Читать книгу My Estonia II - Justin Petrone - Страница 6

Vane, Karin, Rait, Nele...

Epp’s cousin Helina introduced us, but I couldn’t tell one from the other. The quartet lived in a summer cottage in Lilli on the Latvian border. After returning from Hiiumaa, we turned south: for meeting these new relatives, we had to drive down a long forest road, and when we arrived there wasn’t much around, a house here, a house there, and everywhere the thick, looming trees.

Golden-haired Karin, also Epp’s cousin, was the mother. Bearded Vane was the father. Of the two teenage children, I was told skinny Rait was the son and petit Nele was the daughter. Or at least that’s what I thought, because after five minutes I couldn’t remember if the mother was Vane and the daughter Karin, or if the daughter was Rait and the mother was Nele. Estonian names were all the same. “Which one is that?” I would whisper in Epp’s ear. She would tell me, but I would forget.

To make matters more confusing, the relatives all looked the same. Cousin Helina had blonde hair and blue eyes. Her son Ken had blond hair and blue eyes. Vane, Karin, Rait, and Nele? You get the picture. The only one who really stood out in the big family photo we took in the yard was that tall, dark, foreign guy Epp had married. The family was babysitting Paula, Karin’s angelic three-year-old niece, and little Paula refused to even stand near me. “I think she’s afraid of you,” Helina told me as we gathered for the photo. “She’s never seen someone so dark.”