The Faces of Strangers (11 page)

NICO

Tallinn
October–November 2002

One of the best things about being in a country like Estonia was that one never had to choose between destinations outside Tallinn to visit on the weekends. The country was so small that it could be traversed from end to end in a matter of hours. There were three main highways that led out of Tallinn in a circle, and they met in the middle at the south end of the country. Turning west, east or south out of the city center would eventually result in meeting a road that led to Tartu. Nico was headed to the second-largest city in the country with the Sokolovs after Vera had suggested that he might like to see other parts of Estonia.

Leo, Vera, Paavo and Nico piled into the dusty brown Lada soon after breakfast as the sun peered over the edge of Kadriorg Park. Nico had eaten as much
kasha
as he could spoon into his mouth that morning, after crumbling an entire bar of the chalky Kamatahvel
over the groats. He had a feeling that Leo wouldn't have much patience for pulling over for a snack stop along the way. Nico pulled the blanket over his knees that Leo had tossed behind him as he'd started the car. “Sorry—heat only in front.” He was just getting comfortable behind Vera when the door opened next to him and Mari stuck her head in.

“Move over,” she said. “You can't expect me to sit in the middle.”

“I didn't even know you were coming,” Nico said. “Don't you have a shoot?”

“Postponed,” she said. “Come on, Nico, get a move on.”

That Estonia was a small country was the only reason that Nico didn't complain about sitting in the cramped middle seat for the two-hour drive to Tartu. In an effort to give Mari space, he stayed as close to Paavo as possible, but the siblings fell asleep shortly after the car passed by the airport, both nodding against Nico's broad shoulders. Vera appeared to be asleep, too, small snorts emanating from the passenger seat from time to time. Nico tried to take in the scenery around him, as Leo and Nico's eyes met in the rearview mirror from time to time.

“Boring, no?” Leo said softly. Nico had actually been thinking that while the country was flat, it made the sky seem expansive and never ending. The clouds and the glow from the sun were ethereal. It felt as if they were driving on the edge of the world, making Nico perceive how large the universe was, and that there was so much more to life than he'd ever seen. Though they were on a two-lane highway, and the Lada didn't seem capable of going over fifty miles an hour, it seemed that Leo liked to speed, pushing down on the accelerator as hard he could. Other drivers moved out of the way, changing lanes and waving him on as he careened forward. As closed off as Estonians were, they were also incredibly polite.

“It's not so bad. It's a lot greener than I thought it would be.”

“Most Estonia is trees. Untouched,” Leo said. “Outside of Tallinn is quite beautiful. You will see. Vera has many plans for visitation. We will visit my parents in Narva.”

“What about Vera's parents? Where do they live?”

Leo turned his head to honk three times as they jetted past a hitchhiker along the shoulder of the road. It was the fourth one they'd seen upon their exit from Tallinn.

“What's up with those guys?” Nico asked.

“What guys?” Leo asked.

“There are so many hitchhikers. Does no one have cars?”

“Not so many have. But it is easy to get a ride in Estonia. People are good and stop for them. If we had room, I would pick him up.”

“Is that safe?” Nico asked. “Back home, picking up a hitchhiker is dangerous.”

“Why?” Leo asked.

“I guess 'cause you don't know who they are, or where they're from, where they're going.”

“Is the point,” Leo said. “Otherwise, is no fun.”

Just past Põltsamaa, Leo pulled the car over to the side of the road. There weren't many vehicles on the road, other than large trucks that appeared to be bringing goods to different parts of the country. Leo put his fingers to his lips and nodded to his sleeping family. “Come out,” he whispered.

Nico eased Mari's head onto the back of the car seat and stepped gingerly over Paavo's legs out the door onto the road. “Are we here?” Nico asked. “I thought Tartu was a big town.”

“Not Tartu. I will show you something special. Come.” Leo walked toward a lush thicket of trees, which stood about a hundred feet from the edge of the road. Nico watched his shoulders retreat into the shadows before Leo turned back. “Come.”

