The Faces Of Strangers. Pia Padukone

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.