The Hidden Letters of Velta B.

by Gina Ochsner

  “Bovines,” I repeated dully.

  “Terrific animals, cows,” Dr. Netsulis said. “But you needn’t worry yourself about them. My assistant, Joels, feeds and milks them. But if you wouldn’t mind mucking out the stalls every now and again . . .” he said, bowing slightly and vanishing into his cherry-smoke-filled lab.

  Dr. Netsulis was a quiet man and simple in his habits. Breakfast was always curd cheese over porridge, a meal, he said, that kept his brain from falling to distraction. He needed to keep his wits about him; he had five different dairy farms to study. It was his hypothesis that the atmosphere and general conviviality of a barn and pasture directly influenced the flavor and quality of the milk a cow produces. To this end, he made copious notes regarding the color of paint inside the barns, the type of music piping from the radio, and the quality of jokes the milkers told in the presence of the cows. And, of course, he collected a colossal number of milk samples in test tubes, all of which needed cleaning.

  Spring arrived on the ground and above it simultaneously. The bark of the birches peeled and trembled with every breeze. The shedding bark looked like tissue paper upon which long and short dashes, dots and lines, had been branded. These slender gashes on the tissuelike bark were like Velta’s letters, silent music composed of scars. The catkins dripped gold. The ferns steadily unfurled their green standards as if to say that there was no stopping life. The storks returned in droves to their enormous nests atop the telephone poles. Violent windstorms shook the boughs of trees, upended old birches, and lifted roofs from barns. But those nests, amazing feats of architecture built of twig and mud, held fast. As light stretched the ends of the days, the construction crews worked longer hours at the Riveria. First grading and leveling. Compacting. Then slab after slab of concrete. Footings, of course, to receive hardware that would anchor walls, the studs, and the supports. Then the framing. A strange numb exultation seized the town. We were watching our economic salvation emerge one wooden joist and beam at a time. But it was slim consolation. Once the framing went up, Mr. Z. gave Rudy the boot.

  When women experience a sudden loss, your grandmother said, they blame themselves. When men suffer loss, they blame the entire world. Judging by the dull flinty look in Rudy’s eyes, the set of his jaw, I understood that his grief had clarified to anger and resentment toward Mr. Zetsche. The same suppressed rage that I had seen on Uncle Maris’s face now settled over Rudy’s.

  Mother turned her attentions, predictably, to the hall. A sanctuary, a strong tower in the time of tempest, the hall gave her the quietude she could not find at home. Noise was all we had from Rudy and Ligita, who argued steadily. Ligita’s voice droned like a bagpipe, blaring with constant sound and volume. The key points of her complaints had to do with their living arrangements—she wanted to live in subsidized housing, something other young couples were doing. But Rudy’s abrupt dismissal ruined their chances for applying.

  To escape the nighttime noise, Father retreated to the dry toilet, magazines about sleek German automobiles tucked under his arm. I believe it was at this time that Father had some kind of crisis of faith. He no longer drank and he spent more time reading the Bible. In the morning, I’d hear him working long passages forward and backward. This was something his father and his grandfather had done in Vorkuta, but also when they returned home. Knowing the Bible by heart was part of being Baptist. Verse by verse he worked himself toward a personal revelation. Now that he was going to be a grandfather he had to consider what kind of example he would set. And so, out the bottles went to the woodpile, where he tucked them as tenderly as nostalgia.

  At this time, my ability to separate one part of me from the other part of me grew. An imaginary zipper ran from crown of head to sole of foot. I could, as I walked down the lane, unzip myself, step outside of my body corseted in flesh. The spirit part of me hovered at the elbow, documenting the toilets I cleaned, the linens I washed. The spirit part of me imagined she was Velta, she was Mother, she was every woman, any woman. She imagined she had tilled lime into dark soil. She imagined she was one of those women along the A2 holding hands in the Baltic Chain. The A2 is a long highway running from the capital of Estonia to the capital of Lithuania. Along some lonely stretches, there weren’t enough people to stand shoulder to shoulder. So they strung sashes between them. They made an unbroken chain of fabric and song. While I cleaned, I sang. The body part of me and the spirit part of me agreed that my voice was the sash binding you to me. After work, I sat at the piano in our little shed and tapped the keys, struck hammers on those strings, put pencil to paper to coax forth Velta’s dark parables. Water will not always love us, my dear. The rocks groan beneath our feet, keeping time in low sighs. And I congratulated myself for every note, felt certain I was a little less ordinary for this effort.

