DOOM 94 Read online

  — We found Pūpols out here...

  His father carried him to his room. The next day, Pūpols’ little brother raced to school to tell us that when their father had interrogated him that morning Pūpols had held his ground like a man:

  — Where were you drinking last night?

  — I wasn’t drinking!

  — Wasn’t drinking. You threw up everywhere last night!

  — I didn’t throw up!

  When I told Eva the story, she purred as if in a trance:

  — I like the scandalous ones...the bad boys.

  That day I went out on a mission. In two or three other neighbourhoods throughout the city my friends left their parents’ houses the same way, saying they’d be back late, begging with their eyes that they don’t wait up for them. The Jelgava wind whistled clearly: tonight, boys, you get drunk.

  Full of determination, Friday night I grabbed three lats and walked with Kārlis to the Fifth Line. There we met up with a weird group of friends who were supposedly big drinkers. Half an hour later we came to Cips’ house. He came out to meet us, sleepy (he was always sleepy), and said he could come with but first he had to go to Jelgava to get cash. Thirty-five minutes later we were back in Jelgava, where Cips went to talk to someone, and mysteriously came back with ten lats, saying:

  — Now let’s go drink!

  Kārlis gave up and refused to walk any more. But Cips was one to keep his promises. So he and I walked on back toward the Fifth Line. Forty minutes later we and another Fifth Line goon stopped at a kiosk on the Fourth Line by the name of ‘Bordertown’, where we bought a bottle of champagne and a bottle of beer. We hunkered down in an abandoned building and drank half the champagne; then we topped up the bottle with the beer and kept drinking. The townie goon said:

  — It’s weird. Bitter and sweet.

  I drank in silence and concentrated, waiting to get drunk. Nothing. When the bottles were empty it was time for me to hurry to the bus stop so I could make it home on time and not get into trouble. The road back took us past the kiosk, where we were ran into the townie goon’s brother. He convinced Cips to buy a bottle of White Stork cognac. Then they all walked me to the bus stop. Once there the bottle was opened, but curiously enough Cips and the townie goon didn’t want to drink. The goon’s brother and I emptied the bottle fairly quickly, and finished it right as my bus pulled up. As I climbed onto the bus I thought:

  — Again, nothing.

  But it didn’t bother me anymore. I couldn’t get comfortable in my seat. It wasn’t me who was sitting there, it was me in a movie about myself, and I watched as I shifted uncomfortably in the seat. The movie wasn’t all that interesting, but I’d never seen it before, so I watched it for a while with apathetic interest. The bus had reached Jelgava. I started to think about having to mobilize the puppet-version of me to get off the bus, when suddenly I had a moment of clarity and it occurred to me:

  — Is this it?

  Was I finally drunk, had I finally opened the door of my consciousness and entered another world?

  The bus pulled up to a stop, the second to last before mine. I noticed a water pump on the side of the street. Eureka! I just needed to splash some cold water on my face, and it would be like taking a mask off. I got caught in the closing doors, but managed to squeeze my way out.

  The setting sun was blotting out this movie about Jelgava; it descended from the sky and drowned the apartment buildings, the abandoned mansion, the massive tower of the Anna Church. It slowly dawned on me that I didn’t have to go anywhere, that this moment was never going to end. I bent over the water pump like a little robot, grabbed the handle and pumped, pumped, unleashing a deluge onto my face. My filmed face, dripping with indifferent water.

  6

  I won’t bore you with the details, but I decided never to drink again. Because of my night of revelry my parents made me cut my hair — which had just grown past the standard length — and banned me from the opening night of Jelgava’s Junkyard, an alternative club. So my social life was ended and locked up. I had to look for another road to the underground.

  The answer wasn’t far. It had a slim waist, curvy hips and a g-string. And five others. The guitar.

  Kārlis’ brother told us about one of his legendary friends who played the guitar, and who did nothing but play guitar until the day he was called up into the army. One day his Lieutenant had everyone stand at attention and barked at them:

  — Does someone here play the guitar?

