Nora Ikstena

d on the waste heap of our times.

I wasn’t afraid of my mother, only terribly worried about her. And I knew it would be like this until death separated us.

walked in silence but my heart was skipping joyfully. I was walking home from school with my mother. I wanted this road to go on for ever. If it went on for ever, we could walk in silence and we could talk. Both would be good.

cared for my mother as best I could.

My mother and I didn’t know how to behave. I went up to her, put my arms around her, the way the others did, and for a brief while we stood like that.

can one eat one’s children and then die from yearning for freedom?

Although Bambi didn’t deserve flowers, I still picked a tiny bunch.

I thought about my mother and her overheated room at the ambulatory centre. About the endless line of women in the corridor. About her equally overheated room at home. About her daily mugs of coffee and her cigarettes. About the books, the only thing in which she found comfort. And I thought about this endless land, sea and sky, of which even a fingernail’s worth of dirt was denied her. About the grapes, which she would never pluck from an arbour over her head. About the sound of the crotal bells, which she would not hear, and about the love-filled air, which she would not breathe.

I waded into the water up to my ankles. She wasn’t here, yet she was here.

we solemnly swore: if I fulfil and don’t transgress this oath, may I be successful both in my life and in the art of my profession. But if I break this oath or swear falsely, may the opposite come to pass.

The opposite had happened. And I was trapped in the white heat of the inferno.