The World of the End (43 page)

“‘Several hours ago you asked the forest director who he thought was responsible for the death of a shooting victim. I would like for you to ask yourself the following questions: Why, despite the well-documented slackening syndrome, did you have to pull the branch to and fro several times before it gave way? Why did you encounter such stout resistance from the branch when all that was holding it to the tree were a few thin, virtually invisible fibrous strands? And what the hell do you think happens down there when you’re battling a branch up here? Not when you sever it, but when you twist it and turn it, when the soul understands the danger that awaits it and tries to overcome the dizzying distress but, to its dismay, there lives an alias in a faraway world who’s squeezing the life out of it, draining it of its powers of resistance, its last reserves of strength, its survival instinct? The alias launches a surprise attack and the soul surrenders with devilish haste. The person facing the drawn weapon, succumbs, not because he lacks any choices but because they’ve been denied him. In the first instance, he has the option of struggling and winning, wounded, but alive. In the latter one, he has no chance. In the heat of that awful moment the wretched victim loses all hope. In no way is it similar to a light severing blow, which is equivalent to split-second accidents, instantaneous death, because, in the case before us, the victim is not spared the final anguish of submission, the spasms of the soul, the fearful realization that he is leaving the only known world forever! I’m not sure you’re smart enough to grasp the finer points of branch dislocation and their direct impact on the victim because it seems clear you never fully understood the significance of the trees of life, and therefore,’ he turned to me and waited for me to finish his sentence.”

*   *   *

“‘We sentence you to life!’”

*   *   *

“Dear aliases, this is one of the few times in the history of the Other World that we have meted out the stiffest sentence of all. The alias who uprooted life will be uprooted from his world without further delay, and as we speak the guards are dragging the criminal, whose screams echo in your ears, the screams of a fearful creature who will land in the truly other world in no more than twenty-four hours, without any memory, without any knowledge of where he came from or where he’s going, adrift, without roots. He will be forced to deal with life as though he were born into it.

“And regarding the question that interests you all. As far as we’re concerned, that alias stopped being an alias the moment he denigrated the existence of others. His death was denied him. Believe me, there is no harsher punishment. I ask that you remember his story and never forget how it ended. It will make you better aliases.

“And one last confession before adjourning. I apologize from the depths of my heart for abusing your trust and allowing my human partner into the restricted areas of the forest. I violated the oath of the forest directors and am unworthy of continuing in my position. I hereby announce my immediate dismissal and the appointment of Billionandthreequarters as my successor. I’ve always hated good-byes, so I will not continue to tire you with my words. I wish all of us a good day and a brighter future. Thank you.”

34

A Comedy of Terrors

A thick, stubborn fog dampened the small murderess’s ability to think, hovering as it did from compartment to compartment in the rooms of her brain, refusing to part even when she squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated. No ray of light pierced through the cloud that bound her to her spot, planted in a chair alongside the kitchen table. When she tried to move, to rage against the cruelty of her fate, she felt stricken by a gust of dizziness, which turned the entire room into a colorful melting pot of blurry particles. She sat back down. Her eyes waded around the obstacles of several dull objects that inhabited the living room, freezing, finally, on the central object. A body drained of life, sprawled across the floor. The body of a foreign woman. In death, Marian had become that much more foreign. Or at least so thought Ann, peering at her through the mysterious fog, which intensified the fear about what she might discover when it parted. If it parted. And if she was afraid. She wasn’t. She found the murderer’s survival instinct, the urge to detach herself from her victim, funny. “Truly, Ann, truly,” she chastised herself, “survival is what got you into this mess in the first place.”

She nodded without so much as moving her head, verifying what she knew long ago, that the man of her dreams was nothing more than bait meant to keep her alive, something to clutch at just before drowning. She was a small fish begging to be eaten, a little minnow who forgot that its presence slipped under the radar of the predators as they whooshed past with an ambitious fluttering of their fins. False hope encouraged her to carry on, to drift toward the glint of the enticing hook. How uncalculating she had been when she failed to think the story through in her limited imagination: Even if the unknown creature had reeled her out of the water, did she really believe he would wrap her in his brawny arms and carry her to the promised land? What could bind her and him? Oceans languished between them.

