place looked like the sun had fallen to earth. The main doer was my brother, and I was always his loving and faithful follower.
        I remember right next to my father’s house there was a big orchard. I did not count, but Mum said there were 120 apple trees in the orchard. Half of them were planted by my grandfather, the other half by my father. How amazing it was. And what a sight, when, in autumn, the branches were bent low with fruit. The ones I remember most were the “Antonovkas”. They glinted so wonderfully big and white among the branches. Dad had made a wooden device – like a hand, with which each apple was taken and put into the boxes. The apples were kept in the cellar, through which flowed a little stream. They stayed there through to the other side of winter, till in spring, they were taken to Riga’s Army’s Economic Store. Mother said that then, over the radio, they announced that apples had arrived for sale from Ļaudona’s “Ruķi” [the name of our farm]. But the cellar still retained the smell of the apples all the way till the next harvest. 
        Yes, and in the orchard, here and there, there were still a few apples left on the branches. When the leaves had fallen, they glinted so enticingly, my brother and I just had to get hold of them, and of course they were the most delicious of all.
        Around the garden there had been planted some hazelnut trees. They were mighty trees. The nuts would be falling with a thud, one just had to gather them up, so that on the long, winter evenings, one could fiddle around, shelling them. Here, Dad came to help. Oh, our Dad! Was there anyone more wonderful and loveable? But he did have to spend a lot of time at the parish hall, because he was the parish elder, and had other commitments as well. Mother was always busy looking after the farm, because it was no small job.
        Our house was newly built – brick, with spacious rooms and big windows, with a barn of variegated stone. Along a solid, paved driveway rode the big loads of hay. And again, my brother and I had to be there. My sister was still tiny, sleeping in the cradle. So she never saw that beautiful, childhood world in my father’s house, every corner filled with the sun’s warmth.
        Mother milked cows, carried the great bundles of cut grass, fed the pigs, chickens, sheep, as well as the big bull. When that bull snorted, we would feel the droplets of saliva hit our faces, and it made a shiver go down our spines. God, how full of life it all was, of all kinds of happenings. Look – there goes mother to the dairy, the cart full of milk cans, her white head-scarf flutters past;  look, there’s the threshing going on, so much activity in the barn. Things are steaming, and father is bringing grain to the shed, and every time, having tipped them out, lets them pour through his fingers. It looks like a caress, and our chatter, at that moment, falls silent. There is a feeling in the air, some kind of sense of joy, and a warm glance slides over everything. 
        And look, time to dig for potatoes. The machine for digging is something marvellous, what fun, how it twists and turns and the potatoes tumble out one after the other.
Yes, that was a short, happy childhood, with endlessly sparkling memories of yet some other happening, like in a picture book, when you turn the pages.

        14. June, 1941
        For us children, misfortune arrived suddenly. Father was not at home, he had been sent to ride his horse to the Krustpils aerodrome. Probably Mother already had some bad feeling, for she had gathered us children into her bedroom, into the big bed. I was woken by Mother saying “Get up, children, we have to go”. The light was dawning, and in the yard stood a truck. I went into the drawing room. By the fireplace, rifle at the ready, waited a soldier. Two others (offsiders) were telling us to hurry up getting dressed. I felt as though something heavy was constricting my chest. Grandmother was sitting on a bundle of clothes and looking at the children through her glasses. God Almighty! If we had known then all the horrors that would follow! My brother was still worrying, that he ought to run out to the garden to shift the sheep pen across (the pen was on wheels), but that was rudely forbidden.
        We were taken to Ļaudona’s town centre, to the yard in front of the city hall, where they let us out, and drove off to get other families. The guard was asleep, lying back on a stack of wood…surely at least some of us could have gotten away, because later, no-one did any more searching, after the trains to Siberia had departed, but we just sat there, awaiting our fate. And around us was a beautiful June morning, with birdsongs, and everything in bloom.
Then it was back into the truck, and on to Madona. On the way we still met Mum’s sister, Erna Dzelme, who threw a little bunch of Maybush flowers into the truck.
        In Madona, they let us out next to the railway station, where there was already a crowd of people. Some were silently crying, others stared, frozenly, straight ahead. Some were being driven into the wagons. They brought a young wife with her husband. They were separated, driven like cattle each into their own wagon. The young man seemed to lose his mind, he ran to the wagon where his wife had disappeared, tore at the door with his fingernails, then turned and started to scrape with his back along the bolts of the doors of the cattle wagon. His shirt tore to shreds, and deep cuts formed on his back, blood was pouring onto the platform, and on top of everything were the shouted warnings of the soldiers. That was the moment when I stopped being a child, at least in my own mind. Thereafter, everything that followed is written on my soul, like on a tape. 
On the edge of the railway, near the station, there remained a couple of loaves of rye bread – someone had left them behind.

        So began the trip into the unknown. At the ends of the cattle wagon there were two tiered bunks. Each side of the doors was a little barred window. We slept on the bunks, crowded one next to the other. Whoever was next to the window described what they could see to the others. At the stations hot water was available in a little container. Whoever had food with them from home, ate it, while others survived with just about nothing.
In the middle of the wagon, a hole had been knocked out of the floor. The women shielded each other with bits of material so they would not have to blush.
        Far beyond the Urals, in a siding at a station, the train stopped – we had arrived. [Distance travelled from Madona to Krasnoyarsk, Russia is 4,980k]. 
Everyone was taken to some school. The rooms were stuffed full. People were sleeping under desks, on desks. I remember on boy had crawled up onto a cupboard and found some peace there. Next day, everyone started having dreadful diarrhea. It was good that the school was in the middle of nowhere. Nearly everyone was squatting, all together in the tall grass. People had long forgotten feelings of embarrassment. Sorrow and despair was everywhere. Where had my mother’s lighthearted way of talking disappeared to? All of Ļaudona’s forests used to ring with her singing. “Cornflower blue is the blue of the homeland’s sky”, rang out when we went mushrooming; no, that really was exultation!  The songs I heard when mushrooming I’ve continued to sing all my life, even in the Russian times, when it was forbidden to sing them.
        Gradually everyone was dispersed among the surrounding state farms and collective farms. A cart arrived, with a scraggy looking little horse. We were seated in the cart, and off we went to the village. The village had a street going through it, and huts along both sides. We were assigned to one of these. Next day, they brought another family to be with us. I can no longer remember their surname.
So began life in Siberia.

That was the first summer in far away Siberia.
        Mother was sent to shovel grain, right there across the street, in a deployed shed. No salaries were paid, and the Latvian women learned how to do what the local women did – poured grains into hidden pockets, which, in the evenings, in a little cast iron pot, we stewed and ate at the communal table in the middle of the room. We would listen to the endless discussions about what people used to eat back in their beloved homes, what foods they used to like eating, what foods they didn’t. I too, thought about how I used not to like cabbage soup, or cocoa, but how wonderful it would have been to have some now. Then I remembered rye bread pudding, that Mum used to take out of the heat-stove in the guest room. What a wonderful aroma! And then memories would come to mind of Christmas, when Mum would bring in a big plate with roast pork and peas.
        Yes, Christmas. When we finally did return to our birthplace, Ļaudona, the beautiful church was no longer there, just a small pile of rubble, overgrown with weeds. But it used to be a beautiful church, right in the middle of town, at the crossroads. And that was probably the last Christmas that I remember well from those way back, precious childhood days, when snow was gentle and the sun, golden. When, in the evening, when it was already getting dark, Dad harnessed the horse to the sled, tied on a little bell, and we all, our legs wrapped in blankets, with loving arms around each other, set off for the church. Snow was falling in big flakes, the little bell sounded so clearly, and not far from our faces the wind was whipping up the horse’s tail. At the church, along the whole rail there were already lots of horses and carriages tied up. Everyone was rather hushed, and in the middle of the church, covered in candles, was a big fir tree. 
        That first summer in Siberia, for a few farthings, we sold whatever the Russian women had not already managed to steal. I still remember those things that Grandmother had managed, that early morning, to tie into a bundle in a sheet. Firstly there was Mother’s national costume. Even now, at the Song Festival, my eyes go searching for that regional type, or ones like it. God only knows what Grandmother had been thinking, taking that with her, but, well, it came into good use, because the skirt was cut up into bits and used well. And then there was Grandfather’s fur coat. We gave that away last, because Grandmother did not want to part with it, and it provided good shelter for us little ones. Yes, and mother’s curtains, that she had woven herself, intended for the glassed-in verandah in our father’s house. They looked like a field full of flowering dandelions. The thieving Russian women must have also seen how lovely they were, for one day they stole them, and made them into skirts.
        The village was at the top of a hill. When you opened the door, it looked out onto endless distance. But as soon as one went out onto the street, the troubles began. The Russian children threw rocks at us, and dried animal dung, and called us fascist pigs, witches and the like. What could we do? Nothing. It was overpowering. That summer, my brother and I began to learn the Russian language. Forever more, stuck in my mind are their mighty swear words, and I think of them even here in Latvia, whenever I see anyone of that nationality.
        After a year, they sent us to a different place. It was a bigger, more populated place. There was even a main street, and little side streets. Again we were accommodated with some Russian woman. She slept on the big, Russian oven, we, on plank beds along the walls of the one room. That period I remember better. Mother worked in a potato processing place. The Collective Farm supplied the potatoes, they were peeled, cut into chips, washed, dried, and sent to the front. Mother carried water from the well, and sometimes, if at all possible, carried the odd potato to somewhere near the well and quickly buried it in the ground. That evening, we would have several potatoes boiling in our little pot. They were not very sweet from having been frozen, but they were our only food.
        Grandmother usually refused her portion, so that we could have more, and Mother had already managed to gulp something down at work. We would sit around the table. and with frozen fingers, peel off the little skins and breathe in the delicious smells.
        That winter, my little sister, who was only about three years old, twice nearly died of starvation. Lay there, bloated, unconscious. Mother was not allowed off work, so then my brother and I sat with her and waited to see what would happen. My brother said we should go begging. But then we were hated, we were the enemy, sent there for correction. Some swore at us, some threw a few potato peelings at us. Somehow we got our sister through, and she lived on.
        But Grandmother was old, and did not survive the starvation. I remember her sitting on a bench, knitting big shawls for some Russian woman. She taught my brother to knit, and later, to everyone’s surprise, he also knitted big shawls. For that, the owner of the shawl sometimes tossed us something edible. 
        Grandmother died in winter. The ground there freezes metres deep. By paying with the clock that Grandmother had been saving as her last memento of Grandfather, Mother talked some Russian into digging a grave. Of course there were no coffins to be had. The Russian broke some bits of wood from a fence, put four planks around Grandmother, and with a sled, took her to the other side of the village hill where, more in snow than in the ground, he buried her. May her soul rest in peace.

        I have mentioned theft several times. But what sort of Russian is he if he does not steal! And he will steal everything – if you are not sitting on top of it, and in those circumstances, we too, big and small, learned to steal. Without stealing, we all would have stayed back there in far away Siberia. When spring arrived, we knew we were secure till autumn. Gradually we learned from the Russian children what was safe to eat. Firstly, along all the fences grew nettles. We picked those, boiled them, poured off the water, and got stuck into eating that green mass. I think nettles were what gave us strength, gave our organisms iron, and filled our stomachs. Salt was not available for months, let alone anything else. Then came the primroses. Oh how they grew, big and juicy, because in Siberia the soil is like black butter, when you turn it over, it shines. Here, the edible part was the flower stem. Later, in the ditches, grew ‘pochkas’ – something similar to thistles, only the stalks juicy and hollow. Those you could peel like rhubarb, and boil into a soup. It made a nice, warm brew. And then, half way through summer it was strawberry time. We wandered among the birch saplings, picking, and again our stomachs were full. And the strawberries there grew big! When we came upon a patch of strawberries, it just shone red. The Russians were too lazy to pick berries. Their favourite thing was pickled mushrooms and potatoes. Those they grew in their gardens around their houses. In winter, they boiled potatoes. They took the rings of mushrooms out of a drum, then, a bite of potato – that is the Russian, fed! The mushrooms were pickled just the way we pickled cucumbers at home. I also now, for my family, prepare pickled mushrooms – delicious! In Russia, in the autumn, there were lots and lots of mushrooms, similar to the ones in Latvia – big, white, milky.
        The strawberries finished, and the bird-cherries began. Anyone who has not been to Siberia does not know what bird-cherries are. Patches of bird-cherry trees grew here and there. Those places were called “okolki”. They looked like overgrown dams in the middle of the field. In the spring, they bloomed like white hillocks, and by the end of summer, the berries were ripe, black, juicy and very very sweet, but with a little cherry stone. The tree branches bent with the weight of the black berries. Of course they were not as big as usual cherries, but when you brushed off a bunch, you could get a handful. Below the wide bird-cherry trees grew blackcurrants. They were rather small, because they received little light, but they tasted good, and was something different for a change.
        But autumn comes again, the summer is so short, and winter so endlessly long, cold, with lots of snow. Just a moment longer, and it is back to thieving. This time it is night, and Mother is with us, and we go to the Collective Farm’s field to steal potatoes. The field was far from the village. We walked for a long time through birch groves, tall grass and at last we arrived. We crawled along the rows on our bellies, digging out the potatoes. From time time we have to listen out, in case someone comes, because sometimes the fields were guarded, and they would shoot without warning. No, this time there was just endless silence all around, in the bush there was the rustle of falling leaves, and in the sky, a moon had risen, big, round  and white. Enough, we would not take more, because we had to get back to the village before light. If they caught us, it could be a bad end for us. At the edge of the field in the bushes we pack up and start walking. After we have been walking for quite a while, Mother says, “this looks familiar” and we are exactly in the same spot where we started for home. Strange. We go again, and after quite a while we find ourselves at the same starting point. Mother says the evil spirit has got us. What is that, we ask? Mother explains and now, added to our tiredness is fear. We start off for the third time, this time at a pace, and with dawn we are back in our hut. The mistress does not notice anything, or pretends she does not notice, for everyone stole. Also, our mistress was an unhappy person. She was no longer quite right in the head, for her sons and husband had been killed in the war. There were very many unhappy people among the Russians.
         Then it was autumn again. Our abode was at the edge of the farming village, next to a little river. The river was about ten metres wide. If I remember correctly, the name of the village was Berjozovka, and I think the river was also called that. They were planning to build an electricity station on the river. They drove in the pylons with enormous sledgehammers, nailed on the planks to divert some of the water so that they could cement it. Mother had to go with buckets and bail out water, which was forcing its way through every gap and pouring back into the dug out area. It was a hopeless task, but you had to do what you were told. Winter arrived, and everything froze, got covered in snow, but in the spring, it all was washed away with the first high water. Whenever I hear mention of Don Quixote, it always brings to mind Mother on the unsteady wooden platform scooping and pouring. This lot with the water was typical of the USSR outfit. There, everything was sewn with rotten thread, both literally and figuratively, crowned with extreme cruelty towards humans.
        That winter we spent in a dugout. It was like a pit, overlaid with wood, earth and turf. There was something like a door, and outside you could see a metal tube for the chimney. The door opened inwards, so that in the mornings it was possible to dig your way out through the driven snow. Mother wrapped her feet in rags and waded through to the forest for sticks. We boiled water, and drank it hot, to warm up. Yes, it was snow, that we melted. If Mother got something edible, we ate that, if not, we made do with just the water. At night, it must have been in January, around, and over our abode crept wolves, scratched at our chimney, and howled and wailed. Usually the pack contained no less than 20 wolves. They roamed around the village, attacked dogs and people. They could sense us under the snow, and we had no peace all through the nights till winter was over and they went off into the taiga.
        The Russians, there in far away Siberia, had not had an easy life, and that had rendered them mean and lazy. That malice and laziness was also imported into Latvia. But back then, we were still there, with famine, and cold, with hopelessness, not knowing what would come next. My brother and I would wander through the village, hoping to find something to eat. Our little sister is in the dugout, Mother is at work, we do not know when we will see her again. Those dogs, what are they tearing into? Let us have a look. They are tearing into something big, red. We chase off the dogs, and find a chewed horse’s head. We hurry back with it to the dugout, we will have something to eat! It happened often like that, that horses died of starvation, or if they could move no longer, they would be flogged until they fell dead, there on the street. The Russians never even dreamt that in summer one should cut hay so that you would have some to give to the animals in winter. That was too complicated for them. So, word would spread, that in such and such a spot there is a dead horse. We would go and slice off those stringy muscles, not particularly tasty, but still…
        And again it was summer, in the heart of nature. It was wonderful. In the meadows there bloomed white lilies, and beside them blossoms that in Latvia you could only see in special greenhouses. Among the trees bloomed slipper wart in a whole variety of colours, Tall, over one’s head, hung big, bright blooms, and along the gutters flowered the willow herbs, and everything smelled so wonderfully, so wonderfully.
But the Siberian summer is so short, everything blooms so quickly, ripens and look, already the winter winds are starting to howl, and snow covers the paths, and again it is back to starvation and cold.

