high water

WE WERE SEQUESTERED in Ülejõe, near the Konsum parking lot, on account of some grave and rising health threat. Rory Lapp was the first to undergo screening and then he was released to return to his schedule. I think Rory was able to get over the bridge, I remember only glancing at him from behind, in his blue jeans and orange vest, but maybe he stayed behind, I don’t know. The sun was sinking into the river by then and the waters were rising.

When I went into the first tent for assessment, a young woman, dark hair and freckles, used a metal implement about the size of a match, a kind of awl, to pierce my skin and remove a small piece of flesh, just as the Lakota did during their Sun Dance ceremonies. Then she took this offering to the creator and instead of securing it in a tube for further analysis, she tasted it, ruminating and focusing on its flavor, as if that could tell her something about my overall state.

“Yes,” she said, nodding and tasting, “Yes, it’s just as I thought.” She never told me what it was.

From the main, brightly lit medical tent, I was led outside. The river waters were even higher, they were overrunning the high banks and running down into this part of the town, creating rapid whirlpools and swirling eddies. I watched as an old orange Volkswagen Beetle was swept away by the high waters, its owner just able to get out before the car was lost for good. High up on the riverbank, I could hear my Krishna devotee neighbors talking while this went on.

They were laughing and toasting the flood.

And then I was brought into a temporary tent, where it seemed like a dozen strangers were trapped in the sticky darkness. One of them, Alma, a blonde civil servant I knew from town, a few years older than me, seemed to jump me at once, crawling on top of me. She said, “Oh, good. I have always wanted to do this to you.” That’s how I wound up making passionate love in the darkness of a quarantine tent. There was a lot of sweating, blending, fusing. I pressed up against Alma’s hair, her ruddy, blushing face. It was rich and cathartic, but the situation gave everything a kind of menacing portent. What else do you do when the world reaches its end?

linnéa and peeter

HALFWAY THROUGH THE NIGHT the hallway closet dissolved. This was more like a built-in storage space, with hooks for hanging coats and some shelving above and below. There had been too many old jackets there and too many old boots, but these had been replaced by a glowing substance, part gauze, part spiderweb, part marshmallow. Cotton candy, if you will.

Through the cotton candy door, I could see Linnéa in her bedroom.

She was trying on different dresses, standing there before a mirror. A yellow polka dot dress, a purple dress. She smoothed out the fabric, turned from side to side, singing gently to herself as she went, lyrics to songs I had never heard of, or whispering comforting phrases. Yes, the blue dress! This was the one! Her hair was a brilliant yellow. Her lashes were plump and long.

Then she noticed me watching her and climbed through the doorway. “We have to talk,” she announced, taking me by the arm. “It’s time that I told you everything.” She hoisted herself up onto my white, queen-sized bed, and stretched out as if she was doing the backstroke. She was a sight. Her long bluestockinged legs stretched out before me like soothing Atlantic horizons. “It’s been too long, it’s been too long since I told you everything,” Linnéa said.

But soon her boyfriend Peeter would be back. Linnéa was now in a serious relationship and I was expected to blend like all other men into a dim gray background, to melt into the anonymous crowds. Such bedside confessionals were strictly verboten. Peeter then entered through the cotton candy door. He was youthful and had a princely moustache. Peeter was wearing a fur vest and had white war paint across his cheeks. He said, “Hello, I am Peeter.”

“I know,” I told him. “And who are you?” He asked. “I am who I am,” I told him. We stood there looking at each other for a while. I was waiting for him to put the hatchet into me. But Prince Peeter did no such thing. Instead his eyes softened a bit. “It’s good of you, it’s good of you to be a friend to Linnéa,” he said. Then he began to talk of more trivial things, like his job, and politics and trade policy, and other things in which I had no real interest. But there was no revenge and there was no heartbreak and Linnéa had selected the exactly right-colored dress.

of dogs and cars

IN A PARKING LOT with Hendrik Hendrikson, James Simmul, who was probably the only Estonian I knew named James, and a talented bass guitarist at that, and small toy car and a dog. Hendrik was talking about an upcoming game night to be held at the old cultural palace. I was barely paying attention. He was originally from Massachusetts and just old enough that he could have been, had he so desired, a member of New Kids on the Block. This made me always look at him strangely, trying to imagine him side by side with Donny Wahlberg and Jordan Knight. Was Hendrik Hendrikson the sixth New Kid? How many of them were there even?

