MY APARTMENT was at the crest of a hill overlooking the sea. It was part of a house that stood in a hollow between two knolls. You had to walk down a set of hillside stairs to get to the door. It was very dark inside. I suppose it might have looked like something from a JRR Tolkien book, if one was so imaginative. Up the hill apiece lived an older Estonian man named Elvin. He had white, curly hair and was heavy set, but this did not diminish his work ethic. He spent most of his days cutting wood with a saw. He almost exclusively wore work overalls. My girlfriend had been having an affair with him for sometime. I didn’t understand her thing for grandfatherly men, but maybe it had something to do with the rugged sound of that chainsaw.
But things were changing in the village. One day, a real estate agent came to show the neighboring apartment. Two dark-skinned men were with her. They were both Black British, I guess is the term. When I asked them why they had decided to leave the city and move to such an out-of-the-way seaside village, they both responded, in unison, “We broke up with our boyfriends.” So it was a gay couple who had decided to run away together. I should have known. Their outfits were a bit too conspicuously neat. Part of me wanted to warn them that maybe they might have a hard time in the village. It wasn’t conservative per se, in the way that the American Bible Belt was conservative, but it was the kind of place where identity politics were backburnered in favor of scrappy, old-fashioned hard labor. They were on their own.
I felt sad actually, and the old man Elvin was still up on the hilltop sawing wood. I hadn’t seen my girlfriend in ages. I could barely remember what she looked like, and began to doubt in her existence. I came down the hill into town. It used to be a rundown, stagnant place, but new shops and cafes were opening up and it had been revitalized. At the edge of the sea, one could see the enormous scaffolding that surrounded the new ships being built. Titanic-sized vessels were assembled here. One recognized that special ‘V’ shape. I stood at the bottom of the scaffolding and wished that I too, like those great ships, would one day be released to the sea.
north! 