        One day, Mother said that we were being given a horse and cart, and we have to go to a village in a different part of this same Collective Farm. The Collective Farm there stretched on for dozens of kilometres. That is wide Siberia, in the Krasnojarsk area.
        We drove out of the village early in the morning. A still, winter’s day, no road, not even any sign of one. No signposts, just the direction. In the cart, under some sort of rags, wrapped up in rags, we – Mother and three children. Around us, as far as the eye could see, nothing but snow, occasionally bits of forest, or bushes. The horse wades through the snow, the cart lurches about, and it is cold.
        It has already become dark, the horse begins to stop, and the only way to get it to move is to whip it. At last it stops and refuses to take another step. Night. How far still to the next village? Mother un-harnesses the horse, takes it by the bridle and together with my brother, sets off to look for the next village. I am left with my little sister, under the rug of rags, in the middle of wide Siberia. We were asleep. Suddenly I hear the snow crunching. I do not dare look for fear. What joy on hearing Mother’s voice. The village had been about five kilometres away, they got a different horse, and my brother stayed behind with some Latvian family. Soon we are there too. Turns out she is a Mrs. Kvēps, also from our beloved Ļaudona. Now the talk flows non-stop, joy at meeting again, but it turns out that this is still not the right part of the village, and tomorrow we have to keep going, but it is not so far.
        Everyone is pleased that we have made it safely. A few days earlier, about there where my sister and I were asleep alone in the cart, the wolves had eaten some woman and her child, all that was left of the child was a small boot. Yes, the wolves would always leave behind some bit of evidence.
Next day we said our good-byes and continued on. In Krutojarska’s Grain Farm, Section 5, we lived out the rest of our years of exile.
        Here, our abode was yet again different. On a flat area, in the corners, four posts are driven in, and that is the size of the room, ie the house. Between the posts, a wattle fence is woven, tightly. This fence, from both sides, gets covered in a sort of cement made of a mixture of cow dung and clay. Over the top, logs, branches and sod. In summer, grass grows on the roof, the roots hold everything together, and the roof is ready. Inside a little stove is built, and in such a hut we lived – two Latvian families. Of course Mother was rarely home, always far away in the fields, and in winter, she is among the animals at the cattle farm. The poor animals, standing there in an open shed, just a wattle fence around. In winter Mother had to stand guard against the wolves, with a wooden stick.
        Spring arrives, and our family is transferred to a hut nine kilometres away, for summer in the pastures. Mother is given an old nag, and she rides off to look after the cattle. Drive them whichever way you wish – pastures in every direction. I remember once, a pack of wolves had chased the cattle, some had been torn to bits, others had dispersed. Mother was crying, on the back of the nag. The Collective Farm boss arrives, yelling, “You will pay!” How can we pay, if we have never received a salary. Then we would be put in prison! Mother is crying again. What will happen to the children?
         My brother boiled up some nettles, and we were taking them to Mother in some sort of clay pot. While looking for Mother, we tripped, the pot broke, and we both sat down and cried, we could still get more nettles, but the pot was gone.
        The hut where we spent that summer was similar to the previous one. We slept on planks, on hay. But I still now get the chills, remembering the bed bugs there. In the evenings, they would come in droves, onto you as you slept, the whole wall would be moving. If you wiped your hand across the wall, your hand would stink and your palm would be covered in blood. That was why, as much as possible, we would go outside. It does not rain much there, and for three months the weather is wonderful. Again, my brother and I would go searching for food. And the first things we found, were crow’s eggs. There was no shortage of crows, and plenty of eggs. The harder part was getting to them. The nests were high up in the tops of the trees, but below it was still covered with spring meltwater. And the crows were not particularly friendly, either, but my brother was a whiz at climbing, with me below ready to catch the eggs.
        Once the overseer gave notice that we children had to turn up at the village in order to go to the wheat fields, spread out at arms length from each other, and pull up the thistles. In the evening they would give each of us one litre of oatmeal porridge. My brother and I went. My sister was still small, and she stayed in the hut by herself. We came back in the evening. In the good soil, the thistles had grown over head-height, and some of them were not so easy to pull out. Sometimes we could only break off the tops. In the evenings, our palms were swollen, full of thorns, we could not straighten our fingers. Once, I can not remember why, but my brother was not there, and I went to the field with the children from the village. That evening, were were brought back to the village, and the local children dispersed into their homes. I stood and watched the big, red sun sink down behind the distant hills, and twilight set in, but I had no-where to stay. I would have to go the nine kilometres to the summer pasture hut. At that moment I felt such emptiness and loneliness. At the beginning, the road went along the plain, up a rise, across a bare hill, then into a valley, bush right up to the edge of the path, and tall grass. It got dark. Fear rose up, because I could see that I was being followed by a single pair of shining eyes. A wolf. But it was summer, and it was not yet so hungry that it would immediately attack me. But it followed me nearly all the way to the hut. I was already 8 years old – in Siberia as a punishment because my parents diligently took care of their farm, their land, and for that we were deemed enemies of the state, to be exterminated.

        In Autumn, when herding time was over, we went back to the village again. Mother had to look after animals, and children were to go to school. But how could we go to school when we had nothing to wear. Now Mother, out of the old rug, full of holes, made me a long, tattered thing, like a mad-man’s shirt, with my legs bare. It was a couple of hundred metres to the little house which was supposed to be the school. We ran there, across the frozen ground. The village had about 10 houses, and in the class there were about 20 children. I can still see us sitting there. The teacher turns out to be quite young. The class is quiet, no unwarranted noise or mischief. We learn to write letters – Russian, of course. There is no paper, we make do with old newspapers. There is no ink, either, but the teacher makes some ink out of soot, and we write with goose feathers. 
        One day the teacher says, “Children, there’s the first snow!” Everyone turns towards the window to look – yes, it is falling in huge flakes. But I’m just thinking about my bare feet. By the time the class is over, the ground is already covered in a thick layer of snow. I run across the snow, freezing. I sit down in the snow, and wrap my feet in my skirt for a moment, and then keep running. 

        And then it is spring again. That evening, Mother has to deliver water to the village, to the fields, to the threshing places, for the combine harvesters. The village is on top of a wide, rounded hill. There are no wells there. The water had to be brought from a valley, 5 kilometres away. On the cart, there was a big barrel, and at the front a place where you could sit, and the whole thing was pulled along by a pair of grey-brown bulls. I remember one was called “Busijs”, I’ve forgotten the name of the other one, but I remember well what they looked like, and the picture of Mother sitting  there with a long rod, controlling the direction, sometimes shouting out her orders. The beasts were quite peaceful, moving at a slow pace, steady and precise. The road went along the top of the hill, and then a sudden turn and a steep descent. Usually the bulls held the cart well, but one time, I don’t know what got into their heads, they started racing down the hill at a gallop. The barrel was swaying about, we were screaming, hanging on to the edges of the cart. I still don’t understand how we all didn’t fall out and get killed under the big barrel. There were no reins or anything like that. Thank God we got down in one piece.
         As bare as the hill was, like a bald head, in contrast the valley was lushly green: tall grass, flowers, bush – mainly bird-cherry trees. Towards autumn, all the branches are again bent, full of berries. Well, the village folk will have to do without water, as it is more needed on the fields. Mother fills the big barrel, and not far from the well we break off bird-cherry branches, black with berries, lay them across the barrel and so we have something to eat on the way to the fields. We drive along like gypsies, everything we own is on our backs, and empty bellies to boot.
        Siberia’s land is very rich, but it has no-one to look after it properly. In the fields, if you turned over the sod, poured in the seed, the wheat would grow unbelievably. The grain – big and yellow. It was lovely if you could grab a handful, and, on a ladle on the fire, roast them. What a meal that was! Well, you could eat them as they were, that was also good. You had to be very careful with pinching things. Once, I remember, not far from our hut, in the valley was a potato field. A quiet evening, the sun getting ready to set, and suddenly we hear someone screaming awfully. We ran to look, and saw someone riding along the potato field, dragging something -somebody – behind the horse. Some boy had had a brief dream of having some potatoes…

         In autumn, when the fields were cleared, the straw was burned, and on the field, on the ground, there remained singed ears of corn, lots particularly if the field had not been harvested, but just burnt. Then the children moved like shadows, dragging big bags, collecting the corn. Then, if they did not manage to hide in the bushes, and the horse rider caught you, you got a whip across the ribs, and the bag of corn was trampled under the horse’s feet.
Harsh nature, harsh people. 
        It was the winter of 1945. Our lives were following the familiar pattern – hunger, cold, never knowing what the next hour would bring, or the next day. We saw Mother very seldom. For weeks, she was forced to be away working. We three children, lived our own lives. We were lucky if we managed to steal something somewhere, if not, we sat on the straw and froze.
        The Russians refused to go and work, for during war time, no-one got paid. Around their huts there were little gardens, where they planted potato peelings and grew some potatoes. The Latvian families were not given any land, the women were away at work, and anyway there was nothing to plant. If we managed to get some peelings, we immediately wolfed them down.
There was no shop in the town, we had no money, we didn’t even get salt for months on end.
        I remember one evening, a man came to the village. Our hut was right at the edge of the village, so he came up to our place. He was a Latvian, and told us that he had escaped from his camp. His camp had been near some town with a station. The men were starving, driven into the woods to work, and had been chewing on tree bark, brother killing brother for the sake of a clover blossom. Those that didn’t look as if they were going to survive were piled onto the carts by the guards and driven further off from the camp and tossed into a pile as food for the wolves. The townsfolk raised a fuss – because when the wind blew from that direction, the smell was dreadful. This fellow too had pretended to be dead, and was carted off and tossed on the pile. Now, he said, he was following along the edges of places, and hoped to get to Latvia. He left next morning, I don’t know whether he made it to Latvia. Oh God, how far away was our dreamt-of place, our Latvia!
        There were camps, where the weak and the dead were put outside the gates. Just so no-one would escape, the guards would first take them to the forest, and with hammers, bash their skulls in. Then they were taken either to the woods, or, if the camp was in the hills, they were thrown into the gorge, where they lie, permanently frozen.
        The Communists have annihilated more than a hundred million people – destroyed them either violently, or with starvation. And I am overcome with wild hatred if I think about it all, and I cannot forgive them, and I curse them, and will curse them till my dying hour!

        Also this winter is happily over, and it is spring again. One day, there is a big commotion in the village – the war is over! And our dejected hearts are awakening in some sort of faint hope – perhaps there will be some sort of change? We hope, and we hope, but the days go on, one after the other.

         From my mother’s memoirs:
“….The Russian women in the village had a huge number of children – some even had 21 and 22. The grown sons and the fathers were at the front, the little ones, one after the other, with bare bottoms, lived together in the room with the animals and birds, and in summer on the streets, and the mothers felt happy if the odd one died, leaving fewer.
        Once, my Dzintra was very sick. We were working in the fields, and the woman overseer came up and said, “perhaps it will be good, God will take her”. I froze! Even if all else is lost, life – is something that must be preserved! We were starving, we were naked – but we were alive! The state took our work, our strength, everything it could squeeze out of us – we clenched our teeth and hated them, hated them. Can it be asked of me now, that I sing “Hosanna” to it all? A million curses upon those who destroyed my life!….”

         I don’t remember much about leaving the village, so I will write some more from my mother’s memoirs:
“.…The war was over, and our hopes of seeing our homeland grew, but we saw no change. Then news arrived that in the regional centre someone would be coming from Latvia to take the children away from starvation. Mine too went off, but then came back again, because they could not take everyone. Zigurds tried – he had taken his sisters by the hand and gone to beg the Commissioners to be taken back to Latvia. But the Commissioners from Latvia had said that they had not imagined under what conditions people were living, and that they would come back a second time. And they did, in October of 1946, and then we had to bring the children to the station in the centre. In the morning a cart arrived, with some children already in it. My three also got seated all in a row. The ground was frozen, it was cold, and they were half-naked. The camp overseer had boiled some potatoes, wrapped them in a rag, and put them in my lap for Gunta. Marta’s mother took off her knitted cardigan and gave it to Dzintra, and said to send it back with the driver. By that time we were already being given packets of bread – 600g per day for our family. I gave this to my lot so that the centre they could take it all out and have a feed, but Zigurds, along with the knitted cardigan, had sent it back because “they would be giving us something to eat, but you, Mammu, are left with nothing.”
        Without them! I clenched my hands, lest I undo the string, which served as a belt on my old cardigan. Would I be able to stand it? I lived off the hope that they all three would survive, and then, perhaps one day…!….”

        And then there we are already, going along the street in Krasnoyarsk, being led like convicts in a line – children, endlessly starving, wrapped in rags, half-naked, with big eyes and big bellies, people standing along the sides of the street, staring at us. Criminals being led away. One woman took off her small daughter’s little red checkered coat and threw it onto my shoulders. I can still see that little coat, remember its pattern, its texture. And I have deep gratitude to that woman at the side of the road.
        We were billeted out in some orphanage. The building was on the extremely steep bank of the Yenisei River, at the edge of town. Forest all around, next to the fast flowing river. On the opposite bank of the Yenisei, hills rising up, and then the taiga. Now and then, a train would go across the bridge and along the coast, and round the bend into the taiga – going towards Latvia, our longed-for land.
      We spent several days in the orphanage, tummies still rumbling, my brother occasionally bringing my sister and me some carrot he had managed to pinch from some garden. Those were so few, but my brother would console us saying – be patient, soon we will be going to Latvia.
        And then we were herded into the wagon, like sardines (if I remember rightly – 150 of us). Each morning we were given a slice of the traditional Russian rye bread (brick) and half a herring. It stank horribly, was smelly and salty. They didn’t give us anything to drink. We were forced to reject the herring. Usually my sister and I wolfed down the bread and waited for next morning. Our brother always managed to hide a couple of bites out of his slice of bread, and in the evening would push those into our mouths. But we were so thirsty, we cried. Then our guards, who right there in one of the compartments all night were eating and drinking and carrying on in Russian, gave us the boiling water from the locomotive’s runoff to drink. It reeked of coal, but we drank it. Then the sicknesses started – the dysentery, the typhoid. The sick ones were put off the train at stations. Whether they survived, who knows?
        In Moscow, our guards left us, the railway workers pushed the wagon onto the next door rails, so we would be out of the way, and forgot about us. Only by chance, some railway worker found us again, went looking for someone in authority, reported about the half-dead children, and after a lot of pushing and shunting and switching tracks, our wagon was coupled to a train going to Riga. And we were off again! All around stretched the flat land of Russia, full of wrecked cars, tanks, rubbish. One morning we saw bushy forest again, and someone said that we were crossing the border into Latvia. Why did every birch, every pine tree seem so precious? Latvia… A word, which in our exile, was always in our thoughts, spoken out loud countless times. We didn’t know what was waiting ahead for us, but our hearts reached out towards our homeland, the land of our sweet memories and hopes. 
        Rīga!!!

[PS And our torment still was not at an end!]

Aunt Austra’s story [Ian Hart’s text].
[The Harts and Inese and husband travelled in Russia in 1968, and met Austra Lācis, Erna’s sister in Leningrad.]

Siberia

In 1941, when the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, they found it necessary to take action against all those who could be considered dangerous: known patriots, army officers, people in political positions. These days the ex-patriot Latvians remember June 14th as the day of the first of a series of mass deportations.

On June 14th, 1941, she was at home with her three children, the youngest six months old, when the Russians called. Her husband was the mayor of the town and had been an officer in the national guard, and this evening, quite by chance, he was away. They took her and the children, giving them just enough time to pack a few belongings before they put them onto the trucks. She telephoned to her sister who was living a few miles away and got what she could together. The truck got bogged and the delay gave the sister enough time to arrive by bicycle and see her in the truck. She picked a few flowers from beside the road and handed the through the bars, They were treasured for years.

After this they were loaded into railway cattle trucks which were boarded up and a hole left in the floor to be used as a communal toilet. They were given nothing to eat for the six day journey — across Siberia, to a place somewhere near Lake Baikal, They arrived, starving. They were given a spade and told to dig. “You are here to work,” they were told. “When you die there will be plenty to replace you.”

Soon after they arrived they were “asked” to sign two papers. One stated that they had come to Siberia as “voluntary workers”; the other stated that they willingly signed over 700  of their 900 roubles to the state towards a national loan. (This was their annual “wage” — 900 old roubles — worth one tenth of their value in new roubles. In this decade, Kruschev officially repudiated this “loan” and it was never returned.) Those who refused to sign were awoken at regular intervals for as many nights as it took them to break down.
It was continually stressed that they would never return, that they were to die here. “Remember who you are!” they were told.

At no time in the whole of the 16 years she was there was there ever any pretence of feeding them. Her staple diet was nettles, boiled with salt, which was available. Flour cost 1,000 (old) roubles per kilo and, consequently was unobtainable. A month’s wage bought two buckets of potatoes, which worked out at three thin slices per person per day. If they caught a rat or any other rodent they had meat in their soup.

The children went to school in a village several kilometres away, on foot, so that when it snowed the school was cut off. After a year the clothes they had were rags. The youngest child developed a rash which spread over her face and eye lids and they feared for her sight, and when the rash disappeared she came out in huge, blue cysts all over her body. There was no medical attention and no medicine. When people died, from overwork, from starvation or from punishment, or when they were suddenly sent away, their children were either looked after by others, or died.

Her saddest memory is coming home after dark to see her children waiting for her. She had no food to give them, so she could only put them to bed. It makes her sad to remember that they never complained.

Her job was minding calves in the spring, which involved her wading through swamps, often up to her waist in the water and mud. She worked from before dawn until after dark. One night coming home from work she saw a dog carrying something. She chased the dog and found it had a calf’s head. She took it from the dog and several families had meat for a week. Another time some cattle died and were dumped in the forest. They found the carcasses and had meat again for months.

After five years, somebody decided that it was inhuman to treat children this way, so it was announced that the children were to be taken home. Someone had sent her 1,000 roubles, but all she could buy for it were some old army blankets which she made into some trousers and a coat for the boy and a skirt and coat for the eldest girl. She took the padding out of some pillows and made blouses for the girls from the material. The youngest child at least had some clothes to wear.

While the children were waiting for the train, a Russian woman going past was so overcome by the sight of the thin, shivering little girl that she took off her daughter’s coat and gave it to her. Another Russian woman went into her house and brought them a pot of boiled potatoes, telling them to keep the pot between them for warmth and to eat the potatoes on the journey.

When they reached Latvia they were put into orphanages, though later on, relatives were notified, or found out somehow and claimed many of the children. Any relatives who claimed the children were paid 50 (old) roubles per month for their board and the children had to work accordingly. It was many years before she re-established contact with her children and found that they were still alive.

After the children had gone they were told: Don’t think that this is the thin end of the wedge. Just because the children have gone, don’t imagine that you are next. You will never see them again.

For those who showed any resistance there were two favourite punishments. The first was marching. They were simply marched to death. Often this was done to the men just to remind them of where they were. She remembers the sight of a gang marching up and being allowed to sit down on a grass bank for a rest. When they left the ground was black: not a single stalk of grass remained.

The second, most terrible punishment was “sending North”. This was tantamount to execution as only 2% of those sent survived. In the summer the men were employed carting logs through the swamps, up to their necks in the water, attacked by the huge arctic mosquitoes which could kill men in their weakened condition. A friend of hers was sent North for stealing two handfuls of grain for her children, for two years, one for each handful. She was lucky: she got a job working in the kitchen, so she did not starve. In the evenings she and the other women collected the bodies of those who had died in the last 24 hours, loaded them onto a cart and hauled them out into the woods where they were dumped. All that remained of the previous night’s bodies were the bones — the wolves had finished them off.

At the time of the 1941 purges a class of children (aged 9-10 years) had been heard singing an “old” national song (I would rather sacrifice my head than my country, etc.). The whole class was deported to Siberia. They were marched to death. It was the normal practice to shoot anyone who dropped from exhaustion, so these columns of marchers were a pitiful sight — everyone helping everyone else to keep on his feet until the very last moment.

In 1956 they were released and sent home. The one suit of clothes she owned had fifty patches in it.

