DOOM 94 Read online

  — I just hope nothing bad happened to the girls. Maybe they got lost.

  With these words Kandžejs slumped back to the dying fire. Kroģis took a deep breath and hollered with all his might. His had a strong set of lungs:

  — Ladies! We’re over here! With drinks!

  — What’re you yelling for? You’ll just get the cops to come out. Put some wood on the fire!

  Kroģis added some wood to the fire, without even telling Kandžejs off.

  — Blow on it, too, otherwise it’ll go out.

  That he didn’t do. Instead he asked:

  — Where’re we going to find cops out here?

  — Shh. These days they’re all over the place. They get five hundred lats for every fugitive they bring back.

  He spat, thus expressing his disdain for this information. I suddenly felt very sober, suddenly it all made sense. Where exactly did Kandžejs come from? Why had he only just recently shown up? Had anyone seen him before the events in April? He was one of the guys who had broken out of prison. Maybe he’d even been one of the guys who had passed me on the bridge that night. How strange fate is, how unexpected and, at the same time, logical the way things fall into place is. I’d been waiting for a fugitive to come to my apartment, but instead, I had come to him, and it wasn’t Juris’ brother, but in a way, my own.

  He asked:

  — Have you lost it? Why are you laughing like crazy?

  I really had been overcome with a maniacal laughter, the kind you get in moments of divine revelation. I fell silent and lit a cigarette; the wind blew the ash into my face, caressing my like fate, like a warm greeting from hell. Kroģis was talking about a mailbox that had made some guy in India rich.

  — I don’t get why, but everyone wants these mailboxes. And this guy’s a legit millionaire.

  I’d never imagined that having more than fifty lats. But five hundred — that’s exactly how much a Gibson Les Paul cost at the AT Trade store. An original. A guitar-cum-golem that embodied not only the solution to every problem and the fulfilment of every dreams, but also the beginning of a new war. And it became clear to me where I’d get the money: take my friend, who was rolling around on the ground, and turn him in!

  — From shit mailboxes! He got rich from a bunch of shit mailboxes that don’t even make any sense! That’s how it’s done — make money from shit!

  — We do a lot of shit, so, so far so good.

  Suddenly I heard growling next to me. A proper, quality, thick growl from the depths of the throat. Even if we had taken a stereo with us, no one could have a tape with a sound like that. It was a vision, a sign, a signal for sacrifice.

  Kroģis had thrown up on himself. While still laughing. He wasn’t bothered by little things like that. I wanted to laugh and puke too. I wanted to be accepted as a human being who was not only envied, but hated, and feared. But they just kept laughing and making me laugh, they broke me, but I didn’t break, even though the breaking point was near.

  The next thing I knew I was cold and it was morning. My first thought was that I’d slept through the girls showing up. I looked next to me — nope, no girls. Just blades of grass in clayey soil. I looked around. No signs of an orgy. The tent was empty; no one had slept in it. Kroģis was snoring nearby. Both sticks of dynamite were lying in the fire pit — the last logs Kroģis had drunkenly thrown in, but hadn’t blown on the embers.

  I looked to the river to see the one final picturesque scene — Kandžejs pulling the net out of the water. A classical motif, and its protagonist reflected that beauty characteristic of the condemned and the betrayed. There was a single fish in the net.

  14

  As soon as you get to Jelgava, as soon as you’ve crossed both bridges, you see a church tower. It’s not particularly tall and isn’t architecturally interesting. Our tower is in ruins. An empty shell that was engulfed by flames fifty years ago. If you snuck into it and looked up you could see a square patch of sky. The church itself had been razed to the ground in the 1944 battles, but the tower survived, though half its original height, empty and contemplative.

  In case you’re wondering, it had been the Holy Trinity Church — the first church in the world build specifically for Lutherans.

  Now the tower served a different purpose. See, the local government (read: the local underground government) wanted to covertly support metalheads. It was announced that the city wanted to rebuild the Holy Trinity Church tower and, to raise funds, they’d organise a music festival called ‘For the Tower’.

  On your way out of Jelgava, past the second bridge but before Store No. 6, is a kind of wasteland. There, to the right of the highway if you’re headed towards Ozolnieki, is a goat. It was a fairly large goat, about three metres tall. It had been built out of metal pipes by artist Mārtiņš Vilkārsis. The reason for the sculpture was, as were many things in my life, writer Aleksandrs Čaks. He had written a poem titled ‘Jelgava’:

  A city small as a dust mote,

  It’s local symbol — a white goat

  Some literary scholars argued that the poem wasn’t about Jelgava at all. Jelgava wasn’t “small as a dust mote” in Čaks’ time. The poet was most likely talking about New Jelgava. Do they think Čaks was a moron? The poem was titled ‘Jelgava’, what more proof did you need?! And the goat stood there with iron resolve.

  The open-air stage where the ‘For the Tower’ festival took place was approximately half-way between the tower and goat, but on the opposite side of the highway. The Palace was on the other side of the Lielupe River, and you had to cross a bridge to get to the open-air stage. Two bridges, actually, across the Lielupe and Driksa rivers. That’s how it all started.

