The World of the End

by Ofir Touché Gafla

  “Marian? He said Marian?” Ben yelled.

  “And a lot more. He told me an interesting tale about how they met. On a fan site for Salman Rushdie.”

  “Rushdie?” Ben asked, knitting his eyebrows. “Marian liked him, but it’s more like her to spend her time on a site devoted to the Bard.”

  “Let me remind you that you’re talking about the Marian you knew. The Charlatan made no mention of Shakespeare. Maybe the new Marian has different tastes. But what’s abundantly clear is that this man is head over heels in love with her and, much as I’m in your corner, it’s hard not to want the best for him.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Well,” the Mad Hop said smiling, “they never had the chance to meet face-to-face. After a torrid online correspondence, she from France and he from Israel…”

  “He’s Israeli?” Ben asked, wide-eyed.

  “Yes. After a long period of correspondence, she told him that she’d gotten a job in Tel Aviv and that it was about time she met the man she’d fallen for. That night, our Charlatan got out of a taxi opposite the restaurant, saw her from across the street, and had a heart attack.”

  “The man she’d fallen for? Did you tell him that she has a husband who…”

  “I tried to be frugal with the details. I did ask, though, if she ever mentioned a husband or a partner, and he screwed his face up into a ball of disgust and said she had divorced her awful husband a little over a year ago.”

  “That is impossible,” Ben said, squeezing his head between his palms. “This whole thing.… There must be some profound mistake here.… Please don’t tell me you think this is my Marian.…”

  The look on the Mad Hop’s face made him yell. “What? Why the hell are you looking at me like it’s all over? Maybe that idiot you just met got her confused with another woman? Maybe he’s lying.…”

  “Ben, I didn’t so much as giggle during my conversation with him. I don’t even think I smiled. The man was speaking the truth. And in all honesty, I think we both know he was talking about your Marian, the same one we’ve been looking for for naught in the wrong world.”

  “But a minute ago you said you thought she was a Charlatan.”

  The Mad Hop stiffened his lips victoriously. “How awful to want the death of your love.”

  Ben shook his head stubbornly. “Agh. Stop. Just stop presenting everything as though it’s a done deal.”

  “Ben, you simply can’t ignore these developments. The Charlatan swore to me that just two weeks ago he was supposed to meet your wife in Tel Aviv, and that closes off most of our options. And as for Ming-tun…”

  “I don’t give a fuck about that Chinese nincompoop!” Ben yelled. Staring at the floor, flipping through dozens of scenarios, Ben looked up suddenly and asked, “What happened to the portrait?”

  The Mad Hop cleared his throat several times. “He, ah … he asked me to leave it with him … he practically begged.… I told him that I couldn’t, but I did offer to take him out of his misery.…”

  “Samuel, don’t tell me you gave him the portrait. Please, for the love of God, tell me you booted his ass back to the other world.”

  “Ben, we are in the Other World, and no, he refused to go back there. He didn’t trust me, said he thought it wiser to wait. I told him there was no reason to wait around in this world, but he just snatched the picture and took off.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “What did I do? I ran after him. But just as I was about to catch him, a multi slammed into me. By the time I woke up, I’d lost both the Charlatan and the portrait.”

  Ben chuckled and looked with dim eyes at the portrait’s old spot on the wall. “I was looking for my wife, now I’m looking for her portrait, next I’ll search the dead for a voice that sounds like hers.… Is that the hell that awaits me, Samuel?”

  “It’ll be much worse than that if you keep up this level of self pity.” The hard-edged words came out of the Mad Hop’s mouth despite his desire to sound soothing.

  Ben trapped the stream of profanity fighting for freedom from within and mumbled, “She wasn’t that kind of woman … she didn’t have a single devious bone in her body … she loved me with all her heart … Marian was brave … only a coward could weave that kind of a plan to lose their lover … not Marian … it’s unfeasible…”

  The Mad Hop made his way to the door, stopped only by Ben’s cold voice. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  The investigator, hoarse and obviously speaking through a bulge in his throat, said, “home,” and opened the door.

  “If you leave now, don’t bother coming back,” Ben said. “Just make sure you send the tapes to me ASAP.”

  The Mad Hop’s response rocked the bitter righter back on his heels. The short man with the tearstained face marched back into the apartment, slammed the door, and hollered, “What do you want? What do you want from me? How do you expect me to leave? You think seeing you crushed slips right off my back? You think my worn-down conscience isn’t going to sting a few months down the road when I hear that you punched in a seven over three because you realized she’d never be yours? You think it was easy coming here to tell you about the lovesick Charlatan? That I didn’t consider the repercussions? You need to understand, Ben, I’m not built for weathering these tragedies day in, day out. In death, I thought I’d solve all kinds of fun and rewarding cases. No one told me it would be tearjerker central. What do I know about what went on in your charlatan of a wife’s mind, and I use the word conventionally, when she decided to disappear and send you off with a one-way ticket to hell? Like all the lovers I’ve known, she also seemed to be well endowed with selfishness and, like her, you too exercised some first-rate egoism when you chose not to tell me about the rest of your family members, and the more I fiddled with the integrals of the formula of your insane relationship, the more certain I became that what I had on my hands was a case of two hopelessly selfish people who raised their love to the heights of a holy ideal—otherwise, how else can you explain that in eleven years of marriage you never thought to bring a child into this world, as if you’d be devastated by the need to share your sacred and controversial love with another human being? Do you have an answer for me, something that can explain away your towering selfishness and prove that the mirror is not, in fact, partial? Do you, Ben?”