—————–

She now is home again, a free Soviet citizen, presumably grateful for all that communism has done for her. She lives with her eldest daughter and son-in-law and their three children in a two-room flat. You can touch the roof with your hand.

When she retired she went to the pensions office with her slip of paper to say that she had worked in Siberia for sixteen years. They would not accept it. She had to keep travelling into Riga for months, to hire a lawyer who sent a letter to Head Office for her. Letters went back and forth and after months of nervous and physical energy she got her pension. “Why didn’t you come straight to us, rather than hiring a lawyer?” they asked.
She gets 50 roubles per month on her pension and earns another 60 roubles, working in a plant nursery.

The impressions she gave us of Riga today confirmed and added to what we had been told by the other Latvians. Communism, she says, might be very good for the Russians, but it has bled all the other republics dry. All the top posts are held by Russians who keep a separate community with their own shop and entertainment, yet Russian is the official lingua franca. Very few Latvians are any better off than they were before the war, most are far worse off. The people who are satisfied with the new order had no shoes before the “revolution” and now they have two pairs.

Fish is unavailable as is fresh meat and milk products and until five years ago it was only possible to buy black bread. There is no traditional baking any more (there are no ingredients, even if one remembers how). There is no tradition left at all.

There is no sense of responsibility for anything, as no-one owns anything. A man goes out to fix a tractor and if you follow him you can collect a whole box of tools. The next time there are no tools and the tractor does not get fixed. Nobody will raise a hand to do a repair in a block of apartments — the attitude is: when it falls down the government will give us a new one. And the buildings do fall down — every day. Drunkenness is a terrible problem and she told us the same story about the wives going to the factories to meet their husbands.

But what else do these people have? What did they do before to amuse themselves? Is it any wonder that people take the opportunity to study in spite of the lack of reward? To give themselves something. More than often they hide their qualifications and work in a factory, denying that they ever had an education.
But she is not so depressed about the children as the other Latvian was. They have eyes, she says. Her two eldest children remember Siberia.

She was not worried about talking to us or being seen talking to us. What has she to lose? She has lost everything already and there is very little more they could do to her (though today in Riga there is a minister of religion who has twice recently been sent to Siberia for being outspoken). Inese looked at her aunt and kept seeing her mother — the clothes did not fit, neither did her shoes or her false teeth and she looked twenty years older than her sister in Australia.

We took her to the railway station to get a ticket. She queued at the window and handed over a ten rouble note for her ticket which cost 8.75. “I have no change!” screamed the woman across the counter and snatched back the ticket. So she had to go and change her note and queue again for the ticket.

——————————–

Extract from: The Struggle of the Latvian Nation in the Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945.
(Published in Latvia, 1964)
[Our translation]. p.38.

[The official Soviet explanation and justification for the deportations.]

“When it became imminent in 1941 (the threat of German invasion) it became necessary to send all known counter-revolutionaries (police, mayors, partisans, etc.) and their families out of the country. To a certain extent this was justified. Unfortunately it was never explained fully to the people and they never really understood the reasons for the mass-deportations. Unfortunately some mistakes were made — some deported were innocent and many active anti-Soviets remained free. Not having been adequately explained, the West has used the deportations as anti-Soviet propaganda… During the occupation, German Fascists and Latvian bourgeois nationalists made wide use of these few mistakes in their anti-Soviet propaganda, thus slowing down the partisan and anti-Fascist activities in Latvia during the War… We must take into account that the dispossessed exploiters were still in the country, hoping to re-establish their power; whereas in older republics the exploiters had been liquidated and the people were politically and morally united. Because of the widespread, petit-bourgeois layer who were a consequence of the twenty years of injection of nationalist propaganda… all these factors had their effect on the political war.”

The twenty years are the years of independence of Latvia as a state between the wars. The only time the Latvians ever talk about.

[This was written in Hope – that would put it in maybe 1982 (I went to work in Banff in August 1981), or sometime in the next couple of years – if I am 900 km away, probably in Banff, where Erna must have visited, if D’s letter was sent there. It is a response to our requests to tell us something about our past, family past, etc. The rough translation is by an online application.]

Words can’t express – the good fortune, value, life (very existence) – that Inese, my older daughter, has given me.
Words can’t express – the good fortune, life, wonder, that Dzidra, my younger daughter, has given me.

It is like a tree with branches, not able to be perceived by the eye, but that longingly having grown, grows on. It doesn’t start just with Inese’s birth, and Dzidra’s birth; it begins further back than me, than my mother, further than my grandmother. It grows through the ages. It’s not just like one tree, it is trees among trees, it is a web, amassing as it grows, alive. Similarly grows coral (in some Australian seashore, in blue waters, light) but they are visible. What I want to talk about is an unseen tree. Yet it is just as alive, existing, and also eternal, as all that is visible. I and Inese and Dzidra, are only one part, one segment, one moment in this swaying eternal tree, this web of life.

It all is that, which I can’t express.
But of this something that I have had, and have, and it continues further (and one day will do that without me) I can try to speak.
And I come before a human and perhaps also before God and from my heart, sincerely I say: “I cannot express, how much good fortune, life, and wonder, my children have given me.” No, that is not exactly what I mean – I have to say, I actually say – that Inese and Dzidra have given me.

Talking, starting to talk, so full of pathos, although it isn’t pathos, it is the most real search for truth in words, and yet – starting to talk thus, it’s as though I had climbed, raced somewhere up steps, wanting to climb up into some wondrous, but real and actual edifice, yet instantly seeing that I have climbed, raced up empty stairs, that are swaying in the heavens. There is no further place to turn, nothing to find, nor show, nor tell. I have to climb back down. If I want to talk, about that indescribable miracle, life, happiness/good fortune, that Inese and Dzidra have given me, I have to talk about all the small moments, all the small, lived, experienced hours, days, about the earth, things, about life.

All the abstract, big perceived, like carved in crystal, like something just for God, understood by the viewer – visible, all that, which I’d like, clearly and quickly to extract from the mass of the everyday, from the flow of life, is not thus able to be crystallised. It is entwined with all the everyday, from moment to moment, happenings and experiences.

And yet all over again, I say – I don’t know how topers it, and – I am here now, on a cool day, with clouds in the sky, here are this icy land’s trees, such as were in our country – pines, rowan trees, and the greatest satisfaction I get is from the little stones on the road, underfoot, that I can observe in my wanderings. And Inese is far from me. And Dzidra is very, very far from me. [Written when Erna was living in Hope, BC while Inese was working in Banff, and Dzidra was in Australia]. And yet we stretch out to touch, stretch across oceans, mountains, and are together.

Inese just rang (from her, what – 900k distance). She has forwarded Dzidra’s letter to me. I was there. But now again, I am not. Dzidra has injured herself badly in a fall. She’s climbed onto the little shed out back and fallen back down astride the wooden fence. She been off work for a week. X-rays show that there is no major injury. Thank God. She does all the maintenance work there by herself. A painful warning, to be careful. How fragile we are. She said so herself, and wanted to take heed having witnessed an accident in Newcastle, in Parnell place in the street. How fragile we are.

After the phonecall with Inese, I was not able to continue enthusing here, about life’s happiness. Went for a walk over the bridge. Picked blackberries.
The wind blows the clouds. Thoughts gradually can settle down. Because work it out by thinking doesn’t work, and happiness we may take, so long as it is given us.

This morning (still early) the sky is clearing. Still not clear, as to which way it will go. But opposite, on the Cross Hill peak, there’s already a streak of sunlight. Behind the mountain there’s a bit of blue sky and white cloud, but from the mountain cross’s dip there rise a row of greyish clouds, as though the mountain was sending smoke signals, like Indians. This is Indian land, in its way. The mountain also sends smoke signals. (The name of the mountain arose from the cross shaped top, as though carved. There are deep cross-like crevices and they stay full of snow, when the rest of the mountain has already been snow free).

This morning soft morning lights from the direction of this mountain, and the sky there and the cloud smoke signals are again full of what life promises, and yet which somehow never arrives. Perhaps all together after all it would appear as though it has been, like this mountain top this morning. In order to be able to live my life, and not sink into a stranger’s life (G, here with his gout – and his self generated problems, and his life, which hasn’t begun yet, with I’s life) I have to look towards the mountain top. Have to look everywhere for signs. Perhaps also from G’s gout? How far from what I wanted to talk about I’ve strayed with what I started talking about.

It was even earlier a really an unusual and unfamiliar feeling that I experienced when for the first time I had to leave Inese, not yet 2 months old, and had to go away from her for a distance of about a kilometre. The big snow had already melted, which at the beginning of April, when we brought Inese home was still deep and thick. It was an early spring evening and we went fishing with a shore net. Grandmother (then already Grandmother, otherwise still only my mother) stayed with the sleeping Inese, who was sure to sleep for several hours. But it was hard for me to leave the house. I didn’t want to go. Those fishing did rather need me. And to fish with a shore net was a big and rare treat. Now I was going as though forced and reluctant. I looked back, and lingered and sort of calculated the distance – how far did I dare to go? I went carefully, calculating, thinking back, going ahead with only part of me, proceeding as though carefully unravelling that link, that must needs remain between me and the sleeping Inese, carefully, always thinking about that, to not sever it.

This first journey further, actually only a short distance, was a test of my awareness of this link, and that I not break it, and also served to strengthen this tie’s endurance, its strength. It exists. It has to be acknowledged. It is quite incomprehensible, and thereby to be treasured, treasured with one’s realisation of it and with one’s behaviour, that is with one’s actions, conduct, one’s living with it.

Spiritual link?
I don’t know what to call it, but all that, that, which with Inese, and later Dzidra, I have, and have had, are these ties, this linked structure.

Then came Inese’s months of life, which are very difficult for me to mention. I nearly  ended her by following the child parenting book. What was that famous children’s doctor’s name, and his already then famous book. May God forgive him. In the book he was not talking in a really comprehensible language for each individual case. It seems he also didn’t mention there how a breast-fed baby (suckled, we called it) cannot be overfed. That was his big warning: don’t overfeed, don’t rug it up too warmly! I nearly starved Inese to death, and kept her too cold, with that tiny body. She was saved by a doctor that I went to in Madona for advice. She was saved by Grandmother’s advice — “Wrap her in swaddling (so that she doesn’t suck her fists!). All children used to be wrapped in swaddling. You, so too Austra. So everyone has grown up to date. Lovely, healthy people” She was right – all around there were those grown, lovely, healthy people.

Grandmother dug out, from her clothes cupboard stowed away, two long good lengths of swaddling cloth. One was of warm cotton cloth, sewn, only hemmed; the other crocheted with cotton thread (lacy if you like) very beautiful, strong, in ribbed crocheting, long.
Inese was thus wrapped, as is shown in all the old pictures, where the stork is bringing – babies wrapped in swaddling, (like cigars…).
At first it was hard, it felt forced, to bind to the body the little arms, so they wouldn’t be in the mouth, being sucked from starvation. Which I didn’t know, that it was – starvation.

Already after just a few days the digestion improved, the child was quiet, was saved, grew, increased in weight. (Well ok, – that not overfed weight, which was specified in the book, it would no longer be so easy to feed it up…).
Carefully, slowly, drop by drop, fearfully, not to do something wrong, also began the first tastes of wild strawberry juice. And the child was breast-fed for the old-fashioned recommended time of a year, and a month or two more…

Then later, in those first years, it was a big struggle trying to feed Inese, because she had no appetite. She had been turned off eating… It was a big palaver to get her fed. There were those semolina-filled cheeks, which, after the last, happily coaxed spoonful – sprouted open, flowed over! Nothing, or very little, had been swallowed. The proffered porridge, mouthful after mouthful, had been stored, stored up in the cheek.
Later, when she was an adult, she revealed that she had liked sour cream. She used to secretly go to the larder and eat spoonful after spoonful of it. If I’d known that – I would have fed her with cream.

A new mother’s mistake is that she doesn’t follow or trust her intuition. Badgered by  the modern world, she starts listening to everything else ( like – to all nine devils) and  not to her own feelings.
(Still now I see Inese’s fragile, also later, already year-old child’s little arms, which I so desired to see – rounded, to know, that she was growing strong. Yes, later it all eventually sorted itself out.)
This is the hardest page, or one of the hardest, the page heaviest with my guilt feelings, in my story about Inese.
For a woman, a mother (how else) to suckle her child, (here too it must be noted, ’suckle’ is an older and better term than ‘breast-feed’) is something irreplaceable in life (both their lives, perhaps).

Inese, already in the very first feed took up eye contact. As they say in English, that famous, noteworthy, meaningful eye contact. And so it is. Those eyes, its eyes, that is the child’s eyes, stray all over your face and calmly stop at your eyes, and stay and stay, gazing and gazing into your eyes.
“What are you thinking?”
“What am I thinking?”
“What are we thinking?”

And it remains a secret, an understood secret, if that’s possible. And it – is possible. Three times a day, for a whole year, this calm, eye gazing! Perhaps it started to slacken, was no longer so intense towards the end, at the planned end of breast feeding. Perhaps it wasn’t so intense from my, from the mother’s side – “such a child, now we can practically talk with words…”

Inese didn’t start to talk particularly early. To me it seemed that from the first days, well, from the first months, she understood everything, saw, assessed, knew all and didn’t talk only because, she herself didn’t yet want to. She would talk then, when in herself she would have learned the language completely. It didn’t quite happen like that. She started to talk – sing with Grandmother. (approx:) (nursery rhymes – imitating the repetitive sounds). And she started to call our prisoner of war (!) Ukranian Nikolai, “Da”! “Da!Da!” because he always responded Da, da. (We had not noticed it. The Russian language sounds to us were all similar, not sounds, but their meaning). Then came words, [(e.g.) fininger, (finger) driniky (drink) i.e. approximations of various words.] Sad that we forget lots of lovely, sweet things. The same as pain. There remains only a tiny part. And whom to give to, what to do with this little residue?

Inese gave a smile early. But she didn’t smile often. She watched, looked and watched, looked and watched! It seemed like she reflected on, weighed up everything, seemed very wise, seemed to understand everything. After her starvation night time screaming, she was a very quiet child. Her quietness was pleasant, as though filled with gentle curiosity, wonder about everything. And it also created wonder in me. I watched her quietness, her thoughtfulness. And waited for her to start talking. When she would say what she was so, so seriously and deeply thinking about.

I’ve decided that children are born wise. That is, they are much wiser, all-knowing, sensible in their first months, in the first half year, than they are at 2, 3, or 4 years of age, when that quiet, sensible new life’s perspicacity and sense are spoiled by grown-ups’ childish interactions with children, i.e. their rattling, their coochy-cooing, their baby talk, their idiotic behaviour. Of course it’s not exactly like that.

Some moments come timing from before six months of age, even from a few months old, of Inese’s understanding of things, of the situation. The first was sad, in a way.
A sunny afternoon (perhaps early, perhaps before lunch hour) while changing her out of her bindings, for a moment I was playing with her, lifting her little arms and legs in the open air,  to exercise them. I was softly singing some spontaneous melody, just to give some rhythm. The child was happily responding, kicking back and looking. Waiting expectantly for the arm lifting to be repeated.

My husband came in from outside, and in this unfamiliar, new situation for us, in the child’s presence, even in a sort of alarm exclaimed – “What kind of song is that, you harpy” and wanted to push me, actually did push me away. Without a moment’s thought I slapped him on the face. He had sinned two-fold – abused me and used a word (from the Latgale region) as a swear word. Thirdly – to call someone from our  region, to brazenly slander them – paint them with the same brush, is not right. Even if one was! My husband slapped me right back. Then realised that I wasn’t trying to provoke a fight, but responding to being humiliated with a humiliating reaction. My husband left the house and didn’t return till evening. Nor did I go looking for him. He could have not returned at all.

But what I wanted to say was, that the child sensed our nasty interaction, and started to wail piteously. I was sorry that she had had to witness it, understand it. Pity. But it had happened. No-one had yet hit her. How had she know to sense and so deeply respond to nastiness between people.

Whether Inese had toys, and what kind – has disappeared completely from my memory. (So would say they, about whom I’m writing – gone from my mind – not, forgotten. Well, sometimes they also said – forgotten).

Inese would generally be found close by to where grown-ups were doing something. She hung around with Grandmother. Put her shoes on there. Said “shoksh shoksh” (socks). Sewed things together with Grandmother, wrapped little rag dolls. But she didn’t spend much time with them – she was more interested in real life. She raced across the yard to the barn, watched the cows coming into the shed, watched how the girls tied them into the bales, get them ready. Then milk. Inese, when she started walking, had slightly bowed legs. That worried me. Grandmother tried to pacify me – they will straighten out. And so it was, later she was as straight as a candle. It was moving to watch how she scampered, climbed up onto the wide step of the stone barn.

I knitted (together with Grandmother) a soft pine-green little dress for Inese. “Don’t make it too short” Grandma said. “They grow out of it so fast.” I measured the finished little dress (it was rather long) – Inese stood in it, in our guest room, in the light coming in from three windows. She stood on the floor, happy, a little shy, a little bit smiling, in her new dress. And around about them, when she started walking, she often accompanied me everywhere on my daily chores, by my left side.

And this clever, that time’s book’s doctor’s advice that one must put the toddler to bed, to sleep. Feed it – and let it sleep. Leave it, don’t disturb it, don’t pick it up. Heaven forbid  – don’t ever pick it up! Let is sleep, and grow.
Now they say that a child thus left will rather die than thrive and grow.
But Grand mothers and aunts did say – an infant has to be held (handled, etc), a child must be held.
But the books said – “they’ll get spoiled, what then!”  What then? How long does the ‘then’ last? Good that later I was game to take her and hold her. And good – that I fed her myself  (for more than a year) so that at least 3-4 times a day the child was held, cuddled.

Once I was carrying  her with me to the riverbank behind the barn to pick the new sorrel. My husband was away then – military service (border guard) and I was telling Inese that Daddy is far, far away. After a while she repeated ‘faa, faa’. It seemed to me that next moment, there gathering sorrel among the green grass and flowers – that she would start talking, talking long and lucidly, spill forth all that she knew, understood, saw. But more than that ‘faa faa’ she didn’t say. Busily picked the sorrel, plucked them where I plucked them. But talking was not yet ready and she didn’t bother much with half-words. Why has this walk stayed in my mind? It was so beautiful. Summer. Sun. Peace. The land around, and the river. I carried Inese on my back, sat her on my shoulders for a while, so that she would see from the highest viewpoint, feel all the surroundings. We were both very happy. Such a clear, crystal clear moment – serenity. Our mutual understanding felt total, which is why perhaps it felt like she would start talking with me. But it was there without words, that communing, understanding.

