The World of the End Read online

  Yet for all her self-assurances, she was proven wrong on the third evening since his disappearance. Ann looked up, discovered his absence once again and didn’t know whether to be happy or sad: the Spot had lost its power. She felt nothing, her body sent no objectionable signals; the engine was dead. The debate had been resolved; the man, in his absence, had stolen the pleasure that had been reserved solely for him. Ann was finally willing to admit that his sudden disappearance saddened her. There was a bland taste in her mouth. She bought her favorite chocolate bar, and the bland taste remained. A soft sorrow rose within her. Shoot, she thought and bought another candy, he’s turned invisible. Just like me. She tried to relax, to explain his absence as a vacation or a work-related trip, encouraging herself that he would be back. Then she dismissed the thought. Deep within, beneath the calming voices, she heard a voice say, “He won’t be back. He’s gone. Left you for good.” She moaned, looked at her reflection in the display window, and hissed “inferior.”

  She didn’t sleep all night, bemoaning the bitter end of her fabricated love story. Throughout the next day’s bus commute, she strained to find a plausible excuse for her tardiness. She couldn’t say that she was three hours late because she spent the first five hours of the night crying and only went to sleep at four in the morning. She decided to say that the bus was in an accident. She arrived at the hospital, her story tightly stitched and perfectly packaged. The director swerved past her in the hall and the nurses were dashing about, attending to their chores like industrious ants. Ann bowed her head and smiled sadly. She had no need for an excuse. No one noticed she was late.

  4

  Robert’s Birthmark

  The immaculate lawn stretching from the white room to the station was all but empty. A lone figure sat in a wheelchair at the edge of the grass, hidden behind an enormous sign adorned with the words CATHERINE DUMAS. At first, the newly dead thought the man was aflame, but as they drew close they saw that the acrid smoke swirling out from behind the sign emanated from the stout cigar jammed between his lips.

  Before the 9,568 inductees had the chance to voice their disappointment at the well-manicured lawn, which, despite the assurances offered at the orientation, was barren—no friends, no relatives, no acquaintances, no lovers—they heard a deep male voice call to them from the far end of the path. “Welcome to one and all. We’d appreciate it if you could board the multi-wheels so that we can take you to your new homes on Circle 21 in the city of June 2001. The multi-wheels will depart in ten minutes. We request that you not push; twenty multi-wheels await you. As your guide, I’d like to wish you a bon voyage and a pleasant death.” A second or two later, a stampede began, the herd of people charging toward the blue vehicles at the far end of the lawn. The guide, standing in front of the vehicles, brought the megaphone to his lips and announced through a spreading smile that there was “No need to run. And, please don’t step on any bodies.”

  Only Ben stayed put. Rather than ignore the cigar-smoking cripple like everyone else, he looked him over carefully until, feeling the warmth of Ben’s curious stare, he called out in a thick French accent, “You are going to miss the bus.” Ben smiled apologetically, sorry that he had not listened to Marian and found the time to learn the language of lovers. But then, his eyebrows perking up at the sound of his own voice, his lips opened, and he said, in perfect French, “C’est d’accord.”

  A moment after the newly dead stormed the twenty-wheeled multies, they set out, leaving a wave of roiled air behind them. Ben took an admiring look at the tracks—the multi-wheels were a strange crossbreed of bus and train, with special rails and smooth humps that mysteriously rose each time the multi-wheels approached, pushing the surging vehicles forward at the speed of dueling race cars. A moment later they were part of the horizon and Ben was alone with the cripple, who shifted in his wheelchair, pulled a gold box out from under him, opened it, and offered it to Ben.

  Ben nodded his gratitude, but said, “I don’t smoke, and anyway it’s your last cigar.”

  The smoker curled his upper lip and returned the box to its place. “You’re right,” he mumbled in a charred voice, “and congratulations on your reasoning.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You didn’t take the cigar because it was the last one. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s people who refuse for the wrong reason.”

  “What reason is that?” Ben said, eyes fixed on the strange birthmark on the smoker’s left nipple.

