ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER TRAIN. This one was a new luxury mode of transport. It had glass ceilings, so we could watch the snow-dusted and ice-covered winter trees canopy over our heads as we raced north from Switzerland into the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Every destination had its own box, sort of like different gates in an airport. The Warsaw people were over there, the Tallinn people were over here. Helsinki, I take it, was the final destination. The trees were really magnificent too, a white kaleidoscope, forming, reforming. I tried to capture the way they shaped and reshaped themselves with my phone camera, but it was just no good.
When we all arrived, we went into a concert hall. There was a grand piano at its center, and a slightly elevated stage. Esmeralda was there holding a white Fender electric. She knew the chords to the song. What was she doing here, and why was she playing one of his songs? She was small and taciturn, with her potato brown hair and lovely narrow eyes. She was just wearing her jeans. Esmeralda played the chords to the song, and then I took a guitar in hand. It was also an electric, one of those oddly shaped Gibson Thunderbirds, but with a sunburst body. I couldn’t restrain myself from doing some impromptu Stevie Ray Vaughan on my new axe. I was surprised I could play “Love Struck Baby.” It wasn’t so hard to imitate Stevie Ray.
Esmeralda just strummed away. She looked so unimpressed. Didn’t she know that I wanted her so badly? That I wanted to take her away to an island, where our descendants would form the population’s main stock, like those HMS Bounty mutineers on Pitcairn Island and Tahiti? I wanted to pull a Fletcher Christian. No dice. This was a rehearsal, not a love-making session. Esmeralda yawned and walked over to the piano. I stopped riffing on my Gibson Thunderbird.
IT’S EIGHT THIRTY AM, and I’m getting on board a northbound train in Viljandi. Two women sit nearby, waiting as well. Over their shoulders I can see that Lavazza instant coffee machine gleaming white in the sun. The last time I took a train here, I got an espresso in a paper cup, but by the end of the day, and after many coffees more, I looked like someone who had been on a nasty amphetamine binge, and so this time, I have decided to forego the morning espresso. The machine is nice though. It’s a welcome Italian brand. More than a few weeks ago, I decided to sojourn out to Vasknarva, which is at the very edge of the European Union, so I could take a hard look at the fearsome Russian Federation on the other side. Through swamps and forests I journeyed, until I at last saw the onion domes of the Vasknarva church, and trekked down to the harbor where I met some fishermen. They tried to speak to me in Russian, but since I don’t speak Russian, we got by with a few hand gestures and some Estonian words. “Kala,” one of them said. As I stood there, looking over the river at the smoky shanties on the other side, I saw it again. There was a Lavazza coffee machine in Vasknarva.
I could drink coffee and watch Russia.
“Estonski?” one of the fishermen asked me.
“Nyet, amerikanski,” I told him.
His eyebrows raised upon hearing this and he gave me a puzzled smile.
Of course, I ordered myself an espresso from the machine. For me it served as proof that I was still standing in the civilized world, as I saw the border patrol glide up the river in a boat. This feeling of Europeanness means something to me. This is what Europe was supposed to be about. Efficiency, precision, the ability to use a chip card to order an Italian espresso from a machine at the murky riverside of the Western world. These small coffees do mean a lot.
***
AN HOUR AND A HALF later and we pull into Saku. The grass is lush green and dotted with yellow marigolds. Odd new geometric buildings stand in circles near the approach to the town, like a jumble of Lego toys. Europeans like to live in these kinds of Lego buildings. Not too long ago, I was standing on this same platform in the snow cold when the train pulled up. The Estonians call these trains “carrots,” because of their orange color, but I still can’t bring myself to say I took the “carrot” to Tallinn. I was standing there and through the glass, I could see a young woman who I knew, just sitting on the train. There was something cinematic about that vision, of the train pulling up in the winter dark and seeing her seated there through the glass. After some time, I worked up the nerve to go and talk to her. She was on her way back to Viljandi. She’s very young, but she looked a bit sleepy, world weary. She keeps herself busy, I think. You have to appreciate the romance of these trains though. When I write to old friends back in the US, they especially like these kinds of details. How I saw a girl I knew on a train, or how someone came in on the train and left the same day. Or how someone missed the train. For them, it’s reminiscent of that old movie Before Sunrise with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.
