silver crown

WHERE DID SHE GO? I haven’t seen her in ages. And the last time I saw her, it was through the branches of a Christmas tree. It must have been recently then, but I still can’t remember. I decided though that I wouldn’t chase after her. I am tired of chasing after other people. Like Mr. Ray Davies sang back in 1965, “I’m so tired, tired of waiting, tired of waiting for you.”

But I am still waiting for her and looking for her. Three or five times a day I think I see her going into Viru or coming out of Uku. There’s a hundred Estonian girls who look just like her from behind, but when they turn around, it’s just not her. It just isn’t. Oh, they look fine in their striped shawls and long black coats, and with their dark potato brown hair, but they aren’t her. That shine she has in her eyes, it’s not in theirs. They lack some precious unnamed element.

One time I did see her again, but it was in a dream. She was wearing a yellow dress and a silver crown. I don’t know what those symbols mean. There was fire all around her in the dream, as if she was standing on the sun, or beside a volcano. She looked at me and then that was it. That was the last time I saw her, wearing a silver crown in a dream. I am sure I will see her again, but I am a little worried that if I do, it won’t really be her anymore. Maybe she has changed.

Maybe this too has been a dream.

‘did you hear about smith?’

‘BELOVED CHEF DEAD,’ so read the headline of the local newspaper that morning. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it, because Smith was depicted there in a photo to accompany the article. He was wearing a khaki cotton suit, and had on a flat cap. Smith was sitting in the photo, but leaning forward, as if he was game for whatever life had on offer. He had a broad smile. He looked like an African prince on his way to study economics at Oxford. Oh, yeah, our Smith was a handsome fella if there ever was one. He drove the girls crazy. But now he was dead. The article said he had been electrocuted during a hairstyling incident. The police were investigating. I just couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t. Now it was him? When would it be me?

For a while, Smith had been running a restaurant and catering business in the Old Town. I walked by the place reading the paper, and then went down the hill to the new hotel and spa. For a long time, they had talked about building a hotel and spa in town, but nothing had come of it. Perhaps it had been worth the wait. It was vast and mostly open air, like the famed Blue Lagoon on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula. In the distance, I noticed large white and brown objects floating in its frothy hot spring-fed pools. Soon, one of these objects drifted closer, and a large white seal turned belly up in the waters near the white stone steps. The seal looked quite content to swim like that, and from my position, I could also see a large rocky island in the center of the swimming area. “That’s a nature preserve for the animals,” someone told me. “We’re not allowed to swim out there.”

Intrigued, I took a walk along the waterfront. Little cafés had opened up to serve the guests. You know what I am talking about, street food joints, with little round tables shielded with umbrellas from a non-existent Estonian sun. It was actually partly sunny or partly cloudy on that day, and there was a light breeze. I looked over the barrier into the pools and saw a few black bears swimming by. At one café table, Erland was seated, freshly returned from Sweden. His hair was still long, down to his shoulders. I walked over and took a seat next to Erland.

“Did you hear about Smith?” I asked him.

“No, what about him?” he said. “I haven’t seen him since I got back to town.”

“He’s dead.”

“What? But how is that even possible? Did someone murder him?”

I shook my head. “He was accidentally electrocuted at the hair salon.”

“That’s too bad. It does seem like everyone is dying these days. First Agostinho, now Smith. Hopefully we’re not next.”

“Yes, hopefully,” I said.

Our drinks arrived and we sipped them. In the meantime, Erland’s infant son had climbed up on the table and then accidentally slipped onto the ground. He was there on the concrete sobbing in a pool of tears. I went over and picked the child up, but he seemed uninjured and I handed the tot over to Erland. Smith’s widow Külliki came to the café, with their daughter Stina. They were both dressed in light-colored dresses. Neither seemed particularly upset.

“Is it really true,” I shouted out to Külliki. “Is Smith really dead?”

She nodded, but in a nonchalant way. She was picking flower petals and admiring the spa.

“These things just happen,” Külliki said, picking at her flower. “These things just happen.”

meeting with readers

IT WASN’T THAT LATE, but I was exhausted. It had been a long day, and between the minus temperatures and heavy meal at the German beer house, I was ready for sleep. I went into the rental apartment and made my bed on the pull-out couch. I even turned my phone off, so that I could sleep peacefully. I thought I was asleep, actually, until I heard several people enter the main room of the apartment. “Who’s there?” I called out. “Identify yourselves.” No answer came, but I could hear them all talking to each other. “Who’s there? Who’s there? Who’s there?” I cried. About 25 people then came into the room and sat around me Indian style in the dark. They said they were my readers and that they wanted to know about my new book.

