Apocalypse for Beginners
Page 4
For weeks she had been demanding a General History of the Bauermann Family—including both fact and lore—so with chattering teeth I was now about to indulge her curiosity.
My forebears left the Netherlands in the middle of the nineteenth century and settled in New Jersey, where they worked as masons, becoming gradually more specialized in cement and concrete. Their success was such that on the eve of the Second World War they ran one of the region’s largest cement companies: the Bauermann Portland Cement Works.
The plant was located beside the Fresh Kills River, a stone’s throw from what would one day become the world’s biggest garbage dump. The biggest factories, the largest dumps—America, the promised land.
The Bauermanns’ golden age came to an end in the early years of the Cold War, when the family was pushed out of the local market by the Mafia. Of course, they tried to stand their ground, but after dozens of battles on the construction sites, death threats, sudden boycotts and a considerable number of truck windshields shattered by baseball bats, my venerable grandfather, Wilhelm Bauermann, decided to leave to other visionaries the task of building New York.
The exodus of the Bauermanns took place on a December morning in 1953. The family convoy stretched over several kilometres of Interstate 87: cement trucks, crushers, washers and, above all, a monumental kiln resting on two drays.
“A what?”
“A kiln. It’s a rotating oven. It looks like a large, sloping pipe. Raw material goes in one end, clinker comes out at the other, and the oven can operate day and night, non-stop.”
“Fascinating.”
“May I continue?”
“Please do.”
So, the Bauermanns travelled up into New England, crossed into Canada and stopped at Rivière-du-Loup in an embryonic industrial park a few kilometres from the soon-to-be-built Autoroute 20. Lots of overpasses on the horizon.
Canadian garbage dumps were not as extensive as the American ones, and the factories were smaller. So the Bauermann family scaled down its ambitions. My uncle Kurt would sometimes reminisce about growing up in New Jersey, the giant plant that never slept, the constant traffic of cement trucks, the groan of the kilns and especially the mountains of coal, which, from the top, offered a view of the Manhattan skyline veiled in mist like the Baghdad of A Thousand and One Nights.
Our family kept on grinding out cement. The Bauermanns’ destiny was traced out as clearly as the path of a termite colony: my father ran the cement plant, my uncle Kurt managed the concrete plant and my legendary aunt Ida commanded the fleet of cement trucks. She’s the one posing in that famous picture in our basement: arms folded, standing like a rock in front of a half-circle of enormous chrome-plated Mack trucks. Whenever I want to conjure up the image of the conquistador Hernán Cortés, I think of that pose of Aunt Ida’s. Watch out, New World.
Hope laughed. Wasn’t I overstating the case just a little? No, I was not. For the Bauermanns, concrete wasn’t just a business; it was a matter of civilization, a mission to be passed on from father to son. We were builders of worlds.
“So you plan to take over the factory?”
She’d hit on a sensitive subject—the Bauermanns’ calling was in jeopardy. Neither Kurt nor Ida had produced offspring, and my brother had just committed treason by going off to study psychology—my father was still reeling from that blow. As the youngest, the onus of delivering the coup de grâce would fall to me, and I dreaded the day when I would have to announce my intention of studying comparative literature rather than strapping on the harness.
The expression on Hope’s face changed abruptly. She turned toward the bungalows and looked worried, or cross. Just as I was about to ask her what the matter was, hailstones began to pop all around us. Within seconds the storm came crashing down on our heads.
We ran down to the dugout for shelter.
The squall was violent and abrupt. It was impossible to make our voices heard above the din of hail striking the roof of the dugout. The pits in the baseball field soon overflowed with millions of hailstones as immaculate as Styrofoam beads.
Hope looked on, lost in thought. The latter part of my story had evidently annoyed her, and it was not hard to figure out where I had blundered. I had complained about a situation that Hope envied: my father cared about me, had expectations, was interested in my future, even though that future—unfortunately for me—came in the shape of an obsolete cement plant in a remote corner of the country.
As for Mrs. Randall, she nurtured no dreams for her daughter. Hope could become a stripper, a Pentecostal preacher or a cashier at a McDonald’s—it didn’t make the slightest difference.
13. PLEASE AVOID THE VERBS TO BE AND TO HAVE
A Friday like so many others, after school.
The moment I arrived at the Bunker—the nickname that Hope had affectionately given our basement—I switched on the mighty Mac SE and flung my bag down on the floor. It popped open wide enough for a few sheets of paper to spill out, including the instructions for our composition assignment. The topic was rather all-encompassing: “What will the world of tomorrow look like?” Suggested length: 250 words. Please avoid the verbs to be and to have.
I thought about Mrs. Michaud’s enthusiasm as she announced the guidelines, her face beaming with the certainty that this was a harmless creative exercise. She clearly expected the usual clichés: space tourism, household robots, anti-cancer pills.
I stared at the monitor for a minute, sighed, and retreated to the couch, where a comic book lay in tatters: Godzilla King of the Monsters Meets Captain America. I flipped it open randomly to an ad for Amazing X-Ray Vision Glasses, capable of penetrating solid matter (including women’s clothes) and available at the ridiculous price of $2 USD. Send money order and coupon to Post Box 245, Navajo Creek, Nevada.
