The highly acclaimed author of Where Earth Meets Water returns with an arresting exploration of family and culture

When native New Yorker Nicholas Grand applies for an international student exchange program, he thinks it’s an opportunity to broaden his horizons and meet some interesting people. He never imagines that a single year would have repercussions that would follow him throughout his lifetime.

Nicholas is sent to Estonia, where he meets shy, sensitive Paavo, his beautiful sister, Mari, and their gruff father, Leo—a family grappling with the challenges of life in a small country struggling to assert its post-Soviet identity. Nicholas sets off on an unforgettable journey through a foreign landscape that ultimately teaches him that some bonds can never be broken.

Bridging two uniquely captivating cities, The Faces of Strangers traces the intertwined lives of two seemingly symmetrical families from extraordinarily different worlds. This compelling odyssey through friendship and self-discovery illuminates the universality of how deeply we are defined by our connections with others.

Praise for Where Earth Meets Water

“Padukone has created a rich cast of unforgettable characters…. Her debut novel demonstrates an understanding and appreciation of the cultures of both America and India, a sense of the world as a powerful place, and the redeeming values of adoration and belief in the person you love. A powerful read for those who enjoy beautifully written multicultural fiction.”

—Library Journal

“[Where Earth Meets Water] is compelling as [Padukone] writes with grace and wit about grief, moving on, and accepting love.”

—Booklist

“[Where Earth Meets Water] has an elegance that defies the bread-crumb trail Padukone leaves for readers…this story of learning to love what you have should not be missed.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Smart and insightful. A worthy addition to the burgeoning field of new Indian literature.”

—Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of

Absurdistan and Little Failure: A Memoir

“Padukone offers a gripping tale of one man’s haunting sorrows, the wounds that bind a people, and the redemptive power of love. An unforgettable debut by a very promising young writer.”

—Patricia Engel, author of It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris and Vida

“Pia Padukone adeptly captures the aspirations and heartbreak of her engaging characters.”

—Manil Suri, author of The City of Devi

The Faces of Strangers

Pia Padukone

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For my mother, Nina, who started my story.

For my daughter, Salma, who continues it.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise for Where Earth Meets Water

Title Page

Dedication

NICO

August 2002

NICHOLAS

PAAVO

NORA

NICHOLAS

LEO

PAAVO

MARI

NICO

NORA

NICO

LEO

MARI

NICO

NICO

PAAVO

NICO

NORA

MARI

NORA

MARI

September 2004

PAAVO

NORA

NICO

From: EESTIRIDDLER723

PAAVO

NICO

From: EESTIRIDDLER723

NICO

NORA

NICO

NICO

PAAVO

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Extract

Copyright

NICO

New York City

November 2013

The day begins wrong. Instead of the bright sunlight that usually breaks through the slats in the blinds and filters playfully across the bed, ominous shadows stand sentry in the corners of the room. Instead of the sharp fragrance of coffee, the earthiness of sweat fills the air. Nico won’t notice the difference until later, when he sits alone in his living room staring at a paper cup of coffee long gone cold. Normally, he will reach for his BlackBerry before he reaches for anything—or anyone—else. He will have been alone in the bed for at least an hour anyway, as Ivy will certainly have left early to get in a run or a sunrise Pilates class. Normally, he will brush his teeth with one hand while scrolling through emails with the other. But this morning, he allows himself to lie back against the pillows as he smiles up at the ceiling.

This is where it all begins, he thinks to himself. I wonder if presidents ever just take a moment to reflect. It’s a few minutes before he notices the silence. Usually at this time, the students entering the school directly across the street will reach a deafening crescendo. This morning, there is only the constant ping-buzz melody from the BlackBerry on the bedside table.

But today, the messages can wait. Nico wants to luxuriate in the day, in the anticipation of what is sure to be a landslide mayoral election. This morning—the morning that will change his entire life—Nico wants to take his time. He stretches his limbs carefully, one by one, listening for the telltale crack in his lower back that has lingered since his very last wrestling match in college. He showers, taking care to wash between each toe, over the points of his pelvic bones, massaging the tender dip at his temples. He flosses—a rare occurrence, but he wants to feel clean right down to his gum line. He shaves carefully in front of the foggy mirror, marveling that he has managed to make it this far without checking his email, voicemail, the news. He concentrates instead on his sideburns, recalling Ivy’s insistence that he edge the razor at an angle, shaving half an inch shorter than normal so as to give his youthful face a sense of gravitas.

Never underestimate the importance of appearance, Ivy has stressed. People need to trust you. They need a strong, secure man to lead them. Physical appearance is half the battle. Don’t forget that infamous Nixon-Kennedy debate. Nico has drunk the Kool-Aid. How you look matters almost as much as what you stand for. He has allowed Ivy to tote him around town, spending thousands of dollars on bespoke suits and fitted shirts. He is, frankly, embarrassed at the amount of money he has spent to clothe himself, wondering each time he handed over his credit card for a new suit for a photo op or a speech, whether he should have gone into high-end fashion instead. He has allowed Ivy free rein to ensure that he presents himself with his best polished Italian handmade shoe forward. He has allowed for haircuts at abhorrently inappropriate prices, a straightedge razor shave by a hip Hasidic Jew on the Lower East Side, once even a manicure in a cheap Korean salon with bright fluorescent lights in Queens. He has allowed these changes for the betterment of his public image. But he has his boundaries.

One afternoon, Nico had been standing statue-still as a tailor measured his inseam.

“I was thinking,” Ivy had said, holding a teal-and-brown-striped tie against Nico’s jaw. “Maybe you should think about reverting to Nicholas. Nico is who you were as a little boy. Nicholas is stronger, more masculine. It stands for something. I looked it up. It means people’s victory. How perfect is that?”

At this, Nico had shaken his head adamantly until the tailor had asked him to hold still. For the past eleven years, he has been Nico Grand. The name is a vestige from the semester he spent in Estonia as an exchange student. He was dubbed from the moment he’d set foot in the Sokolov household.

“No,” he’d told her, surprising himself. “I’ve always been Nico. People trust Nico. He’s down-to-earth. He’s a people person. I’m not Nicholas anymore. I’m running as Nico Grand.”

Ivy had shrugged. “Suit yourself. No pun intended,” she’d said, turning back and busying herself with the carousel of ties. Nico knows he is lucky to have Ivy, but if he’s honest with himself, he feels stifled by her intense motivation for him to succeed. He has wondered whether she would have given him a chance if he hadn’t been in the limelight from the start of their relationship; whether or not he would have been interested in her in the first place. Sometimes he thinks of Ivy as an accessory: a beautiful, sparkly thing to wear on his wrist like a charm bracelet or good luck amulet.

When they’d first met, at that very first press conference, Ivy had shown genuine interest in his politics. As a representative from the comptroller’s office, she’d asked several follow-up questions about the Navy Yards, the project Nico had invested in on behalf of the Housing and Parks Protocol. When would the project be completed? How could they ensure that the neediest causes would receive priority access? Had they done their due diligence to determine the lowest income threshold? She’d been engaged and ardent, and Nico had been drawn to Ivy like a magnetic pole.

He can’t pinpoint for sure when the change happened exactly, but at some point, the impetus to represent the people began to dissipate into Ivy’s desire for status and power. Nico didn’t originally enter politics for the fancy clothes, the beautiful girl or even the prestige. No, in fact, it was the other way around. Once he realized he had the charm and the charisma he needed to lead, he made the decision then and there to use it for good. Upon his return from his high school semester abroad in Estonia, the confidence he’d gained gave him the strength and conviction to run for student body government and truly make a difference. Even at age seventeen, he had set up an anti-bullying initiative, lobbied to introduce school-issued ID cards that could be scanned upon entry in order to monitor and incentivize attendance, and had even set motions in action to challenge the caliber of standardized testing in public schools across the city. At that age, he wanted to be the voice of the people—high school people—and he had worked tirelessly throughout the remainder of his time at the Manhattan High School of Science, into college and his first job on a real city campaign that would set the stage and prepare him for his future. Now the city knows Nico Grand, mayoral candidate, tireless crusader for the underdogs and hopeless, who won’t sell out the middle class or anger the one percent in order to make a dime or prove a point.

Nico hears the front door open and Ivy’s heels click against the floor until they reach the bathroom door and her keen gray eyes meet his in the mirror. “Here,” she says, holding out a paper cup of coffee. “Your machine broke this morning.”

“Thanks. Can you put it on the sink?”

“My hair’s going to get all frizzy in the steam,” she says. Nico puts down his razor to take the cup from her. “Are you almost ready? There’s already a line of photographers waiting outside for you to cross the street and cast your vote.”

Of course: on Election Day there is no school. There are no clusters of schoolchildren across the street, no thunk of a handball as it ricochets off the narrow alleyway, no squeals of children as they’re tagged by It.

“The obligatory photo op.” Nico sighs. “What do they think—that I’m not going to do my civic duty by voting for myself?” He rubs some pomade from an oversize tub he has purchased from the Hasidic Jew into the roots of his hair.

“Just play the game,” Ivy says. “It’s your day, baby. You’re here.”

Nico sips at his cup. “Thanks for the coffee,” he says. “Come here.” He reaches for her but she arches backward as though about to dip under a limbo stick.

“Your hands are all tacky from the gunk,” she says, grimacing.

Nico returns to the mirror, raking the razor across his face to make tracks in his stubble.

“You’re ringing,” Ivy calls from the bedroom.

“It’s probably Mason,” Nico says. “I’ll call him back.” But Ivy has already pressed the answer button and hands the phone to Nico. She lingers nearby, leaning in the doorway of the bedroom, taking diminutive but deliberate sips from a bottle of water. Nico bristles each time she raises the bottle to her lips. He has extolled New York City’s tap water as some of the best tasting in the world, yet Ivy always insists on drinking bottled water. It’s irresponsible and wasteful, he argues, and he makes a mental note that he has to change her ways once and for all now that as a public figure, his—and his girlfriend’s—every move will be scrutinized, dissected and judged.

“Mason, can I call you after my vote?” Nico tucks the device under his ear and hops into a pair of boxers. Somehow, through the crispness of fall, a large black horsefly has found its way into the apartment and is buzzing lazily through the tepid air that hangs like a cobweb as steam drifts out of the bathroom. Nico waves the fly away, irritated at this potential blemish on this otherwise felicitous morning.

“Dude, where have you been? I’ve been trying for an hour.”

“I’m just trying to get a little Zen over here before what is sure to be a big day. What’s up?” Nico tugs at the dry cleaning plastic that sheathes his victory suit, as Ivy calls it. He can feel his impatience mounting. He yearns to be calm and controlled today.

“There’s an issue.” Nico’s press secretary, melodramatic on the best of days, speaks in a tone that can only be described as shrill.

“Unless you’re calling to tell me that your numbers were all wrong, let it go, Mase. We’re golden. Five-point spread, remember? It’s the magic number.” Nico counts to ten before releasing his breath. Perhaps coffee isn’t necessary today, he thinks to himself. Adrenaline is enough. He is a shoo-in. Polls taken days before elections are rarely wrong.

“Well, we’re going to need more than magic today. When were you going to tell me that you have a kid? With some European supermodel?”

“This isn’t the time for jokes, Mase. I’m tightly enough wound as it is.” Nico dodges the fly that swings toward him in the mirror. He adjusts his tie and smiles at himself. Appearances.

“Tell me you didn’t know about this. You didn’t know, right?” Mason’s breath catches between his words.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Nico pushes air out of his nostrils and swats at the fly as it veers toward him once again.

“It’s not a joke, Nico.” The words hang in the air; Nico feels like swatting them, too. “Some bored paparazzo decided to do some sleuthing on you. And he had absolutely impeccable timing.”

“Paparazzo? Sounds like a dirty Guzman ploy to me. I can’t believe they’re playing at this on election morning. Give that asinine campaign advisor of his a call and tell him that a supermodel is just cliché. And remind him—ideas, not incumbency. Just to drive it home.”

“Cliché or not, it’s all Channel 1 is talking about. Turn it on.”

“I don’t have time, Mason.” But Nico can feel something turning in the air. There shouldn’t be a horsefly in November. His coffee machine should be working. He should be able to breathe.

“Well, you have to find the time, Nico. As soon as you step outside your apartment, the cameras are going to be on you like stink on shit.”

Nico can barely squeak the words out. “What—what supermodel are they saying?” He finds his legs and sinks his tailbone onto the bed.

“Some Russian lingerie model—Maria? Marie?”

He can feel the blood drain from his face. He feels as though he hasn’t used his voice in days. “M-M-Mari. Sokolov. She’s Estonian,” he croaks.

“Potayto, po-fucking-tahto, Nico. Jesus Christ, it’s true? You’re her baby daddy?”

“No! For God’s sake, stop being so vulgar. I haven’t seen or even talked to her in something like ten years. She was my Estonian exchange partner’s sister. We barely even talked when I lived there. We just...” And then it hits him. Actions have reactions; isn’t that one of the basic laws of physics? Snippets of Mari’s body flash against the backs of his closed eyelids like a strobe light: curved ribs, pursed lips, steely gaze. When he opens his eyes, Ivy has moved toward him, but he holds his hand up to ward her away under the pretense of swatting away the fly that has become more brazen with its advances. Ivy’s eyes narrow in deep concentration as she attempts to read Nico’s face.