Once, that same summer, her second summer, when she was walking, and was more than a year old, we were waiting for the arrival of our expected young maid, Elza. I saw Elza coming, as promised. Coming down from Hilltop house and (Baxter) was going to meet her to ferry her across the river.
I said to Inese, lets go outside, to greet Elsa. Let us say – good day! I didn’t know, couldn’t imagine, how seriously Inese took this going to greet and say good day…what she imagined and understood it all.

At my left hand, she slowly came with me, and Elza was there, a strange, big new friendly girl and Inese greeted her – slowly, deeply bowed, like a straw bent in a gust of wind. Elza was almost in tears,  delighted by the sweet child, and I was moved and felt guilty that I hadn’t at all taught Inese how such good days, greetings, are done. Little girls are taught – to curtsey! Later I taught her. But it can’t be said that it was wrong how she herself had understood and carried out her duty – going to meet and greet, say good day. That ‘good day’ – was almost inaudible – just a little – but that ceremonial style. That she herself had observed and felt to be correct. And didn’t  hold back from doing it, though actually it was so much more that was enacted, than just mere greeting, than I’d ever imagined. One had to understand that it was not at all such an easy thing. And Elza was enchanted, won over – one could say. her love gained. Elza was a good, pleasant, ordinary girl. Only now it occurs to me that Elza had been working for us before Inese was born, and now she came just to visit, or perhaps also to work again, and live. Yes, that’s how it was, because Elza was with us also later, when we began our refugee flight.

Where is she now, that good girl.
She and Irene were with us that summer, when we fled. Irene even wanted to come with us, but at the last moment – stayed with her relatives. (Only her red patterned little summer dress travelled with us and when in Germany/Austria I had lost weight from lack of food and was skinny, I used to wear it.) Elza – went to her mother, decided to stay put.

Summer. Home. People. Life. Sun. River. And – life, life. Which was sometimes hard there too. But one had to work through it, work it out. Yes, it already went awry, seriously, there. Only there were still many sunny moments, still there was all that importance and strength.

When Inese was born, she had the most incredible little nails, slender, very slender, oval, with the little halfmoons, and a gently sharp slope at the end. I’d never imagined that such nails were possible on a human. It even sounds kind of brutal to liken those tiny, wee, transparent, perfectly formed little nails of Inese’s to – human nails. But what I mean to say is – that nature has intended the ideal human form. Yes, just a little sharpness in the nail tips. Grandmother (knowingly) recommended  cutting those a bit, so that the child doesn’t scratch its own face. That’s just about the bit of sharpness, but the   shape, the shape of the little nails was unimaginable elegant. Since then I have seen other newborn little nails, but Inese’s nails’ elegance, beauty, was unique.

Because of the advice from that book and that careless hospital nurse Inese was starved (and of course it was mainly my own stupidity’s fault) and with worry and trepidation I waited to see whether Inese’s little arms would fill out. (Like a cherub’s). As cuddly as a cherub’s they never did become, but they became the adequately rounded arms of an active child. And the legs straightened out, not a trace of that slight outward bowing of the first steps. She was like a little doll, when at the second summer’s graveyard festival she was moving around and about our seat, where we sat waiting for the church service to begin. She was in a pink, knitted lace one could say, little dress, brown, light brown slightly wavy hair and an amiable face, with smiles, seriousness, watchful, a little bit happy, little bit shy, brownish eyes. People on the other seat noticed her and enjoyed her, smiled, waved. Inese was sociable, but with good manners – smiled back, even shyly fluttered her eyes, but didn’t approach, didn’t intrude, answered when spoken to. There at that Graveyard festival it was the last gathering with relatives, and others (before fleeing). Inese was admired and praised by all. Pity that Grandmother wasn’t there. Some sort of carelessness and mean spiritedness on the part of my husband meant there was no place for her in the cart. The maids could come, but not her. She also then herself declined. Sasha offered (at the cemetery) to go and get her. Perhaps that should have been done. It should have been. But back then I still had to play at doing my husband’s bidding, try to accept his truth, his way of being, try to find a way of living together.

From out of all those many given days there, so few scenes remain clear in my mind. That is, in my visual memory. I think I live for the most part, more with the visual sense. But from those days too (just like other times) there are also other senses and memories, such as when Inese was sitting on my arm, as some evening when she couldn’t get to sleep, and I would carry her about the room singing or humming something and she’d fall asleep with her little head on my shoulder, then I could slowly lay her down in her cot. It was against the rule book. But – good, good that some times I dared to do it – against those rules. It did us both good, that good lulling to sleep for half an hour, sometimes just a few minutes, whereas leaving her alone in her pram would have resulted in long, painful crying, wearing herself out. Other times she fell asleep being wheeled around the room in her pram. Also against the rules.

Yes, there are other memories than just visual ones, that sometimes seem so few, when you think of all the many days we spent there together, joyfully, comfortably, happily, with grumblings, cares and all kinds of woes and worries through which all lives have to struggle. Yes, there are also other kinds of memories, and then those are no longer just memories, those then are unbreakable bonds, that have grown, continue, and remain.

From the very first I felt Inese to be not as my possession, my child, which I could boast about and bend to my beck and call. I felt her as a person, whose growing had been entrusted to me. I can’t say that I never have ‘bent’ her to my will, but that hasn’t happened, if it has, with the feeling that I’m doing it because I have the right to do it. I never had the feeling of ownership rights, I felt – responsibility, but not in the bare sense of the meaning of that word, this responsibility was deeply embedded in everything that I did – it was my life, her life, our lives. The first time that I experienced the feeling that she ‘doesn’t belong’ to me, standing in the room of our “Ķikuri” home, with the windows overlooking the garden, the house, which now was entirely filled with Inese’s presence, I was at once sad and happy. I felt the pang, not like a loss (i.e. that she wasn’t my possession, that I felt it when hearing other adults say ‘my child’…) but like an honour, and internally I bowed before her, as everyone bows before real, indisputable, given – greatness. (That can be talent, fortune and a child.)
This feeling of not possessing, this inner two-way bond, has remained all our lives. I even think, that in some way, the child, Inese, the same as I, has internally sensed that and contacted herself thus.

Inese was a quiet, obedient child. Obedient is not quite the right word, to express her quiet, considered demeanour. Naturally, Father had to be obeyed just so, on the button, whatever he said. But perhaps that was a little later, when little Inese’s young being had already found some independence.

Anyway, even with Inese, at two and a half years of age starting together with us our refugee journey, traipsing and languishing, from one place to another, still the beginning of the development of her personality was nevertheless perhaps more stable than Dzidra’s. Inese had around her the Ķikuri house, the yard, the garden, people going about their daily business, calmly at their own pace, and Grandmother, with whom to sing, talk, preverbally do things together. Also my and my husband’s shared lives had not yet started to be so visibly discordant. In its way – things were still sunny and peaceful.

Peace also shows itself in people in ways unable to be put into words.  It is internal. And if there is too much chaos in a person, it doesn’t mean they always shout, but the way they relate to their surroundings and another person (in this case, a child) is different. A problem, even if hidden, nevertheless gets mirrored in the other – as a problem.

Where, and from what she learned, absorbed that, I don’t know, but Inese as a child and also later was full of quiet observation and a sunny acceptance of everything that had to be accepted, had to be done. She was full of a sort of quiet, thoughtful happiness, perhaps you could say – a cautious happiness. She occupied herself noiselessly, but with a good mood, happy in herself and only rarely broke out in impish laughter, in jolly antics.

In Berlin, in a bunker in the night during an air-raid, the women around Inese tried for ages to cheer her up, tried to extract a smile from her, and some words, conversation. She sat for a long time, silent, listening, not saying, one could say – a single word. Then suddenly, half jokingly, half seriously, impishly and teasingly, mimicking the ladies’ gestures, she several times repeated two long German words:
“Vollstāndig ausgeschlossen!”
That was so unexpected for everyone, surprising, after only a shy ‘ja’ or ’nein’, suddenly this long German language. And after that — mouth shut again!
They all were – won over. Inese got smiles, praise, wonder. I too was very shocked.

I think that was Inese’s, that little person’s nature. She watched, worked it out, and then when she felt sure enough that she’d conquered something – then she’d come out with it, come what may. After her usual quietness it generally had a powerful impact.

Inese carried on in the same, determined way when in Germany (in Sillenbuch, when we returned the second time after Austria) I came home from hospital with Dzidra in my arms. Our living quarters were on the third floor. The whole (German) house was filled with refugee families, who knew each other. When I was coming with Dzidra through the doorway, like a flash Inese ran, tore up the stairs before us and pulled open everyone’s door on all the storeys with the short and loud announcement:
‘The baby’s here” and further up to our flat and opening its door, to be there to greet us.
That she had so much been waiting for it, so big for her was this event, had not occurred to anyone.

Inese and Dad came and visited me and Dzidra on the second or third day (perhaps later?) after Dzidra’s birth. Dad had plaited her hair all around her head in tiny plaits, and so she, the fairytale creature, stood and gazed and gazed at the baby, her little sister. No doubt the hair plaiting, getting dressed and ready and travelling with her dad to Stuttgart, to the hospital, was a bigger thing for her than we had imagined.

In that Sillenbuch apartment, where we arrived from Austria’s cold autumn, Inese painfully burnt her hands, putting them to warm on the little electric stove which had already become hot, and Inese was sobbing quietly for a long time, nursing and sheltering her painful little palms. Now had arrived – the baby, little sister, little Dzidra, ‘Dzidrulis’ as she was later often called.

Wasn’t Inese jealous, like other children supposedly are? I cannot remember. She was perhaps in herself too grown up not to understand things and events. She had been waiting for, and greeted this happening with much delight. Maybe only in later years, Dzidrulis, for whom Inese often had to be responsible, sometimes gave her grief. Possibly to, that after such great expectation, the baby was a bit of a disappointment, because what could you really do with it?

Yes, Dzidra had arrived. It was May. Trees were in blossom. Children! Otherwise – loneliness. Emigrants, dizzy with the temporary sense of wellbeing and a kind of freedom – in German houses, given by the Americans, were very active socially – choir, theatre, balls, the bosses, the bigger bosses, and the top bosses, all kinds of groups were formed. Till then I’d been excluded from them because of my big belly. (Also due to the generous Americans, after the starvation in Austria, I was particularly big). Now I had – breast feeding duties. My husband and my mother were at knife point with each other. My husband locked all the cupboards with nine padlocks, so that Grandmother could not get to the provisions, and take more than was in his opinion, her due. For example, cigarettes, chocolate. Grandmother started to take her provisions separately. My husband strutted in the social circles like a ‘young stud’. A woman from the downstairs apartment called in briefly and had told the others that she never imagined in what suppressed circumstances Mrs Dzelme had to live!

[Photo: Dzidra’s christening in Sillenbuch, 14.07.1946. Dad front left, Inese second from right in front. Erna behind her in striped dress]


A big Christening was organised for Dzidra. They went off well – with a lovely young godmother, chosen enthusiastically by my husband. At the Christening I too tried to sit a bit closer to the cheerful ‘big society’, to show some  boss or other my spirit, my capabilities, but it didn’t work (not one of) that group paid any attention to me, they had all been busy socialising there at camp, where I hadn’t been taking part. Though I did go to some sketching group, but they were different, and that was later. So I was left with the children, going for walks with them and at last – I started to draw them and ended up with some admirers of my work. There were two sisters (I’ve forgotten their names, from intelligent, well-known artistic lives) who were hugely enthusiastic about my drawings. I think one bought one. Another lady bought a landscape for a gold ring – for none of us had much money, and it wasn’t worth anything. What happened to that ring? What happened to everything? It was scattered here and there. A lot disappeared trying to hide it from my husband. In its way it was not a good time. The beginning of the really bad times. But there were the children – two little bits of sunshine, two young lives, joy, o joy! And trouble. I looked through the window down at the path lined with trees, along a big garden, where Inese went off to school, to some sort of kindergarten. Someone got me a pram for Dzidra – I used to take the pram with her along that spring’s green paths, then come home and draw the sleeping Dzidra, and the active Inese, who was calmly preoccupied doing something or other on her own. Light brown, slightly curly mop, always bent over doing something.

Dzidra was born with a slight dent in the skull, to the side, above the right eye. The birth was long and arduous, as she was a breech birth. But the dent in her head had not occurred during the birth (although they were applying, pressing rolled towels on both sides to try to force the child to a straighter position.) The dent had happened earlier. I think I know when. Once in our little apartment, there in Sillenbuch, actually in the new, good little apartment, I dropped something which rolled under the dresser. I bent down quickly, took a breath, to pick it up and something inside me twisted, pinched, I felt a pain, although it wasn’t sharp. I straightened up, breathed again, and somehow – it felt all right again, although I felt and knew that something was no longer as it had been before. I think my rib pressed into Dzidra then.

Three different doctors had three different opinions. One said – it will stay like that forever – but hopefully it won’t matter.
Another said – it will stay, but in the grown head it will be relatively much smaller, not so noticeable.
The third said – it will disappear, will even out.
I believed the third, but was afraid, and prayed to God. At times like that one remembers him. Invokes him.
Already on the second, third day, passing ones fingers with the lightest touch over the little dent, I thought that I felt, that its edges were just a tiny bit smoother. I hoped. And was afraid.
It evened out for Dzidra slowly. How old? Three, four. Even longer. But by then the dent was only a flat mark, barely visible.

When Dzidra was born, I was so exhausted, that without any real feelings, i saw that people, doctors and nurses, were working around me. Further, by the sink, some doctor was holding the newborn by the legs with head down and slapping it, to revive it. It had already half suffocated. I don’t know why but I thought it was a boy, and I didn’t care whether the doctor would succeed or not. I felt indifferent to it all. But then later, then the child was brought to me and it was a girl, and it had its head lightly wrapped in a white bandage, maybe so that I wouldn’t instantly see the ‘dent’ and be upset again, they said ‘Everything is fine. It’s nothing. It looks like everything is ok. She is healthy, etc’ and I took her to me, tightly, with all my guilty feeling, pity, hope, love, we were together, side by side for the battle, tightly together. Some woman in the other bed (we were 2 in the room, with a third bed empty) had had a healthy child, and said something to her visitor, indicating in our direction, as if it was something dreadfully pitiable. I heard it, understood, and thought “What do you know! What do you know! We will get through this. We’ll be just where you are. Where  everyone else is.” And I pushed away the thought, that would sometimes surface, “How will it be, when the other children will be playing, and mine will be sitting by themselves, just looking on, unable to take part, rejected, ostracised…” I felt that the child was healthy. (whole). And I hoped, believed, that later there would be no sign, no visible sign of the injury, of the dent.

Old women are wiser than most doctors. That’s how it is. All the women said – it’s nothing. Such things, such external dents that happen at childbirth, and before,  smooth out and disappear. And then you would hear the long examples of evidence: how it was for this one, and for that one, and also for another one, and that one too. Of course one can’t always listen to what ‘some woman said’. But it is a different kind of saying. These witness and wives tales, deeply personal things, have been gathered by women in their typical, trusted, confident, reasonable way.

Dzidra was a wonderful, healthy, happy baby. She was born in a German hospital where there were easier, more human rules and regulations – you were allowed to feed the child, not only 4 times, but 5 or 6 times a day. Also in the middle of the night, if it was hungry. A woman is no a machine. Milk does not flow in on the hour, nor in the same quantity. The child is not a machine. Sometimes it feeds more, sometimes less. And the child – then the child is not a burden, with endless fears and worries and impossible comparison to a machine..

As an infant, Dzidra had the most sincere, happiest, genuinnest laughter! One wanted to keep making it it laugh, to provoke it just to hear it laugh, sort of rippling, like a stream burbling.
When I remember it now and think about it, I have to wonder whether our life (mine and my husband’s life together) didn’t already early on snuff out that laughter of Dzidra’s, her delight and happiness. Later she was a quiet child. I think, around my husband, we all learned to be quiet.

There, when I in carefree lightheartedness, happiness, was drumming out some trifling (spontaneously thought up) melody and in time to it was lifting Inese’s little arms, watching her delight and glee, there, when the husband came and humiliated me, made fun of me, of this, my enjoyment, and I gave him a slap, this slap (and his cuff in return!) also knocked out of me some light heartiness, freedom, for all time. No matter how we enjoyed ourselves with Inese, with Dzidra, it was somehow under a shadow, under some sort of weight.
Perhaps in life one doesn’t need such pure happiness?
Nevertheless, I regret its loss.

One must live as one can. One must take, as well as one can, what one can from the remainder. Always, and everywhere, one must shape, do, raise, live with what is, what is left over, do it as well, as well as one can. Not only materially, buildings generate builder jobs, unfading, relentless persistence. Creation.
We must learn from the pearl clam.

Remembering that time which I’m supposed to be talking about, has depressed me more than I ever could have imagined: I can feel how oppressive it was, still now, it can spread over me like darkness, stopping thinking, crushing the desire to overcome it, leading one into emptiness, in which one tries to hide when one has no more strength to  get through what must be gotten through.

That was a long statement. In short: I am feeling depressed.  The shock of what I had to go through, even at that time of life, which was put aside as unimportant, just the beginning of all that ordeal.
Again – a lot of words. In short: I didn’t write anything here for several days, walked around depressed, slept badly and couldn’t pull myself out of it – thinking about it all again.
No, I can’t say it in a few words.

I think – others have also suffered all kinds of such knocks. My mistake in life is largely, so to say, internal, longing, relentless, incurable, dark pain. And worse – never completely healed festerings.
It feels like I’m trying to use words to shed the heaviness that thinking about that time has shrouded me in.

And talking about Dzidra, I wonder that caused her laughter, happiness with which she began in her cot (which was come corner or other, as the case may be) to become silent?
Maybe the heaviness of that time, despite how I tried to change or hide it – nevertheless was in me, and she had to absorb it from me.

Spiritually it all began already in Sillenbuch, in that small German apartment. There, there was still somewhere to take refuge – the green for the trees through the windows to sketch. There there was still lots of sun. The camp’s sympathetic nurse once came to see me and the baby at bath time, and said approvingly that she liked how the little white clothes were hung around the apartment, warming, waiting to be wrapped around the child after its bath. In all that crampedness, still there was room for warmth.

Then we were ’screened’. That is – we were thrown out of the camp (along with many others) for having crossed illegally from one zone to another, i.e. from the English zone to the American zone after such crossings had been deemed forbidden.

