junibacken pillow

SHE INVITED ME over, she said she wanted to do something that would embarrass and humiliate her boyfriend. She had dark hair and looked a little bit like Margarita Simonyan though thankfully smelled better. We cuddled in a rather standard contemporary bedroom on beige sheets, the whole place buzzing with air conditioning, but I felt the natural desire to flee. I hid out in a neighboring building where there was a hair salon. Later, I took a boat and arrived at Junibacken in Stockholm, with a whole troupe of travellers. They took photographs.

Here I found a curious pillow, one that if you held onto it would lift you up in the air, as if you were flying. I grabbed hold of the Junibacken pillow and flew up into the air, floating beside the clocktower’s clock. While I was up there, I waved down at the other travellers, and then I saw Igrayne standing in the corner. She asked me to let go of my flying pillow and to come down and dance with her. I gladly danced with Igrayne. Later we made love passionately, but Igrayne stiffened and had unhealed father wounds and stared away into the remote distance.

I held her from behind but it was just no use.

the non-existent train to geneva

THE NON-EXISTENT TRAIN to Geneva. At least, I didn’t know there was a connection. There was, but it was obscure, complicated. It was one of those Google Maps Directives that tells you to get off at one stop and walk four hundred meters, then turn left, et cetera. Somehow doing this, I would be able to arrive at the conference in Geneva in two hours and thirty minutes.

If every step was accomplished smoothly.

But getting to the train station proved to be harder than I thought. I decided to go on foot and stopped by the Green House Café on the corner of Koidu and Tartu Streets. It had snowed, perhaps the first snow of the season, and I walked in with my bags and asked Põder, or “Moose,” the cheerful barista, if he would make me an espresso, to be consumed at the bar, but instead he made me a flat white, which was like drinking snow. Sven, the owner and operator of the establishment, was outside meantime, digging away. Flat white in hand, I headed up Tartu Street toward the town center, hoping to make the train to Geneva. There was still time.

There I could hear, on Turu, or Market Street, the sounds of an electric guitar. Guillermo was inside a small club there, fileting some riffs on his axe. A small crowd had gathered around him, and I saw my bass was on stage. “Do you know how to play any Rage Against the Machine?” Guillermo asked. His black hair was down his back. I told him of course I knew how to play their songs, that I had taught myself “Freedom” at age 15. This was one of the more intricate riffs I had learned how to play at a tender age. The gig turned out fine. But then I was stuck having to lug my bass guitar and amplifier to the town train station in a snow storm.

Along the route, where I stepped past locals out shovelling more snow, and it was already dark out, and the car lights illuminated the big wet flakes as they fell down, I decided on a solution. I would stop by Brynhild’s house on the main street, which was Tallinn Street, and leave my musical equipment there. Through the window I could see her sitting on a couch in her pajamas. Her dark hair was wet and she was toying with it. I could hear a second voice coming from inside the living room. This person was not visible. They spoke in soft but excited tones.

Another man! I thought. I went and hid down the street in an alley. Then I waited until the visitor exited, only to learn that it was an older woman, perhaps an old friend or acquaintance.

She just happened to have a very deep voice.

“What are you doing out here in the snow, you fool?” Brynhild asked. “Come in, you can leave your pill, your instrument in the back.” I stepped down the hallway, and left the bass guitar and amplifier in a dark back room that was serving as storage of some kind. The idea crossed my mind back there that this was my room and that these were all my things. I had a room at Brynhild’s house, I wasn’t always aware that it was there. After I deposited my things in the back room, I joined her in the living room. It was spare and modern. She sat in her chair, still wet, still in her pajamas. She had pulled them over her enormous freckled breasts. Then I felt aroused. There was just something about arrogant women with wet hair and warm breasts.

I got closer to her. Brynhild looked up. “You’re going to miss your train to Geneva,” she said.

