the golden idol

THERE WERE multiple archaeological teams in pursuit of the golden idol. We just happened to get to the source first, but the others weren’t far behind. It was like a real football pileup. So many people wanted it, this small rectangular piece of wood. It was adorned with golden symbols and engraved with the face of a goddess whose name was H. The name was inscribed across the idol in a strange and unknown alphabet. The goddess’ face had a small mouth that could talk or rather whisper. In this way it imparted its secrets.

We took the idol back with us. Along the way, the golden idol turned into a lion.

***

WE TOOK the idol along to Maggie’s Farm. It was beside the Port of Tallinn and had direct access to the sea. Maggie was outside hanging laundry to dry when we arrived. I was afraid the lion would eat the rest of her livestock, but it curled up in the barn with the donkeys and geese and took a well-deserved nap. At the farm, there was a small ceramic figurine of the philosopher John Locke, but its face had broken off. I took it as my task to replace the Locke figurine, but this turned out to be harder than it seemed. At the same time, she bustled about in the other room, rushing with the renovation work. A lamp needed to be installed. A ceiling needed to be repainted. “Stop messing around with John Locke!” Maggie scolded me. “I need your help over here.” We were fighting just like in the old days. She couldn’t slow down.

***

THE WIND PICKED UP and carried away the lion. But it was no longer in the shape of a lion, but a large golden sphere. It blew up and away along the coast, in the direction of Pirita. Naturally, I ran after that. On the way, I passed a seaside pub where utterly worthless characters, most of them British, were playing cards. I took a stone staircase down to the sea, where there was another beachside bar. A British bartender materialized and helped me to pull the floating golden sphere, that had once been a lion, and had also once been an idol, from the sea. It was lodged between two rocks in the coastal waters. This Brit was friendly. He had a mustache and apron. He said, “All in a day’s work,” and smiled once we had the idol in hand.

***

TRIUMPHANT I returned with the sphere. I felt like I mattered, that I was worth something, and therefore worthy of affection. When I got back to Maggie’s Farm though she didn’t even look at me. She was too busy planning another renovation. This time the roof would get an upgrade. Her fortune teller Magda was there with her hair pulled up inside a white scarf, and a small Andean flute band had congregated and began to play. “But we don’t need all this bread and circus,” I told Maggie. “I’ve got the idol right here!” She didn’t listen. “Everything we need is right here, in this idol. Let’s go inside the house and make love.” Maggie couldn’t hear me. She was telling the roofers what to do. The Andeans were playing their songs. The fortune teller held a finger to her lips. Nobody could hear me. Everyone else was too busy to listen.

night swimming

CONGRATULATIONS on your marriage, someone said. I got married? I thought. When did that happen? “And her mother is so proud?” “She is?” “Yes, because you’re such a good person!” Then I knew I must be dreaming. This was the stuff of dreams. She was the girl, quite literally, of my dreams. But now we were married? There we were in some kind of apartment. It was night out. She was sitting there on the couch. She looked dazed, as if she too wasn’t quite sure what had happened or where she was. She said she wanted to be free. She made it very clear she wanted nothing to do with me. But there she was, sitting. “We’re really married?” I asked. She just blinked at me, but also looked a little tired. Like a kitten that is licking its fur a few more times before it takes another long nap. I walked over to the kitchen table. There were, sure enough, multiple documents in Estonian, with both of our names typed onto them. Abielutunnistus. The whole thing was puzzling. I had no recollection of getting married to her. But she was the girl of my dreams. The most beautiful woman, as I saw it, to be found on the green globe. These were facts, not to be doubted. Doubting them only made life a terror.

Quickly, I accepted this wondrous fate.

Later, I found myself walking through a tunnel. There was no light in the tunnel, and when I reached the end and felt for a door. When I opened it, seawater flooded in. I was afraid I would drown, but it only rose as high as my thighs. As I emerged from the tunnel, I saw someone leap over me into the water. I looked up and realized that the door was in an old tower. There were other dark forms up there, readying to leap into the waves. A young blond man came walking my way from the beach and I asked him what was happening. “Night swimming!” the youth announced. Then he proceeded to climb the tower to prepare for another big sea jump.

All along that beach, I could see people night swimming. The sea, they said, was warmer at night. There was a grand hotel along the promenade, perhaps built during the Victorian Era. It was very clear that I was in England now; I could tell from the people’s accents. Maybe some place like Brighton. “Is the water that warm?” I called out to someone. “Oh, yes, come in, love,” she answered. “It’s so lovely.” I waded into the seawater and an enormous wave rose up high. Thereafter I dove in straight. An exhilarating feeling.

