The World of the End

by Ofir Touché Gafla

  “You probably think I’m a wimp. I flew out of that place and decided I was going to keep it as is. It’s always been part of me anyway. I’d be someone different without it. I know these are just excuses, weak rationalizations for my cold feet, but what can I say, I’m a lot less brave and a lot less tough than I thought. Impulsive, perhaps, but brave? I was thinking of what you’d write me if you heard that at the moment of truth I succumbed to my old demons, allowing them another victory. My mother would’ve been upset if she had heard I hadn’t gone through with it, but she would’ve also understood. All along, when she was still alive, I think I detected a hint of opposition to the surgery. Like she preferred I let the whole thing go. The only reason she would’ve been upset was because the trauma still had such a hold on me. As though the creep had gotten over once more.

  “I know I sound confused, but I have my reasons. It’s not for nothing that I found you, the mate I’ve looked for my entire life, someone who can help me escape to faraway worlds. Oh, Yonatan, how I miss our little games. I don’t sound too weird, do I? When you wake up, we can pick up right where we left off. You have to wake up, Ormus. I refuse to accept that by the time I found you this all turned out to be make-believe, that by the time I found you, my love, you were in a coma. Everything’s ready for you. I left it all behind me, all the nastiness. Nothing’s left in France. My mother is dead, my husband is a relic of the past, and I decided to skip the operation altogether. Who cares if the little scar stays as a keepsake? That’s what I decided on my final trip to De Gaulle. Despite its charm, I’m done with France. That’s what held me up, honey. I had to say my final good-byes. Take a last minute tour through the stations of my life. Before I start anew.

  “I know the timing is strange. After all, I left France two weeks ago. I guess I needed to be here to realize that I had to go back there one last time. It’s a matter of perspective, I suppose. It took me a while to come to terms with everything. To understand that I was really starting afresh in Israel, that I didn’t care that everyone thought I was cuckoo for moving to such a crazy place. The job I got here turned out to be the best possible gift. Only thanks to that was I able to gather the courage to end all my affairs in France. And I haven’t even mentioned you yet, Yonatan. The only person who’s ever managed to get me. At long last I’ve shaken free of my private history and embraced a brighter future with you, darling. Some might say I didn’t dare battle my demons when I upped and left. Whatever. If they had any idea how awful the past year has been. It’s all thanks to you that I was able to crawl out from under the burdens of the past and be reborn. Only thanks to your support was I able to chase the demons away. Amazing how much sustenance you can get from someone in a coma, ah?

  “And you know what the funniest part is? This will probably sound morbid but, when that actor assaulted me, during the scariest moment I’ve ever known, right then I realized how happy I am to be here. The thoughts going through my head were so strange. People in life-threatening situations always say they saw their lives flash in front of their eyes, but I saw all the things that would happen after my death. The funeral, the friends from work, the actor’s career cut to a sudden end, the media frenzy. Then I thought about you and realized I had to save myself any way I could. I mean, imagine if you’d woken up and they’d told you I’d been murdered. That would be too much.

  “But you’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. Oh, and the actor? I changed my mind about him. At first I thought I’d dig around and then interview him. The assaulted interviews the assaulter. A great exclusive. This past week in France helped underscore just how uninterested I am in that, though. It’s just another demon to chase away. According to the cops, it’s no secret that he’s a bit off. I’m sure that if it wasn’t me, it would’ve been someone else. In a profession like his, where you’re always cloaking your true self, a nervous breakdown comes with the territory. And the truth is, I’ll pass on the dubious pleasure of listening to him explain away the attack with all kinds of creative process crap. I’ve been there already. It’s boring. I don’t want to offer him a platform for his lies. Mandatory psychiatric assistance in a closed ward? A few years behind bars? Hallelujah. I’m not going to waste my time with that stuff. Luckily, this is an open-and-shut case, with a witness who saved my life.… Well, you know the details.

