The World of the End (49 page)

When her daughter asked about her father, her mother said he had died many years before, nipping in the bud any talk of her private nightmare. She spent her best years raising the sole ray of light in her life, who grew up to be a blinding sun—Marian surpassed all expectations: an exemplary daughter, a brilliant student, a journalist, and an independent woman. With the loving daughter’s encouragement, the proud mother went back to school in her mid-forties, stooped yet curious and determined to complete what she had started years ago, refusing to allow life to foil her plans again. Upon receiving her masters, seven years later, the dean of the department called her to his office and said he had read her thesis, “The Individual’s Relationship with God: The Most Perilous Love Story Of All,” and that he had found it fascinating. He suggested that she expand it into a book, so that she would be able to continue what she had begun with her modest work—telling the life story of a simple person, from the perspective of God. At first she was startled by the pretentious smell wafting off such a vexing undertaking, but after further consideration and with the help of the old professor she came to the conclusion that as a believer she could not afford to pass up the opportunity to examine her life from the divine perspective.

Three years later, when her daughter informed her that she intended to surgically remove the birthmark on her chest, Catherine asked to accompany her, eager to witness her daughter “change” into the daughter she’d never known and to pretend that she was meeting her for the first time, pushing from her mind the stupid fear that without the birthmark her daughter would lose her identity as the Marian she had known and loved. The last man she ever dreamed of seeing in the small clinic was the one who dominated her mind ever since she had helped wheel her daughter into the OR. And when he opened the door, without thinking of who might be behind it, she lost the power of clear thought. His eyes filled with wonder as his lips stretched into a smile. The repulsive grin pushed her hand into her bag. She drew the gun, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. Robotically. With no feeling whatsoever. Afterwards, when her stunned daughter questioned her motives, she told her a half truth. Sometimes that’s enough. Only her cellmate, dear Sandrine, knew the whole truth, and on her deathbed, Catherine made her swear she would find her lost daughter and bring the two sisters together. When Ben asked her why she waited till her final moments to reveal her secret, she shrugged and looked at the floor gloomily, and when he asked about the book, she managed a partial smile and said, “Forget that, it’s just meaningless nonsense.”

The unavoidable conclusion. The Charlatan who met the Mad Hop is in love with a different Marian, the one who’s living unperturbed in a faraway world. Ben couldn’t comprehend the notion of two Marians. One of them was a world in and of itself, and now he discovered there was a second, an assuredly fascinating alternative. He toyed with the idea of a different Marian, her expressions foreign, her personality different, the Marian he never met, and perhaps he was mistaken and the similarity between the two was far greater than he suspected.

“I’m guessing that at some point you heard from her … my Marian…”

“Yes. A month after the incident at the Vie-deo machine. She wanted to meet. In her hometown. 1616. I didn’t need to mull it over. I took the little one and set out. She lived six blocks from here, on King Lear Boulevard.”

“Lived?” he asked with mounting fright, feeling the nausea creep back into his belly. “In other words, she left that apartment, too? Moved somewhere else?”

“Marian left her apartment two months ago. You must understand, Ben, things have happened … in effect, I was the one who convinced her to leave … there was no other choice.…”

“What are you talking about? Why did you convince her to leave?”

For the first time since the beginning of their conversation, tears pooled in her eyes and the stoic façade she tried to maintain between herself and the events that had shaped her death dissolved fast. Her steady voice lost its clarity, and the clenching feeling that crept into her throat truncated some of her words. “You can surely imagine how difficult it was for her to meet her mother and son … she had watched the first tape … she recognized me … and maybe it was the shock that prevented her from noticing the likeness between Henri and his father, back then, by the Vie-deo machine.… It was not an easy meeting … not easy at all … I wanted to embrace her, to touch her, to make her understand that I’m here forever, but I didn’t dare … she was distant … cold … I don’t blame her, I know … but she hardly showed any warmth even toward the kid … again, I thought it had to do with the shock … she shook his hand and smiled a bit, but nothing more than that, as though she were on guard … even a month later, when I let her know we were moving there, in other words, here, to 1616, in order to be close to her, she reacted strangely.… I thought she’d be happy … after all, from what I’d gathered we were the only family members she’d met … and you know how hard it is to find alternate apartments in the Other World … but Marian didn’t seem excited in the least … she mumbled something like ‘welcome’ and went back to her affairs … I tried to gain her trust by any means … I was willing to do anything for her to forgive me, and in fact we began to meet more often, but only later did I realize that I don’t really interest her … nor does Henri.…”

“The child didn’t interest her?” Ben asked in wonder.

