neighbors

THE HOUSE WAS located in the middle of town, built in the contemporary style that was popular in the 1970s. There were three levels, with lofts and staircases that led every which way, and there were so many doors and rooms that I didn’t notice two women and their families move in. They were somewhere in the house. I could hear them talking to each other and to their children at all hours. There were grandparents there, other visitors, next of kin. But even though they had been living in my house for days, I never saw my new neighbors.

I took care after that though. I made sure not to leave my razor by the sink, for instance, and to always put the toilet lid down just in case. The milk was put away after it was taken out and I left my shoes neatly by the door. I didn’t want to anger anyone or overstep some boundary.

Who knew what they were capable of.

Then one night I left my noisy, haunted home and went to a party. It was just a few days past midsummer, the sky was bright. There were groups of people standing in circles and drinking wine. Esmeralda was there too, listening quietly, running her silver-ringed fingers through her dark hair. She seemed to be the obelisk around which the world turned. When I saw Esmeralda there, I felt a powerful vibration, frightening and terrific in its intensity. Just this small, solemn girl standing there. She didn’t have to say a word. But for me, the sky turned blackpurple then; there was a howling wind. I didn’t even dare to speak to her and I left the party immediately.

There were a lot of people out for a stroll that night by the riverbank. They walked beside me while I sulked about Esmeralda and my invisible guests. All these women. How long could I avoid them? Maybe if I kept walking this way, Esmeralda would manifest at the end of the trail. Swim up ahead. But who should happen to cycle by but Jack Diablo, an old school chum and the recent author of a bestselling book about sports betting. Diablo was a round and happy-looking character. He spread out a blanket on the ground that was printed to look like a chessboard. “Let’s check the odds,” he said, “see what we can see.” Jack Diablo looked up at me as he arrayed the pieces across the board. He smiled. But the wind was too strong and the pieces would not stand upright. Jack frowned. He said, “We’ll have to try some other time.”

At home, I could still hear the voices of my new neighbors. Somewhere two floors down, a little boy was whispering, “Mama.” It was early morning now, the dark storm having long since blown through. I curled up beneath the window as the gray light streamed through and stared up at the ceiling. This house, this house, this house, I thought. Will it ever go back to sleep?

the sea

I COULD SEE the sea when I emerged from the forest, a darker shade of blue beneath a bright blue horizon. To get there I would have to walk through yellow rapeseed fields. There was a fine path straight through but along the way I became very tired, paused by an old tree stump, and fell into a deep sleep. I half expected to wake up back in bed in my home, but when my eyes again opened, I was still on that same path and there were flies buzzing around my face.

I stood up, dusted myself off, wiped the sweat from my eyes and brow, and continued my pilgrimage to the sea. As I neared the coast, I came to a series of old farmhouses, the kinds that are common out on the islands here, with their thatched sea reed roofs. A farmer was in a nearby field, but he paid me no attention as I walked across his property toward the seaside. It was a hot day, and I was looking forward to jumping into those cool and soothing waters.

I walked along a fence and then through a barn, until I came to the dock on the sea. But, to my surprise, there was no beach there, no shallow inlet. The sea just churned beneath a white boat, deep and dark, and I lost any desire to dive into it. It was too vast, it was too heavy, too capable of swallowing everything up. So I just stood there watching it for some time alone.

childhood

IN JUNE 1970, Led Zeppelin played their only concert ever in Iceland. Most of the country was on strike, but at the last moment enough volunteers were found to have the show, which was held at the Laugardalshöll, a venue that hosted handball events. Their set list included “Heartbreaker” and “Dazed and Confused.” They only spent 24 hours in the land of the midnight sun, but letters and paternity suits followed. “Dear Robert,” an Icelander named Sigríður allegedly wrote Plant. “Maybe you would like to meet your son, Snorri Robertsson.”

I found an old magazine about the show at Laugardalshöll in 1970 at an antique shop on Austurstræti and brought it with me to the music studio where Björk was recording her new album. She had been suffering from writer’s block (or singer’s block?) and had been in a funk for many weeks. But seeing the black-and-white photos of Led Zeppelin’s stay in Iceland piqued her curiosity and she sat there in silence in the studio’s lounge, paging through the magazine. “Look, there,” she said, pointing out a man with a shaggy beard in a loose shirt. “It’s my mother’s old boyfriend, Sigurður Guðmundursson! You know, I forgot all about that guy.”

