IT’S A GRAY DAY IN TOWN today, and I still haven’t ordered firewood for the winter. I keep waiting for the price to drop, but there is no drop in sight, and so I wait and put it off, as I do with most things. At an intersection, I paused to watch a half-torn paper bag float down the sidewalk in the wind, along with some rustling red leaves. There is an old house there that hasn’t been renovated, a grand 19th century ruin, and someone has spray painted an image of a man screaming on it.
On Sunday, I was in Treimani down on the southwest coast for a friend’s birthday. We went into the forest, and he brought along a friend who knows about forestry and what the names of the trees are and how to manage them. Treimani is a peaceful place, and I like that nearby there is a village called Metsapoole, “into the woods,” because I can think of no better name for a village, or the circumstances of my life. We learned about ash trees, and there were a few baby spruces we were urged not to step on. My friend recently inherited his farm, and when we went there, relatives turned up and gave him buckets of potatoes. My friend is different from me; he still lives with his family. In the field there in Treimani, there are mushrooms as big as saucers.
Recently, I had something like a panic attack. I did not know what to call it, because I was never taught words for these things. This is actually a problem for men, naming our feelings. We certainly feel things, we just were never taught what they were. This is why the default emotion shown by men is typically anger. This feeling though I have decided to describe as a panic attack. First, there is a wave of energy that makes it hard to focus on anything else. It can happen after being reminded of something or seeing someone you’d rather not wish to see. There you are, trying to write, and it just appears in the distance, a storm of bad feelings, then swoops in with lightning. I try to ignore it, but to manage them, I go home, lie in bed, and caress myself, rubbing my arms, and saying soothing things. I talk to myself — it’s almost like another person is speaking to me. Then I say, “Don’t worry, this will pass. Of course it will! You’ll get through this, you always do.”
For whatever reason, thinking of Wes Anderson films helps me to survive these situations. I like to think of Isle of Dogs and Rushmore, I like to think of Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch. Sometimes I think that I am just one of these characters from one of his films. My life is just a film, and so I don’t need to worry about what happens in the film and should rather enjoy it as an observer. I think of Federico Fellini movies too, like 8 1/2. That one is my favorite. The main character might as well be me, lost in fantasy, memory, reality.
Flying up in the air.
In a world shaped by external circumstances, in which there are few certainties, and role models are hard to come by, any kind of help I can get is therefore appreciated. One day, I came across an old article about the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who underwent a special procedure at the age of 69 that reinvigorated his sexual appetite, and he spent the rest of his days bedding young radical poets and journalists. His erotic adventures fed his creative output and he died happier, if not a truly happy man. Something about this story helped me to imagine a future in which I was not a dispossessed soul at the whims of panic but one who could enjoy life. Maybe there was another way, the way of Yeats, the way of the debauched and lascivious Irish poets. History might remember them as bastards, but to survive in this cold, cruel and windy world, one has to be a bit of a bastard it seems.
An Estonian version of this column appears in the November 2022 issue of the magazine Anne ja Stiil.
WHAT I REMEMBER about Bari Centrale is the tall palm trees outside, even in November, and the graffitied frescoes of the saints on the walls outside the tall apartment houses. I remember the carabinieri milling about outside the doors, and that smell, that awful beautiful smell of life and filth that is everywhere with you when you go to Italy, and I remember the girls with the black hair and black jackets. I remember the fresh fruit markets, where they sell juicy persimmons, and the roast chestnut sellers. Bari is just one port city, and nobody really goes there on purpose. Italy for outsiders is Rome, Milan, Florence, Naples, maybe Palermo. Italy is the blue grotto, Italy is checkered tablecloths, and the singing gondoliere of Venice and famous nude statues. Bari is on nobody’s list. But I have to go to Bari, because Bari is where my cousins live. I cannot go to Italy and not go to Bari. Sometimes I take the train all the way from Rome to get to Bari. Sometimes I fly. In the airport, you can buy mafalda and red wine. For me, it’s like home.