When the sun came up, I could see the beach was not all it seemed. There was a lot of seaweed along the shore and it smelled rather ripe. There were a few cargo ships moored nearby. The smell of their fuel mingled with the sea detritus. At the hotel, a café had opened up. People were sitting around and having their morning coffee. Women in poofy white Victorian dresses and men with black bowlers. Waiters were taking their orders. I walked into the café and looked around. What else was there to do, but pull up a seat and order up my own hot cup?

elon musk’s italian restaurant

ELON MUSK’S ITALIAN RESTAURANT was across from the lake promenade along one of the city’s finer streets. In look, feel, presentation, decoration, and even menu it was generic in every aspect. It even had a generic name like Elon Musk’s Il Colosseo, and showed his rather large, football-like head wearing a Roman imperial helmet smiling down on a miniature version of the Colosseum. In a rather stuffy and lacklustre backroom, Mr. Musk sat forking spaghetti into his mouth and crunching numbers with a small calculator. His eyes were bloodshot, he was wearing a plaid shirt open at the collar and Musk hadn’t had a shave in three or four days.

Musk was surrounded by women of various provenances and ethnicities, one of whom was rubbing his shoulders. He was in no good mood because his Italian venture was losing business to a competitor across the lake, one who had come up with the ingenious idea to open a combined laundromat trattoria. “This punk, who does he think he is?” said Musk. “And do you know what he was selling before, do you?” Musk nodded to another one of his women who brought in a box of what looked like yellow tide pods. “Detergent! He was selling laundry detergent. Then he goes and opens a trattoria next to his laundromat. He’s a rag man, I’m telling you!” said Musk. The woman who was rubbing Mr. Musk’s shoulders rubbed harder.

“I have to go there,” I said in a meek voice.

“Why?”

“I musk.”

Elon Musk glared at me.

“I mean I must,” I cleared my throat. “I needed to get some shirts dry-cleaned.”

“Oh.” Musk tapped some numbers into his calculator. “You know, that’s good. I want you to go there, over the lake, feel the place out. Get a good look around, tell me what’s really going on, see if you can get in the office, any closer to Mr. Chew. Find out everything about Mr. Chew. Even what kind of pasta he likes.”

“Do you want me to put tide pods in his linguine?”

“Not just yet.”

I walked down to the end of the lake, to where one descended a series of steps and walked through an underground before stepping out onto the other lakeside promenade. There were no lights on in the underground tunnel, and I became aware of a man walking in my direction from the opposite direction. He was a black man but with something white around his neck.

As he passed, I could see it was his collar. He was a priest.

***

EARLIER, I HAD BEEN in my apartment some ways away from Elon Musk’s Il Colosseo. It was near the central train station in a postwar building. The apartment was a mess. There were plates piled up in the sink. Clothes were piled up in every corner. Flies nipped at the remains of week-old meals. Almost every lightbulb in the apartment had failed. I was trying to make coffee. I was supposed to bring coffee to the Estonian woman when she arrived on the train. But I couldn’t get the Moka maker to work. For one, it was in several white pieces that when put together resembled something like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat. There was the head, there was the tail, I put the coffee in but, but I couldn’t find the stove top either. It was all so dirty.

There was just too much clutter in the apartment, and as I was trying to make the poor girl a cup of coffee, I began to hear noises from behind the stove. There was a wooden barrier erected there, made of a thatched material, like bamboo. You know what I am talking about. It had been painted different colors. From behind it, I heard a man’s voice say, “Hello, this is so-and-so, we have an interview scheduled. Yes, I just wanted to talk about your annual report.”

“What the hell is this?” I shouted out.

The man, who looked like Henry Rollins, startled, emerged in a white t-shirt and underpants, holding a rotary phone. Another came out from behind a door. He looked like he was Japanese and was wearing sunglasses. “These are the offices of the Reuters News Agency,” he said.

“They are?”

“They are.”

“Then how does a reporter go about getting himself a cup of coffee for chrissakes?”

“Beats me,” said Rollins. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to take this. It’s really important.”

***

AFTER THAT, I shuffled over to the train station with my daughter to meet up with the Estonian woman, sans coffee. But we got lost in the old town. I now realized that I was in Stockholm, but a different Stockholm. All of the houses in the old town of Stockholm, the Gamla Stan, were connected by staircases and hallways. In one house, I met an old man who claimed to have a metal orb with magical properties. He claimed that it had been acquired from Eistland, now Estonia, long ago during some Viking-era raid. Another residence forced us to remove our shoes. And this is how I got separated from my daughter. There were so many shoes piled around that I couldn’t find my own. I had to walk through Gamla Stan in my socks and my feet were soon cold and wet. My daughter, still having her shoes, ran far ahead of me.

No longer could I keep up.

