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Pattern of Stones en Route
(Ceļa akmeņu raksts)
Prose and poems: Erna Ķikure
Published: Inese Birstins, Canada, 1990
Cover art: Dzidra Mitchell, Australia
Cover design: Nelson Vigneault, Canada
ISBN: 0-9693766-3-4

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[Translated by Dzidra Mitchell]

REFUGEE CAMP IN SUDETENLAND
from the cycle – “Without a home”

  Anna’s old mother sat in the quietest corner of the barrack on the bunk and pulled her headscarf further down over her eyes. Now and again, tears came. She did not want anyone to see. That just made it harder. She had arrived here, to a German country. One had to follow one’s children. How else to survive, so old, by oneself. Experiencing new things. Things that she never never could have imagined. Travel across the sea, seeing the hills and dales of strange lands. Only, at what cost, at what cost! The old mother pulled her headscarf down even further.
       The barrack was packed. People were doubling up on the bunks. It was already a month since they had arrived. Her homeland, with the horrors of war had been left behind. She should have been able to relax and settle in to this land. But in this land they had no life. They were shut in behind barbed wire. If only she could have had a little corner in some farmhouse, she would have been able to knit, to mend, to wash dishes. Even those old hands still wanted to be able to work, to earn enough for one’s keep, and a small corner to call one’s own, even the most modest. But here, the people kept coming and coming. There were hordes of people, and no longer any civilised life. They were put into camps like cattle. The strongest would be sent out, assigned work, while the old and the weak would most likely have to fade away here.
       Her daughter’s little girl, Daina crouched next to the old woman. The two year old’s little eyes watched everything in wonder, in reproach, and became wiser by the day. She no longer wanted to eat, and no longer wanted to laugh.
       They were the last days of November. Outside, the mud became covered in snow. In the barracks, the temperature changed. Full of smokey fumes, and icy cold.
       They should have gone for more walks outside, both the child and the old woman, but the clayey mud was so deep and sticky. So many people drying their muddied shoes in the one room was making the air rather unbearable. One had to shrink back, make oneself small, so small in every way. The old woman’s hand softly stroked the child’s dark curls. “Let us wait and see what Mummy will have brought us,”  she said, trying to cheer up the little one.
       It was already getting dark outside. Anna, hot, her forehead covered in sweat from her anxious walk, quickly bent down at the camp’s wire fence, through the hole that was right down on the ground, and back into the camp. Her backpack got caught a little, but did not hold her back. Just a few more big, quick steps away from the fence and she could stop being afraid, the way she had been while hurrying straight along on the outside. She had been trying to avoid being seen by the guard. And she had made it. A few hours earlier, she had found the secret hole in the fence, and slipped through and gone to the village. She had gone begging, from house to house, to no avail, but at last she did manage to buy a couple of beautiful apples. After more than a month without having had any greens, they were sure to make the child very happy. If they could just survive camp life, later it would be easier, she thought.
        She hurried across the trampled floor of the barrack, took off her backpack and quickly opened it. She was dying to see her child’s delight. 
       And the little one’s joy was huge. She took each rosy apple in both her little hands, held them high, and pressed them to her cheeks. And the grandmother took the apples in her hands too, and felt the weight of them. Gazed at them and saw again that long, long ago time, those apples in her own father’s orchard.
       But they were brief moments of joy. A couple of apples could not really change things. The child needed freedom, and healthy air in the place.
      The first air raid alarm resulted in their walking up to the top of the hill into the big, thick forest. The camp’s barracks were on the hillside right where the Sudetenland valley ends and the dark forest begins along the ridge. Little Daina came back to life in the forest. Smiling, and murmuring happily, she stopped at the fallen pine needles on the ground, the leaves in their autumn colours, and the mushrooms which were still, so late in the year, to be found there.
       But the walk ended up being too long, and the little one caught a cold. Or perhaps that happened in the barrack. Who could say for certain? Only her temperature, which here had often been a little raised, now took on the character of a real fever. One of the Sisters of Mercy came, had a look at the child, and said she was to be taken to the hospital. The little one evidently had measles, which were spreading through the camp. 
      The camp hospital was in similar barracks, rough buildings, with a bath and a few toilets.
      The room where Anna was able to put her child was fairly large. It was at the end of a barrack, with two windows, one on each side, and two rows of beds along the walls. The middle had an aisle, and a tin stove, like in all the camp barracks. This was the children’s section. Except that next to the door were two beds occupied by adults, who were partly like invalids, partly like helpers. They were a father and a seventeen year old son, who had both partly lost their minds on a burning ship. No-one knew what had happened to the rest of their family. They were left with nothing, just their lives. The father had already revived a little. Even though he did not talk, he did bring in some coal and light the stove. The son just sat in his bed and looked through the window. Now and then, he nervously combed his hair, and left the comb stuck there. Stories about the ship disaster were horrific. 
       Anna’s little girl’s bed was at the other end near the window. All the beds were full. Next to Daina lay a little girl, Elizabet, about the same age. She was from Poland. The father, a Polish doctor, had been left behind somewhere at the war front. The mother, a beautiful young woman, daughter of a Russian aristocrat, wandered on alone with her child, who was now sick with the measles. 