  These elevated feelings soon evaporated. As I returned home from cleaning the school or from Dr. Netsulis’s, I’d make my way to the river, to a lonely stretch that was not part of Mr. Zetsche’s Riveria development. Our river was changing. Construction debris littered the grassy shallows. The wailing of buzz saws and the steady pounding of hammers assaulted our quiet. How altered the lay of the land was near the water. Gone that choice fishing snag, gone the eel. One evening I walked near the new construction. Another alder had been felled. I ran my hand over the stump. Rough and inexpertly cut, it snagged on my chapped skin. It was bad luck to chop down a tree. But if the crew was worried, they didn’t show it. At the present moment, two men were contemplating a series of vandalized joists decorated with loud graffiti: KRAUT GET OUT!

  There was a time, you wrote in your Book of Wonder, when the faithful walked by sound, not by sight. Having no open vision, people relied upon prophets who could hear the word of the Lord, as a man hears a friend whispering into his ear. Such a man was Samuel. Nowhere in the old accounts do we have a physical description of those ears. No measurements. But his hearing was fierce. This, you contended, was because no razor passed over his head. Like Samson, the strongman of old whose long hair was the source of his power, Samuel’s hair was his strength, the reason for his incredible ability. Reading this in your book, I have made two conclusions. First, you have drawn connections between yourself, Samuel, and our national icon, the Bear Slayer. Your grandmother would be delighted. Second, I understand that you have not quite forgiven me for delousing and shaving the fur on your ears. I am sorry. The fur looked a little natty and it seemed a good idea at the time.

  This morning Stanka turned the ox-harness mirror to the wall. As you may or may not recall, she has strong opinions about mirrors. No problem to bury the dead with small ones, she said, but is it bad luck to have one near the dying? Colossal! Fooled by the pale world returned in the glass, souls fly into the mirror and are trapped. Being stuck, unable to free themselves but fully conscious of the world of the living, they tap, tap, tap on the glass with their long fingernails.

  You tell me that at the root of the word mirror is miracle or wonder. I have always believed in miracles. I credit your grandfather for this unshakable belief that the inexplicable, unbidden, and wholly wondrous can and does occur. And I believe in blessings. You cannot be wondrously healed if you haven’t first been terribly wounded. Doesn’t the pelican in the wild places pluck her breast and nourish her young upon a freshet of blood? you asked in your book. You drew a picture of a bird brooding over her nest. Doleful eyes of the Madonna, motherly torment in the long neck folded toward her clutch. It is she, not her brood, whose heart has been pierced. It is, after all, a mother’s way to bleed for her children. We can’t help ourselves. We spend our youth wondering what we were made for, holding ourselves in, storing up every good thing. And then, in that moment we apprehend life outside of ourselves—perhaps in a child, say—we willingly bare our breasts so that our hearts can walk outside of it. Where does this heart walk? Inside that child. This is a story about where love comes from and that is a story that has no beginning and no end. It’s a story that has a thousand versions, all
of them true.

  In those days I cleaned for Dr. N., he was something of a celebrity abroad. In September he went to a scientific conference in Geneva. He chattered on and on about a subatomic particle called Higgs. I thought it was cute that scientists named itty-bitty things that no one could see. Maybe someone would name a subatomic particle after Dr. N. Then he’d get a fat grant and we’d all eat butter on our bread and drink pricey cognac. Meanwhile, I cleaned and mucked. Dr. Netsulis’s new assistant, Joels, sometimes had to leave the barn to run tests in the lab. I always knew he was inside the house because Joels was very careful to leave his muddy boots—the largest I’d ever seen—in the mudroom. I liked to put my boots next to his and imagine that while we worked our boots carried on lengthy discussions. Like I did, Joels preferred to work unobserved, and so I timed my visits to the stalls to coincide with his visits to the lab. I didn’t want him to think I was some kind of stalker. If he appreciated my keeping my distance, I knew he’d never say so. Joels was from Estonia and therefore uncommonly quiet. He had hair the color of rust and in certain slants of light his beard looked like a finely bristled brush of copper. But every now and then, as I left the barn for the mudroom or he left the lab for the barn, we’d catch sight of each other. And then he’d smile—just a quick flash—and then it was gone. Such a smile from an Estonian meant only one thing. He liked me. A little anyway.