“You, Ben, you were all that interested her. Even Shakespeare lost most of his appeal when she wasn’t chosen to be part of the casting team for his new play. And that was in the beginning. Before we really got to know each other.”

“But you said that she said that he has my eyes … that didn’t…?”

“To the contrary, Ben, to the contrary. The few times she looked him in the eye she shivered and burst out crying. She said it was too much, that she simply couldn’t deal with those eyes. When I asked if she’d like to watch the child for a day or two, she looked at me like I was out of my mind.… Later on, we’d come by her place once a week in order to get her out of the apartment, but it was impossible … she preferred to stay indoors and watch the tapes.… Sometimes I joined her and watched some snippets of your life together … I thought I’d get to know her better that way, but she made it very clear that my presence only bothered her. I wasn’t upset with her, but I admit it was rather hard to understand her … up until that terrible afternoon two months ago…”

“What happened two months ago?”

“Henri did something a little bit…”

The doorbell rang twice. Catherine leapt out of her chair, ran to the door, and opened it with a giggle. The woman on the other side of the door wrapped her in a tight hug and the two swayed back and forth, laughing, crying, and laughing again. Catherine took her friend’s hand and introduced her. “Ben, I’d like you to meet Sandrine Montesquieu, the friend I was telling you about.…”

Sandrine came over to him and shook his hand warmly, exchanging amused glances with her beaming friend. Ben was astounded by the sudden swing in Catherine’s mood, as though new life were breathed into her as soon as the visitor arrived. He assumed that the two must share something so significant that it dwarfed all he had heard up until now. The two of them sat on the couch and held hands, blabbing away, as though all of the world’s sorrow had been muted, as though the room were their old cell, as though they weren’t sitting opposite an appalled son-in-law waiting for the most important response of all. But it was slow in coming. For many a minute he sat there and listened as they relived the old days together, speaking in their own indecipherable code, bringing up pearls from the ocean of grief the two of them had crossed, oblivious to their surroundings. Ben was envious of their remarkable ability to shut him out, and it brought to mind all the times he had done much the same with his wife, until they were brought back to the here and now with a barbed remark.

“I know you have a lot to talk about … and I don’t want to disturb you, if you could just, please, give me the address…,” he stammered.

Catherine looked at him with a silly grin and apologized. “I am so sorry. I totally forgot myself there for a moment. I’d offer to invite you for dinner…”

“That’s alright. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other soon enough.”

“I’m sure we will,” she said, ripping the corner off a newspaper he hadn’t noticed. She jotted down a few words, handed him the note, and whispered, “Be patient, please. And I beg you, do not give up. You’ve come this far, you can’t lose hope.”

Ben nodded and looked at the slip of paper only once they had exchanged thumbprints and parted ways. Since then his lips had rehearsed what had been written hundreds of times, much like the actor who sat next to him on the express multi: “October 1700. First right from the central station, second left, then second right—Worldly Rest.”

38

In the Dark

PMD—Post-Mortem Depression. That’s what the alias in charge of the Incurable Disease ward called Marian’s condition. Three consonants that encompassed the full measure of her postmortem decline: the initial shock, which almost all of the deceased experience upon arrival in the Other World; the illusory acclimatization stage; the primary shock stage; the denial stage; the sinking stage; the frozen stage. Or, in other words, as the alias put it as he smoothed his frizzy beard, the inability to come to terms with the withdrawal from the previous world and the trenchant refusal to accept the new world as the only framework of existence, or, even, as
a
framework for existence. “Ironically,” 270 added, smiling generously, “the two population groups most susceptible to this worrying mental illness are diametrically opposed:

