the treasury department

AFTER HIS COMPLETION of the Epstein Ballroom, President Donald J. Trump went to work on a new building to house Scott Bessent’s Treasury Department. The old Federal and Georgian-style Treasury Building, the central and east wings of which were erected in 1835 through 1842, was reduced to rubble and a new castle-like fortress was constructed on its foundation, as tall as the Sagrada Familia. This, strangely, contained elements of New York City’s Trump Tower, and its walls, escalators, and stairwells shined with gold-coated plates.

I was one of the first journalists allowed into the new Treasury Building, escorted inside with a North Korea-style sightseeing group. We were led up the stairs, which were gleaming with gold, to the second floor, which had the décor of an ancient Scottish castle, with moist, dripping stone walls and antique tapestries. Trump was there himself, bedecked in a Highland Tartan, and several other Scotsmen and women sat around an open fire. Trump seemed preoccupied with something and stared intensely into the air. He was whispering to himself and his blue eyes reminded one of a beached fish running out of oxygen. The Scottish guests only stoked the fire and talked loudly about how they felt comfortable in the new Treasury. “Aye, it’s not too opulent,” a bald man in a sweater said. “Only parts are covered in gold! What’s the fuss about?”

Downstairs, I discovered that a food court had opened. There were people sitting all around on wooden benches, the kinds that you might find at an ice skating rink. Here I encountered some Trump supporters in winter coats who were boasting loudly about how decisive their leader was. “Biden could never make up his mind,” one jeered. I intervened and said that, in reality, their president changed his mind almost every day if not minute. “Yes, I will give the Ukrainians Tomahawk missiles. No, I won’t. Yes, well, actually I will. Let’s see what Putin says.” For daring to bring this to their attention, I was cursed out, but I didn’t care. “The only thing Trump’s consistent about,” I shouted at his supporters as they dispersed, “is his love of tariffs!”

Down the gold escalator rode my old friend Eamon O’Toole next, with his loving Irish grin. He was dressed in a white sweater and gold chain, as if he had just got back from a wild house party with Kid and Play. The first thing Eamon O’Toole did upon meeting me in the new Treasury Building was laugh and say, “Well, well, well. Fancy meeting you here!” He had sprouted a slight red beard in the meantime, and there was a crazy gleam in his eyes. I told him about the Trump supporters and the tariff comment. Eamon O’Toole only laughed more. “All of these people suck,” was all Eamon said with an irrepressible delight. “I hate them all.”

We were then interrupted by Rory Lapp, an Estonian writer and poet and coffeehouse ghost who said, “Excuse me, but do you know where a bestselling author might get a decent espresso?” We went over to the coffee machine, but the first cup was full of a strange, milky liquid, and we realized the machine was cleaning itself, so we pushed the button again. Rory stood there in his black button-down shirt, waiting patiently to taste his first Treasury coffee. Funny that I would rendezvous with some of my best friends in such a gilded, tasteless place.

I noticed then a small gray mailbox by the coffee machine and opened it. Inside, I found a single letter, addressed to me, which I opened as well. It was a postcard with a picture of Ronja Rippsild, a prominent Estonian photographer. She was standing there, in her red shirt and green coat, a winter’s hat on her head. She was as pale as ever — I don’t think Ronja was capable of getting tan — and her dark hair hung around her shoulders. The note read, “Goodbye Justin,” and I scanned it intently, hoping that Trump’s demolition of the Treasury Building hadn’t caused my Estonian friend to commit suicide. Instead she said that she had had enough of the world’s problems and was going on a pilgrimage of sorts, which she intended to wrap up by the year 2049. “By that time, I’m sure we can live happy lives again,” Ronja had written. In the meantime, she planned to embark on a global Camino de Santiago.

