The End of the World Book: A Novel

by Alistair McCartney

  CHRISTIANITY

  I loved the stories the nuns told us about the Christian martyrs of ancient Rome, who, refusing to renounce their faith, were torn to pieces by lions in front of a crowd of thousands gathered at the Roman Coliseum. In one of my Biblical picture books there was a drawing of these martyrs awaiting their fate. In the drawing, the Christians were all standing in a cage, their eyes lifted up toward heaven. The lions were lurking just outside, saliva dripping from their mouths. My eyes were always drawn to one martyr in particular: a teenager with tousled hair, his muscles peeping out from the holes in his rags. I also couldn't help looking at the centurion poised to open the cage and to release the martyrs into their fate, whose short tunic displayed his muscled thighs to good advantage.

  CLOUDS

  Strictly speaking, I don't know anything about them (what they're made of, etc.). It seems that all of science went in one ear and out the other, as they say. However, you should probably know that I do like them. A lot, actually. Especially those big, dark gray storm clouds, and, even more, those big inky black ones—those are really exciting.

  In fact, I'd be quite happy if there were always storm clouds on the horizon, looking lovely and threatening, like a handsome man with a touch of danger about him. I wish life was like one of those stormy, cloud-tossed, cloud-infested paintings by the nineteenth-century English Romantic painter J. W. Turner, as distinct from Turner's actual life, which doesn't sound romantic at all—apparently he was a bit of a miser, and slovenly, and he spent most of his time alone because no one really liked him.

  In the days after the two planes flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, I remember riding about on my bike, and, perhaps because no planes were flying either in or out of LAX, really noticing the clouds. As I recall, they seemed particularly impressive, not exactly stormy, more vast and white and fluffy, though, in retrospect, they probably were quite average, or perhaps even below average, and it was all a matter of perception and contrast between the clouds and the destruction.

  Either way, like most people, I spent a lot of time thinking about what had happened, trying to imagine the unimaginable—what it was like for the passengers in those planes—and looking up at the sky, thinking about clouds.

  COLDS

  I've had some good colds in my life. Childhood was full of colds, abundant with colds, like one long cold we could not shake. If childhood were a substance, it would be thick and sinister, probably very similar to that cherry-flavored cough syrup we were forced to drink out of little plastic cups. If childhood were a space, it would be narrow and bright red, like a sore throat. The night before swimming races, I would stay up all night, with the window wide open, and my mouth wide open, willing myself to have a sore throat, so I wouldn't have to participate. And you know, it worked! I've stopped avoiding things I don't want to do, but I still see boys in Speedos standing on gray concrete diving blocks, shivering, before diving into a pool filled with dark pink cough syrup.

  COMMAS

  After he fellates you, always insert a comma.

  COMMUNISM

  I would say I've been a Communist ever since I was about nine or ten and saw a picture in the World Book of an Eastern Bloc gymnast. I remember he had very pale skin, like white chalk, and dark black hair, like a blackboard freshly cleaned and waiting for propaganda. He was up on the parallel bars, wearing one of those sexy leotards with the feet in them. He had a look of grim determination on his face, and of disdain (for capitalism?) that was quite appealing. I began to have recurring fantasies that I was growing up in a Communist regime, one that was highly oppressive and took boys away from their families almost immediately.

  Although today I am still a fan of Communism, I have to say that Marx perhaps focused too much on the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. He overlooked the truly revolutionary class: the heartbroken, the romantically rejected—surely the most lumpen of the lumpen. I think he would have had more lasting success if he had taken unrequited love into account, formulating a systematic theory of heartbreak.

  If he had, the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc would surely be with us today, their bureaucracies of heartache pining away.

