The Apocalypse Reader

by Justin Taylor (Editor)

  Daniel didn't like Cleveland winters with icy winds blowing from Lake Erie, so he moved with his family south, to Cincinnati, where there weren't many Croats, and even fewer Croatian Baptists, but that no longer mattered to him. He carried the Gospel in his heart, a portable cathedral, with two atriums and two dark Holy of Holies that were constantly washed in his own blood.

  "Let's go to Florida if you want heat," suggested Mira.

  "That would be too steamy. Besides, a hurricane might lift our house and drop it in the ocean. Or one of those rockets, if it failed in its takeoff, might fall on our house and burn it to the ground. NASA is the new Tower of Babel, I tell you. God will mix them all up, if Americans and the Chinese start working together: Not only will they lose the common languages, they'll also lose the common math that helps them blast the rockets."

  "You are crazy," Mira said. "That's one likable thing about you."

  "Why go anywhere else? It's hot enough in Cincinnati," Daniel said. "With you around." Mira, although she was forty, still had outstanding breasts and supple thighs, large and resilient, and when children weren't around, Daniel stroked her, and they frequently made love, wherever they happened to be when lust took hold of them.

  They bought a cheap house in Northside, painted the bricks all red, as was the fashion in Cincinnati.

  Even after a dozen years of being in the States, Daniel hadn't learned English; he was still improving his Greek. He worked too much, and grew ill. He got scorching pains from his kidneys down the urethra, and when he could no longer take it, he went to the hospital. He had a painful intervention, the old-fashioned way. But what pained him even more, once he recovered, was the bill for $5,000.

  He had no insurance neither did Mira, who worked as a checkout cashier in Woolworth's. Daniel paid the bill because he wanted to be a lawabiding citizen and good Christian. But now he needed to work even more, to the point of his biological limits. Why did God's punishment of Adam-In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread-affect him so much, while many other people never seemed to work; they drank bourbon while making transactions?

  He no longer had time for Greek, let alone English, and only rarely did he read the New Testament in Croatian. That pained him, but he thought that he shouldn't be selfish and work toward his own sainthood; God should understand that he needed to give his son and his daughter a chance to prosper. And once they were off to college, he'd study the Bible more assiduously than ever before.

  Marina, already sixteen, was an "A" student, but lately she had been restless; she got a driver's license and wanted to go out and have pizza with her friends all the time. She worried him. He'd sometimes take a look at her; she was a full-figured woman, who wore tight skirts. Looking at her womanly body, he felt uncomfortable, as though it was sinful to notice his daughter, and to resolve his discomfort, he shouted at her that she should wear longer skirts, and threatened to beat her if she walked out like that, nearly naked.

  "Dad, if you beat me, I'll have you arrested for child abuse."

  "You are no longer a child. You paint your lips scarlet like a harlot."

  "Dad, what do you know about harlots?" she asked, pouting her full red lips. "They don't exist in this country, do they?"

  He didn't answer but looked at her sadly. She was brazen, and he resented that. What a country, where you have no means to discipline your child, but where without discipline a girl could perish, be gobbled up by frolicking and drug-crazed mobs.

  When she turned seventeen, she eloped with a law student who attended the same church as the rest of the family. Mira blamed it on Daniel's strictness. "If you'd been more lenient, they could have dated for a while, she could have brought him home, we could have gotten to know him. You should be happy anyway. I know him from the church; she made a catch, I'd say."

  "How can we be a family if we run away from each other? Is that the American way?" To his mind, they were all, except him, Americans now. They spoke English among themselves, and his kids, from what he could tell, had no accent in English.

  Mira said to him (in Croatian, the English equivalent of this): "Don't worry, later she'll be in touch with us-when you calm down."

  "Yeah, when he impregnates and abandons her."

  "Why do you never see the bright side? He's a good Christian."

  "Do good Christians elope?"

  "You should know. Jacob with Rachel and Leah."

