the naplinski paradox

It took the famous Estonian writer Jaak Naplinski an hour and a half to leave Tallinn after the Robbie Williams concert. The concert had pleased him, especially the moment when the British song and dance man had appeared on stage, draped in the blue, black, and white national flag. It was strong evidence for him that Estonia indeed did exist, and that he was not dreaming. Or perhaps the spectacle was even greater proof that this was all a dream. Such thoughts clouded his mind as his drove his vehicle into the wilds of Kükita, Estonia. He was also exhausted from a day of translating Sartre's No Exit into the Võru language, but he dared not to mention the French existentialist's name to the Estonian police.

When the police apprehended Naplinski for driving at an unusual speed -- he was actually doing under the speed limit while the video game-like flow of traffic dictated a speed of 10 to 20 km above the lawful limit -- he was asked to blow into a device that measured the amount of alcohol in his system. He was afraid that some drop of alcohol might have been in the šašlokk he had consumed at the Robbie Williams concert, and was grateful that his grandchildren were oblivious to the situation, sleeping beneath the tiny Estonian flags they had waved in fervent patriotism while Robbie, ever the historian, likened a woman's comings and goings to the War of the Roses. He puzzled over that line, "thinks she's made of candy." What was Robbie trying to say there?

For some reason, it took the police a long time to return with Naplinski's license and registration. He sat and sat, and thought about Robbie, and about the long-haul trucks zooming by him in the mist. Any one of them could plow right into his standing vehicle. He asked the police if they could remove to the Kükita Cafe. They said no, and that he should have a seat in the back of their vehicle. Naplinski's license was expired, they showed him, and said that he would not be allowed to proceed. What was he to do? "Don't you have a friend who can come and drive your car home for you?"

Now, Naplinski was a recluse. He spent most of his days writing at his farm in Võrumaa, and most of the people he still considered his friends were not only other writers, but functional alcoholics who could not be counted upon to pick him up in Kükita at 3 am. Also, while Robbie's showmanship had lifted his spirits, after the police had had their way with him, his clinical depression set on in one of the darkest broods he had ever experienced. He questioned the very meaning of his stupid life. Expired license! Why not just expire altogether? It had all been a dream. He was sure of it. Robbie Williams draped in the Estonian flag! Never happened. Those police eating potatoes in the cafe. Mirage, shadows of early morning central Estonian mist. In a word, Naplinski was fucked. Utterly fucked. Not fucked by himself or the police or by the law or his own willful ignorance. He was just fucked, period.

The weather in Kükita was cold for anywhere in August, but normal for Estonia. The oil-slicked puddles, soggy cigarette butts, indifferent and large pilots of other vehicles who had stopped into the cafe for a mayonnaise and pork sandwich, the frosty temperaments of the police officers -- it reminded him of that rhyming poem he had been writing about Estonia, Sügis Juulis, "Autumn in July."

The next morning, after he had somehow made his way home to the farm in Võrumaa, wrestling with that feeling of utter-fuckedness that wrapped around his appendages and choked him like smoke, he did the only thing he knew how to do. He sat down to his laptop and wrote about his feelings on his sometimes-read blog, Itching for Inanity. He even was so bold as to make a suggestion -- that there could be a stronger effort made to alert aloof, existentialist writers to the peculiarities of the law.

Later that day, when the media had gotten wind that Jaak Naplinski had been relieved of his driving abilities on account of an expired document, and stuck in a parking lot with a car full of Estonian flags and Estonian children in a place called Kükita, all hell -- as they once said and continue to say -- broke loose. It was top news for the bottom-feeding fish of the nation's media businesses. Forget bigger than Jesus. This was bigger than Robbie Williams!

The stone-throwing knaves of one particular online site, some known far and wide for their failure to pass the Nazism IQ Test {If you're still defending it in any way, you've failed}, particularly tore into Naplinski for even daring to write down his story, as if he, as a writer who had been considered for a Nobel Prize in Literature, expected special treatment from the Estonian police. Shut your mouth, Naplinski. Don't say a word. Others questioned the actions of the Kükita police, who had left a man stranded in a parking lot in the middle of Estonia after a Robbie Williams concert {if it had indeed occurred} without any real legal means to get out of it. There were two camps, and you had to choose one: Fuck the Police or Fuck Naplinski.

Naplinski, privately, remained in the passive use of the word. He was still fucked, and his fuckedness ticked up with every bitter online comment. When he went to the store to buy some Kalev chocolates, he noticed the eyes on his back. They were looking at him. Thinking. Judging. Dismissing. Rebuking. Naplinski was someone who had done something about which some opinion was merited. But what were these somethings? That was left up to The Others to fill in the blanks, a sort of real-life Mad Libs.

At home, he returned to his translation of No Exit. How to translate that often misinterpreted line, "Hell is other people"? He thought back to when his mother used to speak to him in Võru language in the countryside when he was a child after the war. Her resigned look often seemed to contain that very sentiment. At the same time, he had never heard her say such a thing.