marcos

I SAW MARCOS at a party in the Old Town. I was standing at the top of the steps, and he was coming up. We saw each other just for a moment, but I recognized him right away. He looked just as he did in college. He looked just as he did in his obituary. “Marcos,” I said. “Is that you?”

Before I saw Marcos, I had been kissing a TalTech postdoc from Nigeria named Omolola, or “Lola” for short. She was a woman who knew her pipettes. She spent most of her days in laboratories. There was a clean, cool, clinical edge to Lola. She wore her braids up in a colorful headscarf. She had been showing me some photos on her phone when we began to kiss, just like that. Why it happened, I don’t know. She was my friend Stig’s latest girlfriend, but there was a high level of attrition in his romantic life. Was she a rebound, or was he rebounding from a rebound? She was just one in a series of basketballs being dribbled across some stuffy court.

Lola was an excellent kisser. I wondered how often these spur-of-the-moment make-out sessions happened. Maybe they were going on all the time. The second you left the bank, that young financial advisor was kissing that grizzled old man. Bolt drivers turned to suck face with their latest fare. Flight attendants from Finnair reached over to deliver a cup of blueberry juice and then … There is something about surrendering up to someone, freely, on a whim. One minute, you are at a party, the next you are locking lips with your friend’s girlfriend. Until you see your dead college friend walk by, as if you were in some turn-of-the-century cafeteria.

“Marcos? Marcos? Is that really you?” Marcos and I had been in the same left-wing student group in college. We were card-carrying Young Socialists. He was the son of a Latin American economic policy advisor. After college, he had become more deeply left-wing. Some said he was stockpiling weapons. For an eventual battle royale with the federal government. But when he was about 40, he died. Nobody knew why. Nobody said. We only saw the obituary online, with that smile of his. He looked just like he did now, at a party in the Old Town. “Marcos!” I called to him. “Where are you going? Why are you here?” The Marcos-looking man shook his head, as if he didn’t know who I was. Maybe it wasn’t Marcos at all. No, it probably wasn’t him.

execution

I DIDN’T NOTICE her presence until after the execution. Her father had died well, as well as any man could have died that way. At the after-party for the execution, there were representatives from the various ministries present. They were all well-coiffed and well attired. These executions were turning out to be networking opportunities for the politically ambitious. The wine was poured. The flesh was pressed. You might have forgotten that the guillotine’s blade had once again fallen on a poor man’s shaven neck. What even was his crime?

And there she was, standing off to the side, quietly munching on something. Dulcinea, the daughter of a disgraced ex-aristocrat. “I’m sorry about your father,” I told her. She said nothing. For even in this time of mourning, Dulcinea would still not speak to me. Not a word. Not for years. When I expressed my condolences, Dulcinea stared out into space, as if she was vaguely aware of a far-off vibration. She wore a close-fitting linen dress with a gold sash. Her straw-colored hair was done simply but perfectly in the modern fashion. She was sad though.

Later, when I got on the bus back to Tallinn, I noticed her in the back seat, with her brother slumped over sleeping in her lap. He was only eight or nine years old. She stroked his hair and he slept. It was an awful fate. All of their belongings were spread around in bags and boxes.

Again, I said hello, but she said nothing. I began to suspect that I no longer existed on this plane. It was as if I had died too and not yet become aware of it. The day had a cool gray pallor to it as the bus rolled into Kassisaba. Such a grim and dull day. I could see all the houses along the streets. Life moved briskly forward. People had to go to work. People had to live their lives.

At the next stop, Dulcinea, still in her linen dress, woke up her brother and they disembarked. She realized then, in her glacial silence, that she was unable to carry their things. With panic in her blue eyes, she turned to me and said, “Are you coming with us or not?” I was shocked to hear her voice. It was as if I had fallen through the space-time continuum. Naturally, I said yes.

porquerolles

I HID MYSELF at the top of the stairs in a white lookout tower in Porquerolles. I stood at the top of the metal steps, alive in the humidity, not really knowing what would become of me, or how long I’d remain up there. Good thing Linus and Simone came to talk me down. Linus had the appearance of an Irish saint. Simone arrived with her children. Her hair was long and brown and beautiful and she said, “We love you. Everybody loves you. Please come down.” “There’s no sense hiding in a tower in France,” said Linus. “We all have our bouts, but come on.”