       In the next bed lay a little one-year-old Lithuanian boy, very sick with pneumonia. Still further were other Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian children, sick with terrible diarrhoea, influenza, and measles. On the other side were similarly sick Ukrainian children. Opposite Daina and Elizabet lay two Ukrainian boys about the same age. Their measles were already fading.
      By the rules, the children were to be left in the care of the hospital, and the mothers could only come during visiting hours. That is what they were told. Only they could not see any body around who could look after their children. So they stayed. All their days and nights beside their sick children, who otherwise would have been left almost in the sole care of two half-witted people. Apart from the doctor’s visits, there were only a few appearances by nurses. The doctor and nurses conversed in Russian. It seems that the first occupants of the camp had been Russians, and the staff had stayed on. They were strange for hospital staff. Their footsteps were slow, their voices loud, and they worked without any human empathy. They measures all the children’s temperatures and doled out tablets. All the rest was left in the lap of the gods. Just now, while being brought from the camp hospital to the district hospital, a four month old little Latvian child had died on the way, frozen to death in the transport vehicle.
       The Lithuanian couple were themselves applying moist compresses to their little boy’s chest. But he was suffering terribly.
       Anna started to spend the nights hunched over at the foot of her child’s bed. Like all the other mothers. For the first few nights, it was torture. Later, she got used to it, learning how to somehow stretch out and manage to fall asleep whatever position the body was in.
       None of the children had any appetite. Any natural vitality had been reduced to a minimum. They were apathetic.
       “I swapped my new, long winter boots for a chicken,” the Polish Russian woman said. Her child did eat a few bowlfuls of chicken broth. That was better than nothing.
      It was said that some of the children in the barracks had come down with diphtheria and had been taken to the district hospital. The little group of mothers seemed to huddle closer, hoping that the infection would not reach them. They were afraid to open the windows, and when they came in, they closed the door tightly behind them. Their searching eyes would scan the rows of beds, the children’s heads lined up, one after the other.
       The sickest one was the little Lithuanian. The high fever was not abating, and the child was wracked with nightmares. The young mother and father, sometimes taking turns, sometimes together, stood, or slid down onto their knees by the little one’s bed. With tear-filled, frightened eyes staring at the little face, the father recited prayers. 
       “Maria, Maria,” in quiet whispers could be heard as he prayed to the Mother of God.
       The child’s mother seemed totally exhausted. In her face, there was already a kind of surrender. It was as though she could no longer bear the weight, the burden of pain. The little one got worse and worse. The woman took up some white bits of cloth and sewed. She was sewing a little burial shirt, a shroud for her child, who was still suffering. She wanted to make sure everything was clean and new for her little child, but her countrywoman’s hands, unused to fine needlework, fingers now shaking, getting entangled, falling back into her lap, had no hope of getting the work finished quickly. She tried to hurry. She was afraid that before she could properly dress it, the child would be removed from her, carted away and buried. The father was utterly distraught.
       He quarrelled, and at times pushed his wife away from the bed, crouched on his knees by his child’s pillow and prayed. He talked, called to his little one, but the boy was way past being able to whisper any thing back, or smile. His little arms flailed, his only response, seemingly seeking to be saved.
       A day when the father had gone out, the child commenced what were unmistakably his death throes. His face was already deathly pale, with dark undercolour, and he struggled for breath. The mother lit some candles and wailing out loud, began to pray to God.
       A doctor entered, furious, and put out the candles.
       “It isn’t yet… what you are doing…” he grumbled.
       He went to the wall as usual and checked the temperature chart.
       “But not long…useless idiot,” whispered Anna to herself. She wanted to run up and thump him, shake the old fool. It was the first time she had seen a death, but this was unmistakable. Perhaps some real, capable doctor might still have been able to do something. By forgetting all else, really taking the child in both hands as it were, working with all his will and wisdom.
       All the mothers looked at the doctor impatiently, shaking with fear.
       He went away. 
       The Lithuanian mother, terrified, continued sewing the little shirt.
       The child struggled with rasping breaths. It seemed it had been going on for an hour already.
       “Should I go to get the father?” wondered Anna. Perhaps it would be better if he did not see his beloved child’s agony, but perhaps he would suffer more if he was not there in his child’s last hour.
       Anna got dressed and told the Russian woman what she wanted to do.
       “Yes, you go! Your little girl is asleep,” the woman replied.  Anna ran out along the deeply muddied paths of the camp in the dark. The snow that had fallen in the morning had melted. The ground was not yet frozen. Anna’s feet were slipping about, several times she only just managed to stop herself from falling. In the dark, there was dance music coming from one of the barracks. The young and strong ones were enjoying themselves. Always, and everywhere. For a moment Anna felt she should run in and scream “Stop! Look around you!” But it would not have helped. With a constricted throat, she ran on. At the door of the barrack she was looking for she stopped and shrank back. How to tell the child’s father? It was such an unspeakable message that she had been running do deliver. But there was no time to waste. Anna went inside.