“The thing is,” I said. “I think I already did.”

side eye

I DO REMEMBER something of it. We were at the music festival, and my wife was sharing a blanket by the castle ruins with a strange woman. As I got closer, I could see it was Dulcinea. Upon watching me approach, her muscles stiffened, and she gave me what is known as the side eye. Several side eyes. My wife got up and left at this point, stretched in the sun, and said, “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone.”

It took Dulcinea a great amount of self-control to slowly turn her head in my direction and speak to me. She looked older, and her voice was different. She was wearing red nail varnish, which seemed out of place. She had been a free-spirited hippie girl. When did she go all corporate woman on me? Alas, that’s what happens to people. They change over time. She looked tired and worn out though. She did speak. We were able to have some kind of conversation. I apologized once again for having liked her so much. The love letters, the entirety of the predicament. The whole thing had been too much for any normal lady to bear. What young woman at the start of her young life needed the love an older, washed up man?

That was the first day of the folk festival. On the second day, I was in Italy, where I had booked an Airbnb. My daughter came along. I remember when we walked into that hilltop house in the hills around Bari. “From here,” the owner said, “you can get direct access to the highway and drive to any place in Italy.” The apartment was strange. There was a bedroom with a loft, but these looked like they belonged more to a doll house. I was afraid that if I crawled up into that loft the whole Barbie Dream House looking thing would collapse. There was also an Estonian journalist there who wanted to interview me at a nearby café. Her invitations were relentless.

I left my daughter alone in the Dream House and did the interview, but she wanted to make Instagram videos too teasing the interview. All of that time my phone was ringing with some urgency as my daughter asked where I was. She wanted to go back to the folk festival. I wondered how my wife and Dulcinea were getting along. I felt guilty, as if I had only brought limitless dark clouds into their otherwise sunny existences. Back in Italy, the journalist still wouldn’t let me go. Wouldn’t I make her pasta too? We were supposed to drink wine! At last, I got fed up with the whole thing and ran back to the hilltop house. My daughter was already waiting by the car, fuming. “Where were you?!” she stomped. It was misty and raining. “Come on, kid,” I said, jogging over to the driver’s side door. “Let’s just get the hell out of this place.”

truth talkers

IT WAS A ROOFTOP PARTY, and I was explaining my most recent love story. Two women were listening, but one of them wasn’t buying. This girl was unfamiliar to me, but she was an Estonian, she had shoulder-length brown hair, sharp features, and glasses, and the gist of her prognosis was that I was continuing to swim in the warm waters of self-delusion. “You do this over and over again,” she said. “You fall for some girl, but nothing comes of it. She’s too young for you anyway,” the woman said. “Our people are pragmatic! Pragmatic!” Quite self assured, she stood up and looked down on me, with her hands of her haughty hips. I wondered a) why I continued to attract such “truth talkers” and b) why I was attracted to such arrogant women. With some additional psychological hocus pocus, I would soon be assembling her furniture.

Instead I left the party and bought a plane ticket to nowhere. I didn’t even know the name of the city. It was somewhere in the American Midwest, and the confluence of several great and legendary rivers. Perhaps the Mississippi was one of them. Maybe this was that bend where the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio all splashed into each other, north of Memphis, south of Saint Louis. Someplace like that. When the plane came into land, I noticed the airport was unusual. There were trees on both sides of the landing strip, for example. The whole area had a Deep South jungle feel to it, with moss in the trees, and vultures on the tree branches.

This was some kind of private airport serving the three rivers confluence area. We were taken aboard a train, where the conductor pointed out the various renovation facilities for old planes. “No plane ever winds up on the scrap heap,” the conductor said. “Every fuselage is saved and refurbished for future use.” I could see several planes being upgraded by men in white suits who looked like Dahl’s Oompa Loompas. They were lifting, hammering, and drilling.

At last we reached the main part of the airport. Most of the people there were headed toward some of the other cities, but I had to get to my still unnamed third city destination. There were several metro trains heading this way and that. The name of the public transport company was “Ringreis,” which seemed odd, as if some Estonians had settled this part of the Midwest and I had just never heard a word about it. To get to my destination, I needed to take the 5 Train. I stood in line with the other travelers, who were talking about Harris and Trump, and soon enough the 5 Train arrived and I got on. To get to my city though, I needed to take a ferry too. At the port, I boarded the ferry, and could see another city in the distance. It looked quite wealthy and developed with large office buildings topped off with gold glinting domes.

