The World of the End

by Ofir Touché Gafla

  Ann was being truthful. She enjoyed spending time with the oversized kid who told her excitedly about his occupation and asked dozens of questions about her. So much so that, when they left, she agreed to his proposal to come over to his place, unable to remember the last time she had been in someone else’s home.

  She didn’t hide her appreciation of the immense house. When he asked what she’d like to do, she responded that she was feeling adventurous. Adam blushed and offered Caesar, the first game in the Roman Empire series, in the way of foreplay. Ann sat down at the computer and giggled each time she tried, unsuccessfully, to break the code behind the premeditated murder of Julius Caesar, totally forgetting the man sitting to her side, who planned his moves with the caution known to him from the secret games of seduction. The nurse, so engrossed in the series of Roman numerals, lost touch with her surroundings, the new relief neutralizing the one waiting in the wings, the one Adam has hung his salvation on, the one his soul thirsts for, the one that would, at long last, wipe away the stain of his perversion and convince the entire world of his true attraction to the little lady whose thin legs did not reach the floor, dangling from the heights of his computer chair, bare to the curve of her round knees, which were stuck together. He watched her flounder as she tried to hinder Brutus, swearing silently that in return for her passion he’d rip up every child’s picture in the world and love her and her alone.

  “You’re so nice to me,” he muttered fearfully.

  She nodded and sent a secret scroll to Julius.

  “You want to play doctor and nurse?”

  She giggled and dashed off to one of the palace’s secret chambers.

  “Don’t go there,” he warned, “the spies will get you,” and she reprimanded him coquettishly, “you’re giving it all away.”

  He put a warm finger on her knee.

  She started, calmed, and laughed. “You’re tickling me.”

  Her smile vanished at the sight of the traitors. He laid a whole hand on her knee and slid upwards, slowly, terrified to the core. She trembled but didn’t ask him to stop, calling out in a hoarse voice, “I know I can save him if I can find him in this enormous castle.”

  “Go into the tunnel between Remus and Romulus.”

  She made it to the tunnel with her legs dazzlingly spread. Adam was beside himself. He got off the chair; Julius Caesar was slain in front of her eyes. “Damn,” she said with choked restraint. His head crossed the skirt barrier; in the distance he spied the El Dorado known to no man other than himself. Ann closed her eyes, and with astounding clarity saw the man from the club, the right one, not the suitor; she had no idea what he was doing down there, under the computer table, but she had been transported back to the mysterious and most pleasurable Spot, never had it been more precise, and the warmth of his curious tongue as it probed her depths parted her lips, and as she was about to issue the first cry of pleasure a bloodcurdling shriek was heard, and it took her a moment of reflection to understand that it was emitted from another throat and that it was rooted in terror, not pleasure. She heard Adam from down there. “Don’t worry. That’s just my brother. He’s acting out the part of someone chased by a ghost from the past. It’s not real.”

  “It sounds very real to me,” she said, turning her head, with her eyes still closed, toward the source of the ruckus, behind the red door.

  “No, my little lady, it’s nothing but playacting.” The determined head below tried to squirm through the viselike closure of the legs, but the second shriek left no room for doubt. Even Adam recognized that something was wrong in the other end of the house—he’d never heard his brother scream in a woman’s voice.

  * * *

  Pulling on her shoes, Ann mistakenly kicked Adam in the head and then called out “I have to see what’s going on over there!”

  “Please don’t,” Adam pleaded.

  But Ann already took off after the voices, crossing over to the other half of the house. At first she saw nothing. But then she noticed the open front door. She ran outside and saw a man lying on top of a woman on the side of the road, strangling her with all his might, yelling, “You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead!”

  In a moment of resourcefulness she ran back inside, took a vase off the kitchen table, raced back to the scene of the crime, and smashed the porcelain monstrosity on the attacker’s skull. Shahar lost consciousness and collapsed on his victim, blood spewing from the crown of his head onto the forehead of the woman beneath him. Ann only remembered to exhale when the woman coughed and whispered in English, “Help me up…”

  Once the two managed to roll Shahar over, Ann helped her to her feet, hooked her arm through hers, and stroked her hair. “Don’t worry, we’re going to the police.”

  The woman nodded. Only as they passed under the first streetlight did she catch a glimpse of the woman who saved her life. She gasped. The feeling was mutual.

  * * *

  A half hour later, while the two women answered a police officer’s questions at the nearby station, Adam put the finishing touches on the bandage around Shahar’s head and asked, as he lay sprawled on the couch, how, exactly, he managed to get himself in this predicament.

  Shahar answered dreamily, “She’s back … she came back to haunt me.…”

  Adam didn’t get it. “Who, Shahar, who came back?”

  Shahar whispered, his eyes moving in fear. “The woman, the woman with the kids, she came here.…”

  “Hold on a second. You weren’t even supposed to be home. You said you had an interview tonight.”

  “I was really tired when I got back from the set. I almost canceled the interview, but the producer begged me, said it would be great publicity. So I took a shower, called the reporter, and asked her to meet me at the house.”

  “That’s why the meeting was so late?”