In California, most people drive. In New York too. Here, I almost never drive anywhere.
Estonians, I think, wouldn’t make these connections. They don’t see how similar their lives are to the French and the Austrians and the “real Europeans.” I will admit that the country does feel mostly like a wilderness. Whenever I drive from Riga and begin to see those dense birch forests, I get the sense that I am heading to the very edge of the world. To leave these forests and go to a city like Rome or Barcelona or Paris is, in the Estonian mind, to go to Europe. But this same Europe also contains other far-flung corners, whether they be the Scottish Hebrides, or the Norwegian fjords, or the rocky Greek islands. The Estonian north woods are part of this larger experience, and through them one can travel on reliable little trains that some call “carrots.” The train pulls up and you can see someone you know through the glass.
***
NOW THERE ARE THE CRANES and graffiti of Tallinn. From here, Viljandi feels like a distant world. For me, Viljandi is just another provincial European town. It has its castle ruins, its old churches, its hotels and bars, its cafes and bakeries. Something about its sloppiness, those old falling-down fences and unpainted facades, makes it especially Gallic in feeling, as if I got lost somewhere outside of Lyon and turned up in this dusty place. Surely the fishing villages of Brittany must be home to similar layers of decay and renewal. Old barns renovated into cafes and bars. Haunted lost old factories. And did you know that there are three Americans living around the corner from me now? One from Florida, one from Massachusetts, and one from West Virginia. There’s an Argentine and a Dutchman too, and an Australian cycles by daily and waves. For the middle of nowhere, it’s some kind of somewhere. A small French town, as I said, that happens to be up in the north woods, and where they speak Estonian instead of French.
Sadly, the wine and bread and cheese aren’t as cheap, but you can get other things at the markets here, and they are playing the same 1980s hits that they play everywhere in Europe. Here they sell cloudberries, black and red currants, and dead eels. In the fall, there are piles of chanterelles and buckets of golden potatoes. There are weird aspects to life here, for sure, but those weird aspects are in every place. The other day I parked my car, and a man started yelling something across the street at me, something about Estonians and parking. An older man with gray hair. I think he was drunk. But there are these kinds of people everywhere. I’m used to it. In America, they yell at you about Jesus and Trump and Obama, here they yell at you about Kalevipoeg and parking. Every society has its pressures, its idiosyncrasies. These things change wherever you go. Often in Estonia, I can feel the weight of the ideas of its people on me. They talk about things as if I know what they mean. My favorite is when Estonians tell you to “be normal,” or to “be concrete.” I imagine turning myself into a stony slab. Even better is when an Estonian will say to you, “but I’m a normal person.” Olen normaalne inimene. Yeah, right. I just shrug my shoulders. I have learned to. It’s too tiring to pay it any more attention.
I don’t take Estonia as a place that needs to satisfy my desire for everything I want. These days, I just take life here as it is. I do like those touches, the instant coffee machine on the Narva River, the smooth running trains gliding into Saku at night, the sleepy-eyed young people on their way to somewhere. I’ve been living in Europe off and on for two decades now, and I wonder if it has changed me, if I too have become a European in this time. I’m not sure what that means. I think my inner American appreciates these little scenes a bit too much for me to be a real European. I still think I am living in some European film. Sometimes it’s an erotic thriller. Sometimes it’s a comedy. More recently, it’s been turning into a historical drama about the lead up to a big war. It’s Midnight in Paris starring Owen Wilson, except Morning in Estonia, starring Justin Petrone. But you know what, I like this movie that I’m in right now.
I wouldn’t change a thing.
An Estonian version of this piece appeared in the newspaper Sakala this week.
