The World of the End (18 page)

Ben covered his mouth, his hand shaking, his head bobbing in abrupt bunny hops, and gave in to the contagious laughter. The two cackled for a while, wiping tears from the corners of their eyes, enflaming the atmosphere with nasty jokes about Marian’s flying abilities, her hidden wings that didn’t pass their big test, the smash of impact, and the shock of the kids who witnessed their teacher disengage from her seat and plummet to her moronic death.

The Mad Hop sobered up first. “What kids?” he asked.

Ben explained, his voice still carrying traces of giddiness. “I told you, she was an English teacher … that morning she took her students, the kids from the consulate, to the amusement park, and that’s where it happened.”

“How the hell does something like that happen there? The rides are supposed to be perfectly safe. How does one go from an immobile, seated position to a freefall?”

Ben shrugged. “No one was able to explain it. Maybe she wasn’t seated. Maybe she was standing. When they asked the kids, they were too shocked to answer. They were pretty self-involved.”

“Who was sitting next to her?”

“Some old guy she invited to join them. One of the kids said she saw him next to the ride and that he looked like a homeless guy. She must’ve felt sorry for him, wanted to give him a few minutes of fun. It’s so like her. But the police couldn’t find the guy for questioning. Too bad. He could’ve solved the mystery.”

“Did she die instantaneously?”

“Luckily. Even though the damage was permanent.”

“What a strange comment.”

“If you’d seen her face, you wouldn’t say that. It was totally disfigured.…”

“She was identified by her dental records then?”

“Yeah. And by a beauty mark.”

“Don’t tell me Kolanski got it right.”

“In all but location. It was between her big toe and the one next to it on her right foot.”

“I see. I’m sorry to raise such sore points.”

“Don’t be sorry. The woman lying on that bed in the morgue only symbolizes Marian for me. Nothing more. Her smashed face, surprisingly, didn’t make much of an imprint on my memory. Marian remained, and will always remain, the same beautiful woman that left the house at ten thirty that morning.”

“And with the reconstructive surgeon’s full overhaul upon arrival in the Other World, you can take it easy. The Marian we’re looking for is not the woman you lost with the smashed face.”

Ben’s smile slackened. “Oh my God, she’s probably paralyzed!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, like Robert. The reconstructive surgeons weren’t able to fix…”

“Forget it,” the Mad Hop said, rising to his feet. “Marian isn’t a cripple, trust me. Now let’s get going and stop wasting time.”

“Where we going?” Ben asked.

“I’ll explain on the way.”

*   *   *

The Mad Hop explained during the hour-long trip to September 1980: “Ben, in the Other World I’ve come across a phenomenon of ‘anti-phobia’ quite a few times. People who perished under tragic circumstances are often drawn to the type of environment in which they died so that they can confront the now-entrenched fear. A bloke who, say, drowned can spend an eternity at the sea until he can get the best of his phobia and, trust me, it takes time.”

“So, what are you saying? Marian is out wandering like some freak through amusement parks?” Ben asked.

“I suppose,” the Mad Hop said.

“Okay, and how many such places are there in the Other World, Samuel?”

“Loads, Ben. But I’m not really interested in them.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re going to
the
amusement park, a kind of Disney World for the dead.”

“Don’t get upset, Samuel, but I have a hard time believing that Marian’s spending all her time on Ferris wheels.”

“And yet you don’t seem to be hopping off the multi-wheel. That’s the beauty of the doubt nestling inside you, the paradox of your certainty. She could be anywhere and nowhere. So long as that doubt lingers, you’ll keep looking. But enough with shallow pep talks. You need to know that the people in the park can be divided into three easily discernable groups: kids, grown-up couples, and druggies.”

Ben laughed. “Drug addicts?”

The Mad Hop smiled patiently. “I think it’s some kind of new trend. I’ve seen it mostly over the past two years. People roll up to the park with their heads completely lit, take one of the rides, and scream like children. Someone told me their high takes on a new dimension.”

*   *   *

Ben felt a tepid disappointment wash over him as he looked out at the masses of people roaming the park, which stretched out before them like a long highway dotted with games and rides. “We’ll never find her with all of these people,” he said.