       The Lithuanian had just left. They must have passed each other in the dark.
       When Anna returned to the hospital barrack, everything was still the same. Only now the Lithuanian father was also there. None of the mothers were sleeping, though it was past midnight. Sitting frozen, they were cradling their own children. They were thinking…soon death will arrive here and take one of the children. Might she make a mistake? Might she also come to another of the beds? And even if not, she would still be taking one.
       The little one’s chest was still heaving with rasping breaths. The mother had stopped sewing. They both were praying. Occasionally they still lifted up the child’s arms, smoothed the pillow and sheets, and lowered them down again.
       The doctor came in, and went out again, saying that they could light the candles. When the Lithuanian did that, all the mothers fell to their knees. After a while, the child became silent. 
       Next day, clad in white, he was lying quietly, stiffly. The dark shadows had disappeared from his little face, and the face that had been harrowed with suffering, had softened, become sweetly rounded again. “My angel, my little angel, my little angel,” whispered the father, and carried him out in his arms.
       For about a day, his bed stayed empty.
       Some children got better and left, holding their mother’s hands.
       Word was heard around the barracks that there were new cases of diphtheria.
       In the other row of beds, the two little Ukrainian boys had gotten over their measles. One left with his mother. The other’s temperature started to rise again.  And in the evening, he started to gasp for breath. He would be wrenched up to sitting position in his bed and be wracked by a rasping cough. The mother carried him around, holding him to her bosom, trying to change his position till he felt a bit better, and having regained his breath, fell asleep for a moment. All the other mothers, their eyes wide, watched the blond-haired boy and his mother.
       The child had yet another bout of being unable to breathe, and then another. Soon Anna noticed the same dark shadows appearing in his face, the same struggle she had seen in the little Lithuanian boy. 
      Suddenly she froze. “That’s diphtheria!” she whispered to the Russian woman.
       “Yes,” she replied. “I just saw that too.”
       “We have to call the doctor to give an injection.”
       “Definitely. And fast!”
       The doctor came, and did not give an injection. Was he still not convinced that the child had diphtheria? The doctor strode about, strutted, in somehow a pretentious way. With a sense of superiority, he quietened the mothers, displayed a look of confidence, and did not listen to their anxious words. But silently, they were grinding their teeth. They had never before seen such a doctor.
       “If this child dies, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he is charged, and driven away from here,” the wife of the Polish doctor said, over and over.
       About 3 o’clock in the night the doctor was called again, and he gave the child a double dose of anti-diphtheria vaccine. 
      Next morning the Ukrainian mother dressed her child, got dressed herself, and waited for the ambulance to take the child to the district hospital. The child was peaceful after the vaccine, but deathly pale, and barely breathing. He sat, propped up against the pillows, and the mother, with her hands clasped above his head, recited prayers. For a long time she stood thus, silently frozen, and the child was also still.
      Anna saw, and looked away. Why did she have to see, have the strange, heavy feeling that this mother’s prayers were not going to be answered. This was a young, intelligent Ukrainian woman, travelling by herself, with just her boy, to get to her sister’s family. The father had disappeared without trace at the front.
       After two days, word spread around the barracks that the boy had died in the other hospital. His little heart had not been able to survive the overly strong vaccination.
       By this time, Anna had already spent eleven nights, without even a change of clothes, at the foot of her child’s bed. The Russian woman’s little girl got better and left. Anna might also have left with her daughter, but the little one came down with influenza a second time.
       The mothers had been warming milk as usual for their children. On the tin stove, there were various containers and tin cups. One of the little pots suddenly started to boil, and the milk spilled over onto the hot stove and burned, filling the room with acrid smoke. A nurse came in and shoved open the window.
       “No-one is allowed to close this for two hours,” she commanded, and left. Outside, it was already very icy, and white wafts of cold air tumbled into the warm room. Not quite for two hours, but still too long, the window stayed open, and the hot children came down with colds. 
       Anna’s child’s bed was closest to the window, and the cold winter air affected her most. In the night, the child’s temperature rose, and she started to complain of a pain in the ear. The child grew hoarse. Not even waiting for morning, Anna ran to the barrack to get her husband. They decided next day they would take the child to the district hospital themselves. If not, then at least, by force, get the child out of the barrack hospital. Here everyone was stuck, playing only by official rules, and it was dreadful.
      Next morning, Anna talked to the doctor, but he, feeling slighted, would not listen.   
      “If help was needed, it would be offered to you,” he said in a monotone, and then added with his voice rising in anger:
“You do not have to do anything yourselves. You mustn’t do anything.” He made no further sign. Scared they would miss the train because of these futile discussions with the doctor, Anna ran like mad, back to her child. The weather was very cold. Maybe the child’s cold would get even worse in the train. But the husband was firm. “Let’s go!” he said, and they hurriedly dressed the child. The husband wrapped her in a blanket, picked her up, and with big strides headed out the door.
