lost in translation

AFTER A LONG period of blackout silence, I heard back from Dulcinea. She didn’t care how I was doing or feeling, but wanted me to translate something for an essay she had written, either for an employer or university. Actually, it had been translated already, by her or ChatGPT, but required a native speaker’s touch. It was just four or five sentences about some humdrum topic. I wondered if I should even touch it given the way she had treated me. The blocking, the ignoring, the side-eye, as they call it, did she even deserve my attention?

I walked away from her. She stood there, as if emerging from a gray alleyway, in a beautiful dress, with her hair all gold. I kept walking away but then something pinched me from within, and I turned around. Fine then, you’ve got me girl, I thought, as I walked back toward the rather sullen young woman. For life! I made quick work of Dulcinea’s translation request.

It didn’t help that Putin was in town with Kim Jong Un. There was a motorcade and ensuing security conference. The secret police were out in force. I led Dulcinea up a series of back alley stairs into a room where others were sheltering. Outside, it had begun to snow. I could hear the security police coming up the steps, and noticed that just outside the window there was another staircase. The window could be opened wide enough for us to escape. All we needed to do was jump and we would be free for a while. All we needed to do was have the courage to make that first big jump. “Don’t you want to be rescued?” I asked. “Don’t you want me to save you?” She had already befriended the others in the room. She didn’t want to go.

traditional music

I ALWAYS KNEW they had rooms for rent, or stay, in the cellar of the Pärimusmuusika Ait, or Traditional Music Center, but I did not know they had these kinds of exclusive suites, or that a woman had been living down there for some time. I didn’t even know how I happened to get into that room, or into her bed for that matter. We were lying together in a queen-sized bed, with messy beige sheets. The frame of the bed was made of a darker wood, and there were some shelves across from us lined with vinyls and compact discs of groups and solo performers supported in one way or another by the center, plus thick compilations of runo songs collected from various rural municipalities over the preceding century and a half.

None of that matters though. What matters I think is the quality of those kisses in that basement bed. She was a younger woman, she had a round face, freckles, blue eyes, and inside of those eyes was kindness. In situations like these, you don’t even need to kiss, you don’t even need to touch, you can just look at each other. It’s better than a kiss. There we both were, beneath the blankets, perched in some kind of euphoria. The young lady said, “Mother was right about you. She said you were a good kisser. And so good in bed.” This of course was fluff to my ears, and I almost found myself adopting a Sean Connery accent, “Yes, yes. Of course, Domino. Of course.” But that word that preceded it, mother, made me sit straight like a rock.

“Who is your mother?” I asked the beautiful girl. “You know very well who she is,” she said, in a playful way. “She’ll be here soon.” But didn’t even know that she had an adult daughter, and still was confused about it. Sexual anxiety throbbed in my veins. I pulled my trousers from a chair, buttoned up my blue shirt, and ran upstairs, the girl’s warm kisses still all over me. In the garderoob or coat room of the center, a number of folk musicians were arriving, among them the mother. She was so busy talking to a guitar player though that she didn’t see me as I grabbed my things and was out the door. I felt bad for her. I felt bad for everyone. I felt like I had done something wrong. I hoped that she would never know about this. She should remain blissfully unaware of the cellar tryst with her daughter. And it was still a loving experience.

You can’t deny that.

encinitas

I TOOK MY YOUNGEST daughter cycling around California on my black Adriatica. We were up in the East Bay Area when we got lost looking for our Airbnb. We took a long road into a forest that was inhabited by large white birds with gastrointestinal problems, apparently. I thought it was raining, but the rain was white. Soon we were soaked in bird shit. I couldn’t believe how much of it came down. It didn’t smell like anything really, but it was collecting in puddles on the forest floor. This was the Bird Dung Forest, I later learned from a map, populated by storks with IBS. After we left the forest, we pulled up a driveway to the apartment we had rented.

THE APARTMENT was in a postwar split-level suburban house. The owner was nice enough, an older fellow with graying hair and a Dead Kennedys t-shirt. We talked about the Bird Dung Forest, and how to get to our next stop, Encinitas. He told me that we were currently in Oakland, but said it in an odd way, almost the way the New Zealanders say “Auckland.” Maybe that was some kind of local Oakland accent. “Encinitas? Yeah, I know Encinitas,” he said while getting us some drinks. “But that’s kind of far away. Why do you want to go all the way there?”

