It has been my privilege to be one of those pictures—controversial, understood by some, mysterious to others. I was born in Wales, thirty minutes drive from Bangor, next to a beautiful hostel in Bryn Gwynant on 8.13.89, at 11:37 A.M., to an Olympus mother and a Kodak father. Two of my sisters were amateurishly overexposed, leaving twenty-two of us in the hands of the midwife, a salesman named Kobi. He and his wife went on vacation with their good friends, a recently married couple—a righter and an English teacher. My birthplace was a deep-green pitch of dew-soaked grass, littered with three scarlet-stained cigarette butts. In the background, a mountain flank plunged into the sea, placing the springy grass and the water on a single plane. The sky was decorated with an armada of feathery clouds and the wind brought with it the news of a premature autumn.
The righter and the English teacher were in the middle of the frame: He—a thin man with spiky brown hair, big blue eyes, and protruding cheekbones—in faded jeans and a red T-shirt and she—a thin woman with brown hair that fell to her shoulders, slanted blue eyes, full cheeks, and a long swan neck—in a violet-colored velvet dress. They were facing my mother, wrapped in an embrace. My mother giggled naughtily just as Kobi pressed the button, perhaps forecasting what was about to take place. Moments before, a sheep sauntered across the lawn and helped herself to some breakfast while getting rid of dinner. The two people that took her spot on the lawn had no idea what they were standing on, which most likely explains why they didn’t pay any attention to the joyous bleating from behind a large tree as the sheep watched the woman slip, the man try to arrest her fall, and the two of them tumbling together on the olive-like pellets from her intestines. My mother managed to capture the very moment of the fall. The two of them, laughing hysterically, looking at Kobi, asking him not to take the picture as he, to our good fortune, snapped three quick shots. Two, as I said earlier, were overexposed, and only your humble servant remains. The hug that preceded me, and the buffoonery in the pellets that followed, are both gone. Only the comic fall remains. If I’m not mistaken, the couple was more than happy to leave the picture with Kobi and his wife. Maybe they had enough pictures of themselves. Maybe, since I was a product of the friend’s camera, he was supposed to develop an extra copy, but due to a careless mistake, he tossed my dad into the trash and I was all that remained. All gloating aside, it would be perfectly reasonable to say that I am a natural survivor.
A word, if you will, on the matter of survival. In the moment before birth each picture is promised that she will live forever. That is the essence of our existence: immortality. We are the scraps of life you decide to save. But how, for God’s sake, are we supposed to live forever if you let us collect dust, turn yellow, crumble, tear, burn, and die? In a just world, you all would have been forced to answer for criminal abuse!
This Kobi character takes the picture without noticing that a loose hair has slipped out of his slacker ponytail, swooping down in front of my mother’s womb at the critical moment. That, my friends, is abuse! I’ll always carry that strand of hair on my upper right corner! The bubble of perfection was popped pre-partum and I haven’t even mentioned the maltreatment I received at the hands of him and his wife. You brought me into this world, thank you very much! You shoved me into an album along with my sisters: thanks again. You did not open that album once in ten years and you know what? I don’t even mind the indifference, I can bear the affront, but what have you got against aerating? Let’s see you live in the house for ten years without opening a window. Why can’t you understand that each and every one of us needs to be framed and placed in a visible spot, like that kitschy one with you and the kid, who, by the way, is gravely undernourished, if you haven’t noticed.
For an entire decade, we’ve been suffocating in the coffin you crafted for us, you ingenious humans, and you still don’t get it. The picture of you two hugging at the castle in Cardiff, okay; the fragrant landscape shots, fine; but did you forget what the wife of the righter stepped in? All my sisters keep a more than polite distance, turning their noses, yearning for me to depart. I learned to live with the burden, and you could say that my nose-holding sisters learned to live with the smell, but then, all of a sudden, a decade later, you decide to open the album and pull me out. How exciting! Someone’s finally paying attention to me. My sisters breathe easy. We all wonder where I’m going.