  Ben sighed long and hard. “You have no idea how badly we wanted a child, Samuel.”

  “Which part of the copulation did you not get?”

  “The carrying-to-term part. Marian conceives, we’re both as happy as can be, but then she wakes up in the middle of the night in a pool of blood and discovers she can never carry a child again.…”

  The Mad Hop apologized and said he’d be back in another minute. He ran outside, knocked on three different doors, got the cigarette he needed, came back to Ben’s apartment, lit it and said, “Now tell me this again—Marian was pregnant with your child?”

  Ben nodded.

  “And she had a miscarriage?” The Mad Hop didn’t need Ben’s confirmation. He put the cigarette between his lips, pulled hard, and kept the smoke down for as long as he could. Staring at the floor as he exhaled, he said, “I wish I was Superman and I could turn the world back in time to the moment we met and refuse to work for you.… I’d like to drill through your skull just so I could see which of the lobes they removed from there and what, exactly, they had left behind.… I’d like to know why you never told me that your wife was once pregnant and had a miscarriage, but I don’t dare, because, as always, you’d play dumb and say, you didn’t ask so I didn’t tell.… I’d like for you instead to walk over to that door and wait patiently while I regulate all the smoke between my two choking lungs … and most importantly I’d like you to have a few glasses of water because in a few hours you’re going to meet your lost child…”

  31

  Pandemonium

  In an instant everything collapsed.

  Ann prepared for the evening as though it were
a matter of life and death. Having once read that a hostess’s success is measured by the guest’s ease, she set to the task with unwavering sincerity, determined not to miss a single opportunity to ingratiate herself with the woman, who was sure to provide answers. The ideal setting for her cross-examination, she concluded knowingly, was one in which everything operated according to the adage about wine and secrets. And even if wine failed to free the chained tongue of the well-versed Frenchwoman, she would still not allow panic to take hold. Her theory held true for food as well, although it did demand a great amount of preparation from the hostess. She knew she would have to serve such a variety of dishes that, despite the Frenchwoman’s likely forte in this regard, she would slide back in her chair, rub her stomach, and grow as pliable as a well-fed cat. And even if extreme satiety failed to generate the desired results, it was always possible to stick with the topic that interested her guest the most, and, with parasitic expertise, to question, peruse, dig, investigate, and examine every possible angle, to give her that warm familial feeling you get when speaking about something dear to your heart, to neutralize all fears and suspicions and indulge her rambling till the last remnants of her resistance have been ground down, and then, once the walls have fallen and the path to the target is laid bare, to steer the conversation to the proper spot and ask, with supreme tact, the question.

  And no less important, Ann reminded herself as she ushered Marian into her home, is to keep her smile beaming at all times. A gentle spirit seems to have descended on the house and the guest cannot be allowed to speculate how much work went into this mass production of an evening. All she knows is that she’s come for dinner. Nothing special is going on. All is ordinary. And with a half smile on her face, the excited nurse thought, just like me, my ordinariness is my believability.

  So how did the ordinary become a colossal catastrophe? Ann wondered as she washed the thin coat of makeup from her frightened face. The fragrant scent of cooking still hung in the kitchen, the dining room table still bore the memory of the feast, and the bedroom still housed the guest. She looked down at the sullied water in the sink, jealous of its powers of erasure. She then raised her scoured face to the mirror and examined its ridiculous contours from up close.

  “I have no regrets…,” she whispered. She noticed the chain around her neck, a perfect copy of the lost original. A secret muscle clenched on the left side of her lower lip as she remembered the fond look in Marian’s eye as she sat down to the table. “I’m glad you decided to exchange the necklace. At least now I know you’re happy with it.”

  God, she thought, how was she able to tell the difference? A deceitful smile on her face, she nodded, eager to do away with the unnecessary diversion. “Yes, I’m very happy with it.”

  Then she sat down. The hostess noted the pleasure on the guest’s face when she saw the new ashtray laid out for her, an invitation to smoke as much as she pleased, yet another step on the path to the much anticipated conversation. Walking unsteadily, the nurse left the bathroom and walked to the edge of the dining room table. She picked up the ashtray. One, two, three, seven butts. No doubt she had felt comfortable. The nurse spilled the contents of the ashtray into the garbage can and laid a restraining finger on her pulsating lower lip. She could not lose control. Simply could not.