“That’s Waynesboro,” I heard someone say from behind me. “Obama won that city back in ’08.”

So Obama had some soft support out here in the larger river cities of the Midwest. Where was I going? I still had no idea. The river water was choppy, there were big waves, and the river water sprayed my face. “Look over there,” another person said. “That’s Chuck Berry’s birthplace!” So, it was, but it wasn’t mine. To think I had come all the way over here to the middle of nowhere to get away from some Estonian girl on a rooftop. A girl with long hair, glasses, and big opinions about everything that was wrong with me. I should have just kept my mouth shut and nodded along with whatever she said. It would have been easier that way.

maybe later

IT WAS AUTUMN, the sky was gray, the trees were nearly stripped of their leaves. We were driving through the country though it was unclear what country. There was a field and then we crossed the railroad tracks. The crossing gates were up and, truth be told, it didn’t look like there was a lot of freight traffic on that route. After the tracks, we entered a forest and there were houses on both sides, with long driveways leading up to them. Old wooden houses. The driver turned to me — I was in the passenger side seat — and said, “You know, your great grandmother Genevieve lives up that road over there, do you want to go and meet her now?”

“My great grandmother?” I asked. “Lives?”

“Yes, your great grandmother lives in that house there. I’m sure she’d be happy to see you.”

But my great grandmother Genevieve was dead. She had been dead for 40 years. Or had she? Maybe she had just moved into this forest here, a little way’s away from the railroad tracks. Maybe she had been hiding out all this time, minding her own business, waiting for visitors. I imagined her sitting at the window there, waiting. What would I even say to her? The last time I saw her, I was only three years old. She was born in the 1890s. If she was still alive, she would be the oldest person in the world. Pushing 130. Something for the record books, for sure.

“Should I turn back?” the driver asked. He was maybe 10 years older than me, had lighter hair, working class manners and and a working class accent. Being a driver seemed to be his job.

I thought it over. I wanted to see her, but the thought of having tea with a 130-year-old Irish lady on a dreary day in some country house, well, it just didn’t sit right with me at all.

“Maybe later,” I told the driver. “We can go and see my great grandma later. Some other day.”

second looks

THIS IS NOT A STORY, and it has no beginning and it has no end. All I know, or remember rather, is that I was standing outside an old wooden house in the middle of town, next to an unfamiliar door. When I opened it, I could see my table and all of my furniture just sitting there, collecting dust. It was my apartment, but everything had been rearranged. The windows were not where they should have been. Unmistakably though it was my place. Even my guitar was sitting there in the corner. My books were on the shelves. I walked through one part of the apartment and came out the other end. The sink was different, it looked like one of those metallic sinks from the 1960s, the kinds that were bolted to the wall. The biggest difference was that the apartment had two doors. I exited the other door into a courtyard. I waited there.

There was a bus stop there with a faded sign. I couldn’t read the name of the village bus stop, but the other houses didn’t look much different from mine, being old, wooden, and in various stages of decay. An old bus pulled up and Esmeralda was seated in the back, with her clever eyes and brown hair pulled back. She was talking to someone else, and I knew that she was aware of me, that I was waiting there for her. But she wouldn’t even cast a look in my direction. She was wearing that red sweater of hers. I did love her. Whatever earthshattering mistake that was. The bus rolled on, but I didn’t get on. Esmeralda wasn’t going to give me the time of day, so I wasn’t about to go chasing after the young lady. I had been there, done all of that.

After that, I went for a walk around town. I stopped at the train station and thought I could catch a train to Tartu, only to find out the train had been booked by a school to take them farther out on the north coast, and so was heading in the opposite direction. I got off the train in the heights around the city. Here, too, there were surprises. Things had developed in an interesting way, there were old saltbox New England-style homes with shake facades, and lush green ivy crawling around the windows and chimneys. It was a gray, overcast kind of day, but the yellow flowers in the English gardens stood out. Where was I? It looked like Nantucket.

