At times when Patuk wasn’t planning something with his buddies, who all came from a family context similar to his own, he walked around and tried to figure out the rules in this new world. Complicated. The girls had on short skirts. In this weather. With so many legs he didn’t know where to hide his erection. The girls were easy to get. Their brothers and fathers were busy drinking, the mothers worked. Patuk had tried it once. Alcohol. It had proved a failure. There’d been vomiting. After his strolls past high-rise apartments out of which strange ill-tempered people stared, past boarded-up houses and factories where imaginary rats that had died of boredom lay in piles, he tried to understand what it was all about for the people here. Nobody was really happy. There were not many families, no open doors where you could see people eating in their kitchens. Instead the residents scurried around the wet streets, the fenced-off yards in their fenced-off housing blocks. Patuk tried to analyze this scurrying. It had to do with a downcast look, hurried movements, and the desire for unconsciousness and death. None of them wanted to be there. And couldn’t even dream up an idea of where they’d rather be.

Patuk sat on swings in playgrounds that were too sad even for the rotten, pale children here; he inhaled deeply and tried to be optimistic. He rummaged charity shops, made bets on horse and dog races at the town’s betting shops, and was harassed by the white residents. There was a somewhat heated atmosphere. The residents of the countries partitioned by drunken Englishmen and Frenchmen in the Near and Middle or whatever else East had through crazy leaders, parentheses male, discovered their hate for the Western world, which had to do with inferiority, aggrieved love, and waning self-confidence.

Europe had discovered the hate. America had discovered the hate. In particular for itself. For its make-believe version of democracy. For the transformation of the world into one where you could barely get ahead without a considerable fortune. For the others, those who laid claim to a share of what little anyone else was entitled to. For the downtrodden they ignored. For globalization, which hadn’t proved its worth, but most of all for life, which turned out not to be so special.