  — I-I do.

  — Can you play Nirvana?

  — Yes, Lieutenant!

  — Then let’s go, you’re going to teach me.

  And they went to practice in the best barracks, while the rest of the soldiers stayed behind to weed creeping thistle in the minefield.

  If you can play something by Nirvana, not even war can touch you.

  My mother bought me a guitar for eight lats in the hopes of channelling my mounting restlessness into something at least halfway constructive.

  I picked it up, emptied my mind, immersed myself in Nirvana and let my heart do the talking. And yet, the guitar didn’t sound like my heart did. It turns out it hadn’t been tuned.

  I put the instrument in a linen tote bag and went to see my friends. Most of them recommended someone named Ģirts or Edvīns, who could tune a guitar so well that all you had to do was brush the strings and they’d play ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. But somehow we managed to tune it without them. Everyone who tuned it would immediately play through his entire repertoire. Kārlis’ brother could play the beginning of ‘Come as You Are’, supposedly the beginning of ‘Plateau’, and a few accidental chords from some INXS song. Kārlis could only play the beginning of ‘Come as You Are’. I couldn’t play a thing. Back at home I’d sit with the guitar for hours, waiting for it to speak to me. But it didn’t say a word. I was happy with how great a single string sounded when I plucked it on its own, but as soon as I added a second string, chaos ensued.

  It took me a lifetime to piece together the beginning of ‘The Man Who Sold the World’. Then I partially learned a few Beatles songs from some sheet music. Someone also taught me Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears in Heaven’, a song that let you mess around for twenty seconds like some melancholy virtuoso.

  — I’ve got it! Man, I’m like some kind of prince of guitars.

  The strings started to listen to me. I combined the chords I knew, made up some of my own, and original, achingly beautiful compositions came to life beneath my slender genius’s fingers, along with the songs my idols played, songs everyone knew. My parents heard me playing and said:

  — Go to bed.

  I got better and better. Familiar and entirely new classics drifted forth with each touch. I did an experiment — I plucked each open string in turn. Out came Nirvana’s ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’, expertly played. Confused, I went to bed.

  The next day in school our homeroom teacher introduced a new student. She was blonde, her curves not unlike those of a guitar and she had a goofy smile. As it turned out, her name was, appropriately, Milēdija — milady. The silent howling of wolves flooded towards her from every boy in the room.

  During break everyone crowded around her, not looking at her and talking:

  — I made the sickest three-pointer at basketball yesterday.

  — Sure you did, fat-ass.

  — We beat up some gypsies the other night.

  — You’re the gypsy.

  Kārlis said nothing and just stared openly at Milēdija. I didn’t give in to that kind of unhealthy obsession; I didn’t follow the crowd. I put on a stoic smirk and thought about the Crusaders besieging Constantinople. No, about Kate Moss, who had seen Jesus at a Nirvana concert. What had Kate been on? And where could I get some? I’d heard it helped play guitar.

  The crowd of admirers started to jostle one another, and tall, stupid Edmund shoved me hard. I went to sit back at my desk, away from the world.

  Not the best move. Having finished
giving each other a hard time, those jackasses turned to me with an unspoken, uniform decision to target me with their displays of machismo.

  — What’re you sitting for? Sing us some Nirvana!

  — What do you guys do out there in the bushes anyway?

  — You’re all freaks, aren’t you? Right, you’re not normal?

  To be honest, these were all good questions, and I would have been happy to answer them if only she had asked me herself, not these jokers trying to show off. I ducked my head and started looking through my backpack for my Uzi, or some other automatic weapon. But then the bell rang, and the honourable Ms Raudupīte came in and calmed everyone down, though it meant she grew increasingly more agitated.

  The class was full of idiots. Or daydreamers slumped in their desks, who were just as useless. But Milēdija spoke up without having to be encouraged. In the first class of the day, and intelligently, at that. Like some kind of know-it-all. If you’re so smart, then tell me something about the guitar. Tell me how to get rid of the false sense that everything I play sounds amazing. How do I get on the difficult path, the true path?