  "Oh, in that case ... Jacob actually waited awhile first-for fourteen years. These kids waited for fourteen minutes at the most." But, he was glad. Things might be easier now. At least he wouldn't have to save for her education.

  Tony was a "B" student, not brilliant but steady. He helped with painting houses, and maybe he'd be an "A" student, thought Daniel, if those fumes hadn't gotten to him as well. So he owed it to his son, to send him away to college.

  Daniel and Tony watched TV evangelists; Daniel liked the idea that you could worship at home, together with a million people at the same time. One Sunday morning they watched Schuyler interview a former Miss America, who had failed to win the competition in her state, and then prayed for a year, believing that God would help her, and God blessed her so that she not only won her state competition, but the nationals as well. "If you want something, believe that God will give it to you. If you want to be Miss America, pray and believe, and you'll be Miss America." That's what Miss America said, and Schuyler agreed with her and repeated it. Daniel laughed. "No matter what I believed, I could never become Miss America. I'd be lucky if I became an American. What nonsense. One more false prophet. Switch off the TV, son."

  YEARS PASSED. Now and then the Markoviches got cards from their married daughter, who lived in Seattle. On Sundays, overworked Daniel needed to sleep; church was in his bed, where he celebrated Sabbath, the seventh day, in perfect rest, supine and sometimes prostrate, as if in prayer, and he couldn't keep his bloodshot eyes open. By now he'd lost most of his hair, but in compensation, grew a red beard.

  Mira and Tony, now a senior at U.C., attended services at a neighborhood Baptist church. One morning, Mira said to Daniel, "Come, let's go to church, at least your English will improve."

  "For that I can watch TV," he said. "Or better yet, read the word of God."

  "Your soul will improve."

  "If work doesn't, I don't know what will improve it. I need rest, wife, not stiff benches. My back hurts."

  "Go see a chiropractor."

  "But that's a witch doctor, isn't it? How can you recommend one and go to church? They are too expensive anyway. To pay to see one, I'd have to work one more day and hurt myself."

  "And how do you think you'll pass the citizenship test if you can't even understand the questions?"

  "Good question. Let me rest."

  He fell asleep on their orange sofa and snored even before the sun set.

  In the morning, he woke up Tony to go out and work. "Got to pay for school," he said. With nostalgia, he thought of the old days in Yugoslavia, where higher education was free.

  They drove to Hyde Park in their Toyota pickup with ladders on top. On the way they stopped for coffee at Dairy Queen. Tony picked up a newspaper, and as they drove on, he said, "Dad, look at this, there's a war in Croatia."

  "Nonsense."

  "Why, look at this, in Dal) near the Danube Bridge, Yugoslav forces killed seventy-two Croatian policemen."

  "Really? What else does it say?" He spilled hot coffee over his white shirt. "But that's not war," he said. "Just several dozen people killed."

  "And to you that's normal?" Tony asked.

  "Not normal, just not war."

  "What is war then?"

  "Big armies attacking each other, not just incidents."

  But while he painted he was worried and absentminded. His wrists hurt, swollen with arthritis. His brush strokes often went over window sills, and he had to wipe the paint. A kid's room that was supposed to be half red, half blue, he painted all blue in quick rolls, with the blue paint dripping from th
e ceiling onto his paper cap and brows. He'd made a cap out of the New York Times.

  DURING THE CITIZENSHIP test, Daniel could understand almost no questions.

  "Maybe we should wait," said the officer. "You must be able to speak English to participate in our democracy. How will you know what you're voting for if you can't understand the language? Out of five questions, you got only one right, that Bush is the president."

  "I know. I learn," Daniel said. "Ask more."

  The officer, a middle-aged black woman, said, "All right. Who is the governor of Ohio?"

  "Voinovich!" Daniel exclaimed. He knew-there were so few people from Yugoslavia in politics, and here was one. Although Voinovich was a Serb, Daniel was proud of him-it made it easier in a way to be a "vich" in Ohio. "And Kucinich was the mayor of Cleveland," he said.

