I WAS BACK in San Giorgio Albanese, but all of the buildings were painted festive yellow, including the massive restaurant perched on a cliff overlooking the Sila with a 360 degree view. There were just some small boulders equally spaced along the edge of the cliff to alert locals not to venture too close. Then a straight drop down of Grand Canyon-like proportions. I was afraid to even look that way. There was a fine bar in the middle of the restaurant, and some of my Petrone relatives were there and I was eating interesting yellow pastries that made no sense to me at all, odd bulky shapes, and sweet but not sugary, so maybe polenta? Some Petrellis cousins showed up and one was the chief of police. I tried to speak Italian but just broken sentences came out, and felt so embarrassed that I couldn’t even string a sentence together. Then grandma died, but not my grandma, Rosaria, my father’s grandmother, and I was asked to make food for the funeral. I made this really nice fettuccine and, yes, there were some tiny clams and shrimp in the sauce, and then, when people started to arrive, someone asked, “Is it possible to get the pasta without the shrimp?” and then I thought, we might as well just order takeout. There was a decent Greek restaurant nearby. Surely they might cater. There was no way I could dislodge or dissect the shrimp from the pasta dish. As is the case in most structures, there was a haunted room in the restaurant, and I went into the haunted room expecting it to be dark, dreary, and full of loathing, but it was surprisingly well-lit and remodeled with skylights. I didn’t sense any ominous presence (usually the ghost of a woman who wants to destroy me). But my daughters were sleeping like angels in a bed in the room, and they said they had weird feelings there, and all was not as safe as it seemed. Later, we all went to visit their old babysitter, but she was not at home. The littlest one was jumping to look in the windows and so I held her up to the glass. All three girls were with me. Then the babysitter arrived, but she was very busy and there was a man waiting in the car outside. The girls looked around the inside of the house. Then we left together.

I WAS GETTING READY to go to the Rolling Stones concert when a Spanish witch showed up. She called herself Lourdes. A vigorous woman from the west Pyrenees. “¡Deja que te lea el futuro!” I allowed this so-called witch or soothsayer to at least tag along, and out we set on our sojourn toward the Song Festival Grounds, at which point, some of her forecasts started to molest my conscience, so I sat down at a bus stop for a rest. Then Lourdes hugged me, rubbing her fleshy dowry in my face and patting my head. I was hesitant to partake at first, but was soon sobbing and licking away. Again I had succumbed to comforts of the opposite sex. “Sí, sí,” said Lourdes, stroking, brushing, caressing. “Conmigo puedes hacer lo que quieras. No hay nada prohibido.” After the concert, we arrived to a manor house, which was more like a chateau. The bedroom was beautiful, just like one of those gilded 18th century Versailles interiors they once displayed at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. There was our chestnut-haired witch Lourdes, with her great dark olive tree eyes, engulfed up and buoyed in white-tipped waves of soft sheets and duvet-covered blankets, illuminated by wax-dripping candles and candelabras. I thought she was reading a book on sorcery at first, but it turned out to be a European women’s handball video game. Lourdes was quite engrossed. Soon after she began to lecture me about my novel. When would it be finished? How many more pages left? Carla, my other publisher, came in and the two chicas sat together in the Versailles bed, blankets all pulled up. An impromptu business meeting. “Ah, I see you have been discussing your literary plans with this Spanish witch and not with me,” said Carla the publisher. I didn’t know even how to respond. More negotiations ensued. Soon after, my publisher left the room and Lourdes went away to take a shower. When she came out, I beckoned her over and she embraced me and sat in my lap. Then I said, “Is it okay if I dance with you, Lourdes?” “¡Claro que podemos bailar!” the bosomy witch said, and there we began to waltz slowly beside her bed, Lourdes in the dripping nude, me with my hands slowly advancing toward that plush cushion bottom. With a growl of thunder, the manor owner arrived, a Napoleon-like silhouette against the white nocturnal mists that engulfed the chateau, with hat and cutlass visible in the shadows. I climbed out the window and ran to an orchard, and tugged myself up into one of the lower branches of the tree. From there, I watched as Napoleon marched in to inspect his wife and property. Before this happened, Lourdes had cried out to me from the window, “Come back you scoundrel, there is nothing here to fear!” She was still naked and wet. She had yet to dry herself.