“It couldn’t be. There’s no way.” Nico hears himself say the words out loud, but the words that rush through his head are, Of course there is a way. Tucking the BlackBerry under his ear, he opens his laptop, angles it away from Ivy and types Mari Sokolov into the search engine.

The last time he’d Googled Mari, he’d been a junior intern on a tense campaign trail for a congressman who had no chance of getting reelected. Surrounded by take-out cartons in a nameless motel chain with the ghostly glow of the television flickering in the background, Nico had jerked off to her image on top of a morose bedspread. Back then he had needed to take the edge off a particularly grueling day of press dockets, speeches and a neck cramp from sleeping on the campaign bus. He’d found Mari parading around the internet wearing ethereal, lacy undergarments that left little to the imagination, but helped him perform—though rather perfunctorily—that night. He woke up the next morning feeling rejuvenated, but that had been the last of it. Now, the hits reveal that her promotion to a Victoria’s Secret Angel means that she will wear more clothes rather than simply lingerie.

Nico clicks rabidly as Ivy shifts and sighs loudly on the other side of the laptop lid. He alights on the celebrity gossip website DishIt.com.

Dark Angel Mari Sokolov’s ten-year-old daughter, Claudia, accompanied her mother to the Haute Couture Awards last Friday. Until recently, when Sokolov has been seen dining and yachting with Spanish media mogul Javier Pizarro, Sokolov has been notoriously single for the past decade, and has kept the identity of her child’s father confidential. Rumors of the father’s identity have included British multimillionaire Eric Rausch and Persian model Feni Rahman, though Sokolov has denied both counts. Both the Sokolov women wore Dior.

“Nico, man, we’ll figure it out,” Mason says softly, breaking into Nico’s thoughts. “But I can’t cover your ass properly unless I know the truth.”

“But this is insane. There’s no proof of anything. I knew her when I was sixteen. It was a lifetime ago. I didn’t even start it. She...she used me.” There are a thousand things to say, and Nico is saying them all at once. When he closes his eyes again, Mari has disappeared, but the infamous Latin term flashes in his vision like an LED sign: ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the law does not excuse.

“So you did have relations with her.”

“Stop talking to me like some Clintonian. It’s not like that. It’s not like anything!”

Ivy is searching Nico with her eyes and she sits on the armchair facing him on the bed just as he slams the laptop shut.

“Look, I think it’s best if you forget about the photo op for now. Lay low for a few hours until I figure some things out. Promise me you’ll stay put.”

Nico promises. Mason hangs up, but Nico keeps the phone to his ear. He wants to keep this to himself for as long as he can. The moment he puts the phone down, Ivy will rush in and insert herself into the situation, demanding to know every last iota. But there is nothing Nico can do now to stave her off. She will find out eventually. She’ll try to make sense of it all calmly and rationally at first, like the lawyer she’s been trained as, but eventually her anger will mount and she will erupt like a steam kettle. And just as Ivy will find out, so will everyone else: the whole city and constituency, his family, Paavo.

He thinks back—it’s been what? Over eleven years since he was in Estonia for the Hallström program, a third of his life ago. He has memories of Estonia, the long bovine vowels that make up the language, the burn of Viru Valge as it traveled down his throat, and of course, Paavo, his exchange partner. He hasn’t spoken to Paavo in a few years. There’d been a rift, and while Nico had tried to understand and repair it, things just got so busy. He was writing speeches, and then he was making speeches, and before he knew it, he met Ivy and she was encouraging him to run for city office. Which he’s doing now. Or at least he’s trying to.

He feels a cold chill run through his entire body, as though he’s sitting on a roller coaster and it has just peaked at the top of its parabolic climb and is about to tip over. Is this what his sister Nora wanted to talk to him about a few months ago? That must have been it. Unlike him, Nora has stayed close to Paavo. Their bond—once created when Paavo had first come to New York those eleven years ago—has strengthened over the years, and Nico is ashamed to admit that she now knows more about Paavo’s life than Nico does of his own exchange partner. Nora knew, and despite the code of therapist-patient ethics to which she usually steadfastly adheres, she had suggested rather intently that Nico reach out to Paavo and Mari. Until now, Nico had no idea as to why.

But he’d tried, hadn’t he? He’d emailed and called. He’d even gone to Estonia to meet with Paavo face-to-face and when Paavo hadn’t been there, Nico had returned to New York City and thrown himself headfirst into schmoozing with politicos and potential donors. He got too busy mobilizing field organizers and wooing supporters to follow up. He’s been too busy cozying up with Ivy in trendy restaurants with overpriced cocktails. He’s been too busy choosing his bespoke suits and neckties.

He stares at his suit where it hangs on the rack, looking shameful and despondent. It, along with the other beautiful garments in various shades of gray that he’d had to learn upon their purchase—charcoal, ash, smoke, birch—has cost hundreds of dollars. It feels like such a waste, like everything else he has worked toward: the campaigning, the speeches, the countless hours he has spent on his public image. It is all about to come crashing down. He clutches the phone to his ear and nods, concentrating on a spot on the floor. If he can carry the farce on a little longer on the phone, he can buy some time before he’s forced to face Ivy. If he continues pretending that nothing is wrong, maybe he can start believing his own lie.

But he can’t deny what happened in Estonia all those years ago. He can’t help but catapult his mind back to his junior year of high school when he stepped off a plane onto a sliver of land half the size of the state of Maine. It had been an experience, as he told his mother it would be when he had signed up for the exchange program. But apparently this experience has stretched far beyond the year that the program was supposed to take place. Nothing could have prepared him for how the Hallström student exchange program would change his life.

August 2002

HEADLOCK12 would like to chat. Accept?

HEADLOCK12: Hi...is this Paavo?

EESTIRIDDLER723: Yes. Is this Nico?

HEADLOCK12: It’s actually Nicholas.

EESTIRIDDLER723: In Estonia, the name is Nico.

HEADLOCK12: I kind of prefer Nicholas. Anyway, Ms. Rothenberg sent me your screen name, so I thought I’d say hi. How’s it going?

EESTIRIDDLER723: Hi, it is nice to talk to you. I look forward to coming to New York.

HEADLOCK12: Same. And I’m excited about Tallinn.

EESTIRIDDLER723: So you are a wrestler?

HEADLOCK12: Yep, I’m on the team at school. I’ve won my division a few times. But mostly it’s just nice to be a part of a team.

HEADLOCK12: What about you? Do you play any sports?

EESTIRIDDLER723: No. I am more intellectual.

HEADLOCK12: Ouch.

EESTIRIDDLER723: Oh, I did not mean to offend you. Perhaps I should say that I am not much of an athlete.

HEADLOCK12: Gotcha.

EESTIRIDDLER723: I’m actually quite poor at sports. My father was always trying to get me to play football—what you call soccer. And I was always trying to be the goalie so that I didn’t have to run. I’m more into riddles.

HEADLOCK12: What, like, why did the chicken cross the road?

EESTIRIDDLER723: That’s a joke. I mean brainteasers. Like, when you see me, you don’t see anybody. When you see everybody, you can’t see me. What am I?

HEADLOCK12: I give up. What?

EESTIRIDDLER723: Fog.

HEADLOCK12: Ah, I get it.

EESTIRIDDLER723: I’m as big as a house, as light as a feather. What am I?

HEADLOCK12: I’m not very good at these. What?

EESTIRIDDLER723: Smoke.

EESTIRIDDLER723: So is New York like it is in the movies?

HEADLOCK12: I guess that depends on the movie. But it is the best city in the world. No offense.

EESTIRIDDLER723: None taken. I can hardly compare the likes of Tallinn to a bustling metropolis like New York.

HEADLOCK12: Your English is very good.

EESTIRIDDLER723: Thank you. In Estonia, we take lessons since the first standard. It’s compulsory in all schools here. I have been reading English books all summer.

HEADLOCK12: You really are a bookworm. :) It’s cool that you read in English too.

EESTIRIDDLER723: I am fluent in Russian as well. It was compulsory until 1991 but I speak it because my father’s parents are originally from Russia. They don’t speak Estonian.

HEADLOCK12: This might be a stupid question, but is Estonian hard to learn?

EESTIRIDDLER723: I don’t really know. I grew up speaking it. But I will help you. You will take a class while you’re here.

HEADLOCK12: Cool. Hey I gotta run, but I guess I’ll see you at orientation?

EESTIRIDDLER723: A free trip to Berlin. No complaints from me.

HEADLOCK12: Yeah, totally. See you then.

HEADLOCK12 signed off.

EESTIRIDDLER723 signed off.

NICHOLAS

New York City

September 2002

The morning that Nicholas Grand set off for a semester in Estonia was like every other. At the table, his father, Arthur, chugged coffee in an effort to use the bathroom as the first step in his morning ablutions. His mother bounced around the kitchen like a pinball, pocketing a ring of keys, absently fingering the same gold-starred studs in her ears that she wore every day as she sorted through a stack of bills. His sister, Nora, pulled at a stray thread in the tablecloth, mussed and unsettled by the anticipation of the first meeting of a support group for other people just like her.

Although it was only eight o’clock, the air was already hazy and hot—an unseasonable September morning. Nicholas could feel perspiration collecting in his armpits as he sat slumped in a chair like the melted butter that was pooling in the dish on the table. Stella swooped in and collected the butter crock, depositing it in the fridge.

“Mo-om,” Nora bleated, her tone echoing a pair of bellows fanning a fire. “I kept that out on purpose. I hate hard butter. My toast always tears.”

“That butter was Dali-esque—practically drinkable,” Stella admonished. “Nicholas, did you eat? It’s a long flight.”

“There’ll be food on the plane, Mom.” It took effort just to speak. Nicholas felt as if he was talking through a bowl of tepid soup; the humidity had already risen to unspeakable levels. One of the few comforts of going to a place as random and as far north as Estonia was that the country scarcely appeared to even have a summer at all.

Stella paused in her undulations to place a maternal hand on Nicholas’s shoulder. Her hand hung like a wet mop against his damp T-shirt. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go to the airport with you?”

“The program is sending a car. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

Stella pinged over to her daughter. “Nora, don’t be late for your first day of group,” she said. “First impressions are lasting.”

“It’s not like they’re going to remember who I am,” Nora said. She collected her wet hair into a tight, tidy cocoon against the nape of her neck with one hand and stroked the little black notebook by her side with the other. “It’s downright cruel, making us sit around learning new faces when we can’t remember the ones we are supposed to know.”

“Remember what Dr. Li said about seeking support from others who understand,” Stella said, putting her other hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “It’ll be good to have some cohesion and routine to your week. I’m sure it’ll get easier.”

Nora rolled her eyes. “I better go get ready,” she said. “Have fun in Commieville, Nicky.”

“STD!” Nicholas shouted gleefully.

“Seriously? You’re actually going to call that out every time?” Nora asked.

“Ste-re-o-typed. STD. Every time you make a generalization about Paavo, yes, I will. In fact, anytime anyone makes a generalization about him. It’s not fair. We don’t know anything about him. So be nice.”

“What kind of a name is Paavo?”

“STD!”

“That’s not a stereotype,” Nora pointed out. “It was a question of clarification. If you’re going to shout out that offensive acronym every time, at least let it mean something.”

“Whatever,” Nicholas said. “I better head down, too.” The family clustered around him, administering kisses and hugs.

“Try everything once, Nicholas,” Arthur advised. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime. I wish I’d had the chance to do this at your age.”

“Call us when you get there,” Stella said. “Maybe we should have gotten you a cell phone.”

“Mom, I’ll keep in touch. I’m sure the Sokolovs have a telephone. It’s not like I’m going to the Amazon or something.” Nicholas crawled his way out of the huddle. “I’ll see you guys in December.”

* * *

Nicholas had been hoping to catch his breath on the drive to the airport. His mother had insisted on coming down to the street to see him off, and he’d been embarrassed when she pulled back from the hug that had lasted a few beats too long to see tears shimmering in her eyes. He reminded Stella—again—that he would only be gone for four months. But once the driver of the shiny black Town Car deposited his suitcase in the trunk, he was surprised to feel the tiniest lump in his own throat. He’d even gotten a little emotional the night before, hanging out with Toby and his wrestling buddies. In the den, Carmine’s eyes were already glazing over from the pot he had smoked before arriving at Nicholas’s house. He was a large, lunkheaded boy with an exceedingly good nature. From the moment Nicholas had met him, he’d reminded him of Lennie from Of Mice and Men.

“Hey, Lefty, you gonna wrestle over there?” he asked Nicholas, prodding him in the side with his elbow.

“I don’t know,” Nicholas said. “Paavo said his school doesn’t have a team, but that he thinks there are club teams around the city I could join. Though I gotta say it doesn’t seem worth it.”

“I bet your coach would be happy if you kept it up,” Toby pointed out. He grabbed a handful of potato chips and fed them to himself one at a time somewhat daintily, rubbing his hands together to shed the excess grease. “Though in a country of a million and a half people, the odds of finding another left-handed wrestler in your weight class are pretty slim.”

“Forget wrestling; I bet the girls are smoking,” Chen said.

