The World of the End

by Ofir Touché Gafla

  “Or perhaps,” Ben said, his face shining, “I’ll simply join you and take them from your apartment.”

  The Mad Hop shook his head. “You’re welcome anytime you like, but you won’t find the tapes there.” He brought his lips close to Ben’s ears. “The Charlatans have taken good care of them. They’re far from reach. Ben, save yourself the trouble and concentrate on your wife. You’ve got a far better chance of finding her than them.”

  Ben held his head in despair. “You don’t get it, Samuel, it’s not like you’re making it out to be. Those tapes keep me going. They encourage me to look for her, to believe that I’ll still find her. Without them I have nothing. Before I took them out, I felt like someone was pulling a rug out from under my feet. My dad lives with a strange woman, my mom doesn’t care, the entire world order seems to have been turned on its head. All of a sudden, everything’s possible. All of a sudden, the truth has been washed away, leaving nothing behind, as though it were only worth something in the previous world. When I watch the tapes, Samuel, I get stronger. They give me fortitude. I refuse to believe that here, in this world, our love has lost its meaning. I’ve got no choice. Reality keeps barging in on me, laughing in my face, and I don’t have a revolver to silence it with. Everything’s messed up. And the worst part is that no one’s seen her. No, actually, the worst part is, even if I find her, there’s no guarantee that everything will work out.”

  The Mad Hop laid a hand over his heart and donned an expression of woe. “That was truly moving. ‘Reality keeps barging in on me, laughing in my face, and I don’t have a revolver to silence it with.’ Did you just come up with that on the spot or is that from one of your epilogues?”

  Ben stared at him, shaking his head. “So now you’re ridiculing my pain?”

  “Not your pain. The source of your pain!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, it doesn’t pain you that you haven’t found Marian; it pains you that you still haven’t found her. You’re an epilogist and so it only follows that you’d like to see a well-defined ending to your story. After all, you’re incapable of handling the fact that your story may have an open-ended finish. That you don’t find your wife, but that you keep on with your death, knowing that perhaps one day … That ending is far more tragic than the terrible ending that says you shall never find her, since that option, of course, doesn’t exist here in our eternal world. The infinite nature of the story drives you out of your mind, so you throw your hands up in the air and succumb to the tapes, where there’s a clear beginning, middle, and end. You’ll agree with me that you committed suicide after Marian died with the understanding that in the best-case scenario, you’d find her, and in the worst case, you’d find that death concludes all stories? You didn’t take into account a Marian-less after-death. You didn’t think such a scenario existed. And then, once you’d managed to locate a few family members and learned that they, too, had no information of use, you gave in, turned your full attention to the tapes of life, which proved that you’re willing to forgo everything just to secure an ending, pathetic though it may be, to your story. Ben, think of her, just her. She doesn’t even know you’re here. Think of her reaction when one day, out of the blue, she sees you. She’s probably already begun getting used to the idea that you’ll never be together again. As far as she’s concerned, the story is truly over … and then you show up, rocking her world, proving her wrong—the ultimate ending, no?”

  Ben smiled through the tears, silently applauding the Mad Hop’s speech even as he dared to question him. “What if by the time I meet her we discover it’s too late? That she…”

  “Forget it!” the Mad Hop said, his face weary. “It’s never too late for you.” He then looked back at the woman entombed in the casket and whispered, “Millicent, my love, only for us is it truly too late.” He pressed his lips to the glass, kissed it longingly, and rose.

  Ben stayed put, his blue eyes boring into the dead woman.

  “You alright?” the investigator asked.

  “I thought her name was Mildred,” Ben said.

  The Mad Hop shrugged. “Millicent was my pet name for her.”

  Ben looked at him, then back at the corpse and said, “You don’t know this woman at all, do you?”

  The Mad Hop scratched a phantom itch and smiled. “I haven’t the faintest idea who she is.”

  “Then why did you…?”

  He winked. “There was a point to be made, mate, was there not?”

  Ben got up and followed him through the hall in silence, the two of them walking together toward the stop, into the awakening dawn.

