Category: minuviljandi

viiratsi’s white cats

VIIRATSI is a community on the margins of Viljandi. On one hot day in July, there was nothing but blue in the sky and it’s fields and parks were green and sun-kissed. Coming down the road from the mechanic’s shop where I left my car, I noticed a white cat that peered at me for a moment, then disappeared into the overgrown brush that had sprouted up between rows of abandoned garages. I waded into the growth, pushing aside flowers and weeds, searching for my little white friend. This was kind of like Alice in Wonderland, I thought. White cats. White rabbits. Where did the cat go? The garages were from the Soviet era, made of white bricks from the factory up north. Someone had built them, maybe in some forgotten summer in the 1970s. Now they were in ruins and the windows were shattered. Just more leftover Soviet crap.

Between the garages, there was a concrete platform. I stared at the platform for a while and couldn’t understand for what purposes it had been built. It looked almost as if one could land small aircraft on it, but that couldn’t happen here, could it? There was just no use for such a thing. What was this place? I heard something rustle behind me and turned to see if it was my friend, the white cat, but it was just a bird. The cat was gone, I decided. I returned to the road and the way back through Viiratsi. The mechanic said he would call me when the car was fixed.

I came down the hill to the park and its two large ponds. On one side of the park, a man was seated on a bench. He wore a black coat and held a book in his hands. I nodded to the man, but he did not return the gesture. Then, as I came closer, I discovered that his eyes were closed. I could see the sweat on his brow, hear him snore. He was asleep. I decided not to disturb him.

I followed the path by the ponds to an empty bandstand overseeing dozens of benches, all of them empty. At some point, a concert might have been held here, yet there was no sign of life. The bandstand was made of new wood and the benches too had been cared for. The smell of freshly cut grass was in the air and I sat on the bandstand to rest. The pond waters were still.

Where was everybody?

The community of Viiratsi is ancient. One can even find the name “Weiratz” on old maps from the 18th century. Today, you would not guess its age. Even the old apartment blocks have new facades. Many homes have lush, organized gardens. There are swings and terraces and grills. Not a few would qualify for Estonian Home of the Year. In a nearby park on most days, children experiment with skateboards and lick ice cream. Somewhere a radio plays American pop songs. Even here the names of Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez are known yet we are far from the streets of Los Angeles. This place is so clean, so safe, so cared for, that the only bad thing that could be said about it is that it is almost too nice, too quiet. Almost every property fits into a tight grid. It reminds me a bit of those Playmobil toys, where the scenes of life are reduced to a home and garden, or an ice cream truck, and the toy people have toy smiles.

At the bus stop in the center of the village, I noticed one of those new, blue local transport buses that have bright yellow folk patterns painted on them and say V I L J A N D I M A A. The bus was just standing there, idling, but there was no-one on the bus, and there was no driver. I suppose he had just stepped away to use the toilet or buy some peanuts from the Viiratsi Konsum. After waiting for the driver to return, I walked on, the bus still idling behind me.

I wondered what had happened to the driver and started to think that maybe a UFO had just kidnapped everybody in Viiratsi. It was just too quiet. I came up Sakala Street puzzled by the silence. At the crest of the hill, I at last spied sweet Viljandi across the lake, with its wooden slums all piled up on top of each other. Viiratsi was over here, clipped and cared for, Viljandi was over there, disheveled, chaotic, and unruly. There was no question to where I belonged.

***

A few days later, I received the message that the car was ready. This time I came down Kõrgemäe Street. Then I turned up Tartu Street and took it all the way down to the highway through the wetlands. Once I reached Viiratsi, I took a footpath back into the silent town.

The old man was no longer asleep on his bench by the two ponds. This time, there was no one in the park at all. I looked up at the sky and saw the trail of an airplane but heard no engine roar. All was very calm and quiet again. I looked around for my white cat, but only encountered a black one, running out from behind one of the garages. He was in a hurry and didn’t look up.

At the mechanic’s shop, I discussed payment with the owner, a cheerful type in overalls. On the wall, there was a poster of a woman with chestnut hair peering over at us from her bed. She looked like a French woman, I thought, with dark eyes. Her skin was flushed, and she looked satisfied, as if she had just made love. I looked into those eyes, but when I imagined them looking at me, all I sensed was indifference. As I turned to leave, something else caught my eye. A white cat was standing beside my car. It eyed me curiously. Hadn’t we met before?

“Unbelievable,” I told the mechanic. “This is the same white cat that I saw here the first day.”

“Oh her? Don’t be fooled by the cat, man,” said the mechanic. “Viiratsi is full of white cats.”

Written June 2018

uueveski

On Kõrgemäe Street stands a faded sign that reads “18%” and shows an incline. 

THE ROAD HERE shoots straight up and down, more or less, and even to traverse it by automobile requires a certain leap of faith as you release the break and pump hard on the gas. It reminds me of those high scary San Francisco hills, like on Divisadero Street, or Powell Street, where you rocket up to the precipice only to behold that gleaming beautiful San Francisco Bay below. Here Kõrgemäe winds down to a pacific lake, one cornered by soldierly lines of succulent shady green pines. On either side of Kõrgemäe Street, pretty Alpine-looking homes with great glass windows and red roofs and eaves and balconies frame this wondrous sharp descent. Yet there’s almost no-one here and those who are, are lost in their own stories.

In the distance, a couple walks a dog.

Down the way, a man takes a break and surveys the work to be done, a cigarette stub dangling and glowing from his rough hands. Terraces separate the homes, as do neat stacks of yellow firewood that line the peripheries of the properties. There are also the trampolines and tree houses, piles of rubbish from springtime renovation projects begun anew. German Shepherds crow at you from gates, but even their outbursts are a bit weary and resigned as the orange sun sinks in the sky, bringing the still nude tree branches of late April into sharp relief.

