IN A PARKING LOT with Hendrik Hendrikson, James Simmul, who was probably the only Estonian I knew named James, and a talented bass guitarist at that, and small toy car and a dog. Hendrik was talking about an upcoming game night to be held at the old cultural palace. I was barely paying attention. He was originally from Massachusetts and just old enough that he could have been, had he so desired, a member of New Kids on the Block. This made me always look at him strangely, trying to imagine him side by side with Donny Wahlberg and Jordan Knight. Was Hendrik Hendrikson the sixth New Kid? How many of them were there even?
They kind of wandered off after that. The house was an old hospital that had been converted into an commercial building, with a white facade and vague Stalinist and Federalist elements, with ivy growing around the columns in front, and a pale blue visible beneath the chipped paint of the exterior. I heard there was a concert happening at the castle ruins, or maybe near the old manor house? Hendrik Hendrikson and James Simmul roamed off into the crowds, which left me, an Australian sheepdog named Lou and a toy car that I could fit inside of.
This was sort of like my daughter’s toy car, except that it had a front and back seat and a trunk. It was made out of cheap plastic. So cheap that when I tried to back out of the parking lot, with Lou in the back, the steering wheel came off and it rolled to a halt between two very pricey vehicles, which had obviously been leased and indebted their pretend “owners,” a BMW and a Porsche. Oh, the anxiety of watching that car land in the middle, stopping against a wall.
The dog was unharmed, happily panting in the back, and I reinserted the wheel in front. Leaving this parking lot was turning out to be harder than I thought. But I knew my parents place was up the road apiece, and I would just have to navigate that tricky three-way intersection before it would just be shady country roads all the way back to the homestead. The hook that held the back of the toy car shut had come off too, so I jammed the doors together, the dog in the back, and began my tedious journey. Then my daughter Lucinda came running out of the bushes, clad in her overalls, looking almost like I did when I was that age.
“Daddy!” “What the hell are you doing hiding in the bushes?” I hoisted her into the trunk with the dog, and we set off. It was getting evening now, I was worried about rush hour traffic. I wasn’t sure where this place was. The house had all kinds of strange businesses operating inside of it. A New York-style deli on the right. A Soviet-style hospital on the further right.
I got the car going, but then I lost control of the steering wheel again, or rather it came off in my hands, one of the wheels fell off, and the whole car drove headfirst into a stone wall at the other end of the parking lot. Somehow I was in two places as this happened. I was in the driver’s seat and I was behind the car watching it happen, two vantage points at once. Huh?
When I woke up, I was in the hospital in the dark. Maybe I had hit my head? It felt kind of sore. Or maybe those were the drugs wearing off? I found my pants on the floor. Outside the door, I could hear the audio from an Estonian television news program. Priit Kuusk was looking very serious and saying serious things about Ukraine and Russia and drone bits. I had to get out of this place. I knew they were going to probably restrain me, or put me through some formal process, some bureaucracy to get out of it. But I needed to find my dog Lou and my daughter Lucinda and they might still be out there waiting patiently in my little toy car. My pants not even buckled, I was already out the door. We were going to make it, little toy cars be damned.
THE LAVAZZA COFFEE vending machine was temporarily out of order. A small dark-haired woman was busy with a screwdriver, installing some new buttons and features. Soon it would be possible to get pastries and croissants. The new installation panels showed an eye-watering array of colorful treats. As such, there would be no coffee for me. “Come back soon,” she said.
The common area of the hostel, in which the machine was located, was dark. Someone had turned out all of the lights. There was always this musty smell in there, the smell of hostels. A long bar in the corner. It was sort of like a rock club crossed with a hostel. The only light came from behind the bar, where wine glasses dangled and thick bottles of whiskey glowed gold.