I came down the steps, but when I stepped off the last step, I found myself buckled into a seat in the seventh or eighth row of an airplane. We had just landed somewhere. When I looked out the window, I could see it was some place warm, tropical, with palms. It must have been early evening. I could see the sun setting. Celeste came down the aisle with her daughters. She was dressed in her black dress, her curls bobbled everywhere. She instructed them in her calm motherly voice to watch their step as they disembarked. Could she not see me? We had known each other for years. When had I become invisible? Did I have to pretend I didn’t know her, even when we left Estonia? How long would the invisibility spell last? Until the end of time?

Until the end of time. There was a spark of light and the match lit. Out of a vivid darkness I watched the light as it ignited a candle. Then the woman blew the match out, placed it on the bookshelf, and resumed reading her book. The book was Edgar Allan Poe’s. Was it Annabel Lee? She read out the words in the dark library. The shelves of the library were piled high with ancient volumes. I didn’t know who the woman was, but she looked familiar. She was maybe five years older. There was a touch of the young Grace Slick in her, crossed with Françoise Hardy. She wore a red knit sweater dress that ended above her knees. It was embroidered in gold, with strange, zigzagging designs. Her dark, luscious Wonder Woman hair was half up.

“But our love it was stronger by far than the love of those who were older than we,” she read. She stood, book in one hand, candle in the other. I sat beside her looking up. Then I wrapped my arm around her hips and began to caress her. And so I slipped into delicious happiness.

riverhead

MY FACE PRESSED against the glass; my face pressed against the glass. Again morning, my eyes open, and my face is pressed against the glass. I open one eye, then the other. They are both goopy, the glass has a veneer of sand grime on its outside. The glass is old. In a small font, Made in Czechoslovakia is printed in one corner. Surely, I’ve been drooling all over myself. I must have nodded off after the train left Narva Station behind. Where are we? Rakvere?

“Riverhead,” comes the husky voice over the speakers. “Riverhead Station, next stop.” I sit up. Have I been sleeping so long? Who knows how many hours it takes to travel from Narva to Riverhead on Long Island by train. I notice my old knapsack next to me. A twenty-something man is seated beside me, staring into stale air. He’s sipping from a 40-ounce of Olde English. The train pulls into Riverhead station, and I can see all of those houses that sprawl along the avenues and boulevards. There’s the courthouse, the bank, and I know exactly where to walk if you want to go to the aquarium. In fact, I decide I will head over there first. To see the seals.

As we disembark, I can see two women I know from Viljandi. One of them is Esmeralda. What is she doing in Riverhead? Of all godforsaken places? She is with Birgit, the festival organizer. They are walking with purpose. Maybe they have come here to recruit acts for next year’s festival? Esmeralda is milk white, she’s dressed in a green tank top, and her brown hair is up. She looks like she is sleepwalking. Her eyes are all strange and filmy. I call out to her as she strides in the direction of the aquarium. “Where are you going?” I yell. “Please come back.”

border point

THE NARVA BORDER POINT, the frontier between Estonia and the Russian Federation, the west and the east, the war and the non-war. But it’s a fine October day, with good sunshine, a mostly cloudless sky, a sweet-tasting fresh wind that whips over the invisible line of demarcation, and the dark river waters below that carve one vast landmass from the other.

I stand at the foot of the white Hermann Fortress, but when I look up, I see Montauk Lighthouse. The air does smell strangely of salt. There are seagulls crying along the old stone walls. I enter the lighthouse and proceed through a series of glass doors. The Estonian border guards are at their desks, clad in their navy uniforms, emblazoned with the three gold lions.

