The last vestiges of sunlight dipped below the gleaming towers of the city as the sky turned from blue to orange. A striking vista I had seen a thousand times before yet I was still captivated by its quiet beauty. The only small pleasure still available to me.
My mind began to wonder as I pondered the existential dilemma of the human condition, the unnerving sense of insignificance one faces when they realise that a universe so vast, cares little for the pretentious self serving diatribe that fills our feeble minds.
I winced as the burning embers of my cigarette faded into oblivion on my fingertips, uttering a quiet curse at the interruption from my quiet musings. It was all bullshit anyway, one trite cliche after another. I had grown accustomed to conjuring them to justify my vain aspirations of wonder. The truth was there wasn’t any wonder left. Just another fucking sunset, nothing more. As the smoke drifted into view over the city it seemed the entire world was ablaze. I took a few moments to watch the world burn.
As contrived as my monologue was, I had hoped for some clarity. I’d read it all, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Plato, Kierkegaard and a slew of other philosophers whose names were as outdated as their words. Everything in this post modern dystopia turns so quickly to ash in ones mouth. Nothing sacred, no truth, just more bullshit. It’s all relativity now, interpretive truths as vacuous as the academics that spout them.
I reached down to grab another cigarette only to realise that the packet was empty. Disgruntled I reached for my wallet. With baited breath I unfolded it to view the contents, some old receipts and a five dollar bill awaited me. Great.
The life of a university student is fraught with a variety of challenges, hardest of all was the dire lack of money. I wasn’t getting paid anytime soon. I’d grown accustomed to going without food for days at a time, nourishing my body with coffee and nicotine. A staple diet, low carbs, low sugar… low everything. I treat my body with disdain and it rewarded me in kind. I haven’t had a decent sleep in two years,
It wouldn’t fucking matter if I had money anyway, I’d still be doing the same thing. It’s not the lack of money, it isn’t even the endless stream of inane essays I am required to write, although they sometimes provide a desirable distraction. It isn’t stress or depression, it is everything and nothing. A profound statement if one disregards its conceited intent.
The past few years I had searched desperately for some kind of epiphany, a way out of the constrictive world view I been taught so desperately to cling to. I watched my friends settled down into routine suburban lives, get married and pump out a few little bastards who could do the very same thing. Rinse and repeat, ad-nauseam. Fuck them and their perfect little lives.
They used to ask me when I was going to settle down. As if one could ever settle down on this planet. Climate change, AIDS, war, poverty, crime, the office, a endless array of justifications to remain forever discontent. They don’t ask me anymore. I barely see them anyway. It’s mostly my fault. I’ve become adept at finding every conceivable reason not to be happy. A friend once told me that my problem was I wanted to change the world. I guess he was right. The most demoralising sensation one can have is realising the potential of our species, yet knowing you’re unable to influence the outcome. A destiny forever distorted by the self importance of the individual. We piss it all away. We can’t help ourselves and I’m no better.
I had often wondered why it is that my friends all seem to be turning into functional adults and yet I have remained stagnant, lost in a sea of contradicting thoughts and feelings. I soon realised that becoming an adult has one determining factor. Acceptance. While I sit here watching the sky turn black, wrestling with the concept of truth and meaning, they have gotten on with their lives. A bittersweet acceptance for the way things are. They realise they can’t change things, and they have moved on. Is it maturity or just fatalism? This realisation had me deeply troubled, consequently I’d left my cosy office job and at almost 30 had decided to go to university.
Insane.
Before I could finish my thought my stomach grumbled in hopeful anticipation of a meal. Five dollars left and I was out of smokes. No sustenance today I mused. Standing up from my chair I walked inside and over to the kitchen counter. In desperate hope I fumbled around in my change jar. Nothing but silver, the gold long since pilfered. Sighing I tipped the contents onto the counter top, the multitude of coins clanged loudly sending reverberating echoes into my empty home.
As they coins settled I began rummaging through the pile, counting out my bounty. This was my life now, a grown man, now a poor uni student searching for spare change. A few years ago I was earning eighty thousand dollars to sit on my ass and fix computer related quibbles. My latest endeavour in education might have seemed admirable if it wasn’t so pathetic. Who the fuck lives like this? Who gives up a comfortable lifestyle to sit with eighteen year old kids every fucking day? All because he had a crisis of meaning and required validation?
As I finished counting I realised I had exactly eight dollars. I eagerly awaited the feeling of shame as I plumped down forty twenty cent pieces at the service station. Heinrich was going to love this.
