the adventure of the swedish pastries

ON THE SHIP TO MUHU, with my daughter and parents, I was surprised to discover my friend Anton was also on board, and that he had a special need to be delivered to the nature preserve at the head of the Sõrve peninsula, an expansive strip of island land that dangled suggestively down toward the Gulf of Riga. It was already night when the ship docked in Kuivastu Harbor and the bus began to roll across Muhu and then the causeway to Saaremaa.

By the time we got to the hotel in Kuressaare, it was bedtime, for sure, but the hotel was jumping, with a restaurant up front, as well as blackjack tables and slot machines. My parents retired to their room, and I left my daughter in ours, and then went searching for Anton so I could take him to Sõrve. Anton himself had disappeared upon disembarking. Where was he? I sent him some messages, but he only sent back photos of himself and friends tearing up various nightclubs in Kuressaare. There was even a shot of a mounted police officer trying to rein in the island pub crawl chaos. This guy wanted a free ride? But a promise was a promise.

I went down a series of long hallways that seemed to stretch on forever. Well-lit, wood-paneled corridors, no doubt created by some Nordic design firm. I kept walking and soon I was near Mändjala Beach. Such long passageways, I thought. How was it even possible? At the end of the final hallway, I saw there was a sauna and swimming complex outside, and old ladies were relaxing in the warm bubbles of a hot tub. Inside there was a breakfast buffet set out with the most delicious looking choux pastries, topped with lingonberry-flavored cream. Inside the breakfast area, some old Scandinavian couples had fallen asleep at the dining tables. I helped myself to four or five of these special pastries and turned back while a DJ was setting up.

As I returned to the entrance of the hotel, with no word from Anton, who was probably sleeping in the drunk tank at the Saaremaa police station, I encountered the maître d’hôtel, an older gentleman with gray hair and a fine mustache, who informed me that I now owed the hotel a pretty sum for the pastries. “You had five umeå-brests,” he said. “That will cost you €25 at the very least.” “But I have stayed here many times before,” I told the maître d’hôtel. “As far as I recall, the umeå-brest pastries were always free.” “Times have changed in Estonia,” said the maître d’hôtel. “We now charge for almond milk, honey. Umeå-brests are certainly no longer free.” No, nothing was complimentary anymore in this odd nation. With a heavy heart, but a belly full of brests, I retired to my hotel room at last. Sõrve was not in the cards. Who knew what had become of Anton. And besides, it just then occurred to me, I didn’t even have a car.

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.

fish coffins

BY THE SECOND WINTER, I already had a good stack of wood in my barn. It was birch wood and it kept us warm. Sometimes the kids in the neighboring yard would kick a ball over the rooftops. Without a word I would toss it back over and they would continue playing.

This was all part of Viljandi’s shanty life, footballs landing without notice, strange boys knocking at the door. One day a few boys even showed up in the snow. “Has anyone seen Benny?” one asked. “He owes us some money.”

“What do you mean, ‘owes you money’?” I said.

“We bought him ice cream and he promised to pay us back.”

“Well, he’s not here. You’ll have to find him somewhere else.”

Benny was the Swedish Chef’s son. Just eight or nine years old. He was already in ice cream debt.

That second winter, I moved into a larger apartment across the hall. The Chef came to live in the small apartment. It became his base, temporary residence for the next few months while he did side gigs in Norway — two weeks on, two weeks off. A spontaneous little commune bloomed up though, between me and my daughter, him and his three kids, and Musi, his girlfriend, and her son, who also stayed sometimes. All together there were five kids and three adults spread across two apartments. The children would race back and forth, doors slamming. There was howling, laughing, arguments, crying, things were thrown, there was anarchy, chaos and then the Chef made soup or porridge and they all ate.

Sometimes the Chef and Musi would come into my bedroom to check on me. I would be in bed trying to sleep. “Are you sleeping?” they would ask looking down at me in my bed. “It’s midnight,” I would say back. “Yes, but we just made some lentil soup.”

During the day, they built snowmen outside and my youngest came too. Now there were six children. On one hand, I enjoyed the company. On the other hand I never knew who might show up. Once I took a shower and forgot my towel. But Musi just happened to arrive at that moment. I asked her for one and she passed one between a crack in the door.

Having so many people around was really helpful. Clothing was mixed, socks exchanged. There was even a green dress in the laundry. No one knew where it came from. A hamster came to us too — Martinus — and he joined the commune. Then there were the two fish, Tsunami and Tornado. These we had bought off Epp’s old friend in Saaremaa. They were as adored and worshipped as any other creature. In the mornings, I would open the curtains so that they could watch the people in Posti Street. In my mind, it was entirely conceivable that they would live forever.

Tsunami and Tornado, swimming in circles, watching the street.

