For their lodging at night in Gaveiki they are assigned two separate rooms. During the Graveyard Festivities Matilde, along with a long line of followers, walks behind Beneventura as he traverses all the four corners of the graveyard, reciting Psalms in each. He looks beautiful and strange in his white vestments. Old women, young girls, vigorous men and children kiss his hand.

He stands at the far end of the graveyard beside a wood crucifix holding a cross and an anointing brush and literally collides with Matilde.

At night they meet in a field behind the graveyard where they head for an abandoned hay barn. That’s not the way it should be but so it is. The hay has freshly dried, and they truly love each other. Mother and son, brother and older sister. He and she, two lovers. He begs her to do what his granny did in his childhood. To tickle him. She begins by gently running her fingertips from his ankles, slowly, slowly tickling him up to his knees, then lightly, like ants scurrying, she moves her fingers up his thighs, tenderly titillating his back, teasing first one then the other arm, stroking his neck and gently scratching his head.

“Love me,” she says.

When Beneventura returns to the city, he is excommu-

nicated. In a private session he is read a notice in his mother tongue – the Latgallean dialect: “Prīsters Benaventurs Gaveiku škiuņī aiz kopim natyklā veidā īgivs mīseigū muosu. Vacuokū. Tys ir naizdziešams kauns I nagūds na tik Gaveikim, bet vysai ticeigai katuoļu pasaulei.” (“In a Gaveiku barn behind the graveyard Priest Beneventura has taken lewd advantage of his flesh and

blood sister. The oldest. It is an unforgiveable sin and a dishonour not only for Gaveiki, but for all of the faithful Catholic world.”)

They meet again only around autumn. In the park, by the canal. She is sitting on a bench when he, wearing jeans, in a light jacket with a knapsack on his back, approaches her along the asphalt sidewalk. He looks younger. He kisses her on the cheek.

“I am going to Rome to my lover,” he says.

Going home, it seems to Matilde that she has a fire-fly in her hair. She walks carefully. Just so she won’t fall, she thinks. Life won’t be so good should she knock out another tooth. And it will be even worse should she lose the glow-worm.

Elza Kuga’s Old Age Dementia