“I think Airi’s parents live around here,” Epp said, her voice echoing through the forest as we rolled along. “The trees look familiar.”
The last time I had seen Airi had been at our apartment in Tallinn. She came to visit after Epp and I married in June. Airi and Epp had spent their time together looking at old photos of India and reflecting on their magical wanderings, that is, when Airi wasn’t responding to urgent text messages from her boyfriend Tõnu.
“Why does he keep messaging you?” I asked.
“He says he’s hungry,” said Airi. “He wants me to come home.”
“But if he’s hungry, why doesn’t he make himself something to eat?”
Airi stared at me. “Tõnu? Make food?”
“What? He doesn’t know how to cook?”
“But Justin,” Airi shook her head, “Tõnu is an Estonian man.”
Poor Tõnu. If Airi hadn’t gone home that night he might have starved to death in their kitchen.
“One time Airi and I wrote an article together about looking for fairies in Hiiumaa,” Epp yelled as she pedaled in front of me. “We met some people who said that the fairies had picked up a ship and dropped it in the forest. And they even showed us the shipwreck or something like it!”
“Whoa.”
“And I was looking at them, wondering, were they kidding or were they really being serious? I couldn’t tell.”
“So, there’s a shipwreck in the woods?” I peered into the trees.
“Then, when we went back to the mainland, Airi’s mother called and said that I had left a pair of pink slippers at their house. And I said, ‘What pink slippers? I don’t have any pink slippers.’ And she said that someone had left them there. I mean, was she joking or did they really find some pink slippers?”
“Whose pink slippers were they?”
“I don’t know! They have some weird sense of humor here, or perhaps the weird things really happen? The editor-in-chief read our article about the fairies and heard about the slippers and said, ‘Epp, you must be going crazy.’”
Through the woods, I spied a distant home here and there. This was how the Estonians lived, away from one another. Estonians never met to mend fences, as there were no fences. There was just distance. If luck had it, they wouldn’t meet at all.
It was different from what I had left behind, of hot summer nights spent pub crawling, riding around in the subway trains, tethered to the flashing electronic eyes of emptiness, the deafening thrum of humanity in perpetual motion. This was where I had been a few days before. New York, a giant city, a metropolis, arrested by masses, unable to move freely, unable to think clearly, chafed and displaced in an urban contusion where one had to yell obscenities to merely be heard.
But I wasn’t there. I was on a bike on Hiiumaa and my nerves still felt raw. A few days out of New York and they were still tingling, craving more noise, craving more light. Things seemed too quiet here, a bit too serene, the only dissonance coming from the mosquitoes and the shiny black Mercedes and BMWs that roared past us at astounding speeds, their windows tinted, each containing a male driver in sunglasses: quiet, self absorbed, reckless, Estonian.
“Holy shit these drivers are crazy,” I cried out after another bullet-like BMW shot by. “People don’t drive like that in New York. Why is everyone here in such a goddamn hurry?!”
“Oh, look, an anthill!” Epp swerved off the road into the forest. “Let’s go have a look.”
It wasn’t really an anthill. Knee-high, sandy and round with a dark opening at the top, like a pregnant woman’s belly button, this was like an apartment complex for ants. “There are even more of them over there,” Epp motioned deeper into the forest.
I saw them, thick mounds, the apartment blocks of the Hiiu ants. It was new to me, different. I watched the line of ants trickle down into the long black entrance of the extraterrestriallooking heap.
“We’re a long way from New York,” I said under my breath.
Even Tallinn seemed distant out here in the forests. And who cared about Tallinn? Who cared about its unscrupulous businessmen or vain politicians or death-cheating drunks? Who cared about its ugly old buildings or shiny new shopping centers? Who needed Tallinn? At that moment, to me, Hiiumaa was Estonia.
I’d be lying if I told you they weren’t intimidating. They were large, fat, brown, hairy, ugly, smelly, and spread along the bay, some sitting, others standing, a few swaying down the road fresh grass dropping from their jaws. There were definitely more Scottish Highland Cattle than people on Käina Bay that day and they were looking at us like we were idiots. What kind of people would cycle across an island until their legs felt like butter and still head out for an evening ride after checking into their B&B?
It was evening and what struck me, as I dipped my hand into the dark waters of the bay at sunset and rinsed my face, was the raw sadness of it all, the vast emptiness. It had stalked me all my life and here it was again on Käina Bay. All day long I had cycled under the bluest of blue skies, almost close enough to touch. But now as the sun was about to retire, the island was swept by the same lingering melancholia that fills the air of all northern lands; that tinge of bitterness, like a raw berry that has just burst in your mouth. But I had come back here; I had come back to the sad north. I could only conclude that I liked its taste.
We arrived at our B&B when it was still light out. The B&B owner didn’t come to the door, but her neighbor did, a bucket of berries in her hand, trying to steal a few clients while her competitor was at the shop. The neighbor was blonde going on white with old blue eyes and calloused, grimy fingers, dripping with worm guts and berry seeds. She drifted into the yard in her knee-high rain boots, trying to seduce us.
“What are you paying her?” she asked with a sly smile, and I noticed she toyed with a small knife as she spoke.
“How much do you want for a night?” Epp was interested.
“Oh, nothing,” she shook her head and laughed. “You can stay for free. I could use the company.”
Suddenly, an old car rattled and coughed up the driveway, and the neighbor stepped back into the shadows of her yard, her berry bucket swinging from her arm.
“See you,” Epp waved to her.
The neighbor nodded and winked. Then she disappeared behind her house. The B&B owner emerged from her car, round and clad in a blue dress with a lion’s mane of dyed black curly hair that bobbed in the evening light.
“Just give me a minute,” the owner said, ducking inside her house to deposit an armful of groceries. She reemerged with a set of keys a second later. “Let me show you to your room.”
Ours was located in a separate barn, with its own door to the yard. It was cluttered with old furniture and flies, but I didn’t mind. Instead I sat on the edge of one the beds and undid my sandals, running my fingers along the raised patches of sore skin.
“Almost 30 kilometers,” I sighed. “And we have to ride back tomorrow.”
Epp didn’t respond. She was too busy sniffing the air. “Do you smell it? This place really stinks! It’s moldy here!”
“It is?” I took a few whiffs of the air. To me the