I WAS INVOLVED WITH THE MOB. Or Mafia. Cosa Nostra. Take your pick. I was supposed to run some money but I didn’t know who was delivering or who was retrieving. They sent me out to some industrial area to stand inside an old telephone booth at night. It seemed like a rather uncreative pick-up spot. There I stood, pretending to talk to someone on the old phone, which didn’t work. I had two soldiers for backup, who were hidden in some nearby reeds. Soon a car pulled up — I couldn’t see the model through the dark — and a stranger got out. I was ready to hand over the cash, but as he got closer, I saw him pull a gun. Everyone started shooting. Bullets pierced the glass of the telephone booth. There was a gunman in the car too, and I could hear the bullets piercing the metal of the car. After about five minutes, everyone else was dead. It was just me and a suitcase full of cash in a bullet-ridden telephone booth.
Naturally, I was shaken up. Then I realized, I had enough money to buy a house on Long Island.
CHRISTMASTIME, some months later. I kept running around the house while I was preparing the meal. I would go out the front door, slide down the alley on one side of the house, cut across the back, and then wind around the driveway and porch until I reached the front door. I would go inside, check on the pasta, and then repeat this ‘running around the house’ motif. The house looked almost exactly like my parents’ house, except it was situated in a slightly more elevated area. The weather was cool but not cold and it was dark. I knew that they were expecting traditional American fare at Christmas, but I only knew how to make Italian food.
I checked the spaghetti again. It wasn’t yet al dente. Another quick run around the house.
Soon the guests began to arrive. I hadn’t seen them in years. Cousin Prescott came in with his family. He was an academic and wore dark-rimmed glasses. He used to have hair, but this had long since been reduced. It made him look more distinguished. “I’ve missed you, Prescott,” I said, patting him on the back. “Don’t tell the others, but you’re my favorite.” “Of course, I am,” he said and entered the house. My wife came down on the landing and waved to everyone.
At last my brother roared up. This moment brought me great anxiety. Would he approve of my new life? This was doubtful. He looked strange though. He had tattoos on both arms, and was wearing a leather jacket that said, Hells Angels. When did my big brother join a biker gang? My brother looked over everything and said, “Nice house.” “Thanks,” I said. “I paid for it in cash.”
IT WAS A KIND OF RESORT, in Finland. In one part, there was a dining area, but very dim because the lights had been turned off. When you turned them back on, the lights were too bright and harsh. I was waiting there at the old bar. Later that afternoon, I was supposed to give a lecture on Estonians at the University of Helsinki. Sanna Marin was going to be there. A young couple arrived to the dining area next. The man was shorter, with dark brushy hair and was wearing a suit with a bowtie, and the woman had on a light blue dress and had light brown shoulder-length hair. A young, newly wed couple full of cake, if not hope. The girl was carrying with her an umbrella, to keep away from the rain, the sun, and the dining area light bulbs too.
THEY ASKED ME if I would take some photos of them together, but the lighting was either too bright or too dark. We played around with positions, “You sit there, now turn your head this way,” and then turned on the bar lights, but turned off the rest of the lights in the room, but it was still impossible to get a shot. After a while, I just gave up. I couldn’t get one good photograph of this newly married Finnish couple. They just could not be photographed.
INSTEAD, I WANDERED DEEPER into the resort, to where there was a kind of food street open, or concessions area. It was early in the morning, and most of the restaurants and kiosks were closed. But there was an espresso machine. Success! The small recycled cardboard cup was filled with the hot black drink. I decided I needed something sweet for my little Finnish fika, but all of the shops and kiosks were still closed. So I stole a few pieces of Fazer chocolate from one that hadn’t opened up yet but then, after some deliberation, put them back. Finland was a respectable, law-abiding kind of place, where one just did not steal Fazer chocolates.