This is the food I grew up eating, these are the manners I learned from my elders. When someone says the party starts at 2 pm, that means it really starts at 4 pm. When someone says goodbye, they don’t mean it. For Italians, or at least southern Italians, saying goodbye is a lengthy process. It can take an hour for the goodbye to fulfil itself. I forget these things when I am away, but it always comes back to me here. Once an Estonian girl complained to me that she could never live in such a place. “All they do is sit around and eat and do nothing and nothing happens,” she said. I thought, what’s wrong with that? That sounds like the ideal way to live. That sounds perfect.
But what to eat? In the evenings in Bari, you can hear the fishermen in the ports calling out their daily catch. Customers huddle around and go home with some dead fish. Some of the fishermen play cards while they are waiting for clients. In the cafes in the evening, you can buy anything, so long as it is dripping in marinara sauce and stuffed with cheese. In one cafe, you can even buy baked octopus, and see the tentacles emerging from a mountain of sauce, cheese, and pasta. I think at some point, you just have to stop worrying about what you are eating in Puglia. You just have to eat it. There are the small mozzarellinis, and then the large loaves of mozzarella. There are the small cubes of polenta baked in sauce, and then a custard-filled pastry that my cousin Michele calls sporcamuss, “because it makes your mouth all messy.” The dialect around Bari has Greek, French, and even Arabic influences. Phrases and words you learn in Puglia are totally useless outside of Puglia. If you try to speak Barese to someone in Rome, they will blink at you. Younger people speak Italian, but the older people here retreat into dialetto at the kitchen table. This is one reason why Italians in New York and other places switched to English so quickly. They could not understand each other’s dialects.
Down the coast from Bari, there are some real gems and pearls hidden in the coastline. Places that time forgot. Places like Polignano a Mare and Monopoli. Ostuni, the white city. Boats sleep in the harbors. Castles bear witness to the waves and winds of the sea. On the other side of the water is Albania, Greece. Sometimes ships go there. Here you are free to wander. Here you are free from the noise of the world. Here there is always something good to eat and people wave to you from balconies. Here the old men stand around eating gelato, sipping espresso, with their hands in their pockets. Somewhere the tricolore is fluttering above. Whenever I am down there, I always think, this is the place. This is the place that made us. This is where we all came from.
FOR A BIG PART of my life, this was the woman against whom all other women were measured. Others perhaps wanted the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover girl, on the back of a motorbike, with a case of beer, I wanted this one. I wanted someone explosive and a little grotesque (which invites the remark, be careful of what you wish for, no additional comment needed). I was actually in a room with her in New York, but was too nervous to approach her, but could not help but think, “What’s a nice Icelandic girl like you doing in a place like this?” The new album is really a treasure, like a cache of pirate’s booty, hidden in the back of a wet cave (let’s see how deep we can go with these metaphors). Something genuinely needed these days. Thanks.