  "We don't have to worry about Cleveland right now," the officer said and scrutinized him. "All right, you pass. Welcome to the United States of America!"

  "Thank you, thank you!" he said.

  As HE PULLED out of the parking lot on Court Street, he said to Tony and Mira: "Can you believe it, the Serb governor's name saved me from flunking the citizenship test. You never know where help will come from."

  "It's amazing," said Tony.

  "I was so worried that you wouldn't make it," Mira said. "We are all Americans now, can you believe it? Isn't it great?"

  "Sure thing," said Tony. "Except, who's going to believe Dad? He speaks English so badly."

  "At least they'll believe you," said Daniel. "Especially when they draft you. You had to say you'd bear arms for this country, didn't you?"

  DANIEL WAS PROUD of being an American, and as a true American, he watched the six o'clock news every night after work, and later CNN. Although he still spoke with a heavy accent and without much grammar, he understood English. And when one hot morning he got the news that his hometown, Pakrac, in Croatia was attacked by Serb irregulars backed by the Yugoslav Federal Army, he did not go to work. He tried to call his old uncle who lived on the eastern side of the Pakra river-he couldn't get through. He couldn't get through to any members of his family in Croatia. He grew anxious, and read the Bible but found little comfort.

  DANIEL BOUGHT A shortwave radio and listened to the news every night. He got Croatian radio, BBC, Deutsche Welle. There was a report of the Pakrac hospital being bombed, and another of Vukovar being surrounded by 20,000 troops, and people massacred. Gradually, he managed to hear from most of his relatives, but he still feared for their lives. But even more he feared for their souls; most of them were atheists.

  Vukovar fell three months later, and Daniel's life went on as usual; after work he watched CNN and listened to the pulsing shortwaves on the radio until he fell asleep.

  A COUPLE OF years later the war in Croatia was at a standstill and the war in Bosnia reached a high pitch; some of Daniel's relatives from the vicinity of Banja Luka disappeared. One day as he worked and worried, painting wooden siding in a Hyde Park house among many large trees, he saw a blonde woman in a tennis skirt nimbly stretching on the floor. He gazed at her strong muscular and smoothly feminine thighs and her freckled cleavage as she bent to touch her Nikes with her fingers. Daniel's ladder shook and scraped on the wood siding.

  "Oh, goodness, you'll fall if you don't watch out," she said.

  "That's the problem. I watch."

  "Let me hold your ladder," she said.

  He was leaning over the tall window, his knees at her eye level.

  She grabbed the ladder.

  "Not necessary," he said. "It's firm."

  "Is it?" she said and touched his crotch. Like a youngster, he got an instant erection. "Oh, that's a compliment," she said. "My husband doesn't react like that to me. Thank you, my friend." She spoke up into his crotch, and it wasn't clear to him whether she was talking to him, or to a part of him. She sounded delighted at any rate. She unzipped his jeans, and held his penis in her hands. With a brush laden with dripping white paint, which sprinkled over her hedges along the house, and another hand holding on to the bucket of paint, he couldn't defend himself, unless he said something, and he couldn't think right away what he could say that wouldn't be rude. And by the time he could think to say something, like "You are beautiful but I am a married Christian and therefore this is not the right thing to do," he felt tremors of lust and a delicious comfort in yielding to what was happening with such dexterity; her gently sliding nails made his lower abdomen twitch.

  Daniel moved, bending lower a little bit, and he put the brush on the can of paint, and fastened the can along the ladder; the hairs on his forearm got stuck in a screw. Probably thinking that he wanted to jump into the room, she said, "Oh no, this is a fine arrangement. You keep doing your thing, I'll do mine if you don't mind."

  When he came, he was flushed, with sweat drenching his shirt. "This is fun," she said. "Why don't you come here tomorrow, and we'll play some more through the window?"

  "But job done today."

  "I know. We could do a bigger one tomorrow."