  When Dr. Netsulis returned from Stockholm, Joels and I, each of us forgetting our reserve, rushed to help him with his suitcases. Dr. N. took one look at me. His caterpillar eyebrows jumped.

  “My God, Inara, you’ve gotten fat!”

  I bit my lip, looked at Dr. N.’s bags. I could not bear to look at Joels.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “Oh. Of course. That explains it, then. I can see that now, it’s as obvious as an axiom.”

  Joels reached for the bags, his gaze glued to his shoes.

  The next day, Dr. N. ushered me into his lab. “How would you like to work for me—full-time?” He scratched his beard. “Yes. Mornings you come and do housework. Afternoons you can clean in the lab.”

  “I’m not good at science,” I said.

  Dr. Netsulis nodded at my bucket of bleach. “You handle chemicals every day. That’s science. But, please, wear gloves—always. And from now on, let Joels do the mucking.” As I had at the Zetsches’ manor, I cleaned the top floor and worked my way down. In the afternoons I washed glassware in the lab and mopped the floor. From my lowly position, I had an excellent view of Joels’s oversize feet. I admired the care with which he lifted beakers and stirred solutions, each movement calibrated so that he never expended more energy than necessary. And he was mindful of where he put his huge feet, never treading over the places I had just mopped.

  One afternoon I watched as Joels made his observations and wrote down notes, ever so slowly working his way to where I stood at the oversize metal sink. Joels stole a glance at my hands.

  “I imagine you are a busy person with many, er, friends and passionate interests,” he said.

  “I’m not busy and I have absolutely no friends or passionate interests,” I said. Better to tell the truth, no matter how pathetic. Joels smiled. His gaze had now traveled to my knees. “As it so happens, I know a good jazz café. We could”—now his gaze had reached my stomach—“have tea or something.”

  We met at a café where I drank tea and Joels downed a beer in good Estonian fashion. He did not approve of drinking in theory, he said between gulps. But in practice he drank. “To thank God that I am not a drunk,” he said. And this made perfect sense to me. For a time, after Uncle died, Father had battled with the bottle. This is how his grief worked its way from the heart through the body. It did not necessarily make a man a drunk.

  “Why did you ask me out?”

  Joels glanced briefly at my face. “You have very nice patellas and clearly you are a hard worker.” It was, I knew, almost a profession of love. “Anyway, why did you accept?”

  “You have enormous feet and you are a very hard worker,” I said.

  I am glad that you kept your self-portrait. Moses had his stutter. Paul had his thorn in his side. You have your ears. A curse, a blessing. You have been teased, persecuted. Burdened with more than one person should ever have to hear. And the family tree. That was a burden, too.

  You did your best to complete it in spite of my failures, my omissions. Digressions. During many chats, I’ve set forth certain facts and observations about your grandfather, your grandmother, your uncle Rudy, even your great-uncle Maris. You must have noticed how little I’ve said about David, and now I’m telling you about your stepfather, Joels. A sloppy genealogy. Where to start and with whom? I’ve given you the key to the hall. And now these strange objects around which every story seems to revolve: the shovel, the letters, the mirror. There are, of course, people and things that ought to be here and aren’t. Your father, David, for one. You asked when you were younger what he looked like and I said, Look in the mirror. This you did for a solid hour or more. What did you see? I wondered. Your eyes, not gray but silver and luminous, are just like your grandmother Biruta’s. Your square jaw—that I gave you. But your ears! You stood and pondered your reflection. You ran your index finger over the rims of each auricle so carefully, with such awe. The wonderstruck expression on your face reminded me of an infant in that moment it discovers its own hands. But I keep losing the thread of the story. You wanted to know how Joels and I became a couple. I think you are really asking why we became a couple.

