accreditation

AND THERE SHE WAS, reappeared. She was standing on one of the sacrificial stones behind the castle ruins. She looked the same with those foxy foresty eyes of hers peering ahead, but I hadn’t seen her in so long that I wondered if I knew her anymore. She didn’t acknowledge me, not once, but by overhearing her conversations with others, I learned that she had been busy. Then, as surely as she had reappeared, this mystery girl vanished into the crowds. She was a mercurial woman and barely a woman at that, gone in a flicker. I felt like an arctic explorer who had just seen the sun for a few moments. Those moments were short but reassuring. There was a sun in this world that I had been lucky enough to see. I saw her there, the sun.

She dipped back into darkness.

BY THIS TIME, the opening ceremony of the festival had commenced. It was July but snow had fallen that night, and the entire festival area was under a white blanket. From one side of the hill, I saw mounted Lakota warriors make an entrance in full regalia, whooping into the air and raising their shields made of stretched buffalo hides in a provocative way. “The Lakota warriors are special guests at this year’s festival,” a spectator behind me said. “They came here all the way from Pine Ridge on horseback,” he said. “Did they cross the Bering Strait?” I asked.

OF COURSE, I had forgotten to get accredited, so I walked over to the Pärimusmuusika Ait, or Folk Music Center, and went in. I was given paperwork to fill out. I wrote in my name, the name of the publication, et cetera. I didn’t remember, offhand, the exact links to my previously published work. The woman behind the desk, a blonde who looked more like a bartender than head of press relations, told me I would have to wait while they processed my application, so I went into the press room, where a certain other woman was lying on the couch in the dark.

The certain other woman had just returned from a tantra retreat and was underneath a blanket. Her hair was a mess and she had haunting blue eyes. “Come lie with me,” she said. The lullaby sound of her voice masked a thrilling danger. One thing led to another, and there I was, in her embrace, if such doings beneath a blanket could even be called an embrace. I thought about the object of my affection the whole time I was there kissing the certain other woman. I thought about the woman I had lost in the crowds. I closed my eyes and begged her to love me but felt no reciprocity. I shut my eyes firmer and begged harder, but again felt nothing at all.

I HEARD A RUSTLING from behind the couch. Lata’s adolescent son was seated there, reading a comic book. I don’t know which one. Maybe Asterix or The Groo Chronicles. He yawned and turned the page. “You haven’t seen or heard anything tonight?” I asked him. He looked up and said, “Huh?” “Maybe you should go home,” I told the boy. He was about 12 years old. He got up and walked over to a dumbwaiter, put his comic inside and rang the bell. The door to the dumbwaiter closed and he left me alone in the room with the certain other woman. I followed him out soon after. To the certain other woman, I mumbled something about “accreditation.”

DOWNSTAIRS, my press pass was still being processed. The blonde in the press relations department asked me if I wouldn’t mind helping to shovel the snow outside while I waited. Never before had there been such a snowstorm in July. And during the major folk musical festival, what awful luck. I began to shovel dutifully. Big clumps of wet snow piled up on both sides of the path to the Ait. As I was digging, or pushing the snow, as the Estonians put it, I heard something metallic clatter. It was my keys. My keys had tumbled from my pockets, along with a few euro coins. It seemed like it would be impossible to find them in that avalanche. I kept searching, but I had lost my keys just as I had lost the object of my affection. Her real name was Esmeralda. I thought of her a moment and looked up, only to see a line of Lakota warriors approaching whooping their Oglala war cries. Their faces were grim and painted.

like a little boat

ATLACAMANI PULLED UP in her new car. Don’t get too excited. I think it was a red Volkswagen Golf GTI. She got out of the driver’s seat and was accompanied by two of her boyfriends. She has this kind of entourage around her of lovers and admirers. They parked on the edge of the forest, but when she saw me waiting there in a piney grove, she told the others to get lost, that she wanted to be alone with me. They both turned and left as if in a trance.

Alone time it was, with Atlacamani. It was a northern dusk then, which meant it was nearing midnight. The dark blue of the sky and the gold of the stars seemed to be reflected on her skin, in her hair and her eyes. I sat down there in the moss by the ancient manor house and she straddled me and sat in my lap. Atlacamani is a diminutive but powerful lady. She has very full lips. She looked into my eyes and said, “You wanted to know what it was like to disappear.”

