THERE WAS A FURNITURE SHOP up by the train station where some local entrepreneur had set up his business in a converted old barn. The walls were made of round field stones and the roof had been built and maintained in the old-fashioned style. It was there that I acquired a swivel armchair, plush and upholstered, and then began to push the chair into town on its wheels. This was tedious, but I covered the ground quickly, passing the Konsum and then the Maxima. By the Old Cemetery, where poets and war heroes are entombed, a car pulled up.
It’s hard to say what kind of car it was. It looked like an old black Buick, but I could be remembering it wrong. There were two women inside, both blondes, both about five or so years older than me. 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, bohemian clothing. The one with the longer hair said, “Hey there, can we give you a ride?”
I said, “But there’s no way my chair will fit in your car!” The longer-haired just smiled. “I bet it’s a perfect fit.” And it was. The chair fit perfectly in the back seat. I sat in the back next to it and the two women sat upfront. When we went to turn at the roundabout toward town, we made another turn and drove into the forests. “We’re leaving for Italy tomorrow,” the driver announced to me. “And you should come with us.” I was hesitant at first. But seeing as two women were willing to give me a ride to Italy, I decided to go. What was there to lose?
The house was situated deep in the woods. It belonged to the woman with shorter hair. She told me her name was Ingrid and that the house had been built by some forefather in the 19th century. There were crooked stairways going to different levels inside Ingrid’s house, and she gave me a room on the top floor, one with windows on every side. There was a large, comfortable bed with a thick blanket in the room and all of the linen and bedding was white. I slept up there alone in Ingrid’s house that night, but when I woke up, she was already in bed with me and we made passionate love. I remember the way the light caught on her eyes the most. Ingrid had sun-kissed skin with lots of freckles. I felt her smoothness everywhere.
Later we got in the car and began our long sojourn south. It would take days to get to Italy, but at least I had good company. Ingrid was at the wheel again and her companion, who was called Astrid, was seated beside me in the back seat. 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 plastic bucket and a knife. She told me we were going to go mushrooming. “But what happened to Italy?” I asked. Astrid just smiled at me, as if I was the dumbest person she had ever met. “Did you really believe us?” she said. “You’re more gullible than I thought.”
Ingrid left us at the edge of a pine forest and went to run some errands. I followed Astrid into woods. Deeper and deeper we went, until I began to worry that I couldn’t remember the way back. I wondered if I would make love with Astrid, 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, each one more delicious than the next.
Astrid moved from spot to spot, peacefully filling her bucket with chanterelles and birch boletes. Her fingers became grimier and dirtier from the slaying of many mushrooms. Something drew me to her, a kind of terrifying but enchanting vibration. I could no longer speak, I could no longer think. I was caught up in some strong energy field. The woods began to hum with it and glisten, as if they had for the first time been penetrated by sunlight.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Astrid said to me. “Like what?” I asked. “You’re looking at me as if I was a kohupiimakorp. Do you want something?” I approached her and undid the ribbon to her shirt, exposing her pink chest in the air of the forest. Then I licked her like I was licking the cream off a pastry. “This is all I really want,” I told her, in between licks. “Just this.”
north! 