The Faces of Strangers

by Pia Padukone

  “What’s the point of my career?” Mari asked, disgustedly. “Thanks a lot.”

  “No, I mean, you have to get some perks out of it, right? Otherwise, you may as well rely on your high honors achievement.” Nico bolstered himself with another pillow so that he could see her better.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I have my ways,” Nico said, arching his own eyebrow at her as though in reflection. “You’re not just a dumb blonde after all.”

  Mari made a face at him.

  “But seriously, what are you doing here anyway? I thought you had a big runway show in Riga.”

  “Canceled,” she said.

  “Again? Didn’t that happen last month?”

  “Mind your own affairs, Nico. And next time, change these yourself.” Mari threw a pair of socks at him and stalked out of the room.

  * * *

  A few days later, Nico’s head stopped throbbing long enough for him to close up the sofa bed and abandon the supine position he’d been in for days. He sat back into the couch, his bones slack as gelatin, and summoned all his remaining strength into his thumb to change the channel on the remote control. He settled on a football match where the ball was being passed and passed and passed.

  Paavo sank down next to him. “Glad you’re feeling better.”

  Nico nodded but didn’t lift his eyes from the screen. “What’d I miss at school?”

  “Not much. Heigi was asking after you. He practically followed me home to see you. I brought you some more assignments. They’re in the car.”

  “Oh. Why?” Nico shifted on the sofa and placed the remote between them.

  “Papa dropped me to school. And brought me home.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why, Nico?”

  “We usually take the bus. Why’d you take a ride with your dad?”

  “It’s just easier this way.”

  “It’s not, Paavo. Tell me the truth. Why do you come with me to school an hour earlier than you have to be there?”

  “I like having the company.”

  “Then why did we run from those boys on the first day after school?” Paavo remained silent. His pupils were the only things that moved as he watched the soccer ball being passed.

  “P-Train. Level with me here. What’s going on?” Nico searched Paavo’s eyes. They weren’t quite as volatile as Mari’s but a steely blue that Nico still couldn’t read after all these months.

  Paavo sighed. “I just feel better with you there. In case.”

  “In case of what?” Nico sputtered.

  Paavo pushed his hands between his legs and squeezed them together. “Just this group of guys that was hassling me last year. Bullies. They haven’t bothered me since you came here, and I don’t know whether it’s because you’re a wrestler, or because you’re new or American, or what...”

  “Who the fuck are these clowns? What the hell is their problem picking on you? Did you do something to piss them off?”

  “You don’t have to do anything specific to get on the bad side of neo-Nazis.”

  Nico’s eyes widened. “You’re being threatened by neo-Nazis? Like skinheads? That’s serious, Paavo. You should report them.”

  “It’s really not a big deal. They dropped out of school last year, and now they just hang out on the streets trying to get others to join their gang and causing trouble. What is the expression—their bark is worse than their bite? It will be fine. It’s just easier when you’re around. I know that’s stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid, Paavo. It’s just not practical. I can’t go with you everywhere you need to go, not to mention that I am not going to be here forever. And you can’t hang out with your dad all the time. We have to figure this out.”

  “There’s nothing to figure out. I’m a coward. Happy?”

  “Not in the least. I’m fuming. We have to deal with this.”

  “I don’t think you understand. These people, they don’t fight fair. It’s not that simple.”

  “You don’t have to fight, Paavo.”

  “It’s six guys. And me. What else am I supposed to do? I can’t keep running away.”

  “Fighting would be stupid,” Nico continued. “The first rule of wrestling is that you only begin fights you know you can win. You don’t wrestle outside your weight class. You don’t take on anyone who’s not a fair match. You just need swagger. I can teach you swagger.”

  Paavo looked at the screen, where one of the players was being shown a yellow card. “I don’t know, Nico.”

  “Look, when we get back to New York, you’ll come with me to wrestling practice and Coach can teach you some things so you feel a little more confident. I can start showing you some holds now if you want. And you just need to know a few tricks. Like, if you have to get in a fight, always hit in the nose. That way you get enough time to get the hell out of there because the force creates tears to momentarily blind your opponent.”

  Paavo sighed. “Can’t we just continue going to school together?”

  “Sure. But at some point, I’m going to go home and you’re going to come back here without me and you’re going to have to go it alone.”

  LEO

  Tallinn

  December 2002

  Leo had been going it alone for nearly twenty years. He had been singled out, his gray passport held out at border control like a penalty card at a football match. He had stumbled over Estonian conjugation at each and every grammar lesson Vera held in their kitchen as his children tried to quiet their snickers over his pronunciation. He could understand every iota of Estonian that was uttered on ETV, but he couldn’t orchestrate the words to align in a cohesive sentence. It was as though he was living a life on one side of the country watching his family over a border partition on the other. And then this morning, he’d had to endure an additional insult for the fourth time.

