by Pia Padukone
“I believe Hallström has already applied for one on your behalf,” Paavo said. “So we just have to pick it up.”
“What do I need the ID card for?” Nicholas asked.
“Every Estonian has one, including visitors who will be here for a long time. You need it for everything—voting, parking, transportation,” Vera said.
Paavo shoveled sult into his mouth. Nicholas could barely stand to watch him. He reminded him of Figaro, Toby’s cat, lowering his lynx-like head to lap up food from a bowl on the floor. He turned his head to watch Vera and Leo, who took large forkfuls in silence, the clicking of their jaws and soft clash of teeth the only sound in the room. From somewhere in the hallway, or the living room, Nicholas presumed, there was the gentle ticking of a clock. The warm meat and the doughy potatoes stabilized his stomach but weighed down his head. His eyelids felt as though they were dripping vodka. He shouldn’t have had that third glass.
“I’m so sorry to be rude,” he said, breaking the silence. “But I just can’t keep my eyes open anymore. Could I—”
“Sauna!” Paavo cried. “It’s going to help you sleep through the night. It helps with jet lag.”
“Not tonight, man,” Nicholas said. “I want to try it, but I’m so tired.”
“Don’t bully him, Paavo. Let the boy sleep if he wants to sleep,” Vera said.
“I will turn steam off,” Leo said. He got up from the table and disappeared into the backyard, letting the door slam behind him.
“Come on.” Nicholas followed Paavo down a long hallway. The streetlamp outside cast long amber strands of light into the darkened room, so that Nicholas could see an armchair, a bookshelf and a computer table without a computer tucked into the corner. A sofa bed was opened out already and sheets were tucked into the mattress with tight, crisp corners.
“Don’t even bother turning on the light,” he said to Paavo. “I just want to sleep.”
“Don’t you want to brush your teeth or change your clothes? I can loan you some pajamas if you don’t feel like unpacking.”
This was not the time to let Paavo know that Nicholas slept in the nude. “Sleep,” Nicholas said.
“Unfortunately, this room doesn’t have a door. It is our family room, but we put this curtain up for you,” Paavo said, pulling a dark piece of what looked like blackout curtain from where it had been tucked behind a rod. “Whenever it’s closed, no one will come in or disturb you.”
“Thanks, man.” Nicholas sat on the edge of the bed and felt the ropes of sleep tugging at him to lie back. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Sleep well, my friend,” Paavo said. “I will be right upstairs, the first door on the left. Knock if you need anything.” In his dreamlike state, Nicholas understood a whole new meaning to the term nodding off.
* * *
In the middle of the night, Nicholas awoke, regretting his refusal to sauna before bed. He lay awake in the dim darkness, the hazy gleam of the streetlights filtering through the gauzy curtains. The ceiling was pockmarked, and Nicholas stared at the constellations of stains above his head. The bed had been comfortable for the first few hours of sleep, but once the jet lag had begun steaming off his warm body, he’d wrestled against the lumpy mattress. Poking a tentative foot outside his blanket, he pulled it back in. The air was frigid outside the little cocoon he’d spun in the sheets from tossing all night. He peered at the electronic clock in the corner of the room, its glaring red numbers mocking him. He threw the covers off and began searching for the light. Ten minutes passed before Nicholas realized that there was no light switch in sight, not behind the curtain rod, not anywhere a light switch should be found. The streetlight would have to suffice. He located his suitcase where Paavo had placed it under the window and pulled out a fleece and a pair of tracksuit bottoms. His room didn’t appear to have drawers or even a closet, so Nicholas began stacking his clothes beneath the window in short towers of T-shirts, sweaters and jeans. He left his boxer shorts in the bag; he wasn’t sure how private this den without a door really was. As he moved to build his fourth pillar of clothes, he sensed something. He peered out into the street, but all that was there were the dust-smeared Lada and other quiet houses with formidably shaded windows. He cocked his head and listened hard. There was something on the other side of the blackout curtain.
