Mr Ramovich (4)
The morning is the usual quiet rush . Andris and Martha, being big enough to get to school by themselves, just need waking up and feeding. They are quiet and kind with each other this morning, asking and answering each other with a gentle precision – a graceful functioning: in contrast to their parents.

After they are off, I go to take some meditation in the toilet. What can I say? How do you address this politely? You don’t, do you, generally? Still, inconvenient as it is, I will have to have a go. Let’s start it like this: sometimes, I think I can offer up a day for the inspection of the public. That would be a day that I dealt with things well. I would have been industrious, smart, capable, and maybe pretty funny, too. Yes, people, you can have that one to peruse: see it and marvel … in low-key way. It is just I would have to edit a bit or two out, which would compromise the whole. What, the people would want to know, was he doing between 08:00 and 08:10? Well, the people should know that when you are secluded from view, and when it has … been a while… there is a … adjectives come to mind… and it begins with an absent-minded consideration of the old firebird, after which, well, you have to take what you can get, and I am not devoid of fantasy. See? Good. After a minute or two of ‘this’ I hear Baiba, my youngest daughter, walk into the kitchen.

“Mamu, how did I get here?” she asks sleepily.
“You walked in.”
“Oh yeah.”

There’s a silence, and I notice some cobwebs by the peeling wallpaper up there in the corner.

“Mamu. Where do babies come from?”

I stop what I am doing, and there’s another silence. I picture my wife smiling there by the sink.

“Do you know? Mamu, do you know?”

Well do you, sweetheart?

“Maybe,” she answers.

“Do you want to know?” my youngest says.

I imagine my wife smiling again: that strangely animal smile she has when she’s really moved, which is like the expression I once saw on a cat in rigor mortis: the back of her top lip drawn up in a curl. Then I see her adopt a new face. The face she has when her four-year old daughter is about to tell her something important: a sort of mock intense pout.

“Okay”
“When I was an angel and lived in the clouds I saw you walking along and jumped on top of you.”

The toilet shares its left-hand wall (as you are sat in contemplation) with the top floor of the stairwell so as I am wiping my arse, I can hear footsteps labouring up the stone steps. They get up to our floor and then begin pacing around just a few metres from where I have just taken a quick glance at the last piece of bog roll. I flush the lav and after the low pressure swirling has washed away, I can hear that the soles, now not having anywhere else to go, are circling around the floor of the stairwell – circling by our front door. I can also hear the accompanying heavy breathing of whoever, or whatever it is whose lungs have burned to get itself this far – really, if I hadn’t heard the footsteps earlier, I probably wouldn’t be sure it was a human being outside. The sounds now are more redolent of a wounded animal, high humphs and whufs punctuating the gasping – like an anxious beast finding itself in a place it hadn’t expected to wind up in: the high and heavy stairwell enclosing the grunts and mutterings deep inside echo.

The doorbell rings.

I stop listening at the wall, and go and open the front door. Two track-suited arms open wide in greeting.

“Hey! Good morning!”
“Morning Tom.”

“Yes!!” He starts laughing, takes my proffered hand and uses it to haul himself over the threshold.

My wife turns up behind me.

“Don’t let him in!” she says with quiet forceful frost.
“Oh, my sweet! Oh, come on – oh hi Baiba!” he says catching sight of our youngest.
“Don’t think you can get in here!” she yells, knocking off the coats hanging on the pegs in the corridor. She gets to his right shoulder, and starts pushing against it with both her hands.

“Janka,” he says, addressing me – his laughter stalling, “Don’t be so serious. Really, I need to tell you something. Let me into the kitchen, come on!” He is still smiling and there’s a wild careering life in his old eyes, but as he falls against the doorframe he seems a little unsure of his powers.

“Aagh!” my wife beats his chest, and turns around to me. “Get him out of here!” she orders me.
“Come on, Tom” I say and usher him outside.

