Trafika Europe 3 - Latvian Sojourn

Toņa runs her fingers over his jutting ribs:

– Bunny asks Piggy, where’d the bones go? Buried in the battlefield, below!

Jukums giggles, Toņa goes quiet. The night and groaning ice freeze in her gaze. She pretends to fall asleep, she wants to be distant and alone. Toņa used to be soft as down. She dreamed of becoming a hairdresser. Wanted to go to the city, find a job. There weren’t many men left after the war, but there had to be someone who needed a shave. Toņa's heart was like down, until the hero incident in the last autumn of the war, on the recent battleground. Ludvigs was tilling a fallow, Pēterītis was leading the horse by the reins. The horse was just like Pēteris – young and green, dishevelled, gangly, couldn’t stay within the furrows. Ludvigs had a smart horse before, but it had been driven off by the Germans, set loose, so they had to till with a horse that had all but rolled off the back of a Red Army cart. Toņa was nearby, scything away and daydreaming. Throwing twigs at her brother each time he, their father and the horse emerged from the bushes.

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