Gustav looked inside the glass – bourbon, a radiant brown liquid, sweet corn. It had once been just moonshine. From Kentucky. Then it became Kentucky moonshine. Then it became seasonal Kentucky moonshine from Kentucky oak barrels. Then it was called bourbon. Systemic. That's the reason this liquor became bourbon, and booze from neighboring Virginia remained just one "of". "So the U.S. is so all about being systemic. – "said the Irishman in the affirmative. – And what explains such selectivity in them. Did it fall out of the sky?" Vincent smiled: "If it had come from the sky, my friend, I wouldn't have lived more than a generation… It's all very attractive, of course, when the best things seem to come from somewhere above, from the unruly peaks, so to speak. But it's the opposite in this life. All the achievements, all the successes, all the incredible accomplishments come from the pit. If you like, from the cesspool." – Oh, yeah!

–

That's right. – The Spaniard smiled sweetly once more. – Where do you get your boxing champions from: Brooklyn or Disneyland? Nobel laureates, where did they grow up and establish themselves as a person, in the suburbs of Malmö? Do businessmen who create commercial empires from nothing come from Brussels and Hamburg? No. These people were overwhelmingly born and formed in some hellish asshole where, figuratively speaking, you can't even get sunlight if you get a visa. They grew up there and decided that they needed something more, and then they just got into the taste… Look at the biographies of great people – it's the road to death, not a descent from Olympus to people for demonstration."

–

Not bad. It's not bad at all. What does the United States have to do with this? – Well, look at the beginning, it's the land of scum. When they were a colony, beggars, fugitives, felons, criminals, of course, prostitutes and just plain losers in life went there. To start a new life…as you can see, they succeeded. And for one simple reason – they have already been to the bottom to realize one simple and only thing – they don't belong at the bottom. And also, as you can see now, they are already determining where the bottom will be. That's where systematicity comes from.

–

From dirt to princes, then.

–

It's a Russian phraseology. But look, even in this expression, there's something pejorative. Russians don't like such things. They need: if you were born in a palace, you live there, if you were born a merchant, you have to pull your own weight. All your life. A kind of voluntary fatalism. On the one hand, it's kind of gloomy to think that you will stay down there, and most of it is exactly there. And on the other hand – the soul is calm. You don't decide anything, so you die and go to heaven. That's the essence of Orthodoxy. In the West, they won't even think of such things. And if you have achieved something on your own, you are not "from dirt to princes", but you are a selfmademan – a man who has made himself. And there it causes respect, not quiet envy.

Gustav grinned: "You're a Russophobe!" and drank the bourbon in a gulp. Vincent finished his fourth glass: "I don't really care what you call it, to be honest. You can't change people, but you can learn to understand them better, or rather where-what comes from in them… And now the main trend is to be in the trend… The playfulness of the person playing. When the benefit of the game becomes an end in itself. The original goal was to find yourself in this game, to be yourself… But the tool turned out to be so sweet that it replaced the very essence of this game. Not the game for you, but now you are for the game. You're not yourself. You're always in something. Your family, or your job. Maybe your friends. Or maybe God. Or in your worries. Even if you're totally selfish, you're not in yourself, then you're in a bunch of little things that are for you: suits, cars, or your own face. Anything but yourself. You can't be in yourself. It would be a clinic, a madhouse… If you're in yourself… And why would you want to be in yourself?

You're not the center of the universe, even if you want to be. You don't want to be, you just think you are. You don't understand what comes next, what it's for. And this stupid and unconscious "I wanted it that way" only ruins even the most selfcentered personalities. And it ruins not from the side of everyone else, but from the side of yourself. When you start to prove and justify your own actions, invented not by yourself, but only by yourself and made. And it would be good to prove it to someone – you will prove it to yourself, as if defending the fact of your existence. And the more you defend it, the less of you there really is. Gustav never thought of hurting this man. Or death. And it wasn't that he didn't deserve it. It was just that the man was a great conversationalist, something like himself. Destroying him would be like heating the stove with a book with his face on the cover: it might get warm, but there wouldn't be enough of the book to go around, not to mention the fact that there was plenty of other, more suitable material than the structured volume of clever thoughts stored on paper. And Vincent seemed to realize that, not so much that he was in no danger, but that his interlocutor was dangerous. And not to say that it was appealing in any way, but it added to the interest of the whole thing, and made him want to talk about things he wouldn't normally want to think about.

The biggest similarity they had was in their approach. They both looked at people as if from the outside. Usually you look at people who aren't in your life, people who are in the news, people who don't concern you at all. But they looked at everyone that way. As if they didn't have a life of their own, as if no one could be in it.

Yet there is much more power in gentleness. Even when it comes to inanimate objects – take your time, be as timely and natural as water in a stream filling a vast lake or even a river turning into a sea. The natural current never meets with any resistance, and if it deals with something sensible, that sensible thing considers it its duty not only not to hinder but to help it. Such an original natural law is to preserve and maintain the natural. One only has to pretend to be this natural, and one can consider oneself a winner. Whether you are a person, a state, a system, or an alcoholic beverage. Maybe even an insect – like the false queen of the ants, who only pretends to be a queen but does not fulfill any of her functions, and the ants will feed her and guard her and do whatever is necessary to keep her alive, but get nothing in return. And all this only because she is natural, naturally occupying a place that is not her own and not meant for her.

It became necessary for Gustav to talk about the most unnatural thing about people – their willingness to give up their lives of their own free will. The need to talk about suicide. And the impression that Vincent knew so much about suicide, as if he himself had committed it more than once, and then came back and wrote his memoirs: "You know, there is such a thing in the world as suicide tourism… Well, some countries have the right to euthanasia, others don't. So you can come to a place where there is, well, and do what you want… Well, really, it's not so important where you die. And here there are also suitable specialists… Methods…

Everything you need".

"Where do they do this kind of business? Switzerland, by any chance? There you can collect suicides from all over the country for the national team…" – Gustav poured another shot of bourbon into his glass.

–

Yeah, and there. I don't even know where it started. But it's there. A lot of people were against it, and they organized a referendum. But nothing changed. It's everyone's right to send themselves to the afterlife. The only thing they won't understand is whose right it is to help them. It's a bit gloomy, of course… But in Mexico they didn't even think of banning anything. In fact, they don't care much about technology there. Well, service is still service, but, as always, reasonable… They poison themselves with pills. It's like a strong sleeping pill, you fall asleep and don't wake up. It's like you don't die, you just fall asleep. Penobarbital. Except they don't monitor quality in Mexico. A dead guy's not gonna write a review anyway. He's not gonna ask for a redo. And the fact that he didn't just fall asleep, but was convulsing and gasping for air… greedily gulping for air, looking for more, climbing out of the other world… actually trying to survive, having been so eager to die before… No one will ever tell…" Vincent took another sip of whiskey, then looked at the glass-a big, strong glass, like a block of moonlit ice that had never been anything else in its essence. – You know, there are still those iconic places, like high-rise structures, from which, conventionally speaking, people like to throw themselves off. Well, in Veliky Novgorod it was a tower of steel beams on the embankment near the Drama Theater. A bit of an apocalyptic place. So after a few incidents it was simply dismantled. But you can't do that with the famous suspension bridge in San Francisco. They're still jumping on it. What's my point? One of them survived. You know, a failed suicide. And then he said that when you've already jumped, the moment you're flying, you realize that all your problems are solvable. Except for one. That you're already flying off the bridge…" Vincent stopped talking, looked at the glass again, took another swig of whiskey. Yes, he obviously knew as much about suicide as the human mind was allowed to know.