Diggers by Viktors Duks Page B

snowball. The little princess looked at me with irony in her eyes and said, “What—I’m supposed to be making snowballs for everyone?” My parents thought that I did not know anything about love, and we moved to a different place, although they kept the old apartment, just in case.
    We met again when I was 17 and she was 18. I was living in my parents’ old apartment. Everyone around me was a fool, I was sick of my teachers, poets were idiots, artists were parasites, writers were all gay. I was the only smart one. Now I laugh at myself, writing these lines—”Viktors, how low you have fallen! Where have all your convictions disappeared to?” My life had arrived at a crossroads. One road promised me merry company, various kinds of girls, alcohol and drugs. The second—well, there wasn’t really a second road, was there? Nevertheless, when I looked at Ija the girlfriend I had then, I sometimes thought otherwise. Although some jerk had knocked out one of her teeth, she was generally speaking a beautiful woman. Or, to put it precisely, she would have been a beautiful woman if she had not been taking tablets by the ton, smoking, drinking and giving her flesh to every man who passed by. I found myself thinking—if all pretty girls are like my Ija, where would I find one with whom I could live until my old age? I kept up this line of thought until a certain evening. A friend of mine did not have a girlfriend to take some event, and, trying to help, I called my old neighbor. Of course, she did not show up. A week later I called her again and told her that if she did not come outside, I would stand under her window all night. It was winter. The next day I was sick, but I got what I wanted. I stood outside for two hours before the most wonderful person on this planet emerged from the dark of the yard. “Sorry, friend,” my brain told me. “She is not for you.” In five minutes I had talked her into coming upstairs to warm up and drink some champagne. When I opened the door to my apartment, I was pleasantly surprised—my Ija was already in my friend’s arms. Thank you, God!
    Stop! That’s not what this journal is about.
    Today we are going to see Mario. The digger has been in Kurzeme since yesterday.
    The weather? For the time being it’s not raining, but conditions are right for the forest to be wet, the grass to be wet and us to be wet.
    Mario was waiting for us on the road, and when we met him our eyes—mine, the Classicist’s and the Communicator’s—sparkled. “The old man told me that when the Germans fled, they left behind boxes of weapons. In order to avoid problems, the old man dug everything into the ground in the forest, by a young aspen. He did not really remember the specific place. There were also two German tank drivers who were racing. One of the tanks sank into a swamp, and the old man knows the specific place.” We were beaming.
    We drove along with Mario, and I scanned the forest from which any minute now we would be bringing out piles of antiques. I imagined how I found restore the weapons, clean them. I guess I dreamed a bit too much. The result was terrible. We found three large aspen trees. We dug up nails, shards of metal, an exploded charge—but no weapons. We cut down thorny branches of raspberry bush and nettle, we tramped across the grass—we found no weapons. I remained alone, the others went to look at some bunkers. I tried to concentrate, I tried to be the old man. I yelled “Abracadabra!” and “Open Sesame!” but nothing happened. I could have shit myself, and that wouldn’t have helped either.
    At that moment the Classicist called me up on my mobile phone: “You wanna come see the box that we’re digging up?” They were 50 meters from me, and he wanted me to see them lift out the box and open it. Progress!
    The Classicist and Communicator were digging around in a