Back in the room, my father was tapping into a laptop. He was wearing a green t-shirt. “Don’t you want to go see some museums while we’re here in Amsterdam?” I asked him. Surely, if we were in the Dutch capital, we could see a few Van Goghs in the process. But he just kept working and reminded me that I should be working too. I was supposed to cover the Olympics in Scotland in a week or so too. What lasting impact would the games have on Edinburgh?
I went back out into the common area to see if the machine was fixed, but it was even in a greater state of reconstruction. There were wires and panels everywhere, and the small dark-haired woman was at work with her screwdriver, putting everything in place. She had on a white sweater, glasses, her hair was braided. She was quiet. Focused. Diligently at work.
Back in the room, my father was gone, but a young woman with a backpack had arrived, asking if she too could spend the night. Who was I to protest? She had blonde hair, a silent, unassuming character. Wore a plaid shirt. Probably from some place like Idaho. She took a seat on one of the bunks and water began to flow into the room. Was it water from one of the canals? Soon all of the dirty old bedding was soaked and there were pillows floating by.
In the common area, the Lavazza coffee vending machine was at last in order, but the button for a straight black coffee was now missing. There were tropical cocktails to be had, rich, creamy pastries and doughnuts, but not one simple black coffee. This was bad. Was I really going to get a flat white? Or maybe I would have to do the impossible and leave the hostel? Surely a good cafe was located just down the way at the foot of some bridge. Just a few steps.
Back in the room, the water had subsided and the carpets had dried. The bedding had all been replaced. I was face to face with a woman dressed in gold, who looked like Madeleine Kahn when she played the Empress Nympho in History of the World, Part I. It’s hard to describe the lovemaking process. I don’t really remember that part, only that at some point it was sensual overload. Her golden dress, and that curly hair. It was everywhere, all over me, from every corner, I was absorbed into her delicious essence. “But you’re older than my mother,” I told Madeleine Kahn. “This can’t be happening. This just can’t be happening.” “Oh, it’s happening,” Madeleine Kahn said while sucking on my ear. She was also dead but it didn’t seem to matter.
THE SUN WAS RISING as I was strolling along the river promenade when, on a whim, I decided to turn up one side street that arched back toward the gray center of town. It was morning in Narva, where it was perpetually late February or early March. Ice clung stubbornly to every façade and rooftop. One’s breathe, like smoke, was always visible and drifting, and the sounds of sturdy boots punched out a clean rhythm on the city’s frosty mottled sidewalks.
About halfway up this street, I noticed a wooden house packed in between two mighty Soviet-era structures. It had a multipaned window that bowed out into the street. Behind the glass, I could see fresh loaves of bread, scones, Cornish pasties. I looked up at the sign but couldn’t make out the hand-painted name. Was it Trelawney? Pendragon? One of those names.
How could it be? How could it be that there was a British bakery hidden in the back streets of Narva? Who was the rogue baker who dared to operate in this sea of Russia-facing Russianness? What clients did he have? Did they even know what a pasty was? What a secret!
It was terribly cold at that moment and I thought a hunk of good sourdough, a slab of butter, some good marmalade, and a strong coffee would be the ultimate fix. Through the window I could see the baker at work, though his back was to me, and he was dressed in old-fashioned clothing. This was not fully Dickensian attire, but he had on a gray coat and flat cap, and an old checkered scarf wrapped around his neck from a century ago. He was an older man, but not much older. It could have maybe been a handful of years between us, but his hair shone silver.
I knocked on the door and then tapped on the window. “Can I come in?” I said. Behind the man, I could see stacks of tea chests with words like Premium and East India stamped all over them. The man cocked his head as if he was confused by the situation. Then he mouthed to me the words, “We’re closed,” through the window and went back about his work. But why were they closed? I was maybe the only person who was lucky enough to find that Narva bakery. Why shut me out?