  He was solid and sturdy. He would not vanish. He would not leave me. You asked me what love looks like, and I can tell you that love is choosing to stay when one has every reason to leave. This is not an indictment against your birth father. God knows, he had no choice in the matter. But you wanted to know what I saw in Joels and it was this: a steady man as solid as stone.

  Joels tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “Jazz,” he said, “is like life. The sorrow is in the frontbeat and joy breaks out on the backbeat. You have to have both halves to make a whole beat.”

  I nodded as if I understood.

  “Look—here they come.”

  A tall spindly man with legs that looked as if they might snap at any moment dragged a bass across the stage. He looked oddly familiar, yet I could not quite place him. Joels leaned across the table. “That’s Buber.”

  Then a young man wearing an enormous trench coat stationed himself in front of Buber. He had no hair, not a single strand on his head. For several moments he ran his hands over his shiny head, as if it were a genie’s magic lamp. Then from the inner recesses of his coat he withdrew a shiny trombone. He held it beside his face and executed gymnastic movements with his lips.

  “That’s Vanags. He’s stretching his lips,” Joels explained.

  Two old men shuffled across the floor. Their bodies bent like hinges at the waist and they had linked arms. It was not clear who was helping whom. But somehow they both arrived at their destinations, one man behind the drum set and the other man at the piano, where he performed scales in such rapid succession, I wondered if he’d hidden inside his shabby coat an extra set of young and limber hands.

  “Ludviks is on the drums and Mengels is on piano.”

  “Twins?”

  “Father and son.”

  “I know I’ve seen them before.” I turned to Joels, squinted fiercely. “I’ve seen you with them. At the groundbreaking ceremony.”

  Now Joels’s gaze reached my nose. “I wondered if you would remember.”

  A series of warm-up riffs, clashing with Mengels’s zippy high-hat glissandos on the piano, pulled Joels’s gaze to a long black box beside the piano.

  “That’s your band. You should be with them,” I said.

  Joels smiled gratefully then leaped onto the stage. Ludviks counted out a measure and then the Merry Afflictions launched into a number. I could not pry my gaze from Joels, who was becoming before my very eyes an entirely different man. As he forced ai
r through his gold saxophone, coaxing a long and sad melody, he was no longer the same man who carefully recorded the demeanor of cows or the quality of their milk. And it was equally clear to me that the rest of us were undergoing a transformation as well. Whatever we carried inside of us—the dark thoughts, the grim despair—Joels had given it voice with the wails and moans of his sax. We did not have to carry these things any longer if we didn’t want to. We could let the music wash it away, at least temporarily.

  Perhaps this is why, when Joels slid into a wrong note, he raised his hand and brought the number to a full stop. Then he made the rounds, first to Buber on bass, “I beg your pardon”; to Mengels on the piano, “I beg your pardon”; to Vanags on trombone, “I beg your pardon”; and finally to Ludviks, who looked so frail now that he could barely hold the sticks, “I’m terribly sorry—do forgive me.” The melody thus corrected, they picked up right where they had left off.

  I tried keeping time with my foot. That’s when I felt movement, a quick flutter. The evidence of life—there, inside of me. I had done the biological actions necessary to make life but had done nothing to deserve it. That God in his heavens might be far more generous than I had imagined overwhelmed me, moving me to tears. Then I felt it again—another small twitch behind my navel. That twitch was you. Mother’s words came to mind: every good thing starts in water. You asked me how I could so quickly, so easily, fall in love with Joels and I think I loved him because you danced when he made music.

  “You were wonderful,” I said to Joels afterward, as he walked me to the bus stand. “I made some mistakes,” he said.

  In the distance a rim of purple trees exhaled sweet darkness. Birds and bats scissored dark patterns into night’s dropping hem. Joels hummed jazz tunes until the old bus arrived. When the doors creaked open, Joels and I shook hands. All in all, a very successful first date.