The World of the End (37 page)

“I’d be ever so grateful to you, oh wise inspector, if you could share this understanding with me,” Ben said, “as I’m sure you are able to discern I am not at the moment yelling eureka.”

“Ben, think about it, if she’s here but there and it’s hard to say which world she inhabits, then there’s really only one solution. Ben, who are the only people who inhabit both worlds?”

Ben distorted his face like an upset child. “She’s a Charlatan? That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Is that not logical?” the Mad Hop asked, caressing the skin around his smooth round chin. “Maybe something happened to her and she’s on life support in some out-of-the-way hospital?”

“And how does that sit with the story you were telling me a few minutes ago, the one that had her pulling the wool over my eyes and leaving the country? Seems it’s either-or.”

“You’re not following me, Ben. When I said something may have happened to her, I wasn’t referring to the Ferris wheel. I meant something else. An ordinary accident or something.”

“And the basis for this fantasy is a sentence by some inscrutable old Chinese picture framer?”

“No, it’s a little more complicated than that. When Ming-tun was through, I took the portrait and went to Ambrosia, you know, where the Charlatans like to hang out. I just wanted to ask around a bit, see if anyone had seen the lady.”

“And those zombies probably sold you stories that made the tales of the Grimm Brothers seem like neorealist manifestos.”

“No. No one, and I mean no one, out of thousands of people, had seen her.”

“Ok-aay,” Ben said, not hiding his impatience. “So you left there empty-handed and, as I know you, you took the next multi to Ambrosia 2000, a far more sensible destination if we lend your fantasies some credibility.”

“I didn’t make it there, Ben,” the Mad Hop said, trying to fish a final cigarette out of an empty pack. His voice low and cold, he continued. “On my way to the multi I walked by a bookstore and looked at the window, kind of hoping Ms. Christie had come back to her senses and started writing again. Looking in, I saw something else—the reflection of a man pretending to be window-shopping but actually watching me. I carried on; he followed. As I walked I could feel his shadow behind me and, in his case, it was a thick shadow indeed, because he was clearly a Charlatan. When he got too close, I spun around and told him the obvious, that one always trails a person from the opposite side of the street. He smiled, a nice smile, and to be frank it was hard not to notice a certain likeness between the two of us. He was also bald and chubby and just a few inches taller than me. He didn’t even contest my charge. He just stared at the portrait. I asked him if he knows the woman in the frame and he, with great sadness, said that the hair was a little off and that the beauty mark seemed out of place, even though he’d only seen her from afar. I was going to carry on, but then he looked at me with these accusing eyes and asked, ‘How do you know Marian?’”

“Marian? He said Marian?” Ben yelled.

“And a lot more. He told me an interesting tale about how they met. On a fan site for Salman Rushdie.”

“Rushdie?” Ben asked, knitting his eyebrows. “Marian liked him, but it’s more like her to spend her time on a site devoted to the Bard.”

“Let me remind you that you’re talking about the Marian
you
knew. The Charlatan made no mention of Shakespeare. Maybe the new Marian has different tastes. But what’s abundantly clear is that this man is head over heels in love with her and, much as I’m in your corner, it’s hard not to want the best for him.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well,” the Mad Hop said smiling, “they never had the chance to meet face-to-face. After a torrid online correspondence, she from France and he from Israel…”

“He’s Israeli?” Ben asked, wide-eyed.

“Yes. After a long period of correspondence, she told him that she’d gotten a job in Tel Aviv and that it was about time she met the man she’d fallen for. That night, our Charlatan got out of a taxi opposite the restaurant, saw her from across the street, and had a heart attack.”

“The man she’d fallen for? Did you tell him that she has a husband who…”

“I tried to be frugal with the details. I did ask, though, if she ever mentioned a husband or a partner, and he screwed his face up into a ball of disgust and said she had divorced her awful husband a little over a year ago.”

