My Life and Times · Chapter 7 of 10

Two weddings and the Year of Horror

We were actually married twice – once in a civil ceremony, the second time in a church wedding. The first time, it happened like this. The Russians came into Latvia for the first time in 1940 for one year, before the Germans chased them out. (The second time was in 1944, but then we were gone already). During the first occupation, they started to put in prison, send to Siberia and even shoot people who were the Latvian intelligentsia, well known national figures. That summer I was working in Litene, a town close to the Russian border. There was a Latvian Army training camp close by. My friend Irmgarde’s husband, a first lieutenant, was stationed there. At first, they were allowed to continue their activities under Russian army supervision. He used to visit me sometimes to get news of his family. Mudīte (Irmgarde’s daughter) had already been born by then. One time, we went for a walk together. The neighboring house next to the one where I lived had belonged to the former owner of the drugstore, who had gone back to Germany. It was now occupied by Russian army officers. So during this walk, Vairogs pulls out his revolver and wants to start shooting into a lighted window of the house, where he figures the Russian commander would be sitting. With difficulty, I managed to calm him down. Had he done that, then you children would not be here today, because I would not have been there anymore…doubtless we would both have been caught.

The year 1940 entered Latvian history as the “Year of Horror” (baigais gads) because as I said before, many Latvians were imprisoned or deported. Papa and I survived this period undisturbed, presumably because we were young, we had not yet accumulated any property or social status that might make us targets. At that time, we were quite naïve and thought that in case we were deported, if we were a married couple we would not be separated and be sent out together. Of course, we know now that that would not have happened. So on one afternoon, I closed the drugstore and we started marching to the county administration building, where the secretary had the authority to perform marriages. The day was sunny and warm. We did not go down the main road where there was a lot of traffic, but followed a footpath beside the road. We took off our shoes and walked through the grassy meadows filled with wildflowers. So I walked to my first wedding barefooted. The second wedding was in Cēsis’ St. John’s church in the same year around Christmas. I had a long white dress with a (plīvurs, i.e., the white cloth hanging down the back)) and a bouquet of lilies of the valley. The minister was one that you all know from summer camp days– Kristaps Hermanis. We did this to make Māte happy. She wanted a church wedding because otherwise her friends would not believe that we were really married. The church had a long aisle from the door to the altar. We both walked side by side to the altar. The temperature inside was not much warmer than outside and everyone had white, frosty breath. But from all the excitement, I did not even notice the cold. So, we there were united for more than half a century. But….everything must end and Papa was the first to leave our present life.

I remember an incident about 6 months before this, when for the first time I met a person who had been arrested for deportation. A truck stopped by the drugstore in Litene and inside was a young woman, crying, and holding an infant in her lap. A slim young man entered, dressed in a white national costume. The infant had diarrhea and he asked me for some medicine. I handed him a package of chamomile tea and told him how to boil it. “How am I supposed to do that?” he asked bitterly. “We are being deported.” I boiled it up quickly and put it in a bottle for him. I don’t know how it all ended for them.