“One last shot before you go?”
“Awful kind of you.” I poured the whiskey and we downed our shots. The flask was now empty.
“You got a place to go?” I asked.
“Oh, there’s always a place to go. Problem be where to stay.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem all right…” I extended him the empty shot glass. “Here you go.”
“Nah, you keep it.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I can get more if I need. And you steer clear of them railroad tracks now, y’hear?”
“Thanks. I’ll try.”
“Yeah, you try.” He stood up from the bench. “Well, good luck to you,” he said and walked away.
I sipped on my last beer and looked at the sunset. I sat there until the last streaks of light were gone and the sky was dark. Speaking with the man had almost given me hope that things might get better. Almost. But not enough.
I suddenly felt exhausted. I’d gotten very little sleep during the last few days. I decided to take the next bus home and call it a day.
22
I slept for at least ten hours that night. Before getting up, I reread Akutagawa’s short story The Life of a Stupid Man. It ended with the sentence, “He barely made it through each day in the gloom, leaning as it were upon a chipped and narrow sword.” The story was written shortly before Akutagawa’s suicide. And thus, it ended with defeat. As did his life. As did everything in the end.
Still, my mood was a little better than it had been in the last couple of days. It wasn’t good, mind you. It hadn’t been good for a long fucking time now. But it was manageable.
After I got up and took a shower, I decided to cook myself some breakfast for a change. I went to the Russian-owned store nearby and bought some bacon, eggs, and toast. I then washed some of the moldy dishes in the sink, just enough for breakfast. I nearly got sick from the smell whilst washing them.
I cooked and ate the breakfast. Drank some coffee. Listened to some music. Looked out the window. Took a random book from the bookshelf and tried to read it but couldn’t focus. Watched some porn. Masturbated. Had a beer. But in the end, I couldn’t figure out what else to do. I didn’t want to go to work. I didn’t want to stay in my apartment. Thus, the only thing left to do was to hit the town. Perhaps I could meet up with my old drinking buddy Joe, I thought, to see how he was doing. I refilled my flask with whiskey and sent him a text message.
It was four in the afternoon. I still hadn’t heard back from Joe when I got on the bus, so I tried calling him, but the number wasn’t active.
Once downtown, I went to check out the main place Joe used to hang out in Old Town—a bar called Lowlander. Perhaps he’d be there. And if not, maybe I’d at least get some information about his whereabouts from the bartender.
There was a Scottish flag waving outside the bar and the steps led underground. I descended the steps and entered. Inside was a small and ancient-looking place with old stone walls and floors. The ceiling was covered in tartan fabric and the walls were decorated with swords and axes as well as the soulless-looking mounted head of a deer. As far as I knew, it was the only Scottish bar in Tallinn.
I walked to the small bar counter and sat down on a bar stool. The bartender had long hair and a beard and was wearing a kilt. I ordered a beer.
After he had finished pouring it, I asked, “By any chance, have you seen Joe around here lately?”
“Joe?”
“Yeah.”
He thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, I haven’t.”
“Didn’t he use to visit this place all the time back in the day?”
“He did, yeah. In fact, he practically lived here. But then he suddenly stopped coming. I haven’t seen him in months.”
“I see. Thanks.”
Joe had a heart condition. It was something he was born with. I wondered whether he could have succumbed to it. But then there was another possibility. Suicide. We had talked about it a few times. About the best way to do it, about the people left behind, and so on. Could he have actually gone through with it? Perhaps.
Or, considering what a drunkard he was, he might have simply gotten himself into some kind of an accident. It was difficult to know for sure. All I knew was that one thing was utterly impossible—that he had stopped drinking.
After I had finished the beer, I left the bar. I walked aimlessly around Old Town for a while, observing all the seemingly happy people walking by. But behind their smiles were skulls. They were the walking dead. It was only a matter of time.
As I was walking towards Toompea Castle up an inclined cobblestone street, I noticed a painter selling his works on the side of the road. I felt bad for him. Capitalism put a dollar sign on everything, including art. And if it didn’t sell, it was worthless. Regardless of its actual worth. That was the contradiction. Real art was individual, yet as its value in capitalism came from being popular with the masses, it had to conform to the lowest common denominator.
However, this tended to apply more to other forms of art, such as novels or movies. No, the world of paintings was even stranger. It was a world of filthy rich people who bought paintings of a couple of cubes for a hundred million dollars. Yeah, try explaining the logic behind that to an extra-terrestrial landing on earth.
Having walked past a huge Russian Orthodox church with golden crosses and icons adorning it, I saw that a big crowd had gathered on the square in front of the pink Baroque Parliament building. It seemed to be a protest of some sort.
As I walked closer, I saw people holding up signs saying, “Meat is Murder”, “Save the Planet”, “Go Green”, and so on. I noticed that most of the protesters were thin young women.
As I was walking past them, a girl with green hair and a nose piercing—a typical sign of her tribe—came up to me and asked whether I wanted to sign her petition. As though petitions ever changed a single fucking thing in this world. Still, I decided to humor her.
“What’s it about?” I asked.
“It’s about how innocent animals don’t need to suffer and die just because some humans like the taste of meat,” she explained eagerly.
“But what about humans? Do humans need to suffer and die?”
“This petition isn’t about them.”
“Why not? The human being is just another animal. Who, by the way, suffers much more than any other animal because he knows that he is going to die and that all of his suffering is ultimately for nothing.”
“I couldn’t care less about humans when they are committing genocide against animals just because they can’t control their urge to eat meat and wear leather.”
“Well, I don’t care about animals that much. So why should I care about your petition?”
“You don’t care about animals?” She did a strange fake laugh, as though what I had said was impossible. “Okay. What about the planet then? Did you know that eating meat causes global warming?”
“Is that so?” I said sarcastically.
“It is!” She was getting emotional. “Growing animals in order to eat their meat is a huge contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. If we want to stop global warming, we need to stop eating meat.”
“Okay. But driving a car—including an electric one—or flying in an airplane causes much more greenhouse gas emissions than eating meat. Yet I doubt you’d like to ban cars or airplanes, right? In fact, you probably love to travel.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“Is it? Well, let me ask you this then. Are you planning on having any children?”
“One day, sure.”
“But if there is no human being, there is no killing of animals for meat. Also, there’s no global warming, no pollution, no destruction of natural habitats, and so on. Not having any children, therefore, is one of the greenest things you could do in your life. In fact, by not having any children, I’m already greener than anyone with a child could ever hope to be.”