  The whole city was saying that this was going to be a fateful trek across the bridge for the metalheads. A bunch of short-haired cretins were supposedly planning on taking the opportunity to surround us in that narrow, confined space. They’d steal our leather jackets, kick the shit out of us and throw us in the river. Supposedly one guy had already been thrown into the river. You could think these were only rumours, but this time they said it was for real.

  That night I approached the bridge alone. As always at fateful moments. My real friends said that they still had to meet up with someone and take care of something, so they’d meet me inside. And so I went alone, totally, totally alone. Just Eva and Robčiks were with me.

  We spent the whole way talking only about the awful things waiting for us at the bridges.

  When we got to the first bridge, our conversation stopped. I glanced at them; Robčiks looked terrified. Dusk had started to settle. Eva said cheekily:

  — You two sure know how to make a girl feel safe!

  She and I had made out before. And now she’s acting like this. No matter, I’d brought it on myself. I’d had the world at my feet (or under them, or something), but I’d chosen rejection, I’d chosen to soldier on alone through a gauntlet of our adversaries, the only way out in the waters below me. I tried not to look up, not at Eva, not at the dangerous road ahead. Gently, as gently as I’d slid my hand over her stomach, I now slid my hand across the railing and stared down into the water. Like the time I’d seen the inmates. That was so long ago.

  Then, suddenly, the water was gone. We’d already made it across the second bridge! And nothing, absolutely nothing had happened! It had been so stupid to believe those rumours and to keep quiet on the bridge, as if we’d been afraid!

  The open-air stage was just up ahead. Rows of chairs in the middle of a field and a stage at the far end, on which something was already flashing and thumping. Someone was doing a sound check. We still had to get by security, big muscly types, who were collecting admission fees. But then we wouldn’t have any money for beer.

  — Should we try to get in without paying?

  — How, though?

  — Sneak in somehow.

  Robčiks tried to think:

  — Maybe from the river, through the reeds?

  — You insane?

&
nbsp; I didn’t want to go wading through the reeds.

  Someone called my name. I turned around casually; it was a metalhead I’d met before, one of the respectable ones. I didn’t know his name, but he knew mine, and Eva and Robčiks saw this. I went over to him and held out my hand. But he said:

  — Death said for you to wait for him here.

  — Okay.

  And then he very pointedly added:

  — There’s another way to get in!

  That made me feel like one of them. I looked back at Eva and Robčiks. The guy hurried to say:

  — No, no! Not all of you. One.

  — But of course! Of course! Thanks.

  — Wait here.

  He left, and I went back to my friends. I lit a cigarette and said:

  — Hey, okay! I’ve got to wait here for a buddy, you guys go on in.

  Eva turned and headed for the entrance. Robčiks didn’t know what to do. I helped him with a look that said: ‘Go, go! I’ll see you inside’.

  I looked across the river to the palace. It was so big that it didn’t seem to be so much rising up as it seemed to be lunging. It looked like there was something shining in one of the windows. Ms Anna, the palace custodian and long-term resident, had once told me in confidence that the place was full of ghosts. Especially the second storey, where the chemistry department was. One night a security guard had been making his rounds and had heard someone playing the piano. He went to check it out. The door was locked. The guard open it — there was no-one there, no-one playing. He close the door, ha, and the music started up again. He went through this a few more times. Sometimes the playing continued even when the guard was in the room, but he still saw no one. By then the guard was really worked up and shouted: ‘Who are you?’ But there was no reply. Only music.

  Maybe the invisible pianist was playing even now, but you couldn’t hear it because Frontlines was already doing their sound check on stage. I wanted to see them up-close. When were they going to get me inside?

  Just then my friends wandered over, also having made it across the bridges without incident. Pūpols, Death, Zombie, Tonijs. We exchanged greetings, and Zombie asked a logical question:

  — How do we get in?

  I answered his question with another question:

  — Wasn’t Death supposed to get us in somehow?

  Zombie turned to face our friend:

  — Oh really?

  Death bristled:

  — I don’t know.

  — Know what?

  — If it’ll work.

  — Well c’mon, get us in, what’s the deal?

  — I was supposed to meet up with Mareks, that was the first part of the plan.

  — Where is he?

  — Inside, I guess.

  — Then go inside!

  With that, Pūpols brought the discussion to an end. We all looked over at the entrance. The security guards, it seemed, had been eyeing us for some time.

  Tonijs usually came up with a plan:

  — Let’s leave, pretend like we don’t want to be here. Then we’ll sneak in from the side.

  We turned and left. I wondered if it looked at all believable, like we didn’t want to go to the concert and had just come out here to have a look. I expressed my concerns. Tonijs had thought of everything:

  — Well, then let them think that we have to go meet someone. Yeah, that we’re going to go meet up with some girls!

  Zombies called out for good measure:

  — Madara! Madara, sweetie, where are you?

  Pūpols started to sputter with laughter, but Death, who was glancing over his shoulder, hissed:

  — Shut up, they’re still watching us!

  We’d just reached the main road, but he kept hissing:

  — They’re still watching!