Just beyond the perimeter of the tall, slim trunks, the shrubbery created a canopy over their heads. Large boulders within the small, contained forest cast long shadows underneath logs, and sunlight filtered through the leaves above them. It was a few degrees cooler within the shelter of the copse than it was on the other side. Much like the streets of Tallinn, Nico felt as though he were entering a fairy-tale world, but this time instead of diminutive colorful houses, they were entering an enchanted meadow, where time seemed to stand still. The air in the woods was cleaner, brighter. Nico found himself taking great breaths of it as he walked, as though it would disappear unless he brought it all into his lungs. Leo continued farther into the woods, and Nico found himself having to jog over twisted roots and rocks to keep up with him. At a thicket of evergreens, Leo paused and waited for him.

“It's beautiful here,” Nico said. “I would never have thought there'd be so much lushness to the country.”

“The
most
beautiful country in the world,” Leo said, smiling. In the few weeks he had been with the Sokolovs, Nico could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen Leo smile, and he felt pleased that he'd caught another sighting. The woods seemed to draw something else out of Leo; it was as though he'd morphed into a satyr, skipping about the woods without a care. The bottoms of Leo's pant legs darkened with dew as Nico followed at a polite distance behind. A few minutes into the walk, Leo stopped short and pointed.

“It is very Estonian,” Leo said, removing a folded plastic bag from his pocket, “to collect mushrooms.” He pointed out a layered mass of orange-colored foam. As Nico looked around, there were clumps of them all over the mossy forest floor.

“Mushrooms?”

“To share your favorite mushroom spot, this is very special.” He grinned at Nico and held the bag out toward him. “We are like KGB when it comes to finding best mushrooms. We never share this information with anyone. Now, Nico, you are family.”

“Wow. Thanks, Leo. Your secret is safe with me. I did this with my family when we were in Provence,” Nico said. “In France they sauté them in butter and wrap them in a dough, kind of like pizza.”

“Is not same. Mushrooms are best in Estonia,” Leo said, digging a little into the dirt with two fingers. He unearthed a long white root at the end of which was a tight little cap. “It is religion here.”

“That's what Paavo says about sauna.”

“We have many religions in this country,” Leo said, winking at him.

The two spent the next ten minutes gathering all the mushrooms in the little clearing beneath the boulders. Nico concentrated on collecting the orange ones as Leo foraged in the clearing; digging beneath logs to find a variety of mushrooms—oysters, morels, chanterelles—he showed each type to Nico before depositing them in his sack.

“Thank you for showing that to me,” Nico said, handing his bag to Leo as they headed back. “It really meant a lot.”

“How much?”

“Sorry?”

“I make small joke.”

Nico grinned. “You really love it here, don't you?”

“Estonia is home. Best country in the world. Best beaches, best forest, best islands, best culture, best vodka. But...weak history with bad rules.”

“Right, citizenship. But you love your country. Can't citizenship be based on that? On like, knowing where the best mushroom spots are? And how to build a sauna? How important is language, really, when everyone speaks English anyway?”

Leo blushed. “Too bad you don't issue passports, Nico. Anyway, let us go back to the car. We will be late for lunch in Tartu.”

* * *

As a family member, Mari was elusive. Sometimes she would join the rest of the family at the dinner table; other times she would be gone for great swaths of time at casting calls or studio shoots in a neighboring country. It was baffling to Nico that in Europe, it took the same amount of time to reach a whole other country as it did to drive across a single state in America, so it was often worth Mari's while to travel across neighboring borders.

But even though Nico had initially been intimidated by her cool, blasé aura and the vehemence with which she'd mocked him on his first night in her home, he was surprised that she always seemed to make herself available on weekends when the Sokolovs took their weekend jaunts. Whether she was warming to him, or whether she was truly not as busy as she claimed, Nico couldn't be sure.

What Nico didn't know was that even though Mari had intended to keep her distance from the young American, she began to find his presence comforting. When she came home late at night after a grueling day of travel, she slipped her shoes off just inside the door, paused at Nico's makeshift door and listened. There was something reassuring about hearing the rise and fall of Nico's breathing from the other side of the curtain, and she stopped there more often than not on her way upstairs. Nico had no inkling that his presence in the family comforted Mari, so he could support her meek brother, soften her bristly father and take some of the stress off her mother so that Mari could concentrate on her career.

