THAT NIGHT I went out for a stroll in the early evening snow. I walked up by the new church and then turned left and came around by the great department store or shopping center or ostukeskus. Whatever they are calling it these days. Half a dozen underwear models fawned over me from a lit-up billboard and Christmas lights were blinking everywhere. At the crosswalk, there was a red light and I stood and waited in the cold. There was a girl waiting on the other side of the street, in the snow and wind, all dressed in white. She wore a white parka, which was pulled up over her golden hair, and she had on white pants and white snow boots.
For a moment, I was reminded of Dulcinea. Dulcinea, love of loves, muse of muses. She always had such a brisk and wild energy to her. She was like a little chunk of sunlight, warming everything wherever she went. I then wished that Dulcinea was the one standing across from me. I imagined how beautiful she would look with such a white parka and such white boots. When was the last time I saw her? In the summer. She walked by me in the park, and her eyes were the same. They were always so kind, her eyes. Dulcinea’s eyes are impossible to forget.
They’re like stars.
I remembered those words she had typed out to me long ago. “With you, it’s always some kind of soup.” But the girl standing across from me wasn’t her. It was just someone else. Some random pedestrian. The light turned green and we walked by each other. The girl in the white parka wasn’t Dulcinea. She looked nothing like her.
WE WERE TRYING to escape. From what I don’t know. It was through some kind of cave system, or tunnel. I cannot say if it was man-made or not. What I do remember is that I was surrounded by Ingrian girls. Dozens of them, maybe. Hundreds. There were so many of them, and they were all trying to climb out of the passageway and get out into the cold but welcoming December air. I don’t know what their names were, but they seemed to have been of uniform age and appearance. They had red curly hair and their skin was milk white. They wore black shirts and blue jeans. They were beautiful but desperate and very aggressive.
One Ingrian girl climbed up my back and then sort of pushed herself over my head, as if doing some kind of acrobatic trick. and another pushed by my arms. There were just so many of them. I can’t say anything was really inviting about the thing. It was a stampede. Ingria was the historical name of the territory connecting what is now Estonia with the current Finnish border. It covers the swampy area where Peter the Great decided to build his imperial city.
The only hint at civilization in the cave was an old monument that had been built into the walls. Words were chiselled into the granite, maybe about the Estonian War of Independence, or perhaps the Finnish Winter War, but I could not read them. I only gripped the stone as I pulled myself out into the light. A dozen or so Ingrian girls were already standing there looking down at me. I remember their curly red hair, the slope of their faces, those haunting blue eyes.
SOMEHOW, I wound up visiting Kermit Haas at his art studio on the opposite side of the lake. I think he picked me up after a plane connected to a local agricultural company had flown over the coastal plain and sprayed it with pesticides. I happened to be outside when that happened, by a lake-side vacation home, and standing among the golden reeds at sunset when that goop rained down upon me. I remember reaching and touching the back of my neck and scraping off a handful of green slime from the pesticide plane. It was like Agent Orange or something. I began to worry about my health after that and if I had been exposed to something really toxic.
But then Kermit picked me up in his car and we drove off.
It was actually a single-storey, Scandinavian style art studio. I didn’t realize that Kermit had so many people working for him. He gave me a towel to clean myself from the green goop, and his young assistant brought me a mug of coffee. A simple, spare, well-lit place. It was almost as if Ikea had done the interior, but the quality of the desks and bookshelves was many times higher, and I am sure he had designed every cranny of that place. Kermit is this kind of engaging character. He’s about 10 years older than me. He studied at an art school in France. He has long, graying hair, and likes to wear sweaters and scarves, when the weather requires it. Kermit has this vague sort of Europeanness about him. He’s not really Estonian or French. He is sort of like one of those in-flight magazines on Finnair or Lufthansa. It feels European, it looks European, and it even smells European, but you can’t really say why it’s so European.
The coffee was good and strong, but a little too hot, and I was clumsy after the plane pesticide incident. I spilled some coffee on a nearby table, and a little ran off onto the floor, where it pooled. Urmas’s assistant immediately went to fetch a towel to clean it up, and I began to apologize. But then I noticed that the wet spot was only growing, and soon a clear water began to roll into the studio. It was the water from the lake! It was rising! The water was rolling in, and it was warm and ankle deep. This had not been from the coffee. “We need to get out of here,” said Kermit. “And quick!” We ran to his car. He stuffed a dozen precious canvases into the trunk. My computer bag was already soaked, and I was sure the electronics were ruined. “Good thing all of my work is on Google Docs,” I said. “I am sure your things will be fine,” Kermit responded. I tossed my guitar in the back too. It was in an odd, turtle-shaped case I had never seen before. Then we all jumped into the car and sped away, to escape the flood.