  She laughed in desperation and recalled how she’d feigned rapture after asking the reporter for a rundown of recent cultural events, and how the Frenchwoman had gone on to tell her about Rushdie’s upcoming book, and how the licking torches in her eyes conveyed her ravenous interest, and how, only when the enthused speaker slowed, did she spur her on with another question about Rushdie, trying to figure out what it was in The Satanic Verses that so infuriated the Iranians, and why, she wondered, did they commute his death sentence, and, by the way, did his own personal distress ever come through on the pages of his later books, and, if she were to start reading him, which book would be best at welcoming her into his complex world; the questioner yawned inwardly and nodded outwardly while the questioned showed yet another side of her winning character as she proved not just beautiful and clever but also well read and analytically adept, perfectly capable of splitting the books wide open without once straying into academic jargon, relying instead on pure curiosity, and so, the nervous nurse listened, enchanted, to learned explanations about the Indian Anthology edited by the renowned author, and a little more about the writing, and the wordplays, and even the book covers, and how the picture on the front cover of the The Moor’s Last Sigh encapsulates the entire novel, and please do not confuse the Moor and the matter of spices in his family with a different book, also written by an Indian author, where she, too, plunges headlong into the mystical qualities of spices, and, in general, how authors from that part of the world tend to season their writing with strong lively flavors, so much so …

  Ann lost her as she delved into the sensory assault she’d experienced while reading The God of Small Things and, just as she was starting to praise the literary feats of Vikram Seth, Ann caught hold of the string she needed, entangled though it was between a web of words, poured her guest a seventh glass of wine, seized the abrupt silence of drinking, and smiled gaily. “But with all due respect to the others, you love Rushdie the best.…”

  Marian nodded, her eyes misty, her smile widening as her host announced, “I think I’ll start with the one about the artist. What’s it called again?”

  “The Moor’s Last…”

  “Sigh,” Ann said, like an attentive pupil. “The one with the interesting cover.”

  “The picture drawn by…” Marian said, smiling and not finishing her sentence.

  “Oh God, I’m such a scatterbrain.…” Ann giggled, her fingers fidgeting with the chain. “You mentioned that picture and I just realized that I have something of yours.…”

  “Really?”

  “Hm-mmm…” Ann said, trying to sound mellow as she bounded out of her seat, returning a few seconds later from the bedroom with the picture between her fingers. “That night outside the restaurant, when we were arguing, this fell out of your bag.”

  Marian glanced at the picture and shrugged. “It’s okay, you can throw it away. It’s not mine.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t know the people in the picture,” Marian said, intent on getting back to Rushdie but unable to disregard the shade change on Ann’s face.

  Placing a hand on her arm, she asked, “Are you alright? You’re pale as a ghost.”

  Ann pulled her hand back, looked long and hard at the photo, and asked, “What do you mean you don’t know the people in the picture?”

  “Two days after getting to Israel, I was riding the bus, on the way to my new office, and my mind was elsewhere, I think you know where. It was before we’d met and I really wanted to surprise him. This woman and her son sat down opposite me, and I think, although I’m not sure, that they were staring at me and arguing, because eventually the woman took the picture away and gave it to me. She must have thought I was someone else. I glanced at the thing and put it in my bag. I haven’t thought about it at all since then. It was just an honest mistake.”

  “You don’t seriously expect me to take that story at face value, do you?”

  “You can take it however you want. I’d just appreciate it if we could drop it altogether because, in all honesty, I have nothing more to add on the matter.”

  “I just want to understand,” Ann said, “if this picture is so irrelevant to you, why didn’t you toss it?”

  “I told you, I completely forgot about it. The fact is, I didn’t even know it had fallen out of my bag.”

  “And really, in all honesty, you have no idea why the woman on the bus handed you this photo?”

  “I realized that apparently she found some similarities between the woman in the picture and…”

  “Some similarities? Please,” Ann said, “you’d have to be blind to not realize that you two are the same person.”

 
“Very interesting,” Marian said, lighting her seventh cigarette as she scanned the photograph. “I admit she looks a lot like me, but her style is not exactly my cup of tea, and the world is full of similar-looking people … and anyway, both of us know how they say that every person has a double.”

  Ending a brief silence, Marian said, “Can we please talk about something else?”

  “Is there any special reason why you so don’t want to talk about the picture?”

  “Is there any special reason why you so do want to talk about it?”

  The tension that had been accompanying Ann since her first waking moment was no longer exclusively hers. A delicate hostility hovered between the two tired women. Neither could figure out what the other one wanted, and the free exchange of giggles did not deceive either of them; a foul wind swept through the room, turning even an innocent giggle into a ruse of delay, and when the guest showed her first signs of boredom, yawning and rubbing her eyes, the hostess grew vigilant and scratched her knees under the table. “I know why you want to change the topic,” she said.