They kind of wandered off after that. The house was an old hospital that had been converted into an commercial building, with a white facade and vague Stalinist and Federalist elements, with ivy growing around the columns in front, and a pale blue visible beneath the chipped paint of the exterior. I heard there was a concert happening at the castle ruins, or maybe near the old manor house? Hendrik Hendrikson and James Simmul roamed off into the crowds, which left me, an Australian sheepdog named Lou and a toy car that I could fit inside of.

This was sort of like my daughter’s toy car, except that it had a front and back seat and a trunk. It was made out of cheap plastic. So cheap that when I tried to back out of the parking lot, with Lou in the back, the steering wheel came off and it rolled to a halt between two very pricey vehicles, which had obviously been leased and indebted their pretend “owners,” a BMW and a Porsche. Oh, the anxiety of watching that car land in the middle, stopping against a wall.

The dog was unharmed, happily panting in the back, and I reinserted the wheel in front. Leaving this parking lot was turning out to be harder than I thought. But I knew my parents place was up the road apiece, and I would just have to navigate that tricky three-way intersection before it would just be shady country roads all the way back to the homestead. The hook that held the back of the toy car shut had come off too, so I jammed the doors together, the dog in the back, and began my tedious journey. Then my daughter Lucinda came running out of the bushes, clad in her overalls, looking almost like I did when I was that age.

“Daddy!” “What the hell are you doing hiding in the bushes?” I hoisted her into the trunk with the dog, and we set off. It was getting evening now, I was worried about rush hour traffic. I wasn’t sure where this place was. The house had all kinds of strange businesses operating inside of it. A New York-style deli on the right. A Soviet-style hospital on the further right.

I got the car going, but then I lost control of the steering wheel again, or rather it came off in my hands, one of the wheels fell off, and the whole car drove headfirst into a stone wall at the other end of the parking lot. Somehow I was in two places as this happened. I was in the driver’s seat and I was behind the car watching it happen, two vantage points at once. Huh?

When I woke up, I was in the hospital in the dark. Maybe I had hit my head? It felt kind of sore. Or maybe those were the drugs wearing off? I found my pants on the floor. Outside the door, I could hear the audio from an Estonian television news program. Priit Kuusk was looking very serious and saying serious things about Ukraine and Russia and drone bits. I had to get out of this place. I knew they were going to probably restrain me, or put me through some formal process, some bureaucracy to get out of it. But I needed to find my dog Lou and my daughter Lucinda and they might still be out there waiting patiently in my little toy car. My pants not even buckled, I was already out the door. We were going to make it, little toy cars be damned.

supermarket

IN THE SUPERMARKET, it seemed as if I couldn’t find anything. Long aisles full of goods, but the ones I wanted or was in search of eluded me. That supermarket was so vast that even the section I was in could have accommodated a whole neighborhood of Beijing or Mexico City. And between these rows of canned goods and leftover Easter merchandise flitted Dulcinea.

I would catch a glimpse of her at the end of the aisle or turning a corner, some locks of her gold hair, her gray pants, but she never acknowledged me. Still, she must have seen me, because only a woman who was purposefully making sure to move in such a way, to avert her gaze in such a way, to turn her torso just so, must have seen the person she was working so hard to avoid. Was this how things would stay between us? Just like this? But I was right here.

Then I saw her, fully, from the back, the whole fish. She was inspecting different loaves of Estonian rye bread for consistency. I traced out her silhouette. Now was my chance to break down the emotional and physical walls between us. That hair, those curves, that smell. Her. Dulcinea. She was there. I was here. And I loved her so. This was the strong stuff. The bright lights of the supermarket beaming down. She read the ingredients and took her bread and was on her way, turned a corner, hurried off. But would she one day see me? One day would she?

the narva bakery

THE SUN WAS RISING as I was strolling along the river promenade when, on a whim, I decided to turn up one side street that arched back toward the gray center of town. It was morning in Narva, where it was perpetually late February or early March. Ice clung stubbornly to every façade and rooftop. One’s breathe, like smoke, was always visible and drifting, and the sounds of sturdy boots punched out a clean rhythm on the city’s frosty mottled sidewalks.

