Apocalypse for Beginners (24 page)

The perennial questions of a Bauermann.

I turned away from the glass wall. The terminal was deserted, peaceful and depressing at the same time. All that was missing was a scattering of the living dead.

A few dozen passengers bided their time near Gate 12: globetrotting women on a budget, farm machinery salesmen, nuns, middle-class Mexicans drinking bottled water, migrant workers, thirty-year-olds in worn-out jeans. The grandeur and misery of the low season.

The flight attendants took their positions at the check-in counter, and I drew a whole collection of boarding passes out of my pocket. I had purchased an exotic ticket on the Internet, an unbeatable deal, which would mean flying to Acapulco, San Diego and Honolulu before finally heading for Tokyo—in total, thirty-one hours of travelling.

The time needed to think about what came next.

Behind the counter a flight attendant picked up the intercom handset, cleared her throat and welcomed us aboard Air Transat flight 1707 to Acapulco.

“This is a pre-boarding announcement. Passengers requiring assistance or travelling with small children, please proceed to Gate 12.”

The passengers stood up. Stretched. Checked their luggage. A line soon formed in front of the counter. The atmosphere gradually became charged with the tension generated by the imminent departure, but I remained serene. Leaning my back against the glass wall, I fanned myself with the sheaf of boarding tickets. I felt light, immortal. I was Paul Newman.

Things were much better now that the end of the world was behind us.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Despite impressions to the contrary, a novelist is never completely alone.

I wish to thank a number of people who have contributed to the making of this book, starting with Antoine Tanguay, who patiently listened to me construct and deconstruct the project, and whose maverick erudition nourished my thinking at various times. Bernard Wright-Laflamme, Martin Beaulieu and Pierre Blais read and commented on the text and corrected certain factual mistakes. Jeremy Barnes assisted me in clarifying the relationship between nuclear explosions and citrus fruits (although the calculations in
Chapter 17
are my own, and I take full responsibility for the errors or inconsistencies that may be found there). Masumi Kaneko and Julie Sirois translated the
Rough Planet
excerpts. Isabel Flores Oliva was there.

A warm word of appreciation for Lazer Lederhendler, my trusted translator, who worked at a breakneck pace and produced an exceptional translation. Very special thanks go to Pamela Murray, whose enthusiasm, intelligence, and sharp eye helped make this English version into an edition in its own right. Thanks also to Shaun Oakey and Kathryn Exner. Editors exist to show that a text can still be improved after five hundred readings.

Finally, I want to express my gratitude to my family, in particular Marie Wright-Laflamme, Jean-Luc Laflamme and Louise Plante, without whose support the manuscript would have advanced at the painful rate of fifteen kilometres a day.

NICOLAS DICKNER
’s first novel,
Nikolski
, won three awards in Quebec, one in France, and was the winner of Canada Reads 2010. He currently writes a weekly column for
Voir
, and is working on his next novel.

LAZER LEDERHENDLER
won the Governor General’s Literary Award for his work on
Nikolski
, which also won a Quebec Writers’ Federation Award. He lives in Montreal.