And that was a true hell. All of that furniture, all of those contracts that needed to be severed, telecommunications devices that needed to be returned, all of the family drama, the grief, the bitterness.
“How could you leave behind New York?”
“Why not? Should I spend the rest of my life renting the second floor of somebody else’s house? And spend three hours every day in the dirty subway train, commuting?”
“You could look for a new job.”
“I have looked for a new job, and all of the others pay less than the one I have.”
“That just can’t be. That just can’t be…”
I have to look out the window now, to stare at a tree or a train, something to forget about the memories. When I think of those months toward the close of 2006 and beginning of 2007, I can only remember the darkness and the rain. Only one majestic moment stands out. That was the night I went for a walk beside the Atlantic Ocean, the night when I learned that we were expecting a new child. The sound of the waves was heavy, and there were a lot of stars in the sky, and it was moist and cool enough that you could see your breath. I stayed out on that ocean beach for a long time that night, staring up into the reassuring cosmos. There were forces in the universe greater than yourself. You just had to trust them. Somebody had told me something like that.
I heard footsteps approaching in rapid succession, the sound of shoes on sand, and then a late-night beach jogger ran past me. Out on the sea, I could see the glow from the ships. I thought about the ship that had run aground once out here, its hold full of illegal Chinese immigrants destined for sweatshops. That was their dream, though, to come here, to New York, the place to be. And I was one of the lucky few who were actually born here. Why did I need to leave?
The waves crashed on the shells, and I watched a plane come in to land at John F. Kennedy International Airport, which wasn’t so far from our house. We had already bought the tickets. It was all done and set. All we would need to do is pack our suitcases. There were three of us and each of us could take two. Six suitcases for lugging one family’s life across the ocean.
But there were actually four of us now, sort of. A new child. Epp wanted to call her Anna. The last time Epp had visited Estonia, she had interviewed her grandmother Laine, and heard more stories about Laine’s mother Anna, a lady who lived in a big house by the sea a long time ago. Grandma Laine was not one to peddle sob stories, but she was not the most uplifting character either. Laine had very light blue eyes and an ancient face. It was a face of cataclysmic geology, that peak of a nose, those ravines of eyes, the patch of snowy white fuzz beneath the chin. She wore a blue handkerchief around her head, and asked you practical questions about the pluses and minuses of life.
But at least one time, Laine gave Epp the full story about what had happened to their family in 1949, how Anna and a teenaged Laine hid in the woods when the Soviet military forces came to arrest them and send them to Siberia, surviving on ants during three long nights in March. So they escaped. A middle aged woman and a teenage girl managed to outwit one of the most bloodthirsty regimes in living memory. There were uglier things, too, but I won’t go into those. What I will tell you is that Anna’s story was a hero’s story, and even when I was standing on that dark, foggy beach, I knew that a new heroic little Anna was coming.
But she wouldn’t be born in New York. Not all children could be born there. Some children had to be born in other places and this child would be born in Tartu.
Tartu, where my sister-in-law and brother-in-law and little troublemaking niece Simona lived, Tartu, with its university where I could continue my studies, perhaps gaining skills that would bring in income, or maybe, if I was truly lucky, I could live the easy life of an academic myself, idling away the hours reading books and grading papers and thinking of ways to spend all of those free days in summer. Tallinn was full of bankers and politicians and professional celebrities who liked to have their personal lives chronicled in the tabloids, but Tartu! It was different. The academic, bohemian oasis was waiting for me.
And so, we put our most important possessions into six bags one night and boarded a plane to Warsaw, and from there to Tallinn, to take the train to Tartu.
VÄINO’S MAGIC TRICK
The first thing I remember about those Tartu days was the strange and metallic sound of two pieces of frozen firewood being struck against each other in the February night.
It was dark out in the yard beside the barn, and Väino was hitting the two pieces of wood together, gently. Väino, a middle aged man in a puffy insulated jacket. Average height and features, quick speaker, strutting posture. If I had to choose an animal or a bird that best represented Väino, it would be a rooster. He smiled at us as he hit the wood and his eyes lit up, as if he had just pulled a rabbit out of a hat, or made a pigeon disappear.
Kluck. Klick.
Back then, my Estonian wasn’t good, so I couldn’t understand most of what Väino was saying. But it involved the word puu (wood). We needed puu for heating the apartment we would rent from Väino, and Väino just happened to have a whole spare barn full of puu that could be had for a special discount price. And it was good dry puu, see? Väino hit the two pieces of frozen wood together again.
Kluck. Klick.
“Hey, I like this guy,” Epp whispered into my ear. “He seems cool.”
“Sure,” I said. But that’s not what I thought. What I thought was that my great intuition had led me to a driveway in Estonia watching a man play with wood. The jet lag from the journey still hadn’t worn off, so I felt awful, and all of the caffeine from the bowls of cappuccinos we drank in Tartu’s favorite place, Cafe Werner, made me feel even more dehydrated and apathetic. The ground was white, the air was cold, but the warm clothes you had to wear as you trudged about the city made you sweat, so you were never entirely at peace, whether indoors or out. Why had I forgotten about these things? Why hadn’t I noticed how rundown some parts of Tartu were? The city had looked so nice in the pictures. And we still hadn’t found a home since starting our search that morning.
But this one, Väino’s one, was much better than the rest. The other ones were up creaking staircases, connected by dark corridors that smelled of wood smoke and cat urine. Väino’s apartment was clean and new. We could move in tomorrow, if he agreed, and we could have that barn full of quality wood too.
After a day of walking around Tartu that was fine with me. All I wanted at that point was to give Väino the money for the apartment and the wood, go inside, take a shower, and sleep.
The house, what would become our home for some time, was on a crooked street at the mouth of a neighborhood of Tartu known as Karlova. As I later came to know, it was named after a German landowner named Karl. When this Karl, who I always imagined as a reclusive and eccentric count, had lived, no one told me. But his name stayed with the locals.
The name of every Tartu neighborhood meant something.
Supilinn, “Soup Town,” for example, was the bohemian shanty town of dirt roads down by the river. It was a 19th century slum that had somehow made it into the 21st century, limping and bent, but still there, with funny street names that translated to Pea, Bean, Potato, Pumpkin, Celery, Melon, and Berry. They said it was called Supilinn because when the River Emajõgi overflowed, it turned the little neighborhood with its tasty street names into soup. The apartment we looked at there was housed in a hulk of splintered wood that looked like the Vasa after it had been lying on the bottom of Stockholm Harbor for a while. But it had potential! That was Supilinn.
Tucked beyond the railroad tracks was Tammelinn, “Oak Town.” It was the resort of wealthier families, of proud, stately homes and new, shiny tin roofs and oak-lined streets. Prime Minister Andrus Ansip lived around there, it