“BUT DESPERATION CAN CRYSTALLIZE. It’s like amber or obsidian, like those obsidian arrowheads from the Yucatan. It hardens and somehow becomes more bearable, natural.”

*

“And Eisenhower hated Fitzgerald. And the hatred was mutual. Cold cold bright days again. Work week, work, work. But, yes, I’ll do it. For the money.”

*

“And waving to [name omitted] at night. It’s like clutching to debris from the sinking Titanic. You just cling to it and cling to it. It provides you with a feeling of safety. Sort of.”

*

“I just sort of glued myself to her after that. She was tired though and left wearing a little black Bolt helmet. She went home to sleep. Mine ja maga uinakut, I told her. Go and take a nap. And I hugged her and it was nice.”

*

“Then I willed myself out into the countryside. I was thinking of her, all silver and blue, a girl who swims through life like a tropical fish. At least it is an honest feeling, a true feeling. At least I know that honesty and truth still exist, just as she exists. And if I could tell her anything, I would say, I would choose you and only you, and even if you are really so short, for me you are just right, paras.”

*

“And in that dream I was waiting for a train to Philadelphia beside [name omitted] who kept telling me that I was annoying her. Then I was in a wooden ruin, which turned into a sinking ship. I was talking about 21 Jump Street with Johnny Depp and Richard Grieco and Peter Deluise. Then I took the subway into the office in New York, arriving at noon. My editor scolded me for being late. [Name omitted] was there, but was preparing to leave work, but she asked me to collect her things. There was a kind of gauze or white sheet, and I folded everything up for her.”

*

“I ran to the theatre, diving for cover. Horrors of Mariupol, murder. I looked out into the distance and could see the billowing red Oppenheimer clouds. Orange with abundant death. I ran to the theatre, taking shelter. Some buildings had been hit. There were glass windows, and blue leaking water. There were anti-aircraft gunners but it was no use. People, blues, ballooning, drifting. Groceries blown all over the streets. Run to the theatre, get in the theatre!”

*

“[Name omitted] was then elected president of Finland, succeeding Sauli Niinistö. She went to Tallinn to accompany an art exhibition or installation, but was protected by her bodyguards. I wanted to see her, but was nervous. We would meet at Kumu. I agreed we could talk about her new flower book. Along the way, several people stopped me to ask for directions around Tallinn. But Tallinn had changed. It was like Stockholm. It was set out on islands, with bridges everywhere …”

Excerpts from my journal, written April 2023 – February 2024

WE WERE SOMEWHERE in the Far East. At least it felt that way because I knew that the flight home was going to be a long one. Getting to the airport was an ordeal. You had to go down to the port and take a ship across the harbor. It was easier to land planes on that side, between the mountains. These were large ferries that made the voyage every 20 minutes. Much of the transport time involved checking and loading passengers. We were late though because on our way to the port, our little dinghy got stuck in the swamps. It was me, two of my daughters, and Kermit Haas, the world famous Estonian cubist painter. When we got to the port, my eldest made it aboard the ship and proceeded to the plane, but the youngest and I stayed behind, in part because I got to talking to Gunna and one of her girlfriends there. They were dressed as if they were about to go out to some nightclub. We agreed to meet again.

If there would ever be an again.

But we missed the next ferry to the airport, and decided not to proceed on our journey. Instead, Kermit drove us around the harbor to his house, where there had been planned for him a surprise birthday party. Somehow this part of the area looked quite like the opposite shore of Viljandi Lake, and there was even snow on the ground. Some farmers were out tending to rusty old machines in their snowy farmers’ fields. The house was full of people. I was surprised to see Linnéa was there. She was a friend of Kermit’s as I understood it. She was dressed in a white blouse and her blonde hair hung about her shoulders. She was filming the entire event with her phone, broadcasting it live via multiple Instagram accounts. As usual, she ignored me. I kept looking in her direction, hoping she might make eye contact, but there was just blackness in those eyes. It was not only that she was ignoring me. It was as if I didn’t exist.

