AN UNFORGETTABLE SUMMER NIGHT


Tartu, Estonian SSR, Soviet Union
1989


The festival was approaching its end. The headliner, Death Angel from the USA, had just started their second song. Above the distant treetops, the sun was turning crimson.

Raivo's buddies were probably somewhere closer to the stage, but Raivo felt he'd had enough fun for one day. He watched the waving sea of sweaty bodies, the bass tones resounding in his ribcage.

"You'd like to be on stage, playing, wouldn't you, Raivo?"
"Not really," he replied absent-mindedly. "Death Angel is not quite my style."
Wait, what? He turned to look at the speaker.
She was about Raivo's age, head at the level of his shoulders, spiky hair, eyes that looked pale green in this light.
"How do you know me?" he asked.
"They should tone down the basses," she said, ignoring his question.
"Yeah, they should." The sound was always crappy at live shows. Raivo hated it, but you had to put up with it to see the good bands. Only a few privileged musicians were allowed to release records in this country, and they weren't worth listening to.

He eyed her black leather jacket and its curvature on the front. Something about the girl was inviting and something was forbidding. She didn't say anything and he couldn't think of anything to say. So he looked towards the stage again.

A fan was shouting at a security guard. Soon a furious fistfight broke out between the two. Raivo watched with horrified awe how the fan succeeded in hitting the guard with at best one punch out of three, while all the latter's blows were dead on target. Before the song ended, the fan felt he'd had enough and left.

The strange girl spoke again. "It's nice to drive early in the morning, isn't it?"
"Um... I guess it is."
"It's no longer dark and there are almost no other cars," she continued pensively. "You have the road all to yourself. You can let yourself go. Feel the freedom."
Raivo flinched. Was it possible that she knew something? He was sure he had never seen her before. Yet her words brought back a terrible memory.

"No, Raivo! You can't drink. You'll have to drive back to Tartu."
"Screw you! Why me?"
"Because you're sober, stupid!"
Raivo rolled his eyes, surrounded by roaring laughter. He didn't really mind being the only sober guy in the company, but he hated getting ordered around and laughed at.

"Were you at the Magnetic Band reunion concert?" the girl asked innocently.
What a question! Magnetic Band, the flagship of Estonian heavy metal, just recently re-legalised – how could he have missed that? They had all been there, his old gang, six blokes squeezed into Tom's car.
It had been late June, just like now, that time of the year when the sun only pretends to go down for a short while. Raivo tried to wish the memory away, but it wouldn't go.

They had attempted to chat up some girls after the show, and somehow the hours had just flown by. Finally they drove into the sunrise, Venom playing at top volume and Mart's leg always in the way when Raivo changed gears. Spruces, pines and an occasional little wooden house zipped by maybe a little faster than 90 km/h. And then that blue car he saw at the last moment when he was cutting a curve...

"Go! Go!" they'd screamed when Raivo slowed down after the other car skidded off the road and hit a tree. He did as he was told, his hands shaking long afterwards. He was the only one to see in the rear-view mirror how the unlucky car caught fire.

"Where do you know me from?" Raivo was getting annoyed.
The girl looked at him and smiled. Her eyes were green no longer. In fact, she had no eyes at all, just empty sockets. "I'm Pille, the girl who burned to death in that blue car. I think you and I have a lot to talk about."



(C) Olavi Jaggo
First published: 2022-08-09
This version: 2023-03-22




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