was also always talking about someone named Endel. I didn’t know who this Endel was. The reclusive neighbor next door was an older guy named Aadu. You might catch a glimpse of him and his old-fashioned flat cap if you happened to walk into the shared foyer at the same time. Maybe you might exchange a “Tere” or “Hello” with him, too. There was also Nils, the musician with the ponytail who lived upstairs. He also only said “Tere,” but in a more alert and friendly manner, and you could hear his keyboard music at night.
But Endel? Who the heck was Endel?
What was more confusing, Väino said he had even made our apartment for Endel. It was a luxury apartment, he said proudly, luksuskorter, with tomato red painted walls and hound-tooth patterned Styrofoam moldings around the ceiling, plus that dreamy white-tiled furnace that looked as if he had brought it all the way to Karlova from Versailles. And it was all for Endel! “Ma tegin Endlile,”Väino would repeat. I only nodded.
One day, I asked Epp out of curiosity about this mysterious Endel whom I had never seen but who was supposed to get this apartment before we showed up.
“What Endel?” she asked.
“You know, Endel. Väino is always saying, he made our luxury apartment for Endel. He says,‘Ma tegin Endlile.’”
“Oh, no, Justin,” she said. “He’s saying, ‘Ma tegin end-a-le,’”Epp laughed. “It means: ‘I made it for myself.’”
“Oh.”
“And all this time you’ve been wondering about this non-existent person named Endel? Hahaha!”
That was the extent of her sympathy. After that day, whenever Daki, Tiina, Anna, the other Tiina, and all the other female visitors came to our home, I was instructed to repeat the,“Ma tegin Endlile”joke to their tea-spitting delight, and I always did it well, like a trained circus bear.
Väino’s luksuskorter was a fine place to live. We managed to stay there for five months.
The couple that moved in after us was an American woman and a German man who were both teaching at the university and enjoyed ballroom dancing. They had no children, and so I assumed that those three luxury rooms would suit their needs for some time to come, and maybe they wouldn’t mind Lord Väino’s midnight drilling upstairs.
Väino’s wife happened to be back in Tartu that week and negotiated the contract in German with the German man and they discussed utility bills and other interesting topics. We sold the transatlantic ballroom-dancing couple the kluck-klick wood we had bought from Väino for about the same price. It was July then, and there was no need to hit the pieces of wood together to show their quality.
They probably wouldn’t have understood what that meant anyway.
Then, one hot summer night a week or so later, the young couple left the windows to the apartment open, and thieves climbed through them while they were asleep and stole most of their valuables. They were very upset and they asked me for advice about what they should do. I told them to just go and check the local pandimaja – I used this exact word – because the thieves might have tried to sell the stolen goods there. “Just go check the pandimaja. There’s one on Tähe and Pargi Street around the corner.”
“Pandimaja, what’s that?” the American woman asked me.
“Oh, that’s right, it’s a pawn shop,” I said. “It’s just been a while since I’ve used that term in English.”
That was when I knew that my Estonian had improved.
WOODSMAN MATS
Our second home in Tartu was in the district of Tähtvere, “the professors’ quarter,” as they called it.
Tähtvere sat on another hill outside of the city center. This neighborhood had larger, postwar dwellings with smooth, plastered surfaces and big windows and balconies. On occasion, you would see a house with round, porthole-like windows, which gave the structure the appearance of a passenger ship moored on land.
Some of the larger Tähtvere houses sat on well-tended plots dotted with orchards and gardens, and were painted in creamy, pleasant colors. Others were gray and crumbling and circled by wraith-like trees. When we walked by these kinds of houses, Epp would remind me that most professors were paid little and couldn’t afford renovations.
The streets in Tähtvere were planned, orderly and mostly tidy. They were named after well-known Estonian National Awakening figures from the 19th Century. Jakobsoni Street was named for Carl Robert Jakobson, the writer, newspaper publisher, and politician; Hurda was named for Jakob Hurt, the folklorist, theologist, and linguist; Koidula for Lydia Koidula, the romantic poet; Jannseni for Johan Voldemar Jannsen, the writer and poet (and father of Koidula); and Hermanni for Karl August Hermann, the composer.
Most of these people’s faces were featured on Estonian bank notes, I learned. Though, at times, with all of those beards and spectacles, it was hard to tell who was who.
The neighborhood streets also had some mystical names. Taara Avenue, named after the Estonian pagan god, thought by some to be akin to the Viking Thor, ran straight through Tähtvere. Another street was called Hiie, named after the sacred forests of Estonia’s pre-Christian belief system. And then there was Vikerkaare, Rainbow Street, so called because it was shaped like a Rainbow. It was easy to get lost on that street because you would follow the rainbow around and almost wind up back where you started.
Most of the houses in Tähtvere we came across were heated by wood and had long barns built alongside of them. It could take half a day to fill these barns with fresh stock, usually ordered in early autumn by calling numbers in advertisements for dry wood, at good prices, found in the backs of the local newspapers.
And so one day toward the middle of our first autumn back in Estonia, Epp came to the office upstairs in our house in Tähtvere to tell me that Woodsman Mats was downstairs waiting for me to come and help unload the wood. When I came outside in a t-shirt and jeans and shoes, Mats was waiting for me behind his truck. If Karlova Väino had been a rooster, then I would have to say that Woodsman Mats was a bear. Yet there was something gentle and un-bear-like about Mats. Maybe he was more like a pine marten, a metsnugis. He certainly looked a bit like one. He had long, shoulder-length hair, which I found unusual for an older Estonian man, and those slanted Uralic eyes. Later, when I described Mats to my father, his hair, his manner of speech, he only said, “He’s a Native American, Justin.” – “No, he’s an Estonian, Dad.” – “No, Justin. He’s a Native American.”
The first thing I noticed that day about Mats, after we exchanged greetings, was his hands. Each one of his fingers was fat and swollen and calloused. It was as if he had only thumbs. My fingers were different. My fingers were long and smooth and lined. I had writer’s hands, typist’s hands. He had hands that could be applied to just about any kind of hard labor. I imagined how he could hammer a stake into the ground with his hand.
But the interesting thing was that, a few hours later, after Mats’ shipment of wood had been unloaded, my hands looked a lot like Mats’. They were red and covered in blisters and a few splinters had been pulled from them. I know what you’re thinking – Justin, why didn’t you wear gloves? Would you think I was weird if I told you that I wanted to feel the wood I was loading into my barn? That I wanted to have that forest in my hands? As soon as Mats backed that truck up to the barn, I took down two pieces and banged them together, to see if they would make that magic sound.
Kluck?
