The End of the World Book: A Novel

by Alistair McCartney

  I took some small comfort in the fact that whereas the actual asbestos structures may be long gone, my memories remain: in regards to time they are incombustible, just as in antiquity, during the ritual of cremation, the fire would eat away at the forms of the dead, grinding their bodies down into a fine powder, yet the asbestos funeral cloth would miraculously withstand the intensity of the heat, the fire merely serving to clean the cloth.

  ASSHOLE, THE

  I am peering through a keyhole, into eternity.

  ASTEROIDS

  Experts say that one of these days we can expect another asteroid, very similar to the asteroid that killed all the dinosaurs millions of years ago: bits of dark, murky green brontosauruses, hairy but muscled legs of cavemen, and ridiculously large jaws flew everywhere. It was positively dinos, the Greek word for terrible. Now we can only learn about dinosaurs from their fossils, just as one day, if people in the future want to know anything about us, they will have to study our fossils, which will seem as monstrous as those belonging to dinosaurs. Perhaps people will no longer be interested in us, though, and our fossils will just sit there, gathering dust.

  This asteroid that we can expect, any day now—in fact, we should brace ourselves for the asteroid—will probably be quite like the one that in 1917 crashed into Siberia and incinerated two thousand miles of good and lush Siberian forest. All the snow covering the ground in Siberia lifted up, very high, and then came back down. It—the asteroid—will most likely look all silvery and shiny, like those silver foil asteroids in cheesy black-and-white B movies, but it will be real.

  Even if it is very small, like Eros, my favorite asteroid, which is one of the smallest, and perhaps that is why it is my favorite—at fifteen miles long and five miles wide, it is the runt of the litter, and I guess I take pity on it—it will still do great damage.

  Eros was identified and computed in 1898, forty years before the beginning of the Holocaust, which itself can be seen as a kind of asteroid that crashed into Europe and the Enlightenment and Western culture and hollowed it all out, leaving a big crater. It—Eros—was discovered by a German astronomer by the name of G. Witt. Eros's last favorable approach—which is when asteroids come close enough to the earth to be seen, but not so close that they smash into and mangle us, which would be unfavorable—was in 1931, two years before the appointment of Adolf Hitler and the beginning of the erosion of Western civilization.

  But perhaps our asteroid is yet to be discovered, and if you browse the color catalogue of asteroids, and flick through the 1,570 asteroids inside, you will not find our asteroid. This is no matter.

  There is an asteroid out there with our name on it, just like our mothers wrote our names on the inside collars of our gray school shirts with non-erasable Magic Marker, to avoid confusion. This asteroid is special because it will destroy all boys, only boys. There will be no confusion. When it hits us we will fall in love with it. Its arrival is imminent.

  AVON LADIES

  I haven't seen an Avon lady in years. In fact, I'm pretty sure that, as a species, Avon ladies are now officially extinct. The last Avon lady was seen in 1994. When I was a kid, there were plenty of Avon ladies. Our Avon lady would trudge around our neighborhood, weighed down by all her cosmetics. Burdened by cosmetics. She would knock on our door, and my mother would invite her in. I'd watch silently as mum and the Avon lady, stooped over the cosmetics, talked in earnest, conspiratorially, about the cosmetics.

  AWE

  Awe is a state located somewhere between reason and death. It seems that I'm almost always in a state of awe over something. Ayatollahs, Aztecs, azaleas.

  When I am in awe, I open my mouth very wide. Bits of the world rush in and get stuck in my teeth. Stars get trapped in my brain. I point at things. I leave my jaw ajar.

  Pretty soon, this begins to take its toll. My finger becomes arthritic from all the pointing. My jaw begins to creak like the hinge on the door of a haunted house.

  But still, it is very easy to live in awe. To locate yourself in awe is not difficult at all.

  B

  BAGGY CLOTHES

  Just as in the Victorian Era, to conceal their bodies, women wore bustles and layers of stiff crinolines, and this had something to do with repression, in our era, boys wear baggy jeans and extra-extra large hoodies; this also has something to do with repression. These boys are also hiding something.