She grasped me then and I was inducted into this Aztec goddess of oceanic storms. She said, “You are like a little boat, always trying to stay dry, always trying to stay afloat on the surface of the water. But tonight I am going to drown you. Tonight, your little boat is going to sink. You are going to become one with me and with this ocean you so fear. Tonight you are going to be swallowed whole,” she went on, whispering to me. “Tonight, I’m going to swallow you whole.”

the east rajasthan health clinic

IN THE BACK of the East Rajasthan Health Clinic, there is a cloak roam and waiting area. Metal chairs are arranged in two rows, one facing the other, and there is a large window above that allows in plenty of light on sunny, springtime days. The cloak room is full of the distinct and colorful angharka robes and jama jackets of the Rajasthani people. Here, they sit and wait for the woman with the maang tikka to call their number. There are several good Rajasthani physicians working to serve Tallinn’s Indian community these days. While they consult their patients, the others sit quietly. A few leaf through Indian magazines. And as for me, I was just catching my breath after being pursued by the traffic police when I first disappeared inside.

***

I am still not sure what the traffic offense was. Maybe Raivo forgot to pay a parking ticket, or rolled through a red light on the Pärnu Highway. We were cruising through town in a white Ferrari Testarossa. The same kind that Crockett and Tubbs traveled around in in Miami Vice. I suppose Raivo was Crockett. I was Tubbs. I always liked Tubbs more anyway. Raivo is my translator and faithful friend. In middle age, he is in spectacular shape. He runs marathons and spends the weekends toiling away on pointless home renovation projects. He was driving the Testarossa when he saw the flashing lights in the rearview mirror. “Probleem,” Raivo mumbled.

When I looked in the window, I could see we were being pursued by a young blonde police officer. She had shoulder-length hair, a pleasant, round face, but very cool, remote blue eyes. There was something vaguely alien about her facial expressions, as if she had never known joy or sadness, torment or love. At Freedom Square we roared past St. John’s Church and then turned up the small road that leads past the Kiek in de Kök and up to Nevski Cathedral and the Parliament House. The police car was right behind us. Raivo parked the car down a side street. We got out and began to run in different directions. Raivo went that way. I went this way.

The Estonian policewoman pursued me into an alleyway, but I managed to give her the slip. I tumbled down the embankment to the Snelli tiik or pond, and that’s when I saw it, a new and modern building. Ida-Rajasthani Tervisekliinik, a sign read, and in Hindi below, पूर्वी राजस्थान स्वास्थ्य क्लिनिक. There are so many Indians in Tallinn now, they say that it’s only a while before they make Hindi a second official language. Without hesitation, I gripped the door handle and went in. I was instantly engulfed in the aroma of incense and young boys were walking through the health clinic crying out, “Chai! Chai! Samosa! Chai!” I bought a paneer samosa off one of the young Estonian Rajasthani sellers and went to the waiting room to hide and wait.

***

After a while of sitting in the East Rajasthan Health Clinic, I began to worry about Raivo. Maybe the policewoman had arrested him? I decided to venture outside, to see if it was safe. And there he was, standing on the street corner across from the Baltic Station talking to her. It was almost as if he was sweet talking her. I saw her nod a little and him lift both of his hands in a gesture that said, “What can you do?” Then she began walking toward me. Those strange blue alien eyes of hers were on mine, but she walked on by. I went over to Raivo and asked him what had happened, he shrugged and said, “Just some nonsense.” We agreed to meet up again in Tartu, and he went back to fetch his abandoned Testarossa. I crossed the street and boarded a train to Viljandi, but not before encountering a certain familiar American actor.

“Alec!” I said. “What are you doing here?” “Just strolling around the Old Town,” said this master actor from Massapequa. “I really love Estonia. All of the history, all of the culture. I am very impressed with the startup scene, by the way. What are you doing here?” he said. “I was hiding in the East Rajasthan Health Clinic after being pursued by the Tallinn police,” I answered. “Oh,” Mr. Baldwin’s Irish blue eyes lit up. “How was that?” “Well, it’s not so bad. They have samosas and chai. And if you ever need to hide from the police, I would suggest the waiting room. Nobody will ever find you in there.” Mr. Baldwin smiled and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Thanks for the tip, kid,” he grinned. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.” He strolled on ahead.