Off to the left, I can see a room which, upon closer inspection, appears to be a small Orthodox chapel. Inside, the priest is administering Communion. The candles are burning, and the incense fogs the air, so that even the glass looks foggy. The church is full of old Russian grandmothers and border guards. They are praying quietly. Some are singing. Just then, a border agent comes down the metal steps of the lighthouse, dressed in the light blue shirt of the Russian border guard. She has glasses, dyed red hair. She brushes by me, indifferent to my presence. From the corner of my eye, I can see her name stitched on her breast. Ivanova.

On the other side of the lighthouse castle border station, there is another door that opens into a green yard. The grass is still very green, even though it is October. There isn’t a tree anywhere, a seat anywhere. There isn’t another living soul to be seen or heard. This is the intermediate zone, the no man’s land between the Republic of Estonia and the Russian Federation. I walk about at ease. Then I go back to Estonia, again through the lighthouse. The Russian grandmothers and border guards are still praying peacefully. “Let them pray,” I think.

omelette

AT THE CRACK OF DAWN, I descended the steps to make my daughter an omelette before she went to school. My feet slid across the smooth wood floor toward the kitchenette. I began to make preparations. I liked to get the frying pan sizzling hot, gurgling with butter before adding the eggs. When I turned on the light, I could see that she was back. She told me I could go.

“I cut short my trip,” she said. “You can go now.” “But I promised her an omelette,” I told her. “A mushroom omelette. She was looking forward to it.” “I have some workmen showing up soon,” she said, reaching out to stop my hand from cracking an egg. “Would you just go? Please?”

I took a step back. “No,” I told her. “I promised her an omelette, she’s having an omelette. I am making her an omelette today.” There were animals all around the house. Cats, dogs. Out on the terrace, I could see some musk oxen lazing in the morning sun. “Why do you have musk oxen?” I asked. “This is my house!” she said. Then, with a more urgent tone, “Could you leave?”

There came a knock at the door, some workmen came in in white overalls and white painter’s hats. They set up a ladder and began to prepare to paint the ceiling. But after them marched more men. Some younger types, who looked like boy band singers. Others gray, with beards, speaking of literature. They began to fill the house from top to bottom with their chatter. These were her men. One of them looked like Ben Affleck, the actor. “You didn’t tell me you were dating Ben Affleck,” I said. “That’s Tarmo,” she said. “He just looks like Ben Affleck.”

Soon the house was brimming with other men. I had just wanted to make an omelette. “You have to go,” she said. “You’re no longer needed here.” “But it’s my child. I have a right to make her breakfast.” “Would you please just leave?” she implored me. I did no such thing. Instead, I reached for a bottle of moonshine, drank it down in sad, heavy gulps. Soon I was stinking.

“You fool!” she said. “How are you supposed to drive when you’ve been drinking?” She sank into a chair, sat opposite me. She became her younger form now, blonde, with those crazy eyes. “You need to find another woman,” she told me. “It’s been long enough. That will make everything better.” For a moment, I followed the arc of her logic. Then I realized her logic had led me here, to this house. “What are you, some kind of oracle?” I said. “You know, I gave you everything,” she said, with a slight disgust. “Without me, you’d be back where I found you.”

“Fine then,” I said. Omelette unmade, I crumpled through the door into the morning light. I felt like garbage. Pure, limping garbage. And I had no idea where this place was. For a moment, I was reminded of the rainy streets of Beijing, and how I had been lost just like this, and a friendly Chinese had waved to me through a misty cafe window. I felt free that day in Beijing.

ikea tower

IT WAS A TOWER. The Ikea Tower. Why it was called that was a mystery. No element of it was made by Ikea. Maybe some of the furniture in the conference room on the 80th floor. The tower was designed to move with the wind. To stand in its conference area was to feel as if one was flying. We were so high up in the air that I couldn’t see the ground down beneath the cloud cover. The movement of the clouds between the legs of the tower made it seem as if we were a ship upon white seas. When I rode the elevator to the conference, I always made sure to look at the buttons. You know how terrified I am of heights. I watched those red buttons.