TO GET TO ENCINITAS we had to take the Pacific Coast Highway, he said. The next morning, we cycled out to pick up the route, and I rode up a hill, only to look down at a precipitous drop. It just didn’t seem that my bike could handle an incline like that and I cycled back down the hill and began to look for other options. A large wooden ferry had just arrived from San Francisco on the other side of the bay, and cars were disembarking. Then I noticed that there were a set of smaller ferries voyaging farther south. Some went as far as Encinitas, they said. My daughter was very tired by then, and clinging to a teddy bear. She yawned as we boarded the ferry. Later, I recalled that Encinitas was a familiar destination. I had passed through there once on the way out to the San Diego Botanical Gardens. But that was a very long time ago.

periphery

A PERIPHERY, a wilderness, a place of doom, fog, and thick dark forests. There was however a settlement nearby on the margins to which I was exiled to live in a small house. The woman in the neighboring apartment had been there for a long time. She was about my age and had red hair and a black dress. She was an attractive girl and covered in freckles. Her bedroom had old-fashioned furniture, and there were pictures and mirrors hanging on the wall. A lamp glowed in the corner. “Why am I still here?” she complained to me. “I hate this place and I’m still here. I’ve been stuck here forever. I want to leave.” She kicked at the air and turned over.

IN THE MIDDLE of the settlement I later overheard a quarrel between two older women who had been exiled there. Both of them had gray hair. One chased the other down a muddy alley until she subdued and overtook her, kneeling over her with a dagger. It was some kind of disagreement over a decision of the architectural review board, but the garden club and historical society were also involved. Small-town grievances. The rivalry had been going on for some time, and I even was shown footage later of a Memorial Day Parade in the year 2000, which was increasingly looking, in perspective, like a really creepy year. The two old women were much younger then, just going gray, and were interviewed in the local news media. Two community activists (who really hated each other). Such things happen in every small town.

NOT LONG AFTER THAT I arrived to a cafe in Tanzania. I suppose it was along the waterfront of Dar-es-Salaam. It was getting dusk and the city was smoggy, and I could see the jungle trees and big birds flying between them, their black silhouettes against a sinking orange sun. Jerry Seinfeld was there, trying to sell books to some local merchants. He took offense when it turned out these African merchants were also doing brisk trade with Newman, whom he called his arch foe. “Newman,” said Jerry. They were all seated around a table except for Mr. Seinfeld, who was standing. “I don’t think I have to remind you how unreliable Newman is. He’d sell his own grandmother.” Somewhere in the distance, the audience laughed. The African merchants, in crisp white linen shirts, conferred and shared a water pipe. I couldn’t understand their weird language, but I could hear them say, “Seinfeld, Newman. Newman, Seinfeld, Newman.”

It was like a form a Morse Code.

AT LAST THE TRAIN arrived to the Baltic Station in Tallinn and I disembarked with my two youngest daughters. It was snowing and dark, and we stepped over the tracks. We decided to go get some dinner at the Baltic Station Market, which is open until 8 pm. But the way was obscured by a new hockey rink. Who had put a hockey rink in the middle of the Baltic Station? I thought about skating across, but there was a game on. That might not be the best move. It could get violent. How to get around the rink? There had to be a way. If we just walked deeper into Kalamaja, we could get around it. It had been a weird adventure and I was very hungry.

fletcher christian

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER TRAIN. This one was a new luxury mode of transport. It had glass ceilings, so we could watch the snow-dusted and ice-covered winter trees canopy over our heads as we raced north from Switzerland into the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Every destination had its own box, sort of like different gates in an airport. The Warsaw people were over there, the Tallinn people were over here. Helsinki, I take it, was the final destination. The trees were really magnificent too, a white kaleidoscope, forming, reforming. I tried to capture the way they shaped and reshaped themselves with my phone camera, but it was just no good.

When we all arrived, we went into a concert hall. There was a grand piano at its center, and a slightly elevated stage. Esmeralda was there holding a white Fender electric. She knew the chords to the song. What was she doing here, and why was she playing one of his songs? She was small and taciturn, with her potato brown hair and lovely narrow eyes. She was just wearing her jeans. Esmeralda played the chords to the song, and then I took a guitar in hand. It was also an electric, one of those oddly shaped Gibson Thunderbirds, but with a sunburst body. I couldn’t restrain myself from doing some impromptu Stevie Ray Vaughan on my new axe. I was surprised I could play “Love Struck Baby.” It wasn’t so hard to imitate Stevie Ray.