Toward the end of the party, an African fellow who worked at Wolt showed up. He was dressed in his delivery clothes. He went over to Linnéa and put his arm around her, and I realized they were together. The Wolt delivery man and Linnéa left the party together, but at the last moment, she looked in my direction. This time I could see it in her eyes that she recognized me, albeit faintly. The two of them left. The rest of the guests were hoisting Kermit Haas in the air.

There were balloons floating up everywhere.

RORY AND MAIMU were two local poets. One day, they came to town when it was all iced over. There had been about six weeks of continuous snowfall, with temperatures plunging to about 20 below, and when the thaw came at the cusp of February, it flooded the streets. When it dipped below zero again, the streets froze over, meaning that the entire town was covered in ice. Ever-long blocks of white and purple. You had to skate from house to house. You couldn’t even walk. And this is how Rory and Maimu and I wound up skating over to the Park Hotel.

Rory was wearing his sweater, tied loosely around his neck, and Maimu had her braid pulled up on one side. They were talented skaters. They were talented poets. Their books had been dipping into the Top 10 and out of it all winter long. They went zooming down Koidu Street, pass the little Coop market and the Green House Café, then turned up Tartu Street. I skated behind them, but when I got to the intersection, a truck was passing and I just couldn’t stop. The truck barely missed me, and I skated on. At Oru Street, it was the same, and I watched as a woman in a red car drove headfirst into a snow pile just to avoid me. I waved and apologized.

There was an old Victorian mansion in the park, one that I had never seen before. It was where the statue of Köler the painter is, or was. It was all painted gray, and the the paint on the façade was peeling off. When I got there, a girl took me by the hand. She said that Rory and Maimu had gone inside for some tea. They were going to write some poetry together. The girl said they were planning to renovate the house and yard, once the EU money came through.

I WAS STANDING outside a large house. It was almost like a university dormitory and I have no idea how I got there. It was so dark out that I couldn’t really make out the structure of the building either, but it seemed to be vast, rectangular, and have many windows. I had a small satchel full of coconuts with me and a machete. Don’t ask me how these came into my possession. My back was to the building, and I cut one of the coconuts open, and lifted it to drink its sweet water. Supposedly, this stuff is the healing elixir lifesource itself. Drink enough and you will be replenished. Instead, a kind of algal green slime poured forth. I let it run into the snow and could see the snow turn green. Fermented, I thought. Simply undrinkable.

From a basement level window, I could see steam puffing out, and when I peeked inside, I immediately saw a nude young woman. I stepped back, still holding my machete and coconuts, not wanting to get caught peeking, but then glanced through the window once more, and saw there were actually two women in there. One of them was straddling the other, and she was moaning. “Yes, yes, just like that,” she said. Maybe this was an all-woman’s dorm? I tried not to listen, but could not help but keep one ear focused. Why did these things keep happening to me? It’s not like I went around searching for showering lesbians. They found me all the same.

I pulled another coconut from my satchel and hacked off its top with my blade. To my surprise, it was actually two coconuts that had grown together, a kind of double-barrelled coconut, with two channels. The water was warm, sticky, sweet, refreshing, everything that coconut water was supposed to be and more. After draining both channels, I felt fully restored, and put the coconut in my bag for later consumption. The showering co-eds were still moaning downstairs, but I walked around the building, showed my pass, and went inside.

Down one hallway, I noticed stairs that led up to a computer lab. The room was dark, but all of the computer monitors were on. Esmeralda was sitting there, squinting at the screen. She was smiling. Esmeralda looked happy. Her brown hair was tied up in a bun, and she was wearing that dress she used to wear when she worked at the café. I thought she looked beautiful, with that special slope of her eyes. She really was such a beautiful girl. I didn’t want to disturb her. Esmeralda looked so happy sitting alone. Maybe someone else had sent her a love letter.