“Well, that’s one way of coping,” I said to myself. I was going to miss Ronja while she was away. I sighed and returned to the coffee machine, where some loud Trump bashing was underway.

kamppi

SOMETIMES HELSINKI looks a lot like Long Island. I was heading to Kamppi, the impressive gray and gleaming shopping center in the middle of the Finnish capital, but I missed my tram and had to hitchhike. I scored a ride with an older gentleman who wore one of those sugarloaf pilgrim’s hats that were so fashionable in the 17th century, with the proud gold buckle, and shoulder-length greasy hair. During the entire ride, I never saw his face. Not one time. An adolescent boy or girl sat in the passenger’s side seat up front. I never saw his or her face either. It could have been a boy, because the blonde hair was cut so short, but there was something so sleight about the frame that suggested the passenger was a girl with short hair.

Like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby.

“Where can I take you?” the pilgrim man said in a Finnish accent. I told him I was trying to get to Kamppi. “Fair enough.” We drove along a rural road, making a turn that looked too much like the intersection of North Country Road, 25A, and Bennetts Road, near the Bagel Express and CVS Pharmacy (there used to be a Merrill Lynch on this corner, in an old house, but it was bulldozed long ago in the name of progress). The sky was a swirling, glowing psychedelic pink.

We made the left and the pilgrim Finn asked where he should leave me. None of the terrain looked anything like Helsinki. On one side, there were old farms, on the other side, a thick and tangled forest. I got out by the forest, thanked the driver, and began to search for my entry into the Kamppi shopping center. I came upon a series of white Scandinavian-style wooden houses here, and I went into one, thinking that Kamppi must just be on the other side of these houses. The house turned out to be some kind of preschool that wasn’t in session. It was tidy and all of the furniture had been fashioned out of wood. Hearts and horses had been carved into the cabinets and doors, and there were blankets draped across chairs that had been knitted in the traditional Swedish way. A strange place, and though there were multiple levels of the house, none of the doors led to Kamppi and, as I discovered, there was no way out.

I heard a rustling downstairs, then a whistling. One of the preschool teachers had apparently entered. Maybe this was one of those Swedish preschools in Helsinki. A daghemmet. But what would they do with a strange American if they found him snooping around a preschool for the Finlandsvenska? Surely, I would be publicly shamed or lugged off to prison. The cover of Iltalehti. “Hobo arrested.” I decided to hide myself in one of the cabinets. Before I did, I noticed there was a bowl full of shiny yellow delicious apples, ripe and ready. I took one of the golden apples, bit into it, and hid myself away, all while listening to the footsteps as they came closer.

dissolving

DISSOLVING, DREAMING. Shot one: stacks of old furniture arrayed like layer cake. Stacks of old furniture that have decomposed into cake and chocolate and sugar. Cake furniture that can be consumed with a spoon. It’s just as soft and gives way, you can eat a mouthful of it. But it all used to be room furniture. It’s a new way of recycling, of turning old things into dessert.

Shot two: a merry-go-round. A carousel at the sliding glass doors of the Lauttasaari-Drumsö shopping center. It’s evening in Finland, but the light shines on the carousel that spins around and around. She is sitting in one of the merry-go-rounds, the only one there, propelling herself with a steering wheel. She wears a green coat and a red woolen scarf. Why is she looking in my direction? Why is she concerned for me? Why is she not running away like the others? Why have I not been blocked, ignored, and so on? Why do I feel like she won’t leave?

Shot three: she still hasn’t left, even though I have gone several times around the merry-go-round now. The light of the shopping center is on her face. She stands and looks at me. How could she be in Finland if she is in Estonia? She is saying something, but I cannot make out the words. I think she is saying my name. I can see her freckles in the light. I can see her brown hair beneath her cap. I am listening to her. I’m not leaving. Why am I still here? In the distance, there’s a whole dump, a graveyard of furniture converted into chocolate cake. The byproduct of a new kind of technology developed at TalTech that relies on strands of beneficial bacteria.

the drones

OUR PLANE had to be diverted to a regional Scandinavian airport on account of sightings of drones or other unidentified flying objects. I was traveling with what I suspected was the legation from the Danish foreign ministry on its way back from the United Nations meeting in New York. I clearly heard one call the other “Jens,” which seemed to settle it for me. They all wore matching navy-colored outfits, perhaps the attire of the diplomatic corps. The plane passed through the clouds in the moonlight. We landed wherever it was we happened to be.

