THERE WAS A FURNITURE SHOP up by the train station where some local entrepreneur had set up his business in an old barn. It was there that I acquired a swivel armchair and then began to push the chair into town on its wheels. This was tedious work but I covered ground quickly, soon passing the Konsum supermarket. By the cemetery, where poets and war heroes are enshrined and entombed, a car pulled up.
It looked like an old black Buick, but I could be remembering it wrong. There were two women inside, both blonde, both older. One had shorter cropped hair and wore a blue tank top. She was at the wheel. The other had shoulder-length hair, she sat in the back. She wore looser, more colorful garments. The one with the longer hair said, “Need a ride?”
I said, “But there’s no way my chair will fit in your car.” The longer-haired lady smiled. “I bet it’s a perfect fit.” It was. The chair fit perfectly in back. I sat next to it and the two women sat up front. But when we went to turn at the roundabout toward town, we made a sudden turn and drove off into the forests. “We’re leaving for Italy tomorrow,” the driver announced. You should come with us.” I was hesitant. But seeing as two women were willing to give me a lift to Italy, I decided to go. What was there to lose?
Their house was situated deep in the woods. It belonged to the woman with shorter hair. Her name was Ingrid and that the house had been built by some forefather in the 19th century. There were crooked stairways inside going to different levels. Ingrid gave me a room on the top floor. There was a large, comfortable bed with a thick blanket and the bedding was snow white. I slept alone that night, but when I awoke, Ingrid was already in bed with me and we were making love. I remember the way the light caught on her eyes. Ingrid had sun-kissed skin, freckles. I felt her smoothness everywhere.
Later we got in the car and began our trip south. It would take us days to get to Italy. Ingrid was at the wheel again and her companion, who was called Astrid, was seated beside me in back. Astrid had on a pair of red pants, some yellow kummikud or boots and a loose-fitting white blouse, held together at the top by a ribbon. A bucket and a knife. She told me we were going to go mushrooming. “But Italy?” I asked. Astrid just smiled at me, as if I was the dumbest man she had ever met. “Did you really believe us?” she laughed. “You’re far more gullible than I thought!”
Ominous. Ingrid left us at the edge of a forest and went to run some errands. I followed Astrid into woods. Deeper in we went, until I began to worry that I couldn’t remember the way back. I wondered if I would make love with Astrid now, just as I had made love with her friend in the morning. It would be interesting to know Astrid, just as I had known Ingrid. I was developing a real taste for these neurotic older women, yes, each one more delicious than the next.
Astrid moved from spot to spot, filling her bucket with chanterelles and birch boletes. Her fingers became grimier from the slaying of mushrooms. Something drew me to her more, a kind of terrifying breath. I could no longer speak, I could no longer think. I was tangled up in some bursting energy field. The woods began to hum with it and glisten, as if they had for the first time been penetrated by sunshine.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Astrid asked. “Like what?” “You’re looking at me as if I was a kohupiimakorp.” I approached her and undid the ribbon to her shirt, exposing her pink chest in the air of the forest. Then I licked her as if I really was licking the cream off a pastry. “This is all I really want,” I whispered, in between the licks. “Just this.”
north! 