Back through the Gamla Stan, up and down the ancient leaning wooden staircases, beneath the dangling chandeliers. I finally got over to T-Centralen and procured a coffee for the Estonian woman at Pressbyrån. Which I should have done in the first place. By that time, it had snowed so much in Stockholm that we had to ski home, which apparently was over next to Elon Musk’s Il Colosseo along the lake promenade. As we were skiing, the Estonian woman’s ski boot came loose, and she attempted to seal it with raw honey. She just happened to have a jar.

“Didn’t you know,” she said, with the wind in her flowing curls, “that honey fixes all problems?”

“It’s not going to fix a broken ski boot, you crazy bitch!” I cried through the snow. I really called her that. Things had been going haywire all day, and now a ski boot covered with dripping gobs of raw honey? I fixed her boot and in the process got the honey all over my new clothes.

“I’m sorry,” said the Estonian woman.

“It’s okay, I know a good laundromat over the lake,” I said. “They also serve decent Italian food.”

“Sounds like a nice place.”

Later, when we were back at my apartment and I had handed the clothes over to Mr. Chew’s Laundromat Trattoria, we reclined on the floor. The carpet had been installed in the 1970s, it seemed, and was shaggy. She had on a white shirt with buttons, which I tore open, spilling her white breasts into the evening light. She smelled of lingonberries and other forest aromas.

“What the hell do you think I am?” the Estonian woman said as I began to lick her. “Elk pâté?”

“Oh yes,” I said to the Estonian woman. “You’re my elk pâté, honey. You are my elk pâté.”

the 6 am circle k coffee

I’ve spent half my life in Helsinki Airport.

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE a 6 am coffee from Circle K. Actually there is something better, and it’s the special Finnair blueberry juice. During the flight over the Atlantic, they just leave it in the back of the plane in the kitchenette, and you can help yourself to as many cups as you like. I feel like Finnair is also my home in a way. And Helsinki Airport. Like I told my mom before I left, I don’t mind a layover in Helsinki, Finland.

I’ve spent half my life waiting in that airport.

I like Finland. Finnish, and by extension Estonian, women are super cute. I can see in my younger self, a sort of terrible but innate and unavoidable lecherousness, which is in and of itself a part of the biological condition. Such things can be ignored for only so long. Herein lies the conundrum of the suburbs. We are raised in comfort and expected to fall in line, but then things go haywire for so many of us and we do rather stupid and adventurous things. Restless people wind up in America, and you think that their descendants are somehow not like them? We are somehow more mellow and set in our ways, because we happened to be raised with a Nintendo and trusty pizza place up the way? I’ve got former classmates scattered all over the earth. You have to wonder, what went wrong here with all of us?

Or did anything go wrong at all?

Maybe things are just as they are.

Do you realize I have been crossing the North Atlantic by plane for more than two decades now? I’ve got grainy photos of me standing in Christiania in Copenhagen trying to pull a sword from a stone. Or that cold morning bus station in Stockholm, the day I fell ill and went to see the Vasa for the first time? I also remember my first trip to Iceland, which was in March 2001, and being on the Icelandair flight, which already had personal screens installed, and watching Coldplay’s “Don’t Panic” video, and the Icelandair attendant coming by and asking me if I wanted some coffee and knowing just by the look in her eyes that I was dealing with some other, non-American Icelandic lifeform.

Iceland had always intrigued me because I had been assigned to write a country report about it in the sixth grade. I had zero interest in this place. But it grew on me, the fermented shark meat, the geothermal pools. Among the first things I did on my first trip to Iceland was go to the supermarket and pick up some skyr, a yogurt that you can find tubs of in any American supermarket today, but was like an exotic food even back then. I put the skyr sticker in my passport like a souvenir, and you can imagine how the passport control officer looked at me when he went to stamp my passport and this sticker fell out.

Life just sort of went that way, and I went from Iceland to Denmark, and from Denmark, after some interludes in Norway and Sweden, to Finland, from which I predictably wound up in Estonia. I forget these things from time to time. I think when you are younger, maybe 25, you have a much shorter, more dynamic self narrative, but when you get to 44, there is so much time, and there were so many phases, that huge chunks of them can just drop off into the abyss like melted Greenlandic icebergs. You are reminded of stuff you did and think, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.” Happens every day. Years melt into years.

I wonder about the vantage point of older people who talk about stuff that happened in the 1960s. Like that’s a whole other block of time removed from the present, and how can you recall stuff that happened in 1966 without it being repackaged into new narratives. I mean, does your recall remain the same, or are you rewriting those past moments every time to remember them? My parents are still cruising around Long Island listening to something called Yacht Rock Radio, where they play the Doobie Brothers, Michael McDonald, Steely Dan, and some DJ who sounds like a guest star on The Love Boat or Fantasy Island treats you to all the best yacht rock hits. “It was the era,” my father says with the wind in his hair listening to Michael McDonald. “The era!”