“Hello?” He wasn’t sure how far his voice would travel in this house, so he spoke barely above a whisper. He felt silly being afraid, but he also felt silly being here in the first place. He should have stayed in bed, in the warmth, in his unconscious. He should have stayed in New York.
“Tere?” a voice called back, filling in the darkness. The curtain was swept aside, and all Nicholas could see were a pair of milky-white legs shining in the light. He felt momentarily blinded before he could follow the slim line of a body up to a face.
There were dashes of color. The girl’s lips were too pink to be naturally colored—her lipstick appeared to have faded over time. But her blue eyes were bright and glistened like jewels, accentuated by striking teal eye shadow in the deep crevices of her eyelids. Her hair was just as light as Paavo’s, though it had been bronzed with golden streaks. It was pinned in fat whorls which had probably at one point been strategic, but now pieces of it were falling down and onto her shoulders, giving her a shipwrecked look. She wasn’t as pale as Paavo; her complexion was more olive, similar to Leo’s tinted skin. The rest of her was clad in a skintight black skirt and top. Other than her pale legs and face, Nicholas couldn’t tell where the black curtain ended and she began. In the dim streetlight, the girl stepped down into the den, coming into full view. “You are Nico,” she said. “Welcome to Estonia. Sorry to frighten you.”
“Mari?” he asked, forgetting to correct her on the pronunciation of his name. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“And you.” She was like a cat stalking its prey, surrounding him on all sides with her bright, azure eyes even though she hadn’t moved. “Did you have a nice flight?”
“Can’t complain,” he said. “I fell asleep pretty early. But it seems like jet lag is getting the better of me.”
“It always does.” She smiled. She reached her long fingers behind the bookshelf and flicked a switch, flooding the room with light. Nicholas flinched and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Mari was perched on the corner of his bed. “Don’t let me interrupt.” She gestured toward his open suitcase. But she was a tigress, and Nicholas knew better than to turn his back on a tigress unless you wanted to be hunted. He felt vulnerable as he stooped into the case, feeling the broad stretch of his tense shoulders and back and how his fleece tugged at his waist.
Mari rubbed at her eyes, as if trying to rid them of their color. She yawned widely and unselfconsciously. “I took an earlier train back,” she said. “The session was brutal. I just wanted to sleep in my own bed.”
“I know the feeling,” Nicholas said.
“Day one, and Yankee Doodle is homesick already?”
“I’m just tired.” Nicholas furrowed his brow. He began folding his T-shirts with more care than he would without an audience. “So you’re a model. What’s that like?”
“Exhausting. Demoralizing. Disgusting.” Mari looked as though she should be holding a cigarette between her slim fingers as she spat the words.
“So why do you do it?”
“Because it’s so fucking glamorous,” she said, turning to smile at him. “Since you’re up, you’ll be the first to find out. I’m going to Moscow in the spring.”
“Cool. Have you been there before?”
“Of course.” Mari rolled her eyes and sucked in her breath. “But this isn’t a vacation. It’s work. I’ve been chosen to move there, to model full-time. Moscow is a stepping-stone to Paris. And Paris...well, you know Paris.”
“I know Paris,” Nicholas said. He spoke slowly and clearly, so a
s not to stumble and say something else that might make him sound ignorant. “But I’m guessing Paris means something more than just the Eiffel Tower in this case?”
“The Eiffel Tower is so gauche,” Mari said. She pulled at a loose thread from the sheet on the bed and it came loose in her hand. She offered it to Nicholas, and he accepted it in a cupped hand. “Paris is the start of everyone’s career. If you’re sent there, you’re practically made already.”
“Made. Like, into a model?”
“Yes.” Mari sighed. This wasn’t going well. Mari already seemed exasperated with him, and she had only been home for fifteen minutes. Time passed between them. It was quieter in Tallinn than it was back home. Nicholas yearned for a siren or a car alarm, some semblance of life outside these four walls.
“What do you think of our fair city so far?”