For days (weeks?) there were more than 30 people, crammed one next to the other, on straw in some big barn. In the night, people tossed and turned in their sleep, moaning, fearful and not knowing what would become of us? Rumours were going around that we would be sent back, given to the Russians.
Dzidra slept there in her pram, next to our allotted place in the straw. Grandmother got very sick.

Then for a while (don’t know how long) we had shelter in some sort of German school. In some corner there at night we were able to sleep. In the mornings we had to clear everything out of the way, and leave the premises till the afternoon. We walked around the streets then. It was probably already autumn. Grandmother was put in hospital. (It had do be done, to save her from giving up heart (spirit)). I locked the children in the room. For a few hours. Locked? What else could I do? 4 (and 1/2) year old Inese and six month old Dzidra.

The fear, doing that, and then the fear when coming up the hill from the hospital I saw the bus going… I yelled, I screamed, I ran waving my arms, I stopped (the bus was already far in the distance), I was out of my mind. Some other people, German, near the bus stop (I hadn’t even noticed them) said – there’ll be another bus!
I slumped, murmured something about my lock-in children.
Yes, these crazy refugees that we were, in our various, crazy circumstances.
The going of that bus was a terrible moment.
I found the children safe. Saved! Once again, we were saved.

There were also some better moments – with Dzidra in the pram and Inese by my hand, some autumn days we spent exploring Weiblingen’s paths and roads, which were all planted with fruit trees, or flowering shrubs. Sometimes we would pick up an apple. What were we looking for? Sun. Air. And to buy something to eat. But there was nothing to be had.

Once on one of our outings I had forgotten to check Dzidra’s gloves. She used to pull those off sitting in the pram, and had therefore been tied on with a rubber band. It had been too tight. Dzidra’s hand was swollen, with a deep groove where the tie had been. Horrible how misfortunes would stalk, creep up, scare us.

The building’s, that is the apartment’s owner, a German soldier came home on holiday with a lame foot, to see his wife and child (a girl Inese’s age). He was miserable, bitter, annoyed at our squeezing in to his apartment. He pushed us out to the downstairs room, into a sort of basement. But it was bigger, with a little metal stove for heating and preparing food. On it too we had to heat water for Dzidra’s bath, and our other washing. The air was constantly filled with steam, dark. cooking vapours, smelly and dark. Dzidra’s nappies were drying there. But it all felt bad only because the owner would sometimes come in and complain about it all, that the walls were getting  mouldy, the smells were going up the stairs into his apartment… Finally he shut up. What else could we do? Shoved in there like mice. He sighed, relented, grumbled about the war, and went away. Strange, I can remember that room only because he would appear there, complaining, that we were bothering him. The upstairs room where we were living before, I can remember because I had to lock my kids in there and leave them occasionally, in fear and trepidation.

Dzidra started her first laughter there. She chuckled lying there in her pram, happy, rippling laughter. One wanted to dally there, make her giggle, just to hear the sound.
How much was given to us there, and changed, lost. But perhaps gained, perhaps regained.
Then we got a fairly big room in Fellbach. What was it called – 9th Street? Two windows onto the street.  A cold, dark kitchen behind the entrance way. Little wood for burning, or none at all.

Then my husband started up the biggest ’shop’ (canteen) in the camp, and we ate spoiled goods which he was not able to sell. We boiled dreadful, smelly meat. I was ashamed to open the door lest the smell spread to the whole building. Horrible, hard fat floated on the surface of the brew. But there was nothing else to cook. Old meat, old herrings. Trying to be stinting. (My husband bought more than he could sell). And the leftovers he brought mercilessly home, for us. Also a bit for him.

He saved up money for three outfits. Once he brought home a smart, dark grey, slightly stripey material. I thought – that’s for me! For he had already made two suits for himself. No – that was for his third suit. I protested, that I also want something for me. I was told to remake something out of the UNRRAS supplied outfit, made of plain brown woollen cloth that never stayed smooth, out of which the dressmaker had made me an ugly, shapeless thing. And for my overcoat I sewed a new collar out of my old  stole I’d brought with me (the old, pale sheepskin one had worn right out). I was still striving to be, to exist! The overcoat then looked half decent. And in my husband’s shop, I took courage and helped myself to a pair of fairly good, brown shoes. Thus I dared to show myself at the Latvians, went to English language discussion groups in the evenings. At that point, I had not yet totally given in. And in my brown shoes, with my brown collar on my coat, I still managed to look very good. Perhaps – yes, good! That coat, with leather lining, was from home from my family, once my wedding present. My last bit of good clothing for a long while.

So we lived, (all five of us), in that big German room. It wasn’t an easy time. But I was still young, and somehow got through it all. My husband brought home some sort of  floor (polishing) wax, for in that room the children and we ourselves made marks over all the paint, and it was hard to scrub, hard to keep clean. My husband mixed the floor wax together with who knows what kind of substance, so that it would go further! It resulted in something that never dried, stuck to one’s feet for months, till finally it wore down and you could scrub it again so that you could take a step without sticking to it. For some time, that, and the old meat, and old herrings and no greens or vegetables, and the ration of soap – a measly black little piece…The washing turned grey, yellowish. I would lug a heavy load of it to the laundry. It was embarrassing to open it, in front of the Germans with their white washing, embarrassing to take it, having been sloshed about, looking the same, back home again. Once a German woman, looking at my washing attempts, said to boil my washing in the tub she’d just finished with, where the water was still frothy and soapy. That was a blessed moment for our washing, but with that single occasion, it didn’t get much whiter.

In search of fruit in the autumn, I used to go high up into the hills. With my father’s old checkered carpetbag on my back. Once for some apples, I traded some blue, brushed cotton dress material. Material I’d been saving – perhaps for some nightie for myself, and for the kids. But it was the only bit I had, and otherwise I couldn’t get any fruit. Carried the heavy bag strapped on my back. I think I travelled part way in a bus with it, because the orchards, where one could still trade something, were far from the city.

Came home, off loaded it onto the floor, undid it happily and then we four – Inese, Dzidra, Grandmother and I – sat and crouched around it and ate, ate apples. Just like in Austria once, when I got some white bread in exchange for some loganberries I’d gathered in the hills. That time ‘Dad’ was also there (Dzidra hadn’t been born) and Grandmother was only allowed the occasional mouthful. I’d gotten it, it was for everyone. Not so the venison, that Dad had shot or trapped. Hard times, little people with big fears just for one’s own survival, one’s own escape, one’s own well-being. It’s shocking, unbelievable to remember it, but that’s how it was. I made a hole in the bag, and took out a few crumbling slices of bread, that i myself had at home(suddenly my heart doesn’t allow me to write the word – Ķikuri) from my own land’s, my own barn, had baked at the last moment and before fleeing had dried out. That all now belonged to my husband – because he had transported it to Germany. (Along with a hundred little wrapped bundles of his own stuff etc).

———-

It is November, 1983, in Sydney. In Dzidra’s house.

I’ve been rereading some of the last pages from previously written stuff (approximately 2-3 years  ago in Canada). I see that I stopped writing then, because it was too difficult to go trawling through the happenings of those times.

I remember thinking that I have to get on with writing about it all, because several years will go by before I’ll be able to write about both children’s growing up, development, life. Well, now I’ve wasted those years. Much has been forgotten, lost from feelings, from memory, somehow covered over, closed over Only – closed over. I have to go back over it, open all those doors, then I’ll be able to be back there, and see it all, perhaps also be able to in part – articulate it, write it down

At the moment I have a lot of free time, and I waste it, and also suffer, from having no life, that I am alone here, finally very alone, and in such a way that I’ve chosen it myself, and choose it still. But at the moment (for more than six months already) I’m not creating anything, not writing. Perhaps I could occasionally immerse myself in the past, and write.

I wanted to write about Dzidra and Inese. I didn’t finish about Dzidra, didn’t get very far, because I sank into that 9th Street room’s sticky floor, and all its burdens. My mother’s death happened there, and then going away. But among all that – there were many days, some must have been clear, sunny?
I guess never was the whole day bright, but little moments were, and they haven’t stayed in the mind in chronological order. Have to catch them as they float up.

I can’t remember, yes I do remember – Aunty Anna (my husband’s sister) was Inese’s godmother.
She, and her ‘Papi’ as she called him (her husband – they had already married as his first wife had died) came to visit us there, in the 9th St room. They came from Germany, from some health spa place, stayed in a hotel, but used to come and have meals with us. My husband then brought home some good pork from his shop, and sauerkraut. But then that was all, and after 3 or 4 days of this ‘good food’, which didn’t manage to change much, they got sick of it. For us, it was a special treat, but they (naturally) wanted a change, missed having some greens, veggies etc. I was ‘a bad housekeeper’, but did they see in what narrow circumstances i was stuck, without money, without a chance to buy something, and compelled endlessly to use the damaged products from my husband’s shop. Endlessly the same stuff, for weeks on end. They probably did not see that – that was none of their business. They started to eat – out. Why not. All kinds of different foods were then already available in Germany.

I have a vague memory of how then we all together once went to that health spa place, for one day. Baden-Baden, was it? I remember it only because I saw there the hairiest man, who reminded one more of an animal than a human. His back was like a dog’s, or calf’s. People were walking around in their swimming costumes, to the baths and the showers. I sat there somewhere with the children, wet and floppy, for we had been ‘bathing’.

They went for a few walks in Fellbach, where they stayed longer. Dzidra went with them.
Walking once, she stopped and complained, that she didn’t want to go any further. After some effort, they worked out what she was trying to say: „Āāh-k-me-nī kā-ā-jā-a ii..” (i.e. a childish version of the words ’there’s a stone in my shoe’ in Latvian).
She took of her little sandal, a stone had gotten in and was rubbing her foot. Later this was one of our family’s amusing sayings.
They liked Dzidra a lot. They might have even – wanted to take her with them. As their own. Of course neither my husband nor I could even imagine that. At least not I.

I gave Auntie Anna a Latvian sun ring. Why? I don’t know. I was sorry to give it up. I had two Latvian rings that some woman in Esslingen made up for me. She was a good worker and wasn’t too expensive. But later I couldn’t allow myself to look her up again and order another one for myself as a replacement. I no longer had the money or the time to go and look for her, and she had probably already emigrated further.

It was a beautiful, (with my own piece of amber) light sun ring. Nowadays they usually get made rather large and clumsy. That one, just like the other Nameja (traditional Latvian) ring which Inese has now, it was gracefully made. Inese really loves that plaited ring. She would also have loved the other one. There are things that are unrepeatable, people who create, make unique things. With love, not calculation.

Part of that period, in that room in Fellbach, there floats up the image of those stiff, long, grey (grey and white flecked) woollen socks that were knitted for the children, and which they long-sufferingly (now and then) wore, because they were painfully abrasive on the skin.

[Photos: The hated, scratchy stockings and hat to match]

The wool was brought home by my husband. Having traded it for something, he presented it as a great gift. It was so stiff and abrasive that nothing else would come out of it, and you couldn’t make anything else out of it for the children, but as socks that wool was completely useless. The socks were knitted by some German woman, as I really didn’t have time to do it fast enough – had to stand in line and endless other things to do, and everyday stuff, the days were full. Nevertheless that, that i didn’t knit them myself, and that they were so unbearably harsh and abrasive, has remained I’m my mind as part of the awfulness of those difficult days. They should not have been knitted, I would not have knitted them, nor had them knitted, but they had to be knitted, because my husband thought so and said, it must be done. The socks – must be good. The floor wax (mixed with oil) must be good. Smelly meat – has to turn out well. On and on. The tiny, hard little bit of soap, which didn’t make suds even while washing  hands – had to wash mountains of clothes. (Later – the cow had to eat those rotten tomatoes, and the dog Ruffy – had to eat the rat that had been killed.) You don’t  die immediately from all that – but eventually, you do die, bit by bit. The motor stops.

There, in that Fellbach room, I think was the hardest time of our life together. I still had strength enough, and also still had some sort of conviction – that it couldn’t continue like that, that that isn’t all there is, and something has to break through and life must get good again. But it also became evident, that all roads out of there were already falling shut, and I couldn’t see -how could I get out of there?  I thought about getting away from my husband. But how – all the documents, all the ration cards, all the money was with him. If only he would get taken away, if only just for a while (get enlisted in the army’s police unit again, like before…) But that didn’t happen, and our tyranny continued.
I did wrong to my mother in so many and varied ways, because I myself was oppressed and utterly downtrodden.

I tried somehow to regain some sort of standing, some sort of place in the world. Already in Sillenbuch I went to some sketching group to do some work. Drew children’s portraits. A few society ladies, two sisters, intelligent Latvians, previously belonging to some artistic circles, came to our apartment and admired my drawings. Another woman bought – swapped a gold ring for one of my drawings. It was all to little. And in Fellbach, when we were screened out, there were no longer so many Latvians nearby to socialise with. Nevertheless I did sometimes go with a woman to Weiblingen, to a ceramic workshop, started to make little clay figures – some American already bought some for cigarettes. Some of my figurines exploded in the kiln. Several kiln loads exploded. Finally they closed the workshop, just when I started to work out how to make the little clay figures, to sell. In Fellbach I also went to English conversation evenings, let by Hugo Misins. There, I learned English.

I also learned to play the accordion, because my husband bought 2 accordions and someone had to know how to play them in order to be able to transport them to our destined country. This country turned out to be – Australia.
We had filled out papers ready for America or Australia. Dad had been taking care of that in his way, handing in applications for both places.
Our big wooden boxes stood already half filled in the Fellbach room, all that had to be done, was write on them where they were to go.

Dzidra and Inese sat on them, swinging their legs, when Dad asked Dzidra, whose speech was still pretty unsure – ’Say, Australia, or, America?’ To our surprise, Dzidra said Australia, even though that seemed to be the harder word to pronounce. So- it was decided, that we would go to Australia.

[There is a little more behind this decision. Mum told me sometime that dad had wanted us to go to America because his lady friend was going there. Mum knew that and gave him the ultimatum that she would leave him, if we went to America. I don’t know to what extent this influenced the decision, but mum had told him that that really would be the last straw – too much.] (Inese)

Then it was already spring. But before that, in winter, in the last of the snow, we went walking in the hills, and Dad photographed the children rolling snow to make a snowman, so that we would remember it, in case we went to a country where there was no snow. That was already nearly spring time, and as though just for us there had been a little fresh snow, which the children rolled together with the dirt and brown leaves.

I went to some dressmaker and got her to sew all kinds of clothes for the trip. She thought that as we were going over the equator, it would be very hot, and it was her idea to sew for both the children, out of linen sheets, outfits with long pants to keep the sun off. On the ship it was quite hot, and short pants would have been better. The children sometimes walked around looking like jokers – long white (narrow) pants and dark sunglasses. Our family’s weirdness was always showing up in all sorts of strange ways…

[Photos: in Fellbach and later on the ship, 1949]

Still in Fellbach, going on walks (Inese was then in kindergarten in the daytime) Dzidra surprised me with her knowledge of the town and knowing where she was. Once, when were were on the other side of the township, she said ‘lets go to the cemetery, to Grandmother’,  and she started to turn into one of the streets. ‘Do you know the way to the cemetery from here?’ ‘Yes’ and she just marched off and let me by the hand straight off, winding through street after street, to the cemetery. I wouldn’t have known the way so well from where we both were. How old was she – 3 and a few months – no, just 3.

Once, when Grandmother was still alive, she sewed a sweet little doll for Dzidra, sort of like a Latvian doll, with a striped skirt. As soon as it was ready, Dzidra, sitting in Grandmother’s lap started waving it about near the open window, and it fell out onto the street. By the time I went out and around the corner of the house (our entrance was from the side) the doll had already disappeared. Some passer-by had picked it up, even though people seldom walked there. So, the lovely little doll was lost forever. Grandmother made another, but it wasn’t so lovely.

[I have a different memory of this: I took the doll and was joyfully ‘dancing’ (waving it about and singing something) the doll out the window and the skirt fell off and disappeared – and I got scolded by all, including dad („See, what you have done?”) and was in tears – and was almost incapable of believing that the skirt was really gone and was devastated at the loss, on top of getting into trouble over it – and even going outside to check – it was in the evening and it was already more or less dark outside – a wonder anyone could see the skirt – probably attracted by my ‘singing and waving’. Anyway, I was devastated that the doll was now ruined.] (Inese).

And then we were sitting again on our boxes of possessions (in the big truck) and – off we went.  And our departure, like all departures, came more suddenly than we’d thought. Just – here it is – take your seats, so you don’t get left behind!

For about a month or more, we lived in Italy, at first in some camp outside Naples, then in Naples itself.  Dad had a room somewhere by himself, and we females – together. But how it all was – none of it has stayed in my memory. Once when we were standing in line after lunch, some people were complaining loudly, cursing the bad food – it was good enough for me – better than in Germany. How was I able, where were the children, perhaps in kindergarten…sometimes I was free, raced around the public venues in the town – the library, a ‘garden restaurant’…I put on my white linen outfit (where did it get to in the end?) and went, looking for something, sat at some little table, in some recreation garden(?)…I attracted some Albanian admirer. He asked me to go with him to Rome, on a small outing for a few days. To have a look at Rome. “Don’t be afraid of me” he said. But I was afraid. Although I would have wanted – to see Rome…ha ha. Then when I ran into the Albanian again there somewhere one evening, he talked and talked, trying to talk me into going with him, and in sudden panic I upped and ran off, even though there were still other people around, everything seemed to me to be empty and dark. I ran like an idiot – he overtook me at last and was laughing and shaking his head, he’d never seen anything like it… Told me to write to him from Australia. Though he didn’t know how long he would be in the camp. I think he was heading for America.

Then one day where we got lunch, I found out that you could get tickets for an excursion to Capri. I think I got 2, or perhaps only one. My husband took it off me for himself, that I couldn’t leave the children (even though he’d promised to look after them now and again) and he did that sometimes, even taking them on outings. But now –  he wanted to go to Capri. To the ruins of Pompeii. And I had to give in. He saw them and boasted and talked about Rome’s ancient grandeur, frescos, etc. It was probably after I didn’t go to Rome. And then I thought – I should have gone, damn it!… That Albanian was quite well meaning, and good looking as well, only not very tall, just like a southerner. He wouldn’t have bitten my head off, at that time that wasn’t the go. It was more ‘Let’s make love, not war”. Nowadays you’d never dare, but, if you want to see – Rome or no Rome – then you have to dare.