  Sometimes when boys wear baggy clothes, the shapelessness of the cloth and the way it hangs on them draws attention to their mortality, like a pirate's skull and crossbones on a mast. We become painfully aware that boys have skeletons, or rather, that they are nothing but skeletons.

  At other times, the bagginess distracts us from their mortality. We are able to forget this truth and relate to boys as if they are immortal, as if they are nothing but flesh, as if they have no bones.

  BALLANTYNE, JOAN

  My Aunt Joan died in 1992. Although her death was mourned, deeply, it did not come as a surprise. Her health had never been good. My mother put it down to the fact that her elder sister had never liked milk, and, ever since she was a child, had refused to drink it.

  My aunt had her own opinion on this matter. She traced it back to 1938. She and her husband, Bob, were newlyweds, living on a ranch in the far north of Western Australia. Bob was away on business, and her stomach had been upset for a few days. Thinking nothing of it, she had been taking baking soda and eating lightly.

  On the night of the third day, however, my aunt was woken up by a streak of pain. She had no idea what was wrong, but she could tell it was serious. Doubled over in distress, she stumbled outside and told one of the ranch-hands she needed a doctor.

  Covering her in his moleskin coat, he lifted her up onto his horse and secured her to it with a length of rope. Together they rode through the night to the nearest hospital, almost 100 miles away in the town of Broome.

  My aunt told me that for most of the journey she was delirious. She knew they were heading to Broome, but she thought she was a Chinese boy, on his way to join the pearl divers there, who are known to hold their breath for up to an hour at a time. At one point she thought she was a piano fastened to the horse. Every now and then she was lifted out of her delirium by the bumps in the ground and the dank odor of the horse's dark red coat, before plunging back into it, even more deeply.

  The next thing she knew, she was lying in a narrow bed in a pale pink room. A nurse was placing a thermometer beneath her tongue. There was a tube sunk into the vein of her right wrist. She asked the nurse what had happened and the nurse explained everything to her. My aunt's appendix had burst. The doctor had gotten to her just in time, removing the organ before it poisoned her blood. The nurse gave her a cup of broth to sip and opened the curtains a fraction, to let in a dash of sunlight.

  Elated at this second chance, yet still feeling somewhat peaked, my aunt resolved then and there to dedicate the rest of her life to showing God how glad she was. She would show God her gladness in every way: through prayer; through plucking the feathers from chickens; through watering petunias and ironing perfect creases.

  BALLANTYNE, ROBIN

  On May 7, 1943, at approximately 3:34 a.m., my Aunt Joan gave birth to a baby girl in her and my uncle Bob's pale blue house in the Canberra suburb of Holder. They named my cousin Robin, after the songbird with the rust-red breast and the dark back, though we should remember that this songbird is not singing for us. This bird's so-called song is not a song at all, but a deterrent, a warning.

  For the next forty-three years, Robin worked and slept and dreamed and occasionally loved.

  Then, on December 12, 1986, at approximately 2:32 p.m., having grown tired of life's intricacy, Robin gassed herself in the garage of the pale blue house in the Canberra suburb of Holder. She lay down on the garage's concrete floor to receive forty-three years' worth of dreams; the fumes wrapped around her like a feather boa.

  I hardly knew Robin. I remember she was lean and wiry and kind, and had curly
graying hair. She liked tennis and was good at it. Perhaps, upon entering that space we cannot enter, she immediately changed into a bright white tennis outfit, with a little white tennis skirt with crisp pleats, and she is spending eternity playing tennis, leaping back and forth over the net.

  Canberra, the city in which Robin lived and died, is the capital of Australia. Planned as a model city in 1911, its foundations were laid carefully according to a series of so-called song lines, bordered by three power points. It is designed in a series of discrete circles: the center of the city, the government zone, radiates out neatly into a civic center, business and commercial districts, an industrial sector, the university site, parks, and tidy residential areas built on both sides of the curving Molonglo River. Not one of the circles overlaps or spills over into the other.