THE WEATHER WAS WARM but overcast, so I decided to take a bike ride through the Old Town. I got as far as the Town Hall Square, but didn’t see anyone, not a single soul. The Christmas market had been dismantled, and there were shipping pallets stacked up on the street corners. A few pigeons pecked about, but there were no people there. Not one person. All of the shops and restaurants were shut, as were the beer halls, puppet theatres, and amber dealers. Everything was closed, locked up tight. Even the Depeche Mode bar. I was mystified.

I rode my bike up toward the train station after that. This was the street called Nunne, but it looked different. Some hipster cafes were open, and chairs and tables were scattered across the street, but there was nobody seated in them. All of the empty chairs made it hard to pass by. But that wasn’t the only thing that was off. At the end of Nunne Street, I saw that there was now a canal separating the Old Town from the Baltic Station. There had always been a pond there at the foot of Toompea, called the Snelli Tiik, but this had flooded over and expanded.

The canal was quite wide and deep.

“A few elevated wooden platforms had been erected across the canal, but these were almost flooded over, with all of the runoff from the melting snow. The wood was also coming apart from the regular wear and tear. I was reminded of an article I once read written by Jaak Juske, about how there used to be a canal in the middle of Tallinn, but that they had filled it in sometime in the middle of the 1930s. I walked my bike across one of the bridges alone. Halfway across, I noticed that one of my tires was flat and I decided to pump it right there — I had a bike pump in my bag — but a pedestrian behind me, a blonde woman with a bunch of shopping bags, was annoyed with me. “Do you mind?” she said in Estonian. “You’re in the way. Tule eest!”

“Tule eest, yourself lady,” I y and continued pumping away. “Wait, you’re the only person I have seen all day. Where is everyone else?” I said. “There’s a big sale on at Viru Keskus,” she replied. “Major discounts in all the outlet stores, plus you can get a good deal at the new restaurants!”

The closer she got to me, the lower the canal platform sank. Finally, with the weight of all those shopping bags, the canal bridge collapsed into the green waters. The blonde shopper swirled in the rapids. I could see her outstretched arm and the bags from Zara and Sportland.

Then she was gone.

I swam briskly to the other side, pulling my bicycle across with me. The pump went floating by and I grabbed that too. Then I got up on the other bank of the canal, finished pumping my tires, and cycled away. I needed to make that last train to Viljandi. It would be leaving soon.

THE CAR DROPPED ME OFF just outside the city limits and screeched off into the polar night. It was near some home improvement stores and car dealers’ lots. The terrain was familiar, that long highway that stretched out past Karula and those dark forests all the way to Tallinn, but the area had been developed in my time away. It seemed that Swedish brands had moved in. There was a Spotify office, a Volvo dealer, and even a Marabou chocolate distributor now. A new shopping center had been built beside the other new one. I went in. In its central atrium, there stood a Christmas tree festooned with gold and tinsel, and little plastic mechanical elves and reindeer danced robotically to Andy Williams’ hit “Happy Holiday/The Holiday Season.”

I rode the escalator up to the second floor. Most of the shops were already closed, but there was a burger and fries fast food restaurant that was still open. A few local women tended to the fries, which sat in small cardboard containers glowing beneath a warm orange light. The burgers, fresh off the griddle, were dressed quickly in silver packaging and lined up to cool on a rack, like tiny astronauts. I placed an order for fries and waited for my number to be called. But when I looked back, all the lights had been turned off, and there were no burgers left.

Then a young woman came out holding my fries and she told me they had shut for the night. Her light hair was cut in bangs, or a fringe as they say, and she had two braids. She was an Estonian, for sure. She had light blue eyes. She said, “Soon I am going to go and live in a commune on the North Coast. There will be good people there, spiritual people. Would you be willing and come to live with me in the woods?” She handed me the fries and I thought it over. Why did I keep running into women like this? A commune on the North Coast? An ashram in India? I didn’t know what to make of it, but decided to tell her yes. When an Estonian fry cook with golden braids asks you to go live with her in a commune on the North Coast, you say yes.

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.

‘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.”