Scooping up the coins I placed them into my pockets and headed for the door. The telltale clanging of metal on metal betraying my lot in life. Before leaving I checked the mirror, my body looked haggard and thin. My cheekbones visibly raised. I grimaced at the sight of my malnourished form. I was a mess. I didn’t care. I’d long since abandoned the sociological conditioning of my peers to fawn over my appearance. I didn’t have anyone to impress.
Stepping outside I could see the moon rising above the trees, we had walked upon that distant world, looked back at our tiny planet and claimed the achievement in the name of all mankind. An accomplishment of epic proportions, and yet nothing here has changed. We still kill one another over bullshit ideology. At that moment it occurred to me that I couldn’t think of a single thing worth dying for.
As I walked down the street I soon realised I had forgotten my shoes, the rough pavement grated at my heels. It was unusually warm but I savoured the sensation of the heat on my cold feet. Lost in thought I arrived at the service station and walked inside. The store was empty except for Heinrich standing behind the counter. The place was a dump, half empty shelves, old stock, and a large security screen protecting Heinrich from the outside world. We all live in bubbles.
Heinrich was an older man in his fifties, his ashen grey hair however failed to represent the youthful vitality he possessed. I first met him a few years ago when I’d walked to the service station late one night to buy some cigarettes and his unfamiliar face greeted me. I would soon learn that Heinrich had immigrated here after fleeing persecution in the Soviet bloc.
A self described closet capitalist Heinrich had planned to escape over the Berlin wall in the early eighties. The problem was Heinrich only had one arm, which made climbing somewhat problematic. He lost it in Afghanistan in ’82, the result of a mortar explosion from friendly fire.
After his recovery he was given the option of a small pension or a free education. The smart man he was Heinrich chose an engineering course and after a few short years had began a career in the Russian aerospace industry as an engineer.
This is where his degree had come in handy. Despite his disability he had taken it upon himself to spend several months carefully constructing a small personal glider in his tiny apartment. He couldn’t put the whole thing together since the place was so small but he designed it to be portable and easily assembled on his apartment roof. This is where the story starts to get interesting.
Heinrich couldn’t actually test the glider before using it so he was taking a rather large gamble when the day finally came for his big escape. He’d woken up early in the morning before sunrise and started assembling the glider on his rooftop. After months of planning things to the smallest detail his hard work was finally about to pay off.
At about 5 in the morning he was finished the assembly and prepared for the big moment when his dreams were to become reality. Across the grey walls, past no mans land, West Berlin in all its capitalist excess waited.
Stepping out onto the ledge he carefully aligned his body with the target. Double checking his safety straps that would hold him into the glider and allow him to steer with his one arm he said a final prayer.
After a few deep breathes he leapt out into potential oblivion, risking it all for a utopian dream of economic slavery by another name. Heinrich told me that for those first few seconds he was the happiest he had ever been. He was on target and ready to glide easily over the wall that had kept him from his capitalist desires for so long. A few moments later however, a wave of terror overcame him as he realised that he was not in fact about to glide safely over, but was heading directly for a large guard tower.
You see, despite his education, Heinrich had needed to spend a lot of time working to support his university placement. As a consequence, some subjects were skipped out of necessity and cash exchanged to give him a pass in his absence. He’d deliberately chosen certain subjects to skip based on utility and in his naiveté had aerodynamics on that list.
Had he known that his future career would be in aerospace he probably would have chosen to skip English Cinema instead. Apparently, the total absence of flaps was to be his undoing.
It wasn’t clear what alerted the guard who only moments ago was minding his own business, but Heinrich claimed it was probably his screaming. The guard startled but alerted to the situation raised his rifle and was about to fire, just as Heinrich and the glider crashed into him at about 60km an hour. Dazed and confused Heinrich had managed to survive the first impact by cushioning his blow on the guard. The guard however was not so lucky. The poor bastard was crushed to death, rifle still held in his arms.
Sensing it was only a matter of time before he was discovered Heinrich climbed to his feet and gazed over the edge of the railing. West Germany was just a 50 metres away. The ladder that would allow him to safely alight at ground level led back Eastward and the only way into No Mans Land was a rather high fall. With heavy heart Heinrich knew what he had to do. With the damaged glider still partially attached he realised quickly that it wasn’t going to help him with the fall. Without hesitation he leapt over the railing and plummeted two stories onto the hard concrete earth below.