The airline put us up in a hotel that had been built, based on the architecture, in the 1960s or 1970s, or at least designed to look that way, with its angular roofs and big glass windows. It looked like the setting for an ABBA video. As the rest of the hotel was already full, I was given the penthouse suite, which included a loft. The loft had a bathtub directly below a skylight and a sleeping area, while the lower floor had a couch, television and entertainment center, and a kitchenette opening out onto a balcony, from which a series of steps led down to a parking lot.

I was there on the main floor changing into a t-shirt to sleep in when there came a knock at the door. Outside it was dark and misty, and I couldn’t see who was behind the glass. I went over and opened the door, only to be visited by a strange woman in a red cape with the hood up. She slowly pulled back her cloak to reveal her face and her long golden hair. It was Linnéa! “You,” I said, stepping back. “What are you doing here?” Linnéa came into the room, shutting the door behind her. She rushed in like a gust of autumn wind. She said, “We need to talk.”

I looked at her standing there in her red cape. We were all alone in some hotel in Denmark or Norway. Or was it Sweden? This was an ideal moment to finally consummate the relationship. However the night would end, there was no doubt in mind that sex was on the agenda. How could it not be? Sex had always been in the plans, hot, karmic, transcendent sex. Linnéa’s eyes lit up for a brief second as if reading my mind, but otherwise she gave no hint that she was interested in sleeping with me. Instead she asked, “Do you have a place where I can clean up?”

I showed her the ladder to the loft and its big white bathtub. Linnéa climbed the ladder and began to run the water. Soon the steam from the tub was wafting down to the lower level. The steam fogged the windows. I looked up and could see Linnéa standing there in the nude beside the tub, each one of her breasts as pert and round as a cinnamon roll. It occurred to me that I had never seen Linnéa naked before. That was her, in the flesh. “You know,” I yelled up the ladder. “I could use a bath too! Our plane was diverted because of drones.” But Linnéa pretended not to hear me, or maybe she really didn’t hear me. Either way, I left her alone.

At last, thoroughly bathed and refreshed, she descended the same ladder in her red cloak. She went to a bag and pulled out a magazine. I forget the name of the magazine but it was also red and had something to do with the Tallinn arts scene. She ran her fingertips across the glossy magazine cover in an adoring, reverent way. Linnéa had beautiful fingers. She said, “We need someone to help with this new magazine and you’re just the one to help out. You’re such a great writer. I don’t think there’s a better writer in Estonia. Would you please write for us?”

Linnéa was talking but I was leaning in, centimeter by centimeter, more and more, until I was within kissing distance. But Linnéa pushed me away. She only wanted to talk business. There was no time for love. How long would I have to wait then? How long would I have to wait until Linnéa was here beside me? Something about it depressed me. All of these women, they just wanted to work and to do great things. They were so busy doing great things that it seemed that the simple pleasures of life had been forgotten all together. Food was there to fill an empty belly, drink to quench a dry throat. Sex was just sex, you know. But work was important.

