Short story "Po river" from a short story collection "The Birthday of Death" (Surma sünnipäev, Tuum 1996)
Translated by Aija Sakova
Every person has had several places to live – if homes, I do not dare to say – and there will be a time when one will want to revisit these places, even if only ashes and overgrown grass has remained. I am putting it this way, someone the other, it all depends on fate shaping the situations. Or on the individual themself, if one has lived in the peace and security of the stable times. Although, I tend to think that there are no so inert moments in time that would preclude placechanges, thus the causes for restless wandering lie in the mind of the individual. And in languages, I would like to add again, as we do not always feel the same during a day and a lifetime, so does change tones and colors also the defining spirit.
All the more I am surprised that I have never visited the places of past battlefields, for how else could I today characterise the growing-pain of my mind and joints, the beautifying afterglow of internal battles that exclude encounters with the child I once was. There have been (and still are) so many of us (me), so that at crucial moments as if a large public gathering is taking place, the individual members of which could barely fit into the familiar shape of an ageing body.
It seems to me that we meet often, and that our internal clashes are like rapids that shake the lazy river, momentarily upsetting the order, the conventions and history of self-knowledge, if only we had the patience to look carefully. Most of the time one doesn’t and then I think of the river Po, which begins in the Alps, is made up of numerous tributaries and remains imaginary for me, and I am particularly enchanted by the wisdom, gleaned from reference works, that the great waters of the tributaries on the left flood the Lombardy plain in May or June, while the urge to storm of the tributaries on the right falls into October, when I am also born.
What places might this largest river in northern Italy pass through, I have wisely not checked on the map, although it’s not impossible that perhaps the suddenly occurred comparison might one day mean something more. It is the thought of flooding that fascinates, like the high start of a mighty (?) river.
Estonia’s biggest river does not have a name, like so many of the people who have defined our history. So we can be here and in this place without betraying ourselves, and always elsewhere as in something homely, since it is only the thought that decides the boundaries of the foreign and the familiar within ourselves.
Sometimes in the evenings I start the journey from Karitsa to Tõrma. I’m nine-ten-twelve years old, and at first, I’m terrified of veering off the winding village road, of getting lost, and I’m not sure of every family’s dog either (you never know what they’ll think of), but the most dangerous are complete strangers, because not even their looks betray their true intentions. And when I go like this, I almost never know what I want to buy in a shop near Rakvere and the cemetery, because all my attention is focused on the road and the journey itself.
I’m only a little surprised about it now, because I’m not going down that road as I did forty years ago. I did not have, and still do not have, the peace of mind necessary to remember my surroundings accurately, so I could just as well come from Vaeküla, Rägavere or from anywhere else to any familiar place in Virumaa and wonder whether it is behind every forthcoming road winding, forest edge or group of houses still as uninhabitedly safe as it is here and now, where nothing threatens me.
The difference, however, is that decades later, I am aware of the peculiarities of my journey, and I also know why colours, smells, the changing light of the seasons, or the recalling of a familiar name have more impact on me than a memory image that can be reconstructed down to the details of a possible landscape that simply does not exist within me.
I might even feel sorry for the brave girl who goes because she has to, if I would not remember clearly that back then the thought of being scared did not occur to me at all. I was afraid without knowing that I was afraid, and therein lies an important difference between the wanderer of then and the reminiscer of today.
It seems that for the rest of my life I have unintentionally admired those who can enter the colour-smell- and event-sameness, because they cannot conceive themselves apart from all that influences the sensations. They enter into the sensuous landscapes as into themselves, and if they nevertheless recall with a lumpy feeling of separation, sequencing times, places, and themselves as detachables parts of the wholeness of being, I perceive the description as an indirect translation, as if the potential listener and fellow traveller were deaf or blind, a bore pursuing logical operations. Most memoirs are written exactly this way, and usually I operate the same way as well.
The authentic rememberer is the anxiety clenching the inner, the expectation, the fear or the slackness, and only the carefree wandering will pay attention to all without even knowing it, as I did not know about the fearful journeys of childhood.
Nominally familiar but pictorially completely unfamiliar landscapes have swallowed me up, digested, transformed or discarded me like a thing when I am left with the memory of the journey, the year and a chest-busting longing for something unattainably beautiful and familiar. Perhaps for the self-free self I have never been. And so perhaps all I do is wander within myself in the midst of who-knows-what-kind-of wind-borne scents, eye-burning colours and silenced voices that are still waiting for the moment to burst into a rejoicing song.
Almost too beautiful to be true. Too sad to escape, because at the bottom of the heart-covering abyss the sounds are concentrated, as if I were playing the violin on myself. The center of a hand fan like branching of strings lies below the throat, at the junction of neck and head, invisible because of the forward bend; and a gigantic bow stretches across the face, across the imaginary strings.
I have seen this painting. It exists. I have only imagined the abyss, as well as the silence, because in the picture only the possibility is visible, not the voice.
For decisive events we come together into ourselves, but our faces are too familiar to ponder about the meaning of abundance.
We meet and make a decision. We are coming from Karitsa to Tõrma or vice versa – depending on where was the evil embracing all the soundcolors –, because for a joyous sake one gathers differently.
We drive through landscapes we may not have noticed, and somewhere, a prehistoric Po river, imaginary and eternally present, ripples. The different flood times of the tributaries mean at once something much more than bookish knowledge, and in the end, it doesn't matter.
The here and now moment of decision is history even if the Po river, Tõrma or Karitsa never existed. Since the hand holding the bow has already risen, the centre of beams touches the throat, a multifaced dissonance prepares itself for a scream.