  “What you don’t know has to do with the little woman who’s taking care of you, a friendly and opaque sort. Ann. I don’t know why, but I get the feeling that’s she’s trying to get close to me. I know it sounds ugly, maybe even inhuman, but if someone saves your life, does that mean you’re forever indebted to them, even if they don’t interest you in the least? God, I don’t want you to think I’m an awful person, but really I have more important things to do than bond with that weird woman. So? Am I unspeakably despicable? I wish it were the other way around. I wish I would have saved her life. Then at least I wouldn’t be the one with the debt. I feel so bad. Yonatan—she left me ten messages on my machine saying I should contact her as soon as I got back from my trip. I was sure something had happened. I took a taxi straight here. Turns out, she wants to invite me to her house for dinner. Ten messages, Yonatan! For dinner. You should have seen her face, too. She was beaming. She ran up to me, pulsating with energy. I asked if there had been some kind of change in your condition. She just stared at me, and only after I repeated the question did she wake up from God knows what kind of dream and say no, not yet. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but there’s something scary about her. She’s so unpredictable. Maybe I’m going a bit overboard. At any rate, I couldn’t disappoint her. I’m going over to her place tonight. I just hope she doesn’t turn it into a habit. Well, speaking of the … she just walked in the room. You should see how she’s looking at me. Like she wants something. Watching me with those tiny eyes. Then disappearing again behind one of the curtains. Yonatan, I could swear she’s snooping. What the hell does she think she’s doing?

  “Okay, enough honey, I don’t want to wear you down with all this talk. Obviously I’m a bit impatient these days. Which reminds me—I think you’ll go wild when you hear this: One of the writers from our book review just told me that Rushdie’s coming out with a new book in September. I think it’ll be called Fury. Well, what do you think about that? You think you’re going to let yourself sleep while all of the midnight children party? It’s due out in only two months, but don’t expect me to read it to you if you’re still in this bed. Honey, you’re going to read me the new Rushdie, otherwise it’s going to be my fury you’ll have to deal with. And on another note, think what an awesome present we’re getting. A new book from Rushdie to celebrate our union. And this time we’ll read it together, in real time, like we always dreamed … Yonatan, don’t be cruel … Who will I talk about the book with, if…? No, no need to get carried away. No way you’ll still be asleep then … right?”

  30

  The Partial Mirror

  The Mad Hop’s face did not bear good news. Ben’s initial reading showed anger and disappointment in equal measure. He walked into the apartment too quickly, head bowed, and offered a subdued “hey.” Ben noted the way the investigator attempted to avoid his gaze, and more troubling, his empty hands.

  The Mad Hop snapped open his lighter, lit a cigarette, and sat down in the wheelchair.

  “Where’s the portrait?”

  The Mad Hop squinted, examining the cigarette from close range. “I’m not sure you want to know.”

  “Samuel,” Ben said, “you went to frame a picture three hours ago. What could have happened in three hours?”

  The Mad Hop engaged in some serious sighing. Looking at Ben, his eyes revealed a newfound, melancholic glaze. “Ben, I have to ask you a strange question. Please try to be objective. Is it possible,” he asked without a trace of drama, “that Marian is still alive?”

  Ben burst out laughing. “So this is the new direction we’re taking in the investigation? We can’t find her, so we dedu
ce that she must be in the previous world?”

  “I remind you that I asked you to be objective.”

  “Objective?” Ben said, his nostrils swelling with disdain. “How could I be anything else when we’re dealing with such cold hard facts?”

  “Regarding the facts,” the Mad Hop said, “I suggest we both use caution. I remember you said it was impossible to recognize the face of the woman who fell off the Ferris wheel.”

  “Yes, but I told you about the other marks that allowed me to identify her: the beauty mark between her big toe and…”

  “I remember,” the Mad Hop said, “I’m simply trying to raise another possibility. Perhaps Marian fell off the Ferris wheel, but the body you saw wasn’t hers.”

  “Have you lost it completely?” Ben cried. “That’s the weirdest theory I’ve ever heard. If the body I looked at in the morgue wasn’t my wife’s, then where the hell is she?”

  “France.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I have reason to believe that your wife moved to France after her ‘death’ and only moved back to Israel some fifteen months later. Rather conveniently timed, don’t you think?”

