The World of the End

by Ofir Touché Gafla

  “Okay, Marian, okay,” the Mad Hop said, laying a warm palm on her shoulder. “You have to let that story go and hope that you’ll meet again one of these days. After all, he wasn’t a particularly healthy person, judging by what he told me, and at the risk of sounding macabre, you surely know that sooner or later his heart will give out, and then I have no doubt that the two midnight children will give thanks to the twists of fate that separated them and brought them together in the same world. Maybe you’ll even laugh about your dramatic entrance into the Other World and the strangest request I’ve ever heard…”

  “Which request?”

  “Make me flicker…” The Mad Hop smiled, offering her a cigarette.

  36

  The Chronicles of a Death Foretold?

  The residents of 1616 could not recall such a strong flow of people to their city. Even though they were accustomed to pilgrimages large and small, this current wave was of an almost ungraspable proportion, as hundreds of express multies pulled into town and spun back around in order to transport the legions of dreamers that waited dozens, even hundreds, of years for the critical moment, and now that it had arrived, were simply unwilling to be left behind. Nearly four hundred years passed before the greatest of playwrights saw fit to release a new play, his thirty-eighth, which he had worked on for a considerable period of time, perhaps as long as a decade, if the rumors were to be believed. On the first day of auditions, thousands of nervous, overwrought actors stormed the theater doors, since the word was that, aside from a stern crew of casting personnel, the man responsible for the whole ado would be in the theater, personally supervising the selection process.

  Those who’d had the opportunity to audition reported, frustratingly, about a large dark hall, a floodlit stage, and a soft voice in the dark asking them to read two segments, as they liked it. The brief auditions had been going on for four weeks with no end in sight, as a stream of daunted actors washed through the city, some waiting for the telefinger to ring and others compulsively rehearsing for their audience with the incomparable Bard. The unbearable congestion on the streets and the neurotic behavior of the actors (fits of rage, anxiety attacks, hysterical crying, and desperate giggling from every nook and cranny), who treated the audition with pristine reverence, embarrassing all those in their company, especially when they decided to collaborate and bring entire scenes to life, and at times entire acts, in the middle of the street, emphasized the sense of distorted reality for those who wanted to die in peace and happened on dramatic events on their way to their humdrum existences—like the woman who craved some ice cream and, on the way to the stand, passed thirty-three indecisive Hamlets, until the last of them stepped in her way, grabbed her head in a viselike grip, and asked the question, or the poor kid who found himself witnessing a brutal murder courtesy of Titus Andronicus; Shakespeare mania gripped every corner of the tranquil city and the harried residents nodded sullenly, all too aware that this was but the beginning.

  For one man, though, it was the end. Utterly detached from the boisterous festivities, Ben spent more than an hour traipsing through dozens of theatrical scenes that, at some other less apathetic period, he would undoubtedly have recognized. In a moment of resourcefulness, he tried to call the Mad Hop, but all that came over the line was a disturbing silence. He smiled and nodded in full understanding. Only someone who had devoted his life to writing endings knew how to detect the end with near scientific certainty—it’s the weighty feeling of enormous unburdening from the shoulders of the protagonist and the teller alike.

  He swerved away from the Caliban-lined street and turned into a quiet narrow alley, where he leaned against a high stone wall and breathed in the hush. He had once asked Marian what he should do if he lost her. She laughed and said, “Find someone else.” “But she’d be someone else,” he snickered back, and she chuckled and, growing reflective, said, “That’s the essence of loss. Someone once asked me what I find in you. I thought about it and answered—things I never knew I’d lost.”

  Ben sorted through his options: one, to return to 2001 and renew his useless search, but then he’d surely be the recipient of unsatisfying explanations—if she felt the need to deceive him to the point of staging her own death, then surely she did not seek his company; two, to meet his grandparents and pretend he was interested in the information for which he’d come all the way to this frenzied city; and three, by far the most appealing—to destroy it all with the flick of a finger. Without delay. The only valid alternative for an existence sans Marian. He was experienced. He’d taken the risk before, abandoned his life without any qualms, clinging to an innocent and optimistic faith in the happy end his death would bequeath him. And even now, in the face of a reality so squalid it left no room for faith, he knew he would do it again.

  He stroked the steel boxes of his stomach and sighed. “How insipid my moral reckoning has been since the day you died, Marian. How insipid I’ve become. Bereft of my senses, I wandered through cities and among people in my futile search for you, whereas you decided not to reveal yourself. Maybe already back then, in our good old days, you detected a worrying fissure in your lover’s composition and, in your infinite wisdom, you knew that leaving would lay waste to the man by your side? Maybe you decided to teach me a lesson, to break me down into my elements and let me deal with the consequences? But I, a silly and inane lover, did not pass the test. Uncle David thought I had begun to put the pieces back together, but he has no sense of the enormity of the destruction you left in your wake. Why can’t I, like most people who have lost a significant other, manage, in the end, to get my head back up above water? Why did I need this kind of drama? And maybe if you’re my significant other, I’m the other without significance? Is it possible that love is the loftiest reason to live—and its loss, to die? It’s the worst end, Marian, the most bitter, thorny, disappointing, dark and defective of them all. You shouldn’t give your all in love, because it demands tenfold in return. Not just what a person is willing to give, but his very being. A dark tunnel where the light at its end is inverted and inside out. The end is the beginning, otherwise how would one even get there? He needs a thin beam of light to take his first steps.

