Around the heart in eleven years. Epp Petrone

of this dead end!”

      The longer I stared at the moon, the more I was filled with a sense of levity. Outside of my body, flying among the stars, I looked back and saw the snowy mountain. Down there somewhere laid a young, confused woman, asking the universe for a change.

      But for starters, the responsibilities I had in this world were waiting for me. My social life was expecting me nearby. It would be seriously unpleasant for all the rest of them if I slipped into an eternal slumber here in the mountain snow! I pushed myself up, fighting the urge to stay as I was, and resumed the climb. The trails my companions had made were clearly visible in the night lit by a full moon, so I kept suppressing the desire to just turn off the path, go somewhere else, stay a while longer just by myself in these mesmerizing mountains.

      After another turn and a bend, a fire appeared in sight, surrounded by people, huddled up and enjoying a wintry picnic. “Where did you come from like this? Come here!”

      Suddenly my eyes welled up and I joined the others in their shared warmth. I wasn’t so alone after all, there was a spot waiting for me here by the fire.

      You can lose yourself in a fire just as easily as in moongazing. I don’t remember much else from that night, aside from the new resolution: it’s time to change and to be changed.

      However, back in Estonia, the same two offices were waiting for me, two jobs: one in television as an editor, the other with a magazine as a writer: in both places I was just another gear in the clockwork, whose wear and breakage went unnoticed.

      Looking back at that pivotal morning, I remember that I was chatting with one of my colleagues in the smoking room. That was back in the days when we all were frantically addicted to nicotine. Maybe we all were worn and broken inside, but just couldn’t see it in each other?

      “I think I’m going through a midlife crisis at the age of twenty-four. I want to get out of here!” I knew how lame that sounded, but still I went on, “Spring is just so far away and I’m so tired of my life.”

      What are you supposed to say to that? I didn’t know how to verbalize it in an appropriate way that would fit that mundane setting, didn’t know how to put into words that obscure calling, the scent of expectation, the hint of something new on its way. Even if I had, I’m sure those words would have come out just as lame.

      However, at that moment a young man from the neighbouring office sat down next to me and he had the answer I was supposed to receive.

      “Ah, but did you know that Harri Hommik is here in Estonia right now and he’s getting together a commune of Estonians for Hawaii! They sell jewellery and handicrafts.”

      He made it sound as if it was the most obvious thing in the world as to who Harri Hommik was, like “Didn’t you know that Michael Jackson’s tour arrived in Estonia this week?”

      Stumbling on that recollection makes me quietly laugh to myself, while looking out at those pale grey clouds covering Northern Europe this morning. For some reason, I’ve never told to that former colleague how he changed the course of my life with just a few imprudent sentences.

      Please take me with you!

Ten years earlier. January 1999Tallinn, Estonia

      “Do you know anything about a guy named Harri Hommik? He’s starting a commune of Estonians in Hawaii…”

      My excited fingers almost randomly tap out the letters as I finish the email and send it to all the contacts on my address list.

      A good acquaintance of mine Mari answers almost immediately. She’s replied to everyone to whom I wrote as well. “That man is a dangerous psychopath! He’s been in the nuthouse and he took his four children to Siberia and lost them there. People, whatever you do, stay away from him!”

      Really?

      I would like to believe Mari, but something inside of me has been set off and I’m already imagining myself by the Pacific Ocean, selling handmade trinkets on tropical islands, and I see Harri, this crazy, exciting man next to me, telling me his whole life’s story, starting with the nuthouse and continuing right up to losing his kids – provided that all the gossip is true. After all, I’m not a child that you can lose, I tell myself. I’m a brave, skilled adult woman!

      And the images in my mind are so vibrant. Why, it’s like I’m on a paradise island already. What I don’t yet know is that dreams do tend to come true, but usually with a small catch.

      “You’ll know who this guy is right away. He has long grey hair and a goatee, he looks a bit like Jesus Christ,” my colleague from the smoking room tells me later that day. “If Harri is still in Estonia – and he was a two weeks ago – he’ll be sitting at the Kloostri Ait3 bar in the Old Town, telling young people about his adventures and theories, so don’t be surprised if there’s a crowd of people listening to him with their jaws hanging open.”

      After work I almost run to the bar.

      And there he is, sitting in the middle of the room, looking exactly the way I pictured him: of an indistinguishable age (somewhere between forty and seventy), with grey, wavy hair half way down his back, grey beard, wearing a printed shirt and faded pants, holding a small woven backpack in his lap, leaning over a table and sipping tea. He is alone.

      “Hi, are you Harri?” I start in as soon as I reach the table. “I’m Epp and I’d like to come and work for you!” My intuition tells me that I can be as free and as bold and intrusive as I like with this strange character.

      His blue-eyed gaze stays on me just long enough for me to start feeling a bit uneasy. He’s got the strangest eyes: at once penetrating and still distracted, as if he was somewhere else, and such a lovely shade of light blue, too, shining in his tanned face. He motions for me to sit and begins in a fitful, high-pitched voice. “It’s a long story, but to put it bluntly, I’m not taking anyone along to work with me anymore. One week ago my business visa to the US was revoked and I got a fiveyear entry ban for some bloody bicycle bullshit one of my employees got into over there because he didn’t pay his fine!”

      Without giving me a chance to say a word, he launches into his long tale. A Greek tragedy is unfolded before me, about how everyone meant for the best to happen, but what happened in the end was a total mess. How a whole house full of Estonians lived on the island of Oahu, in the city of Honolulu, all with working visas and how everything snowballed when a guy named Leo left a tiny little fine unpaid, which caused a conflict with the officials, that in turn ended up with everyone’s visas being revoked and Harri being blocked from entering the US and flown back before he could even set foot there again. “I told Leo before I left to pay that fine! It was a small amount, just a hundred bucks, just for riding his bike on the sidewalk, but he didn’t pay it! The moment I met him at the airport in Tallinn – he had to leave the US as well –, I gave him a right hook for that, sent him flying to the floor and that’s the last I’ve seen of him!”

      I’m listening to that peculiar man sitting in front of me and I already adore him – I’ve always felt unconditional affection towards people who like to tell stories. My emotion is intensified by the strange, pungent smell that emanates from him. It’s a mix of body odor and Indian incense, the scent of faraway adventures and unexplored spaces.

      “Oh, I have to show you what I sell – maybe you want to buy something?” In a flash, the storyteller becomes a peddler, and, like a true salesman, he grabs the bag that’s lying in his lap and empties it out on the table to reveal a heap of beautiful silver items with precious stones and a handful of dark brown knobby things. “These here are bracelets from the Philippines, made of grass. They look really small, but when you put them in water, they swell up and you can wear them. Want to buy one?”

      “But Harri, just because you can’t get into the US it doesn’t mean that you’ll stay home now, does it?” I ask, feigning aloofness as I handle the various trinkets. The rest of what I’d like to say is simmering inside, “You’re going to sell these things somewhere else now and you probably need someone to help you sell them, right? I don’t

3

“Monastery Barn” in Estonian.