THE BABY was not mine. It was my ex-girlfriend’s baby. I know this because she brought it with her when she came to visit Estonia with her friend (or was she her girlfriend?) They looked alike, two lesbian women from the West Coast with pale faces and orange curly hair. We were standing behind the Raekoda or Town Hall in Tartu on a wet, gray streaky day. Student activities were underway, something like a race or marathon. People lined the cobblestone streets, my ex-girlfriend and her friend included. They were unassuming American tourists. For them this was all just taking in the culture. That’s when she handed the baby to me. “Can you take care of her?” she asked. “We would like to do some sightseeing.”
Sightseeing? I walked across the Town Hall Square to Katla’s apartment house, then up that flight of stairs to her door. Inside, I discovered that its rooms were full of boxes and guests. “Whose baby is it?” someone asked. They were standing around a Christmas tree, having a kind of packing holiday party. They were wearing festive sweaters. “It’s not my baby,” I said, cradling her. “But she sure is sweet.” She was a lovely child with yellow fuzz for hair. And despite being maybe half a year old, the baby somehow had learned to talk quite impressively.
This I found out later when I lost the baby. I had just set her down for a moment in the busy apartment and then couldn’t find her. How could I have lost someone else’s baby?! What was my ex-girlfriend going to say when I told her she was gone? Why was I watching my ex-girlfriend’s baby anyway? That was just like her, you know, to hand all the responsibility over to some fool like me while she went out and got her things done. I raced from room to room, hoping for a sign. Then I heard some happy giggling. From the corner of the back room, I saw something move from beneath a blanket. The blanket lifted and the baby peaked out, chubby and pink. “Hey, silly,” the baby gurgled and laughed at me. “I’ve been hiding here all this time.”
IT ALL STARTED with a letter. Handwritten on lined paper in black ink, the letters clear and neat. It had arrived in the mail, my daughter had left it on the kitchen counter, unopened. Inside the envelope, I also found two paparazzi-style photographs of me having lunch with two young Estonian women. One of them was blonde, the other had that famous “potato brown” hair they talk about. They were both thirtyish and well dressed, as they should have been, because these had been interviews for work. Nothing out of the ordinary in the slightest.
The author of the letter had other ideas. “You have been seducing my niece Kätlin and my neighbor’s daughter Tiina!” the writer wrote. “You are commanded to at once cease your lecherous Mediterranean liaisons with these wholesome country Estonian girls!” I rubbed my eyes after reading it, looked out the back window. The house was situated in a wooded area, and in the hollow below the back terrace there was a graveyard, dotted with Victorian-era tombs, which had since been overgrown with moss and ivy. Despite its ancientness, visitors were still passing through this green area to bring candles or flowers to the grave of some ancestor. I watched some of these strangers romp through the graveyard from the window, contemplated the threatening letter, then thought nothing of it. For whatever reason, I was used to threats, just like I was used to living next to dead people. It just didn’t bother me.
Until one day when I came home, only to find the author of the letter sitting in my kitchen, looking nonchalant, as if he owned the place. An older man in an orange raincoat with white hair and a scruffy beard. He looked like an Icelandic sea captain. His eyes were a striking blue color and he had a boyish quality to him, as if he was waiting for his mother to pick him up.
I came into the kitchen and said, “To make things clear, I’m not having an affair with your niece or your neighbor’s daughter. I’m a professional. Strictly professional!” The old man pushed at the air, as if to get rid of the topic. “That’s not what this is about,” he said. “I just wrote that letter to scare you.” “Scare me?” He stood up and began to walk around the kitchen, looked out the window. “Have you ever noticed that this place is different?” he said. “Special?”
“Sure, it’s special, that’s why I live here,” I told him. “Would you mind leaving? My daughter will be home from school soon.” The man agreed to leave, but before he left, he gave me his business card. On it was written just his name. He was called “Jaan Allik.” As soon as he was gone, I called up Vello, who is an old Afghan War veteran and knows everyone in town. I asked him about Jaan. “Allik?” he said through the phone. “He’s an okay fellow, I reckon, but a little off, if you know what I mean. Bit of a strange bird.” Jaan Allik had also been in the Afghan War.
