Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER FORTY NINE – OUR COMPANY. TALLINN. BREATH OF EUROPE
This time I was in Odessa for a short time. A day later, Eli left for western Ukraine to visit relatives, and in four-five days later he returned, and we flew to Tallinn. I really liked the city when I got there for a day from Leningrad. And I decided to go there for a more thorough visit. Lambert’s new apartment was hospitably waiting for me and my friend.
Tallinn seemed to Soviet people to be a foreign city. Not only the architecture, but also the design was different, apparently due to connections with Sweden and Finland. The view on many of the most ordinary things was different: old Estonians rowed beyond the cordon on foggy nights – bringing millstones on boats for the household. The speech in the city was non-Russian and fast. The image of a slow-talking Estonian is a caricature. This is how Estonians speak Russian, translating and choosing words, but in their native language they speak pretty quickly! But they work thoroughly, without haste.
People like to drink alcohol here, as in any northern countries. There are a lot of drunk people. The monument, where a woman supports a wounded communard, everybody call “Wife Helps Her Husband to Cross the Street.”
I felt good here, but I wanted to feel even better. To do this I had to find a girlfriend. The main obstacle in this matter was… Eli. He criticized all the pairs of girls who smiled at us. He didn’t like either their height, or their weight, or their outfit, or their makeup. Also either their legs were crooked, or their legs were muscular, or their legs were hairy, and so on. When outwardly there was nothing to complain about, he said that they had no class! In the end I decided that we should search separately, and we split up.
I offered to take Eli the only key to the apartment. I figured that I would most likely meet someone, but I wasn’t sure about my picky friend. After his graduation work in Pushchino, he brought from Moscow a bunch of stories about beauties who seduced him in the most unexpected places and situations. Denis, who wrote the thesis with him, frowned skeptically every time, but kept a reserved silence. However, Eli refused the key,
“The apartment is your friend’s. You are responsible for it. And the key should be with you. Of course, we could continue the search together, but if you can’t wait, go ahead. We’ll meet you at home. But, understand, you won’t succeed – whores don’t interest you, and a decent girl won’t go with you, as you don’t know neither the language nor customs, your jokes are incomprehensible and may seem stupid and obscene. In a word, it’s like breaking into an inaccessible world.
We parted and I went on my own. It happened as I expected. I started speaking to a lonely young woman with a waffle cone, sitting on a bench near an ice cream stand not far from the park. The question was standard: why does such a pretty girl walk alone? The answer was just right for a lover of psychological discussions about life.
“I’m divorced,” she said simply.
And away we go. We discussed everything – the problems of single mothers, Russians in Estonia, Jews in the USSR, drunkenness, work, sex, emigration. About two hours later, when it was getting dark, and we had talked enough and walked around, I suggested we go have lunch. Linda, that was the name of my new friend, refused,
“It will be too late. I have to pick up my little son from his grandmother. Tomorrow he goes to kindergarten, I go to work…”
And then I went va banque (all in),
“Ask your mother to take the child, and stay the night with me.”
Linda blushed deeply. This is what I needed: not a performance, but real feelings and human relationships.
The next hour was spent persuading her mother. Two more – for the lunch at a restaurant in the park. Everything was beautiful and romantic. And suddenly I remembered with horror about Eli, who didn’t have a key. We took a taxi and rushed home.
Eli sat on the stairs near the door, leaning against the wall, dozing.
“El’ka!” I called him.
He opened his eyes and looked at me reproachfully,
“You were gone for five hours,” he said, “I was worried.”
“Do not be angry, please. You should have taken the key to the apartment.”
“Perhaps. Then you could call me.”
I was even more nervous than when I remembered that Eli was left without a key. Why would I call him if each of us was engaged in our own important search? And then I realized that he didn’t go anywhere, didn’t look for anyone, and for as long as he could, he didn’t let me meet girls. And, having parted with me, he soon went home, hoping for my fiasco. He was ready to wait as long as he liked at the door for his friend’s return, in the hope of seeing him alone, and not in the company of a random contender for love.
“Rest, Eli, I’ll go to bed in Lambert’s bedroom.”
He shrugged his shoulders, went into his room and closed the door.
“Maybe I should leave?” Linda asked, “You have a special relationship here.”
“Not at all what you think. I really have a special relationship with Eli. He is my oldest friend!”
And I told Linda for a long time about how we met, how we studied at school and university, about our friendship and life.
“It’s better than the movie,” Linda said. “It’s like I’ve been to another country or another planet.”
And she kissed me as if she had unexpectedly returned from that world to this one.
We didn’t sleep that night. We made up for lost days on other planets and felt asleep only with the first rays of the sun.
I woke up to the whistling of the kettle in the kitchen.
“I prepared breakfast. It’s time to eat and go!” Eli shouted.
“Where is Linda?” I asked with concern.
“She left you a note and left.”
Eli handed me a folded piece of paper from a notebook. With neat Russian handwriting it was written, “Indeed, it was a journey to another world! But at some point you have to return. Don’t look for me, minu armastus (my love – Estonian), because everything beautiful is fleeting, and only memories of it are eternal.”
I almost cried, but Linda was right, and it was impossible looking for her without her last name, address and job.
“Linda is right, Nick,” Eli said. “We also need to return home soon. But nevertheless, you are the parasites! You screamed all night like you’ve never had sex in your life! Have you both gone wild?”
“Who? We were screaming?”
“No, our neighbors did!”
“It can’t be!”
“I should have recorded it on a tape recorder!”
“And sell it like porn!”
We joked and laughed. Our friendship was again strong and pure. And Linda disappeared, dissolved into her world, inaccessible to me. But we, too, soon had to return to our planet.
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