  Leo heard the door bang open in the kitchen. He replaced the hand that had been supporting his forehead with a tumbler of ice and vodka and let the cold crash against his skin. The house had been silent; the only sound he heard was Kunnar on his back porch as he tossed feed to his birds, the seeds chattering against the ground. There were footsteps in the kitchen, but Leo left the glass pressed against his forehead, letting the cold seep into his brain. He clearly had one. So why had he failed yet again? Why was he doing this to himself? The drudgery of shame was starting to feel old. What was the point of making him feel insignificant? Estonian was a useless language with extraneous vowels and redundant tenses. It didn’t matter outside the boundaries of this insignificant slip of land, whereas Russian was spoken in a huge country, one that spanned millions of acres from ocean to ocean. He transferred the vodka to his other hand and stood up, the shame draining from his face. He walked down the hall to the kitchen, where Nico was sitting at the table, his own head in his hands.

  “You’re home early,” Nico said, raising his head from his arms.

  “I had to pick up my citizenship results from city hall this afternoon.” Leo’s voice was like gravel.

  “Oh, right,” Nico said. “How’d it go?”

  “What you think?”

  “Sorry, Leo. That sucks. Was this the third time?”

  “Four.” Leo swallowed what was left in his glass and poured another.

  “Well, you can take it again, right?”

  Leo snorted out his nose and took a large gulp.

  Nico unzipped his bag and pulled out a roll of paper and tossed it on the table between them. Leo unfurled it and raised his eyebrows.

  “You fail your Estonian exam, too, eh?” Leo tossed the paper back at Nico, the red number one glaring up at him. “Yes, but you are new. It’s all right for you. It doesn’t matter. Soon you will be rid of this language. This language is us
eless anyway.”

  “That’s exactly how I feel,” Nico said, turning to face Leo as he leaned against the sink. “Everyone here speaks English. Even the signs are in English. Estonian is completely ruining my grade point average.”

  “But for me,” Leo continued as though Nico hadn’t spoken, “I am worse. I’m old. It is too late. I’ve live here most my life, and still I am a second-class citizen. So what? I can’t speak Estonian. Am I not a man?”

  “I think you’re just as much of an Estonian as everyone else here. You pay taxes, you work here and you’ve raised your kids here. I don’t understand why they’re making you jump through hoops to prove something to yourself.”

  Leo let out a large sigh and opened the liquor cabinet. He extended a bottle of Viru Valge toward Nico. “Drink?”

  Nico glanced at the clock, in what he hoped was a furtive motion. It was just after four in the afternoon. “Maybe not,” he said.

  “Vera’s not home,” Leo said. “Don’t worry.”

  “No, it’s just that I have homework. Have to keep my wits about me.” Nico smiled. “And isn’t it bad luck to drink alone?”

  “Not in Estonia.” Leo poured himself a tumbler of vodka and leaned on the back spindles of his chair. He gulped down his vodka as though it were cold lemonade on a blistering day. “Tell me about Paavo.”

  “What about him?”

  “He is so afraid these days.”

  “Yeah, he’s a little tense. He needs to relax. I’ve told him that.”

  “But what is problem? He was not like this one year back. Once I had son who wanted to kick football, not speak riddles all day.”

  “He just needs to build up his self-esteem. He’s going to come to wrestling practice with me when we go home to New York.” Nico saw Leo’s gaze wander toward the vodka bottle. “Listen, I was thinking of hitting up Kadriorg Palace. Do you want to come?” The Baroque-style palace lay just a few blocks away from where the Sokolovs lived, a sprawling country home that Peter the Great had gifted his wife Catherine out of love. Only after it had been built did evidence that she’d had an affair with another man surface.

  “No, you go on.” Leo drained his glass.

  “Come on. It might make you feel better. What puts things into perspective more than a cuckold?”

  “A what?”

  “You know—Czar Peter builds his wife a huge palace to prove his love, and then he finds out she cheated on him?”

  Leo made a noise like a cat. Had that been a laugh? “Yes, it will remind me who was boss in Estonia for many years—Russia. I haven’t been to Kadriorg in years. Come. I will get my coat.” Once Nico heard the galumphing of Leo’s footsteps overhead, he replaced the bottle of vodka in the cupboard and walked toward the front door. Two months ago, the prospect of spending time alone with Leo would have made Nico nervous. Perhaps he was finally making some progress.

  MARI

  Tallinn

  December 2002

  Mari’s leg jittered against her desk. At an open call in Tartu a month before, she’d overheard a model say that fidgeting sped up the metabolism and helped her stay trim. But now Mari wasn’t sure if she had always had this habit, or if she’d subconsciously picked it up upon learning of its effects. She picked at the edge of her desk. The laminate was peeling away from the wood. The curl of plastic seemed to mock her, as though it was corroding from disuse. When was the last time she’d sat here, other than to pore over proofs from a shoot? When had she last read a book, or anything of substance? During her first few calls she had brought along a battered paperback to pass the time, but after she realized that the models only toted glossies, she ditched the book and made it a point to pick up a few magazines before each call.