These grainy memories of the old days helped to take her mind off the recording process. Soon Björk was jotting down lyrics onto a notepad and holding my hand. “I got a new idea,” she said. The sweetest moment was when she noticed, in a tiny photo, a small girl with dark hair being led by the hand across the tarmac to where Led Zeppelin’s plane had landed. She was not yet five years old when this had happened and had no recollection of having been there. “This is so magnificent,” she said, staring at the photo. “You just gave me my childhood back.”

public sauna

MY GIRLFRIEND SAID she found a new place for us to live, somewhere deep in the southeast, some place far away from everything, a place where she said the outside world would never find, touch, or disturb us. She scrolled and trawled real estate listings until she found her dream house. This turned out to be a single story cinderblock bungalow in the middle of town.

“But it has potential,” she said, clutching her fingers together. The interior of the building looked like it hadn’t been touched since about 1978. There was even an old bar in the corner that had no doubt served the likes of rockers Jaak Tingimata and Urho Guidopalu at some forgotten booze-guzzling soiree deep in the Soviet time. There were still empty bottles lying around. By its single window, there was a dusty divan, upon which my girlfriend plopped herself, happy as a bee, enthralled by the opportunities presented by this ancient wreck.

“Just look,” she said, tugging at a torn curtain. “We get good light in here. It has a wonderful view.” Behind the curtain, I saw a series of plastic recycling bins. The graywhite light of winter streamed through the window and I knew not what to think. It seemed that she was sold on the place and if she was sold on the place, I doubted I would be able to unpick her reasoning.

She was quite endearing though and attractive and wore a black skirt with girlish stockings. Some part of her was forever 18, even if she was forty-something now. Her hair had been cut à la Aniston and she danced exuberantly around the dreary interior of the cement bungalow.

“Take a good look at that couch,” she said. “We’ll be making love on it for weeks! You are never going to get off of that old couch.” She began to pull up her blouse when, just at that moment, there came a knock at the door. I went and opened it, only to come face to face with about a dozen men, all wearing towels, sauna hats, and toting wooden ladles in their giant hands. Beyond them, I only saw the white of winter, frozen over parking lots, frosty stone facades.

One of them was especially fierce. He said to me, “This is a public sauna!” “No, it isn’t,” I said. I peered back into the building and noticed there were two plumbers at work on what had once been the showers. Since the building had not been heated, the shower area was covered in mottled patches of ice. Icicles hung suspended from the ceiling of the sauna showers like in an Arctic cave. One of the plumbers said to the other, “It will take forever to fix up this old place.”

“You heard the plumbers,” I told the sauna men. “There will be no sauna today.” “Honey,” my girlfriend called out to me. “Come back to bed.” “Just a minute.” The sauna men were unmoved. A pushing match ensued, and one man couldn’t hold them all back. Soon they overwhelmed me and charged into the dingy space, their ladles held aloft, chanting, “Sauna, sauna, sauna!” “Maybe this isn’t the place for us,” I told my girlfriend. “Maybe we could find some place that isn’t a public sauna?” “Nonsense,” she said and yawned, stretching out. “I think it’s just perfect.”

dukkha and apta

MARJATTA WAS ONCE THERE, standing in line. This was the unwritten part, with no context really. She was wearing a red dress and talking to someone. It was like a scene from a documentary. The light framed her in the stairwell; her brown hair was unusually shiny. A block of text typed out in Times New Roman was superimposed beside her, so that you could read it against the wall, something like a biography. All of it was known to me, but there had been some kind of glitch, because two words were out of place, the Sanskrit words dukkha (दुःख) and apta (आप्त), which I later learned, upon reviewing old library dictionaries, meant something like “suffering” and “reliable.” Reliable suffering? Was that what she embodied?

Truth be told, the last time I had seen her, she had been standing in the frozen foods section of a supermarket, talking in an almost frightened tone to a lanky man who bore an uncanny resemblance to the actor Dharminder Phillipe and was all dressed in green. She was talking to Dharminder the way women talk to their men: “And don’t forget this … ” and so on. Dharminder just stood there tall and strong and somewhat boyish. Maybe women like men like that, men like Dharminder, men who are quiet as a rule but make the occasional ironic joke and in the end lift some box over there, or bring a package here, men who pay, who assist, and who don’t ask questions. After seeing Marjatta with Dharminder, I forgot all about her. I mean, did I really want to stand beside her in a supermarket, hearing her say, “Please don’t forget”?