A few moments later and I was already on a Viljandi-bound train. There was a young woman I knew on the train who had platinum blonde hair. I hadn’t seen her in a long time and we began to catch up. She had on a navy blue sweater and navy blue pants and there was something soothing about the contrast of her light hair with all of that navy blue billowing around her like starry evening sky. I began to tell the woman about the police chase in the Testarossa, the alleyway getaway, the East Rajasthan Health Clinic interlude, the chance meeting with Alec Baldwin beside the Snelli tiik. I don’t think she believed a word I said, but she humored me as the train glided toward Tallinn-Väike, Kitseküla, Liiva, and Points South. I was deep in my tale as the last views of the Old Town’s spires and government houses slipped from sight.

we bid you goodnight

THERE I WAS having another coffee with Rory and Ella in a cafe when someone ‘pantsed’ me, as we used to say, pulled down my trousers while I wasn’t looking. I had on my military-style jacket, so I wasn’t exposed up front, but all of the cafe society people got a good look at my ass. To make matters worse, I was so shocked by what had happened, I couldn’t manage to pull my pants back up. I fumbled with the button and the zipper, but they just wouldn’t close. Rory, stalwart poet that he was, had a good laugh. Ella was dressed up like a flapper, but with a pair of butterfly wings, the kinds little girls wear at Halloween. She reclined in her seat, crossed her white stockinged legs and licked her lips. She was very entertained. She sipped from her latte.

Just then Saint-Malo marched in and arrested me for exposing myself. I was hauled off to an open Scandinavian-style prison, but thoroughly tested and prodded before being admitted to my room. Saint-Malo was younger than me, but he was already gray at the temples and had a gruff, indifferent manner. He wore military fatigues, even though he was a jazz musician and not a prison guard. Still, the denizens of the town had elected him to be a sheriff of sorts, preventing robberies of the burger truck, for instance. “You and your ass are a disgrace to the good clean folk of Viljandi Town,” Saint-Malo peppered me with scorn. “But I didn’t drop my trousers on purpose,” I said. “Someone pantsed me in Kodukohvik.” “Silence,” Saint-Malo said.

My prison days passed like that until Jorma showed up and broke me out. He invited me to a “pancake and drug thing” in the Haight. All of the bands were there. The Dead. The Charlatans. Janis was still alive. “Psychedelic pancakes,” said Jorma. “Eat up, man.” This was young Jorma, with the black hair and Beatle boots. The syrup, as I took it, was spiked with LSD. That might have been why Mr. Garcia got an extra helping. The Dead were called up on stage and performed an acapella version of “We Bid You Goodnight.” Jerry, Phil, Pigpen, Bill, Bobby, even Micky. They were all up there singing. They were moving in unison just like the Temptations.

After the Haight-Ashbury pancake drug breakfast, I went for a stroll, eventually winding my way through North Beach and climbing to the top of Coit Tower. From here, I could look out on all of sunny San Francisco. There was the Presidio over there. And I could see Alcatraz gleaming like a mirage off in the distance. Whenever the wind blew off the bay, the top of Coit Tower would move along with it. The engineers had even built a strange system where the top was set on wheels, so that it would rotate along. It felt good to be out of prison, though I was still trying to digest the acapella Grateful Dead performance. Plus those LSD-spiked pancakes.

Rory and Ella came up the steps at that moment. They reached the top of Coit Tower and were also taken aback by its breathtaking views. Lotta was with them. Another cafe person, in fact a regular in the local co-working space. She was wearing a colorful dress and sunglasses and clutching a cappuccino. Lotta blew me a kiss. “Come over here,” she said. “Let’s all take a selfie.”

get thee to a nunnery

AFTER DULCINEA went to the convent I didn’t see her for some time. I did keep her in my thoughts though. Any happenings with her, though few in recent years, allowed me to survive the long Estonian winters. A memory that I kept especially close to heart was of her seated beside the seaside in the summer, in her white sweater, with the cool July winds toying with her straw hair, and that wondrous look in her midnight eyes. She was like summer that night. Dulcinea could become summer just as she could become any season. But she left after that and went to the convent and I didn’t see her again until our paths crossed in a strange way.

She was working with a French priest whose job it was to retrieve lost children and it so happened that I too was assigned to cover the case of the lost little boy for an Estonian magazine. As I understood it, Sister Dulcinea had taken on a secretarial role within this Catholic detective agency. There she was, clad in white. I wondered how long it would last. Would not the pleasures of the flesh, or at least the heart, be the undoing of her virtuous vows? How was I to look upon this woman of god, if not with desire? Something about the gold cross that dangled across her neck was only more seductive and erogenous. She was, in person, quite professional and mostly ignored me, side-eyed me, or didn’t appear at all.

