IN VÕRU, in the south-eastern corner of Estonia, there is a paneelmaja, or apartment building. This apartment building is made of the same elements of all the other apartment buildings of the 1960s. It is, in that sense, a standard Brezhnevka. However, there are some characteristics that separate it from others. For example, it’s built in a precise square with a courtyard at centre, including an old swimming pool. Nobody has been in that pool since Gorbachev was premier and it’s now used for storing potatoes. It’s covered in graffiti referencing Billie Eilish.
This common courtyard though is a place of interaction for the tenants of the Võru apartment building. They can watch each other, spy on each other’s comings and goings. I went there to stay in the building to spend some time with my child. What I found there was true delirium.
What kinds of people live in the Võru apartment building? Woodsy lumberjack-looking tenants with a predilection for the New Age. That means men in red flannel shirts and beards with tiny Ganesha statuettes bedside. They are all meditating and fasting when they are not sharpening their sharp axes. The women of the house make good use of them, and partners are switched and swapped out like lightbulbs. The men give when they are asked to and ask no questions. Such is the way of the Võrumaa matriarchy. When they are no longer needed for sexual favors or car repairs, they head into the Võru forests to tap birch juice or chop more wood for winter.
Children roam the halls of the Võru apartment building freely. I have seen small blonde children leaping between the floors. I myself was heading up a set of concrete stairs when I encountered a small boy in striped pajamas teetering dangerously on the edge of a balcony, the guard rail of which had collapsed. This small boy I took in my arms and went racing around the building looking for his mother. She turned out to be in bed managing her online business while listening to a few self-help podcasts from a guru. A light-haired blonde woman in a homemade blanket. She was still in her pajamas. She was stretching, blinking strangely at me.
“Your son almost fell off the balcony,” I told her. “Maybe you should take better care of him.”
“Don’t worry about Joosep,” said the lady. “He likes to play on the balcony but he never falls.”
north! 