I don’t know what happened to that assistant though. She was too willing to resolve all of our problems. Maybe she stayed behind? Maybe she was tasked with cleaning up after the flood?
THE SCHOOL was constructed in the Colonial Revival style sometime at the tail-end of the 1930s, financed by a local tycoon. It featured four large white columns, and incorporated elements of Federal and Georgian architecture. At its founding, it served as a public school for local students in Sowassetville and adjacent communities, from kindergarten through 12th grade, but eventually, as the population grew, it was developed into a middle school in the 1960s. I hadn’t been there in years, but when I was invited back, along with other members of the ninth grade class of 1995, I decided to return, to see if it could inspire any memories.
To my surprise, the interior of the school had been completely redone, and a large stone-surfaced park had been installed, along with a bronze memorial to the Estonian War of Independence (1918-1920). A solemn soldier stood at its precipice, holding a sword up into the air. His head was decorated with a wreath. In the front of the school, there was a new staircase leading to a second level. From this level, one could take a glass-enclosed corridor into a new extension of the school. It was like something from an aquarium. “I don’t remember any of this,” I told an old classmate, who was clutching unreturned library books, such as The Great Gatsby. “None of this was here when we were. It’s like the entire school has been changed.”
I went down a back staircase into a cafeteria. But only more confusion ensued. It was like a big billowing cloud of confusion. I was reminded of a New Order song by the same name. Because Raivo, my faithful translator, was seated at one of the booths in the cafeteria. He was there in a button-down shirt in one of the booths, digging through a Caesar salad. Raivo said that we had to get a translated version of one my short stories to the editors as soon as possible. I still was baffled to see him there. And then when I turned my head, I noticed that the lovely Atlacamani, the mysterious Azteca goddess of storms, was also seated in the cafeteria. She was wearing a red shirt and blue pants and was seated with musicians from the Viljandi Cultural Academy.
They were all eating fries.
El Scorcho, a Chilean folk singer with a slight mustache who lives and thrives in V Town, arrived with a tray full of food and drink. His guitar was slung across his back. He was wearing one of those gray ponchos they wear down in the Andes. He said, “You look so funny. You should see your face.” I said, “What’s going on? What are you all doing here?” El Scorcho just smiled. “A lot has changed since you went to junior high school,” he said. “Todo es diferente.”
THE FIRST TIME I came to, I was in China. I am not sure where I was, but it might have been in a public park. It might have been in Beijing. I don’t remember. I barely knew who I was, but I was aware that I was an older Chinese man. Other people were working around me. They were sweeping something up, or raking. Moving things around. I could only see blurry shadows moving around. I could smell the smells of China. Those damp, steamed, pungent smells. I was sitting there, meditating, but not really meditating. Then I was out of there. Out of China?
But where had I been anyway?
The second time I came to, I was in a car. I was in a northern city, traveling in an industrial part of the town. I could see the transmission towers glistening like giant metal Christmas trees, and beneath them were real Christmas trees. Snow was piled up on both sides of the road, and the car zoomed forward. There were two women in the car. One of them was older and she had long dark hair. She sat in the passenger’s seat in the front, and the younger woman, who also had long dark hair was at the wheel. They were listening to Yoko Ono sing “Kiss Kiss Kiss” off the 1980 album Double Fantasy. We drove on, to where I don’t remember.
The third time I came to, the car pulled up alongside Sigrún’s house on the outskirts of town. It was summer again and warm. Sigrún was there in the kitchen. She offered me some water and some berries and after that, we went to bed. She really did look just like Mother Denmark and I didn’t take off my shirt. My shirt was soaked by the end of that, and Sigrún’s legs were up in the air. It felt good to kiss Sigrún. Her skin was covered in freckles and her eyes were blue.
MY APARTMENT was at the crest of a hill overlooking the sea. It was part of a house that stood in a hollow between two knolls. You had to walk down a set of hillside stairs to get to the door. It was very dark inside. I suppose it might have looked like something from a JRR Tolkien book, if one was so imaginative. Up the hill apiece lived an older Estonian man named Elvin. He had white, curly hair and was heavy set, but this did not diminish his work ethic. He spent most of his days cutting wood with a saw. He almost exclusively wore work overalls. My girlfriend had been having an affair with him for sometime. I didn’t understand her thing for grandfatherly men, but maybe it had something to do with the rugged sound of that chainsaw.
