The World of the End (7 page)

Ben looked at the domes and realized that each of them was adorned with a letter of the alphabet, stretching from A to Z into the distant horizon. After asking a woman with tears in her eyes how to find his wife’s apartment, he learned that the letters atop the buildings stood for the tenants’ last names and proceeded toward the seventh building on the left.

He thought about giving Marian, a vehement vegetarian, a hard time about her building, which held aloft the immortal sign of the meat industry. Burger jokes would surely be a part of their future in this slaughterhouse-free world. He opened the main glass doors and walked inside. Astonished by the size of the lobby, he began to comprehend the enormity of the building—if each building had a thousand apartments spread over twenty-four floors, then by simple arithmetic each floor had some forty-two apartments!

“Unbelievable!” he called out, advancing toward the elevator doors. They opened, but the sight of the grand piano at the far end of the elevator, which was more like a wedding hall than a device for transporting people up and down the height of a building, stopped him in his tracks. The piano player was bent over the ivories. He played a soft tranquil melody, utterly oblivious to Ben’s hesitant entry into the elevator. Ben pressed 11, recalling the instructions given in the orientation. The doors came together and the elevator sailed up. Once it eased to a stop, he prepared to step out, but taking in the vastness of the halls, he turned to the pianist who, without lifting his head, said, “What time did he or she die?”

“I don’t remember the exact hour. A little before noon,” Ben said.

“You need the left wing,” he said, motioning him out of the elevator.

Ben thanked him and stepped through the open doors. Following his instructions, he scanned the numbered and initialed brass plates, which were positioned right in the center of the gleaming steel doors. Suddenly he realized the final detail. The jumbled numbers on the left side of the hall all shared a common trait: they were more than thirty, (and less than sixty) except for the last one, nearest the elevator.

Ben smiled in recognition. The apartment numbers marked the exact minute the person had passed away, which was why some doors had the same number but not the same initials. The statistical principle of standard deviation worked in this world, too, Ben noted, considering amusedly the chances of two people with the same initials dying on the same day, at the exact same time. Ben, figuring that the right wing started with 1 and ended with 29, ran full throttle down the hall, delighted to discover that only one door had the initials MM. He filled his lungs with air, let it seep out for a long moment, and then knocked on the door. The creeping fear that Marian wouldn’t be home was stilled by the sound of advancing footsteps. A soft feminine voice cooed, “Arthur, what took you so long?”

Before Ben could process the question, the door opened, revealing the last woman in the world he expected to see.

5

A Thousand Words: A Picture’s Monologue

You nasty, crude, insensitive humans! Allow me to protest! Years have passed since the initial daguerreotype, and I, in my innocence, believed that you had evolved along with the apple of your eye, your raging technology. But to my chagrin it seems that each new breakthrough has only set you back a square. The unbearable contempt, ungratefulness, and despicable ease with which you treat us—as though we shall eternally serve you!

Sometimes, in my wildest dreams, I wish that all of the world’s camera lenses were encased in a permanent fog. Perhaps then you’d show some contrition, perhaps even take a vow not to maltreat us, even though you, me, and my band of sisters all know the worth of a human word, which brings me to my point of contention: I don’t know which bastard came to the conclusion that I’m worth a thousand words, and if I did know, I’d find a way to settle the score with him in the dark-room. I do know what the bastard meant. He thought he was complimenting us. As though the comparison to a thousand words would pad our self worth and puff up our pride; as though a thousand were the ultimate number of words one could use to praise the value of a picture.

Poppycock! That’s a cowpie dressed up as a chocolate soufflé. We aren’t going to be taken for that ride. I demand a change in the saying, the proverb, the colloquialism, or whatever other politically correct phrasing you decide to attach to a thousand words. Henceforth, a picture shall be worth a hundred thousand words—at least!

Surely you’ll agree that when humans look at photographs it’s impossible to know what feelings will flood their hearts, what thoughts will wander into their heads. Perhaps, while surveying the matted or glossy evidence, unexpected sentiments, warm clouds of nostalgia, telling revelations, or a thousand and one stories will make themselves known. Their worth has no quantitative definition, let alone a word cap.