  “Cancer…,” the cripple said, wheezing out a laugh. He spread his arms out to either side of his chair and said, “You only live once.…”

  Ben joined the burst of laughter.

  The smoker shook his hand, “Robert.”

  “Ben. Can I ask you something?”

  “You want to ask why no one came to greet you and the others?”

  “How did you know?”

  “It’s simple, mon ami. I’ve been coming here every day for ten years. Ten years of shock, day-in, day-out, on the newly dead’s faces. The speaker promises, but doesn’t deliver. You have no idea how big this place is. Who’s going to make it to the lawn within two hours? Don’t forget, people are busy and they usually don’t hear or pay any attention to the PA system. In ten years, I’ve seen maybe six emotional reunions. Six, friend, that’s it. And between us, all six were relatives of terminally ill patients, if you get my drift.…”

  “You said you’ve been coming here every day? For the last ten years?”

  “Yeah,” Robert sighed, tapping the sign, “ten years I been waiting for her. I won’t take the chance of missing her when she arrives, so I show up at opening time every day. I never stray too far from the area.”

  “I take it she’s not terminally ill.”

  “Like an ox,” Robert said, shaking his head. “She’s sixty, and you know what that means? That I might waste the next twenty years, easy. But I haven’t given up. We’ll meet yet.”

  “Hats off to your determination,” Ben said, trying to raise the man’s spirits.

  “I hope she feels the same way,” he mumbled, bringing his cigar back to life.

  “I think every woman would feel that way if she knew her man waited for her for ten years.”

  “And what if she doesn’t know that you’re her man?” Robert’s voice rose from behind a wall of smoke.

  Ben caught his breath, just barely keeping his peace with the stench of the cigar. “She doesn’t know?”

  Robert closed his eyes, sucked long and hard on the cigar, and growled, “She knows nothing, that foolish woman. Nothing.” After an uncomfortable silence, he added, “So long as she doesn’t fall in love with another woman. That, I could not handle.”

  Already feeling the pull of the hopeless romantic’s tale, Ben urged him on. “Why would she fall in love with a woman?”

  Robert flicked the cigar a good distance away and let out an anguished moan. “Because that’s what always happens to them in prison. Five hundred women in one jail. How could they not fall in love with one another? All that beauty in one place … you could lose your mind. And imagine if a diamond like my Catherine arrives. They probably started circling as soon as the guard shut the gate.”

  “I don’t understand. She’s in jail? She’s a prisoner?” Ben asked petulantly, sitting down on the grass.

  Robert pointed at the birthmark—a brown star crowning his left nipple—and then whacked it hatefully. “It’s all this thing’s fault. This fucking mark ruined my life.”

  “I’ve never seen such a unique birthmark. Usually they’re like stains—plain, boring, and shapeless. But that star … it’s art.”

  “Eh, what have I not heard about this fucking star? A perfect five-point? A fantastic pentagram? In school, I told the kids I was from another planet and the pentagram was the proof. From the first moment I saw it, I felt that fate had marked me, planned great things for me in the future. That, plus the fact that I dreamed of being an actor … when you’re young you let mysterious signs
lead you down the most optimistic paths. And you know why you find all of these idiotic signs? Because you’re looking for them. It’s simple. And I, I was a magnificent imbecile, drawing a connection between this shit on my chest and my future. This mark sure hasn’t made me special. It makes me, if anything, miserable. Fucking miserable.”

  Ben didn’t take his eyes off the birthmark. “Why is she in jail?”

  Robert pointed to the white doors. “How do you think I got here?”

  Ben looked at the doors, and turned his head back toward Robert, surprised. “She killed you?”

  “I’d prefer if you chose your words with greater care.” Robert smiled. “She murdered me. In cold blood. Emptied an entire magazine on me. Pumped me full of lead. I’m sure the good doctors in the reconstruction rooms were shocked when I arrived. Robert, the human cheese grater.”

  “But why?”