“So, what do you think?” Linnéa asked. “Will you help with the magazine?” At that moment, there was another knock at the door and I went to get it. Into the suite poured the rest of the Danish legation from the plane. There were maybe 10 Danes standing around in their matching uniforms from the foreign ministry with bags and suitcases. The one named Jens stepped forward. He said, “I’m so sorry, but we all have to spend the night.” My heart sank. There would be no intimacy. Another opportunity lost. Of course, I agreed to help with the magazine. I’d write a hundred articles for Linnéa’s magazine if that would keep that woman in my orbit. Somehow, some way.

bendy steps

ON THE WAY to the airport, we stopped at the intersection of Liivalaia and what they call the Tartu Highway. We were opposite of the Stockmann department store, by the Laura beauty salon and a striptease club called Virgins. We were about to hike up the hill to the airport. It was a sunny, dusty day, and from that vantage point, the airport looked like it was a floating mirage, gleaming tall and white. It loomed up over us like the old Police Administration Building from Dragnet, the old home of the LAPD. Don’t you remember that old voice over? “This is the city: Los Angeles.” But we were not in Los Angeles. We weren’t even going there.

We had tickets printed out for a Ryanair flight to Italy or Spain. Whatever one it was, it made no difference. And we were late. I was traveling with my eldest daughter and youngest daughter, the eldest one barely a teenager, the youngest one maybe five years old. “What time is it?” I asked the older one. She looked at her wristwatch, a Swatch. “It says it’s 10:20,” she said. “Damnit,” I said. “We might miss the flight!” She had on a backpack, but the littlest one tugged along a pink-colored Barbie suitcase. The suitcase sputtered over the stones as we went.

Thus we began the hike up the hill toward the airport, traffic whizzing by from all directions. There, by the turn off for Lasnamäe, the littlest one dropped a toy down a long flight of steps. I was surprised by how steep those steps were, they descended for meters and meters, or yards and yards. She expected me to retrieve it. She was crying about her toy. I stepped down onto the first step and noticed that the stairs were not secure. Rather they started to wobble and bend, like they were made of a soft, pliant rubber. The steps had a gummy, candyland quality.

With the next step, I noticed the upper steps started to fold over the lower ones. And by applying my body weight, I could easily make the top of the staircase arch and bend in such a way, as that I could retrieve my child’s lost toy and then spring back up to the Tartu Highway. Imagine a young tree branch pulled downward then released. The steps bent in just such a way. With a few movements, the toy was in my hands, the bendy steps had bounced back into place, and we were on our way. The half Estonian child was happy, if only for a few minutes.

She clutched her lost toy like an old friend.

two women

THERE WAS A FURNITURE SHOP up by the train station where some local entrepreneur had set up his business in a converted old barn. The walls were made of round field stones and the roof had been built and maintained in the old-fashioned style. It was there that I acquired a swivel armchair, plush and upholstered, and then began to push the chair into town on its wheels. This was tedious, but I covered the ground quickly, passing the Konsum and then the Maxima. By the Old Cemetery, where poets and war heroes are entombed, a car pulled up.

It’s hard to say what kind of car it was. It looked like an old black Buick, but I could be remembering it wrong. There were two women inside, both blondes, both about five or so years older than me. One had shorter cropped hair and wore a blue tank top. She was at the wheel. The other had shoulder-length hair, she sat in the back. She wore looser, more colorful, bohemian clothing. The one with the longer hair said, “Hey there, can we give you a ride?”

I said, “But there’s no way my chair will fit in your car!” The longer-haired just smiled. “I bet it’s a perfect fit.” And it was. The chair fit perfectly in the back seat. I sat in the back next to it and the two women sat upfront. When we went to turn at the roundabout toward town, we made another turn and drove into the forests. “We’re leaving for Italy tomorrow,” the driver announced to me. “And you should come with us.” I was hesitant at first. But seeing as two women were willing to give me a ride to Italy, I decided to go. What was there to lose?

The house was situated deep in the woods. It belonged to the woman with shorter hair. She told me her name was Ingrid and that the house had been built by some forefather in the 19th century. There were crooked stairways going to different levels inside Ingrid’s house, and she gave me a room on the top floor, one with windows on every side. There was a large, comfortable bed with a thick blanket in the room and all of the linen and bedding was white. I slept up there alone in Ingrid’s house that night, but when I woke up, she was already in bed with me and we made passionate love. I remember the way the light caught on her eyes the most. Ingrid had sun-kissed skin with lots of freckles. I felt her smoothness everywhere.

