by Andrew Biss
I sat down at one of the chairs, feeling somewhat dejected. True, I’d secured room and board for my immediate future, and Mrs. Anna, despite her terse manner, seemed like someone solid and reputable that I could trust and feel protected by in way – like a father figure, if you will. But still.
“Yes…yes, thank you,” I muttered, as appreciatively as I could.
Mrs. Anna nodded at me stiffly and stuffed the money into a small pocket in the waist of her grubby-looking apron. She turned to leave and was almost through the door, when she suddenly stopped and turned, fixing me with a cold glare from her tired eyes.
“One more thing,” she said.
“Yes?” I replied, imagining it to be another of her eclectic house rules that she’d forgotten to mention the first time around.
“Now that you’re here – and for what it’s worth – welcome to The End of the World.”
With that she turned and left, closing the kitchen door behind her – a little too loudly and forcefully than was necessary in my opinion, but it was her door and her house, so I would just have to adapt.
I sat there for a moment, collecting my thoughts, and surveyed the scene around me a little closer. Neglect was one of the first words that sprang to mind. Clearly, this enterprise hadn’t been inspected and approved for many a moon. It was quite apparent that none of the cash flow, such as it could be, went into the upkeep of the business. Just as I was beginning to toy with the idea that Mrs. Anna might not, in fact, be the morally upright role model I’d initially imagined her to be, but instead something of a slumlord – or lady – I was suddenly disturbed by the sound of something scuttling across the floor, right next to my feet. I looked down, ready to be repulsed, but saw nothing. Whatever it was had come and gone before my senses even had a chance to get a bearing on it. I decided it was high time that I retired for the evening.
I recalled that Mrs. Anna had instructed me to climb the stairs and turn to the right. The only problem was, when I reached the top of the stairs the only option was to turn left, as to the right there was only a wall. So left I headed, looking for my new temporary home – room 12c.
The hallway was dimly lit and had a faint odour of something that smelled like a mixture of potato peelings and raw meat. I peered at the numbers on the doors in the half-light trying not to make any noise, but the floor beneath me creaked with every step, and unless my ears were deceiving me, I heard a gentle “Shhh” whispered as I passed each door. My task was not made any easier by the fact that the doors were not numbered sequentially, the first door being numbered 3a, but the one right next to it claiming to be 17b. No matter, I continued on up the hallway, which seemed at times to be endless. I was about to give up, imagining I’d misheard Mrs. Anna’s instructions, when I noticed one last door at what appeared to be the very end of the hall. In the dimness I strained to make out the numbers on the door, which appeared longer than the others. When my eyes adjusted, I saw that it read simply ‘12 – see?’
I gently pushed open the door, half expecting to hear an ominous creaking sound like the ones in horror movies as I did so. Instead it made no noise at all, but was accompanied by another whispered “Shhh,” which made me jump a little. The room was very dark, but I could just make out a bed near the window, on the far side of the room. I groped around the wall in search of a light switch, but to no avail, so I decided to just aim for the bed and fall asleep as fast as possible. As I got closer, though, there appeared to be the shape of someone already lying in the bed. I froze. Had I got the wrong room after all? Perhaps there was a 12 – see? and a 12c, the latter being located in a separate area of the house. I looked back at the bed again, but this time there was no shape of any figure lying inside it, just a flat, neatly made bed. I breathed a sigh of relief and climbed in between the sheets immediately, fully-clothed in case I should have cause to leave in a hurry.
