Pia Padukone - The Faces Of Strangers

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.