       Anna threw a few, remaining things into her bag and hurried after her husband. She could see that the doctor, opening up his barrack’s window, was yelling something to them. Anna did not listen, and ran past him. A sharp, December wind hit her face, wrenching open her wooden head covering and leaving it flapping. As she ran, she wrapped the scarf tighter so that the wind would not pull it off completely, and have her legs get tangled in it. She had to catch up to her husband before he got through the gate, because they could still be stopped there. They would have to rely on cigarettes to soften up the guards, before the doctor came after them, if he was going to at all.
       Having passed through the gate, they only slowed marginally, and headed for the station. The train was already there, but they made it.
      After relentless pleading and explanations, they managed to get the child accepted into the hospital. One of the hospital staff listened to their story, exchanged a silent look with them, and signed in the child without the doctor’s signature. 
      The child underwent a thorough examination. Having received several medicines and some fruit juice, she slept. Satisfied, the parents left the child, and with a late night train, returned to the camp.
       On the following days, they travelled, sometimes walked, the twelve kilometres to the village where the district hospital was. The child was not doing well. Her temperature stayed high, and she continued to have an earache. But she had received the diphtheria shot in time, and the care she was getting seemed good. 
       In the barracks, people had grown quieter. No-one had been offered suitable work. Some groups were sent off to do ordinary public works. But for the rest, and the wives and children, life in the barracks dragged on, and more and more refugees arrived. Diarrhoea was rife. There was always someone sick with it.
       One evening, someone from the next barrack came in calling for Anna.
       “Your mother has fallen outside…”
       Anna jumped to her feet. With all her worries about her child, she had not been looking after her mother properly. Her mother had just again been going outside by herself. And outside it was nasty, with patches of frozen mud.
       The grandmother was in a bad way.  She had no strength left. Her hands and legs were shaking, and unsupported, she was lying heavily on the ground. It was as though she wanted to cling to the earth, to go to sleep, to disappear. She was taken to the barrack hospital. Many people were lying there with fevers, wracked by diarrhoea. The grandmother also began a long period of lying there. She could not get her strength back. She was unable to take even a few steps by herself, but she could not simply lie down and die.
      Anna went back and forth to the child, and to the grandmother, and could not help either one. Once again she sat next to her sick mother and talked to her about the sick child.
      “Go and take care of her,” said the grandmother, softly, “I don’t need anything any more. If this is where I have to stay – then so be it. I don’t really want anything any more, except perhaps… I would like a few quiet days with the little one, to still sit in the sun a while. So that the little one remembers her grandmother…” Her voice broke off, it had become too hard. She squeezed her daughter’s hand. “But no more about that,” she said.
       “See that little child over there,” the grandmother pointed across the room to where, on one of the beds sat playing a child, two or three years old. “He was brought here the day before yesterday from the district hospital. He is just about better now. Just one ear is still seeping a bit. Such a sweet little thing, but can’t speak at all. The nurses too, can’t say what nationality he is.”
       More than six months ago, the child had already been sent from the barracks to the district hospital. There, he had been very sick for a long time. His parents, possibly Lithuanian, or Polish, no-one was sure, had during that time been taken from the camp and given work. The child had remained behind in the district hospital, had gotten well again, and been sent back to the barracks. Parents gone, and no-one knew their address. 
       He had forgotten his first attempted words in his mother tongue, living there in the German hospital, and perhaps had begun to understand something in German, but now the nurses here spoke Russian. He did not understand any of it. He wet his bed. The nurses would swear, and hit the little fellow. 
       “The lice are going to eat him alive,” lamented the grandmother. “We’re all full of lice”.
       Yes, yes, that is how it was. Anna remembered how she had surreptitiously picked a large louse off the doctor’s white coat. In the barracks, the new arrivals did not yet have lice, but here in the hospital, they were everywhere from the previous occupants. The lice were horrible, but the illnesses were worse.
        Anna sat by the grandmother, and did not know what else to say, how not to add to the pain, how to bring a bit of joy. She just stroked her mother’s hand, and they both talked about other things, about the little boy, and the woman lying further along, in the next bed. She was apparently Greek, who sometimes would cry, and talk to herself in her own language. She would call out some name, seemingly her daughter’s name, sometimes soft and lovingly, sometimes crying out hysterically.
       Anna took leave of her mother, and in the dark, walked back to her own barrack. The camp was unlit, as usual, only occasional bits of weak light glimpsed through some door being opened. It seemed that dancing was not happening in any of the barracks any more. Also, even the most devil-may-care ones were beginning to realise that their initial escape was just the beginning. Now there were new struggles, new adversaries, often not even recognisable in time. Real escape was not yet in sight. Christmas was near. Already the second one in these conditions of being without freedom. They had arrived here in mid November. Now the ground was becoming frozen. Occasionally, a snow-flake would waft by. They lightly brushed Anna’s cheek. But they did not herald sweet signs of Christmas cheer. They were just painful reminders that – we no longer have a home. We are cold. Our very lives are icing up. 