The Mad Hop offered a sideways glance. “Ben, it only seems complicated. All we have to focus on is the Ferris wheel. I suggest we split up. The park’s built like an estate. Cut into twenty-six plots. Look to your right and you’ll see a large gate with the letter A above it. Look to your left and you’ll see a similar sight with the letter Z. We’ve got to cover all of the plots—thirteen for each of us—and meet in the middle, at M Gate. Don’t worry, we won’t need to backtrack. You can exit the grounds from any one of the gates.”

“Hang on a minute, I see the big wheel in area A.”

The Mad Hop pointed over to the left. “And what do you see over there?”

“Another big wheel. Please, Samuel, don’t tell me that…”

He nodded. “Each section’s got a big wheel of its own. Let’s say five hours from now at M Gate, alright?” He turned, started to walk, stopped, and turned back. “Remember, don’t pay any attention to the kids and the druggies. Focus on the adults walking on their own. Good luck.”

*   *   *

Ben reached the meeting point forty minutes late. The investigator, shifting his weight from foot to foot, was in a foul mood. “You’re late and empty-handed?” he called out.

Ben disregarded the comment. “It was madness. I kept looking for her, afraid I’d miss her in the crowd, or on the wheels, till my eyes registered nothing. Unbearable commotion. When I got to the sixth area, I even thought I saw Uncle David, but when I got near.…”

“Uncle? You have a dead uncle?”

Ben sounded indifferent. “My entire family is dead. But…”

“Halt!” the Mad Hop commanded, his face stern. “What did you just say? Tell me I misheard you.”

“What do you want?”

“Did you just say your whole family is dead or am I suddenly the only deaf person in the Other World?”

“Yeah,” Ben said, “no one’s left of my family in the previous world. They all died. I was the last of the lot.”

The Mad Hop fixed his gaze on a faraway spot on the horizon, examined it for some time, and then hightailed it over to a waiting multi-wheel, hopped in, and disappeared into the belly of the accelerating vehicle, which left in its dusty wake a shocked and downtrodden righter, who sat down on one of the big stone blocks outside the gate and dropped his head in his hands.

15

The Element of Surprise

Once a week the current forest director met with the former forest director in the latter’s luxurious wooden cabin. Sipping schnapps, they regaled each other with tales from the field. The host, who retired after one hundred and five satisfying years, offered sage advice and urged his successor, who was only three short decades into his term, to come to him with any professional queries. At this week’s meeting, the former director took immediate notice of the shadow hovering over the young director’s ordinarily sunny face.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked him.

The youngster leaped at the chance to explain. “There’s something that’s keeping me up at night. I’m sure I’m just getting carried away, but I can’t get this out of my mind.”

Billion leaned back and threaded his fingers together. “I’m listening.”

Halfabillion didn’t let his smile intrude on the sincerity of his question. “In your day, what was the highest rate of expiration you ever saw?”

“In times of war or peace?”

“Peace. War’s another story altogether.”

“Good. I always said you were a quick learner. Let’s see. In 1906 we had one family totally wipe out another one.”

“No, no, no. I mean naturally, under normal conditions.”

“Till uprooting?”

The youngster nodded, flicked a playful red curl out of his line of vision, and sipped the plum schnapps while his furrow-browed friend mumbled a few names that mingled with an unrecognizable tune, squinted, sunk his teeth in to his lower lip and, his face bright, called out in restrained triumph, “I recall a Dutch family whose uprooting dossier was sealed in 1973. The Van Der Lockes had a very high rate of expiration, as far as statistics go. Eleven months between deaths if I’m not mistaken. It played out like an arithmetic progression. The oldest granddaughter was the only one who deviated from it, being the last of the line.”

“When did she die?”

“A year and two months after her brother died. She hung herself.”

“Not surprising. The last survivor almost always seems to take his own life.”

“True. The survival instinct is worn down when you have no remaining blood relatives, even though, evolutionarily I’d expect it to be the opposite. Still, I guess she didn’t want to perpetuate a dynasty of corpses.”