But things were changing in the village. One day, a real estate agent came to show the neighboring apartment. Two dark-skinned men were with her. They were both Black British, I guess is the term. When I asked them why they had decided to leave the city and move to such an out-of-the-way seaside village, they both responded, in unison, “We broke up with our boyfriends.” So it was a gay couple who had decided to run away together. I should have known. Their outfits were a bit too conspicuously neat. Part of me wanted to warn them that maybe they might have a hard time in the village. It wasn’t conservative per se, in the way that the American Bible Belt was conservative, but it was the kind of place where identity politics were backburnered in favor of scrappy, old-fashioned hard labor. They were on their own.
I felt sad actually, and the old man Elvin was still up on the hilltop sawing wood. I hadn’t seen my girlfriend in ages. I could barely remember what she looked like, and began to doubt in her existence. I came down the hill into town. It used to be a rundown, stagnant place, but new shops and cafes were opening up and it had been revitalized. At the edge of the sea, one could see the enormous scaffolding that surrounded the new ships being built. Titanic-sized vessels were assembled here. One recognized that special ‘V’ shape. I stood at the bottom of the scaffolding and wished that I too, like those great ships, would one day be released to the sea.
THE NEXT DAY, I went out to stretch my legs. I took a long walk down Hawthorne Avenue. It was a fine autumn day, the leaves hung suspended in golds and reds on the forest trees. This was a newer part of the community, in an old New England town. You can find thousands of such streets from the East End of Long Island up to the New Brunswick border. There were typical suburban houses here, all of them probably constructed in the 1970s or 1980s. Some were imitation saltboxes, others were ranches. There were some tall pines in between them and old wood fences. But, as I walked along the street, I began to notice a sinking sensation. The street, it turned out, was made of quicksand and I was rapidly sinking. I quickly began to dig my way out. I noticed a bulldog watching me from between two of the houses. The dog rushed down the hill to me barking, but then also began to disappear into the quicksand.
I managed to pull myself free from the suburban quicksand and make my way out to a main thoroughfare that was on higher ground. The dog was still there, sniffing around, searching for a way out. I walked for a long while, until I was back in Malaysia, or Bali, or India. Some warm and wonderfully rundown place like that. It was here that I came to our apartment, which was on a street across from a Hindu temple. I went inside and began to prepare myself some food, some pasta with chickpeas, but the stove top broke and then the oven broke too. Then my wife came in and began to admonish me. A lamp was also in need of repair, as well as a bed that had been constructed from plastic. Later, we went into an underground cavern, where an alternative school was gathered for a meeting. A group of folk musicians came in and began to play, with one of whom I had been carrying on a secret tryst for some time. The sight of her there, coinciding with the appearance of my children and a disappointed wife, confused me.
I ran up the steps and was gone.
A car came by and an old Indian man asked me if I needed a ride. I told him I did, and he took me to his home. In his back yard stood a row of green canisters that he used for preparing various chemicals. He told me he was in the green chemicals business and that his name was Mr. Singh. He even gave me a business card. Mr. Singh asked me if he could take me anywhere else, and I said, yes, the main market. We drove along in Mr. Singh’s vehicle until we reached the place, where spices and colorful dresses were on sale. Celeste was there with her younger sister Anita. They were shopping for gold saris and khussa shoes. Celeste was annoyed that I happened to run into her. “No woman will ever take you seriously, you know,” Celeste said. The seller was a young Indian woman with a colorful sari. She watched my blue mood turn black.
I turned to Celeste and said, “How could a woman I have loved with all of my heart and so consistently, for so many years, treat me in such a way?” It was true. I had loved her forever. Maybe I still did. Then I began to cry. I sobbed and walked down the street. The Indian seller just shook her head at her bold-tongued Estonian clients and then decided to chase after me. Later, the seller said that there was something about me that had really worried her. The seller’s name was Prisha. We drank chai and ate samosas and I tried to forget everything.