About halfway up this street, I noticed a wooden house packed in between two mighty Soviet-era structures. It had a multipaned window that bowed out into the street. Behind the glass, I could see fresh loaves of bread, scones, Cornish pasties. I looked up at the sign but couldn’t make out the hand-painted name. Was it Trelawney? Pendragon? One of those names.

How could it be? How could it be that there was a British bakery hidden in the back streets of Narva? Who was the rogue baker who dared to operate in this sea of Russia-facing Russianness? What clients did he have? Did they even know what a pasty was? What a secret!

It was terribly cold at that moment and I thought a hunk of good sourdough, a slab of butter, some good marmalade, and a strong coffee would be the ultimate fix. Through the window I could see the baker at work, though his back was to me, and he was dressed in old-fashioned clothing. This was not fully Dickensian attire, but he had on a gray coat and flat cap, and an old checkered scarf wrapped around his neck from a century ago. He was an older man, but not much older. It could have maybe been a handful of years between us, but his hair shone silver.

I knocked on the door and then tapped on the window. “Can I come in?” I said. Behind the man, I could see stacks of tea chests with words like Premium and East India stamped all over them. The man cocked his head as if he was confused by the situation. Then he mouthed to me the words, “We’re closed,” through the window and went back about his work. But why were they closed? I was maybe the only person who was lucky enough to find that Narva bakery. Why shut me out?

vance

AFTER VICE PRESIDENT JD Vance returned from his trip to Tallinn, it was said that a great change had come over him. No one was quite sure what had catalyzed this right-on-time midlife crisis onset, but it could have been the sum of experiences. Maybe it was viewing the Anton Corbijn retrospective at Fotografiska, or merely watching men and women the same age as him engaged in stirring table tennis matches in the many yards and alleyways of Telliskivi. Maybe it was his first taste of a delicious VLND Burger. Nobody knew what had caused it.

The changes were visible. The Ulysses S. Grant-inspired beard was the first to go, followed by that sharp suit he had worn when famously lecturing Zelenskyy. After the Tallinn trip, Vance had started wearing a pale blue, long-sleeve shirt that read TALLINN on it. The shirt was one-size too large, which gave Vance a billowy, college-freshman-getting-over-his-hangover look.

It was this changed Vance that I encountered at the Elliott School of International Studies in Washington, DC, a few weeks later when I went to retrieve a few books I had left behind in the student lounge during a six-week crash course in Baltic Studies. I went into the sparse, multi-level area, climbed a set of stairs and found the books in the corner where some older couples were sitting around and chatting. One of the women, with dyed blonde hair, wore a pink dress, the amount of cleavage visible was on the level of the grotesque. Who were these people?

It was then that I noticed a van pull up outside the school, and Vance and his entourage — a mix of press pool, Secret Service, and Hillybilly Elegy fans — follow him in. With his pink, cleanly shaven face and TALLINN long-sleeve t-shirt, it occurred to me that Vance was starting to look more ex-boyband star than vice president. He came into the lobby and was mobbed by students. Then he told his followers that he needed a rest and sat down on a couch across from me. I was nervous. What could I tell Vance? Was now the time to do some lobbying on behalf of the Baltics? What would Kasekamp say? How would he handle this? I decided to play it cool, to let him do the talking, to make him think that I was his friend. If I came at him with some slogans, he was more likely to tune me out. For whatever reason, the president had not yet turned on Vance, despite his new look. Perhaps after having alienated the British and Italian prime ministers and the Pope, he had decided that annoying the man who could make him redundant with one flip of the 25th Amendment was not the best idea.

“Well,” Vance said. “I came to hear your ideas.” Something about that Ohio drawl made “ideas” sound like “odors.” His put his hands on his thighs, leaned in. “You want to smell our odors?” I asked. Vance gave me a strange look. I gave him a strange look. It occurred to me that I might be tripping. Had I been dosed? How else to explain the weird 1950s couple in the student lounge, especially the woman with the pink dress and obscene cleavage. What was going on?