It was an interesting crew of attendees. Sting, for example, was sitting in the front row, looking like he did around the time that he played a bell boy in Quadrophenia. He told me not to let anyone else know about his secret visit to Tartu. Then another familiar personage stood up among the readers and identified himself. “My name is Keanu,” said the dark-haired man. “I am probably best known as the bassist for Dogstar.” “That’s not true,” I said. “You are best known as Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan of Bill & Ted’s Most Excellent Adventure. And what about The Matrix?” “But Dogstar is my true passion!” commanded Keanu Reeves. “Tell us all about your new book!”

I was in my pajamas, so this was kind of an uncomfortable meeting with readers. Later, we went out to tour the city, making stops at the City Theatre and the Botanical Gardens. Much of it was organized by Davča, a bow-tied Czech entrepreneur, former executive at Maersk, and major figure in Baltic Sea trade. A young woman who bore a passing resemblance to the singer Nicki Minaj came along, and would not let me resist her sexual advances. “Please, please, can I be with you!” She wouldn’t leave me alone. “Fine,” I said, “let’s do it right here.” We went into an alleyway, where I began to lick her rather large brown breasts. This went on for some time until Davča popped his head into the alleyway and said, “Hey, you two, no more time for breasts! Keanu, Sting, and the others are waiting!” It was time to go visit the Christmas Fair.

tartu elevator

I DIDN’T REALIZE that there was a cluster of houses in a hollow across from Kassitoome in Tartu. How I had never walked into this secret hideaway neighborhood was a mystery to me. That it had been repossessed by hipsters and eco-hippies was not surprising. I suppose it had once been a little industrial alley of shoemakers and blacksmiths in the old days, but now there were little red brick bungalows and wobbly lean-to wooden huts serving up tropical smoothies and chickpea-flour wraps. Men with well-groomed beards recounted their adventures in climbing Nepalese mountains, or picking avocados in the Southern Hemisphere, or how they got the first of a whole series of tribal tattoos, while their dreadlock-headed consorts flagrantly nursed their babes in plain view and talked about vaccines and Chinese astrology.

At the end of this alley, there was a tall building that opened up on the other side onto Jakobi Street. This served as a newer part of the University of Tartu Museum, but there was some office space upstairs. I walked into the lobby, and took the elevator up, hoping to come out on Jakobi Street on the other side. But instead, the great glass elevator only went higher and higher until it reached the very top floor. It continued to rise, and I could feel the elevator itself begin to come apart. I panicked and held onto a bar, in case the floor collapsed out from beneath me. Then I kicked the door to the elevator apart, as hard as I could. At last, the glass shattered, and a man in a suit came running from the desk of the museum and helped me out. He looked a bit like Steve Carell in his role as “Michael” in The Office. “Michael” apologized for the inconvenience, but I didn’t care. I was just happy to get out of that Tartu death trap alive.

the last time

THE LAST TIME I saw Dulcinea, it was December. It had been snowing for weeks, and even when the sky was clear, it seemed like thousands of little perfect snowflakes continued to flutter down and dance along the breeze. At night, it was the same, and I wondered if it was just the wind passing around the snow, or if it was fresh snowfall. It was cold at night, deathly cold, but I decided to go for one long walk by the lake. I needed to think about a few things.

I was over by the abandoned factory when she jumped me. When she leaped on top of me, I slid and fell. I had never been stabbed in the heart before, especially by a beautiful blonde girl with an icicle, but the icy blade found its mark. I let her cut me, and the steam of my suffering rose up into the air like ghosts. She said a few things, but I could only understand a few of them. She kept talking about how our age difference made her uncomfortable. “Such a big age difference! Such a big age difference!” I reminded her that Donald Trump’s wife was 25 years younger than him. We had a far lesser gap between us both. This didn’t seem to soften her blows. There were more. “Don’t ever write to me again!” “With you, I don’t feel like I’m free!”

I just lied back and took it, like a man, I suppose. I felt like I was having the very life pulled from my body. I curled up with my knees to my chest and I faced the forest. I remember staring at those birch trees, all covered in snow and ice. Dulcinea finally took from me what she had come for and ran off toward town. When I reached up and felt my chest, all I could feel was a bloody wound on the left. My heart was gone. She had cut out my heart! She had cut it free from my body with an icicle and ran with it into the snow. There I was, bleeding out in some kind of agony. This was really the last time. The last time I would cross paths with Dulcinea. I summoned all my strength and stood with my half-frozen aching heartless body. Then I stumbled towards the lake. The way was black and ran by the woods. I kept walking.

To where, I did not know.

the recording studio

I TOOK THE TRAIN into New York. For whatever reason, the dog came with me, and I was carrying a small bag full of some clothes and a change of shoes. These I left somewhere at a playground near The Cube at Astor Place. Then I walked over to the old building on Grammercy Park and took the elevator to the top floor. I was led into the recording studio by the British girl. She said her name was Florence. She was of diminutive size and had straw-coloured hair, and features that immediately identified her as being of or from the Isles.