  “Some would say hate. I assert that the true motive was a rigid unwillingness to acknowledge love. A denial of emotions. From the very beginning she played hard to get. I had no problem with this. Everyone has their fun with foreplay. Between us, who wants a girl that gives it up on the first date? They have to make us crawl so we can feel what it’s like to fly. But what would you do? You’re a twenty-year-old who, if you’ll pardon my French, makes Alain Delon look like Louis De Funès. Sexual innuendo surrounds you. Women throw themselves at you, but you’re crazy in love with your woman. You live under the same roof, know you were meant to be together, but there’s one small problem—she isn’t willing to give of herself, if you know what I mean.”

  “How long were you together?”

  “One year,” Robert said, dragging the two syllables out of his mouth, as though they could connote the true duration of the term. “One year I lived with the most beautiful woman the human race has ever known. The woman who makes all others pale in comparison. The woman who, with one look, makes you think all her peers are a genetic scam. That she and she alone was what God had in mind when he used the rib. Ah, mon dieu, but this is the catastrophe. Every day I sang her songs of praise, saluted her beauty. Even when I knew I’d gone too far, I couldn’t stop. She laughed at me, said Paris is full of beautiful women, and retreated to her room.”

  “Hold up, what do you mean to her room? You lived under the same roof, you were in love, and you’re telling me you had separate rooms?”

  Robert smiled bitterly. “We were platonic lovers. We never touched. She said she was saving herself for someone else.”

  “Someone else?”

  Robert raised his finger to the heavens, waiting for the nickel to drop. Ben held his belly and laughed. “God? Catherine was in love with God?”

  Robert tried to stifle his own laugh, which was a hoarse echo of Ben’s. “What did you expect? A whole year I told her that God had created her in his image, I called her divine, begged for a piece of paradise, and she … what is she up to? Locking herself up in her room all night with her dildo, moaning with the wild passion of a Georgian monk in the throes of religious ecstasy. I’m talking about the pinnacle of spiritual life—in the morning a theology student, in the afternoon caring for a sick priest, and at night Mary Magdalene.”

  “God,” Ben said.

  “Don’t mention him. You tell me, how can I, flesh and blood, compete with Him? Just try to imagine the torment: Day after day I gaze into that stunning face. A year slips by and I can’t be sure if she’s real, if she was born this way, or if she is just an evil plan hatched by her true love who created her just for Himself.”

  Ben smiled. “And what about other women? I’m sure that at some point you let nature run its course and…”

  “I had no natural needs!” Robert said, slamming the armrest of his wheelchair. “None but her. She was all I needed in life. I knew you wouldn’t understand. As soon as I met her—that was it! All else was dead to me! The entire female sex! It’s as though I had seen the master plan … her very existence negated the existence of others. And the more she held out, the more feverish my love became.”

  “Rejection is the ultimate aphrodisiac, everyone knows that.”

  “Oh, how I was drawn to her room at night and how soundly I was denied.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “She used to lock her door at night. ‘So that I wouldn’t get in their way,’ at least that’s what she said.”

  Ben, recognizing the potential in the cripple’s life story, the man who waited on the arrival lawn of the Other World for ten years, knew that they had reached the pivotal moment.

  “And then?” Ben cradled the words on the way out of his mouth. He used them often, in fact, when squeezing the life out of false plotlines.