“Maybe she was scared that even though she’d made it over the eleven-month hurdle, death would snatch her when she wasn’t ready.”

“Maybe. I’d have been happy to see her pass at old age and not at twenty-four.”

“That’s the part that fascinates me, Billion. Do you think she would have lived to old age had she not used the rope?”

“The dog’s collar, my friend, not a rope. And yes. I have no doubt that had she stood firm in the face of the pain and the hounding of death, she would’ve reproduced and the whole story would’ve ended differently.”

“By the way, did the rest of the family die under ordinary circumstances or…?”

The former director smiled playfully. “Same as the granddaughter, they all used the dog’s collar.”

“They all committed suicide?” Halfabillion asked.

“Yes, which I suppose explains the precision of the expiration rate.”

“And it explains why the granddaughter waited three extra months till she could gather up the courage to carry out what sounds like a pretty mysterious family ceremony.”

“Or rather that explains her courage during the time she refused to enter the family tradition, until cowardice or despair got the better of her and she put an end to her life.”

“Okay. But I was asking about the expiration rate of a normal family. An entire family that systematically kills itself off doesn’t exactly qualify, does it?”

“They were a normal family until the granddaughter’s younger sister, a girl of nine, started off the chain reaction. Before that the family’s rate of expiration was thirteen point seven.”

“The young granddaughter started the whole thing off?”

“Yes. She lost her dog and then hung herself with his collar.”

“Unbelievable. A whole family was wiped out because of a lost dog?”

“The first suicide was because of a lost dog. The second was because of a hanged granddaughter.”

“Hmm, the domino effect.”

After a weighty silence the young director asked the older man if he recalled any other naturally brief death spans.

“Why, what kind of strange bird have you come across?”

“A strange bird indeed. An Israeli family, the Mendelssohns. From grandfather to grandson, who was the last of them and of course ended his own life, the entire family drifted into extinction with somewhere between a six and twelve month expiration rate. From 1994 to 2001, the last eight of them died and the tree was uprooted.”

“I see we’re dealing with a pretty small family.”

“Yes. But before the nineties the last death in their family was in 1970.”

“I see. So, like with the Van Der Lockes, you’re wondering if something happened in 1994 that triggered the whole thing?”

“Exactly. Except that as opposed to the Van Der Lockes, the Mendelssohns all died in different ways. Accidents, diseases, murder, suicides. Were it not for the strangely high expiration rate, I wouldn’t even pay any attention to the case. All told, we’re looking at a good, reasonable, well balanced mode of departure from the world.”

Billion shrugged. “I know this isn’t the most convincing answer, but I think what you’ve got is just a particularly cruel coincidence.”

Halfabillion twisted his lips. “That’s what my deputies said. Quarterbillion used the old argument.”

“Trunk degeneration. A tree whose branches are detached too frequently is sapped of its strength and its limbs lose their purchase on the trunk.”

“I don’t know,” the young director said, his face clouded again. “I have a hard time with those explanations. Think about it, Billion, such a high death span, such diversity in manner of death and…”

“A minute ago you mentioned a good, reasonable, well balanced division.”

“True. But some of the deaths were so bizarre.”

“Bizarre in what way?”

“One was eaten by a leopard. One drowned when his plane went down.”

“Excuse me?”

“The plane went down over water. He miraculously survived the crash but his swimming technique left something to be desired.…”

“I see.”

Halfabillion laid his cup on the table, leaned forward, and said in a stage whisper, “I think I’ve got an explanation.”

Billion mimicked his friend and whispered back, pleased with the surreptitiousness of the affair. “Do tell.”

“I’m almost certain there’s malicious intent behind the Mendelssohn case.”

“Malice?”

“Yes, maybe the family had enemies that wanted to destroy them.”

“No,” Billion said, wrinkling his forehead. “I don’t think so. Say such an enemy existed and say he reached this world before 1994, what could he do? The paths to the forest are sealed. Only workers are permitted into the forest, and all the workers are aliases.”

“Are you saying that there’s no way that a non-alias could sneak into the forest? Don’t forget, they’re known for trickery and slow-burning vengeance.”