Something in the eyes, the lips.

The recording studio consisted of a large bed with a white blanket. It was here that we made love. I was surprised that I even could make love, especially to some random British stranger. But her eyes did light up during the lovemaking process. Behind the bed, there was a window that opened up into another room. It looked like it was someone else’s apartment, but also that it hadn’t been touched for a long time. There was dust on all the furniture. “Aren’t you worried they will walk in on us?” I asked Florence. “Please be quiet, love,” she said. “Just keep going.”

When it was over, she got up and put her clothes on. She packed her bag and got ready to leave. The producer and the sound engineer came in. The sound engineer was a Mexican with long hair tucked beneath a baseball cap, and he appeared to be crying. “Hidalgo,” said the producer, “stop your moping!” The Mexican wiped a tear from his eyes. I said, “You’re in love with her aren’t you?” Hidalgo only nodded. I felt bad, and couldn’t remember how I even knew Florence, or how we had wound up in bed. I thought we were supposed to be making music!

The producer looked like Hugh Grant, but like Hugh Grant looks these days, old and gray. “Excuse our Hidalgo,” the producer said. “He is a Latin man, as you can see. He has emotional tendencies.” The producer was dressed in a gray suit and his salt-and-pepper hair was cut short. “Hidalgo gets too attached.” I didn’t feel particularly attached. As I watched Florence prepare to go out, applying her makeup in the mirror, I felt a kind of sadness if not total disgust. “What? What is it with you?” she said in that rather inflected London accent of hers.

After she left, I took the elevator down. I went back to the playground by The Cube on Astor Place. Could you believe that my dog was still waiting for me? Some characters who looked like the musicians from Parliament Funkadelic were tossing around a frisbee, and the dog would sometimes go and fetch it. They were good guys, and my bag was still sitting there, untouched. New York had become a much safer place. It was safe at least for dogs and bags.

Not so much for hearts.

o brother, where art thou?

MY BROTHER came to visit me in Estonia. He hadn’t been here in 20 years and was amazed by how much things had changed. “It used to look like Gorky Park,” he said. “Now it looks like this!” To tell you the truth, I had been away just before he came, and took a ship from Stockholm back to Tallinn to meet him. Somewhere near one of the Åland Islands, though, I dropped my keys in the sea. They just tumbled out of my pocket. Even though the water was shallow there, and I could see the white rocks just below the water’s surface, I was unable to retrieve the keys and the ship sailed on. Which meant that when he showed up off the flight from New York, we had to take a rickety Bolt rickshaw down to the Baltic Station Market.

He didn’t seem to mind though. It looked as if he hadn’t changed since he got out of work in Midtown Manhattan. He was impressed by the new market, and the different kinds of exotic foods one could buy there. In fact, he spent the whole evening going from one stall to another. “You can get a slice of Sicilian over there,” I told him. “There’s a South African eatery here too. And whatever you do, you are not to miss out on the legendary and delicious VLND Burger!”

He tried them all and even had some ice cream, but then the jet lag set in and I suggested we take another Bolt rickshaw up a few streets into Kalamaja and then Viljandi beyond. But then I remembered the Omniva smart hotel. All you had to do was enter in the access code, and one of the doors in the parcel machine would open up and convert into a budget hotel room. There was even a bunk bed. My brother climbed to the top bunk and was soon fast asleep. His jacket was tucked beneath his arms as he snored in the top bunk of an Omniva parcel machine smart hotel room. To my amazement, there were no food stains on his crisp white business shirt.

white parka

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.

ingrian girls

WE WERE ALL TRYING to escape. From what I do not know. Some kind of cave system, or tunnel. I cannot say if it was made by man or naturally formed. What I do remember is that I was surrounded by Ingrian girls. Dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe. There were just so many of them, and they were all trying to climb out of that passageway and into the daylight. I don’t know what any of their names were, or what villages they came from, but they looked like sisters. Their hair was red and their skin was milky white. Black shirts, blue trousers, blue eyes.

Then one of the Ingrian girls climbed up my back and sort of pushed herself over my head, as if she was doing an acrobatic trick. Another pushed by my arms. There were so many Ingrians. They were crawling all over everything.

The only hint at civilization in the cave was a monument that had been cut into the walls. Words were chiselled into granite, maybe about the War of Independence, maybe about the Winter War. I couldn’t read anything in the darkness, but with my fingers, I could trace out the number 1918. I gripped the stone as I pulled myself into the light. A dozen Ingrian girls were already standing there looking haughtily down at me. I remember the menace of that hair, as if it was on fire and the feel of the northern sun as it at last laid its pleasant hands upon my face.

kermit

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?

She’s probably still there.