Spring

2 April

There’s a bird outside my open window, ka-chee, ka-chee, ka-chee, nac ara, nac ara, nac ara, come out, come out, come out. Buttery light pours through thin clouds, people walk to market bareheaded in light jackets. Tulips and hyacinths push their thumbs up out of the dirt in the courtyard. Kajas (large seagulls) laugh and squabble on the roof-tops. A woman walks by carrying a big bouquet of pussy willows. The tiny bunch tied with a red ribbon Andra bought for me the day I arrived is lying on my desk, forlorn. The wine-colored skins of the stems have gone dusty from drying. Drifting up from the square, voices: Latvian, the Ventspils flavor, with its long vowels and slightly nasal twang, and the Riga flavor, with its higher tones and quicker pace. Russian. Romani, the language of the gypsies.

There’s a distinct Roma community in town, and one of my favorite places to walk is down a side street nearby, just past the Kino (movie theatre) and across from the music school, where two little black-haired girls often play in the street with their short-legged yellow dog. Yesterday, the older one (maybe 11 or 12 years old), wearing a light blue coat, ran, arms spread, right down the middle of the road, the younger one (maybe 7 or 8) trailing behind, the dog barking at passing cars as if to protect his small, heedless charges. One of my vivid memories of 2007 is of the older girl sashaying down the sidewalk, hand on hip, the younger awkwardly imitating her. When they saw me, they doubled up giggling. They live in a very old apartment house just on the edge of the shopping area of Ventspils, in the old part of the city. From the façade, the apartment looks abandoned, the front door, ornately carved but peeling paint, always agape to a ruined concrete foyer. The facades of these crumbling apartment buildings are deceiving; it’s not uncommon to see well-dressed people walking through those door to their apartments, or to see an old woman carefully sweeping what appears to be an abandoned, decrepit courtyard littered with bricks, chunks of cement, and trash. From what I’ve been able to gather, a large Roma family lives on the lower floor of the apartment I pass by every day. A little Roma boy was standing there yesterday, beside that open door, astride his bicycle. He was leaning against the apartment wall. Suddenly, the figure of an older boy leaned out, screamed at him and boxed him on the side of the head before disappearing into the shadowed entry. It’s these fleeting, strange glimpses I store in my mind, loading them like a flash photograph into my memory house. That little boy being walloped on the head – and the hand-made whisk broom made from willow branches wired to a broom handle, leaning against a deserted park bench near the seashore – I know, will return to me unexpectedly, for the rest of my life, when so many other things will be forgotten.

I lean my head out the window. It’s cooler than it looks. It smells like the sea. I’ve been here one week. I’m here, settled, and yet a part of me is still far away, running, running, to arrive.