  The Mad Hop cleared his throat. “I lied about her, yeah, but not the rest. My liver condition really was…”

  “Why’d you choose her?”

  “Did you get a look at the other corpses around there? If you’re going to lie and say you were married, might as well say you were married to a good-looking woman.”

  Ben laughed, full throated. “And to think that you’re a walking, talking truth machine. Samuel, you’re a menace to society.”

  The Mad Hop smiled proudly. “But I got what I wanted, did I not?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tomorrow morning you’ll go try and find some other family members, right?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  * * *

  Ben boarded the multi-wheel toward 2001. At the apartment, the missing tapes were too much to bear. He paced the rooms, trying to decide which family member to look for first, bearing in mind distant uncles that he hadn’t seen in ages, who would probably be of no use.

  At last he smiled at the portrait on the wall, smacked his head, and said, “You see what an idiot I’ve become since you left? Hours I’ve been wracking my brain over who to go see and the answer’s sitting right here. I mean, if there are two people in the whole world who definitely didn’t part, it’s Rosanna and Moses. No way! Right, Marian?”

  The woman in the portrait didn’t change her expression, but Ben was willing to swear he saw a playful glint in her eye, the same glint she’d shown each time she met the most outrageous member of the Mendelssohn clan, Rosanna Horazio Malvina Solpero Mendelssohn, aka “Grandma Rosie.”

  19

  Last Wish of the People of the Day Before Yesterday

  Dear Kobi and Tali,

  Please excuse this hackneyed opening line, but by the time you read these words, we’ll no longer be among the living. We regret imposing upon you but it would seem you’ll have to make another trip to the cemetery and to our lawyer, whose information you can find on the back of this envelope. For a long while we toyed with the idea of cremation, leaving our dusty remains to the two of you, so that you could fulfill our romantic wish of mixing Miriam and Yossef’s ashes, ensuring our being together in death as we were in life, but with time we came to abhor the notion that we would then be so distant from our beloved daughter, and so we prefer a more traditional burial, beside her, in a rather morbid imitation of the small happy family we created forty years ago. Here lay a mother, father, and daughter.

  Miriam’s smiling at me now, urging me to share the secret behind the shady adoption process that has changed the course of our lives forever. And she’s right. What use is it to take a secret to the grave? It’s better to die a feather weight, to leave this world with the same kind of empty nothingness we possessed when we came into it. We regret burdening you with this, but we’d like you to know, just in case one day, somehow, this information will be of assistance to someone. I always loved Miriam’s thoroughness. She’d never leave a Pandora’s Box without keys. Okay, I’ve gone a bit overboard. She’s correcting me. She says no Pandora’s Box and no keys. Just a short story about two bioengineers who devoted their lives to the study of genetics and found, after five happy years of marriage, that they’re infertile as desert rock. We almost allowed ourselves to be lured into all kinds of false beliefs, but before losing our grip on reality, we recognized, with imm
ense sorrow, that we were living through the type of coincidence that nourishes the fantasies of all tabloid journalists on the hunt for human interest stories. During the darkest hours, we blamed the atheism encoded in our nonrecyclable DNA (who else could we blame?), but after a few months we agreed that only the weak seek scapegoats, and decided not to cave under the burden. If nature denied us the chance to bring life to this world, we’d raise a readymade one.

  From the onset we knew we wanted a newborn, so that we could keep up the perfect illusion of parents just back from the hospital. We had no idea how much heartache, weariness, and bureaucracy the adoption process would demand. With time, we developed a deep resentment for the powers that be. After two months of trudging from office to office, we realized it would be quite some time before we’d hear a baby’s cry between the four walls of our home. Fortunately, we met this character named Arthur. He used to linger outside adoption agencies, waiting for people like us. He knew exactly what he was after. A tall, heavyset fellow, very imposing, he approached us one winter day and gave us his card. Said we should be in touch if we decide we’d like to proceed along unofficial routes. At first we feared getting involved with a man with no respect for the law, but after a week of pondering, we decided we had nothing to lose. We met him in a café and he asked if we wanted to adopt a baby. We said we did, and he told us about an underground organization that handles this type of affair. At the time, we didn’t even know there was a black market for such things. He offered little in the way of details. Just took a small pad and asked a series of questions about our financial standing, our health, if we have a gender preference, and if we’d have a problem spending a certain amount. Miriam said, “I don’t care. Any amount in the world.” He smiled and said we would hear from him shortly. A week went by. Then he called and said he had something for us. He asked that we get the money ready (half then and the other half upon his return), he’d fly abroad (to this day we don’t know our daughter’s nationality), handle the necessary affairs and return with the baby girl. Only when he said “baby girl” did the fantasy take shape.

