WE WERE ALL TRYING to escape. From what I do not know. Some kind of cave system, or tunnel. I cannot say if it was made by man or naturally formed. What I do remember is that I was surrounded by Ingrian girls. Dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe. There were just so many of them, and they were all trying to climb out of that passageway and get out into the cold December air. I don’t know what their names were, or what villages they came from, but they looked like sisters and cousins. They all had red wavy hair and their skin was milky white. Black shirts, blue trousers. Beautiful women, but as we all know, Ingrian Girls like to get their way.
One of the Ingrian girls climbed up my back and then sort of pushed herself over my head, as if doing an acrobatic trick. Another pushed by my arms. There were just so many of them, so many of them everywhere. They were crawling over everything. At one point in my life, I would have filled an Olympic swimming pool with these women and dived right in. Now in some kind of fatalistic back slap, I had gotten my wish fulfilled. It was a stampede. Ingria, the historical name of the territory connecting what is Estonia with the current Finnish border. It once covered the swampy area where Peter the Great decided to build his new imperial city.
The only hint at civilization in the cave system was an old monument that had been blasted and cut into the cold, hard walls. Words were chiselled into the granite, maybe about the Estonian War of Independence, or perhaps the Finnish Winter War. Most likely both. I couldn’t read anything in the darkness, but with my fingers, I could trace out the number 1918. I gripped the stone as I pulled myself out into the light. A dozen or so Ingrian girls were already standing up there looking haughtily down at me. I remember the menace of that hair, as if it was on fire and then the fire of the summer sun as it at last laid its fiery hands upon my face.
north! 