He had never really recovered.
I tossed the business card onto the table and again was done with it. Down in the hollow more strangers were coming and going from the graves. They often wore brown or green coats, and so they blended in with the natural scenery. It gave me the sense that it was a kind of meeting place, maybe for friends or relatives. I was so lost in thought that I forgot all about Jaan Allik.
Until the next day when, while standing by that same window, there came a knock at the door. When I went to it, I saw not only Allik standing there, but a group of strangers, all of them dressed in black, like Orthodox priests. One of them was an Indian woman. She came into the house, leading the others. She did most of the talking. “We want to take over your house,” the woman said. I told her that it was not for sale. “But money is not a problem,” she went on. “You see, we are a special group of people. We call ourselves the Autumn Club.” The Indian woman approached the kitchen window and stared out on the old graveyard. As always, people were coming and going from it, like squirrels. Such a damp place. How had I ever come to live here?
“We help souls transition from one world to the next,” the Indian woman told me. “And this is the perfect place for our club to operate.” “Why?” I asked. Why would anyone need a house for such purposes? It made no sense. “Come here, see for yourself,” she said. The Indian woman gestured down at the cemetery. “So many are still there, seeking peace.” “Seeking peace?” “Yes,” said the Indian woman. Allik stood beside her and other strangers from their peculiar organization. “You could say this place is rich in souls,” she said. Her eyes lit up and she said the words and I noticed she had light gray eyes. “This place has quite the inventory of souls.”
I MUST HAVE RENTED an apartment from a middle-aged Estonian man. He was maybe a decade older, dark tufts of hair, graying at the temples, tawny complexion. He might have been Spanish or Jewish in a previous life. He worked in some dusty corner of the financial services universe and was always dressed smart casual, with a jacket, shirt open at the collar, khakis.
His wife had recently left him, or they had separated or taken a time out. So they said. She took the rest of the children off to the Canary Islands, where she had become a poolside yoga teacher and worshipper of the Hindu love gods. The eldest daughter stayed behind to finish her studies. She was disarmingly beautiful. He was certain the girl had caught my eye. She had.
At night, her father would kick off his loafers after a long day spent shilling for the bank and watch the news on an enormous screen he had got a great deal on during the pandemic. When he saw me entering my apartment through the big glass windows on the first floor, and most of the house was made of metal and glass, he would shake his head a little and purse his lips and then nurse another sip from a bottle of beer. The apartment itself was a tranquil single room, wide and spacious, all painted white, with high, echoey ceilings, and a small kitchenette.
It had three windows and through them I would watch the eldest daughter arrive and depart on her way to or from her semiotics classes. The bob of a golden brain in the late winter sun. The lyrical cadence of a youthful, ever optimistic voice heard through the glass, concerned for her joyless, dead-hearted father. There was something to her, a kind of music so faint you could only hear it if you strained your very ears. But it was also so removed from my waking conscience that I could barely grasp at it, even if I tried. This sparkle might have found its way into a magazine article I wrote, one with sultry allusions to such inappropriate relationships.
And then one day, my landlord was there before me, clutching a rolled up copy ofthe magazine’s latest edition in his hand, ready to strike. I could see my face above the column, which was printed neatly in black and white “You,” he said, “are a sick pervert! I have already initiated legal proceedings, a kohtuprotsess!” I stepped back and he whacked me with my own words. I tried to defend myself. “But it was all fictionalized!” I cried. “All of it was fiction!” “Lies,” he shouted and struck. “Of course, some of it was based on reality.” “Jail!” he growled. “Jail!”
In my apartment, I let down the white blinds. Outside I could hear him howling, banging. I grabbed my things, crawled out the back window like a character in a Willie Nelson song. Then I was down the forest path, on my way, almost free at last when his wife appeared like mirage. I tumbled and there were orange leaves everywhere, so many leaves I began to swim. The enlightened landlord’s wife looked down out me, her head wrapped in a bandana. Stars flooded the sky and began circling her like little birds. They arranged themselves into a crown. She reached down and pulled me free from my leafy oceans. At long last, I had been rescued.