THIS IS A TROPICAL STORY that takes place in a hotel in the tropics. But not really, because even though it was on the waterfront, it was the rainy season. Rain thrashed against the glass, and humidity made the outside world a cloud. We were all gathered there, along with our children. Brynhild’s children were also there, as was their father, who was a jazz trumpet player, but she wasn’t. I realized that she would arrive however at any moment, and arrive she did, while I was at the hotel restaurant getting a coffee. I walked back into the room and saw her, but only from behind. The jazz trumpeter was seated beside her. He was stroking her arm and talking to her gently. It was odd because they had been divorced for ages. She told me that he broke her heart. The old boy was in bright spirits. Said he was heading to San Francisco soon for a show. But Brynhild, she just sat there, staring through the humidity, in her tight shirt, with her red curly hair fastened in a clip. Brynhild sat there and never turned to face me.
After that, I went back to the hotel restaurant. There were two women having sandwiches at a table. They were older than me, maybe 10 or 15 years older, and were modeling the very latest in 1980s fashion. No one, it seems, had told them that it was the Twenties. One of these 1980s models was lighter, with golden hair. The other was a brunette. The lighter-haired one, who looked a little bit too much like Kylie Minogue in the ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ years, lifted her Benetton t-shirt and implored me to link her pink breasts, which I did with great haste. It seemed odd to me that I was licking a woman’s breasts in a hotel in the tropics while she conversed with a girlfriend over a club sandwich. That she looked like a young Kylie was, I guess, some kind of perverse bonus. After that, she asked me to come back to her suite.
A few days later, I went to a sweet shop in town. It had stopped raining and a rainbow was breaking over the harbor, I stopped in, and a young woman greeted me. She was dressed in the white uniform of a confectioner. The woman had red hair and looked nothing like the girl in the Benetton shirt at the hotel. But she claimed that she was the same woman. “Don’t you recognize me?” she said, taking my hand. “We’re in love.” We were? How could this be. It couldn’t be the same woman. Or could it? Maybe she was a shapeshifter. Kylie was also known for changing her style. It was rather odd that I had sucked on her breasts in a hotel restaurant. It was rather odd that she was still wearing Benetton. But stranger things had happened.
MORNING ON the Viking Line, Helsinki bound, the special Circle K discount line. It is good to be away from smalltown Estonia and all of the same smalltown faces, the faces that know you, or think they know you, the faces you think you know but do not know. You know what I mean.
Last night was spent in the company of Finnish tourists. They took over the sauna. Some of them looked like my children’s uncles, Priit and Aap. What is this parallel universe of Estonian lookalikes called Finland? What is this strange “speaking in tongues” language? In Estonia, sauna steam is called leili, but in Finland, it’s löyly. Try saying that word three times fast.
The Finns are so white and pale. Milk white. Maito white. I am always just a little pink. At least a little. The Finns need to supplement with iron and B vitamins. They are aloof, but pleasantly aloof. The men do not flatter the women. They are not Italian men, who blow kisses from passing scooters. The Finns are not lovers. This explains a lot. This may explain my entire life.
My soul is kind of foggy, udune, as the Estonians say, but my libido is strangely intact. It waxes and wanes with the moon. It is currently at full, full moon peak. It’s nice to sit in Stockmann though, just like this now. It’s nice to be anonymous. I like watching Finnish people. I like watching Finnish women. I wonder, which kinds of women do I like? I don’t like the women who wear a lot of cosmetics and have intricate manicures. They probably expect lots of money, and round-the-clock maintenance. This is my prejudice. That’s just how I see them.
I do like the women who seem a little shy, or to exist in their own worlds. There was a nice Finnish woman selling baked goods in Kamppi. She was wearing an apron and dressed in white, and was pleasant and round. And she had that beautiful white-blonde hair. There is something about hair like that. I also like the women who look a little strange, or even dangerous. I like the women who make unusual fashion statements, or look like they are members of a) some religious sect; b) obsessed with a musical group; c) forming a revolutionary cell. These women tend to be younger. When you are young, you can be bold.
At least they look interesting.
But then I have intrusive toxic thoughts. So intrusive and toxic as I sip my juice at Joe and the Juice. I don’t have enough money, I am going to be 44 soon. I have three children and have been classed out of the reproductive cycle. But I have actually written almost three books in the past few years. Doesn’t creativity count for anything? Or is it all about the money? These little thoughts are like like Stockmann shoppers. They elbow their way in, but they didn’t originate with me. Who put these intrusive thoughts in my head? Was it you? Or you?