  “On his way where? Into the infinite darkness? Like birth, my love? A passing glimpse of light shines through and then … bam! Blackout. Forever. That’s the promising beginning, misleading sparks of light? The day we met, the day my first ending was published, the day you told me you were pregnant, each and every one of those days ends too early because I no longer know you, because I no longer care to write a word, because our son is an alias, and he’s better off without his ridiculous father. For the love of God, a single flicker of light and off we go, throwing ourselves into the diabolical tunnel of life. Albeit without a choice, but still. How programmed we’ve been to believe that the redemptive light also exists at the end of the tunnel. And what a large role I played in propagating that fallacious tradition. True, I wrote willfully provocative endings, open endings, sad endings. People don’t fear death, Marian, they fear a bad ending, where the illusion of the chandelier at the end of the road shatters in their faces, darkening their world. Marian, there’s no other ending. There’s no other ending. I’m not interested in trudging through this fucking tunnel that refuses to end. I’m not interested in fooling myself with the thought that at some point it will happen. As far as I’m concerned, the choice is not between to be or not to be but between not to be now and not to be later, and, in all honesty, I see no point in procrastination. I think the time has come to put an end to the story, and if I’m wrong, I do hope you’ll never know.…”

  Ben took the godget in both hands and placed his thumb on button number three with utmost care, when he heard a dry cough behind him. “If you think punching in a seven over three is going to make you forget about her, you’re fooling yourself.”

  Ben turned around and looked at the oldest man he’d ever seen. The stooped character, wrinkled as a paper bag that had been reu
sed endlessly, cleared his throat. “Please excuse the rude intrusion but I thought it would only be right to tell you something before you shut the light.”

  “How long have you been standing here?” Ben shuddered.

  The tattered character wheezed back, “Since ‘I’ve wandered through cities.’ About there. I don’t ordinarily eavesdrop on others, it’s just that you invaded my alley, my refuge from all the irritating actors. I thought you were an actor, too, and was about to ask you to go find a different stage, till the matter of the godget…”

  “Unfortunately I am going to have to ask you to find another refuge. You’re in my way!”

  “I’m sorry, but a seven over three will not grant you a pass from the fears you just voiced.” The old man approached listlessly.

  “What do you know about seven over three?”

  “That if a person no longer wants to be, seven over three is the worst option for him.”

  “What’s so bad about eternal sleep?”

  “You can’t wake up from it.”

  “Fantastic!” Ben called out with tempered enthusiasm, unsure if he wanted to hear more.

  “That’s where you’re mistaken.” A surprising urgency slipped into the old man’s cautious voice. “When the first stage of your life came to a close, the prologue that, judging by your looks, was about forty years long, you must not have expected to find this type of world.”

  “True.” Ben nodded in spite of himself. “That’s why I’m tempted by the thought…”

  “Yes, yes”—the old man barged in with a cough—“I’m about to get to that. Desperation, depression, boredom, curiosity—doesn’t matter why, you decided you’ve had enough. The option offered by the godget sounds enticing—eternal sleep in seven pushes of a button. The perfect epilogue. The End! Or maybe not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s simple, son. This world is the proof that there’s no such thing as nonexistence. Not being. It’s all about ‘geographical’ differences.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re able to not exist only in a certain world. Just as you’re able to exist only in a certain world. In your current state, you’re able to not exist in the world in which you were born, and, in your former life, as a mortal, you couldn’t exist in this world, and from that we are forced to deduce that if you punch in a seven over three you will experience a different kind of existence, an existence you couldn’t have experienced in either of your other two worlds.”

  “But it’s just sleep.”

  “Which may turn out to be feverish and fitful. Who can say? After all, for your loved ones that remained behind when you died, if there were any such, you’re in eternal sleep now. They don’t know a thing about our cockamamie world. Wooden casket, glass sarcophagus, what’s the difference? And if I still haven’t managed to convince you, think of the big hint. Eternal sleep. Must we analyze the term to death or are you capable of unwrapping it yourself?”

  “You mean dreams,” Ben said in astonishment. “Do you really think that eternal sleep is to be eternally dreaming?”

  “Far more dangerous than that,” he said, a sly smile flickering across his creased face, reclaiming Ben’s attention.

  “Okay, talk to me.”

  “When a man dies, what do the living say about him?”

  “The living?”

  “Yes, where do they say he’s gone?”

  “Well, where I come from, they say halach l’olamo, went to his world.”

  “And is this world your world?”

  “Not really.”

  “And was the previous world your world? Did you ask to be born into it?”

