I USED TO GO for walks with Brynhildr on days just like these. We would ride out into the forests, or meet at night and circle the paths of the old river park. The weather was grim, as November weather is. She mostly spoke. I tried to keep up. She wore the right apparel. I was underdressed. She’s of rather stocky, freckled, Ingrian stock. Inside a lonely lost girl. Like so many. My whole generation consists of such lonely lost girls, girls who went to bed reading themselves bedtime stories in 1982, really painfully yearning for a comfort they never experienced. I never had that problem, but they did. She grew accustomed to the sound of her own voice, Brynhildr. She spoke as much to herself, as she did to me, or rather she just spoke for the sake of expressing herself to the darkness. Also, remember, everything was happening in another language. So I was already at a loss for words. How does one respond to some deep thought about how life is supposed to be in the Estonian language. Noh jah? Then I would get home after these walks with Brynhildr and for a few sparing moments feel her soggy essence seep into my bones like the moisture. There was a meadow there, and some sun, and there was some sex too. I had sex with Brynhildr. I really did. But then something would go wrong. There would be like a fissure or twist in the material, discomfort would set it, mistrust, doubt, a gaping lack of faith. Without even informing her of it, I would start to get angry, desperate messages. “You hate women.” “You don’t trust women.” “You won’t let a woman’s soul in!” She already felt it, you know, without one word dropping from my fingers or lips. How did she know? I have never been able to figure out this radar talent of hers and, honestly, of most others, but it’s there. She already knew everything before I even knew it myself. Telepathy is the medium here. Time went on. Last night, I encountered Dulcinea in a bleak moment. I was just coming down the street and she was out in the dark. By all tailor’s measurements, this is the wrong woman for me, and she herself has expressed zero interest in me, really. She is far too young for me, though now of marriageable age, at least for the prewar period, and my mind doesn’t even dare to venture there. And yet, there is something fluttering, in the wind, like one of those stubborn tree leaves that just won’t give up. I trust her. There is something in her eyes, in the lines of her face, just in the way she looks at me, that is so direct and honest, that just melts away all of the fat and disbelief. I believe in her 100 percent. There is a shared medium there, again, a shared understanding, whatever it is, costumed in a look. It had been a hard, repressed, blocked day. I felt blocked, I couldn’t even find my own voice, couldn’t summon my own fingers to write, couldn’t play music, couldn’t feel. I was like a blind man groping about an unfamiliar room, knocking over rubber plants and paraphernalia. Dulcinea went on her way, and I went on mine, and I started to feel that little voice again, and the little voice was saying, just let me in. And no other, of course. So I did it. I laid down my arms and I let her in. Then things started to flow again. The universe did not go technicolor, balance was not restored, everything did not right itself. All was not suddenly an H-bomb of fluorescent euphoria. Sleep came on though, and deeply, a restorative, loving, rich sleep. Sometimes it feels good to let someone else in.
north! 