In Napoli I don’t think we had any trouble with the kids. We got taken to doctors, and just had to wait for our ship.
In our bedroom (a big, inconceivably big space), not far from where we slept, was a Latvian woman, Mrs Erdmanis, with two boys about Inese’s age. She was a funny lady. Flirted with the doctor. Did all sorts of pranks together with another woman. Then I realised how naive I was. They giggled and carried on and did all kinds of antics with that doctor, but I thought, if I had gone with that Albanian to Rome, I would have wanted to be good to that Albanian, and to find something beautiful in Rome. But well that’s not so easy, and I fled. That was a time when it wouldn’t have taken much for me to leave. I had no more ties with my tyrant. And I was pulling away more and more by the minute. But it’s not so easy. I can’t do things just for spite. And otherwise – to go off, with my life, my children – I had no chance. Just like always.

—————–

Nov. 1987, Montreal.

Years have gone since I wrote here. I don’t know whether much time is left, for writing, for living. You can never know that. But now I’m already 82, and that’s regarded as hugely old.
That time, writing about Dzidra and Inese, I thought – I’ll need more years in order to write all my thoughts, all that I hold in my memory about their growth and development.
Now I could no longer write it all as it happened. just out of fear that I’d get side tracked in trivialities and get stuck half way. Now I’ll grab a few instances from our lives, perhaps distorted, lifted from place to place, from this time or that. Now I don’t dare do it in any other way.

So, the last pages were about Dzidra – I’ll continue thus for a while about Dzidra.
Dzidra was a quiet, obedient child. Sometimes her slow, silence was taken as spite. Perhaps sometimes there was a bit of that mixed in – both children were forced to understand a lot, accept a lot, and bear it, which often ran against their better judgement, but which had to be given in to.

Once I was screaming and yelling at Dzidra, and I think even hitting her, thinking that she was being unbearably stubborn. Next moment, or rather later, only later, I understood, heard, from her herself, that her silence, muteness, not answering, not cooperating, at that moment was from fright, from not knowing what was going on, what she had to do. Those were some of our shared days. However, my, and Inese and Dzidra’s squabbles, misunderstandings, arguments and – whatever you call those everyday bumpier moments in life – were few. I think we suffered from misunderstandings with Dad, but between ourselves we got through the days with – love.

Dzidra grew, grew out of her baby stage fast, into adult traits that are not easy to recognise or classify but are personality traits, as well as having facial beauty.
Once, when the children were swimming at The Entrance baths (or perhaps it was somewhere else?) Dzidra poked her head out of the water, and startled me with the beauty of her eyes – long dark lashes stuck together, full of water and the outline of her eye, and oval face.  A moment you just want to hold on to, fix in time. It will continue, be, remain, and yet change. That was still a child’s beauty.

Once, sitting opposite her in the lounge room in Wyong (where the view through the window was onto the two pines and the neighbours beyond — the hill) I suddenly noticed how amber-like brown her eyes were, large, beautiful. and how they were looking back at a me – a young woman, someone about to become a young woman – very beautiful, unexpectedly beautiful. Somehow – not realised, not noticed in the everyday, suddenly – as though suddenly, blossomed.

This complete blossoming, growing into a young woman, I saw in Dzidra much later in Sydney when she visited me. She came to Sydney from Newcastle, from her art studies. Looking at her, seeing her stature, movements, in one instant seeing her walk across the room, I suddenly felt, knew – Dzidra is now, becoming, is already turning into a young woman. It was a sort of wondrous moment, full of beauty, knowing it, realising it. What happened in that moment was a revelation for me, but what was going on in her had already begun, was continuing, and it wasn’t just in Dzidra, even though it was profoundly occurring for her, it was somehow also somehow like  a bigger destiny, perhaps our family’s destiny, happening to all of us together.

Perhaps I’ve already written this in this book. I can’t be bothered rereading it just now. I’ve sat down here again after a long time – perhaps to add some more. (I’ve become a bit, perhaps even a lot reluctant to talk, to take up writing again – force myself, take up my writing career again. There’s a sort of stubborn, nasty weariness of talking – to emptiness.)

Yes, perhaps I’ve already written what I’m now trying to repeat about Dzidra. And about Inese. Inese’s growing from child into a young woman also happened without being noticed. Once she was dressed to go, (I think it was to Sydney) her brown hair tidy, dress, everything – and she was standing there, all ready to go – and I suddenly saw – the young woman, graceful, beautiful. Very beautiful.
These are instances – revelations, that surface, light up, shine for a moment, and flow  back into the unseen everyday scenes.

Now one had to almost wonder – are those moments of life’s blossomings really so terribly brief? Of course no. And, also – yes. We grow and develop, we are, and also disappear – transform. We are given time – for living. Yet – if only we were better at being conscious, being happier, and make more of our lives, our days. How? How? We do what we can. We accomplish and grasp a lot. And also unconsciously, heavily, blindly blunder along. But you can only do what you can do.

Have I written that before? ( I have, but where?) Once we were shopping (when we lived in Wyong, – that is, in Berkeley Vale) – in Gosford, with Mrs Clark and her daughter. They bought some pink silk. Inese and I bought some cotton material, greyish, with little daisies all over. I think dresses were being sewn for the school graduation ball.

 Before going to it (Inese must have been going with the Clarks) Inese and I were standing in Clark’s front yard and waiting for Coral to be ready. Mrs Clark came out for a moment, and gazed at Inese for a long time. Inese was standing tall in her dress, I think with some sort of pendant on a velvet ribbon around her neck. You could feel Mrs Clark’s shock seeing how it had turned out – that unremarkable cotton material that we brought home, together from Gosford, and which Mrs Clark, out of pity, didn’t make fun of, but did make a pithy comment. Inese, in that dress [right], looked…how? Like youth itself, graceful, slim, simple and magnificent, inimitably perfectly beautiful – so to say. No pink silk was able to outshine her.

---

ALVĪNE

Your Grandmother, my mother, Alvine Bērziņš, nee Putniņš – was a proud woman. Proud, if by that word one means that till the end of her days she held herself straight and tall, talked confidently and calmly, kept herself and her clothes clean and good as she could. She loved flowers. Tears welled in her eyes when she would look at a bunch  roses, saying: “A rose. Roses”.  So too, “A daffodil! Daffodils!” “Lilies!”  When she used to say this when we were little, it felt as though behind these words – roses, daffodils, lilies – there was hiding some sort of magical world of possible happiness. Lives, somehow being lived, existences, attainable, possible. Perhaps – not, perhaps not for everyone. And yet – maybe. And even just the idea of that splendour was riveting.

She wasn’t sentimental. She didn’t keep her wedding dress. It was out good material (worn only once!). She remade it, altered it and wore it at other special occasions. And nowhere would you have found stowed away children’s first teeth. Some baby bonnet, tucked away between some other rarely used clothes lasted a bit longer, but not really for looking at and reminiscing. Life always propelled her forward with new events, however difficult some of those turned out to be. She always went straight ahead, onward.

She never took off her wedding ring, till when, after many years when it was cutting into her skin and she couldn’t get if off any more, she had to get it sawn off. Then it stayed in the drawer, in two bits.
From childhood she was into books, into reading, wanting to know about the big wide world.
She had a quick mind. In school she was a fast learner, and did it with ease. She was particularly good at maths. (Not a lot else was taught in those days).

She used to read everything she could get her hands on – ‘Petersburg newspapers’, ‘House guests’ – the first 2 newspapers that came out in the Latvian language. It seems she quickly also developed good taste in her reading choices. Never in our house in an attic somewhere would you find some sort of pulp fiction books lying around.

How did she develop this taste? Watching, learning, working, listening. She’d sometimes laugh at herself in those early, becoming self aware childhood years, how she used to observe and listen wherever she could, trying to find out, to copy – what was going on in the world, what people were wearing, how they behaved, what they talked about, what was in. Barely in her teens – she experimented with colouring in her cheeks with the lining paper out of envelopes. Made a chignon (little bun) on top of her head. Then when she had a good look at herself in the mirror, gave herself a shock – the result wasn’t what she had imagined.

In school she sang duets with her girlfriend. Later they both sang duets in church. Then she acted with the Ļaudona’s regional theatre group. After all that week of hard work at home on her father’s farm, on Sundays she went 7 kilometres to the rehearsals and performances. She played the main young parts – (e.g. ’Sunken Bell’, ‘Weeping One’ etc)

Alvine was of middling height, dark brown hair, grey (large) eyes. It was (also later, when I remember her) surprising how in such a Latvian peasant’s house could have grown this slim, neat looking young thing, with a rather pale, very classical face – a straight nose (nearly a Greek line of forehead and nose) with high cheekbones, but a smooth, oval face, with a middling sized, rather a small, perfectly shaped mouth, a chin with a barely perceptible dimple, not quite a dimple.

Some theatre director who had been called out from Riga had recommended, and really wanted her to take off for Riga, go to drama classes and go on the stage, for from her acting skills, and so too her appearance and voice and looks it was evident that she would be guaranteed a big future. In those days the stage, literature and music worlds were opening up in Latvia.

However much she would have liked to go, work on her father’s farm, and lack of funds prevented it. To keep up payments, to keep the house – she had to help her daddy, work already from when she was very young, herding the animals, sitting at the linen press, together doing heavy threshing work (by hand), and certain jobs looking after animals, and hay and grass cutting. And yet – she danced at balls like a bird, without any lessons, just the sound of the music. “When you fly across the room in the ‘gallop’…” “With a good partner!…”  she would say, reminiscing.

I reread the second book I wrote (of family history) and see that there I’ve written a lot about your grandmother, Alvīne Bērziņs (nee Putniņš). So this has turned out to be repetition – but that’s what modern authors do…

That entry mentions that they weren’t able to send their daughter (Alvine) to Riga for any length of time on drama courses, but the father (of the Dauzin farm) gave her the chance to go to Riga for a short while, to study and complete some home economics course. There was a big group photo – (she, with a fresh, round face, flashing dark eyes), and a big, very thick cookbook. It really had lots of very good recipes and tips (naturally according to the customs of those times, not worrying about long cooking times or vitamin destruction. That book informed our food preparation right up to the last in that house. There were recipes for all kinds of roasts, sauces, stuffed pike, cakes and breads. Later, when my sister Austra went to the Priekula agricultural college we had the addition of new culinary art ideas – and in the garden, new vegetables: tomatoes, black root [?], and conserving vitamins.

But here I wanted to talk just about my mum, your grandmother.
Yes – she read everything that I read when I was going to school, to university. She also borrowed books from the Grivnieka Malta family – form Veronica and Agnese, (Professor Nikolai Malta’s sister and wife). Alvine from her very young days looked after her appearance, expressed her mind and stood by her opinions. She knew how to accord respect (for herself and others), and demanded respect from others and from life. Once when she was quite young at some social event, she refused to sit next to some young fellow who had a reputation of being a womaniser and behaving badly around false promises and leading women on. Later in life, as happens to everyone, she had to get off her high horse a bit in relation to others, but she didn’t change her opinions.

Perhaps her biggest and best asset was her power to overcome life’s vicissitudes, always coming up with renewed spirit in word and deed, valuing life and living, not giving up. She sought and found strength in the good, and you could say – the beauty of life. She wove rugs, knitted various good things, even though she didn’t get carried away with handicrafts.  Her free time was spent reading, right up to the last.

She didn’t condemn Janis Dzelme (my husband) even though he behaved abominably towards her, and me. She just said once, “Perhaps with a different wife, he wouldn’t be like that, he’d be better.” It was probably true. He had lived with his first wife, and that had been bad, he lived with his second, and that was perhaps even worse, and finally he lived in Wyong with a third – and that was fine.

It’s a shame, but I think I about my mother I’m unable to write really clearly of how I saw and knew her. She was good, loving, understanding, protecting, who feared something going wrong, but didn’t fear standing up to it and always knew how to fix mistakes, to forgive, mend, and not judge.

UNRRA Team 52
Latvian DP Camp
Stuttgart-Sillenbuch,
Degerlocherstr. 32.

Sillenbuch, September 1946.

This is to certify that Mrs. Erna Dzelme is working as teacher of drawing and arts at the High-School of the Latvian DP Camp Stuttgart-Sillenbuch.

Camp-Leader [signature]
Secretary [signature]
Head of the High-School [signature]
(seal) Committee of Latvian Camp, Stuttgart-Sillenbuch

————————————————————————————————–

Translation.
EXTRACT of the LATVIAN PASSPORT

TP No. ****
Last name: DZELME, nee Berzins.
First name: Erna.
When born: on October, 4th 1906 (nineteenhundred and six)
Where born: Parish Laudona
Marital status: married.
Children up to 16 years (last and first names, when and where born and sex): in this document mentioned Erna Dzelme has born on March 27th 1942 a daughter Daina Inese.
(Seal) (Signature) Chief of 3rd district of the District Police Madona.
Passport owner’s signature: (E. Dzelme) Photograph (Seal)
Passport owner’s print of right forefinger.

According to which documents passport has been issued: Extract from Passport’s Register of the Prefecture of Riga concerning the passport issued to Erna BERZINS, ser AV No. ****, reg. ****
2) Written information of April, 10th 1941 of the Act of civil state of the Registration office of Town Rīga about marriage nr. A 924/41.
Authority by which passport was issued: Parish Office Laudona, district Madona Nr. 152 June, 11th 1943.
(Seal) (Signature) Eldest of Parish Laudona.
(signature) Secretary

I the undersigned official interpreter of the Baltic DP Camp Fellbach – A. BALTMANIS – certify herewith true and correct translation from the Latvian.
[signature] A. BALTMANIS Interpreter
The own-hand signature of Miss A. Baltmanis certified by:
[signature] A. DZIRKALIS, IRO Legal Counsellor.

November, 24th 1948.
Reg. No. 325/C/48       (seal)
Assembly Center Baltic D.P. Camp Fellbach, P.C. I.R.O. Legal Counsellor

——————————————————————————————————-

[Special menu from ship – the ship arrived in Sydney Harbour on July 8, 1949]

[front: drawing of ship ploughing through waves + long thin strip of flag with stars followed by stripes – all in one strip – NOT the American flag look]:

CAPTAIN’S DINNER
Fourth of July 1949
Independence Day

[inside left side]:

Spanish olives
Orange and grapefruit juice
Roast spring chicken – dressing gravy
Succotash – boiled potatoes – suerkraut [sic]
Fresh fruit salad with mayonnaise dressing
Apple pie – ice cream – fresh fruit
Bread – butter—jams
Coffee

[signature] Daniel E. Campbell Chief Seward [sic]

[inside right side]:

USAT ‘General Omar Bundy’
Master                      John. J. Cullen
Ch. Engineer           George L. White
1st Officer                John N. Wiis
Transport Agent    David H. O’Kelley
Transport Surgeon     Joshua R. Derow
Ch. Radioman         Malcolm J. McLeod
Supply Officer        Juan B. Bendicto
Transport Commander    Gordon W. Smith, Major
IRO Escort Officer    Antonio Pedinelli
IRO Surgeon           Massimiliano Mussone

——————————————————————————————————–

Commonwealth of Australia                                                             No. ****
Certificate of Authority to Remain in Australia.

This is to certify that approval has been given for the removal of the limitation imposed under the Immigration Act upon the stay in Australia of          Erna Dzelme       who is the holder or Aliens Registration Certificate No. ****

She is now entitled to remain here indefinitely subject to the laws of the Commonwealth governing residence in Australia.

This Certificate will be sufficient evidence that              she           is no longer regarded as a temporary resident of the Commonwealth.

Dated this NINTH day of JULY, 1951.
(signature & seal)) B.C. WALL
By authority of the Minister for Immigration.

This document is not a Certificate of Naturalisation and does not confer Australian citizenship or British nationality.

Information relating to the future obligation under the Aliens Act 1947 of the grantee of this Certificate and details of the procedure for the acquisition of Australian citizenship and British nationality appear on the reverse side of this document.

Should the grantee of this Certificate desire to leave Australia temporarily before becoming an Australian citizen, return here would be facilitated by obtaining a Re-Entry Permit before leaving.

————————————–

ALIENS ACT, 1947

Approval to remain in the Commonwealth does not absolve you from the necessity to comply with the provisions of the Aliens Act, 1947.

Should you change your permanent place of address you must within seven days of acquiring a new address complete a Form R.A.2 and produce it with your Certificate of Registration to the Commonwealth Migration Officer, if residing in a capital city, or to the nearest post office at which money order facilities are available, if residing outside a capital city area. The new address will then be endorsed in your Certificate of Registration. The same action must be taken if you are temporarily absent from your permanent address for a period exceeding thirty consecutive days.

Should you change your occupation or profession or the place of your employment, you must within seven days of such change complete Form R.A.3 and produce it with your Certificate of Registration to the Commonwealth Migration Officer, if residing in a capital city, or to the nearest post office at which money order facilities are available, if residing outside a capital city area.

CITIZENSHIP AND NATURALIZATION

As you will no doubt wish to become naturalised as an Australian Citizen and British subject, and so acquire the important privileges attaching to that status, your attention is invited to the following requirements to be met by applicants for naturalisation: —

(a)      Residence – A period of five years’ residence in Australia is normally required; service during the war in units under British command may be accepted as part of the qualifying period of residence.

(b)     Declaration of Intention – Persons who will not be able to comply with the requirement (a) until after 26th January, 1951, will not be able to apply for naturalization at the end of their five years’ residence unless at least two years beforehand they have made Declarations of Intention to apply for naturalisation; the Declaration may and should be made by such persons as soon as they have been in Australia for twelve months. If you have not already made a Declaration of Intention, you may secure the necessary forms from any office of the Commonwealth Department of Immigration.

(c)       Other requirements are – Good character, ability to speak and understand the English language, and knowledge of the responsibilities and privileges of Australian citizenship; these latter requirements do not have to be met when you lodge your Declaration of Intention, but only when you make your final application for naturalisation.