“That is impossible,” Ben said, squeezing his head between his palms. “This whole thing.… There must be some profound mistake here.… Please don’t tell me you think this is my Marian.…”

The look on the Mad Hop’s face made him yell. “What? Why the hell are you looking at me like it’s all over? Maybe that idiot you just met got her confused with another woman? Maybe he’s lying.…”

“Ben, I didn’t so much as giggle during my conversation with him. I don’t even think I smiled. The man was speaking the truth. And in all honesty, I think we both know he was talking about your Marian, the same one we’ve been looking for for naught in the wrong world.”

“But a minute ago you said you thought she was a Charlatan.”

The Mad Hop stiffened his lips victoriously. “How awful to want the death of your love.”

Ben shook his head stubbornly. “Agh. Stop. Just stop presenting everything as though it’s a done deal.”

“Ben, you simply can’t ignore these developments. The Charlatan swore to me that just two weeks ago he was supposed to meet your wife in Tel Aviv, and that closes off most of our options. And as for Ming-tun…”

“I don’t give a fuck about that Chinese nincompoop!” Ben yelled. Staring at the floor, flipping through dozens of scenarios, Ben looked up suddenly and asked, “What happened to the portrait?”

The Mad Hop cleared his throat several times. “He, ah … he asked me to leave it with him … he practically begged.… I told him that I couldn’t, but I did offer to take him out of his misery.…”

“Samuel, don’t tell me you gave him the portrait. Please, for the love of God, tell me you booted his ass back to the other world.”

“Ben, we are in the Other World, and no, he refused to go back there. He didn’t trust me, said he thought it wiser to wait. I told him there was no reason to wait around in this world, but he just snatched the picture and took off.”

“And what did you do?”

“What did I do? I ran after him. But just as I was about to catch him, a multi slammed into me. By the time I woke up, I’d lost both the Charlatan and the portrait.”

Ben chuckled and looked with dim eyes at the portrait’s old spot on the wall. “I was looking for my wife, now I’m looking for her portrait, next I’ll search the dead for a voice that sounds like hers.… Is that the hell that awaits me, Samuel?”

“It’ll be much worse than that if you keep up this level of self pity.” The hard-edged words came out of the Mad Hop’s mouth despite his desire to sound soothing.

Ben trapped the stream of profanity fighting for freedom from within and mumbled, “She wasn’t that kind of woman … she didn’t have a single devious bone in her body … she loved me with all her heart … Marian was brave … only a coward could weave that kind of a plan to lose their lover … not Marian … it’s unfeasible…”

The Mad Hop made his way to the door, stopped only by Ben’s cold voice. “Where do you think you’re going?”

The investigator, hoarse and obviously speaking through a bulge in his throat, said, “home,” and opened the door.

“If you leave now, don’t bother coming back,” Ben said. “Just make sure you send the tapes to me ASAP.”

The Mad Hop’s response rocked the bitter righter back on his heels. The short man with the tearstained face marched back into the apartment, slammed the door, and hollered, “What do you want? What do you want from me? How do you expect me to leave? You think seeing you crushed slips right off my back? You think my worn-down conscience isn’t going to sting a few months down the road when I hear that you punched in a seven over three because you realized she’d never be yours? You think it was easy coming here to tell you about the lovesick Charlatan? That I didn’t consider the repercussions? You need to understand, Ben, I’m not built for weathering these tragedies day in, day out. In death, I thought I’d solve all kinds of fun and rewarding cases. No one told me it would be tearjerker central. What do I know about what went on in your charlatan of a wife’s mind, and I use the word conventionally, when she decided to disappear and send you off with a one-way ticket to hell? Like all the lovers I’ve known, she also seemed to be well endowed with selfishness and, like her, you too exercised some first-rate egoism when you chose not to tell me about the rest of your family members, and the more I fiddled with the integrals of the formula of your insane relationship, the more certain I became that what I had on my hands was a case of two hopelessly selfish people who raised their love to the heights of a holy ideal—otherwise, how else can you explain that in eleven years of marriage you never thought to bring a child into this world, as if you’d be devastated by the need to share your sacred and controversial love with another human being? Do you have an answer for me, something that can explain away your towering selfishness and prove that the mirror is not, in fact, partial? Do you, Ben?”

Ben sighed long and hard. “You have no idea how badly we wanted a child, Samuel.”

“Which part of the copulation did you not get?”