AROUND THE CORNER, I encountered some people. A woman went walking by me with some kind of “euro burrito” served on a tray and drowning in white and red sauces. A line led to one little pop-up restaurant, where I could see the corpses of whole chickens that had been deep fried in grease, sprawled about in tins like dead boiled lobsters. The man behind the counter looked like a cross between Ryan Gosling and Steve Carrell. He was American for sure, and had a mustache and was wearing a red vest. “What can I get you?” the man said. “The list of specials is written right up there.” He gestured at a chalkboard and a list of greasy, meaty, deep fried fare. “Actually, I’m just looking for some chocolate.” “Well, if you get hungry for a real meal, come back,” he said. “But whatever you do, don’t get food from the lady next door. Her food sucks.” Behind him, I could see the fry cooks salting a fresh batch of tasty golden fries.
Someone called out the number for an order. I slinked away.
WHO WAS THAT Finnish university lecturer I once knew? I thought as I wandered back through the resort. Was his name Ahto? Ahti? Antti? Aki! Aki was his name. What was he up to today? Maybe he could help me prepare for my upcoming talk at the university. I only had 10 minutes, 10 minutes to bedazzle them with tales of the Estonians. Sanna Marin, as I said before, was going to be there. I wanted to impress her. When I reached the dining area, I could see that the newly wedded couple had already separated. The young man was still seated at the table. The woman was in the corner.
“Marriage just didn’t work for us,” she told me, while twirling her umbrella. “We were just too different.” “That’s too bad,” I said. “Here, quick, would you please feel my breasts?” the Finnish bride said. She pulled down the front of her blue dress, exposing herself. I reached over and felt her breasts. “Very soft,” I said. “Just lovely.” The Finnish bride smiled. “That’s what you get when you come to Finland,” the Finnish girl told me. She had large and friendly beautiful eyes.
Somewhere on a nearby bandstand, a children’s choir had assembled. They were singing a haunting tune. I couldn’t make out the words, but I think they were saying, “Finland, Finland.”
SOME THINGS DON’T DIE EASY. This I learned the hard way. I had to tell my story to someone, so I told the Count, who is descended from some Russian aristocratic family, but actually grew up in the South Estonian countryside and doesn’t speak a lick of the Russian language. He wears cool band t-shirts and a flannel shirt over them, like it was 1992, or ’82 for that matter, and his brown hair is going gray. When he wears his glasses, such as when perusing a menu, he almost looks like a person who should be taken seriously. And this was the setting for me bawling my heart out over Dulcinea, the girl who broke my heart in two.
Or at least blocked me on social media.
“Why did she block you?” asked the Count. He had his glasses on when he asked, and seemed quite serious. “I wrote her too many romantic letters,” I said. “I had promised her I wouldn’t.”
“Then why did you write more to this girl, what did you say her name was again?” “Dulcinea.” “Dulcinea,” he repeated. “The name does sound familiar.” I showed him her picture. “Well, she is attractive,” he said. “Yes,” I agreed. “But if someone tells you to stop doing something, maybe you should stop.” The Count set the menu down on the table, like a lawyer resting his case.
I nodded in silence and my french fries arrived. I let them sit. “I didn’t want to write more romantic letters to Dulcinea,” I told the Count. “There was just this feeling building inside of me. If I hadn’t written those romantic letters to the girl, I would have just exploded into bits.”
The Count removed his glasses and wiped them clean with his flannel shirt. Underneath I could see his blue t-shirt. The t-shirt had written on it, in big block white letters, The Clash. He put his glasses back on. “Yes,” the Count said staring. His smart eyes were beady black. “That’s what the serial killers say too.”
“Fortunately, I’m not a serial killer,” I said, wondering how the Count knew so much about serial killing. I didn’t get a chance to ask. His tarot-toting mistress arrived. She too knew the sad tale of Dulcinea. I showed her a photo of the girl. Her strawberry blonde hair was draped about her shoulders and she was wearing a black hat in the photo. It had been taken in the countryside. “This girl Dulcinea does seem to have a kind of witchy energy,” the Count’s consort said. Was she the Countess? Actually, the girl had supposedly seen the light and eschewed the occult for good. But the line between sorcery and Christianity in Northern Europe had never been clear. Earlier that day, I had drawn The Devil from the Countess’ deck. When I had asked about Dulcinea, I saw The Tower engulfed in flames and white lightning.
