My Estonia II. Justin Petrone
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I read it makes you more sensitive to smells.”
“Maybe we should try the neighbors’?” I offered. “She said it’s free.”
“Of course it’s not free, Justin. It was just Hiiu humor.”
“Hiiu humor?” “It’s like they say. If you believe a quarter of what a hiidlane says, then you have been deceived by half.”
I did the math in my head. The neighboring B&B was definitely not free.
“Will you go talk to the owner?” Epp asked.
“Who? Me?” I looked up.
“Justin, you’re the man in this family. You need to take the initiative sometimes too.”
“Oh, right. But, you know, my Estonian’s not so good.”
“Fine then, I’ll go talk to her.”
Moments later we were ushered into the B&B owner’s home.
“I have another room for you down the hall,” she apologized. “It used to be my son’s room.”
The interior of the B&B was disappointing. I thought that Hiiumaa was separated by the mainland by more than just water. I expected something with a nautical theme, paintings of ships on the walls, canopies of fishing nets, a complimentary cup of clam chowder, for that added maritime effect. I thought it would be like any B&B in any New England seaside village, the ones I had known as a kid growing up. I would stay there in the moonlight, awake late into the night, listening to the beautifully freckled Irish girls who worked locally as they gathered together in the yard to play guitars and sing sea shanties.
The Käina B&B was nothing like that. It was dark and musty with the sad blue wallpaper and glossy dark Soviet-style bookshelves you found in many Estonian homes. The walls too were plastered with the same black and white photos of the same gang of bored-looking Estonian guys with identical moustaches; no smiles, no body language, not even any Hiiu humor. You could find such photos in any house in this country. You might even be able to switch photos between homes and feel secure that the residents wouldn’t notice the difference for a few weeks.
“Those are my sons,” the owner pointed at the men.
“Do they live around here?” I asked her.
“Not anymore,” she frowned. “Here’s your room.”
Our new room may have been cluttered with baskets of old magazines and dusty furniture, but I didn’t care. I just needed to lie down. I sat down on the edge of the bed and once again undid my sandals.
“It’s not pretty,” Epp shrugged after the owner left. “But at least it doesn’t stink.”
The other guests at the B&B were a German couple. He had a moustache and an expensive timepiece. She had bangs and looked very tidy. For breakfast they ate granola and flipped through guidebooks.
“What will it be today, Ulrika? Maybe start with the Rudolf Tobias museum?” he asked.
“Who’s Rudolf Tobias?”
“It says here that he was a composer.”
Germans. Why did they come to Hiiumaa of all places? Was it to bask in their former glory?
Maybe. Later, in the graveyard of a chapel, on an island called Kassari across the bay from Käina, I stooped down to rub my hands in the grooves of the old stones and crosses. Some merely said Puhka rahus4 but the older ones were inscribed in the language of the German tourists. Were these Hiiu people German? No. But in the 19th century, life was recorded in German, the language of the manor owners. Estonians were born, married, and buried in German. Many had German names and many still do. But, despite this overwhelming Germanization, the Estonians had never become Germans. The stubborn islanders had always remained who they were.
The Kassari chapel was crooked and white, like an old woman. And in the graveyard of the chapel, as we stopped to take a rest, I knelt down to read off the names of the old stones. Georg. Elsa. Karl. Minna. All these people were bones. Anyone that could remember anyone that remembered them was dead. But one name caught my eye. It looked a little different. Alive. It didn’t seem especially German or Estonian. Instead, there was something grander there. It could be the name of an Italian film star or a Brazilian singer.
Marta.
It was like a hot spark. There was energy in that name, adrenaline. Is this how you recognize the right name for your kid? I didn’t know, but it felt right.
“I had a great aunt named Marta,” Epp crouched down beside me.
“Do you remember her at all? What was she like?”
“She died a long time ago,” Epp wrinkled her brow. “But I remember she had a cool doll sitting on top of her cabinet.”
“What do you think?”
“You mean for us?” Epp said and paused to think for a moment. “Well, it does sound international,” Epp said. “And it’s a family name.”
“Little does our Marta know,” I reached out and touched the stone one more time, “but she’s going to be named after some dead chick from Hiiumaa.”
“Let’s do it,” Epp agreed. “It’s the name if it’s a girl!”
On the way back from the Kassari chapel we stopped to take a break in an old fashioned villavabrik – a wool factory. We laid our bikes against a stone wall in the deserted parking lot, but there were no cars parked there and there was no one around, no evidence of life other than the odd home in the distance here and there with its dark wooden walls and thick thatched straw roof looking cozy and ancient, like a movie set for The Lord of the Rings.
“So, when we get back to Tallinn,” Epp began to speak as we walked to the factory door.
“Shh!”
“What?”
“Do you hear that?” I whispered.
“No.”
“Just listen.”
And we stood there, both silent, listening. We heard nothing. Not a sound. No cars. No radios. No construction. And then, in the distance, a sheep let out a gentle cry.
“It’s so quiet here,” I whispered looked out into the fields of flax beyond the stone wall.
“Tere!” a voice boomed from the steps of the factory. I turned to see a man with brown hair, gray on the sides, a cowlick in the back, and a middle-aged paunch. He was dressed in blue overalls, as if he had just come from milking a cow.
“Tere,” Epp answered him. “Is your store open?”
“It is, come in.”
The store was tidy and adorned with caps and sweaters and booties embroidered with colorful folk patterns made in subtle blues and reds, greens and golds, zigzagging and crisscrossing like diamonds, snowflakes, tree branches, insects, and thunderbolts. The air in the room was thick with the smell of pungent wool. Epp found a locally made shawl to bring home with us. As we paid, I chatted with the owner.
“Are you from around here?” I asked.
“Born and raised,” he said. “And I’ve been running this shop since the Russian time ended.” And as he shifted his glance to me, I noticed his left eye was a little lazy. Again, an islander was looking in my direction, but not at me.
“The Russian times, eh, so you’ve been running this shop since 1917?” I winked to the owner.
“Ok, ok since the Soviet time ended,” he said with a peculiar grin, as if he was incredibly amused by something, but not by me.
“So, is it true what they say about Hiiu humor?” I asked him. “Does it really exist?”
“Of
Rest in peace (In Estonian)