——————————————————————————————————–

Australian Music Examinations Board
Pianoforte, Seventh Grade
Name of Candidate Erna Dzelme No. 3317A
Technical Work:  Examination Report
Maximum Marks – Marks Allotted – (Pass Marks):
——————
Scales:  Carefully played – Accurate in general. Could be a little more  ‘legato’ Chrom/Fengh stace/Oct stace. Good relaxed hand. Arp. A little hesitant. Dom. Dim also hesitant.
18 – 10 – (11 ½)
——————
List A  Study:  Neat and even semi-quavers. Quality of tone very pleasant with good nuances.  Rhythm good.
10 – 8½ – (6 ½)
——————
List B Fantasie Handel:  Spirit of the piece well portrayed. Good rhythmic pulse, and tonal contrasts well managed, with good clear articulation.
16 – 14 – (10 ½)
——————
List C Beethoven C min.:  Rhythm good, but needs to be a little more vigorous in the opening. Also more  difference is necessary between F & P. A few untidy top notes. Keep the lyrical parts (octaves) singing (also 2nd subject) (avoid holding left hand quavers)
18 – 11 ½ – (11 ½)
——————
List D Little White Donkey:  Good tempo for the donkey – Crisp and well articulated. Middle section had good contrast – grace notes could be ‘snappier’.
12 – 8 – (8)
—————–
Extra list:  Satisfactory list
4 – 4 – (2 ½)
—————–
Aural Test:    1. √ √ x      2. √ √ √        3. √ (nearly)        4. √ √
9 – 7 – (6)
—————-
Sight reading:  Very fair
8 – 6 – (5 ½)
—————
General Knowledge:  Satisfactory
5 – 4 – (3)
————————————–
100 – 73 Total – (65)

85: Honours
75: Credit
65: Pass
Result:     Pass

General remarks: Much thoughtful work has been done – do continue and gain more experience.
Examiner [signature] Mary Greville           Date May 9, 64.
Checked by {initials?} JO

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Postmaster-General’s Department
Telephone Accounts Section
G.P.O., Sydney Telephone    9 2049 Extension 30

4 February, 1966

NOTICE OF PENDING DISCONNECTION    

MRS E DZELME
SUMMER HILL

According to our records, your telephone account had not been paid by  1 FEBRUARY, 1966
YOUR TELEPHONE IS NOW LIABLE TO BE DISCONNECTED AT THE EXCHANGE WITHOUT FURTHER NOTICE 13.12.6 / £3.12.6

RECONNECTION FEE IS CHARGED              £10/-/-

(If you have paid you account since 1 FEBRUARY, 1966 please disregard this notice.)

[translated by Dzidra Mitchell]

It was the summer 1944 when we left our house. It had all gone on for almost 2 years – the noise of artillery – when the Germans moved over towards Russia, and then moved back. One got used to it and thought – nothing really would happen. Some time they would stop. Would make peace. Anyway the battlefield, up till then, was never near our house or even near our district. Somewhere off to the east, behind the horizon, would come the faraway bubbling of the artillery, like a very distant thunder. It would disappear completely for months and then you would hear it again.

The weather turned a little dry. Not a real drought, but rather depressingly hot. Still, it was a very nice Sunday afternoon, when we took our friends, neighbours from over the river, in our boat, after they had visited us, after quiet discussions that all the rumours actually did not mean a thing. The frontline would stay where it was over the border, in Russia.

After a couple of hours that same evening the neighbours phoned saying our talks had been a little too optimistic. “The frontline is coming nearer. We have to be prepared.”

There came another phone call from my brother-in-law. Better check your horses (go to the blacksmith about horses and carts). Go today, rather than leave it till tomorrow. Germans are retreating. The roads are full of refugees and army trucks. Be ready. Pack your things.

Pack your things!
It was a quiet summer. The life around the country house was going on, grain ripening in the fields, the vegetable gardens becoming laden with cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, peas, onions. Enormously big radishes that year. The black ones, round ones, oval, as big as cannonballs. Quite comical.
One of the pigs had 12 piglets. Just starting to look for more food than just their mother’s milk.
But – we have to get ready!

Elza, our maid, left to be with her family. The other maid, Irene, wanted to stay and leave together with us. We had already packed some of her things with ours, but then she visited her mother and phoned to say that she had decided to stay with her mother. The phone, the exchange, still worked as usual.

Our Russian prisoner of war, who had been with us for 2 years, who had been assigned to us as a farmhand, was taken off now. He, the big fat, funny Nicholai, “Da-da”, as Inese called him, because he was always saying  “da, da.” Inese was just 2 years and some months, and had not yet started speaking much. “Da-da” was taken away to a camp. When the Russians would come in – he would likely lose his head – for letting himself be taken prisoner by Germans. He was supposed to fight to the death. Now – he would have to die. He came home once for a couple of hours from the camp, for some food, or some advice, maybe a suggestion of whether  to flee, to hide? Nobody knew what to suggest. If somebody was found hiding him – they would have to die too. And Nicholai was so big and fat that nothing from our clothes would fit him. He spoke only Russian. What was to be done with him? He took some freshly baked bread, some smoked pork and left – for his camp.

Our twelve little piglets were now running all over the vegetable garden. They were left free, while we forgot about them, being busy with packing and trying to sort everything out. The cows also returned to their stables on their own. Each knew their place. A German soldier brought a bottle of rum in exchange for one piglet. After that, nobody was counting any more, nor asking anything for them. The Germans took them, killed and cleaned them. I let them into the kitchen to make a big pot of soup. I watched the pot when they had to go away for a while. They had their duties. They were not the fighting front row soldiers, but still had their orders as to when they had to be there, and when to move further on. When they moved – it was high time for us to move too. 
But we still had a couple of days.

Our summer help, a good natured student, also left for the city, for Riga, to go to his home. (All the students, and clerks from the city in the last years had to work on farms for at least 2 weeks in the summer, because of the shortage of farm workers.) Our one student, who had worked with us that summer, left. The lady teacher, who had also worked for a few months, left too. We were alone now on the farm. Me, my mother, little Inese, and my husband. We put things in barns, buried them in the ground, and packed those which we were to take with us, gave furniture to people, neighbours who were staying put. And still the house was full of things. My husband was away for a couple of hours and I spent the time cleaning – a bit pointlessly, but somehow it seemed to me very important. The house was terribly dirty after the packing. Packing papers, wood pieces, sand, rags – all mixed up, all open, turned out, disheveled. It took me less time than I thought, to clean it all up, wash the cupboards, shelves, drawers. To make it look – like an inhabited house again. Many things had gone – the books, the new bookshelves, my piano, Mother’s furniture from her maiden days – a chest of drawers and wardrobe, lamps and mirrors. But many things were still there – other wardrobes, beds, chairs, tables, the sideboard in the dining room, the clock on the wall, and Father’s deer horns. I made the beds, put up some wall hangings, which had not been used for ages, as well as drawings from my first years in the Academy. When I finished I was surprised at what had happened to the house – it had re-acquired its face from some 10 years ago, when we were starting our studies, our schooling, when we did not yet have so many things, when we had kind of lighter, cheaper, more innocent things, were happier maybe… The house looked very friendly. I was glad. I felt that the people who would come – our people, or Germans or Russians, whoever would come in – would be greeted civilly, decently. 

Then we left. First to a farmhouse about 20 miles away – a friend’s house. My mother and Inese, and 2 of our 3 horses. We would be able to come back for maybe some more things forgotten in the house. If possible. That’s how we did it. We left with 3 horses, with three carts full with things – food for us, for horses, flour in bags, smoked bacon in bags, 2 milk cans with honey. There, in the friend’s farm, Inese and my mother stayed in a big cosy hay shed. They could have stayed in the house, in the living rooms, but they preferred the shed. In peace. With the horses. And cows.

My husband went on a bicycle, I in a farm cart with our older horse, back to our house the next day. It was a very warm, very quiet afternoon. It took more than 2 hours, maybe 3 hours to drive the 20 kilometres. The land around was empty and quiet. 

No people working in the fields, no machines making their noise, even no cattle to be seen. Those who were leaving, had left. Who were staying – had hidden somehow, away, not to be seen. It was a little scary. To go in that direction, towards the front. Sometimes it was really frightening. Would I be able to return? What will happen? What can happen? But – my husband was already there with his bicycle – I had to follow. In our house everything was as it had been the day before. We still packed some unimportant things, looked for some photos. I mixed dough, plenty of rye dough for fresh bread to take with us.

The sun was still high and my husband said – let’s go around our fields for the last time. So I took a jug for berries – the bushes were full of wild strawberries and raspberries, and we went. Our cows were grazing lazily on their own. They were not all there. Some had been taken by the neighbours who were staying on. The little pigs had all disappeared. Also our dog was not there. She had followed us the day before, and then lost us somewhere on the road. We went all over our land. Filled the jar with little, very sweet raspberries (so sweet because of the hot and dry weather). We looked and listened to the empty, calm, quiet country all around. Almost no human sound at all. Only from over the river, from the neighbour’s farm behind the trees, sometimes came sounds, a door slamming, very subdued voices. Those people would be staying. Many would stay. Only some were leaving. The hunted families. The richer farmers, the people who had their stronger opinions, had said or would say something again about rights, rules, life, etc.
(We made love, kind of a ritual, in the sunny bush, and came home.)

The warm smell of the fresh bread filled all the house. I opened the windows of our living room to the garden, and to the river, which flowed calmly behind the apple trees. The peace of the house and the garden, and the evening, the rare light, was so powerful that we were standing a long time without moving and then said to each other – let’s stay at home. Here. At least till tomorrow. Actually – we did not know what we felt – did we mean “till tomorrow”, or – just stay, stay forever, if it could last like this…in our house. It was dark already. And then suddenly 2 sharp, terrible sounds flew like enormous arrows across the calm world, over our house, above us and – fell somewhere further away with a crash. “Rockets” my husband said. We had to leave. Maybe they had destroyed the Arona bridge which we needed to cross. But – we had to go, to try. He hurried to the horse, and put 2 cows behind the cart. 

It was already dark by the time we were ready to leave – one horse with the cart, 2 cows tied to it at the back, to take with us. Maybe for food, or to use them to pay for something. We went slowly. Into the dark summer night.

 It was all quiet again. Only in the east, far away the sky was red and was getting brighter with every minute. You could almost see the flames rising up into the sky. Something was burning violently, maybe our district centre – the church, school, the other buildings, the little township. The village had recently been awarded the status of a town, had swelled to suit.

The front line was getting nearer. Maybe parts of it were already near the river, in the other district centre, only seven kilometres away from us. I walked behind the cows, making sure that they moved, quietly followed the horse, and did not disturb it. They went quietly. As we did. Obediently.

At the barn, where the hedge of young firs left an open view towards the house, I stopped and let the cart with my husband go on. I looked back at the house. There were trees in front, still visible in the dark, the corner of the house, the triangle of the roof against the sky, and the window of my mother’s room. The view was exactly like it was those many nights and evenings when I came late from the station, coming from the city for summer holidays. In the early spring or summer nights, when I had not written to let them know exactly when I would arrive, when the horse had not been sent to meet me, when I had happily trotted the 4 kilometres along the familiar road through the bush, over the bridge at Arona, smelling the young birch leaves, hearing the late sounds of birds, and getting impatient to get to the house, to the summer, the summer… Sometimes Mother’s window was lit up, sometimes it was dark, like now, and then, when I would slowly shut the front door, go through the kitchen and stop in the dining room, I would hear my mother’s voice from her bedroom through the open door – “the matches are on the corner of the table”… I would extend my hand, and would have them, and hear the clock ticking on the wall, feel all the sweet smells, and  strike the match and light the lamp with the creamy porcelain shade. I would see and feel all the things around greeting me, being there for me – the clock glinting with its shiny pendulum, Father’s deer horns with a little green branch which the maid Vilma had put there, the oven with its ornamented tiles high up… Then I would go to my mother. Then to the living room – in part shade from the lamp on the dining room table, cooler with different smells – beeswax, old books, with some light on my piano, from the three windows to the garden and river, the meadow, the summer, all summer.

The house looked now exactly like it did on those nights. And I talked to it in my mind – I put a question to the house very firmly, so that it had to answer:
“Will I see you again? Will you – see me again?”
And waited for the answer. Seriously. Listened.
It did not answer. Or it – said – no, and I did not want to hear it. Or I heard – yes, and knew that I was giving the answer myself.
The house was mute. We had to part. We parted. I had to run, to run a good lot to catch up with the horse and cows and my husband. I did not think more. I did not cry. I walked behind the animals. Sometimes sat on the bags in the cart. Walked again when it seemed to me the horse might get exhausted.

I did not think anymore of the house. Or of the familiar road through the forest. Or anything from the past. Of anything that already was – the past. I wondered – whether the bridge at Arona would still be there? What would happen if it wasn’t? We could go back, around through the country, to find a back road. It would take us an extra 20-30 kilometres, and in the direction of the front. And who could tell in what state the bridges there would be. We had to cross here. Even if we had to leave the cart. Maybe just take the horse and wade over the river, somewhere where we could find a shallower place. It was not shallow at the bridge. I wondered if tonight we could manage those 20 kilometres that now still lay between us and our child and mother. How were they? Was it all quiet there? What had been that powerful, terrible sound and crash? Would it come again? And so on.

The bridge was there. We crossed over it and went on further, a little relieved. We did not meet anybody or anything. We got back to the big shed safely. We brought in the jug of the wild raspberries for Mother and Inese. But it was late at night and they were asleep.

We lived in that shed for several days. Maybe almost a week. There were other refugees in the house. Cattle and children were all around the place. The other men and my husband buried some things in the ground again. Our carts were too heavy. We could not continue like that. Mostly clothes, bed clothes, furs, linen and bags of grain and flour. Someone suggested we sink the bags of flour deep down in an old well. There was water in the bottom of it, but it was clear. It was a clean well, and the flour inside, deeper in it, would stay fresh. And probably, maybe surely – we would all return in a couple of weeks, maybe in a couple of months time. Germans would not let Russians keep the Baltic states. A German – would keep them for himself. He knew what he was getting. He had had us for centuries…

We were invited to spend our free time in the big farmhouse. There were plenty of rooms. Even if we slept in the shed – the rest of the time we could be in the house, spend any free time in the house. We did not have much free time. We had to look after the animals. Wash clothes, wash dishes. Work out what to cook. We cooked outside, on open fire. If we needed something, in order to find it, we usually had to dig around, through one or other of the carts, deep among the packed things. It needed to be done with care, and took time, otherwise all the careful packing would disintegrate. And – we needed rest. We sat in the sun in the shed’s big open door and relaxed, and pondered. My new walnut wood piano was standing in one corner in the big shed, half covered with hay. What would be its fate? It did not matter. Here, so we thought, it would survive maybe longer. Here there was no river, no bigger roads, so near here, battles would be less likely, or bombings, or burning down. Here the piano could wait. Maybe for us. Maybe for some new owner. Or just the strike of some axe, or a fire.

We were invited for afternoon tea in the nice big house. There for the first time I felt how far from a nicely set table I had already come. How useless those nice cups and silver spoons seemed to me. They had gone out of my life.  A long time ago already, so it felt. Maybe forever. They had lost their meaning. And – probably would never get it back fully. I often feel restless at a lavishly set table. I feel that something is ebbing away – something more important. Life. All those fragile cups… There in the shed, we drank our tea and milk and coffee out of strong, old, kitchen cups, and later in many other sheds, at roadsides, in forests, in barns, further and further, all the summer across our country, till we reached the sea. The Baltic sea. I picked up a cup once, on the dusty road as we went along in the long queue of refugee carts. I thought – maybe I would be able to give it back to whomever had lost it. There was no owner to be found.  It was a nice strong, aluminium cup. Maybe from a soldier’s bag. I loved it. It travelled with us all the way to Germany. It was dear to me – from that dusty, sunny road, our country’s road, with all the misery that was happening there now. A firm, light, strong, aluminium cup. I wish I had it now. But it disappeared a long time ago. Everything from that time, from those things, is gone. They drop off you like leaves in autumn. They are replaced. What would I do now with that cup? Look at it, remember something. The wild roses on the roadside. Picking them, I was late jumping back onto my cart. I slipped and went down between the horse and the cart. I saw the horse’s hooves moving near my face, but they did not touch me. I let the reins go and flattened myself to the ground and the wheels went past along on both sides of me and did not hurt me. I caught my horse and got up on my seat. I had only some bruises and a little dizziness. But that night I bled. I lost my second baby. Nothing much. It was only the beginning of it. Maybe it was better like that. I was strong. Next day I brought water for the horses and for the cow and baked bread in a farmhouse. My husband was not one from whom I could ask for kindness, understanding or help. The more you have to bear, the stronger you get, up to a point. Until – it is too much. It takes quite a time to get to that point. In the meantime, if one is lucky, one gets stronger, and stronger, the way I did.

The weather was warm and nice and the first refugee days for us in the big farmhouse were not too bad. Inese and Mother were keeping themselves well. We made our carts lighter, bound and tightened them more securely, and went further on our way. Some unpleasant, disturbing feelings were created by a few things, ordinary things, but what upset us, also showed us, that in our future, such things would be part of our lives, and we would have to accept them. My husband killed a lamb for our food. I cannot remember if it was ours, or some other refugee gave it to us. People used to share things. Some people had packed too much of one thing, and left out other things. From the lamb, we had one or two meals – and then the still good, fresh meat was suddenly covered with worms, millions of worms. The meat had been exposed to the heat. We had nowhere to hide it, nowhere to keep our food safe from the heat, from flies, from deteriorating. To see that fresh lamb’s meat covered with those worms was somehow worse than just to see a piece of food lost. It pointed to our own situation, our deteriorating lives, principles, customs, the meaning of it all… But we had to throw the lamb away, to not think like that, to not think, to not feel at all. Just – to go on. 

We had some quiet days in another shed, in the middle of grassy meadows full of flowers, near a shady young birch forest. I stayed there in the shed, letting the horses and cows (we kept the two cows with us) graze in the meadows. The farmer, a rich young, educated man, allowed us to do that. For as long as we needed to, as long as we wanted. There was no more private property now, to his way of thinking . Everything belonged to everyone who needed it. Mother and Inese got a room in the house. My husband, always around somewhere, left with the young farmer for a few days to find out what the situation was at the approaching front. I milked my 2 cows and would have to pour the milk out. I gave it to the horses. And it seemed wrong to do that. When people elsewhere were starving, fighting, giving their lives. I went to the farmhouse which was about a mile away and offered them the milk, with more milk to be had every day, if they needed it, down in the paddock, in the meadow… They were Germans, German soldiers who were retreating slowly, or maybe would have to fight again, to not let the Russians take over. Germans? Russians? They were all just human beings to me. Two of them came to the meadow and the shed, brought us some sugar, drank the milk, sat on the grass near the shed and talked. One of them came back the next day and had a look at the horses. Helped me to take them further away, to fresh grass. He said – he had horses at home, and that he loved horses. He was an intelligent looking, or maybe just a quite good looking young fellow. I liked him, I felt a little shy and confused in front of him. I wished the situation could be more normal, not a wartime situation, there in that sunny meadow, with the horses, talking, about horses, about life.