       Anna’s feet hit up against the frozen ruts of mud. Even still late at night in the washrooms, in cold water, with a little bit of warm water brought in a small pot and added, the women were scrubbing clothes. During the day, the washrooms were too crowded to do the laundry. The toilets opposite the washrooms were now locked. They smelled badly. The pipes had burst in the freezing conditions. In the dark, someone was creeping along the coal stores. Not much coal was being given out. Someone was breaking the rules and trying to get some for themselves.
        Crossing the pile of pine needles that had been thrown down in front of the door for people to wipe their feet, Anna entered the barrack. The air was stuffy, but at least there was a bit of warmth and light. Most of the people had already settled down for the night. From bunk to bunk came the usual questions: “How much longer? When will we get home?” 
         “In time for the next rye harvest. I’m sure of it.”
        “Harvest? What are we going to harvest? What they ought to do is let us get home in time for planting.”
        “Yes, a farmer would rather find empty fields in spring than in autumn. Some solution to the seed issue is sure to be found.”
        “Anyway – we will get through this.”
        Anna stretched out on the bunk next to her husband. There were already two missing from their own corner. The empty beds sent a shiver through Anna. The little one was getting a bit better, but would her mother ever rise again? Or would they have to leave her here, in a strange place, this awful camp, never to see the sun, or know freedom again…  Then it would have been better to have left her to die back in her own homeland.
       Mother! Who still always found someone she considered worse off than herself, and would forget her own worries as she sympathised with them. Maybe that was the only way one could bear it all. But for someone younger, that seemed too hard. Anna had forgotten about her mother. Had not gone to visit her for nearly the whole week, exhausted with running back and forth to the district hospital, somehow not even thinking about her anymore, accepting that whatever would be, would be. Till one of the women in the camp came to tell her that her mother was worried, was waiting for her. Only then Anna came to her senses. She begged for some rice coupons from one of the German women,  cooked rice for her mother, and took it to the hospital barrack, to try to help her with her diarrhoea…
       The parents also continued their visits to the district hospital. One day they had to run from the station to the hospital during an air raid. They found the whole of the big hospital deserted. They were seized with fear when they saw their child’s bed empty. They crept down into the cellar. The patients were all there, crowded one on top of the other, standing, sitting, lying down, lying on seats. The cellar of that big building was full of people. It had not been renovated or reinforced, but maybe down there it was a little safer than up above.
       The children, wrapped in their grey, hospital blankets, had been put down on the floor in the corner. Nurses did come and go, but the children were restless, crying and wriggling out of their blankets. Anna saw her little girl among the others. Her head was not covered, her shoulders were out of the blankets. This was a cellar, it was winter, and the child was ill. Anna crawled till she reached her, but the child started crying ever so loudly. The nurses scolded.  
        At last the air-raid was over. The father himself carried his child back upstairs. The child’s breath was very hot. Fearfully, they looked at the temperature chart. They could see how the line rose steeply. 
       The nurse made no sign – neither good, nor bad. “We will see. We will see,” she repeated, with a faint smile. “One lung has an infection. We have been putting on compresses. We are doing everything we can.”
       The parents stood, wordlessly. The child had pneumonia. Yet it had to be taken down to the cellar in the air raid. It could not be helped. Life had lost its sense of normality, everything had gone crazy. People stood, understood, knew there was nothing to be done.
       The doctor grew somewhat impatient seeing the parents still with their child after visiting hours.
       “It needs to be left in peace”, he said. “This is the hospital, not the camp, and you are supposed to be there…” he added with a brief smile.
       The parents had to go. Again, they felt the endless, heavy weight of having to be patient, pressing down on them, as they went away.
       On the train going back, again came the sound of air raid sirens. The train stopped for a while. Now they are once more carrying them down into the cellar, thought Anna, and the wet compresses had only just been applied. Anna closed her eyes, and could only try to imagine being back the hospital. Putting the cap back on the little head. Putting a scarf around its neck. Wrapping it in the blanket tightly, tightly. 
       The air raid finished, and the train arrived at the camp station. 
       “You go, hurry, you can walk faster. Go get the evening meal,” Anna said to her husband. He hurried on. Anna wanted to be completely alone for a moment. To breathe for a moment. Regain some strength.
      She walked along the frozen road, lightly dusted with snow, between the potato and corn fields. Some of the corn stalks that had been left behind were still standing, and the wind was strangely whipping about their ragged leaves. It was a cold, windy night. The darkly forested mountain tops were just distinguishable against the sky. It got dark quickly, and the wind started to howl down the valley, tearing at the tin roofs, dragging black, dirty snow along the ground. Some announcement could be heard on the camp loudspeaker. Anna was nearly at the camp gate, with the wind, sharp and cold, ripping at her clothes, and distorting the words on the loudspeaker:  “The… the child has died. Please… the office”. Anna froze, staring with wide eyes into the night, clutching at her own neck. No, no, they can’t be calling her… Not yet, not her… “Calling the Estonian, the child has died… please report to the office.” Oh, the Estonian!… Anna cried out, pulled her head into her shoulders and ran to her barrack. For a long while, already into the black night, the air was ripped by the repeated announcement… “Calling the Estonian, the child has died…”
       Who knew where that unhappy Estonian woman had disappeared to. Even next day, those same loudspeaker words were being tossed about on the wind.