  “Hold on, I just want to get this straight. You’re implying that Marian staged her death just to get me out of her life? Could you come up with something a little more convoluted?” Ben asked, laughing.

  “At this point, might your brimming self-confidence not be the biggest obstacle in our way? I’ve already met plenty of couples whose refusal to look their spouse’s betrayal in the eye, whose utter reliance on the enduring strength of the vows of love, as though they were unbreakable, as though people never change, has led them astray, but don’t misconstrue my meaning here. I don’t insist on betrayal. I’ll settle for a form of weariness.”

  “Weariness?” Ben said, the repulsion plain on his face.

  “Yes, Ben, as in fed up. As in, maybe she got tired of you and decided to put an end to the whole thing—in an albeit sickeningly original manner, but I’m not here to find answers to the ways in which a withering heart responds to an expiring marriage. It’s difficult for someone to realize that his mate has grown weary of him, that all the channels of communication have run dry, and that their spouse had just upped and gone. Mate, how much fortitude will it take for you to just imagine—not accept, mind you, just imagine—that Marian grew weary of you for unknown reasons? Did the Epilogist in you prepare for such a cruel end?”

  “No,” Ben called out triumphantly, “because that ending is the epitome of refutable endings. Marian and I loved each other fiercely to her dying day, and I assure you that she hasn’t grown weary of me.”

  “How unfortunate that all I get is one side of the story,” the Mad Hop said, chewing a half-detached fingernail. “After all, there’s no chance you’ll even consider the possibility that makes the end of your life a complete travesty.… I reckon if this were one of the stories you’d been asked to end, you’d pounce on this wicked development and rightfully reap the rewards of your agile imagination, but when it comes to reality you prefer to curl up in the warm den of denial, willing to accept nothing but the conventional ending. After all, when you committed suicide you were as certain of her love as you were of yours, but you placed a partial mirror opposite your own feelings without for a moment considering the slight chance that…”

  “A partial mirror?”

  “One of romance’s most common maladies. The certainty that your partner’s feelings are identical to your own, the desire for an artificial symmetry, the reach for equilibrium between lovers, all the while ignoring the fact that, when dealing with a pair, the absolute peak is harmony, not symmetry.”

  “Another moronic fortune cookie?” Ben asked, his voice growing hoarse. “Our relationship was incredible. I never tried to impose an artificial symmetry between us. You, on the other hand, are imposing on me the sensibilities of a twelve-year-old girl and not those of a man who knows that the woman by his side is the exact opposite of his own reflection and because of that loved her so fully. Don’t think for a second that it was all chocolates and roses—we were a normal couple, fought on occasion, didn’t speak to each other every once in a while, but that’s all beside the point. We always knew we’d make up in the end, and that we wouldn’t let the bacteria of everyday life infect us more than necessary … a sneeze here, a cold there, even an occasional flu, but never enough to chill our love.”

  “And what about a terrible case of pneumonia? A fatal case of tuberculosis? No, don’t answer me. You’ve been looking in that tricky mirror for too long. For a newly dead person such as yourself, the fact that someone you thought was dead is actually alive is just as shocking as learning that someone close to you has died when you’re alive. Maybe even more so, because from here there’s no way out. If she’s alive, only she can decide to come to you. Unfortunately, reality has once again defeated the fond symmetry.”

  “What do you want from me?” Ben said, leaping out of his chair, pacing across the room in loping strides. “Samuel, what the hell’s happening here? How did you come up with this? How is it that in your mind I’m now starring in the role of the rejected husband in a plot cooked up by my weary wife? Where did you get this load of horseshit from?”

  The Mad Hop pointed to his chair. “Sit, Ben, I don’t think this is going to sound too melodic.”

  Ben gritted his teeth and sat down, listening to the investigator speak in a tone masquerading as peaceful. “My plan was simply to frame the picture, as a means of expressing my gratitude. I could have gone to a thousand different places, but I chose the Borderer’s shop. He’s an eighty-year-old Chinese bloke known for his perfect eye. I knew that by going to Chu Ming-tun I’d be killing two birds with one stone. The wicked octogenarian has a knack for finding the missing by touching the lines of their faces.”