  “You remember I told you how I dreamed of being an actor? There wasn’t a show in Paris I didn’t audition for. Two weeks before the event that changed my life, I auditioned for a small part in a movie rendition of The Miser. Molière. It was the worst audition of my life. I was wound so tight that instead of playing the part of the well-mannered gentleman, I came off as a tic-ridden madman. After a minute of reading, I dropped the text and walked out of the room. It was clear I’d missed another opportunity. Two weeks later I got a call. The casting director was on the line. She wanted me back for another audition. I was shocked. The next day I showed up for the second call, still sure I was auditioning for Cléante, but the director asked me to read Harpagon’s famous monologue. You know, Act Four, Scene Seven: ‘Thieves! Thieves! Assassins! Murder! Justice, just heavens! I am undone; I am murdered; they have cut my throat; they have stolen my money!’ I thought the director had made a mistake, but he insisted, saying my neurotic behavior made him think of Harpagon. My heart was thumping; I closed my eyes and thought of Catherine and the way she had wronged me. I had her stand in for the miser’s stolen money and screamed out the monologue, on the verge of tears. Two days later I got the good news: I’d been chosen to play the lead role in the movie version of The Miser. I felt like the king of the world. At last it was happening; my star was living out its promise. I intended to be the second Belgian in history to bring honor and fame to his country. I mean, what else do we have to be proud of besides Brel? The most famous detective in history, who was created by an English woman? At any rate, that night I asked Catherine to come out with me, but she was in one of her moods. She refused, saying she wouldn’t leave the house until she found her key. Turns out she’d lost the key to her room. I couldn’t see why that bothered her so much. Anyway, I left her at home and went out with friends. We drank half the night away and, for the first time since I’d met my mother superior, I managed to avoid thinking about her for a few consecutive hours. I came home at three in the morning in high spirits. I went to my room, took off my clothes, and crawled into bed. I don’t know how much time elapsed while I was asleep, but when I woke up I was sure I was dreaming. I opened my eyes and saw a fully naked woman mounting me. I switched on my lamp but still had trouble believing what my eyes reported: the exquisitely naked Catherine Dumas was making love to me, eyes closed, moaning ‘mon dieu’ and coaxing herself down on top of me in the most glorious manner.

  “I remember thinking to myself that the star was doing its thing; that everything was falling into place. We made love till first light. When I left the house that morning she was still sleeping … in my bed. I floated down the street, got into my car, and went to the director’s house to sign the contract. When I got back she wasn’t there. By nightfall, I was worried. Catherine was still nowhere to be found. The door to her room was open. Just as I considered calling her priest, four cops burst through the door. They clapped the cuffs on my wrists, told me I was charged with the brutal rape of my roommate, and dragged me to their car. I had no idea what they were talking about. They asked me thousands of questions about what happened that night. I assured them that there must be some mistake. They said they doubted it, considering the charges she’d pressed against me. I begged them to bring her down to the interrogation room so that she could look me in
the eye and tell them that this whole affair was an awful misunderstanding. They refused, saying I wouldn’t be looking anywhere near her eye until the trial. Trial! What the hell were they talking about? I spent a month and a half behind bars. Naturally I lost the part, but that’s beside the point. My lawyer said we had no choice but to portray Catherine as certifiably insane. I didn’t want to go along with it, but what choice did I have?

  “I told him everything, everything. The physical love affair with God, the platonic relationship with me up until that night, the whole story. He smiled and said she would live to regret bringing charges. I waited a month and a half for the trial and believe it or not—I was more eager to see her than to discover my fate.

  “When the day arrived, the police escorted me to the courtroom. I saw her sitting next to the prosecutor and I couldn’t hold myself back. I called to her. She spun around, opened her eyes wide, and started to scream bloody murder, ‘No! Don’t come near me! No!’

  “I won’t torture you with the details of the trial. Just the dry facts. From the outset, it was clear that the jurors were infatuated with her. How could they not be? She looked like a wounded angel. Add a tough lady with a gavel into the mix and you start to get the picture. I suppose you won’t be shocked to learn that the trial lasted less than two weeks. In her closing arguments the prosecutor contended that I had taken advantage of the fact that Catherine was a sleepwalker and raped…”

  “Whoa, just a second, hold up!” Ben called. “What are you talking about? You never mentioned that Catherine was a sleepwalker.”

  The grimace spilling across the sad Belgian’s face deterred Ben. “Now you see what they did to me? They pulled this story out of nowhere. They brought in an expert who testified that she’s a sleepwalker. That she locked her door every night for safety reasons, so that she wouldn’t, you know, wander out of her room and hurt herself. You remember that she couldn’t find the key? Well, they accused me of stealing it. In fact, that was the prosecution’s main piece of evidence. They found it in my pants with my fingerprints smeared all over it. It’s obvious she planted it there to frame me. They claimed I stole the key, snuck into her room in the middle of the night, and, in order to make it seem like another one of her wanderings, took her to my room, where I forcefully raped her. You see what kind of deranged fairy tale the bitch cooked up?