When I eventually got home, my daughter came to the door and told me there had been an accident in the kitchen. When I went in, I noticed that Gilberto, one of the neighborhood’s local Portuguese settlers, had tried to make some dish but the oven had blown up and there was burned food all over the floor. This was confusing for me because Gilberto didn’t live with us, but rather had rented a place nearby. “Don’t worry, I’ll clean it all up,” Gilberto said. He was dressed in his pajamas. He hadn’t slept very well. Understandably, I found it hard to explain to my daughter why stray middle-aged Portuguese men like Gilberto were using our kitchen.

I guess when you’re lost, you take pity on the other lost ones, the ones who are as lost as you.

päikesekiir

ONCE IN A WHILE you need to write some romantic fluff. I once saw a girl here, whom I would remember as päikesekiir. Which means “ray of sunlight,” but sounds better in Estonian.

She was as pale and yellow as straw, and was trying to do yoga, of course.

Later she came over and spoke to me, because she knew who I was, and afterward my daughter said, “Who was that girl you were talking to?” And I said, “Girl?! That was a woman!”

After that I saw her somewhere else staring off into the distance. She was both light as air but thick with a heavy, desperate feeling. I wanted to run after her, but she was gone in a blink.

Which goes to show you that you can’t chase after sunlight.

swedbank airlines

WE HAD TO GO to a conference in Austria, or Switzerland? Some place with mountains in the heart of Europe, where people go skiing, with Alpine villages. We flew Swedbank Airlines, which became the new national carrier after the latest venture to create an Estonian airline went bankrupt and belly up. It had the symbol of Swedbank painted on the fuselage and all elements of its interior were true to Swedbank’s branding. We had a layover in Zurich, I think. That’s where things started to go awry.

For one, my eldest daughter got lost, and when I found her, she was eating pizza with some family friends at a local ski chalet. By the time we got back to the airport, my family was standing at the gate and they were calling our names. There was also a conference at this airport, which made it particularly overcrowded. The attendees were packed into an open air theatre, where the seats were constructed of servers. Someone told me that all of the data in Europe was being filtered through this one data center. From there, one could watch the planes approach and depart through the valley. It was snowing a lot too. It looked dangerous.

At last the sky cleared, and we boarded our plane to our final destination, arriving without incident. The hotel room was clean, in fact there was no furniture in it except for a bed. A familiar cat was in the room. With orange and white spots. She ran to the window and leaped up onto the window sill, and a gray cat came to the other side of the window and they began to communicate in their Austrian cat language. My wife also went to the window and leaned over, and that’s when desire overcame me and you know what happened next. “I hate you,” she kept saying. “You could never satisfy me. You’re not a real man.” But her words fell on deaf ears. The next destination was the big bed, the only furniture there. After she got to the bed, she shut up. The cats were still at the window and those wet snowflakes kept fluttering down.

opposite day

I WAS SENT TO SCHOOL in girl’s clothes. My mother told me it was “Opposite Day.” Fortunately, this only involved having my hair tied up in a bun and wearing a pink shirt and jeans. None of this outfit fit me well. The shirt was too constricting, the jeans — stone washed — were ridiculous, as were those white sneakers. The bun was the first to go. It felt so good to let my hair down, and by that time, my body had torn the pink top, so that my hairy chest was revealed in all of its grotesque, Planet of the Apes glory. “Opposite Day” was a great failure.

The school had grown in the decades since I had left it. I was, after all, the sixth grade class of 1992. Nineteen Ninety-two. The summer of the Dream Team at Barcelona. The presidential election that brought us “Slick Willie” Bill Clinton, the Comeback Kid, blazing his saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show. There were new wings of the school, and to get from one part of the school to the other, a gondola lift system had been installed. I rode the gondola lift from the farthest wing of the school. I rode past the cafeteria and the old Theatre Arts classrooms.

