I am at a café where a lot of university people are having their breakfast. A man comes, greets in English a girl he seems to know, and then, either because their level of acquaintance is poor or because her Estonianness becomes apparent – she responds politely but then shuts off and goes on writing something –, sits at a table far from hers.
I wonder how he will leave the café. What will he say to her? Will he say anything at all? What gestures will he use? Will she reciprocate as before? Will she show any initiative as well? Will I witness his leaving? A shudder runs through me when I think of his leaving. Where should I go to not see his leaving?
I know that it will be to no avail. All these questions are meaningless, because even though I don’t know what he will say and how she will respond (although it is not difficult to guess), he will leave anyway. His future act of leaving cancels all the details, all the motivations for it. I am paralyzed by this imminence, and this paralysis is total, making everything even remotely probable seem unavoidable, underlining the absolute unavoidability of my own death and the end of all things.
He leaves the way I thought he would. I am alive.
(It appears to me that she, too, could have left first. The consequences of that leaving would have been cosmic.)
August 2015