“I haven’t really seen any of it,” Nicholas said. “We just came straight from the airport and had dinner. Your mother is a great cook, but that vodka really packs a punch. I could barely keep my eyes open.”
“Well done. You probably passed Papa’s test by having a drink with him. I have to say that you’re more of a sport than I had you figured for.”
“What do you mean?” Nicholas stopped folding and sank down on the bed, facing her.
“I’m impressed that you are here in the first place. That you’re trying something out of your comfort zone.” Mari inspected the underside of one of her manicured nails.
“Isn’t that the whole point of Hallström?” Nicholas asked.
“Well, sure. I just think it’s laughable that it’s an exchange with Americans. You probably already think you’re hot shit.”
“I... I don’t,” Nicholas said. Although he’d never considered himself particularly patriotic, he could feel the pride—or was it anger?—bubbling inside him and threatening to rise to the top. “I don’t think I’m anything.”
“Please. I’ve been on countless shoots with models from the US. They stand separately from everyone, constantly looking in the mirror, appraising and judging everyone with their eyes.” Mari was standing on the other side of him now, her legs as slim as stalks of sugarcane.
“Are you sure that’s not just a model thing?”
“Maybe,” she said, a curl swinging in front of her face. She made no effort to swipe it away. “Maybe not.” She moved toward the curtain where she turned and smiled sweetly. “I can warm you some piim to help you sleep.”
“Piim?”
“Milk.”
“No thanks. There’s no need to babysit me,” Nicholas said, turning to face her fully for the first time.
“I just want to make sure you have everything you need. I’m your host sister, after all,” Mari said. In the austere glare of the overhead light fixture, her makeup looked clownish. “Maga hästi. That’s ‘sleep well.’ Hope you’re taking notes. There’ll be a test, Nico.” She winked and stepped outside the room, pulling the curtain closed behind her. Nicholas blinked in the light. He could hear the tip-taps of her heels ascending the stairs and the door closing gently overhead.
Then it was silent again. It was as though she’d never been there in the first place. Nicholas felt for the light switch behind the bookcase and snapped the light off. He lay back in the bed. The entire encounter had felt like a scene out of a movie, where a siren appears to completely distract the hero from the task at hand. He leaned his head back, feeling the pillow accept his weight, as he considered what in the world he’d gotten himself into.
LEO
Tallinn
September 2002
Leo had gotten himself into a holy mess by marrying an Estonian citizen and staying in the country after independence. He’d committed himself to a life in a country that didn’t even recognize him. He looked around, shaking his head. All around the yard small pieces of white fluff floated in the air, as if dozens of dandelions had been blown and the seeds danced about the grass. The sun was barely up; his family was still asleep upstairs as he assumed the American boy was in the den. He yawned and stepped into the yard, gripping his cup of tea as though it were a lodestone. A syrup-like layer of dew coated the grass. He pushed his feet into the lawn, his feet dampening with the moisture as he approached a clump of the fluff.
“Damn it,” he growled under his breath in Russian. “Damn those damned birds.” He stalked to the fence and peered over the boards, some moldy and chewed away by termites in places. He made a mental note to speak to Kunnar about the fence, but he weighed the other topic in his head, as well. What was more important—the fence or the chickens? One had to choose their arguments; ensure the priority. Perhaps it was the fence, so essential to demarcating his property. But those chickens made such a ruckus as well as a stink. They had to go.
