Читать книгу My Estonia 3. What Happened? - Justin Petrone - Страница 5

First there is fire and then there is smoke. Like clockwork.

I’ve seen it over and over again with my own eyes. You leave the old wood in the same spot through the seasons until it at last arrives, the long-awaited event: Midsummer, Saint John’s Day. Then you stuff it with newspapers, cardboard, douse it with gasoline, oil, some leftover moonshine, whatever you like. Strike the match and with a pull of the wind it erupts, like your own personal volcano.

After the fire catches, you have to wait a bit. Then you hear the squeaking and croaking and tra-la-la-ing of all the little creatures who have made their homes in the pile. Mice, toads, and newts come scampering and hustling out of that miniature hell. Running for their lives, literally. They rush to the forest or to the barn, to the meadows and streams, to the neighbor’s house, where they remember there is a safe hollow behind the walls. The Estonians call this inferno the jaanituli – Saint John’s Fire. There is shared knowledge about these holy flames. The people say that if you run and leap over the fire, you will have good luck for the next year. The Estonians really believe this. They may not believe in humdrum things, but they believe in the power of fire.

I enjoy the fires as well. I like to get bundled up close to them, to listen to the tinder as it cracks and splinters from the heat, so near that I lose sensation in the tip of my nose and the skin over my cheeks. It’s an invigorating flush, a rechristening by blaze. I like to study the colors of the flames, too, how they hue from yellow to blue, blood orange to green. There is a lot going on in just one bonfire.

My life in Estonia has been like a jaanituli. It’s been one passionate and roasting mess. I came here many years ago knowing nothing about what was about to happen, then I got married, had a kid, left for New York for a while, and then came back because I felt it calling me. I thought I might make it as an academic in Estonia, or enter the world of diplomacy, or up my journalism game and write for some famous international newspaper. Instead I wound up writing some entertaining books about Estonia. Then something strange happened. I had to go away again. Now I’m back.

My books are like the smoke from this flame of life. They smell of the thing, but are not the thing itself. They curl up and sail away pleasantly toward the stars, or linger along foggy country lanes and city streets, thick and sinister, making it hard for you to breathe.

That’s all this book is. Smoke. The smoke of fiery years spent in this windswept peninsula land.

Justin Petrone,

Back in Estonia,

April 2015