The landlord’s wife was a fine looking woman, very smooth features, a kind of gray-brown hair just visible beneath her turban, and she had very clear blue eyes that were skies unto themselves. She did not fear my love of her daughter, for as she saw it, all daughters needed to be loved. “Would you like honey too?” She poured me some tea on the terrace later. I mixed in the honey, watched it dissolve in the peppermint, and drank deep from the warm ceramic cup. I was still kind of shaken up and could see her husband through the windows. He was filming the whole thing. Evidence to be used at trial. He gave me the middle finger. Then he motioned to his throat and made a slashing gesture. He mouthed the words: “Pervert, pervert. Jail, jail.”
MIHKEL RAUD gave me a lift to the city. It was in one of those old-fashioned Volkswagen Beetles, beige exterior, red interior, remarkably clean. I couldn’t tell if he was just being friendly or had gone into the taxi or Bolt driver business, and I wasn’t really sure why I had got in the car to begin with, as I had no plans to go to the city. He wore his flat cap and looked the part of a driver, parked the Beetle on one of the lower levels of the Viru Keskus parking garage. Mihkel Raud hopped out and wished me a good day.
There I was, back in the city. A lot had changed since I was away. Tallinn looked sort of like Manhattan, but in the 1950s or 1960s. Brick buildings, iron railings, snow-covered cars, trash cans. Why did I feel like I was in Little Shop of Horrors or Rear Window? Tarja came walking by in a nice pink dress and waved to me. “But what are you doing here?” she said. “What brings you to town?” Her black hair was done up, she eyed me with her usual sparkling curiosity. “Well,” she said. “I need to get some shopping done. My children are hungry.” And she left.
At the end of the street, I noticed Esmeralda. Young Esmeralda Kask. I hadn’t seen her in ages. She looked quite beautiful in her dress, her chestnut hair was pulled back. There was something about those blue pearls of eyes, the slope of her cheeks. There was no one as beautiful as Esmeralda Kask. Not in this world. Something strange was happening though. She was leading a flock of sheep. When had Esmeralda become a shepherd? Or was she a shepherdess? I was too old for her, but I loved her anyway. Such loves are non-negotiable.
Just then my mother emerged from a store, clutching her grandmother’s pearls. “You, young lady,” she called out to Esmeralda. “What do you plan to do with all of those sheep?” Esmeralda blinked a few times. “I am going to sheer them,” said Esmeralda. “It’s been such a cold winter. I am going to make myself a warm coat.” “That sounds like a lovely idea,” my mother said and waved. Their interaction brought a tear to my eye. For Esmeralda Kask was what the Estonians would call a silmarõõm, my one true love. The tear swelled and rolled down my ice cold cheek.
ON OUDEZIJDS ACHTERBURGWAL, a street and canal at the center of De Wallen, Amsterdam’s Red Light District, a woman sits in a window on a Friday morning staring into an overcast late November day. She is dressed only in her bra and panties and her hair hangs loosely about her shoulders. She is a voluptuous, pale character with doll-like features and pink lips and her face reveals a mixture of morning grogginess and utter resignation. This is the face of a woman who has seen everything and done everything, and everyone, and she seems bored by the world.
Upon seeing her from across the canal, I give her a friendly wave and she waves back to me. For a moment, it feels like we are old school chums. There is a sense of camaraderie there. Though I am a writer and not a prostitute, I suppose we are in the same kind of business. We give pieces of ourselves away for financial rewards. My soul is written with words onto paper. Her soul is pressed into flesh. She is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, maybe a mother.
