The Hidden Letters of Velta B. by Gina Ochsner Read Free Book Online Page B

widely. “Well, scratch a Russian,” he said. It was an old saying, so old I couldn’t remember how the rest of it went, but the gist was that lurking beneath the thin varnish of any ethnic Russian or Russian speaker could be things far worse than mere Russianness. What things those were I did not know. No person could possibly be Latvian enough for Uncle.
    â€œThey’re not Russian,” I said at last. “They are Jews who speak Russian.”
    â€œTerrific. Jewish communists—my favorite kind of people,” Uncle Maris said. “Inflicting their troubles and woe on everyone else. And the way they go on about it—as if they were the only ones who suffered.” Uncle Maris looked at his empty trouser leg.
    â€œOh, they’re all right,” Mother said. Later, as we washed the dishes, she made a lot of noise with them, washing and rewashing, as if those plates and cups were unruly children who could be subdued only by vigorous dunkings and scrubbings.
    It was early April. Light leaked from the sky a bit longer each day, bringing the birds back to us one by one. I could detect the hard elemental smell of mud thawing. The soil was breathing again, and in early mornings when the vapor hung over the fields, Rudy and I collected worms for midnight eel-fishing expeditions. On the Aiviekste, April is a good month for fishing as the sky never quits weeping, and the eels seem to prefer things that way. We wanted to pickle or smoke as many of them as possible. Uncle Maris loved them, and we hoped that with enough eels on hand, he might regain his old sense of humor that had been evaporating day by day since he arrived.
    Mother was on edge, too: she frowned at Maris more and sniffed in his direction, measuring from his body odors how much he’d drunk that day. We figured that either the number of signatures on his petition wasn’t to his liking or his vitamin sales were low because one day Maris announced that he’d combed the countryside long enough and that it was time to sell his wares in our town. On a Monday, Uncle Maris took Rudy with him—for moral support, he said. They rode the bus to the outlying homes beyond the school, calling at the Latvian houses, which—he told Rudy and Rudy told me—were easy to spot because Latvians build their homes as if they were planning to stay, while Ukrainians, Jews, and Gypsies cobbled their homes together with whatever they could find because they were too cheap to bother with appearances. Uncle Maris wasn’t holding out much hope for big sales in our town full of foreigners (“So tight, they squeak when they fart!”), but for some reason he felt obligated to try anyway, carefully pinning that red plastic carnation to his lapel and checking and double-checking his yellowed petition of signatures. With Rudy in tow, Uncle Maris stumped along the back roads only to find himself turned away from every household—and this before even having a chance to brandish his well-polished arguments about the citizenship laws. By Friday, the day before the big tournament, he’d worked his way to the far end of our road and decided to pay a visit to the Ilmyens.
    â€œAt least remove that carnation,” Father advised. “It has lost a bit of color and has acquired a strange odor.”
    Uncle Maris simply smiled. He folded the yellow petition and slid it carefully into his breast pocket then crutched himself double-time across the lane.
    We all gathered in our customary places at the open door and watched. As it was Friday evening, the window shades of the Ilmyen home were drawn. Even so, Mr. Ilmyen had the door open before Uncle Maris made it to their front step.
    â€œGood evening, sir.” Uncle Maris bowed with a flourish. “I’m Inara’s uncle, Maris Kalnins.”
    â€œI know who you are,” Mr. Ilmyen replied, in flawless Latvian. He pushed his glasses higher onto his nose.
    â€œThen perhaps