I closed my eyes and tried very hard to concentrate on bright happy thoughts to fill my mind with as I slipped into sleep. Unfortunately, my attempts to summon bunny rabbits and fields of daisies were beaten back by images of firearms, dark, empty streets, my mother’s head bobbing up and down in my father’s lap, and, for some unknown reason, the face of former U.S. figure skating champion Michelle Kwan. Just as I was about to give up and return to the kitchen in search of a cup of cocoa, I suddenly felt my mind getting hazy, my thoughts more laboured, my grip on consciousness ever…weaker…and…and…
CHAPTER FOUR
Luka
The next morning I awoke refreshed from sleep and ready to face any challenge my new life placed before me. At least, that’s what I’d tried to tell myself. In reality the mattress was thin and hard, I woke up countless times throughout the night consumed by thoughts of worst-case scenarios, and, unless I was very much mistaken, the person occupying the room adjacent to mine was prone to fits of manic hysteria.
I arrived at the breakfast table at 7:30am sharp, as had been so stringently requested by Mrs. Anna. To my surprise, however, I discovered that not only was I the only person in attendance, there was also no food to be found. I called out to see if there was anyone lingering in the immediate vicinity, but there was no response, only the sound of a child giggling that seemed to emanate from somewhere beneath the floorboards. Just as I began to wonder whether my time-keeping regimen had been disrupted by the foreign nature of my circumstances, the door suddenly opened.
A woman with long, dark, unkempt hair that almost covered her face stood in the doorway. She appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Her clothes were worn and tattered, her deportment that of one whose will had been broken. She stood there, staring out ahead for some time before at last speaking, her voice monotone, with an accent that sounded Eastern European to my ears.
“They say it’s going to rain.”
“Well, good morning to you,” I said, brightly. “I’m Valentine – I’m new here.”
She didn’t answer; she simply ambled despondently to the kitchen table and sat in one of the chairs across from me, her expression unmoved.
“What’s your name?” I inquired.
There was another silence. After a while, she looked towards the ceiling, sighed, and said mournfully, “I detest the rain.”
“Do you really?” I replied, hoping that by following her line of conversation, such as it was, I might bring her out of her shell a bit. “I find it quite comforting. There’s nothing I like better than lying in bed and hearing the sweet, melancholic sound of raindrops gently tapping against the windowpane.”
“It is an accursed noise. An indictment of us all. The tears and cries of countless butchered souls, the nameless, faceless dead throughout history come back to haunt us…to remind us.”
My attempt to generate a little light conversation didn’t appear to be working terribly well. But I wasn’t giving up.
“Yes, well that’s…that’s certainly another way of looking at it, I suppose. And a very valid one. What about snow?” I asked, optimistically.
Another silence ensued. Eventually she emitted another deep sigh and attempted to move some of the lank strands of hair away from her face. I was beginning to feel very awkward.
“Did I miss breakfast?” I asked, hoping that a change in tack on the conversation front might help lift her from her doldrums, not to mention the fact that I was genuinely starting to feel quite hungry.
“Hah! How typical of your Western mentality – more concerned with your gut than your conscience.”
It wasn’t quite the response I’d hoped for, but still, it was a start. “Well, no, I just…it’s just that Mrs. Anna was very specific about breakfast time. If I’ve missed it, it doesn’t really matter. I’m never that hungry first thing anyway,” I lied.
“So what? What are you trying to say? That Mrs. Anna is a liar?”
“No, no, of course not. I was simply…I was just trying to abide by the rules.”
“Hah! Rules. What do you know of rules? You’re just a baby,” she j
eered, suddenly more animated than before.
“Well…without wishing to sound disagreeable, I am actually a fully-grown adult and I do believe in playing by them.”
“You’re an arrested child – it’s plain for any fool to see. You know not rules. Rules are tools and only as worthy as the hands they’re placed in.”
The conversation seemed to be taking a turn for the worse. However, I certainly wasn’t about to back down on a point of principle.
“Be that as it may, I distinctly remember being told quite categorically that breakfast would be served at 7:30am on the dot, and so here I am.”
“And if someone told you that you were a cow you would squeeze your breasts and offer me milk, I suppose?”
“I…I don’t know that that’s–”
“Words! What are words? Words are not important; it’s deeds that matter,” she cried.
“Yes, indeed. And serving breakfast is a deed.”