But this has been her fate, to sit here tiredly selling herself, while my fate is to head off to Rotterdam, to give a talk about what it’s like to be a writer who writes in cafes. I feel disgusted, of course, for myself, for the woman, for the world. I feel disgusted as a man, too. But then I wonder why as people we are so often disgusted with ourselves and with our day-to-day lives. As the weekend crowds line the canals of the Red Light District and the sinister laughter of throngs of British men (and women) echoes up and down the alleys, one can only feel disgust.
This is the heart of the decadent West, a West that we have convinced ourselves is dying every day. The official capital of the European Union is in Brussels, but its spiritual heart might be right here by these old canals with their erotic boutiques, 5D pornographic theatres, and sex workers.
Our revulsion and gloom about our future is only compounded by the migrant crisis and climate change. I recently read an article in The Guardian where it said that only one in five female scientists planned to have children, to spare their would-be offspring this shame of being born. No one else should have to contend with the endless famines, wars, hurricanes and droughts.
They want to save the world and so they choke off its future, as if they were solely responsible for all its sins and misfortunes. As demographers forecast our societies will only shrink more, people turn to animals for companionship. There are social media sites for cat and dog owners where their pets can confirm they’re going to meetups at the park, or share photos in a group chat. I suppose the dogs can wish each other a happy birthday. Because animals are innocent and people are guilty. This is how we have learned to think about ourselves. This is the future we are building for ourselves, an indulgent childless future of pet social media.
But hasn’t it always been like this? This is what I think that morning as I wave to my newfound Dutch friend over the canal. She is certainly not the first woman to live this life or have this fate. There are many others. I pass by them as they prepare for the day. Then I turn the corner.
ON THE NEXT MORNING in the Red Light District, the municipal workers sweep up broken glass and soggy french fries and the ravenous seagulls attack piles of trash. This is how yesterday is replaced by today, but the bakeries and cheese vendors are already open, their shops glowing with warm, inviting lights. Life tumbles sleepily forward in Amsterdam, like an old man fumbling for his keys. At night, the city is a hubbub, a bazaar. Whatever you want to eat, you can find it. Whatever you want to see, you can see it. Whatever you want to do, you can probably do it. The Dutch are a tolerant people and that tolerance has become a foundational element of what we call European or Western values. We measure our Westernness according to the number of rainbow-colored Pride flags that hang outside of bars, or by the casual way we smoke cannabis.
We unbutton our top button and walk down Oudezijds Achterburgwal, waving at the women.
We are a free people, we tell ourselves, free people who can do whatever they want and listen to whatever they want. We can spend part of the night in a record shop, as I did, digging through the record bins, engulfed in green marijuana smoke, unearthing treasures by Jamaican and Zydeco bands.
The Western life can be a comfortable life, one where the main existential question is, “How should I spend my Friday night?” Or, “What concert should I go to?” One can just while away the days, in pursuit of personal satisfaction, pleasure, what some call happiness. In corners of the world like Amsterdam’s De Wallen, there are almost no children at all and you can imagine if you close your eyes that they don’t even exist. For many of my friends they don’t. There is an invisible divide between us, I think, those of us who have had children and those who haven’t, and I think we both feel pressured in different ways. When my third child was born, a colleague asked me why I had decided to have one more. “You will never be able to support them on a journalist’s salary,” he said. He was right, but in my mind, that was somehow irrelevant. I took the whole thing to be a kind of godsend or the fulfilment of a prophecy. “Did you expect me to weigh the pros and cons, make an Excel file, and budget for it?” I asked him. “Yes,” he said. “Of course!”
He’s never had any children and so the world of having children was still abstract for him. As it has been for other childless friends, who seem to see kids as something like larger pets, that you can leave at home with a bowl of water for a day or two while you head off to some soiree. Children are an impediment to having fun, a thick wall that walls off happiness. “Every guy I see with a kid is walking down the street, shaking his head and talking to himself,” another friend told me. He hasn’t had children either.