The thought did occur to me that I should go see her perform on the summer stage. To be her admirer. Just the idea of admiring someone amused me. Whether I went or not, I’d probably be seeing her somewhere and I would feel good after seeing her because I always felt good after seeing Marjatta. Whatever it was that she offered me, it was at least something else. She loved a cup of masala chai. She was masala chai. That’s all she ordered. Not a latte, never espresso; masala chai. Once I saw her order it at the bar, and thought, but only to myself and happily: you are my dukkha and my apta. In the winters, she drank it warm. In the summers, with ice.

refrigerator magnets

TRAVELING SOUTH, out of town, along the way I met people who were heading the other direction. They were traveling in packs through the rainy mist. “You’re going the wrong way,” they told me. “Aren’t you going to the ceramics exhibition?” “Aren’t you going to the women’s choral concert?” Eventually night fell and I came to a Japanese restaurant, glowing from the inside with warm light. I went in and took my seat. Dulcinea came in and sat at another table.

She was wearing blue. A blue shirt, blue pants. She ignored me as usual, opened her laptop, feigned work. A woman was walking around the restaurant with a basket full of sweets. She came to my table and offered some of these strange pastries to me, but I couldn’t understand her. She was speaking Japanese. Dulcinea watched this scene unfold and then spoke at last. “They are offering you complimentary desserts,” Dulcinea said. “You just have to choose.”

These were the first words she had spoken to me in years. “So you are talking to me now?” I said. “Of course, I am speaking to you,” she said. “I have been watching you all this time. Do you think I came to this restaurant by accident?” I looked her over. I loved her straw hair, her plain fingers, even her childlike dimples were perfect. “Then why have you been ignoring me?” I asked. “Because I wanted to see if you could finally commit to me, in your soul. If you want me, then you have to make up your mind.” I set down my utencils and said, “My mind is made up.”

Upstairs at the Japanese restaurant, we finally made love. I rolled up Dulcinea’s blue shirt and licked her chest. This was a beautiful feeling. But there were refrigerator magnets all over the blanket and sheets with words printed on them. The tiny words got stuck all over our bodies. Soon we were covered in words.

push

PUSH BACK, step back. Moving backwards as if through water. So many things had happened before I wound up downstairs. What even was this place? A cellar? A dungeon? A Venetian vault? All of the walls were blue-tiled mosaics. The air as cold and as holy as a saint’s crypt. Can’t you feel that cool, holy air? There were dark and shady characters there. From this little crowd she emerged with a hungry and incandescent glow in her eyes. “You,” she said. “You!” She pushed me back and I floated back, and with every push back I became only more excited.

I did like her. I liked how she pushed me. I liked the way her tiger face curled up as she did it, with all of its grotesque freckles. I liked her blue shirt, loose and open at the top, the way she flowed out of it all hot white. I liked to be pushed around by her. I had no more sincere desire. “I have been wanting to do this to you forever and ever,” she said. “Then do it,” I said. “Show me your ego.” That was my own magic. The more she pushed me, the more I surrendered up to her, the stronger I became. The more she devoured me, the more I became her. Until there was nothing left but water. There is nothing lovelier than water. Just go ask Jacques Cousteau.

karl pärsimägi’s ‘your art is long’ at the tartu art museum

IT SEEMS TOO OFTEN these days that we default to minimalism. We want subdued tones, empty spaces, love expressed with silence, tears that flow only in private. Less is always more, we are told. But in the art of Karl Pärsimägi (1902-1942), I have found the opposite to be true. This is a colorful world. In Pärsimägi’s world, less is never more. More is just more. His exhibition at the Tartu Art Museum, Sinu Kunst on Pikk! (“Your art is long!”) (23 May – 25 October) is worth a visit. A modernist from Võrumaa with a south Estonian sensibility, Pärsimägi was prolific and well traveled. The exhibition hall can barely contain his output (a 350-page book has just been published devoted to it). Pärsimägi was famous for painting nude models, but his most beautiful paintings are of women doing everyday things. Reading a book in Reader. Stuck in a blissful moment in 1936’s A Portrait of a Woman with Pearls. My own favorite is 1935’s Young Woman in Blue with a Red Tie. It’s the reason I visited the exhibition. I wouldn’t call Pärsimägi or anyone a genius, as I am not an expert art critic, nor do I ever want to be. But I can say that I came away from the exhibition feeling happier and freer than I had in a long time, and inspired to do, as Pärsimägi did, more! Alas, Pärsimägi’s time ran out. He was arrested in Paris and shot by the Nazis in Auschwitz, some say on account of his sexuality. He was remembered as a reclusive, eccentric character, who liked to visit his siblings in Viljandi and Võru. In his self portraits, he reminds me of Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett after his LSD-fueled mental collapse. An interesting character for sure, one who made memorable art. And also, I think, one worth building on. I see his work as just a start. There is more to be done.