Later, back at my hotel, I slept in. It had been a long week, and I woke up around noon. I knew I was going to be late for the press conference. Where even was this place? My mind said it was Helsinki, but it looked like Amsterdam, with some elements of Copenhagen stitched in. Of course, I wound up talking to the redhead at the front desk, with her silver earrings and silver brooch. She sparkled like a Celtic warrioress. That went on for far too long, and so I was doubly late. I ran to catch a departing gondola and rode it through the city. Its doors opened and I got out, but I was on a terrace. The furniture was certainly made by Ikea. Simple, white.

Young Scandinavian Arabs were seated around, playing chess.

I got back on the next gondola and was carried to the canal, where I got onto a crowded ferry. I could see the red-brick buildings of the town hall and the national treasury. I tried to take a photo of the town hall, with its golden steeple, which looked just like Pauluse kirik in Tartu, but also like the Københavns Rådhus. What even was this city? Certainly, it was still Helsinki. Or was it? Before I could get a good shot, the ferry arrived to port and we disembarked at last.

Everyone filed into the metro. I could watch their heads disappear as they rode the escalator down. I saw their shadows vanish. Somehow I found a tram that delivered me to the foot of that enormous tower. Up the tube-like elevator again, staring at the buttons. They needed the article immediately following the press conference. I could feel the tower move with the strong winds. There was a woman in the elevator who I knew from Estonia. She was dressed in business attire. She had one of those names that no one outside of Estonia could pronounce, like Õie, Ülle, or Krõõt. “How do you do it?” Õie asked. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”

harbor street

HARBOR STREET was always susceptible to floods. Whenever there was a big storm, a nor’easter, a hurricane, the gray seas of the harbor would thrash about and rise ominously. One winter, it lifted huge blocks of white ice up onto the lawns of waterfront homeowners, though one might have asked them why they acquired properties in such a place to begin with. During the winter storm it looked like Antarctica, only with ducks instead of penguins.

When I went back, it was just foggy and the water was at its mostly natural level. The whole area, with its sailboats, boathouses, captain’s cottages and the like, was engulfed in a dense blue mist. Even the green grass of the lawns and the hedges dripped with white moisture. I made the turn up the street in an old-fashioned car, the make of which I didn’t pay much attention to. An old neighbor was sitting in the driver’s seat; I was in the back. Yet, as I found, I was steering the car. I was controlling it with my mind. I could make it brake and accelerate.

Her name was Bettina. She was half asleep. What a funny car, one that could be piloted via telekinesis. Bettina was wrapped up in a blanket. I could only see the back of her head, all blonde and fluffy, like a newborn chick. I said, “Oh look, the guesthouse, does Andy still live there?” Bettina yawned and resettled herself into the driver’s seat. “No, he left many years ago,” she said. “But I have seen him around town.” I had known the workman Andy my whole life, both before and after his stint in juvenile hall. Fleischman and Andy had robbed a liquor store.

“What about Mangione and Schmidt?” I asked. “The carpenters?” “Dead,” she answered. “Mike Mangione died of a heart attack. Schmidt fell off a roof.” “Oh,” I said. The further we went down Harbor Street, the more I noticed that the houses were no longer where they used to be. The Deuteronomy Smith House was still there, the life’s work of the famous shipbuilder, but the others were gone. When we reached the end of the road, I realized that the turnoff that would bring us back around Ditch Road had disappeared too. Instead, a palatial new home had been constructed. The old road was now its driveway. It was lined with lanterns and small pools.

It then dawned on me that I was all alone with Bettina in a car. We were all alone at the end of a road that had no apparent exit. A man and a woman, alone in a car. Something in the atmosphere trembled at that moment. It pulsated away in different colors. “You know,” I told her. “We are all alone together here.” Bettina yawned again. “So what,” she said. “So what.”

egypt

MORNING IN EGYPT, a crowded resort hotel breakfast buffet. There were so many people, there were so many discussions, that I found it hard to find a place to sit, or even to hear my own thoughts. I found a seat at a table with a white tablecloth, one that was covered in empty greasy plates and silver cutlery. This was where I came face to face with the British girl.