  “Yeah, but that’s not the point, Adam, not at all. I left the door open for her. She walked in and only after I’d laid the coffee tray down on the table did I see her. Adam, it was her, the woman from the Ferris wheel.”

  Adam grunted at him. “Don’t you think you’re taking your new role a bit too far?”

  Shahar smacked his leg. “Don’t make fun of me! It’s all your fault! It was…”

  “But it’s impossible. That woman’s dead!” After trying to guess at the thoughts hiding behind his brother’s glazed stare, Adam smiled at him and said, “Shahar, maybe she just looked like her. That’s all, Shahar, she just resembled her.”

  “You don’t understand,” the actor wailed, “it was her. The woman from the Ferris wheel. I’d recognize her anywhere. She’s come to haunt me. She’s going to haunt me, Adam.”

  Adam pulled an arm around his brother’s quaking shoulders and whispered, “Shhh … it’s nothing. No one’s coming to haunt you. It’s just your imagination, Shahar, that’s all. That woman is never coming back to bother us.”

  But Shahar refused to be comforted. It took him two hours to finally fall asleep in his stunned brother’s arms, whispering exhaustedly, “She’s back for revenge. Back from the dead. That woman. The one I killed on the Ferris wheel.”

  18

  Play

  The sharp rapping on the door ended what had been Ben’s first sleep in six days. He sighed heavily, wondering who could be bothering him at this hour of the night. Three minutes later, the knocking still intensifying, he gathered the strength to call tiredly, “I’m coming, I’m coming.” Stubbing his toe on a round item on the floor, he cursed aloud, flipped on the light, and opened the door with an unwelcoming yawn.

  The Charlatan at his door spoke in a hard, forceful voice. “Ben Mendelssohn?”

  “Yes,” Ben said.

  “Pleased to meet you,” the silver-haired, mustached man said, shaking his hand. “We’ve been sent by a woman, name of Marian Mendelssohn.”

  “What?” Ben said, shedding all traces of drowsiness.

  The Charlatan turned around and said, “Get to it. And remember, forty!”


  Six blue-uniformed Charlatans poured into the apartment in silence and began picking up the tapes littered all over the place and stuffing them into their jumbo overall pockets.

  “Wh … what’s going on here?” Ben asked, voice rising to a yell.

  “The lady said you want to see her,” the representative of the living dead said. “In exchange she wants the tapes.”

  “How do you know her?” Ben asked, watching the years of his life disappear three at a time into their pockets.

  “She said you’d like to see her,” the Charlatan repeated. “If you come with me, I’ll take you to her.”

  “What about the tapes?” Ben asked. “What are you doing with them?”

  “If you choose to hold onto the tapes, then you can’t come see the lady. That was her only condition.”

  “And if I allow them to be taken, then you’ll take me straight to Marian?”

  “Yes, sir,” the Charlatan said, gaining Ben’s silent acquiescence before excusing himself and convening the group in the far corner of the room. They huddled briefly and then broke, the six-person crew stomping out of the apartment clumsily, their pockets clicking and clacking with life. Ben watched them go wistfully, rising from his reverie only when the Charlatan lay a guiding hand on his elbow. “Let’s go, we’re off.”

  On their way to the multi-wheel, Ben tried to pry information from the chief Charlatan but the man was impenetrable. At the station, the Charlatan turned to leave. “Hey, where you going?” Ben called after him.

  “Get on the multi; get off with everyone else,” the Charlatan said, fading from view. Bewildered, Ben eyed the somber, late-night passengers surrounding him and realized that there was a dark secret at the heart of this journey and that, as opposed to the smile-filled conversations of daytime travel, this particular voyage resembled a random encounter of people all headed together to the gallows pole, the terror plain on each of their faces. When he turned to the man beside him, he saw a face weathered by grief and wondered whether the Charlatan had taken him to the wrong stop. He would see soon enough, he figured. In the meantime, he tried to rein in his enthusiasm in light of the series of disappointments he had suffered since the day of his death and instead focus on the wonder of the past week—each minute of every day he saw his love living and breathing, permanent and undeniable.

  She was there beside him during every twist and turn of life, a ubiquitous presence on screen. At times, he found himself so drawn to the events depicted on screen that he responded audibly, surprised to find that the man on tape acted differently. Nonetheless, he couldn’t help smiling for the duration of the six-day marathon, marking mutual milestones in a small spiral notebook, keeping careful records of dates, locations, hours, and occurrences so that in the future he wouldn’t have to search at length whenever he wanted, for example, to watch them make love for the first time. The careful dissecting of his life into chapters, paragraphs, passages, and even trivial sentences, made him feel like a clerk wading through the complex clutter of his existence, shelving each nugget of experience in its proper drawer. The meticulous cataloguing pleased him immensely, especially when he happened on long-forgotten episodes. Had the Charlatans not disturbed him, he would have woken up the following morning, after eight dreamless hours of sleep, and started from exactly where he left off, before fatigue bested curiosity. Then he heard the driver’s voice say, “That’s all folks, we’re here.”