  After this Daniel felt a mixture of shame and guilt. What's the big deal, he thought. It happens. It's not like I have done anything. I just stood there; she did it. What choice did I have? But that reminded him of Adam's excuse in the Garden of Eden. She did it. Why be selfish and worry about himself; he had to worry about his relatives in the Balkans. So what if he wasn't a saint?

  THAT EVENING HE went to a gathering of Croatian immigrants at a winery, Vinoklet, in the suburbs of Cincinnati. The sun was setting colorfully over the vineyards, and Daniel had the impression that he was in his native region. A Croatian engineer who ran the winery had nearly replicated his native landscape here-rolling hills with rows of vines, greenish fish ponds, and scattered groves of apple trees. At the entrance to the winery, a sign read, "Warning: consumption of our wines in moderate amounts creates an aura of well being that may lead to pregnancy."

  Passionate emigres gave speeches about the importance of writing letters to the White House, to the state senator, to alert them that there was a large Croatian population that wanted something done to stop the war in Bosnia with a fair settlement for the Croatian minority. "You can all give twenty dollars apiece to hire someone who will send the messages to the White House by e-mail if you don't have the time for it."

  Daniel gave, and then drank the wines, "Tears of Joy" and "Sunset Blush." He chatted with a man who had lost his arm in World War II; he enjoyed speaking Croatian and feeling like he was not a foreigner. "I was just a lad then," the man said. "I was harvesting in a little wheatfield when Chetniks came, surrounded us, and took us to Knin, where they hacked us with knives. I woke up in a mound of bodies, and crawled out. A nurse helped me, and I was between life and death for months, and for ten years my wound kept festering, until I finally recovered, probably thanks to wine. I love wine."

  "Probably God saved you. Not wine."

  "Maybe the Virgin saved me."

  "Which one?" Daniel asked.

  "As far as I can tell, you don't mind being saved by wine either, my friend, do you?" The man laughed loudly, with a smell of garlic and wine coming out of him.

  True, Daniel was drunk, as he hadn't been in years. He realized that although he liked the man he didn't like arguing with Catholics, and if campaigning for Croatia meant simply campaigning for Catholics, he wasn't enthusiastic. But he had to do something to help his relatives. He had another glass of red wine.

  And next morning, he had a headache. He listened to the news about a great earthquake somewhere in China, a flood in northern Europe, further starvation in Somalia, and more massacres in Rwanda.

  The accumulation of so much trouble at once made him feel uneasy, especially since he felt guilty that he had drunk so much the night before and even worse, that he had enjoyed a woman's playing with him, and that at night, he had awakened, wishing she were holding him again. And so, penitently, he read from the Bible, in Croatian, the equivalent of this English translation (Matthew
24:3, 6-7):

  And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? (3)

  [And Jesus answered]. . . And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled.- for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. (6)

  For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. (7)

  Daniel panicked. The end of the world was coming. He did not know how fast-maybe there was a year to live. And he was not ready.

  He told his wife-who was doing crossword puzzles, proud that she had such a good command of English-that the end of the world was at hand.

  "Of course it is," she said.

  "But why do we take on mortgage then, why do we save for retirement?"

  "That's different-so that you wouldn't pay taxes, silly."

  "So you believe the end is near?"

  "Depends on how you look at it. Nobody knows when exactly, and people have waited for generations."

  "Yes, but now there are more wars and earthquakes than ever after Christ."

  "How do we know that?"

  "Don't tell me you're a skeptic, you go to church."

  "Yes, as a matter of fact, I am going there right now. I don't want to worry about the end of the world; that'll take care of itself."

  He admired his wife's attitude, and her straight posture as she walked out, and he stayed troubled. She no longer worked as a department-store cashier, but as a real-estate agent.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Daniel went to Mira's Baptist church, and knocked on the minister's door. A chubby minister with a tight shirt buttoned on top-he literally had a red neck-opened the door. They had met before, because for religious holidays Daniel still visited the church.