Later we got in the car and began our long sojourn south. It would take days to get to Italy, but at least I had good company. Ingrid was at the wheel again and her companion, who was called Astrid, was seated beside me in the back seat. Astrid had on a pair of red pants, some yellow kummikud or boots and a loose-fitting white blouse, held together at the top by a ribbon. A plastic bucket and a knife. She told me we were going to go mushrooming. “But what happened to Italy?” I asked. Astrid just smiled at me, as if I was the dumbest person she had ever met. “Did you really believe us?” she said. “You’re more gullible than I thought.”

Ingrid left us at the edge of a pine forest and went to run some errands. I followed Astrid into woods. Deeper and deeper we went, until I began to worry that I couldn’t remember the way back. I wondered if I would make love with Astrid, just as I had made love with her friend in the morning. It would be interesting to know Astrid, just as I had known Ingrid. I was developing a real taste for these neurotic older women, each one more delicious than the next.

Astrid moved from spot to spot, peacefully filling her bucket with chanterelles and birch boletes. Her fingers became grimier and dirtier from the slaying of many mushrooms. Something drew me to her, a kind of terrifying but enchanting vibration. I could no longer speak, I could no longer think. I was caught up in some strong energy field. The woods began to hum with it and glisten, as if they had for the first time been penetrated by sunlight.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Astrid said to me. “Like what?” I asked. “You’re looking at me as if I was a kohupiimakorp. Do you want something?” I approached her and undid the ribbon to her shirt, exposing her pink chest in the air of the forest. Then I licked her like I was licking the cream off a pastry. “This is all I really want,” I told her, in between licks. “Just this.”

the psychologist

ALL I REMEMBER is that she came into the apartment, closing the door behind her. She began speaking to me at once, in a somewhat worried and anxious tone. Her work was getting to her. Some of the patients at the mental hospital were career criminals and psychopaths, although they did not term them as such. They could be quite seductive and build up a rapport with even the most seasoned psychologists. “They get under your skin,” she had told me. “It’s hard to wash them off.” She had scrubbed and shampooed her luscious blonde hair in vain.

There she was in the cold glow of a kitchen light. It was evening now in Estonia, the darkness was settling in earlier and earlier, and we all knew which way things were heading as the last days of summer faded away and the equinox breathed its first fall-time breathe. She was still talking there in the kitchen, but her cadence was so fast I had a hard time following her. She had on that button sweater of hers, the soft one, and the light made it look only more cloud-like and gauzy, up from the skies. “I’m sorry things are so tough at the mad house,” I said.

I kissed her after that. The psychologist undid all her buttons and soon I was touching her other buttons. My hands were guided by some instinct, I knew just where to push, just where to pull, just how to conjure ecstasy. And then, mid-kiss, her eyes opened and she recoiled in a kind of befuddled plot-twist horror. “We never agreed we could do that!” she stammered at me. “We never had agreement to make love!” “But, but …” My voice trailed off, but it sounded distant, as if it was echoing back from the end of a tunnel. Calamity, despair. All I had wanted to do was take the edge off, to make her feel blissful. I still did. Even as she pushed me away.

boston

THE MAIN SQUARE of Boston had a large, palatial Edwardian-style home at its center, something like the famous painted ladies in San Francisco. This was surrounded by a number of large oaks, from which dangled ribbons and wooden swings, probably put there by the mayor and his many unruly children. I had boarded the T across the river in Charlestown and saw the city as the train passed over the Charles River. Esmeralda was sitting in the train that September morning, along with some other young woman from the Academy. Esmeralda Kask, whose Estonian parents had named her after a character in a Victor Hugo novel, was wearing a corduroy jacket. Her potato brown hair was pulled back, so that her eyes could only better reflect the blue from the sky and river and the white from the clouds over the bay.