YESTERDAY, the Tartu shopping center scene. Tartu is the epicenter of south Estonian shopping. When I arrived to this second largest city in the distant year of ’03, the bus station was a mottled parking lot, the “big department store” looked like one of those makeshift research stations at the South Pole, and they were unearthing the land that would eventually host the new “big department store” across the street. The gaping muddy wound in the earth revealed ancient wooden structures that I am sure were thoroughly sampled and photographed. That was always a fun part about Tartu, no matter where you dug, you were bound to unearth a skeleton or two. Now all of this territory has been submerged in capitalistic wonderland of massive billboards showing taciturn models (the square-jawed Viking, the vacant-eyed maiden) in Baltic bling. There is Tasku, Kvartal, and the now “old” Tartu Kaubamaja (Kvartal, the large shopping complex, now sits on top of the area of the “old big department store”). When I am in the new department stores, I feel utterly poor. Where are my shiny new shoes? Why aren’t my pants as nice as those ones? Maybe I should work more with my hair? Perhaps it’s time to buy a car I cannot afford and get a mortgage on a home I cannot afford either? Maybe the beatnik life is not the life. Maybe it’s time to sell out? Who needs poetry when you can binge watch it? If you don’t get paid to do it, then why do anything? Isn’t that what life is, a big commercial, a giant dangling billboard showcasing the sweetluck apparel of the northern high life? And how come, no matter how hard I try, nature wants me to look like a Greek fisherman? I could straighten everything out, but tomorrow I will be just as messy as the day before. It’s been bothering me when I go out recently. I am the oldest person there. Where are all the other people my age? At home? Watching TV? What do they do with themselves at 9 pm? Beats me. Being in Tartu, this university town, one can’t but help but feel ancient. The median age is about 22. I kind of like being around all of those 22 year olds. It’s not even about eyeballing pretty youth, it’s just that, they didn’t live through most of the forgettable things I did. NSync? Who was that? Bill Clinton? Never heard of him. Webster? Didn’t he write the dictionary? They never had to see what happened to the cast of Diff’rent Strokes, and have never heard of Todd Bridges. If they ever heard of 2 Live Crew, it was because of TikTok. Maybe that’s a good idea. Let’s just wipe the last 40 years or so from memory and start over. Sure, a pandemic and war, but, we’re just getting started anyway. Surely things will get better. Everything is new again, shiny, sparkling and new. It’s a new dawn.
SOMETIMES PEOPLE VANISH from your life. People you are close to. People you thought you knew. People you thought knew you. People you trusted. People whom you thought trusted you. People with whom you shared vivid memories. But then, one day, they went away. They did not die. They just erased themselves from your life. They had good reasons, but at one point you looked over, and all you saw was an empty chair. These people are not dead but have become ghosts. It’s a strange phenomenon, how the living can turn themselves into phantoms. Vague and amorphous. Almost tangible. We actually always talk of the dead. We remember the dead. But when a person becomes a ghost, it’s not just as if they don’t exist, it’s as if they never existed, so there is no need to speak of them, and even if you do, it’s as if you are talking to a wall. What difference does it make? They are no longer there. This creates havoc in your mind and memory. You begin to question if they ever existed, or if they were just imaginary. You begin to suspect that you have become like that troubled mathematician in A Beautiful Mind. At some point, you just have to shed them from your own memories, like yesterday’s clothes. You take them off, and they are there lying coiled on the floor. Not only are they gone from your life, but you are no longer you anymore. You have to become someone else. You have to rewrite your story. It’s like one of those dried up distributaries in the Nile River Delta. It used to be there, but it’s gone. Where there was once water, there is now just yellow sand.
BEFORE I FORGET, yesterday, rain in the squares and in the parks, and down the avenues. Rain on the river and on the little street, and outside the Italian cafe, and the new supermarket, the gentrification of the neighborhood complete. Rain outside the music shops, the academic buildings, the coveted high school, and then the incident, and her and all that. I melted away before I even understood anything. Two shadowy figures in the wet. Love-bombed in October. Then I went to the church and lit a candle. I thanked god, and the universe, and all of the terracotta saints. At night, beneath a warm blanket, I was soaked up in the vibration, and again whispered beneath my breath, “Always, always, always.” And so I waited for her, and dreamed of her, and wrote only for her, and all my sands crashed and crumbled away into the sea, and there were only tropical nights after that, sumptuous tropical nights, with palm trees, starry constellations and rich love.
THERE MUST BE some way to preserve the peace of the bay, rainy and grey on a mottled motley day, dressed in plaid, dull-eyed, youthful, guitar lines spreading out like nerve endings and memories, lightbulbs, passing cars, raindrops and dreadful poetry. If this isn’t it, then whatever could it be? Sitting, sitting. Waiting, watching. Marimekko prints and tea-soaked reveries. Cloudy glass. The dream of the yawning big ocean climax, the sex that collapses the twilight. The hobo who, asking for warmth, is taken under the dry feathered roof, just so that he can persist and persevere. Reveries, memories of big bays and big bogs and cranberries, owls, and maritime creatures. Feelings of blues and stories of singers. Lonesome. Wandering. Sailboats on the gulf. White triangles, stars, midnight blue, equinox, solstice, hope.