“What about the sister?” Carmine asked. “Didn’t you say she’s a model or something?” He tried to sit up slightly but his heavy shoulders pulled him back into the sofa.

“That’s what Paavo said. But that doesn’t mean she’s hot,” Nicholas pointed out.

“Lefty, please,” Toby said, grabbing another handful of chips. “Of course she’s hot. Estonia has more models per capita than any other country.”

“Why and how do you know that?” Nicholas asked.

“Common knowledge,” Toby shrugged. “And Maxim.”

“Yeah, but Estonia has like, a million people,” Nicholas said.

“Exactly. And with that statistic, it means that a higher percentage of them are hot. The odds are in your favor.”

“Yeah, go give up your V card, tiger.” Carmine growled, and the boys joined in, ribbing and poking him.

“How do you know I still have it, jackass?” Nicholas shot back. He still did, of course. Though he’d dated a modest number of girls, he hadn’t gotten anywhere near losing his virginity. He had to admit, the prospect of starting new in a place without a shared history was exciting. He’d be the new kid, an exotic American. He could use that to his advantage.

Nicholas looked around at his friends and felt a pang of sympathy that they would be left behind in the drudgery of the eleventh grade at the Manhattan School of Science while he went forth into the world to learn new things and gain invaluable experiences. Who knew if they would ever be the same together again—shrewd, calculating Chen; sharp but lazy Carmine; and affable, overachieving, ever-loyal Toby. Even saying goodbye to them had been a strange departure from their straight-faced, unemotional relationships. Nicholas felt tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and turned his head away to take a long swig of soda, but the bubbles released up his nose and pressed upon his tear ducts even harder. Chen had even hugged him properly instead of issuing the closed-fist punch trademarked by adolescent boys who refused to show any form of emotion.

* * *

But Nicholas had to be strong. He couldn’t walk into this new experience weak-kneed and watery-eyed. He stepped into the car, welcoming the time and the space during the ten-hour flight to Tallinn to gather his thoughts and expectations, but he realized he wasn’t alone.

Barbara Rothenberg was pressed compactly behind the driver’s seat, her stilt-like legs crossed at the knee. Her perfectly coiffed static helmet of silver hair curled just beneath her chin and neckline, defining her as one of those women people called “handsome,” especially with her judicious use of pantsuits. She reached over to Nicholas and pressed his biceps with her hand, as if assessing him for a fight. It was a strange greeting: a cross between a hug and a handshake. Despite having met her a few times, the director of the Hallström program remained a complete mystery to Nicholas.

“Aren’t you excited?” Barbara asked, her keen gray eyes glistening. “Aren’t you positively bubbling over? How are you? How are you feeling?”

After that setup, Nicholas thought, you weren’t really allowed to feel anything else. “I’m good,” he said. “I think it’s going to be great. I’m really stoked for the experience. But I didn’t realize you were taking me to the airport.”

“I escort all students on the first day of the semester,” she said, using her index finger to scrub at some lipstick that had strayed onto her incisors.

The last time Nicholas had seen Barbara had been at the home visit this past June. He had skipped wrestling practice and headed home to find Stella frantically tossing throw pillows into what she hoped would appear to be an intentionally haphazard pile, collecting magazines into two teetering but thoughtful towers flanking the coffee table and slicing lemons into circles before the doorbell rang. Barbara not-so-surreptitiously gave Stella a startlingly disparaging once-over from head to toe before she stepped inside. The home visit, she had told Nicholas, would be a mere formality since his grades had already been vetted, he’d passed all three of his one-on-one interviews, and now they just had to meet the members of the family who would host one very lucky boy from either Estonia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic or Russia. Nicholas would go to his home for four months, and then he would come to stay with the Grands for the remainder of the school year.

It had been clear that Barbara was trying to remain solemn, but the pretense fell immediately after she walked through the entryway that led from the elevator into the apartment. Nicholas always steeled himself when friends visited his home for the first time. He knew that the apartment that his parents had purchased many years ago, when New York City was considered a den of iniquity, had been a wise decision. The soaring ceilings took breaths away, the cavernous foyer was the size of most people’s entire apartments, and the fact that his home had three living rooms awed most visitors to the Grand home into silence. When the elevator door opened to deliverymen, Nicholas watched them peer past him into the living room as though they were taking in a Victorian room replication in a museum. Nicholas watched Barbara’s eyes travel the length of the molding along the edges of the ceiling and into the center, where they stood.

“This is lovely,” Barbara said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Thank you,” Stella said. Nicholas could anticipate exactly what his mother would say next and nearly mouthed the words along with her. “We bought it a long time ago and we got lucky. Who knew Flatiron would blow up like it did? You should have seen this neighborhood when we first moved in. We were scared to walk down the street.”

“Indeed. Our fair city has come a long way.” Barbara stared, quite unselfconsciously, even though this was against one of the tenets of the program. We’re all different, Nicholas had heard Barbara chant on more than one occasion, and there’s no reason to stare or to wonder. So ask the question rather than keeping it in. It’s why we’re all here—to learn about one another, about the differences in our cultures, and why we eat and wear what we do and why we prefer and believe in certain things.

“Please, come in. I’m Stella. And of course, you know Nicholas.” The three settled on the pair of couches in the formal living room, a plate of water crackers, a crumbling wedge of Parmesan and a perspiring pitcher of iced tea between them.

“I have to tell you, Stella. We love Nicholas at Hallström. He’s the perfect candidate. He has an impeccable school record, and he’s a varsity athlete, well-spoken, conscientious. I’ve conducted countless interviews for these coveted spots, and there aren’t many youngsters that tick off so many of the traits we like to see in our exchange students. You’ve got a bright one on your hands.” Barbara pressed her hands into her lap and forged onward before Stella had a chance to acknowledge the compliment. “We make these home visits to ensure that your family has the capacity, ability and desire to host a student from another country. Other than the permission slip, we have no idea whether candidates’ families even want to be a part of this program. Why—” and here she tittered “—a few years ago, before we implemented home visits as protocol, a young woman arrived from Warsaw without anyone to pick her up. When I drove her back to the program’s office—poor dear felt so abandoned—to call her host family, the candidate’s mother hadn’t even known her daughter had applied and gotten into the program. What a mess that was.”

“Can I choose where I get to go?” Nicholas asked.

“Unfortunately not,” Barbara said. “We match candidates up with who we think they are best suited, personality-wise. It’s not really a question of where you’re going, because you’ll have a chance to travel in Europe on sponsored trips to visit Prague, Budapest, St. Petersburg, Tallinn or Warsaw. The focus is on getting to know people from another culture. It’s about letting someone in. These are things that you can’t pick up in books or movies. They are life experiences, nothing you can study or learn. Regardless of where you go, Nicholas, you will learn invaluable lessons about your exchange partner, his culture and about yourself during your time in the program. Herman Hallström, our founder and benefactor began the program in the post–Cold War era, to attempt to create an understanding between the United States and the countries of the Soviet regime, forging connections and creating ties between countries that had previously been enemies. Mr. Hallström wants to recognize the students, the children of the next generation who will become the politicians, the teachers, the lawyers and the champions of the future to take charge of this change. It’s no longer the Cold War era, thank goodness, but it is about making the world smaller. It’s about bridging the gaps between us in this great wide world in which we live.” Everything Barbara said sounded like a rehearsed speech or as though it was being dictated from the FAQ section of a brochure for the program.

“Well, we’re delighted to host a student, wherever he’s from,” Stella said. “Let us show you the rest of the house.” They took Barbara through the other two living rooms that extended from the first: a casual television den and then an office/library, with a computer and shelves of tightly packed books. In this room, Barbara stared extra hard at the framed Saul Steinberg New Yorker poster with its view from Manhattan as the center of the world.

“You might consider taking that down,” she said, strolling past Stella. Sometime during the tour, Barbara had begun leading the way, and Nicholas and Stella had been relegated to following meekly behind her, feeling guests in their own home. She stopped in front of the foyer and thanked them each formally before pressing the button for the elevator.

A few weeks later, she’d called the house and Nicholas picked up the phone. Barbara had been simultaneously bubbly and composed on the other end, a cheerleader on Park Avenue. “I have some exciting news for you, Nicholas,” she’d said. He could hear the clacks from her strings of pearls as she fussed with them against her neck. “First of all, you’re in. We have officially accepted you to the program. And second, I have your assignment for next year. You’re going to Tallinn!” All he could think about was the fact that he didn’t want to be kicked out of the program for his ignorance; where the heck was Tallinn?

“Oh,” he’d responded. “That’s cool. Tallinn...”

“Estonia,” she finished for him. “Can you imagine?” Nicholas had already started imagining the whimsical steeples of Prague or the onion domes of St. Petersburg. Tallinn had been the furthest option from his mind.

“Why, uh, why Estonia?”

“Remember, I make my matches based on people, not on places. This partnership is one of my favorites. You’re going to love him.”

“What’s his name? The guy, my partner?”

“Paavo. Paavo Sokolov, and I think you’re going to get along really well. You remind me a lot of one another. I think there’s going to be some common ground. I can’t wait for you two to meet.”

Nicholas pictured the Estonian as the Beast from the Disney movie, hulking and wrapped in furs, brooding in a corner. STD, Nicholas thought, mentally rapping himself on the knuckles.

“Same,” he responded. “I’ve never been to Estonia. It should be a good experience.” That was the key to handling Barbara; approaching everything as an experience and welcoming everything that life handed to you, including hours of studying, constipation, a strange assignation in an exchange program. As soon as he’d hung up, he’d dashed off for the World Atlas and located Estonia, a tiny nostril of a country overlooking the Baltic Sea. It felt as remote and punitive as if he were being sent to Siberia, another fictional-sounding place that Nicholas couldn’t locate easily on a map. But backing out at that point would have appeared shortsighted, against everything the program stood for. The explicit agreement Nicholas had made when he handed in his application to Hallström had included accepting any assignment he would be granted.

So he was stuck with Estonia and he was stuck with Barbara spouting her enthusiastic rhetoric on the ride to the airport. It felt as if this trip was already off to a bad start.

PAAVO

Tallinn

September 2002

As far as Paavo was concerned, the Hallström program was off to a terrible start. He’d been paired with a wrestler, someone with whom he couldn’t imagine having the slightest bit in common. His parents—particularly his father—didn’t seem to have any interest in hosting a boy from New York in the least. All Leo seemed interested in lately was spouting anger toward the Estonian immigration authorities. He seemed to be getting sourer by the day. And it seemed as if he was drinking more, too. Most importantly, Paavo was disgusted with himself. He’d applied for the program thinking it would help—anything had to help. Paavo was growing more skittish and cowardly by the day. If he continued like this, there was no way he was going to survive the program to the very end. Paavo opened the sofa bed in the den and pulled a fresh pair of sheets over the creaky mattress, taking care to tuck each corner in tightly. Nico’s flight was scheduled for on-time arrival, and Paavo wanted everything to be perfect. He wanted to erase the first impression of the program from Nico’s mind. He wanted everyone to forget what had happened at orientation. Not that Paavo could forget it himself. It kept repeating itself over and over in his head like a broken record.

In the last week of August, Paavo had flown into Berlin along with the rest of the students participating in the Hallström program. Rolf, a diminutive Hallström employee, met Paavo at the gate, looking almost as blasé as a teenager himself. Rolf herded Paavo through Brandenburg Airport, landing him in front of a dormant baggage carousel and telling him he’d have to wait there while Rolf collected the other European students from their flights. After speakers had gurgled something about a flight arriving from New York City, the gaping mouth of a conveyor belt began spitting out bags and Rolf herded the rest of the European students toward them. Barbara Rothenberg, the program director, who had interviewed Paavo for the program the previous semester, was leading the New York students. The Americans were moving in slow motion, having arrived in Germany that morning, red-eyed and jet-lagged.

“Come, come,” Barbara said, gathering them all together in the wingspan of her arms. Paavo could barely tell the difference between the Europeans and the Americans. He knew there were two girls and two boys from each continent. There was one boy wearing a bandanna around his neck—Paavo thought he might be Russian—who caught his eye. The boy’s nostrils flared before he looked back down at the floor and then at Barbara, who was starting what appeared to be another rehearsed speech. Paavo felt a shiver down his spine, an all-too-familiar feeling. He had a flashback of fleeing down Toompuiestee, his knapsack banging against his back in the hopes of losing the gang.

“Students, welcome to the Hallström program. As you know, you have been selected carefully by a group that judged your academic record, your character and your moral persona to be of great value to the future of relations between America and each of your respective home countries. This is the first day of what should be a very exciting year ahead of you all. Today you meet your counterparts, those young men and women who will become your brothers and sisters for the next nine months. You will go to classes together and learn together, join activities together. You’ll make friends with one another and introduce each other to new and unique experiences. You’ll learn about one another’s cultures and have an insatiable desire to teach your friends back home what you learn. It’s just the beginning. Let’s do introductions.”

Paavo knew it was irrational but he hoped the boy with the flaring nostrils wouldn’t be Nico. He fixed his stare on another boy. This boy was all lean muscle, which he wore well. He was strong without appearing formidable. He seemed confident in his stance, though he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. When he looked up and saw Paavo looking at him, he smiled, and Paavo looked away quickly, embarrassed to be caught staring.