I noticed some other students in the back, leftwing university alumni, familiar to me from my undergraduate days. They began to circle each other. I was mortified. They were going to mess up my lobbying on behalf of the Baltics. We had Vance right here in the palms of our hands. He was becoming one of us, the seventh friend, so to speak, in addition to Ross, Phoebe, Joey, Monica, Chandler and Rachel. Or was JD Vance the replacement for Chandler? All we needed to do was give him some good coffee and his transition to the light would be complete. And those boneheads wanted to insult him? To my amazement, they began singing a familiar song. It was “When You Wish Upon a Star,” the Disney anthem. One of the protestors had even dressed up like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia and was dancing on the hands of the protestors.

“Anything your heart desires will come to you!” Mickey shouted down at JD Vance. I clasped my hands over my eyes. I was certain that I had been drugged. None of this could be true. But when I looked back, I saw that JD Vance was crying. The impromptu singing of the Disney song had moved something in him. “I love that song,” he said. “I just love that song.” Vance turned to me and said, “I’m staying here with you guys.” Happy collegiate faces surrounded him, encouraging his big change. Someone shouted out, “Get this man a latte with coconut milk!”

“No, sir,” said James David Vance, shaking his head. “I ain’t ever going back to the White House.”

connery

AFTER THE EVENT, I was approached by a woman who looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure where I knew her from. People were slowly leaving, many of them taking their time as they walked back to their cars. It must have been some kind of outdoor concert, or maybe a spring wedding in the countryside. It was light out, but a dim, dusky sort of light that hung in the air. We found ourselves at a small playground, and the woman took a seat on a seesaw across from me. We balanced each other out. She told me that she knew who I was, but that we had never met. She said that she worked for the BBC. The woman from the BBC had light-coloured hair, but there was mischief in her features, in the shape of her lips or behind those eyes. Then she said, sliding across the seesaw to me, “I have wanted to do this since I saw you in Dr. No,” and she began to kiss me. Ferociously. Violently. I felt like I was being consumed by her. Something about the seesaw encounter with the woman from the BBC unsettled me to my core. Especially those words she said to me while sucking on my ears, “I loved you in Thunderball.”

After we parted ways, I went home and decided to wash up. It was then that I saw what she had been talking about. There, peering back at me in the mirror, was Sean Connery, the actor who had played James Bond in the 1960s. I looked just like Connery in the mirror, the suit, the tufts of brown hair, that slightly amused expression. But how could it be? When I looked down at my hands, they were my hands, not Connery’s hands. My arms were my arms. I could make out the slope of my nose if I focused closely on it. But in the mirror I was Connery, suit, tie, and everything. When had this happened? At what point had I turned into Sean Connery?

I tried to find out more about the woman from the BBC, obtaining information from various intelligence contacts. She had once had short hair, in a Princess Diana-inspired period, and had been married to some New Wave singer who had committed suicide, or was it autoerotic asphyxiation? What was I to do about my newfound predicament? Or, well, being Sean Connery wasn’t all too bad. It had its perks, certainly. When I was in the shower, washing up, there was a knock at the door and Tarja came in, dressed in white. “I just happened to be in the neighborhood,” she said, “and …” Her eyes went downward and a dreamy look settled across her face. “What?” I said, lathering myself with soap. “Do you see it?” “Oh, I see it,” she said. But then I realized she was referring to my physique, not the fact that I had turned into Connery. Which made no sense. Had I merely been Connery to the woman from the BBC? Maybe every woman was seeing her own desires in me? “I have to go to Stockholm,” I told her.

“I am coming with you,” Tarja decided. She left the shower and when I exited and dried off, a towel still around my waist, I could see her white suitcase there, next to mine. But I didn’t want Tarja to accompany me to Stockholm. Wasn’t she married? How could this have ever been a good idea? A man in a 1940s suit was standing there with my things and said, “I think I see her husband coming.” “You do?” “Yes, he’s just over the hill.” “Can you please just tell her that I needed to go to Stockholm alone.” I put on my clothes, went outside and found her seated beneath a tree with her husband and children. She looked up at me sorrowfully. “It looks like we just broke up,” she said. “All on account of you. The good news is that I can come!”