FOR MOST PEOPLE, COVID-19 was a negative experience. It was the virus that made them ill. It kept them bedridden. They could not go to meetings, or on trips, or perform at concerts. It took away their senses, made it hard to breathe, left them fatigued to the point where they could barely walk. It obviously killed many people, including my cousin, who would not get vaccinated, made a trip to visit her sister in a different state, and died in a hospital intensive care unit after being on a ventilator for weeks. My experience last autumn was mild in comparison to what so many have gone through, but it was an intense two-week-long journey. It also changed me in profound ways.
To begin, I didn’t even know that I was sick. I had somehow made it through the Harvest Party, an annual folk music event, where I had heard from friends that many had been infected, and came out unscathed. I had started to believe that I was immune, or that I had already had the infection. I had, after all, been sitting in cafes throughout the pandemic while visitors coughed and sneezed their way to their next espresso or piece of cake. That Friday, I went to see the new James Bond movie at the cinema. I have a feeling that it was there that I met the virus. The name of the film was No Time to Die.
Two days later, I drove down to Karksi to deliver some supplies to my former father-in-law and his wife, who were laid up with the virus for the second time. I left the small bag of vitamins at the doorstep, called to them, and got into my car to drive home. It was then that I began to start coughing. It was a strange, dry cough. It felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of my lungs. It was worrying enough for me to get a rapid antigen test done the next day at a shopping center. That evening the result came back. I was negative. Of course, I went back to the cafes the next day, even as I began to develop a tremendous head cold. But something else was wrong. I just did not feel completely myself. I felt slower and a little sad. My doctor helped secure a PCR testing appointment, and the following day I walked, yes, walked, to the white tent to have my nose swabbed. Later I got a call informing me of the result. I was positive.
The next 10 days are a blur. The only other person I interacted with was the Bolt delivery man, who left orders of hot curry on the other side of the door. I did not lose my sense of taste or smell, and I credit that spicy curry with helping me get through the experience. I binge watched old James Bond movies. Hours and even days were swallowed up by sleep. I could do, at most, three things a day. Wash a few dishes, maybe a load of laundry. I tried to write. The rest of the time I slept in my bed or stared at the ceiling. At one point, I was almost certain that a young woman I knew was in the room and had brought me a glass of water. I even remember taking the water from her hand and drinking it. When I awoke, she was gone. I also thought I was driving Bond’s Aston Martin DB5. This turned out to be a sweaty blanket.
At some point, I became so disoriented, that I only had a marginal idea of who I was. I knew, in a sort of roundabout way, what my name was, and where I had been born and when, who my parents were. I had some memories, but these memories seemed irrelevant to who I was. My name was just a bunch of sounds put together. Memories were just things that had happened. Thoughts had originated from beyond me. Those were things that other people had told me, or that I had read. As such, thoughts, ideas, and theories had nothing to do with me. They were fake, pieced together in elaborate ways, but not really tied to the act of being alive.
Almost a year later, this transcendence of consciousness has had a positive impact. I can no longer judge others by their words, because I know that their words, or attitudes, are not really who they are. They are just words. They come and go. Likewise, I can recognize connections with others that are significant and powerful, but do not need words to define them. If you do feel for someone, what is the use in telling them, because they probably feel the same. I remember the morning the virus left me though, and the sensation of it leaving my body, as if it was tired of messing with me and was hungry for a new victim. It was like possession. The spirit sat up and floated away out the door. A few days later, I came out of isolation and went to the shop. The girl who had brought me water was there, looking at me. I told her about my vision and thanked her for bringing me that glass of imaginary water. The girl gave me a weird look, but I think she understood that I was just grateful that she existed.