I step away from Kõrgemäe and head toward Peetrimõisa, crossing Jakobsoni Street, the main road that leads out of town, and heading toward the hills and the watery crash of the falls.

This part of Viljandi remains a mystery to me. I never come here, but I have no reason. Tonight though, I feel an itch to explore, to stretch my legs. I’d walk the whole world if I could, cross the frozen expanses of the Bering Straits. First I have to cross Jakobsoni, then turn onto Allika — “Spring Street” — and then turn again down a tiny side street — a põik — following it through the terraces and tidy homes and stacks of firewood, past lush hedges tailored and manicured to perfection — before turning up Pihlaka Street, and then crossing Uus, another major road here, before I begin to ascend Kalda Street, getting closer to the sounds of rushing crying water. Up, up, Kalda Street I rise, feeling the strain in my thighs, loving the strain.

Even as a child, I loved nothing more than to get lost like this, to follow the ways, disappear down the alleys. I loved nothing more than peering over fences, or overhearing the mothers scold their errant but deep-down good sons. “Mida sa tegid jälle?” “What did you do again?”

To hear it this evening in Estonian is a special treat.

At Kalda, the sound of the water grows stronger and I discover a path leading down to a small river that feeds a tiny body of water called “Kösti Lake” on maps. So there’s another lake in Viljandi? Nobody told me about this. Someone had built this staircase, a hardworking, resourceful local DIY type — hammered metal pipes into the ground and then placed cement blocks on top of them, creating a walk that leads down steep to the mossy muddy banks. I half expect it to give out on me as I amble down carefully, looking around and still seeing no one. When the stairs end, I walk as I did as a boy, keeping my feet against the incline as not to fall.

I look up at the houses, which loom above the woods. My brother-in-law used to live over here in this part of town, which is called “Uueveski,” or “New Mill,” years ago, before he died. He had mowed lawns like these, trimmed hedges like those. He had walked his dog here along the river bank. I had driven these same streets in the dark those nights. Yet that was all done now. He was gone, already for a long time, but the birds of Uueveski sing on.

I take in a great breath and go further down toward the waters enjoying their sound, hanging onto tree branches to slow my descent. I come up one side of the bank where the water swirls and consider traversing a line of rocks that leads to a little wooden staircase on the other side, and then see another line of rocks a bit of a ways down and try to cross that one too.

The space between the stones though is too great though, and the water is too deep, spinning in clear whirlpools, and I don’t feel like wading waist deep across. Lovely vibrant yellow flowers are in bloom here along the blank, as pert and ornamental as buttons on a beautiful woman’s waistcoat. I stoop to pick a few and put them away in my pocket. Think of all the trouble I saw in the forests when I was a boy, or how I would climb to the peaks of pines and descend with sap everywhere, and how my mother would use a solvent to get the tree sap off of my hands.

I just want to leap to the other side of the creek, but I don’t have the courage to do it. The rocks are too mossy. I’d be certain to fall in the water. My boyhood self would have done it gladly, and would have loved to fall. I am not my boyhood self though. I prefer to keep dry.

Defeated, I climb the steps to Kalda Street again, now high above the creek, and survey it as far as I can toward the other end. I still see no bridge to cross, but I keep walking down it anyway. If I had to, I would walk all the way around the little waterway, even to Rangoon. I’d love to walk, because I’m tired of writing and I have absolutely no use for people.

Down Kalda Street, the wooded banks of the creek open up to a large grassy park that rolls and rolls with small hills like the prairies of North Dakota. In the center of the park, someone has already set up a huge stack to be burned. I walk down past the bonfire pile, all wooden planks and discarded chairs, and come upon a new wooden bridge. The wood of the bridge is still yellow, and there is no marking on it, no graffiti, not even a pair of footprints. To think, I almost wound up swimming across the creek when this bridge had been placed here for me.

Just for me. I feel the wood of the railings, smooth and sanded perfect. Down and along the creek there is still no one. There are rows of castle-like homes rising on the other side, the part of town called “Peetrimõisa.” There are trampolines there and picnic tables, great green lawns, half moss, half grass. There is no one. This is dreamy solitude blanketed up in solitude.

At the center of the bridge, I pause a moment and listen to the water rush below me. I read recently in a book that what women most desire from men is that they would be present, that they would be there. Just there. Something to depend on. Something to latch on to. Not perfect, but present. There. We must be there. Our duty was to play the river bank, to lay perfectly still and muddy and mossy and calm and let their waters gurgle over us. When I first read it, I thought it was ridiculous. Nonsense! Why should I spend my life lying down on my back for someone else, all for her? Listening to the water singing and spurting beneath that wooden bridge, I acknowledge begrudgingly that it might be nice to get soaked now and then.

Sooner or later I was going to have to join up with another one of them. Some men try to ignore them, or to pretend they could have as many as they want. In their souls, they remain as only halves of hearts, yearning to unite with that something, as night is to day, light is to dark, heavy is to light, or struggling to remain autonomous, independent, which is a ruse. There was really no other way forward for me. I would have to reattach. “Women are like trolleys,” a tuttav, a friend, a mother of four children, had told me once. “One drops you off and another one comes and picks you up and takes you somewhere else. You just have to get on.” 

The trolley of another woman would come by and open its doors and I would notice the conductor from beneath her cap and I would get on.  “On the ovarian trolley,” as Henry Miller put it well way back in 1938 in Tropic of Capricorn. The water kept gushing. I would get on.

Written April 2018