Still it wouldn’t leave me. The idea of her put a chill in me like the air before a thunderstorm.
AT FIRST LIGHT, I fell back into a deep sleep. White light, honeysuckle light. Suddenly I was swimming in darkness. There were some youths there, or younger people. They were talking to me about how much Harry Potter had changed their lives. One of them was a young man with dark hair. He was dressed up like an old-fashioned movie theatre usher, same kind of ridiculous suit, like one of those dancing monkeys you find beside the ancient organ grinders.
He was most enamored with the Potter franchise.
“Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!” the monkey man kept saying. “Brilliant!” A younger woman was with him. She had on a similar costume, but looked more like a barmaid at a German-themed restaurant. Oktoberfest. She looked at me and smiled. While he was talking, I became aware that I was in the arms of a woman. It was as if I had tumbled back and falled into warm water. There was an older woman with tufts of yellow hair there. I could feel her as she caught me. Then I put my head on her soft breasts. She was wearing all black, but this was gauzy, amorphous, atmospheric, oceanic, cosmic. It danced all around me like the northern lights.
“Is it okay if I just rest my head here like this?” I said. She just breathed, but I could tell that it was okay. The restful breast led up to a neck. “Is it okay, if I kiss you here like this?” I asked. Now she spoke and said that I could do as I liked. “All the answers,” she said, “are already inside of you.” I could see her arm extend around me, but most of her was not visible. She was like a phantom, a ghost, more sensed than felt, but there was nothing ominous about her presence. Everything progressed from there, as it does, and there was a long deep kiss, explorative, intense, and dreamy. But no matter how many times we tried to make love, it just didn’t work.
We tried and tried, but no connection. We were just content to kiss then, like that, and for a long time. Sometimes more isn’t necessary, you know. Sometimes kissing is good enough.
IT’S KIND OF FITTING that we finally get to the fifth track on this six-track EP in this third and final installation of the review, because in my opinion, “Only Lonely” is the most Seattle-sounding song in the set. Seattle plays a big role in Bern Band lore. Bassist Dave Trump lives there, and drummer Cody Rahn is a self-described “West Coast person.” I’ve been to Seattle plenty of times myself, and can’t yet describe myself as a devotee or not. I’m not in love with the place, but I don’t hate it. I did find it amusing when, on an overcast cold day, I saw people there beaming about the “sunshine.” Seattle continues to filter into musical culture. Some people swear by Seattle, and want to parade you down to the original Starbucks, or even show you some club where Kurt Cobain took a dump back before Nirvana got big. The scene, man.
The scene!
There used to be more West Coast people in my life, with starry utopias in their eyes.
Plus all that weed.
I actually don’t know if the Bern Band used drugs in the making of this record.
D. TRUMP:The difference in Seattle-New York or the East-West sound is tough for me to pinpoint. My perspective is a bit diluted by now, but I still think I know it when I hear it. One aspect would be the sense of urgency that comes out of NY music — deciding on the direction then making the groove happen. Whereas the Seattle sound might be more inclined to let the direction and sound develop. Of course, there are exceptions that could blow that concept out of the water.
C. RAHN: For me being a West Coast person my whole life until moving to New York City in 2010, the energy in rock music out there when I was growing up had a powerful groove that always felt comfortable and laid back even when the music was exploding with intensity. Slower, never frantic. Always space to think in between the notes.
Of course, we have to mention Pearl Jam. The Bern Band’s last record, Just Not Today, was recorded in Seattle in the final days of 2019, before the pandemic reared its head. They recorded at Stone Gossard’s studio, which was once Pearl Jam’s rehearsal studio. Soundgarden’s Down on the Upside was also recorded there, guitarist Hackett recalls.