FOR MORE THAN A YEAR, my friend has lived a vagabond existence. He was the last supposedly happily married one in our gang, and had watched no doubt anxiously as each one of our marriages came undone over the years. One day, it was his turn. He informed us that his wife and the mother of his two daughters wanted a divorce. He denied the divorce, and a cold peace, or separation was agreed. Putin flew in from Moscow for the negotiations, and everyone walked away waving a white paper. It was decided to share the kids, meaning they would be with him some weeks, with her others. Ever since then, he’s been on the road in his off weeks, as far as it can take him in the pandemic era, which is still anywhere. He’s become another one of the rootless middle aged, his home is where he lays his head at night, his heart is a swirl of memories and yearning. He does not seem unhappy. He sends us dispatches from wherever he happens to be, or remarks on the quality of the coffee or reliability of the local wifi. He’s taking it well, I think, or at least I hope. You might think you know who I am talking about, and the truth is that you both do and you don’t. You probably don’t know him as a person, but you have surely met someone like him in recent years. There are many of us, the dispossessed. Legions. Enough to fill Freedom Square in Tallinn with torches and dread. I meet them everywhere in every situation. Just the other day, my friend invited me over for coffee and gave me a new address. “But I thought you lived in the country,” I told him. It turned out that his wife stayed in the country and he had rented a house in town. The kids shuttle between their old house, now called “mom’s place,” and the apartment, now called “dad’s place.” They seem somehow less troubled by it. From the outside, that’s how things seem. I can’t say it’s any surprise to me now, that all of these families are tumbling apart. It’s become a trite and terrible cliché. The only thing that still surprises me is how business-like couples often are about these big decisions. It’s as if after over a decade of life together, the most significant life events one can have, the wives (and according to some estimates, between 70 and 90 percent of divorces are initiated by women) just wake up one day, decide it’s over and then just have to break the news, like a landlord telling a tenant she has sold the apartment and the tenant has a month to move out. Or maybe a Swedbank marketing meeting where they decide to nix one advertising campaign over another. It’s just a thing, you know, lihtsalt üks asi. It reminds me of all of those countries that lined up to go to war after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. They thought it would be a little war way back in 1914. A territorial gain here, some losses there, and maybe just a few soldiers would die. A century later and we are still grieving it. There is no sense in trying to understand catastrophe. The only good question is how to stay sane. That question has led me to look elsewhere. It has led me away from questions, from thoughts themselves. For a time, the only way I could even function was to stop thinking. I had to stop thinking and trying to make sense of it, because I was never going to arrive at an answer. It didn’t make sense. All of the folk healers, psychologists, astrologers, witches, and the like, weren’t going to help me either. They tried, they did, but most of it was up to me. I take refuge in memories, mostly memories of myself when I was small, before I could comprehend some of these things. Before I was an adult and before I was married, I was still a person and I still existed by myself. More than that, I always had the right to exist, independent of how anybody else assessed me or evaluated me, or was satisfied with my performance as me being me. This memory of existing on my own, not because I fulfilled someone else’s idea of who they thought the perfect man was, has given me comfort in my days as a vagabond. When I consider my existence, I forget about everything that has happened to me and I forget about everyone else. I don’t want to think about them anymore. I don’t want to remember anymore. I am tired of thinking and I am tired of remembering. I want to be like my friend, head for the islands, or vanish into the snowy mountains, find a café with good coffee and free wifi and write. 

I think he’s onto something.

*

This article appears in Estonian in the January 2022 issue of Anne ja Stiil. The title is borrowed from the Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa duet, “Coração Vagabundo” off their 1967 LP Domingo.