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[typed — Erna’s own rough translation of Tulpes un rozes in Ceļa akmeņu raksts]

[TULIPS AND ROSES]

Summer. Summer went over like a hot living wave. Unescapable. It made itself ready and then it was there. Everywhere. All over. All around.
Nevertheless it let you run after itself. To throw, to push pele-mele all the things that one had to put in order, to leave them half done, to slam the door and to run out into the street.

Then to force yourself to calm down, to inhale deeply the mild air with one single powerful breathe in. to open your palms to the soft winds, to hear the leaves… But that was not all. Somewhere was more of it: the sommer had concentrated itself, like everything concentrates, gathers, flows together in some places, in some moments.

Where was the most of the summer? That had to be found, to be surched? “May be I have done it,” Rita thought, “may be I have surched, have found it?”
“May be I have found it?” Rita thought when she left the narrow little street and came out on the big road which was gorgeous, encircled all along with high trees and with the sun in the middle.

Then she was sitting in the town park near the river. Or was it a channel?
There, flowing through the little town, through the long park the river had changed to a channel, the water moved slow, calm, dirty. Still — not so dirty, with the three white swans…

When they started to run over the water surface (level) playing their games, their chests and wings were beating high shining, chrystal clear streams. For the swans the water was not yet too dirty. May be yet not so for the fishes too — the little boys walked with long fishing rods on the river banks. For the people the was too dirty already. Even out of the town, where the river was flowing quickly through the meadows, one could not go for a swim in it — the waster was not clean enough.

There were still some clean rivers somwhere else. Somwhere else. But this river was here. In this town. In this sommer.
And Rita was here, came and sat down on the wooden bench, the heavy bench with a             along its side and also at its ends for resting the elbows.

Rita was sitting and looking further down the path, to another wooden bench and admired its Hospitable (inviting) looks. That was a twin brother of the bench she was sitting on. But you cannot really and wholly consider the looks of the bench you are sitting on, to reflect upon its caracter, its expression, to feel its fascinatingly inviting call.

Rita forced herself to stay on the bench she was sitting. The other was — identical.
After all — this bench was theirs, (here they were always sitting.)
Rita put out her hand an patted the/its? warm, brown wood.

Some things were worth noticing in this town. Some, not quite new things, but not yet antics, born from healthy ancestors. So, that the new things bore the best qualities of the old ones, as for instance the thoroughness, comforts and heaviness of those two wooden benches.

They both had on them cut in the date, the year and the name of the school, whose pupils had made them and given them as a present (or presented?) to the town.
(To this Englands old, little town in the middle of green meadows.)

Yes, their heaviness… After all — one does not lift benches like chairs from place to place. Once put in the garden for the joy and conveniency of the public, they can stand there for years and years.