  We didn’t sleep for a full week. Afraid we’d been had by some kind of confidence scheme, we worried about the unknown and, at the same time, worked like mad getting the baby’s room ready. On the scheduled day, we waited by the phone for nine hours. Arthur gave us an address in the northern part of the city, a private house, and asked us to meet him there at 7:00 P.M. From that point on, it felt like we were in a dream. Everything happened so fast, so smoothly.

  A polite, smiling woman opened the door and asked us for our names. She led us to the living room, excused herself, and went up the stairs. Arthur was in a cheery mood. He shook our hands warmly, asked to see the money in the suitcase, and nodded satisfactorily once he’d counted out the bills. Miriam asked how he set the price for a baby. Arthur grew serious and said the mother named the price, based on her needs and the fact that 20 percent went to the middleman, namely the underground organization. Miriam continued asking questions about the mother. Arthur, smiling, said, “Look, the contract I signed with the mother prevents me from divulging any details about her. All you need to know is that she sold the baby in order to gather enough money to ensure the wellbeing of her other child. She hit rock bottom and, without this, she’d be forced to surrender the care of her other child as well. It’s a tragedy, but at least now she knows that Marian is in good hands.”

  We stared at him, dumbfounded. He tried to cover his discomfort with a sprinkling of humor. “She gave up the girl, but not the name,” he said. That was the mother’s sole wish, to keep the name given her at birth. We smiled in understanding and rolled the name on our tongues a few times, trying to get used to the fact that the three-hundred-name list we had whittled at for months was for naught. In truth, we were rather pleased that someone else had solved the naming problem for us. Arthur pulled a thin sheath of papers out of his pocket. There was a birth certificate that had us as Marian’s biological parents and several other forms filled out by the chief midwife at a Jerusalem hospital, further authorizing that Marian had just recently emerged from Miriam’s womb. Arthur looked pleased by the shock on our faces. He pursed his lips and spoke slowly. “In order to avoid any and all unwanted complications we’re cautious about covering our tracks. The mother has signed a waiver on her rights to the girl. She has no idea who you are beyond that you’re both scientists and are unable to have children. There is no chance she’ll ever be able to find you. If in the future you decide to tell your daughter that she’s adopted, I suggest you say the mother died. I believe that’ll spare all parties undue suffering.”

  Although we were grabbed by a sudden gloom, it drifted away at the sight of the woman coming down the stairs with the most beautiful thing we had ever seen. Kobi’s probably laughing now. Biological parents are always accused of blind love for their offspring, and there we were, two adopting parents, hysterically excited by every sign of life from the most gorgeous, most intelligent, funniest baby, who, obviously, lost none of her charms as she grew up into a fine, impressive young woman. All these years we stayed quiet. We thought there was no reason to confuse our beloved little girl. She had always seen us as parents, so why throw her world out of kilter? And, to be honest, with time we ourselves forgot she wasn’t the fruit of our loins. And it wasn’t only her that we loved, but also Ben and the rest of the clan.

  Ben and Marian were the ultimate couple, and from a pair of old possessives like us that’s a lot more than verbiage. Would you think us sycophantic if we said that the two of you also qualify as a match made in heaven? Even if at the very beginning you raised a few suspicions with your monthly trips to your friend’s parents’ house two hours outside Tel Aviv. But when we learned the reason for the trips, we couldn’t stop giggling. Don’t worry, friends, we haven’t told anyone about your love for restrooms in general, and ours in particular.