The biggest joke since perpetual motion.
A draft swept through the room. Hope was entering the Bunker by the back door (she had given up knocking). No doubt coming over to write her composition on the computer. And—surprise—she was carrying an old red sleeping bag under her arm, obviously intending to spend the night. I immediately presumed the worst. She chucked her things in a corner.
“Have you been following the news?”
I shook my head—I knew nothing of the latest tremors affecting Nicaraguan domestic politics, the Bank of Tokyo or Lebanon’s groundwater supply. Unimpressed by my attempt at humour, she switched on the television and plunked down beside me. On the screen, an unbelievable event was unfolding: hundreds of people dancing and hugging on top of what looked to me like an old concrete warehouse.
Hope turned toward me. Her eyes sparkled electric blue.
“The Berlin Wall has just come down!”
14. GRENZMAUER
In the wake of an amusing slip committed by a high-ranking leader, the GDR had just allowed its citizens to circulate between the East and the West at certain crossings, and was preparing to open the wall at a dozen more locations. We were witnessing a live broadcast of a historic point of no return. Berliners in droves revelled, crossed checkpoints and attacked the wall with whatever tools they had: hammers, sledgehammers and all manner of battering rams. A surge of optimism to warm the heart.
In front of the Brandenburg Gate, a backhoe sent a section of wall crashing down onto the pavement. The Wall wasn’t falling; it was toppling over, and with mind-boggling ease. So a nudge from a bulldozer was all it took to dispose of this shameful structure? I watched with growing fascination as the Wall collapsed again and again. The Iron Curtain had been slapped together with Gyproc. According to Hope, the truth was actually a lot simpler. It was a wall made of Lego blocks.
“Lego blocks?”
“Reinforced concrete Lego blocks, a metre wide and four metres tall, with a T-shaped base. This wall is the fourth generation—the Grenzmauer 75 model. Architecture that’s modular, grey and efficient.”
The daily dose of useless information.
On the TV screen, sections of wal
l were tumbling at a brisk pace, and I wondered what the Germans planned to do with all those Lego blocks cluttering up Berlin. Hope predicted that the value of a Genuine Fragment of Wall would rise briefly on the local market before plummeting throughout the free world.
“They’ll of course try to sell entire sections as trophies in the U.S.”
She was even willing to bet five dollars on the following scenario: A wealthy businessman would quickly step in and buy the whole wall in order to secure a monopoly (the current regime would be happy to turn a profit from what otherwise was shaping up to be a costly historical episode). Said businessman would then hire a container ship and move the wall, piece by duly numbered piece, to the suburbs of Orlando, where he would wage a terrific competitive war with Walt Disney World.
I tried to picture what such a Mauerland might look like. Dismal.
The same backhoe continued to topple the same section of wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate. As recent as it was, history was already running in a loop. Hope seemed to be assessing the weight of a piece of the Grenzmauer and the cost of shipping it via marine cargo. Then she spotted the comic book on the coffee table opened at the ad for the Amazing X-Ray Vision Glasses. She scanned the advertisement, raising an eyebrow. I anticipated her sarcasm.
“I know. You’re going to say that it violates every law of modern physics …”
“Actually, I was wondering why guys don’t try to simply persuade girls to undress instead of ordering these stupid gadgets. Though I admit that for two dollars I wouldn’t take off very much.”
She wriggled her toes inside her woollen socks as though estimating the market value of her feet.
The TV reporter was remembering the Wall’s 140 victims over the years when my mother appeared with a basketful of dirty laundry. As she greeted Hope, the red sleeping bag instantly flashed on her radar screen. Red alert.
She positioned herself behind us with the laundry basket perched on her hip and pretended to take an interest in what was happening on the screen, where the section of wall kept tipping over. Finally, she coughed a little to draw our attention.
“Hope, am I to understand that you’re going to spend the night here?”
“If it’s no bother.”
“I would be more concerned about it bothering your mother, don’t you think?”
Hope’s almost playful response was that there was really nothing to worry about. My mother was not reassured. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her lift the receiver and dial the Pet Shop’s newly acquired phone number.
Through an extraordinary twist of fate, Mrs. Randall happened to be at home.
Following the conventional courtesies, my mother explained the reason for her call. She had not uttered more than a few syllables when Mrs. Randall took control of the conversation, with my mother barely managing to stammer “yes, yes” or “no, no.”
I watched her expression shift from politeness through the whole spectrum of disbelief, to incomprehension and finally to total stupefaction. She hung up and, without saying another word, vanished with her laundry basket. But at suppertime she brought us Chinese food and a family-size bottle of Star Cola, and we ate as we continued to watch Berlin rejoice.
I had no idea what Mrs. Randall had said to my mother, but she never again raised any objections when Hope showed up at the Bunker at all hours of the day or night to eat, sleep, work, read, shower or hang out. My favourite refugee had just been granted permanent residency status.