Shockingly, you give me to the old geezer. I don’t even want to go into the insults he hurled at me; let’s just say that I wish him a long life and a brutal senility. From the moment that appalling artist shoved me in his pocket, I knew I was in danger. I spent a whole month lying in his pants, dying of boredom. I wanted to scream—since when do we fold a photograph, ay?! But the fool had a stroke and I had to suffer through his repulsive shudders. Thank heavens they force patients to wear a uniform, or I would have spent a month at that depressing hospital. Luckily, his wife took his pants and threw them over the couch in the guest room. Just like that, for a month, as if I was worthless. At the end of the month, Kobi and his wife arrived at the artist’s house and asked for me back. They mumbled something about me being the only picture they had of the righter and his wife, and that they’d love to get me back in the album. The old lady didn’t waste any time. She fished around in the pocket and returned me to them.
I returned to my owners with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was upset by the way they carted me off a month before; on the other, life in the coffin was better than wasting away in a ratty pair of pants, especially if you take into account the horror stories I’ve heard about the washing machine. Kobi’s wife put me in her pocketbook, forever changing my fate. They thanked the artist’s wife and then decided to stop for coffee on the way home. After an hour at the café, pleased to have me back in their custody, about to order the check, the woman excused herself to go to the bathroom, saying she’d be just a minute. Kobi laughed and joined her. The surreptitious smiles didn’t elude me. It wasn’t the first time, and I imagine it wasn’t the last. But it was the last time they saw me.
The shamefully libidinous couple forgot the bag under the table. Five minutes after they got up, a young woman, with the look of a starving college student, walked into the café. With truly shocking nonchalance, she spotted the forsaken bag, picked it up, slung it over her shoulder, left a small tip, and walked out. I shuddered, knowing I was in the hands of a criminal. She bolted out of the place and only slowed to a walk at the corner, where she went through the bounty. She opened the wallet and smiled. Crime pays well. She searched for other valuables and only then noticed me. She pulled me out, looked at me briefly, and flicked me to the sidewalk. I was devastated. I knew it was the end of me. A picture on the sidewalk? How can you extricate yourself from that type of situation? Desperate, I cursed the thief, lay down on my back, and waited. Shortly, any moment now, they’ll step on me, trample me, throw me … throw?
Yes, after less than a moment the wind came to my aid. She came out of nowhere, a strong cold gust that lifted me off the face of the sidewalk and pressed me close to two intertwined plastic bags, the three of us flying as an improvised kite. I tasted freedom for the first time in my life—no albums, no frames, and, most importantly, none of you, people. Even though I feared the fall, I enjoyed every moment. The inevitable happened in the early evening. The wind tired and I found myself torn from my random friends, landing at the entrance to the new Central Bus Station. Trying to escape the stampede of passengers, I felt a small hand lift me up. I looked at him and screamed. A kid. A kid. They’re the worst. Wild, cruel, dirty, heedless. His fingers were oily and I remember how disgusted I was when he smeared my edges with lamb- and onion-smelling paws. I almost barfed. I wanted him to get rid of me so bad, but the little idiot just folded me up and stuck me in his pocket. The woman by his side hustled him along. The two of them entered the station, got on the down escalator, and waited for the bus. While the louse petted me inside his pocket, I cursed Kobi with everything I had. They got on the bus, paid, and sat d
own. The bus pulled out of the station. He took me out of his pocket and looked at me covertly, like some kind of spy. Then he picked his head up and stared at the woman sitting opposite him. The woman next to him, most likely his mother, asked him a question, which he didn’t answer. She turned back to him and said it was impolite to stare.
