rory and maimu

RORY AND MAIMU were two local poets. One day, they came to town when it was all iced over. There had been about six weeks of continuous snowfall, with temperatures plunging to about 20 below, and when the thaw came at the cusp of February, it flooded the streets. When it dipped below zero again, the streets froze over, meaning that the entire town was covered in ice. Ever-long blocks of white and purple. You had to skate from house to house. You couldn’t even walk. And this is how Rory and Maimu and I wound up skating over to the Park Hotel.

Rory was wearing his sweater, tied loosely around his neck, and Maimu had her braid pulled up on one side. They were talented skaters. They were talented poets. Their books had been dipping into the Top 10 and out of it all winter long. They went zooming down Koidu Street, pass the little Coop market and the Green House Café, then turned up Tartu Street. I skated behind them, but when I got to the intersection, a truck was passing and I just couldn’t stop. The truck barely missed me, and I skated on. At Oru Street, it was the same, and I watched as a woman in a red car drove headfirst into a snow pile just to avoid me. I waved and apologized.

There was an old Victorian mansion in the park, one that I had never seen before. It was where the statue of Köler the painter is, or was. It was all painted gray, and the the paint on the façade was peeling off. When I got there, a girl took me by the hand. She said that Rory and Maimu had gone inside for some tea. They were going to write some poetry together. The girl said they were planning to renovate the house and yard, once the EU money came through.

no love in my kitchen

CELESTE CAME INTO the kitchen with her child. She was wearing a long black coat, and her child sat in the corner playing with some toys. I was sleeping there in my cot. It was only big enough for one person, and my feet dangled off the end. She walked by me and looked down, and then she stopped and sat next to me. “But why are you waiting for me?” she asked. “It has been so many years. This has been uncomfortable. It’s tormenting me. It’s tormenting you.”

Can’t you just let go of me and of this thing?

I sat up. “No,” I said. “For me, you will always be Woman Number One. You will always be first place in my heart. You occupy the first spot. I have tried in so many ways to get you out of there, but you are stuck there, for good it seems. So there’s no sense in trying to dislodge you from my heart, because it just won’t work. Believe me, Celeste, I’ve tried. This is just how it is.”

Celeste looked troubled for a moment, but then she curled up beside me and she hugged me. “See,” I said. “It’s really not so bad. It’s just love. How could love ever be bad?” Just then, an old woman came out of the kitchen. She had long white hair and was dressed in her food preparation clothes, a white shirt and pants. The old woman said, “You two better knock it off. There’s no love in my kitchen!” I turned over and said to the old woman, “You better stop, lady. I like old, saucy women. If you don’t go back in that kitchen, you’ll be the next one in my cot.”

the end of the approach

FIRST ABOVE GERMANY. Fluffy foamy carpets, white, and between them rolling hills or knolls, nubs, crests, with little motherboard looking settlements below, and lines of wind turbines churning. The mind ping-pongs, skirting memories, realities. The clouds turn to a frosty desert, layered upon other deserts. You think of her dreamy eyes that can give you a thousand blisses. You think of other people and then you think of yourself, a change in focus.

Below is nothing, not a road, not a corner, not a coast, or a line of white trees. The sea seems endless. The clouds absorb the orange and pink from that slowly-slipping January sunset. There is an almost fascinating rainbow glow. Then rolls of milk white that crest like sugary whipped cream. The clouds suddenly look gray and somehow cold. They are lower here, lying in a sort of cloud valley beyond. Big gray hunks of gray coldness drifting, almost like that shattered ice in the Gulf of Finland. No signs of civilization, no planes, no tiny houses, no little glowing lights below. It feels as if we are getting closer to the North Pole. Maybe we passed it?

Then, for a while, nothing, just purple. White clouds spin beyond. They look like French crullers. They are arranged, moving in gentle circles, like gears. Bigger clouds drift in, chunky and heavy, like fists. The longest descent ever. The clouds are so low here that they drift around the tops of houses. The color is almost navy blue fading into gray, an almost depthless bleak fog. The houses are faint and gold, like fire embers. By the time we finally dip below the cloud cover, I can read the signs on the buildings. I can see the icy lunar surface of the lake.

This is the end of the approach.

women’s dormitory

I WAS STANDING outside a large house. It was almost like a university dormitory and I have no idea how I got there. It was so dark out that I couldn’t really make out the structure of the building either, but it seemed to be vast, rectangular, and have many windows. I had a small satchel full of coconuts with me and a machete. Don’t ask me how these came into my possession. My back was to the building, and I cut one of the coconuts open, and lifted it to drink its sweet water. Supposedly, this stuff is the healing elixir lifesource itself. Drink enough and you will be replenished. Instead, a kind of algal green slime poured forth. I let it run into the snow and could see the snow turn green. Fermented, I thought. Simply undrinkable.

From a basement level window, I could see steam puffing out, and when I peeked inside, I immediately saw a nude young woman. I stepped back, still holding my machete and coconuts, not wanting to get caught peeking, but then glanced through the window once more, and saw there were actually two women in there. One of them was straddling the other, and she was moaning. “Yes, yes, just like that,” she said. Maybe this was an all-woman’s dorm? I tried not to listen, but could not help but keep one ear focused. Why did these things keep happening to me? It’s not like I went around searching for showering lesbians. They found me all the same.

