Run up the half-empty escalator and quickly emerge outside, where heavy buildings, by day vibrant with shops and stalls and now heaped together in giant gray blocks, are hanging in dense darkness above your head. Don’t be afraid: just a few steps and you are already right in front of the traffic light. The lights of cars are dashing past you and in the distance lanterns line up alongside the riverbank.
Run, rush, propel yourself forward, PJ Harvey blasting in the headphones, just don’t stop, don’t think, don’t let it inside, don’t imagine it creeping on you, chasing all your thoughts away, conquering a place to establish its reign. But it’s already too late: you’re surrounded. It is time to let it rule again. Recognize its name – unquenchable Hunger.
I spent my days in the library and my nights watching movies that could be considered intellectual: Bergman, Wenders, Almadovar – all those globally recognized geniuses crowned with laurels and people’s adoration. I devoured other people’s words in the hope of weeding out all the mediocrity I recognized in the contempt hidden in the eyes of others. I wanted to weave myself into the vast fabric of what is called European culture, to be lost forever in its bizarre patterns. It seemed to me that only by becoming a mere reflection of other people’s thoughts, the thoughts of those great men who heeded only the words of other great men, the people whose love I was seeking would finally see me. I would at last be worthy of their company.
But every night, hunger returned to me. An immense emptiness that I tried so hard to forget during the day once again ripped my body apart.
In its thick darkness, all my thoughts and desires dissolved, and I disappeared. I’d sneak into the dorm kitchen, a small corner with an electric stove and a refrigerator and eat someone’s forgotten oatmeal straight from the packet. When my ravenous gaze found nothing to eat, I rushed about the room, sweated nervously, and finally, as soon as my roommates fell asleep, stormed outside into the humid night. I hurried to the store to buy five liters of orange juice, a bag of dry croissants, and a chocolate roll. I devoured everything before the neighbors woke up. When hunger came too early in the day, I swallowed my prey right in front of my disgusted neighbors without any shame. I stuffed a cheap chocolate bar, a packet of cheese, a few tomatoes, and a liter of kefir into my mouth. I didn’t taste anything or feel nauseous. Everything I ate disappeared into the gaping void inside me.
Sometimes I tried to tame my hunger. I meticulously created a diet: 3 absolutely moderate meals a day –breakfast, lunch and dinner. I bought fresh meat at the deli from a woman in a white apron. She carefully cut me a piece of beef tenderloin, wrapped it tight in paper, and passed it to me with a smile. Back at home, I thoroughly fried it with fresh vegetables, then unwillingly swallowed a portion, feeling neither satiety nor appetite.
Hunger was disgusted by my pathetic attempts to tame it. It always returned suddenly, the moment I least expected it. It smothered me when I stood in front of the university vending machine with dried chocolates or at a birthday party where the host, cheeks flushed from effort, dragged a heavy pot roast from the kitchen, and, of course, when I was alone.
Even as it subsided, hunger loomed over my thoughts like a black abyss. This feeling of hanging over a bottomless pit wasn’t unfamiliar to me. I noticed it sometimes, thickening inside myself: when I sat in the library, my gaze frozen in the middle of the line, or when in the crowd other people’s eyes threatened to spot me. Years passed, but I still waited in fear for the darkness to swallow me whole. I knew that one day the hunger would not stop until it had turned me inside out and established its hungry kingdom on my remains.
Gradually the fear grew bigger, hung heavy on my legs, stained the pages of books. The fear grew until one day it triumphed. That day I did not go to the university or to the library. I watched impassively as my roommates hastily dressed, as they slammed dresser doors, gathered their textbooks, brewed coffee, and left. The room grew quiet. I stayed lying there, staring at the gleams of the sun flickering on the ceiling. There wasn’t one thought in my head. Warmth spread in a golden tide from my belly and up along my spine. Something unraveled inside me, slowly unclenched. I took a deep breath. Disappearing turned out to be simple.