Anyway, where was I?

The Circle K 6 am coffee. Circle K is a lifeline to anyone past midnight in Estonia. Everything else is closed. French fries are the sole sustenance, unless you are brave enough to eat one of those double-barrelled hot dogs. The french fries, mind you, costed me only €1.50 per portion. In Sag Harbor, they would be like … $10. People keep asking me, do you ever think of moving back to Long Island? I say, sure, when I get my $7 million dollar advance on my next book, I’ll pick up a nice house next to Drew Barrymore’s and we can play tennis together. You’re all invited! I mean, come on. Let’s get real. Even diehard East End Long Islanders are fleeing because they have been driven to eating roadkill because of the ultra rich. The rich destroy almost everything they touch. They come into an area of cultural diversity, and the ‘just folks’ people who made it that way are eventually forced out, leaving behind executives with tennis courts.

So I am here, in Tallinn, with my 6 am coffee. I still call Circle K Statoil out of habit, and because I liked the Statoil branding better. Statoil also sounded better in Estonian. All kinds of characters exist in Statoil/Circle K in the early hours. There’s a kind of rough-edged party element in places like Tallinn, but also in Copenhagen, Reykjavik, especially in summer. In New York, the people sleeping in the train station are homeless, but in these places, they are more like young women (or men) who just had too much to drink last night. And also jetlagged people like myself who are hungry and on some weird inverted vampire sleep schedule, so that I want to sleep when everyone else is awake and vice versa. But, oh look, there’s the Linnahall. And there’s the spire of St. Olaf’s Church. This place. How did I even get here? I have no idea. Here I am, buying coffee.

To borrow a quote from Full Metal Jacket, “This is my Circle K 6 am coffee. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”

number two man

THE ACTOR was at the bar, but seated a few stools down, and on the opposite side. He looked as he usually does, in fact, I can’t say he’s aged a day in 20 years. Longer hair, tucked behind his ears. A blue shirt open at the neck. Features that I suppose could be called both masculine and beautiful. Women loved him and men hated him. I had nothing against him, I just thought he was a fool. Just another fool. He had been drinking and the alcohol had loosened him up, he said, “And that’s why she left him, you know. He can’t kiss as good as I can in bed. She said he’s too soft, she needs a firmer, masculine kiss.” At this, all of the other men at the table laughed.

I turned to her, as she was also seated at the bar. She was dressed in some kind of Western-themed cowboy getup, like she was taking part in a traveling play about Annie Oakley. Saloon garb. Her golden hair was curled around her shoulders. She looked at me and she blushed.

“Is this true what he says?”

“Well, there are probably some things I need to tell you. I could show you.”

I fainted and fell from the bar stool. I ran out the saloon door into a dusty street. She came after me. “You need to calm down,” she said. “I’m sick of all your drama. Besides, I spoke with him. He said that he likes you, but that he knows that you don’t like him. So he just keeps away. Isn’t that nice of him?”

“I hate him.”

“But he doesn’t hate you. In fact, you’ve got a lot in common. He’s a creative, you’re a creative. There’s an apartment that came up for rent. It’s a cellar apartment, but you can both afford it. You boys could room together. And whenever I am back in town, you can both share me.”

“This situation destroyed my life.”

She looked away when I said this. Since when did I wind up in Tombstone or Yellowstone or The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.? Maybe I had just been watching too many cowboy movies. Maybe this was just another dream. Nightmare dream of evil women. She came close to me, put her hand on mine. “Don’t be mad at him,” she said, stroking my hand. “You’ll always be my Number Two Man.” At that I took off down the street into the night. I ran and I ran and I ran.

lost in translation

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

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

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

other swimmers

COLD OCEAN WATER, clear, so clean I can see the sand and pebbles through the waves. I wade in in all of my clothes, a black, button-down shirt, khakis, belt, they say it will keep you warmer and the other swimmers swear by it. Lea’s father up in town keeps promising he’ll find me a good job, a steady job, something in tech. He sits on his stool at his favorite coffeehouse and makes these kinds of promises. But now I am in the water, floating around in my clothes.

Later, Brynhild arrives and descends the wooden steps that lead down to the ocean beach. Platforms of steps built into the dunes and cliffs. Brynhild’s wearing her blue bathing suit and looking like an Estonian incarnation of Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative British MP, who is also famous for filling out bathing suits and is leader of the House of Commons. Step by step, Brynhild descends, ocean wind in her hair. I’m terrified to see her but just keep swimming.

traditional music

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

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

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

You can’t deny that.

encinitas

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

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

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

periphery

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

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

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

It was like a form a Morse Code.

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