By this time a small crowd had gathered to see what the commotion was about only to witness a one armed man, covered in blood with some bizarre broken wooden contraption strapped to his body collapse onto the ground in the middle of limbo between two opposing idealogical forces. An image so stupendously suggestive of the East Vs West proxy wars of the Cold War I feel I just had to mention it.
Dazed and injured Heinrich managed to climb to his feet and begin the arduous process of dragging 90 kg of broken plane attached to his body towards the Western wall. Buoyed by the cheers of his Western fans and shocked no one was shooting at him Heinrich made it past the land mines and barbed wire to the Western wall. The crowd had formed a human chain and lowered a man down to assist him. After some tense moments, he was dragged up and over the wall, his victory against communist oppression now complete.
The East German guard fifty metres further up the Eastern wall did not fire at him as was usually the custom, a member of the crowd had later told Heinrich it was because he was too busy laughing to aim his rifle.
Now saved, the crowd dragged Heinrich to a waiting ambulance but it was quickly discovered he and the plane simply wouldn’t fit. Over engineering is a process Heinrich prides himself in so the litany of straps, buckles and belts holding the plane to him were proving too difficult to remove.
The subsequent image of twenty german adults carrying a one armed man with a broken glider attached to his body three kilometres through the city to the closest hospital is an image I wish I could have witnessed. As Heinrich tells it, he was the toast of West Germany for some time.
A few months later after being discharged from the hospital and filing out all his paperwork Heinrich was on a plane to Australia. A very fucking lucky man.
Casting aside that anecdote I made the final few steps into the service station where Heinrich nodded in acknowledgement as I moved toward the counter.
“Darius, how are you mate” he quipped placing the Penthouse he was perusing down. It had only taken him a year to learn more than the broken English he had arrived with and the novelty of a thick Russian accent he just couldn’t lose mixed with Australian colloquialisms never really got old.
“Fine, Heinrich, you?” I replied
“Mate it’s been a fucking shitty day. You’ll never believe what happened to me today, come look at this”
Heinrich gestured for me to come into the booth. I moved across to the slide doors and I heard the telltale click of the locking mechanism opening. I pushed the them open and stepped into the booth. Heinrich started making his way to the back room and I followed listening intently to his words.
“So I am sitting here by myself and some fucker comes inside the shop. He looks a bit dodgy so I am a little on edge”
Heinrich paused as we entered the back room and he switched on the tv monitor. The light illuminated the dark room and I stared at the small screen.
“So this guy walks in and he comes up to the counter. At this point he has his hand in his jacket and I think, here we fucking go, this bastard is going to pull out a fucking gun and rob me”
“Fuck” was all I could muster in response
“Yeh, exactly so I am about to reach for my shotgun and then this happens” Heinrich gestured towards the screen and I watched the security footage play back. The thief reached into his jacket and suddenly pulled out a very large stick.
“Is.. is that a fucking stick Heinrich?” I asked
“Yeh, a fucking stick. This dip shit thinks he can fucking rob me with a fucking stick, oh wait, here is the best part”
I moved in closer to the screen and I witnessed Heinrich walk across to the security door. He casually unlocked it and moved towards the thief with his fist clenched. The would be attacker raised the stick to strike him, unaware that a very angry one armed Russian man was a force to be reckoned with. Heinrich moved quickly unleashing a flurry of blows into the would be thief’s face. The attacker fell over and lets go of his less than lethal weapon. Heinrich then leaned over and picked up the stick only to start smacking the man around with it. The thief appeared powerless to stop the ensuing blows and was growing weaker by the moment.
“Are you fucking serious, holy shit Heinrich this is fucking amazing” I chortled patting him on the back.
“Tell me about it, oh look at this, this is the part where I start feeling bad for him”
Bemused I continued to watch the footage. Heinrich soon stopped bludgeoning the man who was now completely dazed. He leaned down discarding his weapon. It looked like he was saying something but the footage had no audio.
“What are you saying to him?”
“Well I’d hurt him pretty bad and I asked if he was alright. He sort of muffled out an apology and said he had had enough”
“So, what did you do?”
“Well Darius” Heinrich said switching off the monitor
“I gave him a beer and sent him on his way”
“What? Heinrich the fucker tried to rob you!”
“Yeh but look at it this way, the poor bastard was so desperate he couldn’t even afford a decent weapon, not even a knife. He had a stick, a small stick too. I would have at least used a large branch. It was a sad sight to behold. In Russia we had a old saying, a man with a stick is a desperate man indeed”
“Bullshit Heinrich” I chortled with a smile
“Okay, much is lost in the translation. The sentiment is the same though. You don’t hurt people who are only hurting themselves”
“I guess even the scum of this city is doing it tough huh?” I replied shaking my head.
