The overhanging bulb dimly lit the small, crowded pub. A dingy glass caked in muck blurred the image of night; the image of violent waves; the image of wind whirling inanimate objects towards all directions; the image of a light twirling in the distance with the water, overlooking the town of Strandenforp; the unforgivable image of sea augmenting its length towards new, unknown islands which may or may not house more content souls, for the residents of Strandenforp found themselves in a state of abject, desolate misery.
The pub was a hole of solace, as it – despite its modest, limited and cramped room – blocked out the misery of the town. There were two contradicting glasses for the residents of Strandenforp: the glass of drink, embodying the epitome of happiness bursting out with euphoria; and accompanying this glass of merriness came the glass of doom, displaying what they sought to escape at all moments. These two glasses clashed at once and, therefore, raised a standstill: everyone stood silent, mouths wide open and full of drink, eyes ajar with anger. Time stood still at the pub.
“Bollocks. Bollocks to this and all of you,” an old, cracked voice crept out of the remote edge of the room. This was Harold. Harold differed from every single person in the pub. Every person, apart from Harold, huddled together in the huge centre table, motionless. They would all sit still and swig at their comforting, escapist drinks. Harold, alone in the small table, vehemently gulped his larger, belching and shouting. He was the only person that talked – everyone else, as I pointed out before, merely sat still.
Harold had a distinctive physique. For instance, he was the only person with long hair; his brown, unwashed hair revoltingly curled up towards all directions.
Harold would get up and pace around the room, heckling like mad: “Why are ye’ all so fucking silent for? For fuck’s sake, say something! Is it that fuckin’ windo’? Big fucking deal, what’s so fucking scary about a fucking window with a bit of fucking wind? Fucking hell.”
He returned to his solitary table and his drink. As an alcoholic, Harold kept returning to the pub – the only access to alcohol. Otherwise, he’d stay at home avoiding everyone else. Harold used to be an avid reader and occasional writer, but the drink deteriorated both interests.
Harold got tired. He felt his eyes closing down; his senses closed down. He found himself in a large, poorly illuminated hallway. He saw some faint figures looming in the distance. He finally saw three large bottles of beer – about 4 metres high – skidding through the floor onto his direction. Hmmm. Yum, yum, yum. Beer, beer, beer. He saw it all around. As he set out to slurp the gallons away, a small man with a faint moustache and a fine suite came stomping in at a crazed velocity into the large room; he appeared to be deeply preoccupied about a troubling problem, as he moved his arms towards all locations. He seemed constipated; it looked like he didn’t have permission to say whatever troubling matter he wanted to say.
“Can I help ye’? Who are you?” Harold interrupted his uninterruptible drink to address the extravagantly dressed fellow.
The peculiar, nervous awaiting man finally burst out with the torrent of words he retained: “Proust! I’m Proust! Oh, for heaven’s sake – look at you, Harold! How can this be? Your potential was limitless! And now look where you are! Drinking yourself to death! That amount of beer is surely poisonous! You were well into volume 4 of my masterwork, and through my eyes I could tell you were no ordinary reader; I could tell that your perception to the world and, consequently, my work, was of a formidably well-thought out stature. For all these years, the readers of my work have been passive in their approach; but you! Ah, yes, you! It was incredibly refreshing to find this ilk of reader I had never come into contact with. Through your perception I gathered that you were developing literary aspirations of your own. But then, you never came back! I had to deal with all these other boring, superficial readers! Oh, how I’d wish to see your written work. I’m sure it surpasses mine! But no, now you go to the drink!”
Harold, who had his head inside the enormous bottle while licking the beer, angrily retorted from within: “Ye’ fuckin’ hypocrite! The drink is a search of lost time! You go on about the pain and all that crap and how it’s so fuckin’ important. Fuck off and leave me alone, puff! All that writin’ and readin’ did me no good. Fuck off and go fuck one of them queers you love so much.”