Esmeralda just strummed away. She looked so unimpressed. Didn’t she know that I wanted her so badly? That I wanted to take her away to an island, where our descendants would form the population’s main stock, like those HMS Bounty mutineers on Pitcairn Island and Tahiti? I wanted to pull a Fletcher Christian. No dice. This was a rehearsal, not a love-making session. Esmeralda yawned and walked over to the piano. I stopped riffing on my Gibson Thunderbird.

Then I followed her over.

a house on long island

I WAS INVOLVED WITH THE MOB. Or Mafia. Cosa Nostra. Take your pick. I was supposed to run some money but I didn’t know who was delivering or who was retrieving. They sent me out to some industrial area to stand inside an old telephone booth at night. It seemed like a rather uncreative pick-up spot. There I stood, pretending to talk to someone on the old phone, which didn’t work. I had two soldiers for backup, who were hidden in some nearby reeds. Soon a car pulled up — I couldn’t see the model through the dark — and a stranger got out. I was ready to hand over the cash, but as he got closer, I saw him pull a gun. Everyone started shooting. Bullets pierced the glass of the telephone booth. There was a gunman in the car too, and I could hear the bullets piercing the metal of the car. After about five minutes, everyone else was dead. It was just me and a suitcase full of cash in a bullet-ridden telephone booth.

Naturally, I was shaken up. Then I realized, I had enough money to buy a house on Long Island.

CHRISTMASTIME, some months later. I kept running around the house while I was preparing the meal. I would go out the front door, slide down the alley on one side of the house, cut across the back, and then wind around the driveway and porch until I reached the front door. I would go inside, check on the pasta, and then repeat this ‘running around the house’ motif. The house looked almost exactly like my parents’ house, except it was situated in a slightly more elevated area. The weather was cool but not cold and it was dark. I knew that they were expecting traditional American fare at Christmas, but I only knew how to make Italian food.

I checked the spaghetti again. It wasn’t yet al dente. Another quick run around the house.

Soon the guests began to arrive. I hadn’t seen them in years. Cousin Prescott came in with his family. He was an academic and wore dark-rimmed glasses. He used to have hair, but this had long since been reduced. It made him look more distinguished. “I’ve missed you, Prescott,” I said, patting him on the back. “Don’t tell the others, but you’re my favorite.” “Of course, I am,” he said and entered the house. My wife came down on the landing and waved to everyone.

At last my brother roared up. This moment brought me great anxiety. Would he approve of my new life? This was doubtful. He looked strange though. He had tattoos on both arms, and was wearing a leather jacket that said, Hells Angels. When did my big brother join a biker gang? My brother looked over everything and said, “Nice house.” “Thanks,” I said. “I paid for it in cash.”

finland, finland

IT WAS A KIND OF RESORT, in Finland. In one part, there was a dining area, but very dim because the lights had been turned off. When you turned them back on, the lights were too bright and harsh. I was waiting there at the old bar. Later that afternoon, I was supposed to give a lecture on Estonians at the University of Helsinki. Sanna Marin was going to be there. A young couple arrived to the dining area next. The man was shorter, with dark brushy hair and was wearing a suit with a bowtie, and the woman had on a light blue dress and had light brown shoulder-length hair. A young, newly wed couple full of cake, if not hope. The girl was carrying with her an umbrella, to keep away from the rain, the sun, and the dining area light bulbs too.

THEY ASKED ME if I would take some photos of them together, but the lighting was either too bright or too dark. We played around with positions, “You sit there, now turn your head this way,” and then turned on the bar lights, but turned off the rest of the lights in the room, but it was still impossible to get a shot. After a while, I just gave up. I couldn’t get one good photograph of this newly married Finnish couple. They just could not be photographed.

INSTEAD, I WANDERED DEEPER into the resort, to where there was a kind of food street open, or concessions area. It was early in the morning, and most of the restaurants and kiosks were closed. But there was an espresso machine. Success! The small recycled cardboard cup was filled with the hot black drink. I decided I needed something sweet for my little Finnish fika, but all of the shops and kiosks were still closed. So I stole a few pieces of Fazer chocolate from one that hadn’t opened up yet but then, after some deliberation, put them back. Finland was a respectable, law-abiding kind of place, where one just did not steal Fazer chocolates.