*
An Estonian version of this column appears in the September 2022 issue of the magazine Anne & Stiil.
Don’t Chase the Lizard’s Lee Taul and Tomás del Real, photo by Annika Vihmann
EVERY OTHER DAY I catch sight of Tomás del Real leaving the house on Posti Street. It’s a sprawling, timber, 19th century structure across from the courthouse, and the South Americans have settled into the apartment at the far end. In the evenings, I can hear them singing through the windows. Sometimes I peek through to watch them play. I am not sure if Tomás is actually living in the house or visiting. Del Real turned up in town with his guitar and some other Chileans maybe a year ago. Suddenly, there were these dark-haired musicians milling about, the kinds of nomads who carry the winds of Los Andes with them wherever they may venture.
Del Real was one of them. He’s got thick hair, a scruffy beard. He likes to wear sunglasses. I know almost nothing else about him, other than that he is one half of Don’t Chase the Lizard.
The other half of this indie folk duo is the Estonian violinist and vocalist Lee Taul. I see her around town too. Usually she is either coming from rehearsal or going to rehearsal or getting coffee while taking a break from rehearsal. Sometimes she prickles with electric enthusiasm. Sometimes she is frustrated with the slow pace of a project. Sometimes it is raining and she is taciturn. Sometimes it is sunny and she looks more vibrant and Latin than Tomás the Chilean. Sometimes she has been rehearsing with her fiddle all day and yet no new ideas have arrived. Sometimes Lee has a really brilliant idea.
Taul and del Real met at some kind of musical camp or event years ago somewhere in Europe. When del Real found himself in Viljandi, a town of about 20,000 people steeped in culture that serves as a kind of Glastonbury or Roskilde for this Northern European country, they reconnected. Del Real had just washed up on Estonian shores after leading a peripatetic existence that took him from Chile to México to the US, then back to Chile before embarking for Europe.
“I spent a year without performing and filling myself up with anxiety, not being able to develop much as a person,” he says of this time, which coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic. “I decided that I needed to explore other possibilities, so I moved to Europe with one of my friends.”
During this period, they decided to reach out to old friends they had made at ethno music camps, including from Estonia, which del Real had visited years ago. “I had good memories of Estonia from my past, so we decided to hang out here,” he says. “I connected deeply with the place, the culture, the people and the nature, so that week turned into a year, and here we are now.”
Del Real also got a residency at the Pärimusmuusika Ait, or Estonian Folk Music Center, a converted manorhouse barn that serves as the hub for folk music. It was here that he and Taul began to compose the songs that feature on Don’t Chase the Lizard’s debut album Huracán.
ESTONIAN WINTERS ARE WEIRD. Anyone who has ever lived through one can tell you that. From about November through April, the ground is covered in snow and ice. Sometimes it melts a little, only to be reinforced by double the amount of white cold. Days dawn and end with sheets of the sticky stuff falling all around. Time doesn’t stand still during an Estonian winter. There is no time. In a way, the hypnotic character of the Estonian snowfall found its way into Don’t Chase the Lizard’s songs. It is this strange yet appealing overlap between northern natural elements and Latin rhythms that colors the group’s music, like João Gilberto mixed with a little Hedningarna.
Del Real wrote most of the songs early in the morning. There was an almost monastic quality to the composition process, steeped in solitude and peace. He would wake, work, and send his ideas to Taul, and the two would build on them. “I was the winter resident at the Ait, so we started to work while being very much in isolation from the world,” says del Real. Because of pandemic restrictions, there wasn’t much activity at the Ait, which is located adjacent to the ruins of 13th century castle and a wooded lakeside landscape. With few visitors, they were especially isolated.
“All the tracks from the album come from that experience,” says del Real, “being in our little bubble and around nature.”
Within two months, they had an album’s worth of material. “Huracán” was the first song written for what would become the group’s debut album. “It was very early in the morning and I couldn’t sleep so it was almost like having a conversation with your subconscious,” he says of the song. “Lobos” was the last composition. By the time it was written, the duo had started to play live.
