“You did?” I said, terrified. We had seen a few reindeer while we were hiking and they looked big and smelly; possibly very dangerous. I grabbed her hand: “Where should we go?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, “maybe we should go hide behind those cabins?”
As we snuggled in the bushes behind a wooden cabin, Epp put her head against my chest. “There is a full moon out,” she said as I leaned in to kiss her.
Suddenly, something rustled in the bushes. I shot straight up. “What is that? Is the reindeer back?”
Epp burst into laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“You are.” She laughed even harder.
I looked around in the bushes. It was midnight, but the sky was light gray. Still, I couldn’t make out any antlers in the forest.
“You know,” I said, “we could just be sitting here, and a reindeer could come!”
Epp laughed harder. “Do you want to know the secret?” she asked.
“The what?”
“The secret. The big secret! I have decided to share with you the biggest secret in the universe.”
“Tell me. What is it?” I whispered, leaning closer to hear.
“The secret is that the world is small!” Epp roared with laughter. “It’s not big!”
“That’s the secret?”
“Yes!”
“Really?”
Something rustled again in the bushes.
“Wait, are you sure there are reindeer out here?”
“Oh yes, definitely. Reindeer with big, sharp antlers!” Epp rolled in the bushes laughing.
I grabbed her arms and leaned in closer. As I did, I noticed how high her cheekbones were. In the moonlight, I caught myself wondering if there really was Asian blood running in her veins. Estonian? More like Mongolian.
Before I came to Finland, I had spent the summer watching old James Bond films. I relished the way James used his sexual prowess to get his way with dangerous women. “Sean Connery’s got his act together,” I thought to myself while watching Goldfinger alone late one night. “Pussy Galore is no match for him.”
But the morning after hiding from the reindeer behind the cabins in Inari, I walked nervously into the breakfast room and spied Epp from across the table. Her eyes locked with mine. I nearly spilled my morning coffee. At first, she looked as confused as I did. Then she winked at me. I turned and sat down at a distant table. Where was my inner James Bond in these moments?
“Sometimes I feel that she is sensitive and beautiful,” I told my journal. “Her love is a center of gravity; a home. But other times it just seems too strong. It scares me.”
For the rest of our Lapland trip, I only felt clumsy around Epp. I didn’t know what to say or how to act. I didn’t want to sit next to her, lest I feed Matjaz’s lascivious rumor mill. During our flight from Lapland back to Helsinki, Epp didn’t even sit next to me. She chatted up Jevgeni at the front of the plane instead. I sat jealously in the back, all alone, listening to music. I was on my own at last; a sad individual.
The days continued to drip by in pastels of northern summer twilight and beer. At our farewell dinner in Helsinki – held at a restaurant on an island in the harbor – I decided to sit across from Epp at the table. She had in her hands a biography of Raisa Gorbachev, Mikhail’s deceased wife.
“I am working on an article about their relationship,” Epp said, explaining her interest in the book.
I took the book and flipped through photos of the couple. On the last page, there was a photo of Gorbachev after Raisa had died.
“Poor Gorby, he looks so sad.” I laughed nervously.
“It’s not funny when the love of your life dies,” she said.
“I didn’t say it was funny.” Our eyes locked in tension.
Epp looked distressed. “Let’s go outside,” she said. “I need to walk with you.”
We left the other half-inebriated writers at the table and walked down the long restaurant steps to the island. The golden lights of Helsinki glowed around us as boats passed by in the night. It felt special. At last I had found a place where I felt I was supposed to be.
“What are you going to do when you go back?” Epp asked.
“I don’t want to go back,” I looked at the lights. “I want to stay here.”
“Why don’t you want to go back?”
“Will you just look at it?” I said, gesturing towards Helsinki. “It’s so beautiful.”
“Maybe you should come with me back to Tallinn tomorrow,” ventured Epp. “Maybe it will help you somehow?”
“To Tallinn?” I said, looking at the ghostly boats glowing in the night.
I had heard of Estonia before. When I was a boy my grandmother had given me a book of children’s stories from the Second World War. One of the children was from Estonia. I can still remember how the little girl in the book described rationing, and how she liked it when she had a runny nose, because the flavorless soup she ate would be extra salty. Whenever I thought of Estonia, I thought of this story.
One day during the trip, Sara and Florent, the French journalists in our group, announced that they had visited Tallinn. If they could go, I could go, too. I was also told that Estonia would “soon be part of the European Union” which somehow made it seem more safe.
I had never heard the name Tallinn before, and I felt a sort of unease when I realized that Estonia – this very Estonia where Epp was from – was only an hour and a half’s boat ride across the Gulf of Finland. I knew the location of both places, but somehow Finland’s consignment to the “Nordic countries” and Estonia’s location in “Eastern Europe” kept them far apart in my head.
At that moment, when I figured out how close Helsinki and Tallinn are, the idea of actually going to Estonia revolutionized my internal sense of geography. Estonia had seemed civilizationally different. I imagined the signs to be scrawled in Cyrillic text and onion-domed Orthodox churches looking down over its cities. I imagined pickpockets to be standing on every corner, and untrustworthy women trying to scam me out of money, maybe even Epp. I mean, how much did I really know about this Malaysian-Estonian-Mongolian woman? She was a weirdo; that was the only thing I knew for sure.
As I stood there thinking about whether or not to go to Tallinn with Epp, we were joined by Sara.
“I like you, Justin,” the French journalist confessed with her cute accent while lighting a cigarette. “I have to say that I usually hate Americans, but you are different from the others. You really seem like you are searching for something!”
In the moonlight, I thanked Sara for the compliment.
I sat later that night in front of our TV in the student hall watching mindless shows. Maybe the sexy host Kicki would come on soon. I was miserable now, knowing that our program was over.
Natalie the Brit walked into the room and saw me sitting on the couch. She had just gotten back from the bar.
“Justin, what are you doing?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Justin, will you just go see Epp,” Natalie shook her head. “I know you want to go see her. I am sure she is back in her room now. It’s our last night, do you understand?”
In my heart, I