AROUND THE CORNER, I encountered some people. A woman went walking by me with some kind of “euro burrito” served on a tray and drowning in white and red sauces. A line led to one little pop-up restaurant, where I could see the corpses of whole chickens that had been deep fried in grease, sprawled about in tins like dead boiled lobsters. The man behind the counter looked like a cross between Ryan Gosling and Steve Carrell. He was American for sure, and had a mustache and was wearing a red vest. “What can I get you?” the man said. “The list of specials is written right up there.” He gestured at a chalkboard and a list of greasy, meaty, deep fried fare. “Actually, I’m just looking for some chocolate.” “Well, if you get hungry for a real meal, come back,” he said. “But whatever you do, don’t get food from the lady next door. Her food sucks.” Behind him, I could see the fry cooks salting a fresh batch of tasty golden fries.

Someone called out the number for an order. I slinked away.

WHO WAS THAT Finnish university lecturer I once knew? I thought as I wandered back through the resort. Was his name Ahto? Ahti? Antti? Aki! Aki was his name. What was he up to today? Maybe he could help me prepare for my upcoming talk at the university. I only had 10 minutes, 10 minutes to bedazzle them with tales of the Estonians. Sanna Marin, as I said before, was going to be there. I wanted to impress her. When I reached the dining area, I could see that the newly wedded couple had already separated. The young man was still seated at the table. The woman was in the corner.

“Marriage just didn’t work for us,” she told me, while twirling her umbrella. “We were just too different.” “That’s too bad,” I said. “Here, quick, would you please feel my breasts?” the Finnish bride said. She pulled down the front of her blue dress, exposing herself. I reached over and felt her breasts. “Very soft,” I said. “Just lovely.” The Finnish bride smiled. “That’s what you get when you come to Finland,” the Finnish girl told me. She had large and friendly beautiful eyes.

Somewhere on a nearby bandstand, a children’s choir had assembled. They were singing a haunting tune. I couldn’t make out the words, but I think they were saying, “Finland, Finland.”

the rehabilitation of dulcinea

SOME THINGS DON’T DIE EASY. This I learned the hard way. I had to tell my story to someone, so I told the Count, who is descended from some Russian aristocratic family, but actually grew up in the South Estonian countryside and doesn’t speak a lick of the Russian language. He wears cool band t-shirts and a flannel shirt over them, like it was 1992, or ’82 for that matter, and his brown hair is going gray. When he wears his glasses, such as when perusing a menu, he almost looks like a person who should be taken seriously. And this was the setting for me bawling my heart out over Dulcinea, the girl who broke my heart in two.

Or at least blocked me on social media.

“Why did she block you?” asked the Count. He had his glasses on when he asked, and seemed quite serious. “I wrote her too many romantic letters,” I said. “I had promised her I wouldn’t.”

“Then why did you write more to this girl, what did you say her name was again?” “Dulcinea.” “Dulcinea,” he repeated. “The name does sound familiar.” I showed him her picture. “Well, she is attractive,” he said. “Yes,” I agreed. “But if someone tells you to stop doing something, maybe you should stop.” The Count set the menu down on the table, like a lawyer resting his case.

I nodded in silence and my french fries arrived. I let them sit. “I didn’t want to write more romantic letters to Dulcinea,” I told the Count. “There was just this feeling building inside of me. If I hadn’t written those romantic letters to the girl, I would have just exploded into bits.”

The Count removed his glasses and wiped them clean with his flannel shirt. Underneath I could see his blue t-shirt. The t-shirt had written on it, in big block white letters, The Clash. He put his glasses back on. “Yes,” the Count said staring. His smart eyes were beady black. “That’s what the serial killers say too.”

“Fortunately, I’m not a serial killer,” I said, wondering how the Count knew so much about serial killing. I didn’t get a chance to ask. His tarot-toting mistress arrived. She too knew the sad tale of Dulcinea. I showed her a photo of the girl. Her strawberry blonde hair was draped about her shoulders and she was wearing a black hat in the photo. It had been taken in the countryside. “This girl Dulcinea does seem to have a kind of witchy energy,” the Count’s consort said. Was she the Countess? Actually, the girl had supposedly seen the light and eschewed the occult for good. But the line between sorcery and Christianity in Northern Europe had never been clear. Earlier that day, I had drawn The Devil from the Countess’ deck. When I had asked about Dulcinea, I saw The Tower engulfed in flames and white lightning.

