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She doesn’t pay attention to Laura any more.
The Lejasupītes farmhouse is similar to Mīma’s house. Only
here the veranda’s windows have been broken.
The large house has been divided into many small flats. At
Upītes farmhouse there’s only one door that leads to the
yard, but here there are many. Each door is in a different
color, each obtained from a different place. In Mīma’s
house there are curtains on every window, here old sheets
have been hung, and rags have been stuffed in the broken,
open panes. Laura has asked why that’s so, but Mīma has
responded that she doesn’t want to either think or talk
about it, why trouble her heart, let people live as they like.
It’s good that the previous owners of the farmhouse don’t
see all this, otherwise they’d turn over in their graves in
Siberia.
Can one turn over in one’s grave, Laura doubts it. Besides
that Mīma doesn’t know that people in the graves in Siberia
are frozen stiff, because there in the depths of earth there is
permafrost. Laura thinks that the owners of Lejasupītes
can’t after all turn over in their graves. No way they could.
But let Mīma think they can.
Rita’s mama has cards! She and two other aunties are
playing a Latvian card game called Pigs, while chewing on
semushkas
– sun flower seeds and fighting off flies. Shit-
eating flies swarm around the game of Pigs and even more