The European Enigma (LSD, #9)

24. The Latvian Lovers

The Latvian Lovers

Adam was a good man. Anna knew that. She was not the kind of woman who fell in love with a pretty face or a big wallet. She was the traditional woman who chose a man to stay with him for the rest of her life. Problem was that she'd chosen when she was young. At that time, it seemed like a good choice: Adam and Anna, the king and the queen of the prom. She'd chosen when she thought she knew everything about life (and about men, and about all the other things). Later, she found out she didn't. She'd chosen wrong. She'd chosen Adam.

Anna didn't regret it. She had her little house, her twin daughters, her friends, and her job. And she had her hobby: every Friday evening, she went to the meeting of the Riga Readers Club, twenty-something men and women (mostly women). They picked books to read and talk about, and they organized activities on Library Day or during the Week of the Book. Anna was happy with her life. She knew many people who didn't have what she had, so she was grateful and didn't complain. But Adam was a problem she couldn't solve.

Adam was not a heavy drinker and didn't come home drunk more than once a week, but he was a frequent drinker and spent almost all his free time in bars, having fun with people he hardly knew. He wasn't a cheater either; he never slept with the women he tried to impress, a playful kiss here and there was no crime, and although he was handsome, hot 'n' horny, he always came home, to Anna, to get what he wanted. Adam spent all his money on clothes, cars, and treating his friends, which was no problem because Anna earned enough to pay for the costs of the house, the food, and the children. Adam worked hard. He needed this entertainment to blow off steam and clear his mind. Anna didn't matter. Anna did understand. Adam was a good man.

Imants was a different man. He wasn't as good-looking as Adam, he wasn't strong, and he didn't dress that well either, but... When Anna thought about Imants, her heart was filled with joy, and her head was filled with doubts. What was it that Imants had? Why did she feel so attracted to him?

Anna and most of the other women of the Riga Readers Club were in love with Imants after reading the first words of «Heart's Dynamite», his award-winning poetry collection. He was a writer who wrote with blood and tears, with passion and tenderness, who smashed down the words on one page and let them melt your soul on the next. Imants was not only a poet but also socially and politically engaged, the first one on the barricades for better education, arrested twice for his controversial essays and his sharp critiques against the political powers. Nobody expected Imants to accept the invitation to visit the Riga Readers Club and talk about his work, but he did. And when Anna listened to his speech and spoke to him in person at the end of the meeting, something changed inside her, something hit her with the force of a TGV: she'd never met anyone like Imants before.

That night, Anna couldn't sleep. She tried and tried to push her thoughts like she pushed her pillow around, tried to concentrate on tomorrow's laundry and shopping, on the upcoming exam that made her girls so nervous, on the project her employer wanted her to develop, on many other things, but her mind floated back to this poet, to his soft and determined voice, his grey curls, his ideas, his passion for the words he wrote and read, his shy smile, and his grey eyes...

Anna told herself: "This is madness. You are a grown-up woman, you are married, you have two fantastic children, a job, a house and a life, and you love all those things. Don't trust your heart when it beats twice as hard and three times as strong for a man you've only seen once, a man you don't know at all, a man who doesn't even remember you exist, who's probably married and has a life of his own, with no space for an ordinary working-class housewife like Anna Brigadere."

Anna tried as hard as she could to talk reason into herself, to forget this man; he meant nothing, he could only destroy everything she had. She looked next to her at her snoring husband. Adam was a good man. He had his little points, but doesn't every man have something? If she had been married to Imants and met Adam, she would probably feel exactly the same about Adam as she felt about Imants now, for knowing the bad side of the one next to her and only seeing the good side of the man in front of her.