Don’t Chase the Lizard performing, photo by Ako Lehtmets
THE GROUP’S FIRST CONCERT took place in the Ait itself in February and by March, they had released their first single, “Buscar la Luz.” The single has a soothing, undulating quality, held together by del Real’s splendid guitar work and the droning quality of Taul’s violin, which adds color and depth to the melody, topped off with sincere lyrics and beautiful harmonies.
The duo appeared on several Estonian radio programs in the early spring before making their Tallinn debut at Philly Joe’s in May. From there, they flew over the ocean to take part in Folk Alliance International, where they had an official showcase in Kansas City in May and performed at the Kansas City Folk Festival. Once back in Estonia, they played the Seto Folk Festival in July and opened for Rita Ray in Tallinn the same month. They are also scheduled to play at the Ait’s Harvest Party concert this coming October.
In the meantime, Don’t Chase the Lizard racked up more than 30,000 streams on digital platforms with its singles “Huracán” and “8,” incidentally the eighth track on the album, which was released in July. “8” features more intricate guitar work, with a hushed, almost prayer-like quality to the vocals. The violin work takes its time, no note is wasted, every tone is supple and adds to the sound. Credit is due to Kaur Einasto, who recorded the album in Viljandi, as well as to Jorge Fortune, who edited, mixed, and mastered it at Estudios Triana in Patagonia, Chile.
According to Taul, the concerts have gone quite well, and the crowd’s positive feedback has surprised the duo. “I don’t know if it’s the fact that the folk audience is used to a different kind of music, and ours has had a refreshing effect, or that the songs, mainly in Spanish, give the program a special flavor,” she says. “In any case, we have been satisfied with the results.” Taul notes that audiences in the US received the group warmly and that the group made new contacts. “We met amazing musicians, producers, and agents,” says Taul. “We can only hope that some future cooperation will come out of those interactions in the future,” she says.
“I think people have been reacting very well to the live performances,” agrees del Real. “It seems that people connect with feelings and sounds that seem genuine to them,” he says. People have particularly been intrigued by the combination of Chilean and Estonian sounds. “It’s attractive to see how two people from opposite regions of the world have a sound that might fit together very well and become something quite unique,” he says.
GOOD ALBUMS are likethe best novels, of course. They have a way of effortlessly reaching you on their own time. Someone might give you a book and urge you to read it, but you put it aside until one day, out of boredom, you pick it up and devour it all at once in a few hours. Likewise, someone might give you an album and ask you to listen to it, but it might take time for the right moment for listening to arrive. In my case, it was a Sunday morning in August when Huracán presented itself to me. The sun was already shining, I was about to take a shower and go to the cafe to get some coffee. Many of the big milestones of the summer, such as the annual Viljandi Folk Music Festival, had passed. I myself was in a calm morning contemplative mood.
Each song on Huracán is a treasure to be savored in its own way, unwrapped slowly and delicately. The voices reach out to you. While well produced, it’s a bare bones recording yet with stirring atmospherics. It sounds like it was recorded in an old church in the Andean Mountains. There is del Real’s guitar and Taul’s fiddle, plus their exceptional voices, del Real’s intimate delivery and Taul’s intuitive and sensitive harmonies. There are no electronics gurgling in the background. There are no distractions. It’s as if they are right there with you playing in the room.
I will always recall that moment of putting on those songs and letting them play. They seemed like the best way to start a quiet Sunday morning in the first week of August. It was kind of funny as well. This music, written in isolation in the winter, somehow made sense in summer. Huracán, the ultimate winter album, had unwittingly become the ultimate summer album too.
AFTER SHE HAD finally purged her life of her husband, Céleste invited me over. I wasn’t surprised they had gone their separate ways, but Céleste had often spoken lovingly of Georges, a man of business, a man of ideas, a man she could depend on. It was a relationship consecrated in a cathedral, celebrated at a manor, formalized with the necessary paperwork.