The world for parents among childless friends can be a cold one. “Aren’t you coming to the party?” someone might ask. And then they are disappointed when you can’t, because your daughter is vomiting. They understand that such are the pitfalls of reproduction. They can’t see why someone would voluntarily do it to themselves. Where’s the benefit? Truth be told, it makes no sense. Because if I was to weigh the pros and cons, it would never be the right time to have children. The forces of Western society seem aligned against it. They make it hard in every way.
The West’s days are over, it seems. There’s nothing to do but close up shop, turn out the lights.
But if the ship of the West is sinking into the sea, why not just get our kicks before it slips below the surface?
ON MY LAST NIGHT in Amsterdam, I take a walk to see an old friend. She lives all the way at the end of Vondelpark, which is where my hippie father spent a night sleeping on a bench in 1973. I think about my father as I walk the avenue beyond Leidseplein, which is lined on both sides by restaurants and homes where childless couples watch Netflix while the West slowly dies. In one of these apartments lives an my friend from New York who, like me, attended college in Washington, DC, and later settled in Europe. She has married a Dutchman and has made two Dutch children who are now awaiting Sinterklaas.
Their building is a brutalist masterpiece. Its balconies face an internal courtyard. Outside the doors to the apartments, some boots and toys can be seen. Families have started to move in here, replacing the first generation of inhabitants who had lived in it since it was built in 1961.
That was the year the Berlin Wall went up brick by brick. The next summer, the Cuban Missile Crisis happened. Life must have seemed just as impossibly damned then as it does now. Yet people continued to marry and have children. In 1961, the Netherlands experienced the highest birth rate in recent history, with 3.2 children per woman. But just like in Estonia, the Netherlands are expected to lose people over the next decades. In this massive post-war edifice, young families huddle. They are demographic survivors.
My friend’s family gathers around a table and eats soup and pasta. The little boy, aged three, is dressed in pajamas that resemble a cat. The girl, aged six, is eager to put out her shoe for Sinterklaas, who will reward her with snoep, or candy. My friend’s Dutch life is very different from my Estonian life. She lives in the busiest corner of Europe. I live in the frozen wastes. But we both know the joy of setting out a shoe or slipper for a Christmastime visitor who brings candy.
The family tonight is being visited by a neighbor, a 34-year-old Dutch designer who looks like a woman from a Johannes Vermeer painting. She has red hair and is milky white and once lived in a black neighborhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn where her neighbor was in a gang. In Amsterdam, she has taken up with a Russian software engineer from Saint Petersburg, and they are expecting their second child. “I only have a few months left,” she says, patting her belly.
This is how new Europeans come into this world.
Later, when I ask my friend about why she decided to have children when so many of our classmates didn’t, she gives a bunch of different reasons. But she also notes that it hasn’t been easy being a mother, that her career has suffered and that academia, even in the progressive Netherlands, is still quite male dominated, and that the women who have secured the best positions for themselves tend to not have children. But she does love her children and she wouldn’t have it any other way, she says. Her main reason for having children appears to have been that she had an awesome amount of love to give and just wanted to give it to someone.
Which, to me, seems like the best reason that a person can have.
EVEN LATER THAT NIGHT, I head back to the Red Light District. Something fascinates me about its stark grotesqueness. I lean up against the Oude Kerk, which has stood since the 13th century, writing in my journal with the hope that the walls of the church will imbue me with more marvellous writing powers. Down the way, some young men negotiate a price with a sex worker. Then I go looking for the woman I saw on the first morning in Amsterdam, the lady in the window. I just want to see her one more time, to wave goodbye to her, to make us both feel like we are human, for just one precious moment. The West may be rotten to its core and in decline. We may all peer out at our futures with that same haggard look of resignation, but I do feel compassion for her as she plies her trade. We are, after all, in the same kind of business.
