by Des Ekin
He had been born in the Estonian capital of Tallinn at the height of the Cold War. His father, a highly-respected university professor, had married a doctor and they had settled in a comfortable house on the Baltic coast.
Settled was the wrong word – Professor Talimann had been given a rare freedom to travel in order to exchange ideas with other academics around the world, and the young Andres found himself exposed to cultural influences that most of his friends would never have encountered. He spent part of his childhood in Dresden, part in Prague, and short periods in Berne and Paris.
‘When I reached university age, I was expected to put all that behind me and prepare for a long and productive life as a Soviet citizen,’ he said. ‘But I found that impossible. After witnessing Western democracy in action, I could easily see through the Soviet propaganda that portrayed it as an evil system. I resolved to get away from Estonia as soon as possible, and return only when my country was free of Russian domination.’
He found he had a natural gift for languages. In addition to the Estonian and German he learned from his parents, and the Russian he was forced to study at school, he could speak fluent French and Spanish.
‘But never English,’ he said with a rueful smile. ‘My father blamed the British for surrendering Estonia to Stalin after the War, so I was never formally taught the language.
‘But like most young people, I rebelled against my father. I secretly learned English grammar from textbooks. Then I bought a set of language-instruction records at a second-hand market and listened to them covertly in my room until I had learned something of the vernacular. I still have the records.’
He rose and bounded across to a cupboard. When he returned, he was clutching a battered old box. On the lid was a graphic artist’s painting of a man in his twenties wearing a trilby hat and smoking a pipe. The title words, in 1930s art-deco type, read: LEARN SUPER ENGLISH IN JUST FOUR WEEKS. Underneath, a subheading exulted: ‘Impress all the chaps at the club with your command of colloquial expressions.’
Tara burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. ‘Now I understand,’ she managed to say at last.
‘What understand? Understand what?’
‘The way you speak. Your idiom. Your slang. It’s frozen in a nineteen-thirties’ time warp.’
‘You mean…it’s not modish?’
‘No, it’s not modish. But never mind. I’ll give you a few lessons. We’ll soon get you up to speed.’ She accepted another top-up of wine. ‘Now please go on. You learned all these languages, and then what?’
When he left university, Andres explained, he was immediately snapped up by the Soviet tourism agency Intourist as a translator-guide for visiting foreign VIPs. His job was to meet them at the airport, take them to their hotel, show them the triumphs of communist society during the day and, if they wished, take them around the bars and State-run whorehouses at night.
This was no problem to the young Andres, who had an easygoing approach to life, but he soon found out that there was another side to the job.
Every night, at midnight or three am or six-thirty am or whatever time the foreign dignitary staggered off to bed, he was required to fill out a full report on the VIP’s activities – and particularly any sexual indiscretions or weaknesses that might make him liable to blackmail or political extortion. The report was forwarded to the murkier corridors of the State security apparatus, where it would be painstakingly studied by men with pale faces and blood as cold as the white tiles in the chilly interrogation rooms beneath their feet. They would read his report, stamp it, duplicate it and recommend whether the matter should be acted upon immediately, or simply filed away to add to their bulky dossiers.
Andres loathed that aspect of his job, and would deliberately turn a blind eye to some of the wilder activities of his guests.
But one night when he returned an almost blank report on the activities of a French nuclear physicist who had spent most of the night indulging in role-playing games with a fifteen-stone Ukrainian prostitute, his luck ran out. The Ukrainian lady had also reported back to State security and her truthful story did not tally with Andres’s work of fiction. The lady of the night was rewarded, the happily-married French scientist was compromised and forced to reveal some confidential information about his trips to certain testing-grounds in the Pacific, and Andres Talimann found himself cleaning out toilets and attending re-education sessions.
‘I got off lightly,’ he shrugged philosophically. ‘If I hadn’t been the son of a highly-placed professor, I could well have ended up rotting in a prison camp or receiving a lobotomy in one of their special psychiatric hospitals.’
