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 dress 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.”
north! 