“No,” I said. “I need to go to Stockholm alone!” I needed to catch the next LuxExpress bus to the capital, to get on the right ship. But Tarja’s interloping had cost me 10 minutes and when I looked back, from beneath that outdoor tree, I saw the bus drive by. The man in the 1940s suit then appeared and said, “Looks like you two will have to drive up, come I’ve got the car ready, your bags are in the trunk.” So it was settled. An overnight cabin with Tarja, an adulterous liaison. I began to miss the woman from the BBC. She had been so upfront with her feelings and desires. She just took me right there, on a seesaw. There was no weirdness, there was no hesitation. I wondered if Connery’s life had been like that. Women seizing him at parties, no questions asked. There was no way to know anymore though because the old chap was dead.

double plastic

A DIM BEDROOM, sprawled on the bed. She told me that she had sworn off men, for all time, on account of our serious inadequacies in every department, but that didn’t stop her from walking in and climbing into bed alongside of me, while we watched some long-forgotten TV show from the Nineties, something action fantasy, like Xena: Warrior Princess. We began to kiss then, which surprised me, but I went with it, then quickly I had the shirt up, revealing pleasant rolls of womanly middle-aged fat. Like pre-baked pastry dough. I disappeared into her chest with soft and long licks until her son came into the room for a moment. With a certain deftness I repositioned us in an instant, so that it looked like we were just reclining.

The moment he was gone, the sex continued. I wore a condom and she inserted a female condom, which looked like one of those clear plastic bags you get at the supermarket, you know, the kinds you fill up with bananas or chestnuts. The friction of my plastic against her plastic rendered the whole experience double plastic. I couldn’t feel a thing. I didn’t know if anything was happening. Somehow I had lost all sensation in my body. Her own freckled face wore a haunted, sleepy expression. “Are we making love?” I asked her. “Because I just can’t tell.”

After the double plastic incident, I left the house, took a long drive. It was a sunny day, I was cruising down some boulevard in a sprawl of gas stations, supermarkets, and telephone poles. Sonja was there, waiting on the street corner, about eight months pregnant. She looked beautiful with her blonde hair, all dressed in black, plus that big fat gut showing beneath her.

What else was there to do but give her a ride?

“But why are you still being nice to me?” she asked. “Can’t you see I’m carrying another man’s child?” She wasn’t very happy about being treated so royally by me, with the chauffeur escort business — we had just pulled into a home improvement store parking lot. “Because you are you,” I told her. “And I still like you, wherever you happen to be in your life.” I went on, “Plus I am going to miss you. Once that baby pops out, you are going to disappear for a while. You are going to be in the baby cave or cocoon. It’ll be years before we ever have the chance to have a normal conversation again.” Sonja found all of this disarming, but she softened upon hearing it.

Inside the home improvement store, there was a carnival, and Sonja paid a few euros to throw giant balls at some targets. Maybe she would get a prize. She threw another ball and struck the target. Lights began to flash. Then my eldest daughter walked by and started to watch Sonja. “Who is that woman?” she said, almost in awe of this pregnant Amazonian throwing balls at a home improvement store carnival. “She is amazingly beautiful,” she said, as if she was observing an especially colorful fish at an aquarium. “She is,” was all I could say to that. “She is.”

community cinema

ON MY BACK on the kitchen floor, she was facing me, her hair all done up in curls. She was very proud of herself because of the success of her latest exhibition. She was wearing a white gown, I imagine she had been sleeping, or was in the midst of preparing for bed. I looked up from my spot on the floor and said, “Come here,” and pulled her on top of me. She laughed when I did this. There was of course the question of how far this kitchen game would go.