However, his linguistic talents were too valuable to waste. There was a shortage of graduates who could fluently translate Estonian into Spanish. So when an elderly Estonian composer, who spoke no language other than his native tongue, was invited to travel to Mexico City to address a prestigious international cultural seminar, Andres was pulled out of toilet duty and back into a higher plane of public service.
There were three of them in the delegation – the composer, Andres his translator, and a smiling seven-foot giant from Leningrad who was there to care for both of them and ensure that they returned home safely.
The three-day event went like a dream. The famous composer was greeted as a hero. He spoke for an hour to a rapt audience, and Andres even managed to translate his obscure Estonian jokes so well that the audience actually laughed. The Important Men Back Home were delighted and phoned to say so.
As soon as he had taken the call at his hotel in Mexico City, the burly minder from Leningrad became much more relaxed. He was so relaxed he permitted himself a small Tequila in celebration, then another, then another, and finally he just ordered the waiter to leave the bottle on the table with the salt and lemon segments. Sitting in the lobby of their hotel, all three of them toasted the Revolution, and the Communist Party, and perestroika, and the future. At around five am, the composer slowly slid under the table. Half an hour later, the minder stood up to go to the toilet and collapsed into a potted plant. Andres surveyed both comatose bodies, calmly got up, and walked out of the hotel into the streets of Mexico City towards freedom.
The Bach CD ended, and he replaced it with Billie Holiday – impromptu, slap-happy jam sessions from the late 1930s, the era before heroin and heartbreak had destroyed her magnificent voice.
‘I spent a year travelling,’ Andres said. ‘Taking work where I could get it, going hungry when I couldn’t. For some time, I lived with the Tarhumara Indians of northern Mexico – you may have read that chapter in my book – and then I took the Pan American highway south.’
Eventually Andres managed to obtain a German passport and flew to Frankfurt, where he landed a job in a library. His multilingual talents earned him extra income as translator and researcher for the globetrotting journalists on Magnus magazine, which was based nearby, and when he was made redundant from the library he began submitting his own articles to the editor.
‘We arrived in Germany expecting to stay there for only a few months, and we ended up living there for five years,’ he said, replenishing her wineglass. ‘But the magazine job involved a lot of travelling. For instance, we spent a long time in Cape Town, South Africa. It is a beautiful city. We loved it.’
Tara sipped her Swiss wine and quietly noted the subtle change of pronoun. I travelled to Mexico; we arrived in Germany.
‘There were a lot of changes to report,’ Andres continued. ‘I talked to Desmond Tutu and FW De Klerk, and my interview with Mandela just after his release from prison in Robben Island proved the turning point in my career. It earned me my first international award, and Mandela sent me a personal letter of congratulation.’
Tara nodded. She had read the interview and, like many people, had been moved by it. ‘But there were a lot of changes happening in the Baltic at that time as well,’ she reminded him.
‘I know. I watched the news on television and I could hardly contain my excitem
ent. The mighty Soviet empire was being destroyed – not by intercontinental ballistic missiles, but by human voices. And it was all happening in my own little corner of the world. Thousands of people were gathering in the centre of Tallinn to sing traditional Estonian songs that the Soviets had banned for decades. It went down in history as The Singing Revolution.’
Realising that the Soviets were finally relinquishing their bloodstained grip on the Baltic States, Andres returned home to Tallinn, determined to share in these epic events.
‘One magic day in 1991, peaceful protesters formed a human chain all the way from Vilnius in Lithuania to Talinn in Estonia,’ he said, his voice reflecting the excitement he had experienced that day. ‘A six-hundred-kilometre-long line of human beings holding hands. Can you picture it? The world watched and it was struck dumb with awe.’
‘It must have been a very emotional experience for you.’