Over time though, I began to realize that our connection, while not expressed in words, was pulsing in the air. After the French priest finally found the lost little boy, who had been kept by kidnappers in an old house somewhere in the south of France equidistant between Grenoble and Lyon, there was a celebration. The sun was setting magnificently that evening and the boy’s grateful parents gathered around and thanked the French detective, who I imagined was something like Poirot and Maigret mixed together and clothed in the black clothes of the Christian faith. It was then that lovely Sister Dulcinea walked toward me, her hands toying with her beads, and kissed me passionately. “That’s that,” she said. So much for the nunnery.

it will all start to make sense

IN THE CITY CENTER, a woman was managing a small aquarium. She filled this small water pool with different elements, which began to coalesce and take shape, creating new fish-like creatures, which emerged into sight as they swam in circles. Some of them looked like the kinds of strange fish one might find in a Swedish market, burbot, cod, and terrifying anglerfish, with their ugly toothy jaws. The woman was quite discrete about the fish. She wore a white raincoat and made sure they were fed. When I asked her what they were for, she said it was hard to describe, or that she couldn’t say. “You’ll see,” she said. “It will all start to make sense.”

Later, when there was another drone and missile attack in the center of the city, and pedestrians crouched and took shelter in between fast food kiosks and t-shirt vendors, I noticed that soldiers in white uniforms with backpacks emerged into the streets. With small hoses, they sprayed down parachuting Russian soldiers, who were rendered powerless by a thick pink goo. This, as I understood it, was the toxic by product of the new fish. The woman in the white raincoat had been creating a new form of biological weapon, fish that could kill.

I tried to tell my pal El Scorcho all about it as we walked through the city later when the latest missile attack had ended, but he was too busy talking about his music career. “She’s raised a whole mini-aquarium of biological terror,” I told him. “You wouldn’t believe it. It’s so far-fetched even I have trouble believing it.” El Scorcho was lost in his world. “Can you believe they want me to headline next year’s festival?” he said. “I’m think of covering some Paul McCartney solo stuff.” We arrived at a supermercato in the middle of town, one where you had to ride an escalator up to a second floor. The building itself was made of yellow adobe, so it looked as if El Scorcho was entering a pueblo. What a pueblo was doing in a Northern European city under constant in-coming Russian attack escaped me. El Scorcho tossed some bags of potato chips and plantains down the escalator at me after he bought them. He smiled down while sipping at a bowl of mate. “Will you shut up about those weird fish, man,” El Scorcho said. “Nobody cares.”

shapeshifter

IT HAPPENED AT NIGHT, or rather the early morning. The clock said it was 4:30 am. Either way, it was still dark. The black cat was biting my fingers, which was uncomfortable enough, except that this black cat was also my child. Somehow my child had shapeshifted into a black cat. I wasn’t sure which child this cat was. One I didn’t know or didn’t remember. My black cat child bit down hard. I tried to shake it from my hand. There was something vindictive about it.

I was being paid back for something by the universe. The cat’s fangs pierced into my thumb.

Silvia was in the apartment while this was going on. She was doing renovation work. Specifically, she had removed the front door, which looked like a water-logged piece of driftwood that had once been painted Mediterranean blue. “All of the doors have to be replaced,” Silvia told me. Her boyfriend Enrico was in the kitchen while she sanded down one of the doors. He was standing by the stovetop boiling a hot espresso. “Cats!” was all he said as he watched me tangling with the cat. He didn’t know what to make of the thing. Neither did I.

frida and saskia

FRIDA AND SASKIA came to visit Estonia. They booked for themselves an exclusive suite in an Old Town hotel, one with its own traditional sauna. We sat by the fireplace in the suite together, waiting for the sauna to warm up and drinking tea. Saskia was at the table, thumbing through a fresh copy of Eesti Ekspress. Frida’s older sister looked the same, with her red-hair parted down the center, and she was wearing a t-shirt with a vest over it. I’m not sure why Saskia was so engrossed by Ekspress, because she couldn’t understand a word of the Estonian language, but maybe she liked the cartoons? She seemed in high spirits, whatever the case.

Frida stretched out on the couch. She was wearing a dark dress, maybe black, maybe navy colored, and seemed quite tired from all the travel and very unimpressed. Her brown hair fell across the couch pillows like waves of grain tossed about by an autumn wind, and she reminded me of one of those slightly jaded Romanov princesses from before the Revolution. I surveyed this woman from end to end and from head to toe. Frida looked me over with a glum mix of pity and boredom. She yawned. I took a blanket and draped it over her legs. “Why did you do that?” Frida said. “I was afraid you might get cold,” I told her. “But I wasn’t cold,” she said. She took out her phone and showed it to me. There was a photo of her and her husband there. They were embracing each other and both topless. Frida put the phone quickly away. “I’m a married woman. Married.” She repeated the word as if it had great eternal meaning.

“But married women also need to stay warm,” I said.

Saskia looked up from the newspaper at that moment. “Cute!” was all she said. She smiled at me. “Frida, do you remember him being so cute? Because I had no memory of him being so cute. He sure is cute!” “That’s always nice to hear,” I said. Frida lounged on in tranquil lethargy, eyeing me with a mix of frustration and half-amused interest. The nerve of this man to barge into her life again like this. Why couldn’t he just let her go? Why did it keep on happening?

