Trafika Europe 3 - Latvian Sojourn

Since that time, Toņa no longer dreams about owning a salon. Or about medicine.

She doesn’t need a laboratory, a white smock and white gloves. Nor does she need the city men who’d vie for her attentions because of them:

– Where’re you coming from, sweetheart, the clinical institute?

She doesn’t need the two-storey house with a garden and flowerbeds, the kind other girls dream of; she doesn’t even need the radio her brother wants so badly. With the loss of her hero, Toņa became a widow. The only thing that interests her is Pasha Angelina. The luggage racks on long-distance trains. Armoured trains. Ocean liners. Petrol and oil. Mittens coated with ice. Lake Baikal, steamboats, motorboats, fishing dinghies. The Angara, the Yenisei, the Arctic Ocean.

Toņa’s heart is frozen over like the Daugava, when it cracks it will roar.

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