We stand there for a while. He is holding the banister and breathing quite hard.
“Give me 5 Kapostas?” he asks, not looking at me.
“I don’t have it.” But I root around in my trouser pocket and finger a coin. “I can give you two.”
“It’s not enough.” He turns around to take it though, struggling to get it out of my palm with his shaking hands.
“Too bad,” I say, and then add, “Why the fuck I should look after you as well as your daughter and our kids I have no fucking idea.”

I don’t know where that’s come from, but the force of it has its own momentum, and as I thrust the coin into his hand, I haul him towards me and then push him away hard against the door of the flat.

He looks up at me from waist height, one knee dropped on the floor. He looks like what he is now: a hard and heavy old man. He has an expression on his face that I can’t read, but a moment passes and he absorbs it, deals with it, and stands to his full height.

“Yes,” he says, “no, it is good you said that. You are right.”
“Sorry.”

My hand is shaking, but I go to place it on his shoulder. I don’t manage though, because he has moved past me, his head looking down at the worn stone floor.

“Goodbye,” he says as he moves down the steps.

I go back to the flat and take a seat in the kitchen. Baiba is eating some porridge, and my wife is making some coffee. When she has finished, I go to make some for myself. There is hardly any left. I toy with the idea of asking if there is any more, but resist it, and take some tea instead.

We aren’t talking, so the media box dominates the room. The head of the Central Fund is being interviewed on the breakfast updates: alert despite the early hour, he has swivelled his chair to face the smart lawyerly female presenter.

“We are spending every day far more than we earn,” he declares, “and unless we can convince our creditors that we are serious about collecting the state tribute and passing on what we owe, then we will never break out of this circle of debt, and we will never have the hospitals, schools….”

“But, “interrupts the presenter, “What do you say to those who say we simply don’t have the money?”

The head of the Fund pulls his hand lightly through his side parting, smiles and says in a more confidential tone, ”Look – do you know what the financial community are saying about us, really? We are being compared to an alcoholic always around with their hand out. That’s why they will never give us another leaf unless the sweepers are in position: this is not old news! If you give money to a beggar, you at least want to know he will spend it on food, and if he does have a chance of work, then he should take that job and pay that money back! How else can we as a nation stand up tall and look at our friends and allies eye to eye with a clear heart? So, I tell you – there are jobs for people working with this tributeless money in the dark economy. You,” and here he looked at the camera, “I know this is hard, but if you are not paying your tribute, you are being unpatriotic. You are not helping us drag ourselves out from the crisis. Please, rethink your actions.”

The skin of the presenter, a young women in a cream suit with tight blond hair, seems to smart just a fraction, and there is, it seems to me, just a hint of innocent annoyance in the cadence of her next question:

“Well, that’s all very well, but some would say that that is easy for you to say. You and your staff there at the Central Fund are well remunerated.”

The head of the fund steeples his fingers and lowers his head in thought, as if he is praying in the church of quiet logic he has formed for himself there. Then, he places his hand on his chin and begins:

“We have to attract the very best people here, to the National Loch, to navigate through this storm. There it is. It might seem unfair, but it is absolutely crucial that we have the most competent, qualified and experienced team that we can attract. I would ask your viewers to understand that.”

“Mr Ramovich, thank you very much,” says the presenter, to which, in the classical manner, he nods his head, reassumes a steeple of his fingers and swivels away slightly.

My patch vibrates on the kitchen table.
“Hi, Nuchi.”

“Hi – you are ready, of course. Listen I have to run some errands: my daughter is sick. Let’s meet in the centre, by the market – you know the chemists on Freedom Street in say, one hour.”

I finish up and head for the centre. It is good to be out. The sun is bright, hard and hot. There’s a pleasing steam to the air above the pools of rainwater. By the tram stop, a couple of girls are smoking their early morning cigarettes, flicking the ash on to the tree blossom washed off during last night’s storm. I stretch my arms above my head and close my eyes: I feel free. Reasonably free.