When we left for Italy, I left them in the care of the Chef and his children. They heated the apartment periodically with the wood from the barn, but one day before we were set to return the temperature slipped to -25.

That was the day the fish stopped swimming.

When we found them there, like that, suspended in cold water, upon arriving back from our trip, my daughter cried the cries of someone in deep emotional anguish. I took two matchboxes and made small coffins for them. Tornado, the blue fish, went into the red matchbox. Tsunami, the red fish, had a yellow matchbox coffin.

“Why don’t you just flush them down the toilet?” asked the Chef as I put their tiny fish corpses into these makeshift fish coffins.

“We have to wait to bury them in the spring,” I said.

“You could just cremate them,” he offered. He had apologized for their cold-water deaths, but wouldn’t be losing much sleep over them. This was a man who gutted salmon and carved up crabs for a living. Dead fish were a part of life.

“They deserve a proper funeral,” I told him. “They were family.”

I kept the fish coffins in the freezer. It became my tiny makeshift morgue for dead fish. Then one day, I opened the freezer to discover the coffins weren’t there anymore. When I saw the Chef, I was furious.

“What did you do to the fish? I know you did something!”

“What do you mean? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You flushed them down the toilet, didn’t you! Or burned them.”

“Never happened.”

“I saw your eyes. You think I’m crazy. You think I am crazy for wanting to bury the fish. You don’t think that they deserve a proper burial!”

“But you are crazy. You’ve completely lost your mind, man.”

“I am not crazy!” I said. Or was I? That winter, with all those people around, with that constant low temperature, I had started to doubt my sanity. Maybe the fish had simply combusted or dematerialized? Or maybe the fish god had taken their souls? Viljandi was a very weird place, and in such very weird places, very weird things like that just might happen.

It was months later that I discovered the two little coffins, packed neatly into the ice in the back of the freezer. They had fallen behind some frozen pelmeenid. They looked like the graves of British explorers left behind in the Arctic wastes, only to be discovered by some later expedition. I took them out to the yard, dug a small hole for them beneath that crooked old tree, and set them to rest there for all eternity.

Written in 2018-19/Revised March 2025

sand street beach

I SWAM OUT to the end of the bay, to where it connects with the sound, just off the point. The water was darker and deeper here and the current was just too strong. Turning back was hopeless, so I let the water carry me all the way around the point to Sand Street Beach. Remember Sand Street Beach? Wasn’t there even a little shelter there, at least in the old days? Maybe it’s still there, with the names of aspiring lovers carved into its sturdy wooden walls.

Joanie loves Chachi.

It was there there that I emerged, dripping salt water and sand. It wasn’t such a long walk home, but a storm was setting in, and the air was thick with thunder and that ominous grayblue feeling. The wind picked up and danced with the cedar branches and I began the hike. Sand Street connected to Christian Avenue. Christian Avenue intersected with Quaker Path. I had this feeling all along that a hundred eyeballs were watching me through the windows of white clapboard houses that had once belonged to dead whaling ship captains.

a bus full of books

I HAD TO GO TO PORTUGAL to pick up some books. The address was somewhere between Porto and Povoa de Varzim. It was a seaside street, ruled by proud white castles of houses. Matteo, of all people, answered the door and we shook hands. Then someone else, another Milanese writer, told me I should relocate to Portugal and that the beach here was “just full of people like us,” in other words other Italians. But I had to drive back to Estonia, I told them. Business demanded it.

On the other side of the street there was a canal, and some local yogis were filling it up with birthday cake. Channels of cake, cream, different kinds of colorful toppings, so that it almost resembled a floating chocolate garden. They were hanging decorations above the canal, too, in preparation for a major street festival. But I was expected back in Tallinn within days with a shipment of books, and so set out shortly after toward Madrid. When I got to Barcelona, I parked my car and went for a walk. On one back street, I passed an aerobics class in session. I could see Linnéa inside stretching. “You can stay and watch me,” she mouthed to me through the glass. “I don’t mind at all.” As she stretched, I caught sight of her undergarments. There was just something about the pattern of the lace on her skin, the way her golden braids dangled down her back. I decided to curl up right there, outside the window glass, and sit beside her as she stretched.

Later, a door opened and I watched Linnéa and the others file out of the class. A Catalan nurse had come to administer fresh COVID-19 booster shots. I remained at a distance, though I could see the tiny glass vials of the Pfizer vaccine piling up. I didn’t want anyone to know of my secret affection for Linnéa. An old colleague happened to turn up and we started to talk about people we had known from our days in New York. Good old Jankauskas! I told him about the bus full of books and the long ride in from Portugal. Jankauskas asked me the books and I told him all about them. You should have seen his eyes as I relayed their plot twists and turns, their heroes and villains. Jankauskas said it sounded like a lot of good reads.