15. KABOOM!
We spent the evening listening to the news reports while taking turns typing our essays during the commercial breaks. I felt uninspired and fell back on a familiar subject: concrete. I predicted the advent of a revolutionary architecture based on completely new varieties of additives. (In the vocabulary of science fiction, I felt that the word additive had a persuasive ring to it.)
Hope, meanwhile—always in sync with current events—foresaw the fall of the Soviet regime and the end of the Cold War within two years. In addition, she wrote, instead of the atomic bomb we would soon start living in fear of the industrial obsolescence of the USSR, as illustrated by the Chernobyl disaster. This new peril would be far greater than the H-bomb; it would be a self-destructive device beyond anyone’s control, a time bomb plugged into the very heart of Imperium Sovieticum.
Her miniature essay (250 words exactly) was succinctly entitled “Kaboom!”
As the StyleWriter spat out our papers, Hope asked me for an unbiased opinion. I mechanically corrected a few spelling mistakes and said that it was a very good paper that would most likely earn her a very poor mark. The mere idea of Mrs. Michaud’s horrified expression made me laugh.
We watched the last news broadcast, and then the stations signed off one by one. Toward midnight, the choice came down to David Letterman’s Late Night, L’Île des passions and the eight-hundredth rerun of Planet of the Apes.
Naturally, we opted for Planet of the Apes.
16. THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA
The atrium was teeming with the usual Monday-morning commotion. There was no sign whatsoever that the Berlin Wall had come down just a few days before. The high school was history-proof.
Going up the stairs, we bumped into Mr. Chénard, who was toting a paper bag full of lemons.
Chénard had been teaching chemistry for decades. He was born during the Great Depression—i.e., prehistoric times—making him the oldest teacher in the school, an inexhaustible fount of anecdotes and the butt of many a cheap joke.
Hope liked him in the way one is fond of a grandfather who survived World War Two. She often hung out in his office during lunch hour. As Chénard filled his pipe with two or three pinches of cheap tobacco, she would rest her feet on the edge of his desk, and they would discuss Darwinism, geology and quantum physics. On a shelf, a shortwave radio played quietly. This was no mere appliance, but its owner’s alter ego, a venerable tube radio that in days gone by had tuned in to Eisenhower and Orson Welles. Now, all it could pull in was the local AM station.
So Chénard was coming down the stairs on the wrong side, the bag full of lemons clutched against his stained lab coat, pipe wedged behind his ear. He said hello and exchanged a few words with Hope on the subject of Berlin.
“How old were you in 1945, Mr. Chénard?” she asked abruptly.
Caught off guard, he raised his eyebrows.
“About fourteen.”
“So do you remember Hiroshima?”
“The bomb? Yes, I remember it.”
He seemed pensive as he settled the bag of lemons on his hip.
“Yes, I remember the bomb,” he repeated.
A wave of students rolled by on the port and starboard sides of us, grumbling at the obstacle that we were creating, and our old chemistry teacher suddenly resembled one of those figures in a movie standing still in a public place while hundreds of extras rush past in accelerated motion. But Chénard was only outwardly immobile—under the surface, his mind was racing back through time at the speed of light.
“What I remember most are the newspapers. The tone was … triumphant.”
“Triumphant?” I exclaimed.
“Indeed. Canada had taken part in the Manhattan Project. They were proclaiming the dawn of a new era. Houses heated with atomic energy. Plutonium-fuelled cars. An unlimited source of power. It made me want to study science.”
He absently watched the students streaming past on either side, as though suddenly waking in the middle of a flood. He blinked his eyes, as if searching for an explanation.
“You know, a lot of scientists found their calling with Hiroshima.”
The first-period bell rang. As if waiting for a signal, the paper bag on Mr. Chénard’s hip split open. Dozens of lemons tumbled down the stairs, bouncing around the students’ ankles.
We hurried off to class, leaving him to deal with his citruses. But Hope was intrigued.
“What do you think he’s going to do with those lemons?”
17. MEGALEMONS
The mystery was cleared up in the late afternoon in the chemistry lab. Mr. Chénard was going to teach us how to use lemons to put together an electric battery.
The experiment seemed perfectly straightforward. All it required was to stick two electrodes into the unfortunate fruit and, with the aid of a voltmeter, note the very faint electrical current generated by the potential difference. The current was just barely perceptible—around 1.5 volts—so several hundred lemons would have to be hooked up in series for a 40-watt bulb to light up. Of course, the main point of the experiment was not to produce electricity but to explain the role that citric acid, zinc and aluminum played in this curious phenomenon.
Hope and I made a formidable team—admittedly, thanks mostly to Hope—and we completed the experiment in no time. I was already proofreading our report while our closest neighbours were still struggling with their prescribed fruit, trying in vain to lance the peel with the copper wire.
Armed with a scalpel, Hope proceeded to dissect our lemon.
“Do you know the origin of the word ‘electricity’?”
“No idea.”
“The Greeks discovered static electricity by rubbing a piece of amber against some fur. In Greek, ‘electron’ means amber.”
Hope’s face puckered as she bit into a lemon wedge.