  Then Raudupīte called on me to talk about the Latvian poet Jānis Ruģēns. Ruģēns was actually a rather likeable guy, and quite eccentric. Once he made a fool of the local clerk by showing him off like a monkey to a rich farmer from another county.

  — Listen, do you want to see a monkey?

  — Of course I do, who wouldn’t?

  — He’s in there, behind a glass window.

  The farmer went into the municipal building and there it really was, a monkey sitting behind the glass window (the clerk was an incredibly hairy and bearded man). The farmer was delighted and began to poke the clerk with the handle of his whip, laughing:

  — Look, he doesn’t like it when you poke him! He’s just like a person!

  But now, as I re-enacted the story in front of all my classmates, these farmers who weren’t listening to me, just laughing, I felt just like Ruģēns’ monkey.

  After class I wanted to talk to Kārlis about Pearl Jam. I wanted to regain my footing, return to mankind, validate my existence with the coolest kid in class. But Kārlis was talking to Milēdija.

  What could they have to talk about?

  I went to leave the classroom; when I reached the door she spoke to

  me:

  — Do you like Latvian literature?

  — What?

  The entire school hurried past us. Milēdija smiled:

  — Grab the bull by the horns!

  And she smiled again and the whole world cracked in two.

  — It’s kind of a joke, a saying, though not really literary. I’m from the countryside. But listen...

  I let my suspicious gaze wander higher than her lips.

  — You don’t really like Nirvana, do you?

  I didn’t understand what she was getting at. Was this a test? Who are you working for, lady?

  — I do.

  — Strange. You look like someone with more refined tastes.

  And she turned and left, her skirt fluttering after her.

  I wandered around after school. I wasn’t afraid of courtyards anymore, instead heading straight into them. This lessened the risk of one of my mom’s co-workers catching me smoking. I stopped by a rubbish bin to light a cigarette, then looked up at the sky and said:

  — Don’t let anything happen between Milēdija and me, don’t let it. It’s not what I need. I’d rather learn to really play the guitar!

  Why do we act like someone has to take note of and execute our personal requests? When I got home and picked up my guitar, I wasn’t able to play anything at all. When I got to school the next day, Milēdija didn’t even look at me.

  7

  Although I had new friends and interests, I did retain some of my old habits. I still read books. I mean, I know the time for Ivanhoe had long passed. Now it was time to read something non-standard. Like Camus’ The Stranger and The Plague. Then I could talk to Milēdija about them if we managed to have a few minutes by ourselves during break. Eva lent me Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. At that time I was most taken by the fact that this was the book Mark Chapman was reading after he shot John Lennon and was waiting for the police to arrive. I still liked Lennon, that was allowed — even Kurt had liked him. But it didn’t stop me from feeling giddy about his murder; it had happened the year I had been born, and Salinger’s book fit into all of it. The book itself was rather interesting, too. In it Salinger’s protagonist contemplates whether he’d want to be able to talk to Maugham or Hardy. Did I want to talk to Salinger? I guess, yes. What would I ask him? I don’t know. I’d want him to listen to me.

  And as one observant girl had already noted, I like Latvian literature too. Back then I devoured books by Andris Puriņš. He wrote about regular things. His protagonists sometimes would end up meeting ancient Aztecs or aliens, but he also wrote about alcoholics and punks. Students who pined after things, got over them, who drank and listened to a lot of music. And who didn’t like school either.

  But someone should talk about the thing Kafka wrote: ‘Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.’ Where was that point? We’re not yet truly free, we’re still so close to falling backward. What step do we need to take to really break away?

  We didn’t read Kafka back then. But a different book offered an alternate suggestion. It was a fairly popular book — Czech author Radek John’s Memento, a didactic work about the detrimental effect of drugs. Though for me and many other nerds, Memento became a sort of bible lauding the amazing powers of narcotics. Yes, Michal’s girl and friends died, and he himself lost his mind, but that was life. It’s what we all longed for — not to be a prude. That said, if I wanted to live, I needed drugs.