Rita tried to understand that. Was thinking about that for two months already — to throw the benches in the river? to pick the flowers? To scatter then on the ground?
The flowers were for picking. It was not quite naturally, that those enormous, in dozens arranged flowerbeds, you could not touch even with your little finger.
Sure — you could not. One should not alone empty the dish…
But something became kind of useless, unfulfilled… To look only. To walk along. To pass by.
It was enough. May be it was enough. It was very much already. But nevertheless…

The young ones came here some nights, many nights, many evenings full themselves of that summer. How could they just sit there, just sit on the benches! They sat on the grass too. The could sit on the grass too, next to the blossoms. Together with blossoms.

The blossoms become/are? different when/if? you touch them, pick them, take them in your hands. They are soft, moist, alive, fresh, fragrant, frail (vulnerable?) Put them at your face, at the lips, the eyes, put them to your friends face, press them, sniff them, diss, eat… Throw way.
And if the next day there are blossoms thrown on the ground, (blossoms?) trodden over, and the beds of the tulips are a little disarranged — it/that is understandable.
Really in some places only, in couple of nights it has happened like that. Very very little.

But what about the benches? To turn them over, to throw them in the river? Drink out the wine, toss away the goblet… Sit, lay, rock to and fro in the bench, get up and turn it over in your happiness. And surprised of your own forces, take it over your shoulder, cary, throw in the river, let it have a swim like a horse, in the hot summer night.
Rita could understand that.

2 months had passed already since Rita could understand that, what the strange woman could not, who had stopped at the tulips where Rita was standing, and complained about the young ones being bad mannered, wild, negligent.
May be she misunderstood Ritas thoughtful looking there at the tulips. where some of them had been torn, thrown in the paddles of rain, in the mud on the garden paths.

Rita did not think of those trodden over blossoms whom about complained the stranger.
Rita thought about the thousands of the living ones, she thought about — how she could express the beauty of them, may be just to understand what did the tulips did to her? What did they do to her, when she was standing so before them? It seamed as if every blossom, every goblet of the blossoms wich had so protectively folded its blossom leave over its hear, it seamed to her, as if every blossom — they would reach up to her face and would offer her a drink…

Also she thought about the one person, for whose sake she had come to the park, that he too had to know about these tulips, that he — had to receive an armful of tulips.

Deep in the stillness of her inner monolog Rita hardly noticed that the (strange) woman had stopped talking and had left

Already, when the tulips were blooming the oncoming sommer had lead her away from rational thinking: the nightly misbehaving of the young ones, did not seem to her monstrous, not even something really bad.
Now in all the large flowerbeds (instead of the spring tulips) were blooming rozes. Powerfully grown, high and wide, blossom to blossom they were like red, pink and golden clouds among the trees of the park. And Rita sat on the heavy bench waiting.

She almost jumped up, but forced herself to stay where she was and not to rush to the other bench. Why to the other? From restlessness.

There at the other bench the rose bed seemed to cling nearer, the path along it lead uphill nearer to the big traffic road. There behind the widely open big gate the (city) crowd was moving in a ceaseless stream.

There among the others, she soon will notice him coming. Even if she would be deep in her thoughts, looking with unseeing eyes the movements of his walking would flow in her consciense. Powerfully       like… Like what? May be — like music. Or something not comparable to anything. As if the movements of his body, would have released themselves off his his shoulders, rocking (flowing?) out of everything real, becoming abstract, all reaching.

Then he would be out of the crowd, all visible, would come come quickly, with a smile or kind of light over his face, would bend down, pick a rose…

Are they the last flowers before the winter. Will they plant still some other flowers. What kind of flower. Why? Is that all already, those roses?
Will the emptiness of the outomn take it all over…?

Rita had  jumped up. grabbing the warm, smooth wood of the bench as if pushing herself away as a boat from the riverbank. She turned swiftly (abruptly?) and hurried away the path to the other side, to the other gate out of the park. She was not running but walked very quickly, so that she unnoticed could disapear behind the poplars where the path took a turn/turned? before he would come.

Her time in this town will soon come to its end. It had some to the end already. Very soon she will have to leave this town. The carelessly spend sommer had to be finished.
Every parting accrues (takes place?) before it really happens. Better to escape the actual ending.
May be his steps will be reluctant too today — considering the disolving case, the sommer and roses have come to the end.

He might even feel unburdened (relieved?) seeing the empty bench.
Fleeing is a powerful action, since it continues on does not feel pain.