  In a rare moment of drunkenness, Marian told us how passionate the two of you got by entertaining yourselves in a place not intended for such affairs and that the technical side was no less exciting to the two of you. She told us that you made love in hundreds of bathrooms across the country (sterile, we know), but that ours offered the perfect conditions for your favorite position. Mind you, on one truly surreal night we tried to assess the source of your pleasure in a slightly less than theoretical manner. After one minute of preparation, we realized we were heading toward a spectacular failure and that, if we persisted, our hips would fall prey to our curiosity. Instead, we opted for some old fashioned spooning in our own bed.

  And still on that matter, Marian even once informed us in secret that Tom had been conceived in our house. We’re quite honored to know that that fabulous kid was made in our bathroom and it would be our pleasure … Well, now we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

  Back to Ben and Marian. If you think we were overjoyed when they told us they were getting married, you should have seen us when Marian told us she was pregnant. That was exactly five years ago. We felt like we were floating on air. We’d have a grandchild. We’d be a grandma and grandpa. Do we sound pathetic if we say that the notion that Marian carried a life inside her womb filled us with a sense of triumph, as if we managed to defeat our defects through her? What if we admit to the satisfaction we felt at the prospect of sitting the future down on our laps and allowing the amazing, soothing thought to wash over us, that years after our expiry date had passed, we’d continue on in his mind, a sweet remembrance, like that first drop of water he’d see through the microscope or the memory of the first experiments he’d perform with the science kit we’d get him for his fifth birthday?

  As you well know, that child never came to be. When Ben called from the hospital, his voice smashed, and told us that Marian had woken up in the middle of the night in a puddle of blood, screaming for help, we knew it was time to pack the science kit and the microscope back into their boxes, but we had no idea that the worst was still ahead. Marian had to have a D and
C. Afterwards, the doctors told her she would never be able to have children of her own. We tried everything, spoke to the leading experts in the field, discussed IVF treatments, even proposed surrogate motherhood. Ben wouldn’t hear of it. Marian sunk into a deep depression. That was the first and last pregnancy in our home and, believe me, you have never seen a more severe self-flagellation. Marian blamed herself for letting Ben down; Ben blamed the mysterious gene pool of the death-prone Mendelssohns, saying that the fact that he seeded his wife’s womb with death only strengthens the Mendelssohn curse; Miriam and I blamed ourselves for somehow transmitting something of our infertile DNA to our adopted daughter, as though the tragedy had leapfrogged the logic of biology.

  Two years passed before the plague of martyrdom left our family. We wrestled with our childish and fact-free assertions. And as is often the case with these types of affairs, the recognition that they wouldn’t ever hug a child of their own only brought Ben and Marian closer together. After they’d weathered the crisis stage, Marian told us that Ben had suggested adoption, but that she had strongly resisted the idea. We inquired as to why she refused to consider such a stellar idea, and she said she only wanted a child that was the fruit of their own love. We told her that an adopted child could also be the fruit of great love if you care for it from the first moments and take genetics out of the equation. She laughed and said we were bandying hypotheses around. At that moment we realized there was no choice but to tell her the truth. Marian was visibly shocked (obviously we took Arthur’s advice and told her that her mother had died two months after she was born), and only after we explained to her that there was no reason to share the inessential truth with her until that moment did she smile and say half sarcastically, “Well, then I guess you’re really the best parents in the world if you’ve managed to hide the truth from me for my entire life.”

  It took another year for her to come to terms with the idea of adoption. We were the only ones who were in on the couple’s intentions. In late 1999 the two of them went to an adoption agency and got the ball rolling. We told them they’d need a lot of patience and that the process could be long and arduous, but in February 2000 they told us that they’d be receiving a baby within two months. We were delighted to find how much smoother the process had become. But yet again, tragedy caught us by the heels, this time worse than ever before. Smack in the middle of our preparations, some two weeks before the much-anticipated adoption date, she was taken from us.