I sat up on the bed. Like life, I had been brought to the hospital without my consent. I decided that I was going to leave and nobody was going to stop me. I got up, got dressed, and walked to the door.
“Where are you going?” the old man suddenly asked in a shrill voice, putting away his newspaper.
“I’m getting out of here,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t need to be here.”
“I think you’d better wait for the nurse.”
“The nurse can’t help me, old man. No one can.”
I left the room. In the hallway, I headed for the stairs, trying to avoid eye contact with the nurses. Nobody stopped me as I slipped into the staircase.
When I reached outside, I recognized the hospital. I had visited its emergency room once due to an extremely painful stomach ache, which had made me feel as though I was about to die. I wish I had.
I dug out a cigarette and lit it. Although I felt like shit, the drag from the cigarette felt good. I checked whether I still had all my items. My wallet, my phone, my keys, a half-empty can of pepper spray, and my flask. They were all there. The flask even had whiskey in it. I uncorked it and took a long hit. It felt good.
I looked at the time. It was five in the evening. I didn’t want to return to my apartment. Not yet. For I knew what awaited me there. Thus, the only logical conclusion that remained was to go to a bar.
Yeah, I was a broken record all right.
30
The hospital was in the Russian part of town. It was an industrial district with no industry, full of Soviet-era brutalist architecture.
Its inhabitants lived in massive gray concrete apartment blocks with hundreds of small and identical apartments. The atmosphere of the oppressive regime that built them still lingered in the air, even though it was now nothing but a cheap and ugly district full of urban decay. As were its inhabitants.
I walked between the ugly gray concrete buildings, smoking cigarettes. The sky was beginning to turn dark. It looked like it was going to rain.
Considering my surroundings, I decided to go to a bar I wouldn’t have normally visited. A Russian bar. It was possible that I’d get the shit kicked out of me in one, but I didn’t care. It would merely be one more thing to push me over the edge. And considering that I was afraid of heights, I’d welcome the push. For the carousel of life was wearing extremely thin at this point and I didn’t much feel like going for another ride. It was therefore possible that this would be my last night on earth. My last night of drinking. My last night of human interaction. And I chose to spend it amongst fucking Russians. Oh well. So be it.
I finally found a sufficiently suspicious-looking place with a generic green neon sign that said, “Bar and Billiards”. A couple of mean-looking Russians were smoking near its entrance. They gave me some looks as I walked in. It was as though they could smell that I wasn’t a Russian.
I sat behind the counter. The place had a cheap yet gaudy atmosphere, as did most Russian-owned places from my experience. Despite the sign, I saw no billiards tables anywhere.
“A Heineken please,” I told the bartender. She didn’t seem to speak any Estonian or English, so I pointed towards a bottle and made a gesture with my hand. This she understood.
After the unpleasantness of waking up in the hospital bed, the beer tasted extremely good. I practically inhaled it down and ordered another one.
As I’d expected, I soon caught the eye of a Russian who, for one reason or another, just didn’t seem to like the fact that I existed. Well… that’s how it was with some of these Russians in Estonia. Because of the animosity between the Russian and Estonian populations, it was often enough to merely glance towards a mean-looking Russian and they already thought you were asking for trouble. This was due to the majority population—Estonians—resenting the minority population—Russians—for the poverty they tended to live in, which bred crime. And the minority population in turn resented the majority population for not doing anything to help end their poor living conditions.
Every country has its ghettos, as they say. And in Estonia these were the Russian parts of town. And I happened to be in one. What made it particularly funny was that I didn’t speak a word of Russian. And if you didn’t speak any Russian, the Russians looked down on you, even though they were a minority in your own country. And they, of course, didn’t think anything of not knowing any Estonian.
The Russian walked over to where I was sitting and started picking a fight with me. He said something in Russian and chuckled.
“Sorry,” I said, “I don’t speak any Russian.”
He repeated what he had previously said.
“Listen. I don’t speak any Russian, you fucking oaf.”
He pushed my shoulder.
“The fuck’s your problem, big guy?”
He pushed me again.
“Right. I guess I’ll fuck off then.” I got up and started walking towards the exit of the bar.
It was raining outside. I took out a cigarette. But before I could light it the Russian grabbed me by the shoulder and forced me into a nearby alleyway.
“Ah, here we go again,” I said, not putting up any resistance. First the boxer and now this guy.
“Shto takoi?” he said as we stopped walking. He was looking at me with a furious expression.
“You know, you really chose the wrong person to fuck with. And it’s not because I’m a tough guy like you’re pretending to be. It’s because I don’t care whether I live or die. Which means that there isn’t a single fucking thing you can threaten me with, you Russian cunt.”
“Shto?!” he said aggressively, as though he was unable to comprehend that I didn’t speak any Russian.
“Listen. If you don’t speak any Estonian or even English for Christ’s sake, why don’t you fuck off back to Russia, huh? Why are you here?”
“Idi nahhui suka bljat!” he politely informed me.
“Yeah? Well, fuck you too,” I said nonchalantly.
He punched me in the face. The punch landed on my right eye and stung like hell. Although I wasn’t much of a fighter, I wanted to retaliate, so I threw my arm at him. He blocked it with no effort. As I said, I was no fighter. Or a lover. Or a liver. I was a goner.
“You want die?” he suddenly said with a very thick Russian accent and took out a gun. So he did speak some English after all, even though it was probably just something he had heard in a Steven Seagal action movie.
“Well, as a matter of fact…”
“Shto?” He held the gun to my face.
“Oh yeah? Then do it, you pussy.” I put my hand on his gun and pointed it towards my forehead, which was something I had also seen in a movie. “Pull the trigger if you dare.” He seemed visibly confused by this. I could tell from his expression that he wasn’t going to do it. Typical tough guy. However, the opportunity was too good to let it pass. If I was going to commit suicide, my plan had been to do it by hanging myself. But fate had now presented me with an infinitely better option. A bullet to the brain hurt much less and it was easy to pull a trigger.
I had secretly taken out my can of pepper spray while he was threatening me with the gun. I suddenly pointed the can at his face and shot the spray into his eyes while at the same time grabbing hold of the gun barrel and yanking it out of his hand. The shock from the pepper spray was enough for him to let go of the gun. I sprayed what was left of the can into his eyes.
I then pistol whipped him in the face with the gun barrel as hard as I could, busting open his forehead. He fell on his knees and groaned, putting his hands on his face as blood began flowing from the wound.
My first reaction was to get the fuck away from there as fast as possible. I pushed the gun between the waist of my jeans and started walking away from the alleyway at a quick pace. My heart was pumping so fast it felt as though I was going to have a heart attack.