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to the twelfth floor, and I turned the key in the lock, and I flipped on the light. According to the clock on the wall it was seventeen minutes past three. All at once I quickened my pace, that’s right, I crossed the two rooms with kitchen at a rapid walk. I was in a great haste and all my movements were rapid; it was not that there was little time, there was enough time, but in a visible and suffocating way my hesitation was intensifying. I won’t enhance the visual impact of the story with an effect that is not far from the truth, I will not say that demons of hesitation were crawling out of the corners, no, things weren’t quite that bad, but all around it was undeniably denser, darker, and also somehow more yellow, yes, all around it was denser, darker, and yellower; after all even abstainers know the term “a stifling aura,” after all even abstainers sometimes get short of air and start to hyperventilate, performing spasmodic motions, as if they were trying to break out of a noose that was tightening around them, as if they were trying to gather their failing powers of concentration. In the final seconds of my not-drinking something analogous occurred, but a thousand times more painful. I was not short of breath, but actually choking. I did not perform sudden and panic-stricken movements—I thrashed about like a madman. Though even that is inaccurate. I acted logically; in my madness there was cold, calculated method; the speed of all my movements was mad, I acted with the rapidity of a madman, nevertheless I placed my bag on the desk with scrupulous care, opening it and removing what was inside, I prepared glasses and an ashtray, I changed swiftly into a warm and comfortable track suit—still, still at this moment it would have been possible to douse the fire, which was already burning strongly, still it would have been possible to pour the two bottles I’d purchased in the all-night store down the drain, throw them into the trash chute, or even fling them out of the window, and it was this very possibility, the shadow of this possibility, that lent unutterable drama to the situation, for it was not a matter of there still existing a genuine choice between drinking and not drinking, no, such a choice had ceased to exist long ago (frankly speaking, such a choice had not existed for at least twenty years), yet it was still possible to pretend that the choice existed, to put on a poorly acted show of indecision, to not waver between drinking and not drinking, but to nevertheless self-sacrificially prolong, knowing that in essence I had stopped not drinking, the road to drinking. I thrashed about, and, truly, I thought about not drinking like a man who in the absolute certainty that he will not commit suicide thinks about suicide: the vividness of the imagination has nothing to do with reality. You can think often about suicide, you can see all kinds of details clearly, you can relentlessly picture your own corpse hanging from a roof beam, yet in the depths of your heart you know you won’t go through with it. That’s how things are. In the depths of my heart I knew I would not go through with it. If I had, if, God forfend, I had poured both bottles I’d purchased at the all-night store down the drain or thrown them out of the window, what outcome could I have achieved by this illicit and hypocritical act? None whatsoever. I would have had to take off the warm and comfortable track suit, I would have had to get dressed again, put back on the shoes and the fancy clothes I had worn to the Catastrophes’, return on foot or by cab to the all-night store or to another one, and from then on things would have been even worse. Out of rage at myself, out of rage at having been carried away by my illicit and hypocritical act, and as a consequence having become embroiled in spurious goings-on, out of rage at the mendacity surrounding me on every side, I would have bought not two but four bottles of vodka, and then, checking a hundred times to make sure that my bag, now twice as heavy, was safely on my shoulder, I would have gone back home on foot or by cab, taken the elevator to the twelfth floor, turned the key in the lock, and flipped on the light. The game of possibilities that were seemingly multiple yet in fact absolutely precluded could have gone on into infinity; now I might have poured all four bottles down the drain or thrown them out of the window and repeated the entire sequence step by step, and again, and once again. This nightmarish asininity had to be finally brought to a stop, the truth had to be looked manfully in the eye, and the truth was not pouring vodka down the drain or throwing bottles out of the window; the truth was drinking. I moved with uncommon swiftness because it was a question of pouring the first dose of truth into myself as swiftly as possible and terminating the exhausting rhetoric. It was necessary to put an end to the conscious literature of perpetual doubts as swiftly as possible and to choose unwavering, insensate life.
Chapter 8
Christopher Columbus the Explorer
Toward the end of each stay on the alco ward I had always managed to manufacture around myself a certain order; even if it was the order of a closed ward it was still order, and the transition from the order of a closed ward to the disorder of the open world, or, to put it in plain terms, the return home from the hospital, was impossible for me without fortifying myself with a couple of stiff ones.
“Classic exit stress,” Dr. Granada would have said. “You’re unable to handle the exit stress. You look as if you’re exiting in good shape, but you’re unable to handle the exit stress.”
It was true, I was incapable of handling the exit stress, and so I would reduce the exit stress to a minimum. The cab ride from the alco ward took about twenty minutes, then afterwards, after the torment of the cab ride, after drinking four stabilizing doubles and equipping myself with a bottle of vodka, I would cease suffering from exit stress, I would cease suffering from stress in general, and if I started to feel a little worse, I would have a drink and feel better, and that was all, that was the entire philosophy, the entire philosophy of drinking.
“There is no philosophy of drinking.” Christopher Columbus the Explorer, my roommate, would repeat with the professional intonation of an impatient lecturer while turning around on his bed, taking off his eyeglasses, and setting his French translation of the New Testament on his bedside table: “There is no philosophy of drinking, there’s only the technique of drinking.”
Christopher Columbus the Explorer had been sailing across a sea of darkness for at least twenty years; when he accidentally swallowed even a single shot of the boundless expanse of oceanic waters, he invariably descended into a murderous unending jag. Two weeks earlier he had been brought in in his death throes, not to the alco ward even, but to the Intensive Care Unit on the floor below; he had been laboriously treated for, and miraculously restored from, first delirium and then epilepsy. By now he was more or less himself. During the day he would go for a walk down the hallway with the French translation of the New Testament under his arm, and through his words and actions he would convey the fact that he was mightily disappointed with conditions at the boarding house, to which he had repaired for the purpose of restoring his overtaxed nerves.
At night, however, his helpless body was incapable of assuming any position; the muscles of his arms and legs, purged entirely of magnesium, kept seizing up in spasms. Though I was knocked out with powerful doses of hemineurin, I would be jolted awake. Columbus the Explorer would be twitching on his bed in a manner that was entirely devoid of style; if there was any style whatsoever in his convulsions, it was the style of death throes. I was convinced he was dying, at least that was what it looked like, and it even looked worse—the spasms of death throes are surely gentler.
I would call the doctor and the nurse. Nurse Viola would administer an injection of magnesium and various other minerals and provide vitamins and sedatives, and Dr. Granada would lean over Columbus the Explorer as the latter strove in vain to subdue the trembling of his own body, and he would say:
“How are you feeling, professor?”
•
In civilian life, when he was sober, aside from his incarnation as a drunkard, aside from his role as a conscript of liquor, aside from his alcoholic calling (ah, what ingenious pyramids of extraordinary drinking metaphors you are capable of erecting, my addicted tongue!), Columbus the Explorer in normal life was a tenured professor of the social sciences. He had climbed every rung of the university career, he had taught abroad for several years, he spoke foreign languages, and, with the full rationality of an enlightened scholar and all the adherence to principle of a person who for years has spoken ex cathedra, he asserted that he did not have the slightest problem with drinking.
“How are you feeling, professor?”
“Fine, fine,” gibbered Columbus the Explorer, “fine, there’s nothing
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