Barbara extended her right hand toward the bandanna boy, who turned his head away although it appeared that she was going to start with him. Paavo could see a crisscross of holes in the boy’s left ear, leading up to the helix of his earflap, as if something very tiny had been digging for treasure and hadn’t quite hit the spot. A trace of a tattoo caressed the nape of his neck like an extra piece of cloth or a thatch of hair that hadn’t been brushed away after a haircut. Paavo bit his lip and steeled himself for the introduction.

“Everyone, this is Peter,” Barbara announced, as though he was her own son. “He’s from St. Petersburg.” Paavo realized he’d been holding his breath; he released it slowly and took in cool sips of air. This boy would not spend the next four months in his home with his family. Paavo would not be sent across the ocean to be raised by this boy’s mother, who, it seemed, didn’t appear to be doing much mothering at all. Paavo cupped his elbow with his palm, congratulating himself with this victory.

“And,” Barbara continued, “this is Evan, who will be your program partner.” Evan stepped forward in unsure, jerky movements as though he’d just learned to walk.

“Hi, Peter. It’s nice to meet you.” Evan said, holding his hand out. Peter scowled while shaking his hand.

“It’s Pyotr,” he said in heavily accented English. “Peter is so common.”

“Pe-eter.” Evan smiled, pleased with himself.

“Pee-ott-urr,” the boy said, shaking his head and knotting his eyebrows. “Roll the r.”

“You’ll work on it,” Barbara said, ushering them to the side together. The girls and the other boy were appropriated—Sabine to Jess and Anika to Malaysia. Barbara guided the boy who had smiled at Paavo toward him as her finale.

“Nicholas, everyone,” she said. “You’re paired with Paavo from Tallinn.” Nicholas smiled broadly at Paavo, who remained tight-lipped and nodded his greeting toward his host brother.

“Once everyone has located their luggage, it’s time to head straight to orientation. We have a busy few days ahead of us before the semester starts.” Barbara herded the combined group out, with Rolf bringing up the rear.

“How was the flight?” Nicholas asked. It looked as though his face would cleave into two parts from the breadth and strength of his smile.

Paavo’s face remained stoic and unchanged. “Unfortunately, quite bumpy the whole way. These Polish pilots don’t know what they are doing half the time.”

Nicholas raised his eyebrows and licked his lips. Apparently Estonians had STDs of their own. “You ready for orientation?”

“I suppose so. What are they going to tell us that we don’t already know?”

* * *

The Hallström program orientation was scheduled over two days, with a few hours scattered here and there for sightseeing and getting to know one another. The Berlin Hallström corporate office was an imposing metallic building that glinted so brightly in the sun’s rays that it was impossible to look straight at it with the naked eye. Rumor had it that when the architect was drawing the plans, Hallström himself had insisted on using the most reflective steel in order to create an edifice that dominated the skyline in more ways than one. However, the building was so lustrous that it had succeeded in causing arson; on more than one occasion it had set fires in a few surrounding buildings, melting plastic chairs and beach umbrellas that had been placed on nearby rooftops. Hallström resolutely refused the fire department’s suggestion to sandblast the facade, digging in his heels when the matter was taken to the city council.

The conference room reserved for the orientation was located on the corner of the forty-ninth floor of the building, with light striking against the sharp angles of the balconets so that Paavo had to squint upon entering the room. A long slab of wood constituted the table, the knots still visible but the grain polished and buffed. Around the table sat the Czechs, the Poles and the Russians in that order, geographically from West to East, congregating like a tiny Eastern European Bloc. The American counterparts bookended the Bloc in designer swivel chairs, each of them guarded and their spines straight as they waited for orientation to begin. Barbara had disappeared once they’d arrived, but Paavo could hear her in the hallway, delegating the staff and ordering more ice and soft drinks.

In her seventeen years working as the coordinator of the Hallström program, Barbara had ushered in all types of students. With her keen sieve-like manner, she had succeeded in plucking the right type of student for the program, though their shared characteristics were invisible to the untrained eye. They were all model students, their grade point averages vetted and culled from a stack of applications by a team hired expressly for this mundane responsibility. The students have arrived in packs, or alone, with overstuffed suitcases as though they had been summoned to an expedition down the river on the Amazon instead of into the conveniences of cosmopolitan cities. They have arrived wielding only a simple backpack, causing host parents to worry about hygiene or whether they might have to coax their exchange student to change their undergarments. They have been sent home early for misconduct, which mostly consists of smoking pot or excessive drinking. They have received commendations, accolades, and have been recommended for honors programs at universities. They have been preppy, athletic, rebellious, lazy, overweight. They have come with eating disorders and autoimmune diseases. They have come with clean bills of health. They have come resplendent in designer clothing, exuding riches from every pore and orifice. They have come needy, some almost destitute, but no matter, because entering the hallowed fold of Hallström levels the playing field. They have all come with open minds, with open hearts, of that Barbara is sure. They have come with good intentions, the desire to lead, to fulfill the common Hallström goal.

As he stood upon the threshold of the room, Paavo couldn’t imagine these ten people having anything less in common, not to mention how uniquely disparate he felt amongst them, like a lamb amongst wolves. Paavo glanced at each of the students already seated; the Polish and Russian girls flanked the Czech boy on either side. Pyotr’s face appeared sour, as if he were constantly being forced to chew on lemons. Paavo made his choice to settle directly across from the Russian girl, a decision he immediately regretted because of her hair. It was so long and ratty that he almost wished he’d sat next to her so he could pick apart the tangles with his fingers. Nicholas settled in next to him and reached over immediately to the small bowls of snacks placed in a straight line like a dividing border between themselves and the rest of the group. The room was eerily silent, waiting with anticipation for their leader to enter the room. Barbara entered the room squinting, and held her hand up to her forehead like a visor.

“Looks like we’re all here.” Though she smiled, there was something chilling in her look, as if even though everyone had made it into the Hallström program, she was still constantly assessing and appraising every one of her recruits, to ensure that she had made the right decision.

“Now,” Barbara said, standing in the front of the room and gripping the chair back in front of her, “let’s reintroduce ourselves to one another, just in case we have forgotten names or faces.” Paavo was secretly glad for this, as he had forgotten everyone’s name except for mawkish Pyotr, who sat sullenly between the girl with the unkempt hair and Nicholas.

One by one they were reintroduced as partners: Pyotr-Evan, Sabine-Jess, Tomas-Justin, Anika (Unkempt Hair)-Malaysia, Paavo-Nicholas. Each time Malaysia’s name was mentioned, whether it was during a roll call or introductions, Paavo found himself stumbling over the concept of her. Malaysia was a slender black girl, with hair that puffed out around her head like a cloud of spun sugar. Her skin was darker than any Paavo had seen before. He hadn’t encountered anyone quite like her, and not just because black people were few and far between in Estonia. What kind of a name was Malaysia, he wondered. She was clearly not from the country; their people were tawny-skinned with eyes that seemed to screw together at the corners. He had to force himself to stop looking at her; as if she could sense his gaze, Malaysia lifted her head and shifted her body to face the opposite direction.

Paavo stifled a yawn behind his hand and sat up so that his spine pressed against the back of the seat. It was the only way that he was going to get through this session. He could feel the creep of sleep start behind his eyelids and he twitched his mouth and licked his lips, willing himself to wake up.

Barbara was warming up. She looked out over her audience as though surveying her kingdom. It appeared that there was something there that just wasn’t right. She honed in on something—someone—seated in the center of the table, and before Paavo knew what was going on, she was walking toward Evan. She held her hand out expectantly and Evan looked up.

“Give that to me now, Evan,” she said, her voice like stone. Paavo leaned forward. What did the boy have in his possession? A cell phone? Cigarettes? Drugs? How had she even seen what he’d held in his lap? All the students leaned forward and craned their necks to see the contraband in Evan’s hands. He handed over a small book and looked up at Barbara, his eyebrows knitted with confusion. Barbara held it up in front of her chest. It looked like a guidebook. The words Understanding Russian Culture were typed across the front in a firm, Communist font. “This, ladies and gentlemen, will not be tolerated. Do you understand?” Some of the students nodded, though Paavo didn’t understand; perhaps it had a false cover and was hiding something else. But Barbara held the book over her head and marched to the front of the room, shaking it so that the pages flopped from side to side.

“This is poison,” she said, her voice rising an octave above its normal pitch. “This type of book is what CliffsNotes is to literature. It’s demeaning, it’s degrading and it’s uncalled-for. Hallström is about understanding. It’s about bridging the gap between cultures that have for the past few decades been estranged, unfriendly and misunderstood. It’s about breaking down all the stereotypes that books have printed or movies have compounded. If I see anything like this again, we’re going to have serious words about your future here. Is that understood?”

There were soft murmurings throughout the classroom. Evan looked down at the ground, as though he were about to crumble into tiny pieces. Even Pyotr looked as though he had softened during Barbara’s speech. Barbara lifted the book into the air again with both her hands, and with one swift motion, the book was torn right down its spine into two halves. She tore the pages from the binding in pieces and chapters and tossed them into the trash bin at the front of the room.

“I apologize for destroying your property, Evan,” she said. “But that trash doesn’t exist within the Hallström walls. This should mean more than a bolster on your college applications or simply for just a cool experience.” Paavo flinched at the older woman’s use of the word. It seemed forced and neglectful, creating an even wider gap between her and the students.

With the room shocked into silence, Barbara segued into a long lecture about social and cultural anthropology, about the strength of unique comprehension across borders. She reviewed the scheduled outings, check-ins, protocol for what to do in certain situations, difficulty in school, financial issues. Although each of the students had read all this in their course packets, she rehashed etiquette from both host and guest point of view, and though she stressed constantly that neither of them were to think of themselves as hosts and guests, she didn’t change her choice of verbiage, either. What to do in a cultural conflict, what to do when someone wasn’t understanding you, what to do when you had a problem only your parents could solve but they weren’t there, what to do if you needed something your host brother or sister couldn’t help you with. Barbara drawled on and on, her shiny hair reflecting the fluorescent lights over their heads.

It was when Barbara addressed bullying that Paavo felt all the air rush out of him. Pyotr had been sneering all morning; whether it was at Paavo or whether that was just the general look on his face, Paavo couldn’t tell. But it reminded him of the gang at home. It made him remember things like the raised scab on his right knee. Things like the memory of the trash cans behind the Kadriorg market, and how the boys had threatened to stuff him into one of them and seal the lid shut. They’d seemed friendly enough at first, surrounding him on his walk home from the bus stop on the last day of school, bumping into his sides good-naturedly so that passersby didn’t suspect that he was being walked against his will. In fact, it looked as if the pack of them were all walking together, toward a unified destination and that Paavo was happy to be right in the middle, the most popular boy of all. The gang was thickly cut, each of them like great slabs of black rye bread, and their identical brush cuts made them indistinguishable from one another. They were cartoons of themselves with their soldier-like severity and their fierce blue eyes stabbing into him with each glance.

But as soon as they cleared the busy stretch of Narva maantee, the boys flanked him on all sides in a most unfriendly manner, pulling at his knapsack, tugging at his collar. Russian Rabbit, one of them hissed in his ear. Half-breed. He flinched as a stubby finger traced figures into the back of his skull. Know what that says? another asked. Paavo shook his head. Eighty-eight. A lucky number, the boy said. Next time, I’ll ask you why. As they reached Toompuiestee, the pack of boys shrugged him off like a scratchy sweater. Paavo had kept his head down to the ground the entire time, looking where his feet were stepping rather than the direction he was going. When he lifted his eyes once all the boys were gone, he realized that he was going the right way. They had steered him to the start of his street, which was a blessing and curse. They knew where he lived.

Once, just after he had returned home from school without incident, he’d happened to glance out the window to see one of the boys across the street. The boy looked harmless as he leaned against the gate of a garage, smoking a cigarette nonchalantly. He didn’t tap the end of his cigarette for a long time, waiting for the ash to collect and when he did release it, he caught it in his cupped palm and turned toward the garage gate, his back to the street. Paavo couldn’t make out what he was doing and he waited hours until the boy had left to make sure that he was truly gone before opening his door and approaching the gate. The number fourteen had been written in cigarette ash. Another number. Paavo felt as though he were being numbered, like a cow in anticipation for slaughter. A chill ran down the back of his neck as though someone were watching him. He didn’t know what the number meant, but he ran back into the house and cried in the kitchen, not because he was scared, but because he was a coward.

The next morning, on the first day of summer vacation before his Hallström year, Paavo found that he couldn’t leave the house. He loitered around the living room, toeing the carpet in his football cleats until his mother asked him to remove them lest he tear up the floor or go down to the pitch once and for all and stop floating around like a specter. He went into the den, the room that would become the exchange student’s in a few months, and dragged his fingers across the books lined up like soldiers on the shelf. Leo’s deep obsession with rummage sales and secondhand shops had resulted in an overflow of cheap, dog-eared books that no one would ever read. Perhaps this was the summer to change that. Paavo selected the first three from the top shelf and sat down at the bottom of the case. How to Code, Computer Programming Made Easy, The Software Inside Hardware.