I presented her next with a gift, a box wrapped in old-fashioned wrapping paper with small evergreen trees painted on it. Frida carefully undid its ribbon, and opened the parcel in a way that the paper could be reused. Inside there was a small toy piano, like the type that Fisher Price might make, except made of metal. Frida gave me a funny look and pressed down on the keys. The piano made a playful, tinny, musical sound. “This is for your children,” I told Frida.

To be honest, I had no idea how many children she had. We hadn’t spoken in years and I knew nothing about her anymore, other than it was her fixed policy and heartfelt desire that I would continue to know nothing. Frida gave me a clear-blue-eyed glance and a sad half smile. I stroked her legs again. Then Saskia set the copy of Ekspress down abruptly and looked over. “Well, you two love birds” she said. “I think the sauna is ready now.” It was ready. It was hot.

b‐boys makin’ with the apteek

AD-ROCK AND MIKE D were in the Raeapteek. Ad-Rock was wearing his red t-shirt and Mike D toted a stolen VW hood ornament around his neck. It was a summer’s day and there was light through the windows. It fell upon the jars of burnt bees, bleached dog feces, dried deer penises, and other potent medieval remedies. They were impressed, to say the least, especially by the thick, ancient volumes of the Burchard family, the original owners of the apothecary which, to their surprise, were full of dope rhymes about wack aldermen and fly maidens.

I be smokin’ roaches in the vestibule, in the next millennium I’ll still be old school.

“But where’s Yauch,” I asked? This was taking place in the past, you see, long before the sad, unnecessary, and tragic death of the vital MCA. “Yauch went to Helsinki,” Ad-Rock said. “He went to go to a Kaurismäki film screening with Lars von Trier.” I could see him then, with his nose to the sea, sniffing the Gulf of Finland. I could see him traveling on Tallink. I was worried about Yauch disappearing into a cinema in Helsinki though with this notoriously difficult Danish director. They would no doubt go out drinking. There would no doubt be pool hall fights. But then I remembered that Yauch had toured the world. Yauch had leapt into hotel pools from third-floor windows. Yauch had rapped alongside strippers in cages beneath giant inflatable phalluses. Yauch once made out with Madonna during the Like a Virgin Tour in ’85.

Yauch also had a beard like a billy goat.

“You don’t need to worry about Yauch,” Ad-Rock told me. “He always comes out unscathed.”

Yes, Yauch would turn up unscathed off the ship in Tallinn Harbor, munching on some fresh Karelian pies. Mike and Ad-Rock would have rhymes galore to share from the archives of the Raeapteek. And no matter what happened after that, the B-Boys would rhyme the rhyme well.

registration

ESMERALDA came in wearing a green dress. She arrived with the others, pointing out her name at the registration with her pretty ringed fingers. Her name was there, as was mine just a few lines away. I was surprised that she even remembered me. I was certain I had been entirely forgotten, maybe on purpose. She had skipped town months before, but here she was again in the full flesh. I asked Esmeralda where she had been all this time. If she only knew how many black nights I had walked home thinking of her, or half expecting her to appear from some shadow or behind some corner, only to whistle on alone in solemn disappointment. She said that she had been busy. ‘I’ve been so busy,’ she said. She was a busy kind of woman.

In the summer, during the festival, I would watch her walking up and down the street. She was always talking to someone, and she was mostly in a good mood when she wasn’t having one of her sad-looking sulky days, when she sat in the corner staring out the café windows. I asked Esmeralda why she hadn’t responded to any of my love letters, but she told me that there was no need to. She did this fluidly, as if she was dancing between the registration desk and the coffee. There were many bureaucrats in white shirts buzzing around. Her potato brown hair was pulled back. There was something about those eyes. Esmeralda has clever, fox-like eyes.

I could see her soft comforting milky white chest poking out of the top of that dress she had on, the same way you might see a gold coin reflecting the sunlight at the bottom of a clearwater lake or pool. Or the same way you might see a distant light in the night sky and wonder if it was a planet. What struck me was how at ease we were with this whole thing by now. It had become the default for us. It ebbed, it flowed, it undulated, rolled along and vibrated but it was reliably there, as sure and as trustworthy as the sunshine. ‘But you do know that I love you,’ I told her at registration. Esmeralda only smiled, her smart eyes drawing up into half moons. She placed a finger on my lips and said, “Hush, hush, hush.” Then I felt her all over me and in every part of me like a March wind. In my bones, in my blood, in my hair.

Everywhere.