“The larger group is comprised of those who suffered their entire lives and mistakenly believed that death would put an end to their existence, and so, they cannot deal with the fact that the Other World extends onward toward eternity, and rather than rejoice at the second chance they’ve been given, they defiantly reject that reality, treating it like an inexplicable but certainly malicious plan designed to compound their disgust at their existence. Since they so abhor the misleading state of their being, they embark on a silent campaign against the ‘puppeteers’ behind the deceitful existential conspiracy, are ensnared in it, and thereby avoid the final, seemingly inexorable measure. They feel cheated and betrayed, left to dangle against their will between the uselessness of their current situation and the uselessness inherent in an act that will not produce the desired results. On the fringes of that group is an especially strange subgroup of frighteningly realistic folks who simply refuse to believe in the existence of the Other World and all of its fantastic elements, insisting instead on trying to convince everyone who crosses their path of its overwhelming inconceivability. Most of the time, these folks come to Worldly Rest after they’ve compulsively destroyed several stolen godgets and attempted, in vain, to print currency bills in order to ‘get some reality flowing through the veins of this grotesque universe.’

“The second group, which, statistically speaking, represents only one percent of the larger group, is comprised of people who experienced great joy in their lifetimes and in death have come to realize the good with which they were endowed, and subsequently, have trouble divorcing themselves from the past. The transition to a new world is, from their point of view, an unwanted new beginning and, consequently, they show nothing but a keen contempt for the forced grappling with death, which stripped them of their joie de vivre. These patients claw through their personal biographies and sanctify the masterpiece that began with their birth and ended with their infinitesimal death. As opposed to the Disappointed-By-Death patients, who suffer from active depression as a result of their paranoid frame of mind, the Formerly Joyous patients sink into a passive depression that prevents them from extricating themselves from the imprisoning trance of their memories. That being said, one should exercise caution around them, as they are the most dangerous and can react in an extreme manner if they feel threatened.” The expert added sympathetically, “This latter group is the one to which you wife belongs.”

Ben smiled. “Marian would never react as extremely as you say. She’s not a violent or dangerous woman. She is the most…”

The expert cut him short. “Marian almost killed her own child.”

“Liar.”

The alias grinned. “I wish. In another world this story would have ended terribly.”

“What story?”

“Your wife, Mr. Mendelssohn, is addicted to the tapes of her life. She steps away for a moment, goes to the kitchen, the child stays by himself in the living room and looks for something to amuse himself with. He plays with the buttons on the Vie-deo machine. He erases a week. He erases the wedding and the honeymoon. That’s what the kind grandmother told me. Marian returns to the living room and discovers what the child has done. She loses it. Goes wild. A week of her life, and not just any week, has been stolen from her. She pounces on him and starts to strangle him with all her might. The grandmother finds the daughter in an indisputable position. She understands that the woman needs help. Marian does not make a scene when we send a special multi-wheel to her house, along with four orderlies who ask that she come with them. ‘The tapes’—that’s all she says, that’s all she cares about. She takes them with her; she doesn’t mind moving to Worldly Rest. After all, everything that happens after death isn’t really happening.”

“And how does she explain the week she’s lost from the tape?” Ben asked, shocked at his own equanimity just a moment after learning about Marian’s sickening metamorphosis.

The alias played with his facial hair again, this time tugging on his beard with a gentle, tranquil motion. “A technical glitch. On the other hand, she remembers what happened in a distant part of her memory. The experience is rather tricky, Mr. Mendelssohn. She didn’t forget that she strangled the child, but the fact was insignificant as far as she was concerned. As I said, anything that does not pertain to the past is rendered superfluous and worthless to her. The fact that she met her biological mother in our world, the fact that she found her only son in our world, the fact that he erased the week and the fact that she reacted with fury, all these facts are immaterial, relegated to the far reaches of her brain and even there are doubtlessly buried under mountains of exhaustively chewed-over information. A colleague of mine once described this phenomenon as Regurgitating. And that, in essence, is what all passive PMD patients do. Introspection, followed by conclusions, is not why they watch their lives. They simply live their lives anew, as spectators.”