  Still, when we look at those images of Eastern Bloc gymnasts, we have to recognize that this was the highpoint of beauty in the twentieth century. Despite those images of Eastern Bloc supermarkets and department stores with their empty shelves and barren window displays, and of long lines of grandmothers in heavy coats and headscarves, lipstickless, holding string shopping bags, lining up for hours just to get a poor cut of meat, there was no shortage on beauty. Those Communist nations had a surfeit of it, what Marx called a surplus of loveliness. Yet no one paid enough attention to these gymnasts; they went unappreciated, going rancid like those butter mountains in the West. Everyone in the East was more interested in butter, and that's why so many of the gymnasts defected to the West, not for freedom, but to be adored. The beauty of Communist gymnasts has not been surpassed; in this sense, when people talk about the failure of Communism, they are wrong. These gymnasts are the praxis of Marx's theory, which, ultimately, succeeded.

  CORDAY, CHARLOTTE

  A week before she visited Marat, Charlotte Corday had her favorite sunbonnet heavily starched until it sat on her head like a big piece of coral. She wrote a long essay, “Speech to the French Who are Friends of Law and Peace.” The text is a seventy-two-page justification for the act she is about to commit. In it she refers to the bloody leader of the Reign of Terror by several names, including the red monster, the itching one, the author of disaster, and, somewhat obscurely, the enemy of cotton.

  After stabbing Marat through the lung, the aorta, and the left ventricle, Charlotte went into hiding at the Hotel de Providence where she composed a much shorter essay titled “What It Was Like Killing the Inflamed One.” In this text she reveals that she hid the knife in her sunbonnet, and that the knife had a very dark wooden handle. During the act, she observes, I caught a brief glimpse of his heart. She expresses concern that she may have contracted Marat's skin condition.

  We also learn that upon leaving Marat soaking in the bathtub, Charlotte noticed a crystal sugar bowl on a table and rapidly ate fourteen sugar cubes in succession: I looked in the kitchen cupboards so as to replace the sugar, she writes, but without success. Historical acts, she concludes, make one feel homesick. I already miss our little stone house in Normandy. I miss the sailors, the apples, the iron ore.

  While awaiting execution by guillotine, Charlotte had her portrait painted by a guard. Each morning he brought her cherries, at which she brightened considerably. Each evening, she washed his paintbrushes. While she sat, they talked; apparently she expressed concern and embarrassment about the mob seeing her bare neck. Charlotte's final request was for a large number of hairpins, so, when her head left her body, her sunbonnet would stay attached to her hair.

  COTTAGE, THE ENCHANTED

  I like to think that the house my boyfriend, Tim, and I live in is enchanted, just like the house in the 1945 black-and-white movie The Enchanted Cottage, starring Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire. I only saw this film once, when I was a kid, sick, on a day off from school; the most important moments of our lives occur on such days. Ever since then the images of the film have been pinned to my memory, like a row of butterflies and insects stuck to little silver pins.

  In the film, Young's character is a man called Oliver who's been horribly scarred by the war, and McGuire's character Laura is a very plain and ugly woman; no one could ever love either of them, they're both lonely beyond lonely, but—and this is where the enchanted part comes in—somehow the cottage makes them appear beautiful, both to themselves and to one another. I enjoy imagining that, just like them, Tim and I are both hideously disfigured—so much so that no one would ever want us—but the bewitched quality of our house protects us from the reality of this. As far as I can remember, eventually the enchantment wears off. Laura and Oliver realize they are still horribly ugly and d
isfigured, but they remain together and become even happier, even begin to enjoy their disfigurement.

