Apocalypse for Beginners

by Nicolas Dickner

  “A small dose, comrade?”

  Hope accepted, and almost instantly a steaming bowl materialized under her nose. As she waited for the broth to cool down, she absentmindedly trailed her chopsticks among the freeze-dried flakes of chives. Meanwhile, Merriam drained her bowl.

  “So, you’re late tonight.”

  “I just walked from Gilo.”

  Whistle of admiration. Hope affected an air of modesty.

  “It’s just 20 kilometres.”

  Hope swallowed some broth, wondering whether she should mention her meeting with Hayao Kamajii. She decided against it. She had completed her Mission and there was nothing left to say.

  She took off her Tony Lamas, which, toward the end of her hike, had felt uncomfortable. The left heel was starting to come loose and several seams had given out. Hope had put an inordinate amount of kilometres on the boots since arriving in Tokyo. They made hardly a sound as they dropped into the wastebasket behind the bar. Hope wiggled her toes in the air with a sense of relief.

  Merriam glanced at the boots: two pieces of smoking leather.

  “Can you imagine how people saw the world before the invention of the automobile?”

  Hope sucked up a scalding braid of noodles. She had no specific opinion on the subject, except that, in light of her recent experience, everything must have appeared considerably farther away.

  “Yes, of course. But it’s more complicated than that. These days, everyone moves at roughly the same speed. Back then, it varied a lot, so, as a result, the perceived distance varied as well.”

  She took out her pack of No. 9 and lit herself a cigarette.

  “In a region like Palestine, for example, someone on horseback could cover 65 kilometres a day. A single individual on foot, about 40. A well-disciplined army could rarely do better than 30 kilometres. And if you added a herd of goats, the distance was reduced even further.”

  She looked around for an ashtray and finally dropped her ashes in the sink.

  “Nothing travelled more slowly than a family. If you were burdened with people who were old or lame, young children or, still worse, pregnant women, the average speed dropped below 15 kilometres a day. Under normal conditions that would not make a huge difference …”

  Puff of cigarette.

  “On the other hand, if you were fleeing from a threat—Pharaoh’s army, an infestation of the living dead, or the almighty wrath of Yahweh—well, that changed everything.”

  Another puff.

  “Doesn’t that throw an interesting light on the New Testament? The story begins with a pregnant woman riding a donkey toward Bethlehem. The very picture of vulnerability. Troubled times, dangerous roads—but the woman is in no hurry. She knows things that the reader doesn’t. She knows that there are still seven hundred pages to go before the Apocalypse.”

  She doused her cigarette in the sink.

  “Impressive, don’t you think?”

  Hope sat there without speaking or moving, but only stared into empty space holding her chopsticks in mid-air.

  “Hé, camarade, ça va?”

  Hope roused herself and seemed to come back down to earth. Merriam poured her a large glass of mineral water, adding three sections of lemon.

  “You’re dehydrated. What an idea, walking 20 kilometres in the middle of a heat wave! Here, drink this.”

  Hope shook her head.

  “No, I’m okay. I was just thinking of something. Old memories.”

  Merriam’s frown was both menacing and maternal, and Hope meekly drained her mineral water. Satisfied, Merriam wiped down the steel countertop, unfolded her copy of Ha’aretz and went to work on the daily crossword.

  Hope finished her noodles without saying another word and slipped away via the secret stairway. Once on the roof, she took a long look at Tokyo burning—tens of thousands of light bulbs, neon lights, fluorescents, sodium lampposts. Billions of kilolemons per second.

  At last she felt safe.

  83. UNDER A DIFFERENT LIGHT

  August 1989. Route 185 was baking under a Sinai sun. Behind the spruce trees, an army of peat harvesters raised a cumulonimbus of reddish dust that was visible for kilometres in every direction.

  On the shoulder of the road sat Ann Randall’s deceased Lada, hood half-raised, all windows down. An uninterrupted stream of traffic brushed past the carcass without even slowing down: Winnebagos, top-heavy cars, aluminum rowboats perched on trailers. A whole nation of vacationers returning from the Atlantic provinces, totally satiated, totally unaware that the end of the world was due to take place any day.