Still it wouldn’t leave me. The idea of her put a chill in me like the air before a thunderstorm.

like a phantom

AT FIRST LIGHT, I fell back into a deep sleep. White light, honeysuckle light. Suddenly I was swimming in darkness. There were some youths there, or younger people. They were talking to me about how much Harry Potter had changed their lives. One of them was a young man with dark hair. He was dressed up like an old-fashioned movie theatre usher, same kind of ridiculous suit, like one of those dancing monkeys you find beside the ancient organ grinders.

He was most enamored with the Potter franchise.

“Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!” the monkey man kept saying. “Brilliant!” A younger woman was with him. She had on a similar costume, but looked more like a barmaid at a German-themed restaurant. Oktoberfest. She looked at me and smiled. While he was talking, I became aware that I was in the arms of a woman. It was as if I had tumbled back and falled into warm water. There was an older woman with tufts of yellow hair there. I could feel her as she caught me. Then I put my head on her soft breasts. She was wearing all black, but this was gauzy, amorphous, atmospheric, oceanic, cosmic. It danced all around me like the northern lights.

“Is it okay if I just rest my head here like this?” I said. She just breathed, but I could tell that it was okay. The restful breast led up to a neck. “Is it okay, if I kiss you here like this?” I asked. Now she spoke and said that I could do as I liked. “All the answers,” she said, “are already inside of you.” I could see her arm extend around me, but most of her was not visible. She was like a phantom, a ghost, more sensed than felt, but there was nothing ominous about her presence. Everything progressed from there, as it does, and there was a long deep kiss, explorative, intense, and dreamy. But no matter how many times we tried to make love, it just didn’t work.

We tried and tried, but no connection. We were just content to kiss then, like that, and for a long time. Sometimes more isn’t necessary, you know. Sometimes kissing is good enough.

old school

A LOT HAD CHANGED. The school used to sit on the top of a hill overlooking a nice green park, with tennis courts and such, and a baseball diamond, but in the intervening years, some genius had decided to expand it, so that it now resembled some sort of horrible municipal building erected in Philadelphia or Boston, or some other godforsaken concrete nightmare built with state money, and the green park was long gone, as was its murmuring pretty creek, to which our preschool teachers would take us in those happy new years for sunny picnics.

Yes, the happy years. The first day there was one of holding my breath, just so that I wouldn’t be the only little boy who cried for mother. I made it through that day and others. My first classroom was to the left, I remember, and the second one was down the hall. The swimming pool was down at the far right. It was here where we would change, and I still have a memory of a little boy telling me that he knew how we could spy on our swim instructors as they changed into their bathing suits. This was the first time this particular idea of voyeurism even popped into my young mind. The thought had just never occurred to me. Naked teachers?

Anyway, there I was again, at the entrance to the school. Somehow I got inside the building. The walls were all paneled, and there was a dry, beige carpet that ran the length of the hallways and corridors. There were some people seated at desks. I walked right by them, as well as beneath a large metal clock. What had happened to the place since I left? Almost nothing was familiar to me, but the shape of the building had been retained. Down the hall toward the swimming pool, I encountered a man with a moustache and and the baseball cap of a team that is generally ignored by the New York fans. Maybe it was the Montreal Expos? He had glasses and curly red hair. He said, “Excuse me, sir. Are you looking for something here?”

“I’m looking for the swimming pool,” I told the man in the Expos cap. “I used to go swimming here, when it was a preschool.” The man looked at me oddly. “Oh right, I have heard it used to be a preschool,” he said. “But I have never heard about a swimming pool. Oh well, nobody goes down to that end of the building anymore.” “Oh,” I said, imagining a caved-in swimming pool behind locked wooden doors, slowly being reclaimed by nature. Maybe at some point during the George W. Bush administration they had just forgotten it, left it to rot, focused on expanding the building over the nice green park and creek. Now only the squirrels knew of it.

“When did you go to school here, might I ask?” the man in the Expos hat asked me in the hallway there. “In 1984 or so,” I said and shrugged. “Probably 1983 to 1985 was when I was here,” I told the strange man. “Oh,” he said with a frown. “But that was before I was born, you know. That was before any of us were born.”