Rita was out the park already, she stopped for a moment in the underground/subway? tunnel only, to the other side of the town. It smelled of earth there and she hurried out of it in the sunny little streets, they were narrow there with little traffic and small shops, whose windows showed glass bowls with sweets, piles of apples, bread, fine letter papers, streets with old cemetery crosses around the little churches, which did not look like cemetery crosses anymore, as the children played hide and seek there and many smooth paths crossed the green grass.

Still further there, were streets with old fashioned gas lanterns, where in the evenings now burned yellowish electric lamps (bulbs?) — each of them a little differently golden…

---

[typed — Erna’s own rough translation of Kanādas mežā in Ceļa akmeņu raksts]

[CANADA’S FOREST]

It is good to be in a forest of the North Country after a very long time spent in the South country.
The wind in the fir trees (blows?) sounds differently than in the palm trees.

Sometimes you suddenly have to stop (or stand?) still, as if someone had taken you by the elbow!.. No, that is only some exquisite sound of the forest that unaware has slept in a secret place of your memory and is awakened for the moment.

You wonder — how has it been possible that you have carried (have been carrying?) this sound in you all those years?

I (find anew? or just) — walk through?
I rediscover this forest every day now.
Exceedingly high, big silvery fir tree trunks lean closely all to each other.

As a gigantic wheat field the forest is rocking through their days and nights, through their sommers and winters, through their decades, their centuries without end (or as long, as the modern world has no need for it…).

It is an uncared for, not much used road through the forest I am walking.
My walk there, through the deep forest, could be (equal to) like an ants or a wild bugs crowling, it could be small, threatened.

It is rather (almost?) a wonder, that it is not so. Shoulder to shoulder we are in our statures when I put myself against this living, mighty instrument; I am against it from side to side, from end to end, I cover (meet?) it’s approaching eye to eye.
How can it be so? (like that?)
Is it my friendship to it?
Is it its friendship to me?
Is it — its swallowing me up as (like?) a dangerous stream swallows one up?
It is the secret of lives or the secret of deaths nearness my calm confident greatness before this big forest — shoulder to shoulder?

A bear could come out of the dark shades and pat me down.
That is a possibility here.
I can not say, that I have not some precautious fears of that.
Cautiousness would not help me much. Running still less.
It is suggested to take a bell with you in the forest, an empty with a handful of little stones in it — to make noise.
If so, then I might as well walk on the big road near the forest, there are plenty of noises.

The aunty of Margaret Troudo had waved the bears away with her summer hat.
That would be delightful (to do).
But — I am not born here.
If the bear happened to be angry, he would leave me lying (cold) on the mossy forest road.
Would I — stay then eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder with the big forest.
Strange as it is, it seems to me — that I would, (like some double photo…)
The living power of the forest is so great, that it has created a new, different sence of reality in me.

Along the road, half hidden in the youngest trees there are very old, very big tree stumps. Unbelievably big, high, black time darkened, with longtime ago axe cut hole — now eyes, mouths, noses, in those old fairytale faces, with the hairs eyebrows and beards of moss and fern.

Through the shades and the lights play of the sunshine they are looking (gazing?) with different expressions every moment, uncomprehensibly, ununderstandable.
Threatening? good? Mean?
If you judge them by the human eyes — how re they?

The dreadful faces of the old stumps (after all — dreadful — a human would think) look at me patiently. Only so long like that if I do not give in and do not lover my eyes before them.
They look patiently, but sometimes their features move, their expressions change, and then you can hear what they talk:
“…and do grow over with moss…”
“…fall down, get flattened…”
“with your once living juices seep (trickle away?) in the new trunks…”
“…climb up high, till the treetops…”
“To see the skyes?” I cannot hide my curiosity.
“…not — to see…”
“To — be?” I want to know.
“…not — to be as you think it… Learn to think differently…”
I go, and learn to think differently.

Some stones on the road, deep in the moss pressed, suddenly in the strong sunlight seam to lift themselves up, high, till my face, my eyes, so well known once and loved, with my young steps trotted…
Then quietly the road falls in its place again, says nothing and takes me out up on the big road that (which?) leads to the town.

A pair of deer also comes out of the forest and tries to cross the road. They listen to its faraway sounds with their heads bend down to the asfalt.

Sometimes they listen to long, then they motionless lay under the treebranches thrown off the road, to the roots, with their once living fluids flowing in the new treetrunks, up till the tops (to see the skye?).

On the other side of the big traffic road, among the bushes and the stumps of the not so long ago cut trees, the wild cock chatters its song with all its strength.

The wild hen looks after her seven chicks, puts them to sleep in the tall, warm grass. They have to grow quickly to swing (rock?) in the tree branches a sommer long, or two sommers long, or may be even three sommer long — depend of what kind of luck everyone of them will have.
****
The forest has put his roots in me, I do not know one lives or dies of that, but it is easy to walk back to the city.