‘It was. For two years at least. I felt as though I were in exactly the right place at the right time, that I had a role to play in this new drive towards freedom and democracy. And then, five years ago, I left my homeland, never to return.’
He stood abruptly and began clearing their plates. She rose to help him, but he laid a restraining hand on her shoulder.
‘But why…?’
He turned his back on her and disappeared into the kitchen.
Tara recalled Melanie’s words in Galway.
‘His wife died suddenly, five years ago. Some sort of accident or something…a tragedy that could have been prevented if he’d been there. He’s been blaming himself for her death ever since…’
She waited until he returned, carrying a large pottery bowl filled with fresh fruit. ‘Do you want to talk about it? I mean, would it help?’
He set down the fruit bowl. ‘I would much prefer not to, Tara.’ His tone was light, unoffended. ‘Do you mind?’
He never talks about his wife.
She shook her head. ‘Of course not. I understand.’
‘Good. Let us change the subject,’ he said lightly. ‘We have talked about Andres Talimann for far too long.’
‘Okay, then. Music. Is it true that you can’t work unless you have Bach playing in the background?’
‘Perfectly true, I’m afraid. It’s the only thing that gives me the peace of mind I need to write. And needless to say, this was the source of some amusement to my colleagues.’ He smiled and passed her the bowl of fresh fruit. There were oranges and apples and several unidentified fruits of various shapes. Tara reached for a knobbly fruit about the size of a ping-pong ball.
‘No, no!’ he seemed genuinely anxious. ‘Not that one.’
‘Why not? What’s wrong? Is it wax, or something?’
‘It’s a lychee.’
‘So?’
‘In some parts of India, where the litchi tree has been cultivated for many centuries, there’s a tradition that its fruit should be shared only between lovers. Otherwise it will bring bad fortune.’
She stared at him. Was this some sort of joke?
‘I’m serious. Put it back.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘They say it is a very erotic fruit. You peel off the outer layer and you expose a fleshy membrane which they say resembles…intimate human parts. That is why it should be shared only by those who are in love. It is just a silly superstition, that’s all.’
She laughed. ‘You’re making this up, Andres.’
‘I am not.’ He pretended to take offence. ‘The Ancient Chinese also regarded the fresh lychee as a very seductive fruit. Dating right back to 200 BC, when the Emperor Kao Tsu insisted on having them served in his royal bedchamber.’
‘The Emperor who?’
‘And early Cantonese literature refers to it as “nature’s titillating treat”. If you don’t believe me, check in the National Museum’s library of oriental manuscripts.’
‘No problem. I go in there every day.’ They were both laughing now. Tara replaced the lychee and chose an orange instead. She was going to take a banana, but God knows what those Kamasutra experts in India would have said about that.
Andres disappeared into the kitchen again and re-emerged with two espresso cups and a small cafetière.
They sat and sipped their coffee in silence as darkness fell over the Irish sea. Accustomed to west coast sunsets, Tara found it hard to adapt to an evening seascape where the sun didn’t settle on the ocean horizon, like a parent kissing her child goodnight.
She was just starting to mellow nicely when Andres deliberately shattered the tranquil atmosphere.
‘What do you see in Fergal Kennedy?’ he asked suddenly.
She gasped in astonishment. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You heard me, Tara. What do you see in him? He doesn’t seem like your type. Tell me if I am talking off my turn.’
‘Listen, Andres.’ She sat bolt upright, trembling with outrage. ‘You may have helped me out today, but it does not give you the right to make intrusive remarks about my personal life. It does not give you the right to interfere in my relationships. It does not give you the right…’
She let him have it, with both barrels. But at the same time, she surprised herself by trying to analyse that peculiar tone she’d heard in his voice when he’d asked the question. She’d detected the same tone in the voices of other men. It usually meant they were jealous. And somehow, that thought didn’t displease her as much as she thought it might.
Eventually she paused, out of breath. But her verbal onslaught hadn’t deterred him in the least.