  While her mother discussed transmissions and carburetors with the tow-truck driver, Hope paced up and down next to the car. She kicked the door and, leaning on the roof, eyed the inside of the vehicle with a look of annoyance.

  Now, in the middle of the day, she saw the interior in a different light.

  She looked at the seats overflowing with bags, clothes, provisions, canned goods, the bottles of ketchup and relish stacked on the floor, the jars of pickles, the bags of salt and flour, the rubber boots, the umbrella wedged under the handbrake, the two enormous bags of rice piled on the front passenger seat, the tuque and gloves, the heaps of ramen packages, the bibles, the twelve dust masks and three flashlights.

  And amid the chaos, in the corner of the back seat, Hope’s minuscule space—barely enough room for a young girl.

  A young girl, or an extra case of ramen.

  84. A THREE-THOUSAND-YEAR VOYAGE

  The moon was rising over Rivière-du-Loup. A freight train trundled by on the other side of the street—two tiers of assorted containers: Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, Hanjin and China Shipping. The usual parade. The locomotive was already far down the track, and one could hear the screeching of the rails and the occasional whistle of a poorly sealed compressed-air duct.

  It was dead calm at the Ophir. A Dalai Lama was dozing at the counter with his nose in a bowl of pretzels, under the maternal eye of Ann Randall. In a corner—surprise!—the TV was tuned to BBC with the volume turned down. I imagined Hope nestled in the shadows, holding the remote control.

  “Hey there, Mickey! Long time no see!”

  I half waved and installed myself at the counter. My work clothes were shedding particles of cement. Ann Randall, who had obviously read my mind, set down a frosty mug of pale ale in front of me.

  “It’s on the house, honey!”

  I raised my glass to her health and took a gulp. Countless alcohol molecules instantly exploded in my brain, a thousand magnesium flashbulbs going off together. Dozens of tiny knots loosened at the core of my tender muscles. Proletarian drinking habits suddenly appeared to make sense.

  We talked for a while. A scattered exchange without any specific goal: It’s been a while, the bar’s pretty quiet, how about this heat wave, they say it’s hard on the farmers.

  From time to time, I glanced distractedly at the screen. There were shots of an Israeli military airport, where the airlift of fifteen thousand Ethiopian Jews was being completed—an exploit that had required only thirty-odd airplanes.

  “These people,” an Israeli journalist exclaimed, “are ending a three-thousand-year voyage.”

  The muted whine of the dishwasher could be heard, or perhaps it was the snoring of a Dalai Lama—the distinction was not easy to make. I took another swig of beer. “Do you want to watch something else?” Ann Randall asked, offering me the remote control. I declined.

  Standing in front of a jet engine nozzle, the BBC reporter talked about the climate of instability in the Somali Peninsula, repeated that Israel had just smashed a number of records with this exceptional resettlement. The servicemen had even removed the seats from some of the 747s in order to squeeze in more passengers. The journalist noted in conclusion that several women had apparently given birth during the flight.

  I whistled. To be born in an overcrowded Boeing—now there was an omen of an exceptional future, right? Ann Randall smiled politely—she had not really been listening
.

  The report ended with images of refugees kissing the tarmac. This was followed by an update from Iraq, and I turned my attention away from the screen. Ann Randall was pouring herself a small cognac.

  “Have you heard any news from Hope?”

  She gave me an inquiring look and put the bottle back without corking it.

  “Me? No. Why do you ask?”

  I toyed with my beer mug, somewhat nervous, after all, about venturing onto such private territory. Ann had evidently not even noticed that Hope had left town.

  “Left? Where?”

  “Japan.”

  She raised her eyebrows, as if to say “well that would explain a lot of things,” and took another sip of cognac.

  “How long ago?”

  “Four months. Five, pretty soon. I thought you knew. She hasn’t called you?”

  “No.”