I pulled another coconut from my satchel and hacked off its top with my blade. To my surprise, it was actually two coconuts that had grown together, a kind of double-barrelled coconut, with two channels. The water was warm, sticky, sweet, refreshing, everything that coconut water was supposed to be and more. After draining both channels, I felt fully restored, and put the coconut in my bag for later consumption. The showering co-eds were still moaning downstairs, but I walked around the building, showed my pass, and went inside.

Down one hallway, I noticed stairs that led up to a computer lab. The room was dark, but all of the computer monitors were on. Esmeralda was sitting there, squinting at the screen. She was smiling. Esmeralda looked happy. Her brown hair was tied up in a bun, and she was wearing that dress she used to wear when she worked at the café. I thought she looked beautiful, with that special slope of her eyes. She really was such a beautiful girl. I didn’t want to disturb her. Esmeralda looked so happy sitting alone. Maybe someone else had sent her a love letter.

the conjurer

SOME KIND OF GURU or shaman came to these shores and so we set about arranging an event to host him. This conjurer from Jaipur was booked for an evening at Helsinki’s Royal Sibelius Hall. Petra, my wife, played an important role in organizing the conjurer’s airfare, found him a place to stay, made sure his dressing room was outfitted with Ravi Shankar records and mounds of rice and chana masala. My job was simple enough, to make sure the concessions operated smoothly, but of course I botched this too, like everything I touch, and the price list wasn’t posted properly and a fist fight broke out over the sweet gulab jamun.

Petra was annoyed. “I give you one little thing to organize and you mess that up too! No wonder I’m divorced you!” I apologized and slinked away, but started to question things. Why was I always apologizing to people who had hurt me and humiliated me? Was there a limit? It was shameful to experience. But there was a time before them all, before all of this. I had been a person then too. Psychological terror. It had scarred me, but I was still there, beneath it all.

Outside people gathered after the conjurer’s talk. A tango group had been commissioned and began to play the square in front of the Royal Sibelius. El Scorcho, the Chilean guitarist, was there, with some friends. They began to dance the tango. Petra also began to move to the music. She was standing right next to me. Did she want to reconcile? Did she even want to dance? Of course not. A few minutes later, her date arrived. He was tall and pale and all dressed in black, with a cowboy hat to top it off. She said he was from the countryside. His name was Tex. Petra and Tex disappeared into the crowd and began to tango, tango away.

Then the wind picked up. It was a strong gust. I tried to hold onto the iron fence outside the hall, but it was no use. I began to drift away toward the head of the Esplanaadi. It was here where I had met Petra, years ago when we were younger. That was where it all began, by that fountain right there. And this is how it ended. Soon I was over the Swedish Theatre. I tried to move in some direction, maybe I could float over to the Eira neighborhood? It was no use. I was at the wind’s mercy. I was tired of people anyway. I was tired of the evil of the human heart. It seemed every heart around me was poisoned. They went to fists over Indian sweets.

not a single soul

THE WEATHER WAS WARM but overcast, so I decided to take a bike ride through the Old Town. I got as far as the Town Hall Square, but didn’t see anyone, not a single soul. The Christmas market had been dismantled, and there were shipping pallets stacked up on the street corners. A few pigeons pecked about, but there were no people there. Not one person. All of the shops and restaurants were shut, as were the beer halls, puppet theatres, and amber dealers. Everything was closed, locked up tight. Even the Depeche Mode bar. I was mystified.

I rode my bike up toward the train station after that. This was the street called Nunne, but it looked different. Some hipster cafes were open, and chairs and tables were scattered across the street, but there was nobody seated in them. All of the empty chairs made it hard to pass by. But that wasn’t the only thing that was off. At the end of Nunne Street, I saw that there was now a canal separating the Old Town from the Baltic Station. There had always been a pond there at the foot of Toompea, called the Snelli Tiik, but this had flooded over and expanded.

The canal was quite wide and deep.

“A few elevated wooden platforms had been erected across the canal, but these were almost flooded over, with all of the runoff from the melting snow. The wood was also coming apart from the regular wear and tear. I was reminded of an article I once read written by Jaak Juske, about how there used to be a canal in the middle of Tallinn, but that they had filled it in sometime in the middle of the 1930s. I walked my bike across one of the bridges alone. Halfway across, I noticed that one of my tires was flat and I decided to pump it right there — I had a bike pump in my bag — but a pedestrian behind me, a blonde woman with a bunch of shopping bags, was annoyed with me. “Do you mind?” she said in Estonian. “You’re in the way. Tule eest!”

“Tule eest, yourself lady,” I y and continued pumping away. “Wait, you’re the only person I have seen all day. Where is everyone else?” I said. “There’s a big sale on at Viru Keskus,” she replied. “Major discounts in all the outlet stores, plus you can get a good deal at the new restaurants!”

The closer she got to me, the lower the canal platform sank. Finally, with the weight of all those shopping bags, the canal bridge collapsed into the green waters. The blonde shopper swirled in the rapids. I could see her outstretched arm and the bags from Zara and Sportland.

Then she was gone.

I swam briskly to the other side, pulling my bicycle across with me. The pump went floating by and I grabbed that too. Then I got up on the other bank of the canal, finished pumping my tires, and cycled away. I needed to make that last train to Viljandi. It would be leaving soon.