“There is no food. You must go hungry like the hordes of wretched souls you never gave a second thought to – except for the few guilt-ridden seconds when reading your newspapers and chewing your toast, only to turn the page to smaller tales of smaller pains that caused you smaller sadness. Here you must go hungry. No matter how you saw yourself before, here…here you are nothing…nothing special.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve no desire to appear difficult, but I paid good money to retain the services of this establishment and I think I have a right to expect what I was promised,” I insisted, beginning to feel a little hot under the collar.
“You can expect what you want but you’ll get what you’re given. Your money doesn’t talk here. The only thing you will get here is what you deserve. Everybody does eventually – at The End of the World.”
Her combative tone triggered an aggressive aspect of my personality that I rarely ever gave public voice to, but in this instance I felt compelled to vigorously express my displeasure.
“Let me say first of all that ‘what I deserve’ has a judgmental tone to it that I find wholly displeasing, especially from someone who has known me for all of five minutes. Secondly, my money is as good as anyone else’s and when I part with it I expect something in return. Now, I was promised a full English breakfast and that is what I intend to receive. However, if you are some sort of agent of Mrs. Anna, sent here to dissuade me from expecting what is rightfully mine, I would respectfully ask that you identify yourself as such now so that we can draw a halt to this ridiculous charade.”
“Strong words from such a small child,” she said, flipping away a greasy lock of hair from her eyes.
I was still feeling decidedly agitated. “I will ask you one more time and I expect to receive a straightforward answer. To the best of your knowledge, have I or have I not missed breakfast?”
“How should I know? I just arrived,” she shrugged.
“Oh. Oh, I…I just assumed that–”
“Of course you did. You people always assume you know so much about those around you when the truth is you know nothing.”
“Actually, I think it’s you that’s doing the assuming, but never mind. Anyway, it looks like we’ve both missed breakfast.”
For the first time she looked me directly in the eye, her plaintive expression unchanged.
“I am not missing breakfast. I am not missing food. How can I miss breakfast when I am missing my stomach?”
“You’re missing…I’m sorry, what was that?”
“I have no stomach for food. I have no stomach. You understand, yes? It was blown apart by a 12-gauge shotgun.”
“Your…your stomach?”
“A man from a neighbouring village – a man I had known since I was a child – he blew it to pieces in search of a Greater Serbia. Overnight I changed from being a fellow resident to a filthy rodent. People can be so fickle, no? And grudges run so deep. Then he turned his gun on my daughter – my screaming, petrified little girl. So, yes, now I am missing my stomach…and my child.”
I stared at her in shock and disbelief. “I…I don’t know what to say, I’m…I’m quite speechless.”
“And I am quite stomachless.”
“But…but doesn’t it…hurt?”
“What’s to hurt? There’s nothing there.”
“But how…how could anyone…do such a thing?”
“Why not? People can be dead and living at the same time, no? Don’t you know that by now? He was living but feeling nothing – nothing but resentment and suspicion and anger. There are those that are dead inside but still take breath. You would do well to remember this, little boy,” she said, her eyes squinted as if to underscore the weight of her words.
“But it makes no sense. It’s senseless – cruel and senseless.”
“You ask for reason from such people? I was Muslim – that was all that mattered. He saw my faith as skin deep. So he thought if he destroyed the skin he destroyed the faith. But as you can see…he was mistaken.”
She threw her head back with exaggerated pride, as people sometimes do when trying to convince themselves they’ve won, while knowing full well they lost.
“I can’t…I cannot believe someone could be so…I mean, how could they? How could that happen? Why didn’t someone stop him?”