He spent the summer inside or on the back porch as snowy feathers floated through the air from the neighbor’s chicken coop next door, his face buried in a book. His naturally pale skin grew even more luminescent. The house had been his; Mari had spent most of her time in studios, returning home late at night from photography shoots, her face caked with makeup and her toes throbbing from being jammed into sky-high stilettos. Reading was the guise; he knew his parents wouldn’t challenge him to go outside or find a summer job, and even Leo stopped his refrain of telling him to go down to the football pitch and play a game or two when he recognized that his son was studying without being told to do so. It wasn’t that Paavo was a particularly keen student in general, and certainly hadn’t professed any passions about anything much.

But the computer books had whetted Paavo’s interest. At breakfast a few weeks before, Leo had been complaining about the government-funded computer initiatives that were being put in place in order to compensate for a lack of physical infrastructure and a workforce with limited education.

“They’re giving our jobs to machines,” Leo thundered, pounding at the newspaper on the table so that his teacup jumped. “They’re making a mockery out of hard work.” But Paavo had always believed in knowing your enemy. So he read everything he could about computers, including the endowments that had been granted at the Tallinn Institute of Technology.

After he’d exhausted reading the computer books at home, he ventured out to the Tallinn Central Library on a few furtive and brazen occasions to learn more about the information age. He collected a stack of books on programming, wiring and hacking, stowed them in his bag and headed toward the World War II section of the library. He had some research to do, namely on numbers. Eighty-eight was comprised of the eighth letter of the alphabet, H, which when doubled, stands for Heil Hitler. Fourteen: the number of words that create the doctrine established by David Lane, a white supremacist who had become one of the voices of the contemporary Nazi party.

“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Paavo whispered the words out loud to himself in the cool stacks of the library over and over before shaking his head as if to release them from his entire being, replacing the slim volume in its place on the shelf and slipping onto a bus back home to Kadriorg.

Across the conference table in the orientation, Pyotr blew air out of his mouth, which was still curled in its perpetual sneer. Pyotr’s hulking frame, his hunched shoulders, his Cro-Magnon brow—they were all too reminiscent of the gang back home. How had Pyotr made it into this program with his belligerent face and his uninterested countenance? Paavo lowered his head down between his knees and took deep breaths.

“Are you okay?” Nicholas whispered.

“Fine,” Paavo said, without looking up.

“Do you need some air? We should probably ask for a break.” Nicholas glanced up toward Barbara, who had just dimmed the lights and was pulling up a PowerPoint presentation on the screen.

“Just taking everything in. Probably should have had some more breakfast.” Paavo raised his head and grabbed a handful of pretzels from a nearby bowl. The saltiness seemed to calm something in him as he crunched and tried his best to concentrate.

At the afternoon’s first set of icebreakers, the students had to share something about themselves that no one else knew. He watched the intensity in Sabine’s eyes as she searched for something interesting to share with the group, how Pyotr chewed on his bottom lip and scowled in thought. Paavo wondered what might happen if he divulged the truth: “I’m Paavo from Tallinn. I am happy to get some distance from home because I am being harassed and bullied by a group of neo-Nazis who want me to join their gang.”

He could only imagine the drama that would ensue after that admission. His parents would be called; they might force him into that all-American practice of going to therapy, lying vulnerably prone while a man or woman analyzed every word out of his mouth. He would be monitored carefully for the rest of the program in case there were signs of weakness or breakdown. That was the last thing he wanted, so he kept his mouth shut and said the following: “I’m Paavo. I’m from Tallinn and I really like riddles.”

Halfway through the session, Paavo had to use the bathroom. He slipped out of his chair and found the men’s room down the hall at the curve of a corridor. He stared at himself in the mirror. His face appeared wan and washed-out, as though he hadn’t slept in days. He rubbed his eyes, and pinched his cheeks, coaxing the blood to flow through his veins. The toilet flushed, and Paavo flinched. He hadn’t realized someone else was in the bathroom with him. Pyotr opened the door to a stall, zipping his fly and grinning—or was it sneering—at Paavo.

“Pathetic,” Pyotr said, as he stood in front of the sink alongside him, wiping something off his face. His eyes met Paavo’s in the mirror.

“Excuse me?” Paavo felt his voice squeak, and Pyotr turned to face him.

“I said, ‘pathetic,’” Pyotr said again, wiping his hands against his thick trunk-like thighs. “This whole thing is just pathetic. As if we don’t know how to behave. Adults never give us enough credit.”

Paavo watched him as he smoothed down his sweater, and rubbed at the tattoo on the back of his neck. Those certainly seemed like numbers printed at the base of his skull.

“Did you hear me? I’m talking to you,” Pyotr said. “Hello?” The set of Pyotr’s jaw was all too familiar. He even had a crooked smile like the gang leader. Paavo could feel his stomach start to fall. He put his hands up in front of him for mercy, and began backing away, his desire to use the bathroom long forgotten.

“Yes, yes,” Paavo said. “I’m just... I’ll see you back in there.” But Paavo’s foot caught on a cleaning mop that leaned against the wall, and he fell backward. The last thing he saw before his head hit a stall door was Pyotr’s face. Then everything had gone dark.

NORA

New York City

September 2002

This was what life after the accident felt like to Nora, as though a switch had been flipped and the spotlight on her life had been turned off. She constantly felt as though she were wandering around in the dark, groping for answers, reading faces, trying to make sense of what had happened in her brain. She’d certainly made sense of her feelings in the year since the accident, and she could communicate how frustrated and helpless she felt. Perhaps she would do well in the support group after all; these things always tried to get you to connect with your feelings. But would acknowledging the feelings help them go away?

After her brother left for the airport, Nora spent a long time lying on her back in her bedroom, clutching her black notebook and staring at her wall of quotes. It had been about a month after the accident that she had first starting writing directly on the wall in permanent marker. She’d done it out of pure rage at first, scribbling angsty snippets from whiny bands that all her friends listened to, and then graduating to more philosophical lines. Words of wisdom from Shakespeare and Sonic Youth each bore equal presence on the wall. It would be another six months before she would abandon the wall altogether and whitewash over it in another fit of frustration, but for now the wall was her own personal therapy.

Her mother had told her not to be late for the group, but she dawdled, opening her notebook and flipping through the pages. She hated overhearing her parents talk about her as though she wasn’t right there. They discussed her at length—out of concern, she had to admit—but it was still humiliating. She had already started living away from them in college. She’d already staked her independence. But after the diagnosis, she found she couldn’t return. She’d been intimidated by the prospects of all those faces: her suitemates, her professors, her thesis advisor. At the end of the summer, once her arm had fully healed and her skin had grafted itself back into her own cells, she called the registrar and told them she was taking the year off. It would be a setback, and it would certainly be embarrassing, Nora knew, but it wouldn’t be as tragic as returning to a campus filled with people who called out to her but whom she couldn’t greet back.

Her stay in the hospital had been over a year ago, but it still felt as if she had just returned. From time to time, her leg pulsed as a cruel reminder of the accident. As if she could forget. In the first few days of her stay at St. Paul’s General, doctors had all tried their luck at diagnosis. They asked her to recall the specifics of the accident.

“I was crossing the street at Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Fourth Street and a car barreled into me. I remember flipping over onto the hood but not much else after that.”

They asked her to recall what she had been doing, where she had been going.

“I’m home from college on spring break. I have to go to Myrtle Beach with my friends. We’re leaving. They’re going to leave without me.” She had attempted to rise out of the bed, but her wrists and ankles had been tethered there beneath the blankets. They asked her to recall her name—“Nora,” she’d scoffed. They asked her to recall the names of the people standing in front of her. “Dr. Li, Dr. Charles, Dr. Kelly.” They asked her to name the couple sitting on either side of her bed, each holding one of her hands. She rolled her eyes. But when the request was repeated, she stared into each face with determination and focus for what felt like hours before she turned her head, slumped back into the pillows and said that the exercise was stupid. The woman had broken down then, biting her hand so as to contain her tears, and the man had come over from his side of the bed to comfort her. Nora had watched all this, as she had watched Doctors Li, Charles and Kelly exchange glances and purse their lips before they scribbled copious notes into their individual ledgers. One of them picked up the phone in her room to make a page, and in moments, a flurry of men and women in white coats descended upon the room.

After a number of days, questions and tests, the team of neurologists and orthopedists gathered the man, her father Arthur, and the woman, her mother Stella, into the hallway to deliver their diagnosis in hushed, hurried tones. Arthur had erupted in the hallway at the mention of the words. “That’s ridiculous. Nora knows why she’s here. She knows her name. She can remember what color her sheets are, what kind of cake she had on her fifteenth birthday. She knows who she is.” This time, it was Stella who calmed him, walking him into the stairwell, where his angry shouts echoed and bounced off the landings and banisters.

In the end they told Nora everything, from her broken femur to the damaged sliver of fusiform gyrus in her brain. How could such a tiny piece of spongelike matter make such a difference? The doctors had tried to soften the diagnosis by reinforcing the fact that Nora could still function regularly on a daily basis. She could eat, study, get a job, find a husband.

“Not really sure how that one is relevant,” Arthur had smirked in the hospital room while Stella held her daughter’s hand. “Everyone knows you would have no trouble in that field even with a bag over your head.” The neurologists weren’t entirely certain of the long-term effect this might have, but the terminology was enough to scare the Grands: brain damage. Nora had forced herself to smile at her father’s attempt at levity, but brain damage was brain damage. Whenever people mentioned it, there were always a few shocked moments thereafter, with audibly sharp intakes of breath and sympathetic sighs exhaling them.

By the time Nora was released into the care of her parents and a borrowed wheelchair, she had lost all track of time. Her father wheeled her from the elevator and into the foyer, where her eyes lit on familiar things. She took in the pile of colorful throw pillows in the corner, the twin towers of stacked magazines on either end of the coffee table, the plush couch that had long since broken its spine but was so comfortable that the Grands couldn’t bring themselves to part with it. Even the word familiar had become familiar to her. She cherished the word now, because when the doctors used it, it meant that she was doing well, that she could identify things. Familiar was always one step closer to being normal. From the threshold of the dark dining room, she could hear whispered rustlings and excited murmurs.

“She’s here,” a voice whispered. She turned to look back at her father, that not-quite-yet-familiar face, but one she was retraining herself to know in the antiseptic starkness of the hospital room. He smiled down at her and pushed her farther into the room, where a flashbulb went off, illuminating a few bobbing balloons and a group of people gathered around a large cake.

“Welcome home!” they chorused together, and broke into embarrassed giggles at their seemingly rehearsed symphony. Nora knew she should smile so she did, but there was a halting in the way her cranial muscles worked, taut and obdurate, as though coming out of hibernation. She engaged her brain, forcing her lips to purse together and show her teeth, but she didn’t mean it. She didn’t even feel it. Seven strangers smiled back at her. She turned back to look at her father. He licked his lips and smiled even harder, glancing at the woman who stood just off to the side, methodically massaging each digit of her fingers as though she were taking a tally. Nora could see the gold stars twinkling in the woman’s ears. She smiled harder at their presence, at their continuity. She was forever grateful for those gold stars that helped her identify her own mother.

A boy approached her, holding out his hands. “Welcome home, Nor,” he said. “I really missed you.” He bent over to hug her and the floral smell of Pert Plus mixed with the metallic scent of the oil he used to clean his flute wafted off him. Her brother, Nicholas. She remembered the scent in the hospital room as he had sat by her side, watching her concernedly and narrating the play-by-play of his recent wrestling matches. Her own brother had been distilled to a smell. She found herself hoping that he kept up with flute practice and being that hygienic boy whose sweaty wrestling practices encouraged him to wash his hair every single day. As he leaned in to her she put her arms around him and breathed him in. She wanted to pack this smell, to put it in a little atomizer and spritz it every so often so that everything around her smelled just like him. But that left six others. Behind Nicholas came a tall girl with a cleft chin. She had sandy hair and wore a retainer across her top teeth. When the girl bent down, she whispered, “Claire” in Nora’s ear, like a blessing. Nora looked up at her best friend, grateful for the answer to an unasked question. Claire tightened her grip on Nora then, and Arthur had to put his hand on Claire to remind her that Nora was still very weak.

“Sorry,” Claire whispered, backing away, her eyes glittering with tears, the ridge of that perfect cleft chin quivering with sadness. One by one the others came forward—her friends and classmates from high school, from her childhood, from the building. They each whispered their names in her ear like an invocation, and Nora felt glad that she’d had each of their names on the tip of her tongue as they leaned down. All except one; when the last boy approached her, she flinched and turned her head down. She hadn’t meant to be rude, but she couldn’t place anything about this boy, from his polo shirt to his porcupine hair. His arms were reaching out to embrace her, but this boy couldn’t look more like a stranger to her. He looked up at Arthur before he came any closer to Nora, his eyes beseeching him. Nora couldn’t see behind her, but Arthur had shrugged his shoulders sadly and shaken his head. Stella had whispered, “Maybe later, Jason. She’s probably exhausted.”

Jason backed away, nodding, and joined the group of girls and Nicholas, who were still using the dining table as a sort of barricade between them and her wheelchair. Nora turned her head slightly and whispered toward her parents. Whispering was all she seemed to be capable of right now. It seemed to be the only tone appropriate for the situation. Anything more and everything would appear normal. “I need a minute, Dad.”

