rimi

I WENT TO the Rimi supermarket to buy some bread. Of course, I could have picked up a loaf at any of the many fine bakeries in town, among them the house bakery on Oru Street which is renowned for its delicious rye. The latter I often consume with salted butter, and I can devour a whole loaf in the span of a midnight hour. I could have gone there, but I wanted the gluten-free loaf made by some German company, with its soft yet firm texture, laced with seeds and other delights, fibre-laden and fortified with vitamins, available only here at Rimi supermarket.

As soon as I stepped foot in the supermarket, which is enclosed in a new shopping center built on the site of a former prison, in which some Soviet wartime executions and atrocities once took place, I could sense that something was different. There was virtually nobody inside Rimi’s vast and expansive aisles, save for a few employees pushing metal carts stacked up with boxes. Some kind of retro muzak was playing in the distance, maybe an orchestral version of some old Hall and Oates song. Maybe it was “Maneater,” maybe not. As if it even mattered.

When I got to the gluten-free section, where one can find all kinds of sugar-free, dairy-free, nut-free and allergen-proof goodies, I found that it was no longer there. The aisles were only stacked with plastic bottles, bags of potato chips. “Where’s my favorite bread?” I asked one of the supermarket ladies. “The owners decided to get rid of the natural foods section,” she told me in Estonian. “It wasn’t selling well.” There was a sad, melancholic, deadpan manner to her speech. Her skin was pale, her eyes were deadened. Her hair had been bleached. I imagined if you were paid scant wages, or had not had sex in months, you might begin to talk like that.

Then I noticed that the lights in the supermarket were dimmed. It was quite dark. “Why is it so dark in here?” I asked the woman. “The owners can no longer afford to keep the lights on,” she told me in that same mournful, taciturn way. “It’s a sad story, I’m afraid. We have to work like this all day in darkness.” So this was the final result of years of inflation and high energy prices. A vacant supermarket that only sold chips and bottles of soda, where even lighting was a luxury, and they played horrible retro muzak inside. After that, I searched the aisles. I wandered among them, looking for something to buy, something to eat. I left emptyhanded.