They also had a child.
Then, just like that, in a matter of eighteen months or so, there had been a crumbling, a dissolution, a reversing of the course. Everything she loved about Georges she now despised. She disliked the way he drove, especially. I wasn’t sure if infidelity was involved. I never dared to ask, but I had my suspicions. If anything, Georges was more married to Pierre on his hockey team than he was to his wife Céleste. As soon as she had banished him from the home, she invited me over to dinner. I went there accordingly. I had no idea what to wear or to expect.
When I arrived at their house, the door was open. I knocked and rang the bell and when no one answered, I went in. I could hear that someone was in the shower downstairs, and then Céleste’s mother came out from the kitchen, holding little Antoine in her arms. She invited me in, and I saw that Georges was very much still in the house, eating dinner together with Pierre. They said they were both going to play ice hockey, and then asked if I’d like to come along.
Naturally, I thought they were plotting to kill me. Georges must have known there was something going on between me and Céleste. Perhaps he had even read our erotically charged letters? Or seen some of the photos she had sent in her more vulnerable, early morning moments? I studied him as he walked toward the rink. He was no doubt regarded as handsome, I thought but at the same time, a rather stale, dry kind of character, the kind who breezes through life into positions of power, even ascends to the presidency, or who collects great wealth, but in person is rather a bore. Such a character is the very epitome of manhood by all metrics, yet lacks anything that would distinguish him as a man. The only thing that defined Georges was his love for hockey. He knew statistics associated with all of the players. He played hockey. He watched hockey. He was hockey. During that solemn walk, I did not dare mention his failed marriage, but the man never mentioned it. Instead he spoke of the game with Pierre, and they recalled with great accuracy different plays from the season. His only lament was a sore shoulder that was taking too much time to heal. I suggested he take some time to recuperate. Georges sneered at me as if I knew nothing and said one word: “Never.”
I left the two players at the rink and walked back to the house for my dinner with Céleste. The evening had just begun and yet had already taken a strange turn. Even the trees down the boulevard looked sinister. In a nearby park, a man tossed some breadcrumbs to some pigeons.
At the house, Céleste was waiting for me. She had put on a red dress, and draped herself in a white shawl. Her blonde hair was pulled back. She held a glass of red wine before her and stared at it in contemplation. I knew she wanted something from me, but did she want it all, and tonight? The grandmother had apparently left, and Antoine was sitting in his high chair.
“Well,” said Céleste. “At least you came.”
Dinner was nice. Afterward, she told me she wanted to show me the cellar. We came down an iron staircase to a series of underground rooms, full of antiques, magazines, and a plush bed in the corner beneath a ground floor window, through which shone some early evening sun. The child held to its mother. When she set him down on the ground, he started to scream.
“Please kiss me now,” said Céleste. I obliged and kissed her. She fumbled with my pants, grasping at my underwear. “Now I want you to make love to me,” she said. “Would you?”
Of course I said yes. “Please do it. Here, like this. Take me from behind.” I complied. Antoine kept sobbing. Then, from outside the window, I could see a shadowy figure approaching us.
“Don’t stop, ” Céleste said. “Whatever you do, do not stop.” “I am not stopping,” I told her.
The figure put his face to the window and began to speak through it in hurried French.
It was Georges! He had returned to the house to fetch a hockey stick. That was all he said. Céleste put her face up to the window and began to pelt him with obscenities. I tried to make myself invisible, but this was impossible. How do you make yourself invisible when you are servicing another man’s wife in a messy basement with a screaming child on the floor? I was wrapped up tight, deep inside the lady of the house. There was no way back or out of this thing. “Céleste, please come to your senses,” I heard Georges say through the small window.
“No, I want you to watch,” Céleste responded. “I want you to watch this all, Georges. This is how I feel now. This is exactly how I feel about you, and us, and about the game of hockey.”
north! 