“The carrying-to-term part. Marian conceives, we’re both as happy as can be, but then she wakes up in the middle of the night in a pool of blood and discovers she can never carry a child again.…”

The Mad Hop apologized and said he’d be back in another minute. He ran outside, knocked on three different doors, got the cigarette he needed, came back to Ben’s apartment, lit it and said, “Now tell me this again—Marian was pregnant with your child?”

Ben nodded.

“And she had a miscarriage?” The Mad Hop didn’t need Ben’s confirmation. He put the cigarette between his lips, pulled hard, and kept the smoke down for as long as he could. Staring at the floor as he exhaled, he said, “I wish I was Superman and I could turn the world back in time to the moment we met and refuse to work for you.… I’d like to drill through your skull just so I could see which of the lobes they removed from there and what, exactly, they had left behind.… I’d like to know why you never told me that your wife was once pregnant and had a miscarriage, but I don’t dare, because, as always, you’d play dumb and say, you didn’t ask so I didn’t tell.… I’d like for you instead to walk over to that door and wait patiently while I regulate all the smoke between my two choking lungs … and most importantly I’d like you to have a few glasses of water because in a few hours you’re going to meet your lost child…”

31

Pandemonium

In an instant everything collapsed.

Ann prepared for the evening as though it were a matter of life and death. Having once read that a hostess’s success is measured by the guest’s ease, she set to the task with unwavering sincerity, determined not to miss a single opportunity to ingratiate herself with the woman, who was sure to provide answers. The ideal setting for her cross-examination, she concluded knowingly, was one in which everything operated according to the adage about wine and secrets. And even if wine failed to free the chained tongue of the well-versed Frenchwoman, she would still not allow panic to take hold. Her theory held true for food as well, although it did demand a great amount of preparation from the hostess. She knew she would have to serve such a variety of dishes that, despite the Frenchwoman’s likely forte in this regard, she would slide back in her chair, rub her stomach, and grow as pliable as a well-fed cat. And even if extreme satiety failed to generate the desired results, it was always possible to stick with the topic that interested her guest the most, and, with parasitic expertise, to question, peruse, dig, investigate, and examine every possible angle, to give her that warm familial feeling you get when speaking about something dear to your heart, to neutralize all fears and suspicions and indulge her rambling till the last remnants of her resistance have been ground down, and then, once the walls have fallen and the path to the target is laid bare, to steer the conversation to the proper spot and ask, with supreme tact, the question.

And no less important, Ann reminded herself as she ushered Marian into her home, is to keep her smile beaming at all times. A gentle spirit seems to have descended on the house and the guest cannot be allowed to speculate how much work went into this mass production of an evening. All she knows is that she’s come for dinner. Nothing special is going on. All is ordinary. And with a half smile on her face, the excited nurse thought, just like me, my ordinariness is my believability.

So how did the ordinary become a colossal catastrophe? Ann wondered as she washed the thin coat of makeup from her frightened face. The fragrant scent of cooking still hung in the kitchen, the dining room table still bore the memory of the feast, and the bedroom still housed the guest. She looked down at the sullied water in the sink, jealous of its powers of erasure. She then raised her scoured face to the mirror and examined its ridiculous contours from up close.

“I have no regrets…,” she whispered. She noticed the chain around her neck, a perfect copy of the lost original. A secret muscle clenched on the left side of her lower lip as she remembered the fond look in Marian’s eye as she sat down to the table. “I’m glad you decided to exchange the necklace. At least now I know you’re happy with it.”

God, she thought, how was she able to tell the difference? A deceitful smile on her face, she nodded, eager to do away with the unnecessary diversion. “Yes, I’m very happy with it.”

Then she sat down. The hostess noted the pleasure on the guest’s face when she saw the new ashtray laid out for her, an invitation to smoke as much as she pleased, yet another step on the path to the much anticipated conversation. Walking unsteadily, the nurse left the bathroom and walked to the edge of the dining room table. She picked up the ashtray. One, two, three, seven butts. No doubt she had felt comfortable. The nurse spilled the contents of the ashtray into the garbage can and laid a restraining finger on her pulsating lower lip. She could not lose control. Simply could not.