It has been my privilege to be one of those pictures—controversial, understood by some, mysterious to others. I was born in Wales, thirty minutes drive from Bangor, next to a beautiful hostel in Bryn Gwynant on 8.13.89, at 11:37
A.M.
, to an Olympus mother and a Kodak father. Two of my sisters were amateurishly overexposed, leaving twenty-two of us in the hands of the midwife, a salesman named Kobi. He and his wife went on vacation with their good friends, a recently married couple—a righter and an English teacher. My birthplace was a deep-green pitch of dew-soaked grass, littered with three scarlet-stained cigarette butts. In the background, a mountain flank plunged into the sea, placing the springy grass and the water on a single plane. The sky was decorated with an armada of feathery clouds and the wind brought with it the news of a premature autumn.

The righter and the English teacher were in the middle of the frame: He—a thin man with spiky brown hair, big blue eyes, and protruding cheekbones—in faded jeans and a red T-shirt and she—a thin woman with brown hair that fell to her shoulders, slanted blue eyes, full cheeks, and a long swan neck—in a violet-colored velvet dress. They were facing my mother, wrapped in an embrace. My mother giggled naughtily just as Kobi pressed the button, perhaps forecasting what was about to take place. Moments before, a sheep sauntered across the lawn and helped herself to some breakfast while getting rid of dinner. The two people that took her spot on the lawn had no idea what they were standing on, which most likely explains why they didn’t pay any attention to the joyous bleating from behind a large tree as the sheep watched the woman slip, the man try to arrest her fall, and the two of them tumbling together on the olive-like pellets from her intestines. My mother managed to capture the very moment of the fall. The two of them, laughing hysterically, looking at Kobi, asking him not to take the picture as he, to our good fortune, snapped three quick shots. Two, as I said earlier, were overexposed, and only your humble servant remains. The hug that preceded me, and the buffoonery in the pellets that followed, are both gone. Only the comic fall remains. If I’m not mistaken, the couple was more than happy to leave the picture with Kobi and his wife. Maybe they had enough pictures of themselves. Maybe, since I was a product of the friend’s camera, he was supposed to develop an extra copy, but due to a careless mistake, he tossed my dad into the trash and I was all that remained. All gloating aside, it would be perfectly reasonable to say that I am a natural survivor.

A word, if you will, on the matter of survival. In the moment before birth each picture is promised that she will live forever. That is the essence of our existence: immortality. We are the scraps of life you decide to save. But how, for God’s sake, are we supposed to live forever if you let us collect dust, turn yellow, crumble, tear, burn, and die? In a just world, you all would have been forced to answer for criminal abuse!

This Kobi character takes the picture without noticing that a loose hair has slipped out of his slacker ponytail, swooping down in front of my mother’s womb at the critical moment. That, my friends, is abuse! I’ll always carry that strand of hair on my upper right corner! The bubble of perfection was popped pre-partum and I haven’t even mentioned the maltreatment I received at the hands of him and his wife. You brought me into this world, thank you very much! You shoved me into an album along with my sisters: thanks again. You did not open that album once in ten years and you know what? I don’t even mind the indifference, I can bear the affront, but what have you got against aerating? Let’s see you live in the house for ten years without opening a window. Why can’t you understand that each and every one of us needs to be framed and placed in a visible spot, like that kitschy one with you and the kid, who, by the way, is gravely undernourished, if you haven’t noticed.

For an entire decade, we’ve been suffocating in the coffin you crafted for us, you ingenious humans, and you still don’t get it. The picture of you two hugging at the castle in Cardiff, okay; the fragrant landscape shots, fine; but did you forget what the wife of the righter stepped in? All my sisters keep a more than polite distance, turning their noses, yearning for me to depart. I learned to live with the burden, and you could say that my nose-holding sisters learned to live with the smell, but then, all of a sudden, a decade later, you decide to open the album and pull me out. How exciting! Someone’s finally paying attention to me. My sisters breathe easy. We all wonder where I’m going.

