But if you squint a little, it gets better. Patuk doesn’t know where he is. Ah, right, I live here, he thinks, seeing sad bottoms in sad trousers scurrying through the streets. Where are they scurrying? What is it that makes them scurry, these people; they all have so much to do and scurry about, making piddling illegal deals, moving goods and drugs to and fro and ingesting the stuff as fast as they can. They get addicted to things that let them forget they are alive, until they are finally allowed to really die, and then that, too, is no good. They whine and raise their bony fists at god and pray to fairy tale characters. Who always resemble people in the Luton pedestrian zone. The otherwise aggressive tone, generated by young men with too little brains and too many hormones, has yielded to an atmosphere of complete drabness. Packs of young men sit around apathetically in front of decrepit bank buildings, staring at their devices. Russia had bombed Syria liberally a few years back and thereby multiplied the number of young male refugees by a factor of five. Which had been helpful. In the meantime there’s no democratic state left. Which isn’t even a dramatic development, since democracy was an exception in human history anyway. Patuk stops in front of them unsteadily, trying to establish a connection between his brain and the image on his retina. After the—let’s just say—forfeiture of his business there is nothing more that can keep Patuk from complete loss of control over his life. He’s become hazy. In every way. And has found out that he can better tolerate himself when he heavily abuses the tablets that are available at the pharmacy and which provide a mood that remains on the plus side of the ledger. Well, as much as that is possible when you’re taking too much diazepam. Which, of course, can happen if you’re addicted to the stuff, which Patuk has been taking daily for two years at this point. He moves as if in a dream, and he gets into states that have to do with fear and hatred. The faces of the people in his neighborhood often look to him like the faces of animals. Lizards and ferrets, rodents and pigs. He sits in the pedestrian zone a lot. Or in his room. He eats things from cans. He is debilitated by total helplessness when it comes to his life.

It is nearly morning

When

THOME

Sits on the windowsill, thinking. Well. “Thinking.”