The kitchen hadn’t been remodeled for decades. There was blue tile on the walls, one window with a raggy curtain. Two other Viljandi ladies sat behind her on chairs. They were enjoying the scene, it was just like their community cinema, kogukonnakino. Our faces were face to face, and her dark curls were everywhere, and then the lips parted. There was that hesitancy that’s always there, the heft of a warm figure across my abdomen, and then the tongues that began to probe each other, like playful little snakes. One went in and the other went around.

As this was going on, the Viljandi ladies from the community cinema approached her from the back and began to massage her legs. She laughed out of pleasure and joy, and the kissing continued. Then, from downstairs, I heard the creak of a door, and the fourth woman arrived, a young artist in a corduroy jacket. Somehow I could see her in the foyer even though I was on the floor. Her eyes smarted with happiness. Her reddish hair was pulled back, her cheeks were rosy pink. She had a package in hand. Another birthday gift! “Well,” she said. “I’m here!”

easter

BLUE CHOCOLATE EASTER EGGS, stolen from somewhere. I was seated in the Viljandi Library, assembling baskets for the librarians. But how many eggs to give each? They needed to be allotted according to size. I wasn’t going to let any single librarian be the favorite. I filled the baskets, each one had an equal amount of smaller and larger ones. These were beautifully decorated with golden designs ringing the metallic blue. When this was all done, I stepped out

I noticed I had a broom in my hand. Strange. I had never tried to fly with a broom. Like a real witch, or male witch. What were we called? Warlocks? It was a bright day with a strong cool wind blowing from the north, and I rose up into it with the broom between my legs. This proved hard to steer, I pointed the broomstick toward Kodukohvik, clawing at the cold air as if trying to swim, but the winds blew me back toward the shopping center and I struck a giant billboard of my daughter’s fourth grade teacher Miss Madu before sliding down to the ground.

There I was, on the hard stones of the sidewalk, when Ignacio came walking by, looking like a true troubadour. He had on his black cap; this only drew more attention to his folk singer’s mustache. Ignacio said, “I have to go back to Chile, man, but I don’t want to,” he pulled at his eyelids as he did it. “I don’t want to go back.” He said Chile was full of liars and manipulators.

After that I went in a nearby cafe, where I ordered up a cappuccino. Who else should be sprawled out on the couch but the poetess Els Stenbock, nestled beneath a blanket in the blue light, her eyes all fire and her hair all gold, beads of sweat on her brow. I dove into her like one dives into a swimming pool. Struan Peel was there. He was jealous. Frowning, moping. He said, “You two are going to get married,” I said, “But we can’t, she’s already married.” She was.

Struan looked back with some agony at the baristas, but they were all attracted to the same sex, be they man or woman. There was no love to be had for this young straight Englishman who looked like Shakespeare, and so he walked sullenly out of the bar. I gave Els another kiss, and she purred. It felt good to be kissed, to have any intimacy at all. I had started to doubt in love all together and then … So there was one woman who did not despise me in this world? She was hiding out at the cafe on Tallinn Street? “Come back here,” Els Stenbock demanded.

But I couldn’t. I had to find Struan, who was stricken with grief and self-doubt after having been rejected by the gay baristas. “There’s no love left for me,” he had muttered before leaving. “There’s just no love.” Outside things in the streets had changed. This was no a longer town, these were the frozen wastes. A musket ball went whizzing by. When I looked down, I saw that I was in the uniform of the Swedish army. Embroidered into my blue uniform was a golden XII.

I was in the Great Northern War. I scrambled down a snowy hillside, more musket balls went flying by, and I heard the sounds of Russian being spoken from a nearby grove of spruces. The soldiers had built a barrier made of branches, and as I stood on these branches, I could see that I was standing on top of a deep, open well. I looked down into this frozen well and saw the branches emerging. What even was this? The tree of life? The branches circled, almost as if they were arranged into constellations. Space, time and trees intertwined. What good fortune that I hadn’t fallen in. Who knew how deep this was. It was all just too puzzling. Where was I?

I decided after that to go back to the cafe after that, to the safety of Els and the couch, where she no doubt lied in waiting for me, warm beneath a blanket. But there was no street anymore and there was no cafe and there was no door. There were just fields of snow, forests full of trees, cannons blasting in the distance. I was stuck here in the great war. Where was that door?