Arthur patted Nora on the shoulder and swung her chair toward the hallway. As she passed the group of people, they were all nearly indistinguishable in a huddle. There was only enough time to recognize that her brother was wearing a maroon hoodie with Harvard emblazoned across the chest before she was wheeled down the hall to her room. The late-afternoon light softened the walls, glancing off a window outside to illuminate all the framed photos on the walls and on her shelves.

“Just wheel me to the vanity. I can take it from there. My hands are fine, you know.” She shook them jazzily.

“I know you can do it, honey. I just don’t want you to tire yourself out.”

“I have to get used to it.” He parked her where she had requested and kissed her softly on the cheek. “We’ll be in the dining room. Just call if you need anything.”

Nora nodded and waited until the door had clicked shut. Once she was alone, she looked up. Purple bruises blossomed under her eyes and her lips were red and chapped. Her cheekbones looked all wrong to her, as did even the color of her eyes. They had been brown, she’d thought. But now they looked gray. She was looking at a stranger. This face was unknown to her. This face, this entire temperament was like an arranged marriage to a person she would have to spend the rest of her life with, sight unseen. She shut her eyes, turned her wheelchair away from the mirror and buried her face in her hands. She didn’t want to look at herself anymore. She didn’t want to look at anyone.

Everything felt drained—her brain, her heart, her tear ducts. There was a tentative knock at the door, and when it was pushed gently open, Harvard walked in, wafting that burnished flowery aroma.

Nora looked up. “Nicky...?” she asked.

He nodded. “Here’s how I see it, Nor. I figure that now we’re even. You’re face blind. I’m left-handed. The playing field has finally been leveled.”

“How is that leveled?” Nora said. “Being left-handed is not an affliction.”

“I can’t tell you how many wrestling matches I’ve lost because of it,” Nicholas said.

“Last I checked, being left-handed wasn’t classified under brain damage. And when’s the last time being left-handed ever caused social suicide? ’Cause that’s what this is, you know. I’m fucked.”

“It’s not that bad. It’ll get easier. It’s just hard now ’cause it’s new. Look, I got you this,” Nicholas held out a small black notebook toward her. “I thought it might help.”

“What is it?” Nora took it from him. The pages inside were blank except for the first one, which had Nicholas’s name on top.

Nicholas Grand

5ʹ10ʺ

Hazel eyes

Broad shoulders

Handsome

Stunning smile

“You’re too young to be resorting to the Personals section. What is this?”

Nicholas grinned. “It’s a face book. You make notes on people. That way, you can put the descriptions to the faces.” Years later, when that ubiquitous social media site would seemingly take over the world, Nora would remark that if only her brother had taken his idea to the internet, he might have been the millionaire by his thirtieth birthday.

“And I see this one has been written extremely objectively,” Nora said, arching an eyebrow.

“Well, you can amend those based on whatever helps you remember.” Nicholas grinned.

“Thanks, Nicky.”

“We can go back out and start working on it together,” Nicholas said, nodding toward the door. “Starting with Jason. How about ape-like?”

“I know Mom and Dad did it to help, but I didn’t ask for all that.” Nora sighed, waving her hands in the direction of the dining room. “I didn’t even ask to come home from the hospital. I would have been fine sitting propped up in that bed for the rest of my life, with the doctors shining their little penlights in my face, whispering all around me like I had lost my hearing. Gesturing toward me as though I had gone blind. No, asshole, I can hear and see just fine. The problem is that I can’t remember your face.”

“The mind is funny,” Nicholas said. “Your brain is probably exhausted from everything that’s happened. You’ll be okay, Nor. We’ll all help you.”

She looked at his sweatshirt. “What happened, did you get into Harvard while I was in the hospital, boy genius?” Nicholas looked sheepish.

“No, this is the one Claire gave you. I stole it while you were in there, ’cause it smelled like you.” He raised his arms above his head and peeled it off, offering it to her. She accepted it and buried her nose in it.

“Now it smells like you.”

“Really? What do I smell like?”

“Pert Plus and flute oil.”

He sniffed under his arms. “Add it,” he said, nodding toward the notebook. Nora scribbled down the observation onto Nicholas’s page. “What about me? What do I smell like?”

Nicholas leaned toward her and breathed in. “Raisins.”

“I don’t even like raisins.”

“I know. That’s what’s ironic.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t recognize Jason. That was some mind fuck.”

“It’s okay. It’ll take time. Though if you ask me, Jason is definitely worth forgetting.”

“I guess that’s one way of relegating an ex-boyfriend to the recesses of your mind. Or literally forgetting about him altogether.” Nora smiled at her brother, but she could feel tears building in the back of her eyelids, threatening to weaken her resolve, forcing her to screw her eyes shut and bury her face in her hands. Nicholas held her tight, and while she tried to hold her tears in, they burned her eyes as they trickled out from behind her fingers.

* * *

The ironic thing was that when Nora was in high school, she’d known every single person in her graduating class of five hundred. She’d started introducing herself to everyone and, by the middle of her freshman year, waved to everyone in the hallways. That overfriendliness had begun as a defense mechanism at first. Saying hi to everyone seemed less obnoxious than saying hi to no one, so she began associating herself with them all—the cheerleaders, the football players, though she’d never been to a school game. She waved to the kids who dressed in black trench coats and who played that fantasy card game Magic on the sixth floor outside the English department. She waved to the theater kids, and the preppies, and even the teachers—the ones she’d had the years before. The ones she’d inherit the following one. She’d felt strange doing it at first, waving and acknowledging everyone. But that had been in high school. That had been before the accident.

Shortly after she’d been brought home from the hospital, her parents had given her space, encouraging her to take all the time she needed to heal. They let her postpone her return to college until she felt ready. But at the end of what would have been the second semester of her junior year, on a dark overcast Saturday afternoon, Stella had silently placed a few books on Nora’s bed and walked out of the room. Nora had waited until her mother’s footsteps had faded away down the hall before she vaulted herself out of her desk chair and limped over to read the titles. Facing Your Fears, Understanding Facial Recognition, Face Prosopagnosia Down. Nora had seen it as a personal affront. This is what you have, the books were calling. This is your new label and you can’t shed it until you recognize who you have become. She needed some kind of protection from the elements, from herself, even, so she’d cracked open the covers and learned how to combat this feeling—this feeling of helplessness, of unfamiliarity. There were tricks and tools you could use. But a lot of it relied upon good friends and people that you could trust inherently. And at the time, she wasn’t sure she could get that. She didn’t know how to talk about her situation. She couldn’t very well introduce herself to some stranger that didn’t have any specific identifying demarcations and expect them to become friends with her.

She rolled over now and hugged her knees to her chest. I can’t do this. She swallowed hard, pushing back tears that were poised to spill. It’s too difficult. I want mandatory name tags. My brain hurts. It was exhausting, having to focus even harder on everything all the time, to have to imprint someone’s face onto your brain. It wasn’t the way it used to be, where you made casual eye contact upon meeting someone. Now she was forced to devour faces with her eyes.

After a few silent moments of crying, she sat herself up and went into the adjoining bathroom. Her face was tan from the summer, but crying had whitewashed it so it appeared pale and gaunt. She squeezed her eyes shut and examined herself in the mirror. Thank goodness for that beauty spot right on the crown of her cheekbone. But she would never forget her own self, would she? She gripped the edges of the ceramic basin with both hands, feeling as though she herself might sink through the tiles. Her mascara was bleeding down her face; she looked like a sad clown in a Marcel Marceau sketch. A limp washcloth hung from the edge of the sink where she’d left it this morning, and she polished her face with it. A new person appeared, clean of the mask of makeup. It was so surprising to her how different she looked without it, completely new, washed out, as if she’d just been born. But that thought made her start crying all over again. How can I not even recognize myself, she asked through blurry vision as she stared menacingly at the mirror, engaging with it, pushing herself to recollect some aspect of who she was, what she looked like. She used to think her features were so striking, but clearly they weren’t. Clearly her features looked to her naked eye like anyone’s features, because she didn’t even look like herself. Not to her, anyway. When was this going to stop? Would this eventually turn into a dull headache that might only pierce the edges of her memory? Her memory was the one thing she had. Other than faces, she remembered everything. Vacations, graduations, those mundane family moments that suddenly seemed so precious. It was faces that escaped her entirely.

* * *

She felt daunted by the day’s task of attending this group, already drained by the prospect of conjuring features, memorizing jaw formation and the way dimples poked like divots into faces. She would have to concentrate extra hard when someone addressed her, her eyes keen for signs of nail biting or cuticle peeling that might tip her off on his or her identity. She had promised her mom and Dr. Li that she would attend the group and see what it was all about. She hadn’t promised to commit to it, but if Dr. Li thought it would help, she would go. Maybe she’d start to feel a little like herself again. Maybe that light would finally start to turn back on in her life.

NICHOLAS

Tallinn

September 2002

When Nicholas’s plane departed after the hour-long stopover in Stockholm, the light had already been waning, highlighting islands floating like clusters of paint chips. Tiny crystals of ice spider-webbed across the glass window, splintering the dark outside into tiled mosaics of uncertainty. With the plane starting its descent over Tallinn, the sun was completely gone, and Nicholas felt the darkness seeping into his chest and sticking to his insides, eclipsing light and hope. He had considered that he might be homesick, but he was more fearful of the unknown, of the foreign, of the discomfort that might await him. He stretched his arms overhead, his fingers striking against the light and air panel. As the plane circled over a postage-stamp-sized tarmac, the fear saturated him completely like a sponge. He focused on shaking it off with the same concentration he used to approach a wrestling match: fiercely and with conviction. But fear clung to him like a straitjacket, pinning his arms to his sides and rendering him helpless.

As he stepped through the doors of the plane, warm air whipped through the slats of the air bridge, attacking him like another fold of ammunition. Even the immigration hall with its warm halogen lights didn’t soften the pall that seemed to have settled over him. He handed over his passport with his Estonian visa plastered inside. The control guard scarcely glanced at him or the pages inside before stamping it heavily and passing it back across the divider. Nicholas felt warm and turgid from the compression of the plane as he made his way down a long ramp that led to Arrivals. The hall was practically empty; just a few limp businessmen holding laptop bags and searching for their drivers; flight attendants walking briskly past him, their heels clicking against the floor as they wheeled their bags away from the airport as fast as they could.

Either the passengers on his plane had been incredibly fast to collect their belongings, or no one had checked in any bags. Nicholas’s suitcase was the only one making a plaintive, circuitous path, and as he pulled it off, he noticed Paavo walking toward him. Paavo was even wirier than Nicholas had remembered, as though the slightest flick of a finger might upset him. His fine, blond hair was so light that he appeared bald. He remembered how Barbara had mentioned her pleasure with this partner match, how much she had thought Paavo and Nicholas would have in common. Nicholas could hardly believe that he would share any common ground with this boy. He remembered how skittish Paavo had been at orientation, how pale and wan he’d looked, and how that hulking Russian student had come bursting into the conference room to announce that the Estonian boy had passed out in the bathroom. Paavo had been all right—mostly dazed and extremely embarrassed. But Nicholas couldn’t help but think that he’d gotten the short end of the exchange student stick.

“Nico,” Paavo said. “Welcome.”

“Nicholas.” He gripped the handle of his suitcase and put his hand out. “Paavo. Good to see you. You feeling better?”

The boy nodded and looked away. “It was nothing that day. I hadn’t eaten.” He took Nicholas’s hand and reached for the suitcase handle with his left. “Was the flight all right?”

“It was long,” Nicholas said, stifling a yawn.

“I hope you are hungry. Mama has been cooking all day for your arrival.”

“I’m starving. I slept through the meals.”

“Come,” Paavo said, turning toward the door. “Papa is in the car outside.”

“I forgot how good your English is.”

“I told you—mostly everyone in Estonia speaks English. After all—” Paavo turned around to face Nicholas, who stopped short behind him “—it is easy when there are only three words in the English language. What are they?”

“Huh?”

“It’s a riddle.”

“Oh. I give up.”

“The English language,” Paavo exclaimed triumphantly. “Get it? One—The. Two—English. Three—Language?”

“Right,” Nicholas said, forcing a smile.

“Anyway, you’ll pick up some Estonian while you’re here. I think you’re taking a class at school. But I can teach you some things, as well.”

“I’d love that.” Secretly, Nicholas wanted the information, vocabulary and pronunciations to travel by osmosis from Paavo’s brain to his own so they could skip all the embarrassing times when Nicholas would feel inferior to Paavo, when he would feel beholden. Nicholas had a good ear—that’s what Senora Hall told him in Spanish II—but he wasn’t sure where his talents lay in a language that sounded as though it had more vowels than consonants.

Nicholas followed Paavo meekly toward the door, feeling as though he were being brought to the gallows. In the small embankment outside baggage claim, the brisk air sent a shiver down his spine. Was it still September in Estonia? It felt so much colder. He zipped his jacket up to his nose, breathing in the salty, damp flavor of his unwashed self. He squinted at the streetlights; their contrast against the inky sky was blinding. A small brown Lada chugged at the curb, streaked with gray stripes of dirt as though it were aging. Paavo swung his suitcase into the trunk and nodded toward the passenger seat.

