Free Days in the History of Silence by Merethe Lindstrom

were crippled by arthritis, and one day it suffered an epileptic fit, it was terrifying to witness, and affected Simon most of all. It lay on the floor, head banging and body tensing, foaming at the mouth, thumping against the floor. When it recovered consciousness, it attempted to stand up, but could not manage to, it peed on the floor, looking at us, me and Simon, Marija, as though it had never seen us before. The vet talked about putting it down, but we decided we would wait. It should die naturally at home in the living room, on its blanket, it ought to lie there, not on a bench, a table, a floor, it should not die in another place.
    Marija used to talk to it in Latvian, she called it by the Latvian word for dog, suns . But she did not like it. She didnot like dogs. She called out to it only when it was to be fed. It used to watch her from its place in the living room, or stand on the kitchen threshold right until she asked it to leave. They kept an eye on each other. Perhaps she was afraid of it. Maybe a dog has scared her, I said to Simon. It all seemed more understandable that way. She had been frightened. A dog had probably acted threateningly toward her, and it didn’t help matters when I told her Max would never hurt anyone. I went for walks with the dog too, and sometimes she accompanied us. The dog on one side of me, her on the other. They never walked side by side. She said only that she didn’t like dogs. I thought it was perhaps something she normally said to avoid having a dog prancing about her legs when she was doing the cleaning, I thought she perhaps really did like it. When the dog lay down beside her, I imagined she stroked it. I could envision it, but I never saw it happen. Perhaps I wanted it to be so. When it became clear it ought perhaps to be put to sleep, she asked what we wanted to do.
    A dog, she said. You can get a new dog.
    I said that wasn’t the problem, we wanted that dog.
    But it’s old, it will go soon all the same.
    No.
    She said it was different where she came from. Keeping dogs. But I’m not so sure it was anything more than an excuse. Regardless of what the reason was. She did not like dogs.
    •
    MARIJA SAID SHE thought a great deal about her daughter, her grown-up daughter. She would have liked to have her closer, she missed her all the time. Once Marija was ill and away for a couple of weeks. The house shone following her earlier stint of cleaning, so spotless it might have been sterilized. She always did more than necessary. She had even unearthed some curtains from a closet, old curtains I had long forgotten. Now they were hanging in the living room and gave me a strange sensation of being conveyed ten years back in time, but I liked it.
    Eventually the aversion to having help in the house almost disappeared, everything was so well ordered. The wardrobe was filled, the bedclothes hung out to air. The lawn was mown, the hedges trimmed. The floors sparkled. It was no longer so insistent, the distaste about having employed a servant. It had now become essential. This was a wise choice. They all thought so. My daughters. The girls liked her, the atmosphere in the house became brighter with Marija there, they said. We too began to like her, Simon and I. Convinced that it was due to our own efforts, we really thought we were the ones who should be given the credit for it since we had devised the best arrangement, we required assistance, and everyone did the same, our neighbors, everybody in our neighborhood. But we did not compare ourselves with them. We wanted to be gentry of the most pleasant type, making up for all the injustices, the imbalances, we hadn’t employed an African teenager.
    I don’t actually believe we wanted to get to know her. It was not something we chose, but we did come to know Marija. I don’t even know why, what it was about her.
    You should take better care of your belongings, Marija said. And of yourself. Like a stern inspector, a police officer, she