  On the TV screen, Hans Blix was commenting on the UN inspections in Iraq. Saddam Hussein had agreed to abandon his weapons of mass destruction, to suspend his chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs, to destroy his long-range missiles and to no longer allow children to play with penknives and matches. The West had nothing more to worry about.

  A minute went by in almost total silence. Each of us drank without saying anything. The Dalai Lama turned over onto his left side. A few pretzel crumbs fell from his hair.

  I didn’t dare ask the questions that were nagging me: Why had Hope gone away? Why the radio silence? Only a Randall could have answered those questions, but I doubted that Ann would be able to recall what was going on inside her own head the night she decamped from Yarmouth, nearly leaving her daughter behind.

  Rather than putting the questions to her directly, I announced that Hope had found her date.

  “Which date?”

  “The date of the end of the world.”

  “Oh?”

  There was an awkward silence. Maybe I hadn’t been specific enough.

  “According to her, it will happen on July 17, 2001.”

  Ann Randall appeared to be analyzing this new data, like a teacher evaluating her student’s work.

  “Good date,” she finally declared. “Prime numbers, Mickey, that’s the secret.”

  She poured herself a finger of cognac and said nothing more.

  Damned Randalls.

  85. WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

  After a while I got tired of hearing about Saddam Hussein. I drained my beer and went out for a walk.

  In the moonlight, the city looked like a Japanese water-colour, and the paper mill emitted an odour of rotten eggs. I ended up at the municipal stadium or, to be exact, at the place where the municipal stadium had stood a few weeks earlier.

  Not even the slightest evidence was left of the fire. The day after, the rubble had been removed and the ground levelled by a bulldozer. The municipal council had voted in favour of rebuilding a larger, better-equipped stadium on the outskirts of the city. The layout of two new streets and the construction of thirty condominium units were announced a week later, and an illustrated sign was put up at the perimeter of the site, like a giant postcard from Eden. I was surprised at how quickly the project had been set in motion. Someone somewhere seemed to be in a hurry to obliterate whatever was left of the old stadium, to erase it from collective memory. It seemed almost suspicious.

  The sign resembled a modernist manifesto. Boundless optimism, perfectly trimmed hedges. You could sense the echoes of the postwar boom. The only things missing were plutonium-fuelled cars, household robots and velocopters.

  Standing beside me, Hope examined the billboard with a sarcastic smile.

  “Yessir, it sure looks clean and tidy.”

  She turned away from the billboard toward the adjacent streets. Etched against the moonlight were the bluish silhouettes of the bungalows, perforated here and there by TV screens.

  “Can you imagine what the world looked like before?”

  “Before what?”

  “Before bungalows.”

  I frowned. Yes, I knew what the world looked like before. I had seen archival photos at an exhibition of the historical society. This poorly drained depression was once an ancient peat bog. Spruce, reddish lakes covered with sphagnum. Flowering pitcher plants, water lilies, probably a few migrating birds’ nests. Frogs, bulrushes, mosquitoes, flies, butterflies, dragonflies. Muskrats, raccoons, garter snakes. Countless small animals, bacteria, single-celled organisms.

  The results of millions of years of evolution.

  Hope sighed.

  “Can you imagine the effort it takes to wipe out a peat bog? It doesn’t happen on its own. You have to drain the land, unload thousands of tons of gravel, level the ground with bulldozers, graders, steamrollers. Dig sewers, plan streets. Install water and electricity systems.”

  All at once, my view of the surrounding bungalows shifted: Now they encircled the empty lot and were preparing to close in on it and bury it in silence—like a blanket of peat moss on the surface of a lake. One world swallowing another.

  “The UN inspectors can say what they like, the fact remains that the bungalow is the primary weapon of mass destruction invented during the Cold War.”

  I burst out laughing. Who but Hope could be so matter-of-fact in spouting such fantastically outrageous comments?