B. HACKETT: There was just a real Seattle feel to the whole recording. We recorded all the basic tracks ‘live, live,’ meaning there was no click track and we were all playing live in a big room, baffling was the only isolation we used. So they are all one take, live. Which adds such an amazing feel to that album. However, the downside to that recording was that we had a small window to capture everything in the studio, not much time to think through all that we would have liked.
One thing that’s come up with Hackett in talking about the guitar distortion on this record is the weather where we grew up on Long Island, and how the distortion reminds me of the fog that rolls in off the inlet where we used to hang out, known as Conscience Bay.
A more writerly name could not have been selected for a body of water adjacent to such introspective, philosophical lads as ourselves. Most of the houses in the area were built postwar, and in dialogue with a local historian, I learned that the area where we lived had once hosted a hospital during a smallpox outbreak in the 1770s. This rather melancholy detail has only made the guitar distortion seem more ghostly and ominous. Perhaps soldiers during the conflict with Britain had bathed their pox sores in the bay. The same bay we would frequent in our youth, when Pearl Jam and Soundgarden ruled. There’s definitely some “Fell on Black Days” in “Only Lonely.”
This one is more like a Hackett solo number, I have to admit. The acoustic guitar, the festive chorus. Even his voice sounds more like him here. This is him, with no masks or shields. Just him. I have to think, it got me wondering about how I even met Hackett. There is a class photo of us together in second grade, but I barely remember him from those years. We definitely were in band — school band — in fifth grade. He was also in my class from fourth through sixth grade. There was a particularly raucous sleepover party which must have been in 1990, because I gifted Hackett a cassette of Vanilla Ice’s hip hop masterpiece, To the Extreme, and we were so animated and sugar high that Hackett’s dad, “Jim,” took us all out jogging.
Later, I remember Jim being taken aback by listening to Vanilla Ice rap about “handcuffs and chains” on “Stop That Train.”
Things probably started to mesh around this point.
But Hackett is a Sagittarius. His birthday is before Christmas, as this festive number informs. What that means is something like this. You go to visit Hackett, but he’s not there, because he’s somewhere else. You go to Point B, but he’s also not there, because he’s too busy smoking something with Jimmy Buffett at an Allman Brothers concert. You go to the concert, but it’s over already. Jimi Hendrix was a Sagittarius. Remember that tune, “Highway Chile”?
“His guitar slung across his back. His dusty boots is his Cadillac. A flamin’ hair just a blowin’ in the wind. Ain’t seen a bed in so long, it’s a sin.” That’s him.
They call him the breeze, he keeps blowing down the road.
I like to think of Hackett as sort of an early breezy guitar hero. He was just that kind of kid. But his guitar heroics earned him enemies. And so one day, while I was standing in the auditorium of Paul J. Gelinas junior high school, someone pressed into my hand a cassette recorded by some Primus devotees — the kinds of kids who wore baggy pants, with expansive “wallet chains” — that was called “Bury the Hackett.” Whose side was I going to be on?
This was the circa 1995 musical equivalent of the Drake-Kendrick feud.
A whole cassette full of diss tracks.
Or at least Nirvana-Pearl Jam.
The hand-drawn cover of the Hackett diss project showed a guitar neck sticking out of some grass.
Not all was well on Long Island. Evil was lurking along those muddy inlets.
Would I betray my lifelong friend, and come over to the dark side, the sinister Primus side? Would I disavow jeans that fit, and a wallet I trusted enough to stay put in my pocket, or would I get those big pants and keep my wallet on a chain? Could I strike some kind of balance between these packs of musical rogues emerging in my midst? Danger, danger. No, it wasn’t always easy being loyal to the Breeze. But he’s still out playing his guitar, ain’t he? And those snotty Primus kids are accountants or something. Their wallet chains have gone crusty.
To borrow a line from Good Will Hunting, “How do you like them apples?”