  * * *

  Ben followed the other passengers who got off the vehicle. Like them, he dispelled the darkness with the bright light of day, eager to find out what waited behind the black steel doors that stood at the end of the sandy path. Walking along, he felt as though he had been swept up in a strange tribal ritual. Fits of crying rippled through the mass of people. Ben, remembering family funerals past, recognized something familiar in the walkers—the terrible yoke of loss hunched their backs and weighted their feet. When the black doors yawned open, Ben stopped in his tracks, blinking at the sight of the strangest cemetery imaginable. A bright white hall stretched before him, its floors marble, its ceiling sky. A black lane ran down its middle, separating innumerable rectangular glass caskets containing naked corpses. The crowd strode between the giant fish tanks and, as they reached the caskets of their loved ones, fell to their knees, conversing in hushed tones. The cooing reminded Ben of soft museum chatter. To his right, a twenty-year-old male corpse lay in a fetal position. To his left, an elderly woman lay flat, spread-eagled on her stomach. Up ahead, a child with his thumb in his mouth, his left leg bent so that it formed a triangle with his straight right one. For the better part of an hour, he toured the grid of coffins, entranced by the variety of tranquil sleep positions. Stifling a smile at the sight of a dark-skinned man who had chosen to die in the classic tanning position, hands behind his head, loins marked by the whiteness of imaginary underwear, as though he died a second after leaving the beach, Ben heard a whisper in his ear. “You see the bald man forty-eight rows in front of you?”

  He started, looked around, and then stared ahead, remembering the telefinger. “Yes, I see him.”

  “Well, then stop flirting with the corpses and go to him,” the voice commanded.

  Ben stayed riveted to the man, who bowed before the glass coffin just like all of the rest of the visitors. Only when he was a few steps away did he smile. “Samuel?”

  “Speak quietly,” the Mad Hop whispered, motioning him closer.

  Ben bowed beside him and looked at the petite, pretty woman entombed before him. Her body was balled up, her hands tucked under her left cheek.

  “Who’s that?” he asked.

  “My wife, Mildred,” the Mad Hop said, looking at him with glassy eyes.

  “I had no idea you were married,” Ben said, examining her delicate face.

  “Five years. First time she died was back in 1985. Lung cancer. Second time was eleven years ago. She got drunk and punched in a seven over three. You know what that means?”

  “Eternal sleep,” the righter sighed. “So this is where they bring all the permanently dead?”

  “There’s no way back from here,” the Mad Hop intoned miserably.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  The Mad Hop stroked the top of the transparent coffin. “She was my Marian.”

  Ben turned away from the coffin. “You also killed yourself a year after your wife died?”

  “I told you to keep your voice down,” the Mad Hop said. “People come here to mourn. And regarding your question: yes, and no. Yes, in that my suicide took a year; no, in that had I not chosen alcohol as the cure for my pain, it’s likely that my liver would’ve held up for a few more years, not that I have any regrets.” He looked at Ben out of the corner of his eye and added coldly, “As opposed to you, I reckon.”

  “Come again?”

  “Surely you regret your actions,” he said, his voice getting colder with each word. “After all, you didn’t commit suicide in order to give up on Marian, did you?”

  “What?”

  “Look around, Ben. Look at the people who frequent this place. Desperate people, broken people, people who come to grieve for their loved ones. People who would give anything to switch places with you!”

  “What are you getting at, Samuel?”

  “Is that not clear? I called you here to show you how lucky you are. You haven’t yet found Marian, but at least you know she’s not here, which means there’s still hope.”

  “That’s why you drummed up this whole charade with the Charlatans?” Ben asked, abandoning the code of hushed speech.

  The Mad Hop clapped a hand over his mouth and barked, “Shut up, buggerhole, and listen to someone who knows a little more than you do. Last time we met, you said you were going to look up your father and report back to me. It’s been a week and I haven’t heard a word. I left you twenty-three messages on the telefinger, but you couldn’t be bothered to return my calls. Not a single one. Correct me if I’m mistaken, but upon return from your fathe
r’s or mother’s house or wherever the hell you were, you gave in to despair and, rather than contacting all other family members, you did what any weak creature might: You waltzed over to the Vie-deo machine and took out the tapes of your life.”

  “You have no right to trick me like this,” Ben said, shaking with rage. “What right did you have to send them to me?”

  “You came to me to help find your wife! That gives me every right in the world to act as I see fit! I warned you before not to go near those tapes. They suck you in, distort your reality. Every day of viewing makes you a bit more certain that you won’t see her again. You trap yourself in the gilded cage of memory and forget what’s truly important! And what do you make of that, Ben? Exactly what I said at the beginning. You’ve rendered your suicide pointless! If all you were after is moping, why leave the previous world?”

  “Save the sermon; give me back those tapes,” Ben insisted.

  “No more tapes!” the Mad Hop said, like a parent at the boiling point. “They’re off-limits until you’re told otherwise.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  The Mad Hop caught his eye and whispered venomously, “That’s it, Ben, it’s a done deal. You’ll get the tapes back when you find Marian, and not a second sooner.”