  CRUCIFIXION, THE

  As we gaze upon Raphael's Procession to Calvary, depicting Jesus Christ and assorted company on the way to his crucifixion, although we try and focus on the unbearable sorrow of said crucifixion, on the heaviness of the big brown wooden cross that is balanced on Jesus's shoulders—surely it must be giving him terrible splinters—although we feel for his mother, Mary, who, unimaginably grief-stricken, is at the back of the line, fainting, and although we experience the magnitude of that which awaits not only Jesus but, ultimately, all of us, we find that our eyes keep wandering away from Jesus, along the length of rope: one end is securely tied around Christ's waist, the other end is being gripped by a man right in front of Jesus, assigned the dreadful responsibility of dragging Jesus, making sure he arrives to his crucifixion on time. The man has shaggy, dirty-blond hair, and although we are not usually interested in blonds, we feel as if we can make an exception given the unusual circumstances (i.e., a crucifixion). He is wearing an extremely short, pale yellow dress, very similar to the minis worn by women in the 1960s, leading us to think that the '60s began a bit earlier, quite a bit earlier in fact; it seems the '60s began on the day of Christ's death. It is precisely the length of the man's dress that causes our eyes to gravitate toward him, showing off, as it does to good advantage, his wondrous, almost miraculous, smooth alabaster, tightly muscled thighs. The man's mouth is open wide in a kind of scream but also like the mouth of a blow-up doll. Although we make every effort to follow the length of rope back to Jesus, inevitably our gaze returns to this man. It is as if the rope is tied around our waist, and he is pulling us along by our eyes. The man has been given the task all men have historically been given: that of distraction. He is distracting us from the crucifixion. If we were present on that day, undoubtedly he would have distracted us from the actual crucifixion; we would have been trying to make eye contact with him while the cross was being raised; we would have been getting his cell phone number as the nails were hammered in. Afterwards, the rope would have come in handy. We would have taken the man back to our home, or better yet, a room in an inn. We would have tied the man up and had our way with him, to try and get over the crucifixion.

  CRUCIFIXION OF GEORGE BUSH JR., THE

  After President George Bush Jr. was crucified, and after he died and was promptly resurrected, interviewers asked him what he thought of the people who had crucified him. Well, he said, in a decidedly upbeat fashion, I expect there to be dissent. That's what democracy is all about. In a free society, people should be allowed to express themselves freely, and crucify whomever they feel ought to be crucified.

  Ever since his crucifixion, it's virtually impossible to get a crucifix with Jesus on it. When I inquired at the Catholic gift shop downtown at Second and Broadway, the saleslady told me that they don't make them anymore. They only sold wooden crucifixes with George Bush on them, his smiling face and tortured body carved delicately out of gray stone.

  CRUSADES, CHILDREN'S

  In the year 1212, 30,000 boys and girls, all of them twelve and under, led by a French shepherd lad by the name of Stephen, put down their Game Boys and set off to free the Holy Land. Most of them died, either on the way there, when they were there, or on the way back. Later on, another group, this time of about 20,000 children, led by a German shepherd lad whose name was Nicholas, did the same thing and met the same fate. At home we had a book about the Crusades, complete with illustrations. It seemed that all the children had their hair cut into severe bobs and wore tunics that finished well above the knee, so it was hard to distinguish the boys from the girls. In most of the pictures there was always a big sun shining over them; the children looked thirsty. Little dark spots on their knees were meant to indicate scabs. Just a child myself, I was fascinated.

  In retrospect, I think the attraction lay in the fact that these children left childhood and did not return. In this sense, these diminutive crusaders set out not only to free the Holy Land but also to free themselves from childhood, to stop being children. The idea that one could just get up and leave childhood and never return was, and continues to be, immensely appealing.

  CRYSTAL

  Whatever you want to say about men on crystal, they're exceedingly generous and offer such easy access that, even if they're wearing tight jeans, it seems like they're wearing those baggy white pantaloons with the elastic waists more commonly worn by Pierrots, those figures you see in French pantomime. And as these men wander through the dark, sticky mazes of sex clubs and down the hospital-like corridors of bathhouses, or as they sit in the ghostly light of their computer screens, utterly still, yet roaming chat rooms like Cathy in Wuthering Heights roamed the blasted moors, they tend to have a drawn, dazed look on their faces that is a little scary, but also a little lovely, just like the pale, spooky face of a Pierrot.

  However, as the Bible says in Proverbs 9:5–7, Although it may be easy to get into the ass of a man high on crystal, perpetually greased up as he is, it is extremely difficult to wend one's way into his heart; it would be far easier to get your dick through the tiny tip of a silver sewing needle.

  That said, it is understandable that braver men than I have tried to access such hearts! Men on crystal have a faraway look in their eyes that can be quite seductive; it is a bit like the startled look found in the eyes of trolls on key chains. Indeed, some crystal addicts have claimed that when they take crystal they see tiny zombies, who, with their wild, hot pink and fluorescent green hair, look very similar to trolls; apparently, these zombies scream tiny screams directly into the addicts' eardrums.