Ann blanched when she resolved the twisted trickery of survival. Even the body by her side was of no use. In death she had denied her his acquaintance. In death she put an end to the subterfuge. The intoxicating contradiction carved a thin smile through her parted lips. In order to survive, she murdered the woman whose survival she depended on, only to discover, in the end, that survival itself is an unconvincing pretext. How distorted—she marveled at her understanding, mesmerized by the raucous discoveries that continued to shine through the foggy screen—under one set of circumstances, she had saved the woman’s life, under another, she had taken it. Her eyes drifted over the lingering fog and examined the full length of the body, passionately studying the newly revealed irony: the pottery shards around the body. She had saved her life with one vase, and with another … Was it structured, planned, or mere chance?

A dull noise from the back of the house reached her ears. She didn’t bother checking. Must be the prying neighbor’s grandkids over for a visit again, playing with a ball. The sweetish stinging in her eyes accentuated her tiredness. She launched an exhibitionistic yawn into the stifled space of the room, leaned forward, placed her head on the table, and shut her eyes, hoping not to wake. In her dream she saw a spirited pair of swordfish dueling on the bottom of a worm-infested aquarium. The two lashed at each other in remarkable silence, the tiny organs torn from their bodies floating all around, mingling with the worms on the sides of the tank, when a pair of manicured female hands lifted the aquarium into the air and smashed it on the ground. Forest. Helicopters hovering in the sky, casting purple beams of light from three different directions all aimed at the small male figure, working out. Deserted beach. A manicured feminine hand digs in the sand. Someone’s laughing in the background, a mirthless laugh. The hand draws a dead eel from the deep hole. Then it produces a dead sea horse. A dead baby crocodile. A dead baby shark. An octopus. Dead. The laugh dies, too. A cheap lightbulb hangs from the sky above the sea; a latex-gloved hand stretches toward it, revealing in its advance a forearm clothed in a white doctor’s cloak; the fingers wrap themselves around the scorching bulb and twist slowly. Absolute darkness.

Ann barely managed to open her eyes, begging for a little more sleep. Her exhaustion rewarded her with ten additional minutes. She rose from the chair without feeling dizzy. The mists melted away. She looked down at the body and said lethargically, “You’re still here?” and, dragging her feet toward her, looking her over apathetically, a serious smile on her lips, “Now you and I are one and the same.” With a sure hand she picked a burgundy shard from the dead woman’s auburn hair. The doorbell rang with deterrent immediacy. The shard fell out of her hand and skittered across the floor, stopping near the door. She crawled to the rectangular slab of wood that stood between her and the world. The silences between the ringing of the bell grew shorter until the visitor decided to drive her out of her mind and leaned his hand on the doorbell, flooding the entire house with an infuriatingly trite
ding-dong,
forcing the deafened homeowner to turn the key in the lock and open the door.

He hid behind a pretentiously large bouquet of Sweet Williams, a Magritte-ian character in an elegant suit, three-quarters man and one-quarter floral arrangement, awaiting the response of the battered woman, who exposed nothing more than her head. She accepted the flowers and muttered into the bouquet, “Another small fish…”

“What did you say?” Adam smiled hesitantly.

“Thanks for the roses,” she said, burying her head in the petals.

“They’re Sweet Williams, Ann.”

“Does it matter?”

“If I had wanted to bring roses…”

“You would have brought roses.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t ring.”

“You rang like a madman.”

“I mean on the phone. I wanted to surprise you.”

“You have.”

“Are you upset that I came by unannounced?”

“No.”

“I wanted to come earlier, but unfortunately I was out of town on business. I just got back this morning. I had to see you, so, right after visiting my brother, I went to the flower store and came here.”

“Your brother?”

“Shahar. He had a nervous breakdown. He’s been institutionalized…”

“I thought he was arrested.”