But when he followed me into the shed, (I do not remember what for) I suddenly got frightened. We both were a little breathless too, from some kind of yearning, from some feeling of sympathy, from some longing for life or something. But I was stiff with fright, trying to keep my dignity, to rule the situation. I even extended my hand in self protection and a plea, and he took it and said – No. No, do not be frightened. It’s just that you remind me of something. Something of home. And we relaxed. There was nothing for us live, young people, other than this life that we now had, which we still cherished, and for which we continued to carry on. A life, still with some joy, daring, even flirtation. He left. And I felt I had escaped some terrible danger. Felt relieved. And felt a little miserable. What are the needs of people in war situations, with all former attachments destroyed – home, life, meaning? What was that life force, that still burned, burned with full flame, flashed bright for a moment – wanting to be alive, to live, to share, to love? There is no such thing as a bad man because of his nationality. I have met Germans, many of them, and Russians, and Jews… A man is bad if he, in his individual nature, is bad, or when he has to be bad because of the rules of the group he belongs to. If he is ordered to destroy – he has to do it, whether German, or Russian, or Jew, or Latvian. Or…when he has obeyed the rules so long that he is broken, has lost his senses and is running riot, attacking and destroying everything. Luckily I have not met such a man during the war days. Rather, perhaps – in normal life, everyday life, where of course it is not always so clearly visible. In everyday life, all is neatly masked.

We left. On the little track, hardly visible through the field, with bullets flying, we struggled to reach the forest. Twice I have struggled like that under bullet fire to get across an open space, to reach tree cover. I know that feeling – you seem to move terribly slowly, you seem to be terribly weighed down, you almost fall to the ground from the heaviness but actually you are moving, running, climbing as fast as you can. Then we were hidden by the forest. But not fully. Some Flugzeuge (planes) appeared, the bullets came from above. They always come in intervals. If you survive one onslaught – you can go further. Some little aeroplanes that were circling the advancing tanks, were showering machine gun bullets in all directions, left and right. We struggled from one sheltered part of the road to another, sometimes had to stop suddenly in an open place, to fall to the ground, and then continue going again… 

Once in a quieter moment, we stopped our horses. Mother was coming last. She was somewhere behind us. Suddenly there was a terrible bang and crash, somewhere near, behind us, or beside us, or around us. Not right on us. The horses had stopped, but we were not hurt. But the third horse, with the cart with Mother, was not visible, she was somewhere further behind. She would have been where the crash was. I thought – she has been hit, crushed. We stood there. I was standing there with the terrible feeling – she is dead back there, gone… I could not run back, I was tied to my unremitting “carry on further” drivenness. Still, I stood there. Our horses, and my husband had stopped. Not for a moment did I think my mother might be wounded – I just thought – she is dead…! What was to be done. Nothing. Then the horse, the cart, my mother appeared, kind of slowly, on the road behind us. She was not hurt, nor the horse. And she had been thinking – that we must be dead, that maybe we were dead, but she had kept coming further, continuing when the horse moved again after having stopped for a moment with the crash, as did our horses. We continued on again.

One burst of fire came and I was flat on the ground, in among the trees. I could not get up. I had to have that moment to hide, I knew, even though my child was not with me. She was back in the cart, under the tent but open to the bullets, which could reach her there. I had to save myself till the next quiet moment. What if I stayed too long? Till the next hail of bullets? I did not know. I got up with my husband shouting at me, in a terrible rage. I thought it was all just a brief moment, then I would leave the trees, but  then I heard his shouting. I cannot be a hundred percent sure – maybe I would have stayed a little too long, maybe the next onslaught would come. Actually – it did not come till we again reached a bush, a copse, a hiding place. Then again we were in the open, and the track disappeared in the soft meadow, the bullets were flying, and my husband’s cart with Inese and all the heavy milk cans full of honey overturned. The young, gentle, mild-tempered horse stopped, with the gear all over its back. My husband grabbed the child out of the wagon load, which was now all on the ground. A German soldier came out of the bush, wanted to help, maybe cut some of the leather straps, to ease the gear that was twisted up on the horse. It was not much help. He knew it, and left. Disappeared. They knew how to hide, how to disappear. We fell on the ground, only the horses were standing. but – the bullets were hitting here and there, somewhere around us, and then were gone again. We threw the things back into the cart, and continued through the meadow. There were a few cart tracks visible. Someone had taken this way before us. After a quarter of a mile of more struggle, we were on the big road. All perspiring, exhausted, tense. There was a ditch with still water. I fell on my knees beside it, drank with my mouth, like horses and cows do, drank greedily with open eyes, looking at the green grass and the water bugs swimming all around my face.

A young landowner and my husband had been riding on bicycles (a good, quiet, easy way to get around without being too noticeable) for a couple of days through the countryside, also back closer to the front, and had discovered – that we must get on with our journey. The Russians had come forward, the Germans had retreated. The Russians were advancing. We had stayed in this place maybe too long already. We went on. Did some 15 kilometres more. We stopped to rest again in a big farmhouse. These were Vidzeme’s nicer, richer areas that we were crossing. I do not remember if we had already stayed the night there, or had been there just half a day, doing our usual things – cooking, washing, letting the horses graze somewhere, and also the cows. There were many more refugee families now, in the house, in the garden, in the yard. Somebody said – those are Russian tanks! We could see them passing on the big road behind the apple trees. Could they be… were they Russian tanks? The garden and the field just a few minutes ago were full with German soldiers digging trenches, hiding in the trenches with green branches and leaf-covered helmets. Now – they were not to be seen anymore. They – had retreated. Some soldiers were still there though. Some came into the yard. And the bullets from the tanks started to whistle. Not all the time. Just sometimes. Mother and Inese stayed in the yard, somewhere, sitting on the ground, packing up, cleaning dishes. My husband and I hurried to the field to the horses, harnessed them back onto the carts. The bullets flew again. I started to run, to be with Mother and Inese, to protect them somehow, to do something… “Stay!” I was  commanded. “Do the work!” Yes. We had to. We had to get the carts ready, or try to. We hid behind the horses, arranging the gear. Would that help? It could. The horses might get hurt. If so, we would not be able to leave. But – we might stay alive. A bullet hit the front wheel of my cart, a whistle, a sharp crack – but the wheel was ok. The bullet had hit some metal part of it. We made the carts ready. Ran to the yard – the people, women, children, men – were all around the farmyard like before. A German soldier appeared, ordered us all into the cellar. He was angry at our stupidity, our standing there out in the open. We were impatient, unhappy in the cellar – we had to leave. Our horses were ready. Then we were out in the open again. Somebody told us about another road, a small bush road where we could go further, join the big road later, maybe we could be lucky, reach the road before the tanks. Or the tanks might take the big road to the right into the centre of Ergli, and we could escape on the other big road, on the left, and could continue our way without entering the town centre, and so maybe escape the Russians.

There were houses with open doors and windows, open gates, dead horses, other dead animals here and there on the roadside, pieces of furniture that looked so unbelievably out of place, much more so than the dead animals. Some things were burning, there was no-one, no human being, not an animal to be seen alive. All gone or hiding. After a couple of kilometres we came to a bridge. The Germans waved to us to follow, to hurry. They had to hurry too, to blow up the bridge. Maybe wait a few seconds, some minutes more, maybe behind us there would still be a German soldier coming through. Had we see some? Yes, we saw one. Two. We crossed the bridge. We continued along the empty road and understood, that the centre of Ergli, where the Russians would have entered by now, lay somewhere to the left, somewhere now dangerously close to this road that we were on. If we were lucky, we could reach the big road behind the centre occupied by the Russians. And that’s what we did.

But we came to a very crowded road. All filled with refugees and full of German army vehicles, big ones with horses, and motor vehicles. It was hard for the refugees to be mixed in with the army, with the retreating army. We were pushed aside, the road getting destroyed by the unceasing heavy traffic. There were sections, all stones and sand, and the horses could not pull anymore. Many carts and wheels and possessions went to pieces. The horses had to be helped, the carts to be pushed. Everyone was out of their carts, doing it. Step by step we got through it. In the beginning, aeroplanes came at us, then later we were left alone. We met some people from the same farmhouse where we had stopped before, when we first noticed the Russian tanks passing. Somebody had been wounded, shot in the leg. In that same farmyard, where Inese and Mother had been moving around before while we readied the horses and loads, someone had been hurt. We had escaped. Some people on that road after Ergli buried their child, who had been shot dead in an air raid. In some carts were wounded people, some were walking having lost their horses. We survived it. Many came through. More than were shot and hurt. The bullets fly blindly, you happen or not to be in their way. Our two cows were still with us. They were useful to hide behind, they were shelter when the bullets whistled. But they were not hurt either, some scratches in one of the horse’s manes.
We did one of the longest stretches of road that day. We went on and on till night, while the animals could still move.

Further we continued more quietly. After that, we were never again under bullets or bombs. We slept in sheds. Relaxed in forests, paddocks. Together with somebody else, shared a bullock they had killed. I even do not know, and did not know then, where it came from. Maybe bought, maybe taken from some field somewhere. Another family was with us. We had meals of fresh meat and then – afterwards – the smelly meat, halfway bad meat for days… The terrible, awful meat that I had to cook. It was not totally spoiled yet. We still had some of it, and then left the rest for some people at the harbour, where we took the ship to Germany.

But before that – we never again came under fire. We were travelling now a good distance ahead of the front line. The Russians were advancing more slowly. We travelled through our Riga, our capital city. Over the main bridges, through the main streets that led from Vidzeme to Kurzeme, and further to our land’s coastlines, to where there was the possibility to cross the Baltic Sea to Sweden, or go to Germany through Lithuania, Poland. Or by sea to Germany.

Going through Riga was so slow that we had to stand still for hours. Cart after cart, for kilometres and kilometres. Through the whole city, there were refugees. The longest stop we had was just opposite the old cathedral, opposite Esplanade Square, on Brivibas (Freedom) Boulevard. We could not leave the horses or turn off somewhere. We had to stay in the queue to get through, to get through Riga as soon as possible. To be on the other side of the Daugava River. Maybe there, in Kurzeme, we would be able to slow down. To wait. There were always rumours that we would be able to go back. That the Russians would be pushed back. That the English are coming. That we will not be allowed to be taken over by the Russians.

We were standing there with our tired horses and cows on the boulevard. Where I once first met my husband. Maybe a mistake. But maybe not. Life really does not make mistakes. The same boulevard where once I walked in my tailored suit, silk stockings, kid gloves, little felt hat. Also in summer time, almost all the summer, you would wear a felt hat. A real “Hute” [German for “hat”… “elegance” implied]. Gloves. Shit! Once, I’d been walking with the Minister of Internal Affairs and his wife and his brother. I was once engaged to his brother. It had been a nice evening when we walked there. But that did not work out. And – maybe life does not make mistakes. He was one of the first to disappear when the Russians came in, just a few years ago. I had (was destined) to live.

City people stopped and looked at us. Patted, touched the tired horses with their hands. Cried. A tall, not very young man in dustcoat and hat, stopped and burst into tears: “My country, my people. Where are you going?” We all, in the immense queue, sat on our bags with watchful faces. 
“How long have you been on the road?”
“Three weeks.”
“What can we do for you? Do you need something? Tell us if we can help?”
“Thanks. Nothing. There is nothing, we have everything with us. We have milk. Do you want milk? Here is some flour. Take it. We really are too heavily loaded…”

Slowly we moved ahead. Over the Daugava River. And felt safer. And started on the long road through Kurzeme. Kurland. Old Kurland. Our land. For Heaven’s sake, all you Germans, Russians, all you maggots…

We continued to camp in sheds, in meadows, in forests. Sometimes we were asked into houses, got a warm bath for the child. Got some fresh vegetables, some fruit. Killed a calf or bullock, together with some other refugees. It was bought, stolen, or not stolen – taken from a paddock maybe. We had our fresh meat and then for weeks smelly meat, the nauseating half-bad meat. 

But that was my husband. All thing, events, people and animals had to obey him. Even years later, in the new country, he dropped a killed rat before our dog, near the barn: “He will eat. He will eat.” And said, about our little skinny, newly bought cow – “She will eat those tomatoes. They are not too rotten for her.” “You will chop that wood…” There could be only one ruling mind. Maybe it is easier like that.

It gives you desolate loneliness and a great toughness, enormous endurance. For you, who has to eat those rotten tomatoes, cook that half spoiled, smelly meat. The rule is – you do or you die. And – you go on. You do not feel the headache, dizziness, thirst, hunger, pain in your legs, you do not take any notice of those little signals your body is sending you. And later it stops sending them, stops bothering you. Sometimes you think of it like an obedient animal, which follows you. And when it is possible, you say to it – well, take a rest, bloody well go to sleep. And it does. You are free to observe, to investigate your future a little further. You reach for something ahead of you. You know how to continue. You keep going.

I have felt that for years and years. I have walked always a couple of steps, more than a couple of steps, ahead of my body. And, very occasionally, have stopped, looked back at it with a sudden pity, but not love. The best servants really are those, who are not loved. Let them be in eternal struggle for that.

We all got tough. Me. My children. Our dogs. Only mother died early. We others all stayed on our feet forever – inexhaustible. All those prizes and scholarships. But that was years and years later. 

Now, we were struggling across Kurzeme. The weather kept dry and warm. We met some friends on the roads and lost them again in the crowd. I met the family of our big poet. He was on a horse cart too. And his wife and daughter and son. I do not remember if his son was there. His niece – was his niece there? With whom I studied together in the Academy? Maybe she was. Or she stayed behind in the country. The poet also asked: “Why are you going? Where are you going?”

They went to Sweden. To the same northern side of the globe, where years ago he had been in exile. For being a supporter of all those good ideas, the human ideas, which had been on the placards of that same power? force? – from which he was fleeing now.

Similarly, my father, at the same time (1905) scarcely escaped being hanged for socialist ideas and was shot 15 years later by the same bearers of such socialist ideas. There was nothing to ponder. Just to keep going. We had not much hope of going to Sweden. Only a few boats took a few lucky people there. 

I met my cousin A. on the road too. He was angry with me -“Why do you go through those dangers? You could earn your living in Germany any time. Could you leave him and flee?” It was not as easy as he said. I should have run into him a lot earlier. And then he would have had to help me. Somebody would have had to help me. But that was not meant to be my life. My life went the hard way through, across country roads. And had something good for me in store too. I bled away 2 pregnancies on the roads to Germany, to Austria, to so-called peace, the end of the second world war, and at last got a sister for my first child, for Inese. I got another girl, another daughter, which is the other wonder out of it all.

Yes, what cousin A. suggested, when I met him on the road, did not touch my mind. I knew it was impossible. If I had heard his suggestion earlier, had prepared for it when we were still at home… But nobody thought of those things back then. Anyway – not us. 

All the Baltic Germans were repatriated. Several years earlier. I used to hear the thousand rumours – disaster will come, destruction, changes for the worse. I used to smile. Never! Life, security, freedom, seemed settled and ours for ever and ever. 
Who would have been so mad as to flee with the Germans at that time?
What cousin A said now, reminded me of those German repatriations. He said – “You could get a job easily in Germany. Live there!”

I did not even listen properly. Even in better times, it is different when you are not alone, when you are in two parts, in three parts – my child, my mother, my self…Things are different for someone independent, like he was.

I also never for a single moment thought of staying there, in our land, if the Russians would take over again. And not only  because of personal danger, being a member of a hunted family. Maybe I would not have been persecuted. I could not stay because I could not imagine life for ever under the kind of ‘liberation’ that they would bring. I knew enough of all that. However – I’d never really thought about, or remembered all those things. How at college, a woman history teacher, from the same high school where I was teaching arts, later, when visiting me once, during the time when we were “under the Russians”, said to me – “Do not speak to me so openly now about everything. Now – we cannot talk so much… “
I did not understand what she meant. She had to repeat and repeat it in variations. I still could not get it. She said at last – “I am in the party now. I am applying. Hope to be accepted.” Even then I could not fully grasp the real meaning of it.
“But we have known each other for years,” I said. “We know each other. You know me. We can talk. As we have always talked…”
“No,” she said. And added that she better not visit me any more. And she never did.

And just the same words “do not talk to me now any more like before” – were said to my brother-in-law by one of his friends. Already the spy mesh was being woven. And now, when they took over again, we would be in it. Everyone in. 

I was a free spirit. Was – once. Actually not so much any more, already there on the road. Some time before it all, when I was a free person, in a free land, when I first heard that war was coming, would be coming, that we may again lose our freedom, I remember how, standing at the window of the pleasantly lofty building of our school, looking over the roofs of the nice little town, over the trees and forests and brilliant skies, I had the thought – “Never. Then rather die. Kill yourself…” 
“Suicide,” I vowed. But soon you learn to postpone the dying. In these times – it is better that way. Only in very exceptional cases would it be better if you died. I was worth more now, walking those roads. The almost endless road that was just beginning for me. The road that still continues. The walking still goes on.

I postponed one opportunity to make my life different, not even realising it. A couple of days before we left our home, my brother-in-law came on his motorcycle. He already had a car then too. My husband was not at home. Maybe my brother-in-law had chosen just that hour. Maybe he had asked my mother about it when he phoned.
They were talking together as usual at the table in the dining room, under the clock ticking on the wall, when I came in.
“How,” my brother-in-law asked me. “How will you manage to get away?” They both waited for my answer. Something important had been asked, but I did not see it. Did not understand.
“Oh – we will go, with 3 horses.” I said. So, he left.
Only maybe later that evening or next morning my mother said doubtfully – “Did you do the right thing?” And she asked me if I had not understood that J. had offered to take us with him, me, her, Inese to Germany straight away by car, then train or ship…
No – I had not understood that.

And – I reconsidered it quickly. I would accept, I would go! But the phone did not work anymore. I could not reach J. Only – by walking 13 kilometres. Impossible. He would be already on his way. It had been a last minute opportunity – he had taken the trip to us just then, before he left. His house was 12 kilometres nearer the front line.

The missed opportunity to have a better way for Mother, Inese, me… I would have chosen that. It did not turn out that way. Something had prevented me from seeing, from hearing what was being offered. Mother too had not asked again. Nor had J. said another word. They too were prevented from seeing that I did not see.

I was not sorry for long. I did not even really know, if I was supposed to be sorry. I had no time to think. There remained no other realities, other possibilities then, except those which were now left.  Through those little spaces between events, through those half steps right or left, half seconds earlier or later, all those living moments, went the lives of human beings there. Lives went on. Some went further, kept going on, others fell away, disappeared, just the same way, in half steps, half seconds.