THE SCENE, an industrial area, a dump, maybe both. Rory Lapp, the acclaimed Estonian writer and poet drives in first, then I follow him, our automobiles follow a set course. It’s almost like we’re rally racing. Yet there are no competitive drivers, just rusting manufacturing waste that brings to mind a mineral processing plant. At some point, Rory leaves his vehicle with a sort of industrial plant valet and I do the same. Then we head into an old building, vast and obviously post-war, with a peeling façade. It’s an auditorium. Light wooden floors. Burgundy curtains.
Inside, everything has been renovated. I can see that we’re in something like a basketball court set up for a party. This is one of those multipurpose halls. There are long tables on both sides, and on stage, an unfamiliar hip hop trio is performing. They are pacing with microphones, trading rhymes, and a DJ spins records in the corner, cutting back and forth. At the head of the tables, I see a familiar-looking man, clean shaven, with a full head of wavy hair. He wears a red button down shirt, open at the top, and looks somehow lost in thought or just unimpressed.
“Who is that?” I ask from one of the partygoers, who is loading his plate from a bowl of potato salad. “He looks just like …” “That’s MCA,” the partygoer responds. “Today is his 61st birthday. Weren’t you invited?” “I guess so,” I say. Now I can see that MCA, also known as Adam Yauch, also known as Nathaniel Hornblower, is at the gifts table, and guests are hovering around him as he unties every last big package. I look down and see I have a gift bag in hand too. It’s full of my own books. “Yauch loved Minu Viljandi,” somebody says. “He’s a great fan of your work.” “He is?” I answer. “I have to say, he looks great for 61,” someone says. “Sixty-one?” another answers. “And I thought he was dead!” “Isn’t he though?” I ask them. But nobody answers.
Slowly I make my way to the busy gift table. MCA is seated there. He still looks like he’s part alien or something. Did the Beastie Boys really smoke so much dope back in the day? Or was it all that Tibetan Buddhism that did that to him? MCA is functioning on some other plane of consciousness. He’s floating around in the Third Bardo. I am afraid to even say hi to him. He’s a big superstar, one of the greatest emcees ever. I’m just … But how did MCA even find out about me? MCA looks up as I hand over my gift. He nods in his good-natured, all knowing way. Kind, sympathetic, brotherly. The man looks as if he’s about to speak. MCA looks up and says …
MAPLE LEAF was one of Estonia’s top drummers. His real name was Vahtraleht, which means “maple leaf” in Estonian, but his nickname was Vaht, which means “foam.” He was, by his 39th year, a seasoned and accomplished percussionist, who had once jammed with Tony Allen, Fela Kuti’s drummer, and Damon Albarn, albeit on congas. He had lived in several communes and had even spent a stint in Trenchtown. His hair was long and maple-colored, as was his beard, and his skin a flawless milk white. Because of this, he was nicknamed “Mormon Jesus” by some of his American friends. He played in three or four ensembles. He changed girlfriends like lightbulbs. It’s not easy to go steady with a mercurial character like Estonia’s own Maple Leaf.
But then he died. It was in a terrible car crash in Germany. Every single vehicle in the crash was German made. I think a BMW collided with his little white Volkswagen. Surprisingly, he survived the impact, but then crawled out onto the autobahn, where he writhed in pain for some time, pleading with God. “No,” he cried. “No!” Then, with a final tapping of his fingers, he expired from this life, and attained musical immortality. His was the kind of face that was spraypainted on the facades of old buildings in Tallinn, Tartu, and Viljandi. The Estonians had always yearned for their own Viktor Tsoi and in Maple Leaf, this had at least been achieved.
In honor of Maple Leaf and his dramatic end, I decided to bake a kind of maple sugar cake. I brought it into the temple that had been erected in his honor. This had been constructed in the same pattern of an ancient Indian temple. I found it incredibly sad that Maple Leaf would no longer play drums anymore. And to die in a car crash in Germany, of all godforsaken places. But nobody ate my cake at the Indian temple. I guess they were just too consumed with grief.
north! 