Things had changed in every way. Dramatically. All of the stone walls had been rebuilt with rough wood planks. There were trees — birch saplings — growing in the entrance. The library too had trees growing in it. The stone floors had been replaced with gravel and grass. There were also red chickens clucking around the foyer, and some students were harvesting giant-sized pumpkins, and putting them in carts. It was a New England scene. Everyone in vests.

But the layout of the school remained the same. Mrs. Coldflesh’s Nurse’s Office was still there, as was Mrs. Laketree’s office. She was the assistant principal. And on the right, facing the front of the school, I could see Principal Clocks’ grandiose office. This too had been reconstructed of wood, and a smaller, older woman came out to greet me. She was wearing a gray jacket and had on a black shirt. I was still wearing my Opposite Day outfit. The pink top was in tatters, my hair hung down. What a dumb idea, to dress me like a girl. Wasn’t it obvious that I was a man?

“What are you doing here?” asked the new principal. She had shortly cut gray hair and glasses.

“I used to go to school here,” I told her. “Back when Bill Clocks was running the place. Surely you’ve heard of him. I think Bill Clocks was the most well-known principal this school has ever had. We all loved him. Truth be told, I spent a lot of time in his office. We got in lots of trouble.”

“Clocks?” the principal looked at me and folded her hands. “I’ve never heard of a Bill Clocks. That must have been a long time ago indeed.”

wild rabbits

I WAS MARRIED AGAIN, this time to Gunna. Funny that I couldn’t remember the courtship, or even the ceremony. How had it even happened? There it was, the certificate, lying at the top of a wastepaper basket. I took it out and examined it. It seemed to be legitimate. Gunna was in the other room packing for our big trip. She had taken some time off from work for our long-haul to the Americas. She was a kind woman and all, a bit sarcastic, and very cute, with that haircut of hers, and she could fill up a dress, but I didn’t feel well about the whole thing. Marriage? I hoped she hadn’t changed her name. How many more women would carry this heavy name around with them by the time the story was over? It even translated as “Big Rock.”

On the certificate, I could see that she had kept her original name. That provided a sparse moment of relief. Just a moment. There was a date of marriage there though. From that date, all things would be calculated. A marriage was like a loaf of bread. At some point, it would go stale. There were tricks to keep it fresh, maybe moisten the loaf and bake it in the oven for a while, or just deep freeze it and consume it later on? Gunna kept packing. Packing, packing, packing. She had a fine beige suitcase. I boiled up the last small yellow potatoes before we left.

I didn’t want them to go bad.

“We’re going to be late to the airport,” she said. “Why are you wasting time with those?”

“We can eat them on the way. Tell you what, why don’t you fly ahead? I’ll take the next plane.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, grinning and gently slapping at my hand. “We’re married now.”

AFTER WE ARRIVED IN PARADISE, we took a long drive down a beach road. There was some kind of tourist workshop happening in an old barn. Maybe it had been a fisherman’s shack. It wasn’t very warm that day. Gunna was wearing a black pants, a long-sleeved shirt. Where were we anyway? It was only September. Maybe we had turned left somewhere and wound up in Prince Edward Island. Newfoundland? One of the Maritimes. To be honest, it looked a lot like Long Island back home. But why would anyone go there on vacation? We were gathered outside the fisherman’s hut as a local guide gave us a demonstration of the old folk ways.

I heard some commotion coming from the roadside. We walked over and in the sand dunes, we could see hundreds of wild rabbits scurrying in the sand. They were black or dark-furred rabbits. Just when you thought you had seen every rabbit, you noticed about 20 more of them hopping in from some other location. Why were they all running toward the sea? Did rabbits drown themselves like whales beached themselves? Some of the other tourists were delighted. “We’ll eat good tonight,” one man said. Gunna took out her camera. It was one of those disposable cameras, flat and long, like the kinds we had back in the 1980s. She stood there taking pictures of the beach rabbits. This would be a memorable moment of our honeymoon.

I stood there too, watching her take photos. In the distance, I could hear the sound of the sea.