  “No.”

  “And if you hit seven over three, then that could be the first time in your existence that you come to a third world of your own volition.”

  “But I came to this world of my own volition, too. No one else is responsible for my death.”

  “The aliases must be taken into consideration, don’t you think?”

  “What?”

  “If this third world is a world that belongs to you, only to you, your world, it must be comprised of something, right? Impressions, tastes, loves, hates, traits, colors, senses, wants, fears, inclinations, thoughts, dreams. All of that is based on your life, otherwise how could you ever determine for yourself who you are and in what alternate manner you could have amassed the entire array of existential experiences?”

  “But if I will eventually pass into my world, why must I go through this world first? Why can’t I just skip over it?”

  “I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but two things are clear to me—if you were an alias and you died before being born, what world exactly would you arrive at? How could you go to your world if you didn’t have the chance to experience anything? This world has to exist for those to whom the other world remains beyond the realm of their experience. The second fact is no less important—everyone knows that particularly advanced aliases developed the godget, without which you can’t get to any other world…”

  “In other words, in any case, there must be an intermediary world between that world and…”

  “I think it would be best to compromise on the term intermediary world between the external world and the internal world.”

  Ben closed his eyes and called out excitedly, “The godget. The simulation of freedom, allowing us to choose our preferred terms of existence, practically without restrictions. The transition from an arbitrary world devoid of choice to a world where we are not asked to confront the hardships of the body, the difficulties of communication, and the woes of economics. An ostensible utopia, which readies you for the true utopia—the internal world. A world where the topography of the soul reigns. Ben halach l’olamo. The world of Ben Mendelssohn—a religion of the self. With a quick turn of the mind, the sparse Israeli landscape can be exchanged for the ruins of a monastery in Portugal, the colors of spring can be made ever present, Schubert, Costello, Woody Allen, one cat or two, hypnotic tranquility, I’m going back to writing, I’m painting because all of a sudden I can, I’m encircled by Marians. No need to search for her, she’s everywhere, like the sky and the earth, she’s an element of nature, with her rolling laugh, she’s there just like me, in the dream, a permanent resident in my castle, which looks out over the great sea, and every morning we’ll swim, and make love on the beach, and he … he’ll be with us, too, our little alias … maybe even more than one. I always wanted two, brother and sister … mother and father, the perfect familial idyll. Well, what’s preventing you from seeing the vision through?” He opened his eyes and recoiled in dread. The old man had disappeared and in his place stood the most beautiful woman in the world.

  Ben came close to her and laid a hand on her exposed shoulder. “Are you real?”

  She smiled her famous smile and hooked her arms behind her back, accentuating the full curve of her hips and her impeccable posture, wearing the blue velvet dress he loved most.

  “Where did you get the dress from?” Ben wondered.

  “From the closet.” The most famous voice in the world squeezed his heart like the last notes of a melody.

  “Where’s the closet?”

  “In the bedroom, silly,” she giggled warmly, twisting the skin on his elbow between her two fingers as she always did whenever he asked a stupid question.

  “Where’s the bedroom?”

  “At home.”

  “In the house in Tel Aviv?”

  “Do you know any other?”

  “And when did you stop in there?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t know. It’s so far away and there’s no way you’ve been hanging out here for the past fifteen months in a blue velvet dress when everyone knows that this is a clothes-free zone.”

  “Who’s everyone?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Benji, there’s no one here but us. And what’s this nonsense about no clothes? What are your jeans made out of, air?”
/>   Ben stared at the well-worn denim longingly. “But where did everyone go?”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I didn’t go anywhere. You’re the one who left.”

  “But here I am. Right here. In front of you. At an arm’s length.”

  “So, why can’t I touch you? And why is this meeting so cold? Marian, it’s not supposed to be like this.”

  “Benji, honey, what do you want from me? You make the rules, you can break them, too. For some reason you decided that I’d be icy and unapproachable, and that doesn’t leave me a lot of options. Maybe you should turn up the temperature of this meeting.”

  “I can’t. I’m stuck on tepid.”

  “Then for now we’ll have to work with tepid.”

  “Marian, I didn’t come all this way to do tepid.”

  “So do something about it.”

  “What can I do? And what are we doing in this alley anyway?”

  “Do you want to go home?”

  “To Tel Aviv?”

  “Or to Saint Madera Sanctus.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A small ruined monastery north of Lisbon.”

  “Why there of all places?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “But before you said we only had one home.”

  “We do have only one home.”

  “So why would we go to the ruins of a monastery north of Lisbon?”

  “You like those kinds of places.”

  “Marian, what is this? What’s the meaning of this conversation? Why can’t I get through to you?”

  “Maybe it has to do with that thing.…”

  “What thing?”

  “With the aliases’ funny little toy. I have one of those, too.”

  “An alias?”

  “No, a godget. But you’re far braver than I am.”

  “I’m not brave at all.”

  “You’re right. You’re a coward. First the gun, then the button, and now we have a problem.”