The World of the End

by Ofir Touché Gafla

  “Excuse me?”

  “The makeup. It looks like you’re auditioning for Frankenstein’s bride.…”

  “I’m not used to putting on makeup.”

  “Clearly. But we can’t let you walk around like a roving advertisement for domestic violence.… Come here, before Yonatan wakes up and goes back down for another week.”

  Pleased by the unexpected development, Ann dutifully followed the reporter into the bathroom. Marian asked her to shut the door, pulled a few tissues out of her light green leather bag, touched them to the running water, and wiped away the bashful nurse’s war paint. Marian’s attention was too intimate for Ann. It reminded her of the altercation near the cab the night before, and she turned her head away when she felt the sweetened warmth of Marian’s breath on her face, inhaling her French perfume despite herself and focusing her gaze on the tiles on the far wall.

  “Stop fidgeting,” Marian said, holding her face steady and wiping away the last remnants of the makeup. When she was through, she asked the nurse to wash her face and mentioned the name of a certain face emulsion that could inspire her haggard skin.

  “I’ve made a fool of myself with all this makeup,” Ann said.

  “Not at all,” Marian chuckled. “If you’d like I could give you some tips.”

  “I’d love that,” Ann said, nodding, “and by the way, yesterday, when your bag…”

  “Just a second,” Marian said, raising her index finger as her cell phone started to vibrate. “Yes? I see. Okay, no problem.” She stuffed the phone back in her bag, checked herself in the mirror, and said, “I’m really sorry, Ann, I have to run. I have to be at the airport sooner than I thought. We’ll speak some other time.”

  “Where are you off to?” Ann asked.

  “Paris. Please keep an eye on Yonatan and tell him I’ll be back in three days.”

  Ann watched Marian breeze through the doors, and then turned her attention back to the mirror. “Silly woman,” she whispered, “you should be glad. In three more days you’ll know where he has gone.”

  * * *

  The next three days were devoted to meticulous preparations for Marian’s much awaited return from France. Ann decided to invite her over to her home in a well-coordinated attempt to strengthen their ties. For two consecutive days, she’d been glued to the television, watching cooking shows that showcased maximum creativity with minimum work, trying to upgrade her reasonable proficiency in the kitchen, pleased by her passable replicas of the delectable dishes laid out by The Naked Chef. With a confident bounce to her step, Ann spent the third day shopping for jewelry, covering her face in shock at the many digits on the small price tags, till she found a chain, just like the one she’d lost, in the window of a small store that specialized in high-quality knockoffs. Ann bought the chain and, still thriving on the success of her mission, decided to improvise with her next errand, surfing the wave of adrenaline to an almost-fashionable shoe store, where she tried on black high-heeled shoes made for women with unusually arched feet, and asked the saleswoman to wrap them for her. On the way home, she bought two bottles of wine and a host of other supplies for the impending meal.

  She rose early the next morning, ran the vacuum cleaner over all the rugs, scrubbed every corner and, before leaving for work, found time to buy a bouquet of purple roses, put them in a glass vase on the windowsill, and exited the house uplifted. Walking past the health club, she smiled to herself—Adam hadn’t been there the past three evenings, a blessed fact that saved her the trouble of staying out of range of his watchful dark lenses. Yet again she felt flooded with the warmth of good fortune. Yet again she told herself that nothing would go wrong.

  But she was mistaken. Everything went decidedly wrong. Three days had passed since Marian was due to come home. Ann had left ten messages on her machine, had called Ben Gurion International Airport to see whether “her friend” was in fact on one of the incoming flights, and even drove to her apartment on three separate occasions. And still nothing. Six days after their hurried parting, all of her preparations seemed to belong to a different reality. There was no choice but to face facts—at the worst possible moment, the earth seemed to have swallowed Marian, leaving behind a woman who experienced a lifetime in a week, a woman smashed to a thousand smithereens of hope and disappointment, a woman who looked in the mirror and wondered where the hell everyone was disappearing to just when she was becoming visible.

  25

  On the Wings of Imagination

  “Ben,” she called, marching in his direction, panting.

  “Keren,” he said, surprised, striding toward her.

  They stopped next to each other, taking in the overarching changes. Keren simultaneously admired and scoffed at the sight of his new body; Ben noted her new curves with a throb of pleasure and a twinge of regret. Each noticed the deadened eyes of the other. They smiled in mutual embarrassment.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said.

  “Yeah. I wasn’t really expecting to see you here either.”

  “It’s crazy. I mean it’s been fifteen years since we…”

  “Broke up. It’s okay, you can say it.”

  “Since we broke up, and I hadn’t seen you once in our little village of a country, and then I come here and in this colossal place, just walking down the street, I literally bump into you, just like…”

  “Like the way we met the first time, Keren.”

  “Only it was pouring then and both of us were down in the dumps, if I remember correctly.”

  “Well, we can arrange a downpour in a second with the godget if you want an exact replay.”