  Where could I get some? The newspapers said we were surrounded by drugs, that they were easier to come by now than ever before. But then where were they? Eva said she had a friend who could get us some weed. Gatis used a pen to demonstrate how you were supposed to smoke weed, but he didn’t know where to get any. The crime report on the radio said that some pills had been confiscated from a group of students, but the students claimed they’d found the pills on the street. I kept my eyes on the road, but found nothing.

  Those who lurked around the Other School and smoked on the basketball court said that all the good stuff had been left behind by the Soviet army. In the abandoned bases, in the medicine cabinets and gas-mask pouches in the bunkers, you could find tablets with the label ‘FOV’, which were to be used in the event of poisoning. A girl had taken one with her coffee one morning. For the rest of the day she thought she was being followed by two creatures: one was a long, bendy and segmented pipe and the other was just round and furry. Inguss from the Other School had eaten handfuls of them. When he got home he took a hammer and put it in the phone cradle.

  — It needs to charge.

  Parafin had ground up half a FOV pill with the end of a lighter and then snorted it. Soon he was gushing blood out of both nostrils and he was certain he was going to die. It was beautiful.

  But I never wound up finding a FOV pill. Yet they were apparently all around me.

  Parafin knew of some easier to find substances. Once he went into the hardware store and approached the sales associate:

  — I need five tubes of Moment glue!

  — Why so many?

  — Because it’s my birthday today!

  Apparently you could even get high off bananas. If only I knew how, I’d try bananas for sure. Glue was strong stuff, it could give you a headache.

  One day we were sitting on the asphalt by the Other School. I was talking about drugs. My knowledge was rather unsystematic, but broad.

  — Sometimes you see a huge, pulsating flower. It pulses—

  — Where?

  — Right there on the floor... Out over half the room.

  Salt chewed a straw and corrected me.

  — It makes you giddy, hysterical. The pills
, if you can get them, make your whole body go stiff.

  — Even your dick?

  — Not yours.

  Tiny bits of quartz glinted in the asphalt. I wondered what they’d look like if you were high. They’d turn into tiny planets. Planets where little fairies lived.

  Then a gypsy started to walk towards us. My entire body froze in fear. It was normal to be afraid of gypsies. He greeted Ķīselis and joined us, crouching down in a typical thuggish pose, and spoke softly. Then Ķīselis pointed to me. The gypsy stood up and waved to me to step aside with him.

  I was afraid of gypsies the same way I was afraid of dogs.

  I stood up. Warning bells were going off in my mind. The gypsy took a few more steps and I followed him. He stuck out his hand. He had a weak handshake; he just clasped my hand briefly and then let it drop.

  — You need plasticine?

  He asked me this but stared hard past my head. I liked plasticine just fine; back in the day I used to make all kinds of animals out of it, particularly hippos, my favourite. But why would I need some right now?

  I’ll teach you how to roll it and smoke it. And I’ll show you where to get Belamors.

  I understood less and less of our conversation. So I said:

  — Excellent! All set.

  His stare moved closer to my face, but still looked right past me.

  — How much do you need?

  I still had no idea what to say, so I answered:

  — It’ll be enough.

  The gypsy glanced around quickly. I did too. The guys were still sitting in the same spot on the asphalt, not looking at us. They were playing rockscissors, where the loser was subjected to Mercy. It worked like this: the winner would put a hand palm-down on his victim’s head, then pull back the middle finger and let it snap back down. And so on and so forth. Salt was exceptionally good at it; it was my luck that I couldn’t participate.

  — Meet me back here in two days. Eleven o’clock, when no-one’s here. Four lats.

  We went back to re-join the group. No one said anything, and the conversation went back to normal. But I knew I was party to a crime. I was going to buy drugs.