Better to think of nice Finnish women selling baked goods. Something else. Something nice and cozy, or mõnus and hubane, as the Estonians say. The bookstore here is amazing, Akademiska. Bookshops will never be replaced by online. No way. There is just no way to replicate this sensation of drifting along, being drawn in by some book or its cover art, or title, or, “Hey, that’s Murakami!” I try to write like Murakami. I try to do a chapter a day. To punch in and punch out. I am not just satisfied with some ideas and a few paragraphs. But I am a father. I am running and I don’t always have the juice to do it.
It’s funny, I thought that if I came to Helsinki, I would be inspired. But I already know Helsinki intimately. I know what this city feels like. It’s in my bones. Turning 44 is somehow bothering me. It feels like the point of no return. Forty sounded kind of youthful. And these last four years just blew by. Gone. Around the corner from here is a bakery. I even once wrote a story about it, because one morning I was here, and I thought I saw Dulcinea working at the bakery. Yes, Dulcinea. I suppose she does look like a Finnish girl. I don’t have many love stories you know. Just a few. Sometimes, I would like to excise them. Sometimes, like with you, I buried them, and I can’t remember where I put them. Oh, I have tried to alter history. I have gone to psychologists, psychiatrists, healers, witches, tarot card readers, Hindu shrines, Orthodox retreats. Most people just tell me, as common knowledge, to leave the past in the past.
Things do fade but other things, and other people, they don’t always go fully away. Not 100%. They are just part of the scenery, the furniture. They are a room in the house of you.
I do want to get a new book before I go though. Some crime novel by a Harlem writer. I like crime fiction, it helps me with everything else, with structure, with pacing, with dialogue. I went to go buy it, but then the bookstore was closed. A milky white security guard with a beard said it was closed, kinni. The book was Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Hines.
After that, I went back to Stockmann and got another exorbitantly priced sandwich. Which is basically what an Estonian sandwich now costs. I watched the bourgeois Finnish couples coming and going, smelling of perfumes and colognes. Why was I not able to play that role in life? Who am I even writing to? And how come, no matter how much I write, nobody answers me? I feel like I am writing to a dead person. Maybe I am writing to Vahur Afanasjev. I remember that day, when I saw the headline about his death. Now I have become accustomed to disappearing acts, including by the living. Because when a friend leaves your life, alive or dead, it feels the same way, like a little death of sorts. I can’t say I am surprised by it anymore.
I WAS OUTSIDE when the helicopter came down. It was a military transport. I think it was from our side. The pilot tried to fly higher before it arched into a tailspin, eventually crashing nose first into some surrounding fields. There were sirens after that, and ambulances and stretchers, but there were no survivors. I was in the garden in front of the manor house when that happened. It was warm summer day. There was a gentle breeze and a bright sun was out.
The smell of the flowers was fragrant. It mingled with the smoke from the crash. I went inside.
There were many rooms in the manor house. In one of them, Celeste was sprawled out in a bed full of messy sheets. There was light on her face through the windows. She seemed unhappy, or at least restless. I took my place beside her. She said nothing at first, but there was a kind of hum or vibration that was familiar to me. I thought we were alone. She looked at me, and said, “I know you love me and have always loved me.” Her castle defenses were at last abandoned. Her walls came down and Celeste stared at me. “You are still here,” she said. “I don’t know why you are still here with me, waiting for me, after all this. Why are you here?”
I remembered that day in the garden, when the summer wind blew her dress above her waist. That had been years ago. Another lifetime. I had reached up and pulled the dress down, setting it back into place. Celeste looked at me again. We kissed. We had never kissed like this before. It was a passionate kiss, and I melted into her as deeply as was possible to disappear into another person. “But I am not sure,” she said, sitting up in bed. “I am not sure about so many things.” “You don’t have to be sure,” I told Celeste. “But I will still be here, waiting for you.”
It had been a weird afternoon. A helicopter crash. A kiss with Celeste. Her thick tangles of hair ran everywhere, over the pillows and blankets. I must have really been dreaming. The maid came into the room in the middle of this and saw us. She asked if we wanted her to make up the bed. I said no, that it could all wait. Then the maid asked if she could have a kiss from me. There were other women standing behind her. Lots of women. They were standing in the corners, and sitting in the bunk beds, glaring down at me madly like a dozen Cheshire cats.
“Just one time! Please, kiss me! Please!”
I only laughed in response and snuggled closer to Celeste. “You all must be joking,” I said.
north! 