Proust’s restrained nervousness now broke out from its prohibiting cape; it elapsed into an infuriated anger. He rolled around the ground, losing his clear, articulate manner of speech as he now emitted monosyllabic screams. Harold had his whole head into his beer, with his mouth gurgling down as much as it could, and he also drenched his long hair in the process. He was immersed in pure nirvana, so he could not hear Proust’s screams. Proust, with his weak physique, attempted to pick the beer bottle positioned next to Harold’s; he wanted to pick it up and throw it to the beer bottle Harold was inside in. This quest was futile – he was, inevitably, far too weak. The intention for this was very questionable; his anger was irrational, with no pretext supporting the violent outbursts whatsoever. He went to the corner of the hallway where he found an axe for emergency situations. He took it out, rapidly ran with it toward the beer bottle containing dazed-off Harold, and, with all his meagre strengths, smashed it. The glass and the blood and the Harold were now all over the floor. Harold had now come out of the beer glass. He remained on the floor, weakly grunting in pain.
Harold awoke. Despite having a large dose of alcohol in his system, he felt extraordinarily lucid, a feeling he had not experienced for a while. He did not feel drunk at all.
He saw the people around him that glumly sat together in a shared feeling of discontentment. He seemed rather concerned by this – what was wrong? He approached the cramped crowd and amiably asked, “what’s wrong, kindred souls? The silence suggests that this lovely pub is empty. What singular occurrence has shaped your souls to such a repented state? You all look very unhappy – too unhappy.”
This stream of polite, carefully arranged words was a watershed event. For the last year and a half – as mentioned before – the norm was that everyone should bleakly sit still, stare into space, weakly drink their beers, look at the menacing window, and endure the drunken rants of a foul-smelling ogre. Not only was it surprising that some kind words were emanating out of the dishevelled man’s mouth, but he articulated himself like a soft-spoken English Oxford professor – rather than the reckless hobo they had grown accustomed to.
As a result, time was broken back to its original state. One of the men, with his stooped head fixed on the beer he irregularly sipped, timidly addressed Harold: “the wind, you see. It’s all quite frightening. The wind in Stadenforp harbour is the strongest in the world.”
“Well, it seems like you all come to this pub to forget about the wind; it looks like this could be a utopic, ‘runaway’ location. And why should it be so murky? It hardly looks like a pub; you should decorate it more so that it doesn’t merely look like a bare room. And it looks like the window, which displays the wind, is the centre of attention. It’s so large and you’re so attentive in gazing right into it. Why don’t you put a curtain over it?”
The man’s eyes suddenly lit up. “A curtain? Yes, that surely would work,” he enthused. “Oye, rob,” he exclaimed, addressing the bartender, “cover the window with some rags you have lying around.”
The bartender – the only person in the room other than Harold who was segregated from the crowd – got a very large cloth out of a draw, which he then laid over the window.
“Ah, yes! I feel better now! Yes! Yes!”
A chatter gradually commenced and more and more beverages were purchased. The roar of sound finally led to an ear-splitting cacophony encompassing everyone’s merriness. Alcohol no longer heightened mourning; it heightened celebration. The overwhelming sound convulsed Harold, so he sat down to one side.
Ah, books. Book, book, book. Harold’s fondness for literature now became paramount. Three large books lay in front of him. He started reading the first paragraph from the one that was positioned to the far right: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is –“
A drop hit the next word – ‘different’. Another drop now hit the word ‘families’. Harold got his finger on the liquid and licked it. The taste was very familiar – it was the taste of beer. And then another drop came, and another, and another – until the entire first page was drenched by the liquid. Harold licked the page and savoured the taste when he fell on the ground and rolled around in agony. He felt drunk despite tasting the scantiest amount of alcohol. He started heckling incoherently again: “Wi ar’ this so articulate? Articulation is fucking bullshit.”
Harold awoke and found himself in the pub yet again. The overhanging bulb was not strong, but it managed to enhance the joy of the cosy, intimate room overflowing with content faces which were accompanied by loud, bursting music. An enormous yellow cloth, acting as a curtain, tied the room together, since all objects corresponded around it; the image of a drunken man falling off his chair, laughing with delight; the image of a woman grinning, staring into space – completely out of sync with her senses. And from their eyes an image that did not emit the same resonance as theirs could be met, but this image was not, indeed, met: the image of Harold, for he found himself in a state of abject, desolate misery. His literary attempts were now drained by alcohol, and this raised a standstill: he could not motivate himself towards the shared happiness in the room. Harold remained as the outsider.
30th of September, 2007