“Please sit in the front.”

Nicholas opened the door and ducked his head, folding his legs in front of him. The car was warm and smelled like petrol and peppermint. “Papa, Nico. Nico, this is my father, Leo.” The man in the driver’s seat looked nothing like Paavo. He was broad and brown and hairy, reminding Nicholas of a big Russian bear. Leo grunted and grimaced, which Nicholas translated into a greeting and a smile. The evasive Estonian smile would emerge eventually. Coaxing it out of Leo would be one of Nicholas’s first challenges in the Sokolov household. Paavo’s father pulled at the gears, squeaking the car out of the airport road and onto a slip of a highway.

“Don’t mind the car,” Paavo said. “Papa refuses to trade in his trusty Russian beast for something a bit more modern.” Leo threw off a few long sentences into the air. Nicholas tensed at the sound. Was that English? He couldn’t be sure. Paavo sighed from the backseat and spun off a few of his own, ending with, “Papa, English please. For Nico.”

“Nico, I am saying,” Leo said, shifting the car into the next gear, “that this car has been with us for the past fifteen years. There is no problem with it.”

“It’s actually Nicholas,” he said. “And hey, I’m with you. If the car gets you from point A to point B...” he said.

Leo glanced at him. “How was the travel? Are you wanting tired? Wanting sleep?”

“I’ll be okay,” Nicholas said, though the moment he uttered the words, he found himself stifling a yawn. “What time is it anyway?”

“Eighteen thirty. We’ll take it easy tonight. Mama’s made dinner and you can go to bed early. There is a mall where we shop.” Paavo pointed. “And they are building a market there. And another mall there.” Shadowy, mountainous structures sulked in the recesses of deep parking lots. Silhouettes of cranes stood out against the harsh blaze of floodlights. Nicholas could see large pits below them, which would eventually be filled in with cement and the foundations of more shopping centers.

“You’ve come at an interesting time,” Paavo said. “The city has finally begun to fix some of the damage done by the Soviets, so there’s a lot of building and renovating going on.” The land was otherwise flat, but punctuated every so often with a slightly taller structure in the process of being overhauled. There were cranes and heaps of construction material all along the side of the road. The entire city was in a state of flux.

“They have made the old salt-storage building into a museum of architecture, and we have a new multiplex in the city with eleven screens,” Paavo said. “I’ll have to take you there.” Nicholas nodded, deciding not to share the fact that there were numerous movie theaters in New York City that boasted multiple screens. Old brick buildings that had been factories, storage space, silos, were being converted into retail space, lofts and offices. In ten years, when independent businesses would start to do the same to factories and large building spaces in the outer boroughs of New York City, it would be considered “hipster” and all associated retail and services would be priced at triple their actual value.

Tallinn didn’t look very different than Queens, especially near the airport. The existing buildings—from what he could tell in the darkness with intermittent streetlamps shining through—were monstrous industrial edifices, looming in the background as the trusty little Lada zoomed down the road. There was a cloak of darkness settled over everything, as though in September, the country had already settled into hibernation.

Nicholas had been anticipating a long drive, like the one from JFK to Manhattan that could take more than an hour. But the industrial-sized buildings began to shrink in stature, the road narrowed, and soon they were driving over cobblestones.

“We live in Kadriorg,” Paavo said. “One of the nicest neighborhoods in all of Tallinn. We are very near the park, where there is a castle and a pond and most importantly to most Europeans, a football pitch.” Modest wooden houses began to flank them on either side of the road, making Nicholas feel as though he was entering a fairy-tale village. The houses differed in color, size and design; they’d just passed a moss-green cedar-planked one across from a humble mauve ranch-style. Nicholas found himself disappointed when Leo parked the Lada in front of a plain brown wooden cottage, turned the engine off, and the three sat in the silence as the muffler slowly ticked to a halt. Nicholas dreaded going back into the darkness, but Paavo and Leo had unloaded his suitcase and were waiting for him on the driveway.

“Come, come,” Leo said. “We will be late for dinner.” He held his arm out toward the front door, where a tall woman stood. Her hair was either so blond it looked silvery or so silvery it looked blond. Her rosy cheeks were the only color she wore. Her lips held the trace of a smile, but her head was erect and alert as though she had been trained not to slacken her facial muscles. Nicholas had studied the Dust Bowl in United States History the year before; that famous photo of the woman staring into the distance with children clutching at her shoulders reminded him of the woman’s hardened face.

“Tere,” the woman called to him. “You are welcome.” She nodded, as if she were calling a puppy home from its romp outside rather than her new adopted son for the next four months. Nicholas approached her, and at the threshold, wafts of cooked meat mixed with the stark coolness of outside air. “I am Vera, Paavo’s mother. Welcome to Tallinn.” She held out a small posy of orange marigolds. “This is the traditional welcome here in Estonia. You are very welcome to Tallinn and to our home.”

“Thank you. It’s good to be here.” He accepted the flowers, clutching them in his fist and expecting to be enveloped into her chest. Instead, she stepped aside so he could enter the house.

He had imagined a warm, cozy gingerbread-like house with antiques on the walls and framed black-and-white photos yellowed with light. But the decor was minimalistic; the white walls provided little dimension to the room, the dining table took up as much room as it needed and while there were casserole dishes and pots on the table, everything else was concealed behind cabinets and drawers. He had only been in Estonia for an hour, but Nicholas furiously missed the chaos of his home.

The same lump that had arisen in his throat when Stella had hugged him goodbye appeared in his throat again, but he swallowed it back. There was no way he was going to cry now. But his body was bucking being here. The tears he blinked back had sent some kind of signal to his stomach and it rumbled like an approaching storm. He had slept through the meal services on the plane, and he was ravenous. He swallowed the saliva that had been collecting in his mouth. He felt light-headed, as though he might faint right there on top of the table.

“Would you like to eat first, or sauna?”

“Sauna?” Nicholas looked around, bewildered.

Vera swiped an errant piece of hair away from her forehead and placed her hands on either side of Nicholas’s shoulders. “And will you have coffee or kvass?” Nicholas spun around to Paavo, who was stepping through the door, lugging his suitcase with him.

“I... I don’t know. What’s kvass?”

“We have a sauna out back,” Paavo said, breathing heavily from the weight of Nicholas’s suitcase. “It was actually the first on our street, but since then, the neighbors have been building their own. It’s sort of like our religion. In Estonia, we believe any bad day can be made right with a sauna. It’s absolutely best after a long flight. Unless you’d like dinner first?”

“I am pretty hungry.”

“And kvass, is like nonalcoholic beer. Papa makes his own. It’s delicious. You should try it.” Leo had already poured a stein, which he held out to Nicholas.

“And Nico,” Vera said. “What would you like to—”

Paavo interrupted. Nicholas was able to decipher the difference between the Russian he had spoken in the car to his father and the Estonian he spouted out now. Both had been delivered rapidly, and both had left Nicholas wondering how in the world he was going to catch on in four months’ time. Vera pursed her lips and spouted something back. Paavo shook his head. “Lõõgastuda, Mama,” he said, pressing his hands in downward motions like undulating waves. “Lõõgastuda.”

“My son is telling me to relax,” Vera said. “You, too, Nico. You relax. Okay?”

“Sure,” Nicholas said, though the instruction made him tense a bit more, his back going rigid against the chair.

Vera began carting dishes to the stove, ticking the burners on one at a time. Nicholas sat at the round table in the middle of the kitchen, gripping the mug of kvass with both hands. The ale had a pale yellow tint with tiny effervescent bubbles escaping to the top of the glass every so often. He lowered his mouth to the lip of the mug and took a sip as Leo and Paavo watched. Caraway seeds and yeast filled his mouth, as though he were drinking a loaf of rye bread.

“What do you think, Nico?” Paavo asked.

“Nicholas,” he said under his breath. Nicholas wasn’t sure at what point it would become awkward to correct everyone about his name, though he felt as if he’d passed that point already. It was too early to concede, though in a few days, it would get too frustrating to correct everyone at school, and he would only be referred to as Nico from that point forward.

“It’s refreshing.” The room deflated, as though it had been holding its breath. Even Leo, who had gripped the steering wheel tensely and barely glanced at Nicholas during the drive, seemed to have engineered himself a new, scowl-free face. The table was silent as Vera reheated the pots on the stove one by one, lids rattling as steam pressure built up beneath them.

“Where’s, um, Marie?” Nicholas took another sip of kvass.

“Mari,” Leo corrected. “She is model.”

“She has been in St. Petersburg for the past few days for some new fashion magazine. She’ll be back tomorrow,” Paavo said.

If Nora felt like the spotlight on her life had gone out, Nicholas felt as though there were three trained on him. He had fumbled Mari’s name, been unable to correct the Sokolovs about his own and could feel the drilling intensity of three pairs of eyes since he’d set foot into the kitchen. He felt exposed and naked, as if he was wandering the streets in a dream. As he looked around him, he realized that the contours of this room were all he knew in this country. He didn’t know his way around this town, or even around this house. Nicholas felt as though he had been set loose in a place that could consume him unless he was very careful. Leo pulled him out of his thoughts by plunking a clear bottle down on the table.

“Here is good stuff,” he proclaimed. “Now we make you good Estonian man with hairy chest.”

“Viru Valge,” Nicholas read aloud. “Vodka?”

“Your initiation into Estonia,” Paavo said, grinning at his father.

Standing at the sink with her back to the table, Vera raised her voice like a dagger in the air, stabbing with its elongated vowels. Paavo responded in English.

“No, of course, Mama. He doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to.” Paavo looked at Nicholas. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” Nicholas shrugged; while the vodka might rankle Vera, this appeared to be the way to Papa Leo’s softer side.

“I’ll try it,” he said. Leo grinned, revealing stained teeth as though they had been steeped in tea, frozen in sepia for posterity. He lined four tumblers along the edge of the table.

Vera shook her head. “Mitte minu jaoks.”

“Oh, come on, Mama. Just one to welcome Nico.”

She sighed and turned to face them, closing her eyes as she held her hand out for the glass, as though she were receiving a rap on the knuckles in penance. Nicholas looked around at the faces, Vera’s resigned and tired, Paavo’s shining and expectant, and Leo’s suspicious and taut.

“Terviseks,” Leo said, raising his glass and looking Nicholas squarely in the eye.

“Terviseks,” they echoed obediently. Nicholas let the liquid slide down his throat like a luge. The burn in his throat wasn’t new; he had done shots at parties before, but never with adults as chaperones, as instigators.

“More?” Leo asked, lifting the bottle.

“It’s very good,” Nicholas said, holding his glass out.

“No,” Leo said as he tilted the bottle into Nicholas’s tumbler. “The best.”

Vera placed the dishes in the center of the round table. “Okay, enough drink. Now we eat. As we say, head isu. Eat well.”

Paavo reached for a plate of dark sliced bread. “Have some homemade rukkileib. And there’s pork and potatoes in that dish over there. And you must try the sult. It’s very Estonian.” Nicholas was passed a clear, jelly-like substance wrapped around chunks of white, fleshy meat. The dish quivered as though it were terrified to be consumed.

“This all looks wonderful. I’ll start with the pork, I think,” Nicholas said. “I need something hearty to stick to my bones.” Vera gave him a tight smile as she passed him the platter of pink meat with a hard shell.

“The skin’s the best part,” Paavo said, tapping his knife against it. “It’s Mama’s specialty. No one can get it like her.”

“Nico, tomorrow after school, Paavo and I take you for ID pickup from city office,” Leo said. He hadn’t touched his plate, but had refilled his vodka tumbler three times since they had sat down at the table.

“I believe Hallström has already applied for one on your behalf,” Paavo said. “So we just have to pick it up.”

“What do I need the ID card for?” Nicholas asked.

“Every Estonian has one, including visitors who will be here for a long time. You need it for everything—voting, parking, transportation,” Vera said.

Paavo shoveled sult into his mouth. Nicholas could barely stand to watch him. He reminded him of Figaro, Toby’s cat, lowering his lynx-like head to lap up food from a bowl on the floor. He turned his head to watch Vera and Leo, who took large forkfuls in silence, the clicking of their jaws and soft clash of teeth the only sound in the room. From somewhere in the hallway, or the living room, Nicholas presumed, there was the gentle ticking of a clock. The warm meat and the doughy potatoes stabilized his stomach but weighed down his head. His eyelids felt as though they were dripping vodka. He shouldn’t have had that third glass.

“I’m so sorry to be rude,” he said, breaking the silence. “But I just can’t keep my eyes open anymore. Could I—”

“Sauna!” Paavo cried. “It’s going to help you sleep through the night. It helps with jet lag.”

“Not tonight, man,” Nicholas said. “I want to try it, but I’m so tired.”

“Don’t bully him, Paavo. Let the boy sleep if he wants to sleep,” Vera said.

“I will turn steam off,” Leo said. He got up from the table and disappeared into the backyard, letting the door slam behind him.