He whispered something in her ear and showed me to her. She looked at me, looked at the woman opposite them, turned to her, and said something like, “I’m sorry but I think you may have dropped this.…”
The woman smiled bewilderedly, took me in her hands, arched her eyebrows, and thanked her. The kid started to cry like mad, “It’s mine! It’s mine!” The blushing mother asked him to calm down. The bus came to a stop. The woman got off, looked at me again, this time intently, bent over, opened her bag, and threw me inside. Two days have passed and I’m still in the dark. I hope with all my heart that she’ll be kind to me and, for heaven’s sake, will pull me out of this gloomy place.
6
Dead Prefer Blondes
Ben couldn’t decide what shocked him more: the fact that the woman who opened the door wasn’t Marian; the fact that she flashed him the most famous smile in the history of womankind; the fact that she had dyed her hair a charcoal black, taking away her hallmark; or, perhaps, the sudden realization that she wasn’t who she pretended to be. She sighed petulantly and signaled him to wait. Then she took off down the long hall of her apartment, disappeared into a room, rattled and rummaged, finally returned with a Polaroid camera, bent down, pressed her face against his, called out “cheese!” and pushed the button. Embarrassed, Ben looked at the photo she shoved his way. The frozen and forced smile on his face lent him the expression of the ultimate idiot. However, he made up his mind not to call her bluff.
“Here,” she said, “you can show everyone you had your picture taken with me. What more could you want? Please, sir, please, just take it and leave. Arthur is supposed to be back any minute now.”
He furrowed his brow, thinking about the prosperous industry of look-alikes in the previous world and wondering whether “Arthur” was “the” Arthur Miller, or, strangely enough, a look-alike of the famous playweight, then handed back the picture. “I’ve got no use for it,” he said, shrugging.
“Marilyn” smiled faintly. “Do you know how much this picture is worth?”
Ben snatched the picture, glanced at it, and stared at her condescendingly. “I’m sorry, Ms. Monroe. I’m of the mind that you earned every compliment you ever got … but I swear, I am not a fan. I came here with one thing in mind, to find my wife.”
“Your wife? Why did you think you’d find her here?”
Concentrating on her face, he responded with a question. “Why do you live here? Shouldn’t you be living in 1962?”
Her face soured. “Don’t you think I’m tired of moving from place to place? I have no choice. They always find me. They always find their way to my new apartment and force me to move.” After a ponderous silence, she asked in astonishment, “You’re really not a fan?”
Ben shook his head. “This place belongs to my wife, Marian Mendelssohn. I actually still don’t understand why you took her apartment; it seems a lot like trespassing.”
“You think I need to trespass? I have a good friend who finds abandoned places with my initials for me. I move every year. And before you even ask, yes, a lot more people loiter around apartments with the initials N.J.B., thinking I’m undercover with my old name.”
“Did you ever consider changing your name?” Ben asked, immediately regretting the question.
A tremor of desperation slipped into her gleaming smile. “Even if my name was Florence Nightingale they’d find me. The move just buys me two or three months of quiet till they come again.”
“If your fans find you everywhere, why don’t you just go live with Arthur? The way I see it, all your problems would be solved if…”
“Marilyn” raised a finger to her lips. Her face dull with boredom, she answered in a sleepy voice, as though she were saying this for the thousandth time, “because of the AACM.”