An Estonian version of this review appears online in Edasi magazine.

two a.m.

I GOT A TICKET to see a show at the old Main Street Theatre. A former vaudevillian hub that had retained its gilded, art deco elements even though it had been long since upgraded into a modern performing space and hosted all kinds of B-level musicians. These included up-and-coming singer-songwriters who would soon graduate to bigger and better things but miss its cosy intimacy. My seat was on the left. From its plush cushion, I could see everyone come in.

This was how I spotted Mai. To my surprise, her seat was next to mine, and to my double surprise, she was soon in my lap. She was still clutching the program in one hand as she embraced me. It was good to see Mai. She wore a red sweater, the kind J. Geils once sang about, soft and fuzzy, just magical to touch. I soon became lost in its textures, how they rose and fell, rearranging themselves along her abdomen like desert sands. Her chestnut hair was pulled back. Her eyes were blue. “I’ve missed you,” she said. There was a sincerity there. I had sincerely missed her too. My hands soon found their way under her sweater and we sat joined, like frogs. Sometimes you don’t need anything else but to be and be still. Most times, I think.

When I woke up, the shape of my lovely friend was still there but the band leader was shouting down at us from the stage. This was an old soul group, straight out of New Orleans. “If all of y’all is going to sleep, then none of us is going to play!” the band leader said, gesturing with his trumpet. I looked around the theatre and could see that everyone was asleep, not just us. Many blank and groggy faces, old ones, young ones yawning. “Oh, I’m so tired,” Mai whispered.

“If you are going to put on a show at 2 a.m., you shouldn’t expect people not to fall asleep!” I yelled back at the band leader. “You don’t know nothing,” he said. “We always play at night!” “Two a.m. is when most people sleep! It’s the middle of the night. Maybe your band should have its concerts during the day.” “Tell you what, man,” the band leader shouted back. “We are done playing for squares.” The band came off the stage, slowly, sorrowfully. They funeral marched up the aisles past their audience, sullen faces down, sad not to play, horns and all.

frida

FRIDA HAD SLIPPED MY MIND. She was just gone. Poof! Away in a small cloud of atoms, dust, and smoke. I hadn’t thought about her in ages. Her existence had been archived and lost in those vast stacks. Misplaced. We lived very different lives. If you took an old-fashioned globe and set it to spin, she would be over here and me all the way over here. We still spoke the same language, the language of the British, but I wondered if we could understand each other.

But there she was one day, getting into an elevator and there I was, running to squeeze in beside her. She looked the same. Her dark hair was lush, bushy, curly, her pale face wore the same look of frustration. Frustration with things. Frustration with the world. A beige raincoat, rubber boots. For Frida, life was always raining. I rushed into the elevator, but fortunately I had a dog with me. I knew that Frida would never speak to me again, even in an elevator, but I also knew she had a soft spot for dogs. Frida could not resist the temptation of small furry animals.

She gave me an annoyed look and her eyes rolled over me once and then they hit the small dog below me, restrained by a red leash. She stooped down and said, “Ooohsooowoozoo!” Or whatever it is women say when they encounter a dog they like, and she stroked him behind his ears whispering, “Yes, yes?” Then she looked at me. “Well,” she said in a northern accent. “I never thought I’d be seeing you again.” I only nodded. Better to remain silent. The elevator buttons lit up as we moved between floors. “Don’t you remember how you brought her flowers every morning?” said a faint voice. “And how you left them behind her window glass? Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember?” Indeed, I was once capable of such things so long ago.

The elevator came to a halt and its doors opened. I saw a country landscape with thick shiny green grass and a red Victorian house in the distance. A stone path led from the elevator, which was lodged inside a bus stop shelter, and the house, which belonged to Frida’s family. Frida exited the elevator and various forest animals crowded her at once, deer, hares, squirrels. She stopped and smelled an enormous sunflower. “Oh, it’s so good to be back. And my sister’s here!” she said. Then she turned to me and said, “Well? Are you coming or not?”