  “And what about our moods?”

  “As far as I can tell we won’t be needing any technological assistance.”

  “It’s that obvious?”

  “It’s that obvious.”

  They fell silent, their words echoing faintly, like long-lost history. Beyond them, an unresponsive multi-wheel ran down three old men. A young woman in a winter state of mind glided past, a cold, private cloud hanging over her head.

  “Did you come here a long time ago?”

  “About a year ago. What about you?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Two weeks? Straight off the boat, huh?”

  “How did you wind up here, Keren?”

  “Car accident.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Don’t be. I was on my way to the pharmacy to buy enough sleeping pills to put me down forever, but before I got the chance an angry truck driver rammed into me and crushed my VW Bug.”

  “You were killed on your way to commit suicide?”

  “What do you think, Ben, is that story-worthy or what?”

  “Truth is, I really did end a story once in a similar way. A guy with a gun in his hand sees the light at the last possible moment, decides to call off the suicide and then, while handling the gun, mistakenly pulls the trigger.”

  “Only difference is, I had no intention of changing my plans.”

  “You have no way of knowing. You were spared the last moments, when the decision’s really made.”

  “That has the ring of firsthand knowledge.”

  “It is. I pulled the trigger.”

  Keren widened her mournful eyes and shook her head back and forth, her wavy hair flying across her face. “You committed suicide? Ben, you’re the last person in the world…”

  “No, Keren, please, not the cliché about two kinds of people, those prone to suicide and those immune to it. Who better than you to attest to the falsehood of that?”

  “You aren’t familiar with the circumstances.”

  “I imagine life wasn’t smiling down on you.”

  “Funny hearing that from you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you were the first guy to break up with me.”

  “We were kids, Keren. Two clueless Hebrew Lit students. You remember how much we fought toward the end?”

  “The first year was a dream.�
��

  “The second a nightmare.”

  “And yet we had our good days.”

  “True, but as you remember, I didn’t only leave you.”

  “Yeah, I remember, you bailed before graduating. You were thirsting for action, couldn’t stand the academic gibberish. Pretty bold move, especially when one considers that you went into what must be the strangest profession in the world.”

  “You know, I never planned to be an epilogist. I guess it was just luck that I ran into that desperate screenwriter at the local bar. Sinking into a glass of whiskey, he told me how he’d woven this web of a plot but couldn’t fight his way out of it, couldn’t get it right at the end. I asked him to lay it out for me, and once he told me the whole story, I suggested a possible ending. He started hooting and hollering, called me a genius. I laughed and went back to my beer, but he took down my number and called back two weeks later, inviting me to the studio. My life changed. They offered me a job as a screenwriter, but I said I didn’t have enough patience to write a full story. The only part that was really interesting to me was the ending. For some reason, they loved the idea and signed me to a contract on the spot. That’s where it all started.”

  “And I, dreaming my whole life of being a writer, ended up a much-glorified book critic, and it stung each time people praised my work and said I was born to write reviews.”

  “You even wrote about me once, you know.”

  “About you? You never published a book.…”

  “Not me personally. You reviewed a book that I wrote the ending for after a well-known author totally lost his bearings some thirty pages from the end.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “I can’t say. That’s my little morsel of revenge.”

  “Was I brutal?”

  “If words could kill I would’ve been here long ago.”

  “I guess an apology at this stage would be ridiculous.”

  “Well, only if you apologized to me. You directed your fury at the poor author.”

  “That is bizarre.”

  “Not as bizarre as us bumping into each other in the street.”

  “Maybe we were meant to bump into each other, right here, right now.”

  “Pretty soon you’re going to start talking about circles closing, and we’ll both raise an eyebrow.”

  “Hey, don’t be nasty. You’re the one who seeded the fear of abandonment in your first love.”

  “I’m starting to feel like abandonment is more than a recurring theme in this conversation.”

  “Rightfully. I told you, you were the first. After you there were six more. All told, seven men left me.”

  “Wow, Keren, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “I doubt that. And you know what, I spent a year with the last guy. I was sure it wouldn’t happen again. We had a really gentle, beautiful love. And on our one-year anniversary he went out to get cigarettes and never came back. The next day the coward left me a message on my machine: ‘Keren, I’m sorry but I just had to go.’ I thought I was going to lose my mind. I’d sworn I’d never let that happen to me again. And then the rest is history.”

  “I really am sorry, Keren.”

  “You should be. You’re the one who started this and it’s because of you that I drove all the other ones crazy with my paranoia, till they really did get fed up and leave.”

  “But if you remember right, even then, before I bailed, you were always worried I’d leave you, and I warned you about how dangerous your dependence issues were.”

  “My psychologist said that in a dependent relationship the independent individual cultivates the other side’s dependence to the same extent that the latter does.”

  “She would know, considering her hourly rate.”

  “Don’t be crude.”