Each Saturday morning, Nico found himself bookended by Paavo and Mari as Leo urged the little Lada down straight, cleanly paved roads that led as far as the eye could see. Vera was diligent in planning their jaunts, choosing a different destination, intending to show Nico every corner of the country. They strolled the cobblestone streets in Tartu, past students with their noses buried in textbooks in cafés and under trees. They walked barefoot in the cool white sands at Kabli Beach, their only company flocks of speckled grouse that congregated in the marsh grass below the dunes. They hung back on the rocks, watching the gray seals cavort at the edge of the ocean in Vilsandi National Park, as the wind whipped the sea into a frenzy, whitecaps and roiling waves churning toward the shore. They hiked the theater land around Rakvere, home to one of the earliest civilizations in the Baltic. They roamed the lush greenery of Saaremaa, the largest of the country's 1,500 surrounding islands, exploring the red bricks of Kuressaare Castle and poking their toes in the frigid, serene waters of the Baltic Sea. They visited Leo's parents, Paavo and Mari's Deda and Babu, in Narva, where they lived in an apartment amidst an immense block of communist-style housing, all gray concrete and right angles. They rode the ferry across the span of water to Helsinki—Leo sheepishly producing his gray passport at the ferry terminal—to spend a day traipsing the industrial neighborhoods that had sprung up near the docks.

Vera took her role as tour guide seriously, explaining the history of each place and why it was special. She explained how the tiny country had been overtaken and manipulated by hundreds of hands over the centuries: the Vikings at first, and then the Danes, the Swedes, the Germans, the Soviets. She spoke passionately about the resilience of the Estonian people over the years, despite the numerous changeovers that took place before their very eyes. Even though the family's weekend trips took them to every corner of the country, it was in their own neighborhood in Kadriorg that Nico got a sense of just what this little country had been through. As the family walked around the perimeter of the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds, Vera took him back to 1988 when hundreds of thousands of Estonians gathered to sing their hearts out in support of an independent Estonia.

“All those voices singing patriotic hymns together,” Vera said, looking off into the distance. “It was the beginning of something very important. And then of course the following year, the Chain of Freedom.”

“What's that?” Nico asked softly. He felt as though he were intruding on Vera's memory. Her eyes were misting, and she bit her lower lip in an effort to keep tears from spilling over.

“Citizens from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania lined up to join the capital cities, holding hands in peaceful protest against the Soviet occupation,” Vera said, sniffling. Leo put his arm around her, and bent his head so the others couldn't see his face. “Two million people holding on to one another, requesting for their countries to be free. It was beautiful to be part of this day. It led to independence. Do either of you remember it?”

Paavo shook his head and walked to the other side of Leo. Mari nodded slowly, concentrating hard on something on the ground. She grabbed her mother's hand, and the Sokolovs walked together as a family, Nico following behind.

* * *

Right on time, the beginnings of winter arrived in Estonia in November. Nico was used to the wind tunnels of Manhattan that whipped through the canyons made by avenues, snaking from river to river, nullifying multiple layers of clothing to chill him to the bone. This cold was different than anything he had ever felt. It was as if he had let a flame lick the tips of his fingers and stuck his toes into the red embers of a fireplace.

It surprised Nico that it had taken him this long to get sick. The chill finally wound its way into him, permeating his bones, his body succumbing as it fell gratefully into the sofa bed with a croaking throat and a buzzing head. It felt as if Nico slept for a week, when it had only been three days. Vera attended to him, placing cold compresses on his sallow, drawn face and dosing him intermittently with marrow broth and a yellow fizzy drink that tasted too sweet to have any medicinal properties. Paavo brought him his homework, which piled up on the floor and was eventually kicked under the bed during one of his many trips to the bathroom. He slept in fits and bursts, plummeting into deep throes of delirious sleep, and fighting with his bedclothes, febrile and lathered in sweat when he was awake.