  The end result of this design is not so much one of beauty, but of order.

  BANAL, THE

  Although we don't have a name for the era in which we presently live, in the future, long after you and I are gone, and we are nothing but skeletons, God's cages, future generations will look back at our epoch and define it as the Epoch of the Banal.

  Historians will say that this era began around the year 2003, with the election of a former bodybuilder and actor—star of such illustrious films as Twins and Kindergarten Cop—by the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger, to the position of Governor of California. In a footnote they will mention that this man also happened to be the son of a Nazi SS officer. They will add that this epoch's status was really secured in 2004 with the reelection of one George Bush Jr., a simple, wizened little man, sort of like the postindustrial equivalent of the village idiot, to the position of president of the United States. A footnote will mention that he was the son of a previous U.S. president of the same name and was in a sense a photocopy of that president.

  But historians will agree that the real arbiter of power during this era was a pop singer by the name of Madonna, who cast a long shadow over this entire period, and ruled the charts for sixty-three years, her reign equaling that of Queen Victoria.

  Experts will describe our era as one in which there was no hope of doing anything even vaguely original, an era in which the imagination and all the tattooed, baggy-clothed muses were placed under court injunction. Although these experts will acknowledge our many efforts to overcome this pervasive banality, they will also be firm in saying that all our efforts ultimately failed.

  They will conclude that our lives were heroic yet futile, a combination that, in retrospect, will seem somewhat poignant.

  BAREBACKING

  In the early twenty-first century, having grown tired of the plague, profoundly bored with it, men once again took to fucking without rubbers in a practice that came to be known as barebacking. Some people thought these men had a death wish. In interviews, these men denied having any interest in death. They claimed they barebacked because the tip of a condom felt like the tip of an inquisitor's hat, as if an inquisition were taking place deep inside them.

  BEACH, THE

  In summer, on the weekends, Dad would take us to the abyss. We'd leave first thing, so as to get there before all the good spots were gone, and to make a day of it. We'd place our blue and white striped deck chairs right at the edge of the abyss. When we weren't frolicking in the abyss, we'd just sit and gaze into the abyss. Dad would bring his little transistor radio, and listen to the cricket, or tune in to an easy listening station, which made the abyss even more relaxing. Mum always made us bring our cardigans, because even though during the day at the abyss it was hot, often by the end of the day it would get quite chilly. We always brought a packed lunch and sodas in a plastic cooler, because the prices at the abyss's kiosk were simply outrageous, though Dad often treated us to ice cream. We'd try and lick our ice-cream cones as quickly as we could, but in the heat the ice cream inevitably melted and trickled down our fingers, over the edges, into the abyss.

  BEAR, BRUNO THE

  Recently, a wild brown bear appeared in the Bavarian Alps, the first wild brown bear to appear in Germany since 1835. The bear was sighted in that disconcertingly beautiful landscape we have come to associate with Adolf Hitler, the landscape he loved to paint, in a style that would come to be known as evil pastoral, a landscape more recently known for gay porn, the location of films such as Bavarian Bareback, a film in which boys who look like Hummel figurines come to life to have unsafe sex. At first, all of Bavaria welcomed the bear with open arms, but gradually Bavaria began to rethink its welcome. Bavarian authorities claimed the bear posed a danger to humans and had already raided a beehive and a rabbit hutch. No one knew how to interpret the appearance of the bear, which had made its way across the German Alps from Italy. Some said it was a good omen, a very good omen, others that it could only mean bad things. Unable to decide, hunters killed the bear. The shooting has happened, the bear is dead, said the Bavarian government's bear expert, who then went on to say that the bear had been transported to a facility where a top taxidermist was ready to take accurate measurements of the skin belonging to the dead animal.