“What, you don’t have television? All your Western advancements don’t include the television set? You see, you hear, you know. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
“Yes, but…”
“What, you don’t like reality TV? Or it’s not reality until you find yourself sitting face to face with it at the breakfast table, is that it? Well, who can blame you really, sitting there in your comfortable home, looking at the terrible images and feeling so bad? It’s not your fault. You didn’t cause it, after all – who can blame you? Except me…looking at you – all of the power and asleep at the wheel. Do we intervene or don’t we? What will it cost us? Will we be re-elected if we act? It’s a human catastrophe. It’s abhorrent. We deplore it. We condemn it. We do nothing. Better to wait…wait until the killing is done. East Timor, Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sudan…so many conflicts, so many conflicting opinions, so much talk, and so much death. So they pick and choose their humanitarian gestures with the steely eye of a seasoned gambler. The scales of power are laden with guilt, cleansed by a moral cause, and replenished by a lucrative book deal upon retirement. And on it goes. But I am too tired for this. I’ve had enough.”
She stood up and looked around the room with cold detachment. “I will go to my room now,” she said, impassively.
“It’s…it’s a miracle you’re alive…to have gotten here…to be able to tell your story,” I said, part of me not wanting her to leave, secretly hoping she might feel inclined to go into more detail on her harrowing ordeal.
“Where? Here? It’s The End of the World – we all get here eventually.”
“Be as modest as you like, I think you’re…I’m in awe.”
“You’re in shock. You have no idea, do you? You are like a canvass half started – the rudiments are there but it will remain forever incomplete.”
She eyed me up and down for a while and then said something that even under these circumstances I still found the ability to be shocked by.
“And yet I find you unconventionally attractive,” she said, toying with one of her greasy tresses. “Perhaps you want to have sex with me?”
I was completely taken aback. “Oh, I-I…um…”
“Yes?”
“Nothing, it’s just that I…I…”
“What? You don’t have the stomach for it?”
“No, no, I-I-I just…”
“Forget it. It wasn’t important. I don’t care for the sex anyway – just the connection, you understand.”
As she began to cross towards the door, I felt relieved but also acutely embarrassed at the same time. I mumbled a stuttering apology.
“I’m sorry, it’s not that I’m…or that you’re…I mean, you’re very…”
She stopped and turned
back, wearing something that vaguely resembled a look of irony on her face.
“Little boy, when I was 6-years old I was raped by my uncle. When I was all grown up I was raped by seven drunken Serbs at gunpoint, then with a gunpoint, then later with an empty vodka bottle – so don’t try to spare my feelings…they’re long gone.”
She contorted her face into a kind of half-smile.
“Another time, perhaps?” she said, wearily.
Before she’d completely disappeared out of the door, I suddenly leapt from my chair and called out to her, realising something very important.
“Wait! You…I don’t even know your name.”
She looked back, dismissively. “Names? What good are names? We all have the same one eventually.”
“Yes, but…but even so.”
“Very well,” she shrugged, just before taking her leave. “If it makes such a difference to you. My name is Luka – I live on the second floor.”
Why did that ring a bell? Had I met her before? It seemed unlikely given the limited contact with the outside world my parents had permitted me. Nevertheless, it was all beginning to feel like a bad dream with no alarm clock to draw it to a halt. I considered going back to sleep and trying to wake up again, but the thought of that mattress quickly undermined what little motivation I had for the idea. I concluded that food depravation must surely be the root cause of my mental disorientation. I decided to raid the refrigerator.
CHAPTER FIVE
Hank
It was a very old, decrepit-looking refrigerator, which was not surprising considering the general dowdiness and lack of upkeep that Mrs. Anna seemed to have adopted as her signature style. It was also extraordinarily large, at least four times as big as the one my parents owned. Having a small refrigerator was never an issue for us, however, as my mother rarely cooked – which was a blessing, as her occasional attempts at Boeuf Bourguignon or Chicken Kiev usually ended up with billowing plumes of acrid smelling smoke filling the house, stinking it up for days afterwards. Most of the time she’d have food delivered, though would never answer the door herself as she considered all delivery men to be potential rapists. It was always left to me when the doorbell rang. “Valentine,” she’d cry out, “The PR’s here.”