It was 11 a.m., the beginning of the day for Unemployed. Another nightmarish morning. Time stood still. There was nothing, no hope, no normalcy, no life. The unemployed being emerged from the cemetery, into a mindless reality. He walked like a puppet. Unemployment had a strange quality of attracting all the worst. He was like a magnet. Perhaps its specific scent, or perhaps this unrefined, unconstructive Being, caused all the trash and filth to cling to it. When mosquito season came, human beings felt safe in its surroundings. Fucking female mosquitoes bit him mercilessly. His blood had a scent and taste that even the horseflies, who adored him and swarmed him during the rutting season, could detect. Unemployment had come to terms with the fact that someone had to be needed. Even if it was just food for the stronger. When he fled from sentient beings into the forest, there was no place where he wasn't surrounded by all things filthy: worms, spiders, flies, carrion-eating vermin. Unemployment is Nobody, unemployed until he's dead, only moving.
He sat on a bench in a small park. He watched children playing in the sandbox, looked at their smiling faces. For mothers full of gratitude for them, for husbands who, through hard work, give them money for clothes, bread for entertainment, who, when they come home, get a warm meal and the joy of a night's sleep. The unemployed man liked sex, but for him, it ended in his hand. Fuck, how different. How distant, so virtual, this can't be reality. For the unemployed man, there is no reality; there is only the passive area surrounding him. The Unemployment Zone. Berobol's world. He lit a cigarette. His brain choked. The whore is smoking again. Instead of a little something to eat, he buys cigarettes. And my oxygen is mixed with the Mendeleev periodic table. How can anyone think that? It's impossible. This fucking smoking will end when I give him a warning stroke.
Someone was walking. Someone is more than unemployed. Someone walked by. He knew Bezropol. He was a member of AA, a club where alcoholics recover. Bezropol wasn't an alcoholic, he never had a tendency to drink. He didn't like this kind of state. Flashback. Something worked. At the beginning of Bezropol, he had moments that still reminded him of humanity. He wasn't so degraded, though the same thing was already taking effect. He drank out of regret, loneliness, boredom, lack of prospects, friends, acquaintances, hope. He drank like never before, drank like never before, drank like never before, drank like never before. He ruined himself. He returned home. The woman-wife, seeing him, knew how to react: normality, you fucking scum, scum, drunk, you fucking unemployed, you worm, get the fuck out of here, you're nobody, you're gone, you're just a lousy bastard. And he just wanted to sleep, just sleep. Then, for the first time, he felt the word "Unemployed"—he didn't hear it, but he felt it physically. It hurt, it was sharp as a razor, it was a word that stripped him of his dignity. He wanted to sleep. To lie down and sleep. He didn't do anything, he didn't strike, he didn't respond.
He wasn't drinking. He was getting his ass kicked out of grief. Every healthy man should do that once a year.
How a woman and her state of consciousness change when a Berobolstwo shows up at her door should be the subject of scientific research.
A week had passed since drinking. A vigil at the door. A postman to the unemployed. What the fuck could that be? He remembered those moments. Since then, he associates the postman with fear. He went to the post office to answer the call. A summons—what fucking summons? To the commission for solving alcohol-related problems. It's a joke. Yes, it's definitely a joke. No, it's not true. Real stamps, official paper. A warning. In case of failure to appear, the police are available. The beginnings of unemployment are terrible; the turn of events is surprising for everyone. He went. City Hall. Room, 1st floor. Queue. Tramps, whores, company that was unacceptable to him then. Now it is. He's even lower than them. A committee of six people enters. He knew them all. He helped a few of them. They looked at him. They no longer knew him. A complaint had been filed about his habitual alcohol abuse and disruption of family life. The unemployed man asked who the author was. It was a secret. He didn't know what to say. The events had happened before him; everything was happening as if without his involvement. He knew how much he drank, he knew much more about the committee members than about himself. He saw they were members of a clan. He knew and saw how drunk people pissed in public places. What the fuck was going on here? He didn't have the energy to talk, to translate, to discuss. He used to be good at arguing, he was pretty good at it. He had the gift of persuasion. The commission was a fucking drunken commission. Now he was an unemployed drunk. They'd try to get a report on him. He was as helpless as a mouse spinning on a toy in its cage, over and over again. He wanted to leave. He couldn't stand the fucking hypocrisy. He wanted to puke, just puke, just puke. He was referred to a psychiatrist.
He'd never been to a psychiatrist. Within the limits of his rational mind, he thought that maybe this visit had one upside: some medication for depression. Psychiatrist. A fucking doctor for nothing. A philosopher, a dimwit, a mind explorer, a fucking Dr. Freud, only at the end of his life he considered his entire doctrine of psychoanalysis and dream research to be ghastly bullshit. He sat fat, swollen, and wearing glasses behind a desk. He sat. He didn't even look at Unemployed. He had a report from the commission. How much do you drink? Once a year. How long? One day, an evening. What the fuck kind of questions are these? What do you drink? Vodka. Did you vomit after drinking alcohol? It happened. Like a normal person after a salad. When was the first time you reached for alcohol? I don't remember, in college, maybe in your senior year. Like 99 percent of people.
End of interview. You're addicted, the psychiatrist stated. You're supposed to be attending therapy with the group I run. What? You're fucking joking. Do you hear yourself? Please calm down. Do you think 90 percent of Italians and French are also alcoholics? They drink gallons of wine every day. Please leave. Unemployment set in, and the nightmare continued. So he became an alcoholic. He became one against his will, despite not being one. Then he learned that the psychiatrist for every drunkard referred for therapy receives money from somewhere? From a commission. Clan, fucking clan. The mechanism worked. The downgrading began. The deletion of a person. The unemployed man remembered it all clearly. "Wife," the word, ceased to have value; it became synonymous with evil.
The AA guy was walking along, remembering him from the group. He'd only been there once.
His wife—how could he have been so mistreated? It was possible. Unemployment ended her husband's career when he lost his job. And he loved her so much at one point. There are all kinds of wives. His happened to be a teacher—a catechist, a teacher of children and God's youth. For God's sake.
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