A LOT HAD CHANGED. The school used to sit on the top of a hill overlooking a nice green park, with tennis courts and such, and a baseball diamond, but in the intervening years, some genius had decided to expand it, so that it now resembled some sort of horrible municipal building erected in Philadelphia or Boston, or some other godforsaken concrete nightmare built with state money, and the green park was long gone, as was its murmuring pretty creek, to which our preschool teachers would take us in those happy new years for sunny picnics.
Yes, the happy years. The first day there was one of holding my breath, just so that I wouldn’t be the only little boy who cried for mother. I made it through that day and others. My first classroom was to the left, I remember, and the second one was down the hall. The swimming pool was down at the far right. It was here where we would change, and I still have a memory of a little boy telling me that he knew how we could spy on our swim instructors as they changed into their bathing suits. This was the first time this particular idea of voyeurism even popped into my young mind. The thought had just never occurred to me. Naked teachers?
Anyway, there I was again, at the entrance to the school. Somehow I got inside the building. The walls were all paneled, and there was a dry, beige carpet that ran the length of the hallways and corridors. There were some people seated at desks. I walked right by them, as well as beneath a large metal clock. What had happened to the place since I left? Almost nothing was familiar to me, but the shape of the building had been retained. Down the hall toward the swimming pool, I encountered a man with a moustache and and the baseball cap of a team that is generally ignored by the New York fans. Maybe it was the Montreal Expos? He had glasses and curly red hair. He said, “Excuse me, sir. Are you looking for something here?”
“I’m looking for the swimming pool,” I told the man in the Expos cap. “I used to go swimming here, when it was a preschool.” The man looked at me oddly. “Oh right, I have heard it used to be a preschool,” he said. “But I have never heard about a swimming pool. Oh well, nobody goes down to that end of the building anymore.” “Oh,” I said, imagining a caved-in swimming pool behind locked wooden doors, slowly being reclaimed by nature. Maybe at some point during the George W. Bush administration they had just forgotten it, left it to rot, focused on expanding the building over the nice green park and creek. Now only the squirrels knew of it.
“When did you go to school here, might I ask?” the man in the Expos hat asked me in the hallway there. “In 1984 or so,” I said and shrugged. “Probably 1983 to 1985 was when I was here,” I told the strange man. “Oh,” he said with a frown. “But that was before I was born, you know. That was before any of us were born.”
WE TOOK THE NIGHT BUS up to Saint Petersburg. I was surprised they even gave us visas, or allowed us over the border. When we got there, it was still night, or perhaps it was already dawn. There was a kind of blue hazy light along the canals. The city was as I imagined it would be. It had had many names in its history, among them Petrograd and Leningrad. I knew the locals just called it “Peter,” or “Piiter,” as the Estonians put it. I was standing around with some Estonian women outside of our hotel and one of them, an artist who I thought was my friend, was talking. But when I managed to say something, to ask a question, she told me to shut up. “Nothing you have to say is interesting,” she said to me. “God, why are you so damn annoying.”
After that I went and hid myself away in the shadows. The rest of them were shown to their rooms. Later, the proprietor came back, Irina, and I asked if I too could be shown to my room, or at least given a place where I could sleep. Irina, who was a young blonde woman, understood me a little, because I could not speak Russian, and managed to say, “All the Estonians are sleeping on the third floor.” She led me up a few back staircases until I came to the door or where everyone else was staying. A half-naked Estonian woman opened the door a crack and said, “You? No. You’re not allowed in here with us.” “Don’t you dare let him in,” I could hear another say. “He’s not allowed to be with us.” I could hear them whispering more.
I realized that I would be sleeping outside that night, and made a place in the hall outside. On one side there was just an old metal barrier that looked out into a courtyard. I stretched out there with my bag under my head and tried to sleep. It was a lonely feeling to be there in Saint Petersburg or Leningrad or Petrograd. Whatever they were calling it this days. A cold feeling.
north! 