She was sitting there listening to the stories of some stylish Japanese man, laughing at every motion of his body or every hint of a joke. He was maybe 30 years old, his dark hair was cut almost like John Lennon’s on the cover of A Hard Day’s Night. Probably an artist, I thought. Or a bioinformatician. Esmeralda’s gems of eyes did not stray from the handsome Japanese. I walked by her, changing my seat, with the hope she might take notice of my existence. There I sat in the middle of the train, the part that turns, where the seats are less comfortable, listening to the hum of their conversation. Each mirthful laugh of hers only hurt me more.

At the center of Boston, by the Edwardian mayor’s residence, we all disembarked. I suppose we were near Beacon Hill, or an associated Hill. Copp’s Hill? Was there a Faneuil Hill nestled in those cobblestone streets somewhere? Esmeralda and her friend disappeared into the crowds, I could see her put her headphones on as she sauntered away, hands in her pockets. The handsome Japanese walked toward the business district. Then I saw him take out his phone and talk to someone, but then grow outraged, shouting, “Five minutes late? Nobody told me!” This was followed by rapid-fire bursts of obscenities, until he threw himself on the ground and his body exploded in a puff of white smoke and crackling fire. People began running after that.

“Come quick,” a woman of Boston said, motioning to me. She was dressed up like a British postal worker from the time of the Second World War, and had her blonde hair tied back in a thick, golden braid. “He seems to have spontaneously combusted,” she said. “Run! Others might start to combust!” The British postal worker easily outpaced me as I ran up the hill, passing by a familiar bookstore, one I had visited each time I was on assignment in Boston.

My pace slowed though as I reached the edge of the square, even though we were all engulfed in a gray haze. I wondered why I just couldn’t be bothered to run away from things anymore. There was no immediacy to my flight. Maybe I didn’t care if I would be spontaneously combusted that day? If it didn’t happen on that day, it could have happened on any other. All I could think about was Esmeralda Kask and how she had ignored me again. Why did she ignore me?

My running slowed to a half-hearted jog.

Down a street, I ducked into a building and climbed up a flight of old stairs. This happened to be the studio of a popular area radio station. At once, I was led to a desk where Will Ferrell sat opposite me, asking me about the blast, what I had seen, what I had heard. I told him about the train over the Charles River, my encounter with Esmeralda Kask, and her affinity for the handsome Japanese. “It seems he had some kind of meltdown because he was late,” I told Will Ferrell. “That caused him to spontaneously combust.” “Mmm,” Will Ferrell said, listening to me live on the air. “Is there anything else you would like to say?” “Only that I feel guilty,” I told him. “I feel guilty that it gave me some pleasure to watch another man destroy himself in public. Because no matter how good Esmeralda’s love is, it shouldn’t be worth the sight of another human being in pain, just because of my own jealousy, my own envy, my own pathetic malice.”

possessed house

SOMETHING WAS WRONG with their new house. They told me that it was “possessed.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I went over to see for myself. It was down one of the older, zigzagging walking streets in the Old Town. The interior hadn’t been refurbished since the Imperial Swedes had the run of the place. When I walked up the steps into the kitchen, I noticed how musty and dreary the house was, but that hadn’t stopped my father-in-law and his wife from acquiring it. He was there by the sink, but looked different. His cheeks were pink and rosy. His eyes had turned orange or yellow, and his pupils were white instead of black.

He did seem in good spirits as he involved himself in some mundane task. His wife came over and kissed him on the cheek, but her eyes were also orange-yellow. I looked at him and said his name, but he cocked his head as if he had never heard it. “Don’t you know what your name is?” I asked him. He was almost too jolly. My father-in-law, or former father-in-law, was not especially known for jolly moods while undertaking renovation. He was a taciturn, quiet sort of man. He chuckled loudly and the white wisps of hair around his ears made him look comical.