‘Fergal Kennedy?’ he repeated, as though she hadn’t spoken at all. ‘You know you deserve better than that, Tara.’
‘Of course I do,’ she said with heavy sarcasm. ‘But Tom Cruise went and married someone else.’
‘What do you know about him? I mean, what do you really know about him?’
‘Tom Cruise?’
He smiled but his eyes continued to ask the same question.
‘I know everything about him.’ She was furious with herself for even bothering to reply, but she couldn’t help it. ‘We come from the same small village, for Pete’s sake.’
‘Yes, I am aware of that. But his missing years in Canada?’
‘They’re not missing years. He’s told me all about them.’
‘Are you sure?’
Tara avoided his eyes. She was loath to admit it, but he had a point. Fergal had talked at great length about some periods of his life in Canada, but she’d noticed that he’d adopted an almost furtive secrecy about other times.
And as for Andres’s first question: what did she see in Fergal? It may have been breathtakingly impertinent, but, if she were to be starkly honest with herself, there had often been times when she’d quietly asked herself precisely the same thing.
Right at this moment, for instance.
Exhausted by their verbal skirmish, she sat for a few moments watching the new moon shimmer through the rustling leaves of a eucalyptus tree.
‘The only thing I’m sure of,’ she confessed after a long silence, ‘is that I’m not sure of anything any more.’
He smiled. ‘Then there is at least one thing we have in common.’
Tara looked at the profile of his face silhouetted against the fast-fading light, and felt a surge of some sort of emotion she couldn’t easily identify.
She didn’t know why she reached across the table and rested her fingers lightly on the back of his hand. Perhaps it was meant to be a swift gesture of apology for the ferocity of her outburst. Or a simple expression of gratitude, something any woman would do for a man who had come to her rescue in time of trouble. But for some reason her hand remained there, her skin lightly touching his, maintaining contact. He didn’t move, but she could feel his response as surely as though he had turned his hand around and enfolded hers.
He raised his head slowly and looked directly into her eyes. This time she didn’t look away.
Andres withdrew his hand from hers and
placed it gently on her cheek. She turned her head slightly towards it, responding.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, taking his hand away. ‘I promised I would behave like a gentleman.’
She looked away. Among the mishmash of emotions she was experiencing, there was one that closely resembled disappointment.
‘And you have,’ she smiled.
He chose to make light of the episode. ‘And yet here we are, drinking coffee, and I cannot offer you a brandy or a liqueur to go with it. And you specifically asked me for brandy earlier. That is hardly the behaviour of a good host.’
Tara finished her coffee. ‘It’s okay. I don’t usually drink brandy, anyway,’ she said ruefully. ‘It makes me behave out of character. I’m not myself.’
‘We should all behave unlike ourselves from time to time.’
‘I suppose we should.’
He leaned forward, his face hovered over hers, and for an instant she was sure he was about to kiss her. Perhaps he was. Perhaps he changed his mind at the last minute. But instead, he simply rose to his feet, and she felt angry with herself for wondering how she would have reacted.
‘But now it is time for sleep,’ he said. He stared up into the night sky, where a jet was flashing its landing lights as it began the slow descent towards Dublin Airport. ‘Tomorrow, I have to take an early flight to Paris.’
‘Paris?’
‘Paris, France.’
‘I know where Paris is. It’s just…I thought we had planned to work together on this business.’ Her voice sounded brittle and tetchy and she hated herself for it.
‘This is “this business”, albeit indirectly,’ he said. ‘And as for working together, you are welcome to accompany me if you so choose. In the meantime, your room is just through there. I think I have provided everything and I hope you will be comfortable. Sleep well, Tara. Good-night.’
‘Why Paris?’ Tara was exasperated. ‘What has Paris got to do with anything?’
But he had already gone, and she found herself alone at the window with the new moon, the whispering eucalyptus tree, the plaintive sigh of Billie Holiday, and the untouched lychees.