“He had a breakdown at the police station. We all hope he’ll come out of it soon.”

“Hmm…”

“Ann, why are you hiding behind the…?”

“Adam, I’m sorry, but I can’t see you anymore.”

The lavishly fragrant man took off his glasses and looked at her forlornly. “You never let me explain what happened that night.”

“It has nothing to do with you,” she whispered feebly. “I must ask you to leave.”

“If you’d just let me in…”

“I’m afraid not,” she said, returning the bouquet, revealing her battered face.

“Oh my God, what happened to you?” he asked, putting down the bouquet and extending a hand to caress the long scratch marks along her plum-colored cheek. “Who did this to you?” he yelled, gently pushing the door open.

The sound of the phone perked up her tense shoulders and she moved ghostlike toward the sound of the noise, answering sluggishly, “Yes?”

The hospital director began in a panicky flow, “Ann, why didn’t you return my call? Did you hear the message I left you? I asked you to come in to the…”

Ann lay the receiver back in place and pulled the cord from the socket in one swift, indifferent motion. Hearing the door slam behind her, she turned around, annoyed. “Didn’t anyone teach you to close the door like a civilized person?”

Adam emitted a muffled shriek when he saw the body, recoiled, moved toward it fearfully and recoiled again, shifting his weight from foot to foot in an amusing dance of horror until his body was willing to stride forward again, his head straining onward, his body remaining behind.

“Dear God,” he muttered softly, “isn’t that…?”

Ann sunk into an old wooden chair by the kitchen table, smiling sweetly. “I told you not to come in.”

“What happened here?!”

“Want some tea, Adam?” Ann asked, rising out of her chair and floating toward the kettle.

“I asked you a question!”

“We argued,” Ann retorted dryly.

“You argued?” he said, holding her spindly shoulders in his large hands. “You have a dead woman in your living room!”

“They can’t hear you downtown,” she said, pushing him away and looking at the kettle. “Do you take sugar?”

“How can you be talking about tea?!”

“Do you think that if we abstain from tea she’ll come back to life?” She grabbed two mugs from the sink, washed them, and pulled the silver box toward her, fished out two teabags, placed them at the bottom of the mugs, and shot the kettle an impatient look. “You still haven’t told me if you take sugar?”

Adam ignored her question, grabbed the garbage can from the corner of the kitchen, and ran back to the living room.

“What are you doing?” she asked, staring at him in surprise.

“What do you think I’m doing?” he carped, and leaned over Marian, careful to keep his knees away from the pool of blood that ringed the body as he sifted through her hair for shards. After gathering all of the pieces of the vase, he rose and began pacing, his palms pressed hard against his temples in thought.

“Stop thinking about it,” came the lifeless voice from the kitchen. “She’s dead already. Nothing matters anymore.”

“Ann, I want to understand something. What would you have done had I not come?”

“Take a long shower. After that I suppose I’d have gone to sleep. You have no idea how tired I am.”

“At some point you would’ve had to do something about the corpse in the middle of your living room.”

“I imagine at some point I would’ve done something.”

“What kind of something?”

“Well, I guess I would’ve tried to get rid of it.”

“Yes, that’s obvious, but how?”

“Do me a favor, Adam, I’d rather not deal with the details.”

“But, Ann, that’s exactly what counts. The details. Even the slightest mistake could send you to life behind bars, and please excuse my ignorance of all that has transpired here, but…”

“There’s not much to understand. She was married to the guy from the health club.”

“What?”

“You heard me. They were divorced and she wouldn’t give me the necessary information. You know, in case I wanted to find him.”

“And would you want to?”

“I told you, I don’t want anything anymore. Jacques wouldn’t notice me anyway.”

“Jacques?”

“The guy from the health club.”

“But still you wouldn’t want to spend the rest of your days behind bars.”

“You meet a man twice and already he’s an expert on all your wants and desires.”

“Ann, maybe you should go shower. I think you need to unwind.”

*   *   *

He sat opposite her, held his mug of lukewarm tea in a remarkably steady hand, and sipped long and slow.