I walked up to him and pushed his chest. “Don’t you remember your name?” I said, pushing him. He seemed taken aback. “You need to wake up and remember your name,” I said. I pushed him so hard he fell on the floor, and in that dizzying instant, I saw his orange-yellow eyes flicker to a light blue again. He wiped them and looked around the kitchen, dazed and blinking.

“What is going on here?” he said. “Where am I?”

It was true then that the house was possessed. But where was the ghost? I was waiting for it to make itself visible, to manifest, appear, but as I searched it from top to bottom, I saw nothing, only cobwebs and dust. Maybe the entirety of the house was possessed and so it would be impossible to see just what was possessing it. From the outside of the house though I noticed I could see a white bird flying on the second floor of the building. The bird hovered there as if to land and then fell dead on the floor. Then through a ground floor window, the scene repeated itself as a white bird went to land in the kitchen and fell dead into the kitchen sink.

My youngest daughter then came skipping out of the house. She said, “Daddy, I want to go to town.” I hoisted her up on my shoulders and said, “Good, because I want to get the hell out of this place.” We went walking toward the center of the town, past rows of English hedges and fieldstone walls. Windmills twirled in the distance. Eventually, the main street sloped down, just like the road into Tallinn, Estonia, and we came down the hill, by which time we were at an intersection that looked like Sörnäinen in Helsinki. Where even was this place? There were some young families seated on pink blankets over the tram tracks. They were having a picnic.

It was a sunny day in a northern city, whatever city it happened to be, and the white clouds were beautiful and enormous. My youngest daughter told me that we should stop and sit a while. It felt good to be away from the possessed house. That episode already felt like a dream.

alaska summit

THE HOTEL WAS LOCATED in a most exclusive area of the city. To get there, one had to follow a winding road through a pine forest which led down to the waterfront. It was a gray, cool day in Alaska, but that hadn’t discouraged the fleet of news vans and journalists from milling by the chain-link fence that had been installed. There were other parties, cult members, UFO truth seekers with binoculars around their necks, true believers, true doubters, and just random indigent folks who had, exhausting the homeless encampments down south, worked their way up the coast to the pristine nature surrounding Anchorage and Cook Inlet.

Luckily, I was accredited to cover the summit, but that didn’t mean I was free to roam the premises. After being let through the first gate, I was ushered into a tent, where a man in a military uniform sat at a desk. I showed him my Edasi press card, but as I looked up and down the table, I noticed that there were various tubes and lateral flow tests. I wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the summit unless I submitted blood, saliva, and urine samples. “You have to be kidding me,” I told the man in uniform. “Putin is a war criminal and you’re afraid that I’m going to get him sick!” “This is standard procedure for the Alaska Summit, sir,” said the uniformed man. “We want Mr. Putin to feel comfortable, welcome, and entirely at home here in the great state of Alaska.” “No, no,” I said. “I refuse to submit any samples to anyone,” I told him. I exited the tent, which oddly was unguarded, allowing me to creep closer to the hotel.

At this point, some musicians from Estonia who had also breached the security perimeter encountered me. They had planned an intervention along the road leading into the hotel. We wrapped ourselves in Ukrainian flags and lied down in the road in the rain, only to see several small armored vehicles approach. “Disperse!” one of the commanders shouted from somewhere. “Disperse! You are disrupting the high-stakes Alaska Summit!” The musicians groaned on the asphalt, but did not move. Then came the bursts of and blasts of tear gas. There was a scramble, some chaos, and in a moment of fear and cowardice, I stood and fled and was followed by some others. I ran toward the hotel complex, turned toward a posh waterside café.

There, behind the café, there was some space between two stone walls. The walls were made of beige brick decorated with natural motifs, such as bears, whales, or caribou. I hid myself between those walls and groups of soldiers went marauding by. I put my head down and realized that my journal was still there in my bag. My precious journal, purchased last September at Rahva Raamat. I pulled my journal from my bag and decided to write a little.