“Come on.” Nicholas followed Paavo down a long hallway. The streetlamp outside cast long amber strands of light into the darkened room, so that Nicholas could see an armchair, a bookshelf and a computer table without a computer tucked into the corner. A sofa bed was opened out already and sheets were tucked into the mattress with tight, crisp corners.

“Don’t even bother turning on the light,” he said to Paavo. “I just want to sleep.”

“Don’t you want to brush your teeth or change your clothes? I can loan you some pajamas if you don’t feel like unpacking.”

This was not the time to let Paavo know that Nicholas slept in the nude. “Sleep,” Nicholas said.

“Unfortunately, this room doesn’t have a door. It is our family room, but we put this curtain up for you,” Paavo said, pulling a dark piece of what looked like blackout curtain from where it had been tucked behind a rod. “Whenever it’s closed, no one will come in or disturb you.”

“Thanks, man.” Nicholas sat on the edge of the bed and felt the ropes of sleep tugging at him to lie back. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Sleep well, my friend,” Paavo said. “I will be right upstairs, the first door on the left. Knock if you need anything.” In his dreamlike state, Nicholas understood a whole new meaning to the term nodding off.

* * *

In the middle of the night, Nicholas awoke, regretting his refusal to sauna before bed. He lay awake in the dim darkness, the hazy gleam of the streetlights filtering through the gauzy curtains. The ceiling was pockmarked, and Nicholas stared at the constellations of stains above his head. The bed had been comfortable for the first few hours of sleep, but once the jet lag had begun steaming off his warm body, he’d wrestled against the lumpy mattress. Poking a tentative foot outside his blanket, he pulled it back in. The air was frigid outside the little cocoon he’d spun in the sheets from tossing all night. He peered at the electronic clock in the corner of the room, its glaring red numbers mocking him. He threw the covers off and began searching for the light. Ten minutes passed before Nicholas realized that there was no light switch in sight, not behind the curtain rod, not anywhere a light switch should be found. The streetlight would have to suffice. He located his suitcase where Paavo had placed it under the window and pulled out a fleece and a pair of tracksuit bottoms. His room didn’t appear to have drawers or even a closet, so Nicholas began stacking his clothes beneath the window in short towers of T-shirts, sweaters and jeans. He left his boxer shorts in the bag; he wasn’t sure how private this den without a door really was. As he moved to build his fourth pillar of clothes, he sensed something. He peered out into the street, but all that was there were the dust-smeared Lada and other quiet houses with formidably shaded windows. He cocked his head and listened hard. There was something on the other side of the blackout curtain.

“Hello?” He wasn’t sure how far his voice would travel in this house, so he spoke barely above a whisper. He felt silly being afraid, but he also felt silly being here in the first place. He should have stayed in bed, in the warmth, in his unconscious. He should have stayed in New York.

“Tere?” a voice called back, filling in the darkness. The curtain was swept aside, and all Nicholas could see were a pair of milky-white legs shining in the light. He felt momentarily blinded before he could follow the slim line of a body up to a face.

There were dashes of color. The girl’s lips were too pink to be naturally colored—her lipstick appeared to have faded over time. But her blue eyes were bright and glistened like jewels, accentuated by striking teal eye shadow in the deep crevices of her eyelids. Her hair was just as light as Paavo’s, though it had been bronzed with golden streaks. It was pinned in fat whorls which had probably at one point been strategic, but now pieces of it were falling down and onto her shoulders, giving her a shipwrecked look. She wasn’t as pale as Paavo; her complexion was more olive, similar to Leo’s tinted skin. The rest of her was clad in a skintight black skirt and top. Other than her pale legs and face, Nicholas couldn’t tell where the black curtain ended and she began. In the dim streetlight, the girl stepped down into the den, coming into full view. “You are Nico,” she said. “Welcome to Estonia. Sorry to frighten you.”

“Mari?” he asked, forgetting to correct her on the pronunciation of his name. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“And you.” She was like a cat stalking its prey, surrounding him on all sides with her bright, azure eyes even though she hadn’t moved. “Did you have a nice flight?”

“Can’t complain,” he said. “I fell asleep pretty early. But it seems like jet lag is getting the better of me.”

“It always does.” She smiled. She reached her long fingers behind the bookshelf and flicked a switch, flooding the room with light. Nicholas flinched and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Mari was perched on the corner of his bed. “Don’t let me interrupt.” She gestured toward his open suitcase. But she was a tigress, and Nicholas knew better than to turn his back on a tigress unless you wanted to be hunted. He felt vulnerable as he stooped into the case, feeling the broad stretch of his tense shoulders and back and how his fleece tugged at his waist.

Mari rubbed at her eyes, as if trying to rid them of their color. She yawned widely and unselfconsciously. “I took an earlier train back,” she said. “The session was brutal. I just wanted to sleep in my own bed.”

“I know the feeling,” Nicholas said.

“Day one, and Yankee Doodle is homesick already?”

“I’m just tired.” Nicholas furrowed his brow. He began folding his T-shirts with more care than he would without an audience. “So you’re a model. What’s that like?”

“Exhausting. Demoralizing. Disgusting.” Mari looked as though she should be holding a cigarette between her slim fingers as she spat the words.

“So why do you do it?”

“Because it’s so fucking glamorous,” she said, turning to smile at him. “Since you’re up, you’ll be the first to find out. I’m going to Moscow in the spring.”

“Cool. Have you been there before?”

“Of course.” Mari rolled her eyes and sucked in her breath. “But this isn’t a vacation. It’s work. I’ve been chosen to move there, to model full-time. Moscow is a stepping-stone to Paris. And Paris...well, you know Paris.”

“I know Paris,” Nicholas said. He spoke slowly and clearly, so as not to stumble and say something else that might make him sound ignorant. “But I’m guessing Paris means something more than just the Eiffel Tower in this case?”

“The Eiffel Tower is so gauche,” Mari said. She pulled at a loose thread from the sheet on the bed and it came loose in her hand. She offered it to Nicholas, and he accepted it in a cupped hand. “Paris is the start of everyone’s career. If you’re sent there, you’re practically made already.”

“Made. Like, into a model?”

“Yes.” Mari sighed. This wasn’t going well. Mari already seemed exasperated with him, and she had only been home for fifteen minutes. Time passed between them. It was quieter in Tallinn than it was back home. Nicholas yearned for a siren or a car alarm, some semblance of life outside these four walls.

“What do you think of our fair city so far?”

“I haven’t really seen any of it,” Nicholas said. “We just came straight from the airport and had dinner. Your mother is a great cook, but that vodka really packs a punch. I could barely keep my eyes open.”

“Well done. You probably passed Papa’s test by having a drink with him. I have to say that you’re more of a sport than I had you figured for.”

“What do you mean?” Nicholas stopped folding and sank down on the bed, facing her.

“I’m impressed that you are here in the first place. That you’re trying something out of your comfort zone.” Mari inspected the underside of one of her manicured nails.

“Isn’t that the whole point of Hallström?” Nicholas asked.

“Well, sure. I just think it’s laughable that it’s an exchange with Americans. You probably already think you’re hot shit.”

“I... I don’t,” Nicholas said. Although he’d never considered himself particularly patriotic, he could feel the pride—or was it anger?—bubbling inside him and threatening to rise to the top. “I don’t think I’m anything.”

“Please. I’ve been on countless shoots with models from the US. They stand separately from everyone, constantly looking in the mirror, appraising and judging everyone with their eyes.” Mari was standing on the other side of him now, her legs as slim as stalks of sugarcane.

“Are you sure that’s not just a model thing?”

“Maybe,” she said, a curl swinging in front of her face. She made no effort to swipe it away. “Maybe not.” She moved toward the curtain where she turned and smiled sweetly. “I can warm you some piim to help you sleep.”

“Piim?”

“Milk.”

“No thanks. There’s no need to babysit me,” Nicholas said, turning to face her fully for the first time.

“I just want to make sure you have everything you need. I’m your host sister, after all,” Mari said. In the austere glare of the overhead light fixture, her makeup looked clownish. “Maga hästi. That’s ‘sleep well.’ Hope you’re taking notes. There’ll be a test, Nico.” She winked and stepped outside the room, pulling the curtain closed behind her. Nicholas blinked in the light. He could hear the tip-taps of her heels ascending the stairs and the door closing gently overhead.

Then it was silent again. It was as though she’d never been there in the first place. Nicholas felt for the light switch behind the bookcase and snapped the light off. He lay back in the bed. The entire encounter had felt like a scene out of a movie, where a siren appears to completely distract the hero from the task at hand. He leaned his head back, feeling the pillow accept his weight, as he considered what in the world he’d gotten himself into.

LEO

Tallinn

September 2002

Leo had gotten himself into a holy mess by marrying an Estonian citizen and staying in the country after independence. He’d committed himself to a life in a country that didn’t even recognize him. He looked around, shaking his head. All around the yard small pieces of white fluff floated in the air, as if dozens of dandelions had been blown and the seeds danced about the grass. The sun was barely up; his family was still asleep upstairs as he assumed the American boy was in the den. He yawned and stepped into the yard, gripping his cup of tea as though it were a lodestone. A syrup-like layer of dew coated the grass. He pushed his feet into the lawn, his feet dampening with the moisture as he approached a clump of the fluff.

“Damn it,” he growled under his breath in Russian. “Damn those damned birds.” He stalked to the fence and peered over the boards, some moldy and chewed away by termites in places. He made a mental note to speak to Kunnar about the fence, but he weighed the other topic in his head, as well. What was more important—the fence or the chickens? One had to choose their arguments; ensure the priority. Perhaps it was the fence, so essential to demarcating his property. But those chickens made such a ruckus as well as a stink. They had to go.

Leo had become quite proficient in choosing his arguments. Each day’s Russian-language newspaper reported a new slew of insults toward his people. In his heart, he felt Estonian, but when policies were created stating otherwise, separating the Estonian wheat from the Russian chaff, he couldn’t help but feel rebuffed by the country in which he’d spent most of his life. The small gray passport that lay side by side with the three other red passports in the vault in the master bedroom was like a spit in the face. When the family had traveled to Riga for the children’s school holidays last summer, and previously across the sea to Finland for a long weekend, the border guards flipped through its pages searching for visas while impatiently waving the rest of the family through. It appeared that the country—his country—was doing more and more to make him feel insufficient, unnecessary. He felt like the outsider in the family. There was a game he used to play when Mari and Paavo were small—which one of these objects doesn’t belong with the others? It was always him, glaringly. He could barely stand to look at the newspaper anymore. It was ripe with arguments waiting to explode over the breakfast table that continually minimized his presence in Eesti, if he was even allowed to call it that anymore. The night before Nico arrived had been the penultimate clue that he was wearing his family’s patience thin. He had sat down in his chair at the dining table, glowering over the layered tower of kasukas salad of smoked salmon that Vera had prepared especially for him, and grabbed at the sliced rukkileib she’d placed beside it. With his other hand, he tossed the newspaper onto the table. He’d folded the pages to frame an article that proclaimed that six thousand Estonian-born Russians had failed the citizenship test to date.

“There,” he’d sneered in Russian. “And I’m supposed to compete with those numbers?”

Vera served herself and passed the platter to Mari, who took a modest dollop of kasukas on her plate. Vera settled back, chewing her food meticulously while Mari picked at her already-meager portion. Lately, his daughter seemed to want nothing to do with them. Leo was disappointed that his eldest had grown into a full beauty. She had piercing blue eyes and a dainty mouth and a figure that he ensured was well attired when she left the house. Leo had not wanted a beautiful daughter. Nor did he want a homely one, but there had to be something in between. Beautiful daughters were nothing but trouble, and this one was poised for it. At least she had funneled her beauty into something concrete; Mari’s modeling career was beginning to take flight and her ads had appeared in Anne & Stiil and Naisteleht and her face had taken up prominent real estate on the side of bus shelters. Leo had swallowed the silence that followed his indignant proclamation and thrown the paper under his feet in disgust.

Leo watched the chickens now, clucking and pecking. A few of them bobbed toward him, cocking their heads hopefully. Leo stalked the length of the gate, noting where the paint had scratched away or where the wood needed to be replaced, never once taking his eye off the chickens, which also followed him as he moved. He bent down where the fence led toward the back of the long yard, where the wood had truly corroded, and ran his hands over the decaying boards. Behind him, the walls of the sauna he had built by hand when they had first moved into the house were still solid; a gentle breath of eucalyptus and birch bark puffed through the slats of the wood, aerating the insides of the sauna and perfuming the air. Leo crouched and shook his head at the base of the fence, where a hole as big as two fists allowed him to see the birds in Kunnar’s yard, bobbing and searching in vain for any scraps that might have lingered in the dull grass. That’s when he saw it: a single egg, nestled amongst the crocus bulbs on his side of the yard. He startled at first, as though a tiny little bird beak might begin to press through its porcelain shell. But then he knelt down, set his teacup down in the grass and scooped the egg up in his palm. It was still warm, as though the hen had just lifted her bottom from it moments before. He cupped it within his fingers, imagining it as a butterfly or something that might take flight.

His family would have been shocked to see him hold something so delicate. Leo made quick, definitive movements, rarely lingering, barely faltering. He declared decisions before he’d necessarily even made his mind up. To have been caught cradling an egg as though it was an infant might have lost him years of curmudgeonly credibility.

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