  Then we crossed the highway and stopped. Maybe we were out of their line of sight here. Tonijs laid out the plan — we’d climb down to the river on this side, along the bridge supports back to the other side and sneak back to the stage through the reeds. The riverbank on this side of the bridge looked fairly overgrown. I couldn’t quite make out the type of plant in the twilight, but I was pretty sure they were nettles.

  Two girls crossed the bridge and came toward us. It was Mele and her pretty friend. They came out of the night like ghosts. Surprisingly, her friend opened her mouth this time to talk:

  — You called?

  — Us?

  I didn’t even know her name. None of us did. But Mele was convinced:

  — It was you! What do you want?

  For whatever reasons she seemed even grumpier than usual, while her pretty friend was uncharacteristically happy. Grinning like an idiot. But Mele took the lead:

  — We have an extra ticket. You guys need one?

  We all started to grin like idiots. We didn’t know what to say. The friend spoke first:

  — Take it! It’s a gift!

  Everyone’s hands shot out to take it; someone did, but it wasn’t me. The friend continued:

  — It’s my birthday today!

  Now we really didn’t know what to say. Someone said ‘Mmm’, someone else said ‘Ooh’, until I gathered my senses and said:

  — So, drinks on you!

  And oh, how my friends laughed. The birthday girl closed her mouth, confused. Mele took her by the elbow, let’s go. Tonijs waved the ticket and said:

  — I’m going to go, okay, and I’ll find Mareks so he can get you in, okay? Davai, see you inside!

  And he ran off across the road to join the girls.

  We stayed where we were. Zombie said:

  — Alright then!

  And he disappeared in to the roadside thicket. And we followed, we followed.

  A few steps in the thicket was already well above our heads. The ground sunk beneath our feet.

  — I stepped in water! Zombie called out.

  We were standing on a narrow, nettle-ridden strip of sand right by the water. I suddenly realized that Tonijs was a traitor. He abandoned us. This had been his plan. Mele was a traitor, too.

  Meanwhile, Death had taken charge:

  — Time for a drink!

  Pūpols reached into his jacket pocket. He brought out an alreadyopened bottle, which by the taste of it was black-currant flavoured Riga vodka. Death also passed around a small bottle of some unidentifiable liquor. We all lit cigarettes, and the smoke rose above the darkened Jelgava skyline, where there had once been a synagogue, but now were just regular buildings and the tower, the tower we were all here for tonight. After the bottle had been passed around three times and then tossed in the river, carrying away with it a message of emptiness and the final chords of Frontlines’ set, we all turned to the right and headed under the bridge.

  I walked carefully along the narrow strip of sand. Something splashed next to me. It was Zombie; he hadn’t gotten back out of the water and was now trudging along in it up to his knees.

  — Why are you in the water?

  — Because.

  And there was the bridge. We walked under it as if it were a roof. The strip of sand ended; we stepped onto the hard, but very steep embankment under the bridge. Death patted one of the concrete columns:

  — Solid bridge! Should we drink to it?

  And how his words echoed! The acoustics scared us, and we drank in silence (this time I didn’t notice who took out what). I chugged the sweet beverage, it went down like the river with a painful glugging that echoed against the railings. Something huge drove over the bridge, probably the last bus to Ozolnieki. Death pissed into the river and it sounded like a waterfall.

  But even more imposing was the voice that said:

  — You guys are idiots!

  I poured some vodka down the wrong pipe, but my heart spat it back out. It was a female voice, and a tearful one at that. Could it be the White Lady? Ms Anna had seen her once with her own eyes, crying out in the palace courtyard next to the giant bell. How far were we from the palace?

  But i
t wasn’t the White Lady. It was Mele and her friend. Pūpols’ anger flared:

  — What’re you doing here?

  — Nothing. We just wanted to sit for a bit.

  — You have any more extra tickets?

  — No.

  — Where’s Tonijs?

  — Who?

  — That guy.

  — He’s inside.

  I took another drink to calm my racing heart. It was all so, so stupid! Shouldn’t we be inside to?

  — So are we not going in?

  — We’re going. Give me a drink!

  — What are you pissing in the river for? Are you stupid or something?

  It was Mele talking. She added:

  — It’s so uncultured!

  I wondered if she wasn’t actually a ghost. Then , quietly, before Zombie was able to guffaw, I head a piano.

  — D’you hear that? A piano!

  — Where?

  — From the palace!

  — It’s not from the palace. It’s an acoustic trick. And it’s not even a piano.

  Death was always the rational one.

  — It’s Skumju akmeņi, their set just started. Let’s just go, guys.

  And we set off again. It really was Skumju akmeņi playing, I could just make out the words:

  In the moonlight my stones of sorrow,

  My flower of sorrow blooms like crimson,

  When it opens, it scatters stone seeds.

  And I’m like a child ignorant to life.

  By now we were right alongside the open-air stage. One of the security guards yanked me out and held me tightly, even though I didn’t try to run. There were a few other guards standing all around us. The one holding me asked:

  — What should we do? Bring them to the cops?

  His question wasn’t directed at me. But I knew one-hundred per cent that I absolutely could not wind up in jail because then my parents would get caught up in all this, but they had nothing to do with it. But then Mele spoke up:

  — They were coming to visit me! I live right over there!