She groaned at the sight of Ben’s blank face, and said, “We’ll make this short, okay? As I’m sure you know, in the Other World you can change your name in one direction and one direction only. You can cut it short but you can’t make it longer. I’m talking about the name you had when you left the previous world. Mostly it’s for people who had three names and more. Like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He, for instance, had no intention of changing his name in any way. And from what I hear, he led a fascinating death until the Association for the Appreciation of Classical Music caught up with him. The AACM is full of musicologists, amateur composers, musicians, and just ordinary aficionados. Fanatics all. If you’re a famous composer, they’ll do anything to convince you to keep writing music. They’ll never let you be. Their love for music borders on a pure hatred for musicians. They decided they wanted Mozart to finish the Requiem, as though he’d never gotten sick. He refused outright; said he was happy with Süssmayr’s work and that no one would convince him otherwise. But that didn’t make much of an impression on them. They wrote petitions, staged protests, hounded him wherever he went. But he stuck to his guns. The real victim here is actually Süssmayr, who couldn’t handle their insults and, despite his teacher’s praise and encouragement, punched in a seven over three. Mozart was crushed. He blamed the AACM for his student’s eternal sleep, but they just brushed it off, and as if that wasn’t enough, later that day they went on the air, on the evening news, and urged him to write a brand new requiem, because “now more than ever,” he had the best possible reason: He could compose a requiem for the composer who had finished his own requiem! Naturally, Mozart refused … He said nothing would sway him. Everyone thought it was over, but they wouldn’t let him be. They came after him everywhere, harassed him constantly. He moved five times and they found him each time. Mozart thought about going back to his original name, but like I said, you can’t add names, you can only subtract. Think about it, with a name like Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus, who would find him? Anyway, he decided to drop Wolfgang. You know, just keep the essence. Amadeus Mozart. I don’t know what he was thinking. They’ve been combing the world for him for two hundred years and now suddenly it’s over? The truth is, he almost pulled it off, would have actually, had it not been for Salieri, the tattler, who bumped into him at a Beethoven performance, the Tenth I think, and then followed him back to his apartment where he uncovered the ruse.
“Since then, the poor guy’s been on the move, darting from place to place. Anyway, my Arthur’s borne the brunt of it. You know how many times they’ve come to his place by mistake because of the initials? And these aren’t sane people, mind you. Even when they see they’ve made a mistake, they ask permission to search the place. These loonies think Arthur’s hiding Mozart in his apartment. He moved eight times before he took my advice and moved in with me. Sure, I’m harassed, too, but not with the same intens—” She yawned and covered her mouth. Ben promised to leave soon; he just wanted to know how she ended up in his wife’s apartment.
She stretched and sleepily repeated what she had said earlier. “I have a good friend. He finds abandoned places. No one’s lived here for at least six months.”
“Six months?” Ben asked. “But she only came here a year and three months ago. You’re saying Marian only lived here for nine months?”
“I have no idea. I’ve been living here for three months. That’s when I was able to set this up.”
“But this is an eternal address, no? This will be Marian’s address a thousand years down the road, too. That’s what they said during the orientation.”
“That’s what I meant when I said I was able to get this thing set up. My friend works in the thumb center. So, you know…”
“No, I don’t.”
“Look, you think I died yesterday? I know you’re just buying time,” she said.
“No, no, no,” Ben said, “I’ll
be out of here in a second. Just so you know, though, I did die yesterday. I hardly know anything about this world. Like that thing with the thumbs. As far as I know, all you use it for is to take out tapes and…”
“Alright, rookie, alright,” she laughed, opening the door and pointing to an elliptical, thumb-shaped hole. “You see? We don’t have keys or locks. We have the thumb hole. You recognize your apartment by the signs—date of death, initials—and your apartment recognizes you by your thumbprint. In the whole history of this world there’s not been one recorded break-in. You come to your apartment, put your thumb by the door, push lightly, and in you go. Simple, easy, and spares you the sorrow of carrying keys.”
“But,” Ben said, enchanted by the simplicity of the idea, “this hole is supposed to recognize Marian’s thumb, not yours.”
She agreed and hurried to explain. “Every time you come and go a blue light goes on in the thumb center HQ. If six months go by without any movement, a red light goes on. It means that the resident either left or went seven over three. Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s the former. Once someone’s left, a resident can come and ask the center to move in. The higher-ups in the center have you sign a piece of paper that says that if the initial resident returns you have to pack up and leave within three days. As I said earlier, Arthur and I have been living here for three months and no one has asked to move back in.”
“And the fingerprint?” Ben asked.
“Switched!” Marilyn’s copy announced, raising her thumb. “This is my thumb print and my thumb hole. If your wife comes back, I’ll have to leave and take my thumb hole with me.”
The World of the End Page 6