Leo had become quite proficient in choosing his arguments. Each day’s Russian-language newspaper reported a new slew of insults toward his people. In his heart, he felt Estonian, but when policies were created stating otherwise, separating the Estonian wheat from the Russian chaff, he couldn’t help but feel rebuffed by the country in which he’d spent most of his life. The small gray passport that lay side by side with the three other red passports in the vault in the master bedroom was like a spit in the face. When the family had traveled to Riga for the children’s school holidays last summer, and previously across the sea to Finland for a long weekend, the border guards flipped through its pages searching for visas while impatiently waving the rest of the family through. It appeared that the country—his country—was doing more and more to make him feel insufficient, unnecessary. He felt like the outsider in the family. There was a game he used to play when Mari and Paavo were small—which one of these objects doesn’t belong with the others? It was always him, glaringly. He could barely stand to look at the newspaper anymore. It was ripe with arguments waiting to explode over the breakfast table that continually minimized his presence in Eesti, if he was even allowed to call it that anymore. The night before Nico arrived had been the penultimate clue that he was wearing his family’s patience thin. He had sat down in his chair at the dining table, glowering over the layered tower of kasukas salad of smoked salmon that Vera had prepared especially for him, and grabbed at the sliced rukkileib she’d placed beside it. With his other hand, he tossed the newspaper onto the table. He’d folded the pages to frame an article that proclaimed that six thousand Estonian-born Russians had failed the citizenship test to date.
“There,” he’d sneered in Russian. “And I’m supposed to compete with those numbers?”
Vera served herself and passed the platter to Mari, who took a modest dollop of kasukas on her plate. Vera settled back, chewing her food meticulously while Mari picked at her already-meager portion. Lately, his daughter seemed to want nothing to do with them. Leo was disappointed that his eldest had grown into a full beauty. She had piercing blue eyes and a dainty mouth and a figure that he ensured was well attired when she left the house. Leo had not wanted a beautiful daughter. Nor did he want a homely one, but there had to be something in between. Beautiful daughters were nothing but trouble, and this one was poised for it. At least she had funneled her beauty into something concrete; Mari’s modeling career was beginning to take flight and her ads had appeared in Anne & Stiil and Naisteleht and her face had taken up prominent real estate on the side of bus shelters. Leo had swallowed the silence that followed his indignant proclamation and thrown the paper under his feet in disgust.
Leo watched the chickens now, clucking and pecking. A few of them bobbed toward him, cocking their heads hopefully. Leo stalked the length of the gate, noting where the paint had scratched away or where the wood needed to be replaced, never once taking his eye off the chickens, which also followed him as he moved. He bent down where the fence led toward the back of the long yard, where the wood had truly corroded, and ran his hands over the decaying boards. Behind him, the walls
of the sauna he had built by hand when they had first moved into the house were still solid; a gentle breath of eucalyptus and birch bark puffed through the slats of the wood, aerating the insides of the sauna and perfuming the air. Leo crouched and shook his head at the base of the fence, where a hole as big as two fists allowed him to see the birds in Kunnar’s yard, bobbing and searching in vain for any scraps that might have lingered in the dull grass. That’s when he saw it: a single egg, nestled amongst the crocus bulbs on his side of the yard. He startled at first, as though a tiny little bird beak might begin to press through its porcelain shell. But then he knelt down, set his teacup down in the grass and scooped the egg up in his palm. It was still warm, as though the hen had just lifted her bottom from it moments before. He cupped it within his fingers, imagining it as a butterfly or something that might take flight.
His family would have been shocked to see him hold something so delicate. Leo made quick, definitive movements, rarely lingering, barely faltering. He declared decisions before he’d necessarily even made his mind up. To have been caught cradling an egg as though it was an infant might have lost him years of curmudgeonly credibility.
Inside the house, he held the egg up to the sun that was just beginning to stream in through the kitchen window. The egg was dark in this light, impenetrable to his naked eyes. He rifled through the kitchen drawer and found the stovetop lighter that Vera used to relight the pilot light when it went out and held it up behind the egg. Immediately, it lit up like a bulb. Leo could see the dark yolk within, strands of tissue that held the yolk and its gelatinous membrane together. He peered at it as though through a microscope, taking in the contours of the goop inside, how it formed itself around the yolk and floated there formlessly. It was safe.
Leo listened for signs from upstairs but there was complete silence. He took a bowl out from the cabinet over the sink and looked at the egg in his cupped palm. He moved his wrist up and down, flexing and stretching. Leo had one chance at this. His wrist felt ready, so he held it poised over the bowl.