Translated by Aija Sakova
Every person has had several places to live – if homes, I do not dare to say – and there will be a time when one will want to revisit these places, even if only ashes and overgrown grass has remained. I am putting it this way, someone the other, it all depends on fate shaping the situations. Or on the individual themself, if one has lived in the peace and security of the stable times. Although, I tend to think that there are no so inert moments in time that would preclude placechanges, thus the causes for restless wandering lie in the mind of the individual. And in languages, I would like to add again, as we do not always feel the same during a day and a lifetime, so does change tones and colors also the defining spirit.
All the more I am surprised that I have never visited the places of past battlefields, for how else could I today characterise the growing-pain of my mind and joints, the beautifying afterglow of internal battles that exclude encounters with the child I once was. There have been (and still are) so many of us (me), so that at crucial moments as if a large public gathering is taking place, the individual members of which could barely fit into the familiar shape of an ageing body.
It seems to me that we meet often, and that our internal clashes are like rapids that shake the lazy river, momentarily upsetting the order, the conventions and history of self-knowledge, if only we had the patience to look carefully. Most of the time one doesn’t and then I think of the river Po, which begins in the Alps, is made up of numerous tributaries and remains imaginary for me, and I am particularly enchanted by the wisdom, gleaned from reference works, that the great waters of the tributaries on the left flood the Lombardy plain in May or June, while the urge to storm of the tributaries on the right falls into October, when I am also born.
What places might this largest river in northern Italy pass through, I have wisely not checked on the map, although it’s not impossible that perhaps the suddenly occurred comparison might one day mean something more. It is the thought of flooding that fascinates, like the high start of a mighty (?) river.
Estonia’s biggest river does not have a name, like so many of the people who have defined our history. So we can be here and in this place without betraying ourselves, and always elsewhere as in something homely, since it is only the thought that decides the boundaries of the foreign and the familiar within ourselves.
Sometimes in the evenings I start the journey from Karitsa to Tõrma. I’m nine-ten-twelve years old, and at first, I’m terrified of veering off the winding village road, of getting lost, and I’m not sure of every family’s dog either (you never know what they’ll think of), but the most dangerous are complete strangers, because not even their looks betray their true intentions. And when I go like this, I almost never know what I want to buy in a shop near Rakvere and the cemetery, because all my attention is focused on the road and the journey itself.
I’m only a little surprised about it now, because I’m not going down that road as I did forty years ago. I did not have, and still do not have, the peace of mind necessary to remember my surroundings accurately, so I could just as well come from Vaeküla, Rägavere or from anywhere else to any familiar place in Virumaa and wonder whether it is behind every forthcoming road winding, forest edge or group of houses still as uninhabitedly safe as it is here and now, where nothing threatens me.
The difference, however, is that decades later, I am aware of the peculiarities of my journey, and I also know why colours, smells, the changing light of the seasons, or the recalling of a familiar name have more impact on me than a memory image that can be reconstructed down to the details of a possible landscape that simply does not exist within me.
I might even feel sorry for the brave girl who goes because she has to, if I would not remember clearly that back then the thought of being scared did not occur to me at all. I was afraid without knowing that I was afraid, and therein lies an important difference between the wanderer of then and the reminiscer of today.
It seems that for the rest of my life I have unintentionally admired those who can enter the colour-smell- and event-sameness, because they cannot conceive themselves apart from all that influences the sensations. They enter into the sensuous landscapes as into themselves, and if they nevertheless recall with a lumpy feeling of separation, sequencing times, places, and themselves as detachables parts of the wholeness of being, I perceive the description as an indirect translation, as if the potential listener and fellow traveller were deaf or blind, a bore pursuing logical operations. Most memoirs are written exactly this way, and usually I operate the same way as well.
The authentic rememberer is the anxiety clenching the inner, the expectation, the fear or the slackness, and only the carefree wandering will pay attention to all without even knowing it, as I did not know about the fearful journeys of childhood.
Nominally familiar but pictorially completely unfamiliar landscapes have swallowed me up, digested, transformed or discarded me like a thing when I am left with the memory of the journey, the year and a chest-busting longing for something unattainably beautiful and familiar. Perhaps for the self-free self I have never been. And so perhaps all I do is wander within myself in the midst of who-knows-what-kind-of wind-borne scents, eye-burning colours and silenced voices that are still waiting for the moment to burst into a rejoicing song.
Almost too beautiful to be true. Too sad to escape, because at the bottom of the heart-covering abyss the sounds are concentrated, as if I were playing the violin on myself. The center of a hand fan like branching of strings lies below the throat, at the junction of neck and head, invisible because of the forward bend; and a gigantic bow stretches across the face, across the imaginary strings.
I have seen this painting. It exists. I have only imagined the abyss, as well as the silence, because in the picture only the possibility is visible, not the voice.
For decisive events we come together into ourselves, but our faces are too familiar to ponder about the meaning of abundance.
We meet and make a decision. We are coming from Karitsa to Tõrma or vice versa – depending on where was the evil embracing all the soundcolors –, because for a joyous sake one gathers differently.
We drive through landscapes we may not have noticed, and somewhere, a prehistoric Po river, imaginary and eternally present, ripples. The different flood times of the tributaries mean at once something much more than bookish knowledge, and in the end, it doesn't matter.
The here and now moment of decision is history even if the Po river, Tõrma or Karitsa never existed. Since the hand holding the bow has already risen, the centre of beams touches the throat, a multifaced dissonance prepares itself for a scream.