Some people search their whole lives for these kinds of immediate love encounters. Others just stroll into a bar or across a park and they find them, just like that. The British girl was something else, something unordinary. She had dark hair, lively gray eyes, she was dotted with freckles. I think she said her name was Lily. Or was it Grace? I think she said she came from Exeter. It was hard to hear anything in the breakfast room. We didn’t stay there long though. Things soon moved to another room.

It just went, like the sea, and it took me out with it. I had no idea how old she was, what her past was, or if I was just this morning’s moment of solace. Maybe there were a hundred guys standing behind me, like a hundred setting suns, all lined up in a row across her sexual infinity.

But it was good love, the best kind you can have at a breakfast buffet. Her white button shirt was mostly open now. It was soaked. Then a male voice boomed, “Where is he? I need to have a word with this bloke. Teach him the meaning of respect!” Lily Grace said, “Run! It’s my dad!”

I hightailed it through the corridors of the hotel resort, up and down steps, brushing past other guests. I could still hear the man’s voice grumbling like a thunderstorm. “He’s old enough to be your father!” Was I? Lily Grace looked about 30. But I couldn’t be sure. Out the hotel, down the steps by the tennis courts. Here I paused to tie my shoes, and then I kept running.

Eventually, I reached an inlet along the Nile. Some children were tossing breadcrumbs into its cool, dark waters. I thought they were feeding fish. Then I saw about five or six baby crocodiles, snapping up the crumbs, swimming avidly, blissfully, full of life. “Hey, kids,” I told the children. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” Then, from the back of the inlet, I saw her emerge, the mother crocodile. She was vast and terrifying; she looked as if she had been cut from blocks of black stone. Such a creature could easily kill anyone. It would just seize you or me up in its obsidian jaws and drag us down into the dark. That was what they called nature.

roof

THERE I WAS, dancing with the Alexandrov Ensemble in my living room, when the wind blew the roof off the house. This was the premier song and dance ensemble of the Soviet army. They were used to doing prisyadki, or Cossack squat kicks. They knew how to do povzunets. But once I put the needle on the vinyl of Off the Wall, they were totally baffled as how to perform to “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” “Good American music,” I told them. “But how do American soldiers dance to this style of music?” one of the dancers asked. His name was Boris.

Then the wind blew the roof off the house and the soldiers all fled into the street. The house was a single-story bungalow, the type that’s popular in California and other earthquake-prone places. The roof came off intact, hovered in the air. My family members gathered around to observe the sight of a roof being lifted into the air by a spectral, unseen force, then tossed on its side. It wasn’t even that windy. It was like watching the Titanic issue its final deep groan.

How was I ever going to fix that? That was my first thought. In other parts of the house, a table was arrayed with a family meal. Cousins were still seated around, passing buckets of fried chicken. They were unfazed by the loss of the roof. From our side of the house, we could see the roof pitch to one side, then float into some black powerlines. The roof looked like a UFO.

Another gust of wind pushed the roof back toward the house and then across the side yard. Down it came, out by the mailbox, still mostly in one piece, though wooden shingles had started to break off on the sides. Just then, a neighbor boy arrived home from school. The bus had let him off on the street. “Come quick,” I shouted to him. “Maybe we can weigh it down with some rocks!”

All this time, Off the Wall had continued to play on the house speakers. Now it was “Rock with You.” “You fool!” my wife cried out from inside the house. She was cradling our newborn in her arms. She said, “You really think some rocks can stop it from levitating?”

She was right. The wind began its ominous rustling. There was something precise and focused about it. Again, the roof went sailing into the air. Like a zeppelin, it righted itself and began to smoothly float away across a blue sky. “Well,” I sighed and told the boy. “There goes our roof.”