“Yeh exactly. So yeh I didn’t even call the cops. Just wanted to show someone the footage though so no one would call bullshit on my story”
“Heinrich, with your past antics, I’d never call bullshit”
As we made out way back out into the main store I headed out of the booth and over towards the counter my pockets clanging. Heinrich was already there waiting.
“Do you hear that?” Heinrich said cocking his head to the side
“Hear what?”
“It is the sound of a very poor man overburdened with small coins“ He replied with a cheeky smile
“God damn it”
“Ok, tell you what, you count it and no more jokes”
“Fine” I answered as I started heaving large clumps of change onto the counter.
“I counted it at home. There’s eight bucks here”
“Eight dollars. I assume you want the usual packet” Heinrich said reaching behind him for my particular brand of nicotine treat.
“I should warn you that they’ve gone up again”
“Your joking. Heinrich I only have 13 dollars here counting the five in my wallet. How much are they” I said sighing
“Fourteen eighty” he responded wryly
“Fuck, man can you help me out here, I can pay you the rest in three days”
“Darius, I would love to do this for you. But if my manager were to discover the transgression I too would be counting tiny coins and walking around without shoes”
I sighed slowly looking down at my bare feet. Fuck
“You know Heinrich, for a man that escaped the supposed horrors of communism, your attitude in this particular situation astounds me, can’t you help a comrade out?”
I leaned in closer, attempting my usual persuasive gesture
“You know the fucking government and it’s ever increasing tax on tobacco really fucking shits me. They claim that they want people to quit and yet they continually exploit our fucking addiction by raising the price of smokes as if its some kind of disincentive. Do you think that telling a fucking heroin addict that his fix is gonna cost him more is gonna stop him? No, he’s just gonna go fucking rob some poor bastard for the extra money and pay it anyway. The fucking state is getting richer off my fucking habit because they don’t have the fucking balls to just outright ban smoking. Do you know why Heinrich?”
Heinrich patiently shook his head, gesturing me to continue. It was one of the things I loved about him, he let me rant.
“It’s because they’re capitalist PIGS Heinrich, because the capitalist economic system you admire so much leads to greed and exploitation. They KNOW they can make more money off smokers by NOT banning it and stockpiling the profits so they can finance their endless bureaucracy”
Heinrich laughed and so I continued
“They say its for anti smoking campaigns but we are all painfully aware that the money they spend by showing a few cursory ads of people with fucking cancer costs no where near the amount they actually make off suckers like me”
“Monstrous” Heinrich replied with a wry smile creeping across his lips. Unfettered I continued.
“You know fucking alcohol is responsible for domestic violence, road deaths, liver disease, financial ruin and a litany of broken dreams but you don’t see the government taxing it to the high fucking heavens or putting giant warning labels on bottles. I mean fuck, if I have to look at a woman’s gangrenous fucking face they could at least be fair and put an image of a man brutally beating his fucking wife on the side of a six pack. It’s only fair. So Heinrich, that’s why you should just give me my cigarettes and show those fuckers in Canberra what we think of their greedy little conspiracy”
My little rant had weakened my resolve and I leaned further in towards him in a pleading manner. If I couldn’t use logic, I’d have to use pity.
“You know Darius I would like to debate the benefits of your scheme but I am afraid that in the time it would take you would waste away and collapse from hunger or exhaustion. I’d like to say that you should probably just quit and start eating a little more but since it means so much to you, I’ll pay the rest for you out of my own pocket, on one condition” Heinrich reached over the counter and grabbed a large Snickers.
“Yeh whats that?” I said shifting uncomfortably
“Eat this. For gods sake you look terrible. When was the last time you ate something?”
“I don’t know, sometime yesterday. I’ve been busy”
“I see” Heinrich replied handing over my smokes and Snickers
“Thanks man. I owe you one”
“Not a problem, Для умный человек , вы очень глупо” Heinrich retorted, mixing in some of his native tongue.
“So what the hell does that mean”
“Never mind, I’ll see you tomorrow”
“Cheers Heinrich”
I gave him a gracious smile and walked towards the exit. Before leaving I waved my hand behind me.
“You’re the best Heinrich”
Outside I unwrapped my smokes and tossed the plastic into the bin next to me. Lighting up I began my walk home in the warm night air. Relieved I had gotten what I came for. Now, to start that essay.