  When men on crystal get barebacked by strangers, this faraway look in their eyes gets even further away. Their bodies become time machines in which they travel back far in time to the kingdom of sluts, a kingdom in which they are sovereign.

  CURIE, MARIE

  Most of us will spend our lives thinking about one or two things. In Marie Curie's case, it was radioactive substances and dresses. Apparently, in Paris, every day on the way to the laboratory, she used to pass by a dressmaker's. In the window was a dress. It had black stripes crossing diagonally, little black buttons like cough drops, and a frilly collar of geranium silk. Each morning she would pause for a moment in front of the window and admire the dress. Every evening, on the way back home from the laboratory, she would stop and do the same thing. She would inhale the dress like a flower that opens only at night.

  It is the kind of dress, she wrote, that makes you want to destroy all your old dresses, and be faithful only to that one dress.

  In 1898, Marie and her husband, Pierre, discovered (that is, isolated) two new elements that contained far more radioactivity than could be accounted for by the uranium itself. They named them, like one names one's children, radium and polonium.

  At the time of the discovery, Marie was wearing an ankle-length black frock, black buckled shoes (somewhat scuffed), and a white apron.

  Knowing that this discovery would bring in a little money, she immediately rushed from the laboratory down to the dress shop and asked them to hold the dress. She was so excited about the thought of finally owning that dress that she was still carrying the glass tube containing the radium in her left hand, which was shaking. She had also forgotten to take off her apron.

  You can see a picture of Madame Curie wearing this dress in the World Book, volume C, page 950. In this photograph her expression is stern. The stripes on the dress have a vibrant quality to them, like the radiation given off by radioactive things. It is said that she wore this dress constantly, including when she received the Nobel Prize in 1903. She also wore the dress one month later, when she was hospitalized for a deep depression.

  CYCLONES

  I had been looking forward to the cyclone for weeks. The weather forecast predicted this one was going to be terrible and destroy everything. My first grade teacher, Ms. Van Der Linden, handed out crayons and big sheets of b
utcher's paper and asked us to represent the cyclone. I drew a highly naturalistic representation of my family going happily about their business throughout the duration of the cyclone. I managed to slip some of the broken bits of crayons into my pocket. Ms. Van Der Linden must have been distracted, either looking out the window, daydreaming, or hunched over her desk, absorbed in correcting.

  Later, a class discussion was held on strategies for dealing with the cyclone. Perhaps, I posited, our hips are so narrow that this will allow us to slip through the so-called eye of the cyclone. On the afternoon of the cyclone, my mother was the last to arrive. Ms. Van Der Linden sat with me on a long wooden bench and held my hand while we waited for my mother, and for the cyclone. My mother and the cyclone arrived at approximately the same time. As we walked home, the cyclone was slowly getting underway; the wind was whipping up sand, which stung my bare legs. My mother and I held hands, chatting about our separate days, and walked directly into the cyclone.

  CZECH GAY PORN

  I am glad that Franz Kafka did not live to see the rise of Czech gay porn and so-called gay Euro porn. For surely he would have been utterly dismayed by the sight of such vigor, such glowing health, such strapping, cheerful boys, and such ceaseless gratification of desire.

  I suspect that right away he would have perceived there was something sinister going on beneath the surface of all those ruddy, rosy cheeks, and that something evil was dwelling within all the pastoral settings of so many of the earliest films. Kafka would have immediately identified that although the first known example of Czech gay porn did not appear until 1991, with the release of the film Farm Boys, its foundations were already being laid back in 1938, with the annexation of Czechoslovakia by Nazis who shared a similarly robust, bucolic aesthetic. He would have drawn up a timeline, which eventually would have been printed in every schoolboy's standard history textbook, on which only two dates would have appeared: 1938, for the Holocaust; and 1991, for gay Euro porn. According to this timeline, nothing else of historical consequence would have occurred between those years.