  She silenced her leg by settling her free hand on top of it. Her skin was mottled and rough; there were stubbly patches she’d missed with the razor and her calves badly needed moisturizing. She shifted the phone to her other ear. She was still on hold—the third hold she’d been on since she’d called Viktor’s office. She remembered a time—it felt like generations before—when her phone calls received precedence. Viktor would snap his fingers aggressively to silence his secretary when she entered the room during a coaching session. He turned his phone off when Mari was in the office, or ignored the other lines when she was on the phone. Mari had once captivated his complete attention. He had been laser-focused on making sure she wasn’t heading to any call or shoot with the slightest hesitation or concern.

  Everything seemed worn now, including herself; she felt as though her modeling career had been through the wringer, and was developing that gray pallor that was cast onto garments over time, tiny little threads pulling away from woven cloth. She sighed and stretched both legs out in front of her now, and something cracked in her pelvis, her lower back, she couldn’t be sure. Her ligaments felt loose, as though a meat hammer had pounded and tenderized her joints like a slab of pork. It was true what was said about prodigies who skipped grades and were catapulted into classes ahead of their age; about army brats who traveled the world with their parents, clinging to the wisdom that the wide world had so much to teach them, but they didn’t have a solid foundation on which to grasp ahold. It was true, too, of child models. While she’d only been modeling for the past year, Mari had missed out on her formal saja päeva ball, on being taken out by boys, on obsessing for hours over stupid details with her friends. Instead, her obsessions had been redirected toward booking shows, the arch of her foot, the circumference of her waist.

  She sighed. I’m hanging up by the count of ten.

  “Sorry, darling. Been utterly hectic.” Viktor certainly didn’t sound in the least bit harried or stressed; his voice dripped, as though he were midmassage. Maybe he was. “Where were we?”

  “Next month’s schedule.” Mari began picking at the laminate again. She’d succeeded in lifting the entire upper right corner; she might as well finish the job now.

  “Well, you’ve got Dove on the third, and then...then...” Mari could hear his fingers drumming against his own massive custom-made artisanal desk, which was most certainly not peeling. “I’m working on the rest.”

  “That’s all? That Dove ad doesn’t even call for models. It’s an open call for real women. Dove doesn’t discriminate.” Mari pulled furiously at the laminate; a large strip of it ended up in her clenched fist. “What, am I not good-looking enough for the clients you’re working with?”

  “Oh, don’t throw yourself a pity party, Mari. It’s not becoming.”

  “Viktor, we’re on the brink of a new season. I should have been cast in Spring Fashion by now. I should have had to turn down houses, because I couldn’t handle the work.”

  Viktor chuckled. “Someone’s been doing her homework.”

  “I’m not trying to be cute over here, Viktor. I’m trying to be indignant. I am indignant—you and Eva have to book me.”

  “I’m working on some really exciting things for you, Mari. You have to be patient. Let’s talk at the end of next week. I think you’re going to be pleased, and then you’re going to be falling all over yourself in apology.”

  “I will come and polish your toilet in penance. But I’m getting bored and when I get bored, I eat.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Viktor said. It was the first time during the whole call that Mari had heard any emotion in his voice.

  “Just do your job,” Mari snarled, and hung up. She hadn’t ever hung up on anyone before, but it was strangely satisfying. She stood up, stalking back and forth, kicking shoes out of her way, feeling steam mount in her nostrils. If she were a man, she would punch the wall. But she was a model.

  Ha, she scoffed to herself. Some model. A failed model was more like it. She had promised her parents that she would try this for two years, and if her career hadn’t taken flight by then, she’d have to return to schoo
l, return to life before the day in Freedom Square had changed everything. What’s worse was that she would have to slink in sheepishly to a high school class two years below hers, leaving all that she’d learned about modeling behind by keeping her head down and her back hunched so as not to draw attention to herself. She needed to take control of her life, and if that was out of her hands, she needed the ability to control something else.

  Was she not pretty enough? Could she not compete with the likes of Carmen Kass? If she wasn’t as good-looking as her, Mari knew she worked at least as hard. She’d heard the story of when Carmen was just starting out in the industry at age fourteen and had her passport taken away from her in an effort to make her work cheaply. She’d threatened that agent with a knife until she’d gotten her way. That was a bit extreme, Mari admitted. But maybe she needed to up her game. Maybe she just needed more confidence to achieve what she wanted.

  She heard a noise from downstairs. She’d thought she was the only one in the house, but she tiptoed down the back stairs and inched her way into the den. There, as though she were living a scene in backward time, Mari stood in the mouth of the den, watching Nico as he plucked his folded clothes off the ground in the same, meticulous way he had placed them there when he first arrived. This time the room was washed in the golden light of the late afternoon, and his hair was lit from behind, giving him a halo that followed him with each movement. Nico straightened up when he noticed her there. She liked the effect she had on him; his body had tensed in self-awareness from the moment she’d stood outside the den. He selected a pile of T-shirts from the floor and gingerly tucked them into his duffel bag.

  “I feel like I’ve lived this scene before,” she said. “Déjà vu.”

  “I was thinking the same.”

  “Shouldn’t you be down at the football pitch?” Mari asked.

  “I’m just finishing up here, and then I’m meeting Paavo and your dad in town for a beer. Paavo can’t believe your dad allowed me to get away with not having had a Saku until now.”