  The laughter stuck in my throat. I suddenly, brutally, realized the magnitude of my mistake. Like an idiot, I had let Hope run off to the far side of the world without reacting, instead of going after her to convince her to turn around or disappear along with her. But I had done nothing. Now it was too late, and I knew she would not be coming back.

  Alone on a vacant lot, I watched the world disintegrate around me.

  86. DOES ANYONE STILL TALK ABOUT NUCLEAR WINTER?

  I grew up in a world obsessed by the apocalypse.

  On the playground of my primary school, the atomic holocaust was just another topic of discussion. Between games of hopscotch we would talk about bunkers, radiation, plutonium and megatons. Some of us, though completely hopeless in mathematics, could cite detailed statistics on the Soviet nuclear arsenal, and this quantified knowledge made our fears all the more tangible. Who would get their share of Soviet warheads? Would we die roasted, vaporized or irradiated?

  We were the pre-war generation.

  Bunkers were only halfway reassuring. Who would want to spend three weeks crammed together below ground, eating sardines packed in oil, playing poker with matches and defecating into a tin can, only to resurface at the dawn of a nuclear winter that was going to last forty more years?

  We were a little taken aback by the fall of the USSR. No matter—there was still acid rain, the disappearing ozone layer, carcinogenic substances, cholesterol, desertification, the fluoridation of drinking water, asteroids, whatever. The specifics didn’t matter, so long as it was imminent.

  We saw the end of the world everywhere. As far as we were concerned, even a trivial change of date was liable to trigger the collapse of civilization or at least a return to the Middle Ages and everything that that entailed: black plague, cholera, carnage, crusades … elevator breakdowns. The Gregorian calendar as a catalyst for destruction—why hadn’t someone thought of that before?

  On the night of December 31, 1999, the dials slowed down in one time zone after another—but nothing happened, and the sun rose over a civilization unscathed. True, a grandmother in the suburbs of Pittsburgh lost her weekly shopping list, but everywhere else human beings continued to get high, to copulate and to keep an eye on the stock markets. Kids still combed through the garbage in the dumps of Calcutta. Other kids, in Sierra Leone, polished their old Yugoslavian AK-47s. Thousands of pumps sucked out oil through the Earth’s crust. Why should anyone have been concerned about the end of the world?

  Greenhouse gases, tsunamis, particle accelerators, radon, nanotechnologies, the market economy, black holes, epidemics of neuro-eruptive infants, peak oil, ice-nine, the reorientation of the Earth’s axis and deorbiting episodes,
genetic mutations, azoospermia, the atrophy or hypertrophy of the Sun, sticky or scaly creatures emerging from the ocean depths, the inversion of the poles, the industrial transformation of human beings into chipboard panels, increasing entropy, gravitational anomalies, androids, pelagic methane, saturated fat and hydrogenated fat, bird flu pandemics, pesticides and/or herbicides, riots, antibiotics and the People’s Republic of China. The list of perils looked more and more like the ingredients printed on a package of ramen—an implausible inventory. But we had gone beyond the point of any plausibility. We had been expecting the end of the world for so long that it was now part of our DNA.

  Anyway.

  I often thought about all this. Not every night, but almost. I may even have been thinking about it at the exact moment Ann Randall died at the age of forty-seven years and four months. The death certificate was signed at the Hôtel-Dieu, the hospital of Rivière-du-Loup, just before midnight on July 13, 2001.

  “A very bad date,” Hope would have declared.

  87. INCANDESCENT WAVES

  The news of Ann Randall’s death reached me at noon. All my co-workers had gone out to eat, leaving me in conversation with my computer. I didn’t really feel like going outdoors: for several days Montreal had sat under a layer of yellowish air, and just looking through the window was enough to make me choke. I was eating a repulsive tuna sandwich while reading the forecasts on Environment Canada’s website (smog warning in effect) when my father’s message showed up on my screen.

  From: J. Bauermann

  Date: 15 July 2001 12:16:45 EST

  Subject: Re: RE: Re:

  Ann randall pass ed on two days ago. Stroke or r uptured aneurysm. No view ing, wake a t the ophir tonight.