  BEARDS

  God wore one. Socrates had one. Marx and Freud and Darwin all had them. Where would the history of ideas be without beards? Gay men wore them until AIDS came along and hair became disconcerting: homosexual, all too homosexual. We shaved off our beards; some took this as a sign that we were distancing ourselves from God. Though perhaps we were merely waiting to direct our prayers to a clean-cut God, a God that was yet to be invented. Let me remind you, Kafka never wore a beard. If you have to wear a beard, let it be one of those fake beards, which must be glued on.

  BEATLES, THE

  Unlike the rest of the world, I have never really liked the Beatles. In fact, during certain periods of my life, it would be accurate to say that I have hated them; and even when I was not actively despising the most popular and most well-loved band in the world, it is safe to say that I've always held a deep-seated grudge against them. Although I have of course heard their songs, I have never sat down and listened to one of their records.

  Disturbingly, there have been times when people have told me, You look like one of the Beatles. Equally disturbing is the fact that I bear the same last name as the Beatle who I have always entertained particularly violent thoughts against, Sir Paul McCartney, whom, I must admit, I bear a slight resemblance to. Our last names are spelled in exactly the same way; hence we are linked by not only physical but also grammatical sameness. McCartney is not the most common name, and it stands to reason that, somewhere down the line, we are ever so distantly related.

  This leads me to think that just as with every form of hatred, this hatred I have for the world's most loved band is simply another form of self-hatred. Yet perhaps not everything leads back to the self—perhaps nothing leads back to the self—and this form of hatred is entirely justified.

  A few nights ago I dreamt about the Beatles. Given the complex set of feelings I harbor toward them, this should come as no surprise. I dream of them often. Usually, these dreams are of a violent, sadistic nature. They tend to involve knives and feature scenarios in which I slowly cut one or more members of the band to ribbons (all set to a soundtrack of one of the countless hideous Beatles albums!). In some of these dreams, I wear a badge, like a fan might wear. However, my badge doesn't bear the inscription I love Paul, but rather, I want to destroy Paul.

  But in this particular dream I was holding one of their albums (I believe it was their ninth album, the self-titled but nicknamed The White Album) and seriously contemplating listening to it. This album had an inner sleeve, which was not merely the inner sleeve for the record itself, but the inner sleeve containing all the liner notes necessary to explain the secret of who I am. The inner sleeve of myself. I saw very clearly that it was quite possible I could learn to like the Beatles.

  Now that I have some distance from the dream, I cannot help pondering that, if I could learn to enjoy the Beatles, I could learn to embrace anything, even this ragged thin
g I call my self.

  BEAUTY

  Throughout Western history, philosophers have spent a lot of time contemplating beauty. As they've done so, drool has slithered out of the corners of the philosophers' mouths. (One need only look closely at the surface of philosophy to see that it is drenched in saliva.) Pretty much what they have come up with is that every encounter with beauty begins very promisingly but inevitably ends in a musty atmosphere of disappointment and a failure to return one's e-mails and phone calls. As Plato said so fittingly, Beauty is barbaric, beauty must be destroyed.

  BEDS

  At some point between 1774 and 1793, the wooden posts of beds, which formerly had been covered with draperies and hangings, became visible. Naturally we were pleased with this development, giving us, as it were, a better vantage point, and making it much easier to watch men dream.

  BODY, THE

  The term body is far too inaccurate and general to faithfully describe such a peculiar and complex habitat. I prefer to think of my body as a smuggler and of myself as the smuggled, illegal substance. Or, that my body is the suitcase the smuggler is carrying, made from 100 percent crocodile leather, containing a secret compartment in which the self will never be discovered.

  BODYBUILDERS

  At my gym, which you are welcome to join, all of the bodybuilders are really depressed and clutch at razors, bleeding all over the floor of the gym. At various stages of their workout they stop and see that there is really no point, because whatever machine they're working on, and whichever part of the body they're developing that particular day, ultimately, every machine is an abyss machine, one that, with every movement and every repetition and every set, only makes the abyss wider and wider, so as to more easily accommodate them. The bodybuilders pause to take all of this in, before resuming their workout.