  “Judging by what you say, I’ve been a lot worse than that.”

  “True, but like it or not, you’ll always be the legendary ex.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. You know damn well what you’re worth, and I’m sure you won’t be the least bit surprised to find out that all your successors were just pale imitations of the real thing.”

  “And yet a pale imitation drove you to suicide.”

  “The last straw.”

  “With all due respect, in my current state the last thing I need is to stand trial for long-term emotional abuse before the first woman I ever loved.”

  “I’m not putting you on trial for anything, just tying up loose ends and trying to gauge if I made a mistake by going to the pharmacy.”

  “Luckily you get the benefit of the doubt.”

  “But had I not been involved in the accident…”

  “And had the last one not left…”

  “You’re right. Reality’s twisted enough as it is. It doesn’t need layers of guesswork heaped on top of it all. So, give it to me straight from the horse’s mouth: What made Ben Mendlessohn kill himself?”

  “His beloved wife died mysteriously and he was unable to go on without her.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Eleven years. Happy ones.”

  “And your wife dying mysteriously?”

  “She fell off a Ferris wheel.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I know how it sounds.”

  “Kids?”

  “No.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Marian was an English teacher.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “Why are you asking all these questions?”

  “I’m curious about the woman who won your heart … so much so that you killed yourself for her.”

  “You remember Kobi?”

  “Your friend with the bathroom fetish?”

  “That’s the one. I met her at his wedding. I was with the groom, she with the bride.”

  “How convenient.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t like that. No one introduced us and they invited so many people to the wedding that I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have noticed each other without the incident.”

  “The incident?”

  “I’d been working like crazy that day and realized only on the way to the wedding that I hadn’t eaten since the day before. I was starving. Anyway, just as I was about to greet the bride and groom, a waitress floated past with a tray of bourekas. I took the biggest one I could find and crammed as much of it as possible into my mouth. Before I could swallow, I started to choke. It was terrifying. Everyone was laughing and dancing and I was in the corner choking to death. Luckily, Marian was standing behind me. Later, she told me I had started to convulse. She wrapped her hands around me and pulled off a perfect Heimlich Maneuver. The flaky chunk of bourekas came flying out. It was mortifying. I turned around to thank her. She introduced herself and I just stared at her like a fool. I’d never seen such an intelligent face. Then I asked to take her out. Just like that. I needed to wipe away the first impression. She smiled and asked if I thought I could handle a full meal. I laughed and promised to take my time swallowing in the future. She agreed.”

  “Then you started going out, and I take it it was clear cut from the very beginning.”

  “Not at all. We argued nonstop on our first date. About books, records, movies, politics. Everything under the sun.”

  “And the second date?”

  “Kept on arguing. About things that would seem stupid to others.”

  “Like…?”

  “We tried to guess the names of the songs on Morrissey’s next album.”

  “What?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t get it. And I don’t mean that condescendingly. We just realized that we inhabited the same mental realms but that our opinions clashed. Right from the start we both had the feeling that we knew each other. There was no initial tension.”

  “So how did you fall in love?”

  “I don’t know. I think we skipped straight over that part. We loved each other from the start. As though the falling in love part was a minor detail in the
past. And we knew we were fascinated by one another. We just didn’t waste time with games and stuff.”

  “And what about the thrill that you have at the beginning of a relationship?”

  “Oh, believe me we felt it. Marian thrilled me with the crossword puzzles she crafted especially for me, and I returned the favor with endings I wrote just for her, inserting them in the books she was reading. We were thrilled when we met other couples whose conversations had run dry and we were still arguing incessantly, we were thrilled when we didn’t notice the time pass and we were the last ones left in a restaurant, we were thrilled when we went for walks and got lost, we were thrilled each time we got into bed and each time we got out of it. And we were thrilled most of all when we realized there was no sense in living apart.”

  “But how did you know she was the one?”

  “Did you have an imaginary friend when you were a kid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right, so did I, but at some point around puberty he disappeared. Then around a month after I met Marian I felt like he had come back to me in female form. That feeling you get that someone’s watching you, when you’re shocked, when you’re happy, when you’re mad, when you’re put down, that feeling that someone’s always with you even when you’re alone, that’s Marian.”

  “I’m dying to meet her.”

  “I died to meet her, and it still hasn’t happened. Marian’s disappeared. I’ve been looking for her for two weeks and…”

  “Is it possible she doesn’t want to be found?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have no idea what was going on between the two of you, but women don’t just go flying off Ferris wheels. If anything, they plunge to their deaths.”

  “There’s no way in hell Marian committed suicide. The notion is absurd.”

  “What about if you just rest your wounded ego for a second and think logically: Couldn’t there be some things you didn’t know about?”

  “You don’t even know her.”

  “So what. I’m way too familiar with the feeling of loss and shock that comes with sudden abandonment, and I’m terribly familiar with people’s unwillingness to accept hard facts.”

  “Who’re we talking about here?”