  “Why didn’t you go see him earlier?”

  “He’s one of those who believe that a picture of a person captures the soul; surely you’ve heard of such things in the past. And that’s our problem, because we don’t have a picture, we have a portrait. I didn’t know if it would work. The second reason I resisted going is my instinctual repulsion of all things mystical. I’ve got no patience for clairvoyants, especially dead ones.”

  “And…?” Ben said between clenched lips.

  “I asked him to frame the portrait. When I inquired whether he could tell me where I might find this woman, he responded with alacrity, said there was no such person. It took me a moment to understand what he meant, but then I put my finger on the beauty mark and kept it hidden from view. He closed his eyes and let his fingers traverse her face. His fingers went around her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. Finally he opened his eyes and smiled mysteriously. ‘She’s here but she’s there, it’s hard to say in which world.’ I was obviously pissed off and asked if Chinese wisdom is by definition enigmatic, he laughed and said he was sorry, he couldn’t help me find the woman, but that he did have a few hundred picture frames that could work well for the particular portrait I was holding. While he was working on the mahogany, I sat down on a stool in a corner of the room and tried to make sense of his logic-proof sentence. I repeated it a few times like a mantra, and suddenly it all became clear. As he brought the hammer down for the final time, I jumped up out of the stool. Ming-tun looked at me and smiled as though he knew that I had finally got it.”

  “I’d be ever so grateful to you, oh wise inspector, if you could share this understanding with me,” Ben said, “as I’m sure you are able to discern I am not at the moment yelling eureka.”

  “Ben, think about it, if she’s here but there and it’s hard to say which world she inhabits, then there’s really only one solution. Ben, who are the only people who inhabit both worlds?”

  Ben distorted his face like an upset child. “She’s a Charlatan? That’s what you’re telling me?”

  “Is that not logical?” the Mad Hop asked, caressing the skin around his smooth round chin. “Maybe something happe
ned to her and she’s on life support in some out-of-the-way hospital?”

  “And how does that sit with the story you were telling me a few minutes ago, the one that had her pulling the wool over my eyes and leaving the country? Seems it’s either-or.”

  “You’re not following me, Ben. When I said something may have happened to her, I wasn’t referring to the Ferris wheel. I meant something else. An ordinary accident or something.”

  “And the basis for this fantasy is a sentence by some inscrutable old Chinese picture framer?”

  “No, it’s a little more complicated than that. When Ming-tun was through, I took the portrait and went to Ambrosia, you know, where the Charlatans like to hang out. I just wanted to ask around a bit, see if anyone had seen the lady.”

  “And those zombies probably sold you stories that made the tales of the Grimm Brothers seem like neorealist manifestos.”

  “No. No one, and I mean no one, out of thousands of people, had seen her.”

  “Ok-aay,” Ben said, not hiding his impatience. “So you left there empty-handed and, as I know you, you took the next multi to Ambrosia 2000, a far more sensible destination if we lend your fantasies some credibility.”

  “I didn’t make it there, Ben,” the Mad Hop said, trying to fish a final cigarette out of an empty pack. His voice low and cold, he continued. “On my way to the multi I walked by a bookstore and looked at the window, kind of hoping Ms. Christie had come back to her senses and started writing again. Looking in, I saw something else—the reflection of a man pretending to be window-shopping but actually watching me. I carried on; he followed. As I walked I could feel his shadow behind me and, in his case, it was a thick shadow indeed, because he was clearly a Charlatan. When he got too close, I spun around and told him the obvious, that one always trails a person from the opposite side of the street. He smiled, a nice smile, and to be frank it was hard not to notice a certain likeness between the two of us. He was also bald and chubby and just a few inches taller than me. He didn’t even contest my charge. He just stared at the portrait. I asked him if he knows the woman in the frame and he, with great sadness, said that the hair was a little off and that the beauty mark seemed out of place, even though he’d only seen her from afar. I was going to carry on, but then he looked at me with these accusing eyes and asked, ‘How do you know Marian?’”