Shockingly, you give me to the old geezer. I don’t even want to go into the insults he hurled at me; let’s just say that I wish him a long life and a brutal senility. From the moment that appalling artist shoved me in his pocket, I knew I was in danger. I spent a whole month lying in his pants, dying of boredom. I wanted to scream—since when do we fold a photograph, ay?! But the fool had a stroke and I had to suffer through his repulsive shudders. Thank heavens they force patients to wear a uniform, or I would have spent a month at that depressing hospital. Luckily, his wife took his pants and threw them over the couch in the guest room. Just like that, for a month, as if I was worthless. At the end of the month, Kobi and his wife arrived at the artist’s house and asked for me back. They mumbled something about me being the only picture they had of the righter and his wife, and that they’d love to get me back in the album. The old lady didn’t waste any time. She fished around in the pocket and returned me to them.

I returned to my owners with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was upset by the way they carted me off a month before; on the other, life in the coffin was better than wasting away in a ratty pair of pants, especially if you take into account the horror stories I’ve heard about the washing machine. Kobi’s wife put me in her pocketbook, forever changing my fate. They thanked the artist’s wife and then decided to stop for coffee on the way home. After an hour at the café, pleased to have me back in their custody, about to order the check, the woman excused herself to go to the bathroom, saying she’d be just a minute. Kobi laughed and joined her. The surreptitious smiles didn’t elude me. It wasn’t the first time, and I imagine it wasn’t the last. But it was the last time they saw me.

The shamefully libidinous couple forgot the bag under the table. Five minutes after they got up, a young woman, with the look of a starving college student, walked into the café. With truly shocking nonchalance, she spotted the forsaken bag, picked it up, slung it over her shoulder, left a small tip, and walked out. I shuddered, knowing I was in the hands of a criminal. She bolted out of the place and only slowed to a walk at the corner, where she went through the bounty. She opened the wallet and smiled. Crime pays well. She searched for other valuables and only then noticed me. She pulled me out, looked at me briefly, and flicked me to the sidewalk. I was devastated. I knew it was the end of me. A picture on the sidewalk? How can you extricate yourself from that type of situation? Desperate, I cursed the thief, lay down on my back, and waited. Shortly, any moment now, they’ll step on me, trample me, throw me … throw?

Yes, after less than a moment the wind came to my aid. She came out of nowhere, a strong cold gust that lifted me off the face of the sidewalk and pressed me close to two intertwined plastic bags, the three of us flying as an improvised kite. I tasted freedom for the first time in my life—no albums, no frames, and, most importantly, none of you, people. Even though I feared the fall, I enjoyed every moment. The inevitable happened in the early evening. The wind tired and I found myself torn from my random friends, landing at the entrance to the new Central Bus Station. Trying to escape the stampede of passengers, I felt a small hand lift me up. I looked at him and screamed. A kid. A kid. They’re the worst. Wild, cruel, dirty, heedless. His fingers were oily and I remember how disgusted I was when he smeared my edges with lamb- and onion-smelling paws. I almost barfed. I wanted him to get rid of me so bad, but the little idiot just folded me up and stuck me in his pocket. The woman by his side hustled him along. The two of them entered the station, got on the down escalator, and waited for the bus. While the louse petted me inside his pocket, I cursed Kobi with everything I had. They got on the bus, paid, and sat down. The bus pulled out of the station. He took me out of his pocket and looked at me covertly, like some kind of spy. Then he picked his head up and stared at the woman sitting opposite him. The woman next to him, most likely his mother, asked him a question, which he didn’t answer. She turned back to him and said it was impolite to stare.

He whispered something in her ear and showed me to her. She looked at me, looked at the woman opposite them, turned to her, and said something like, “I’m sorry but I think you may have dropped this.…”

The woman smiled bewilderedly, took me in her hands, arched her eyebrows, and thanked her. The kid started to cry like mad, “It’s mine! It’s mine!” The blushing mother asked him to calm down. The bus came to a stop. The woman got off, looked at me again, this time intently, bent over, opened her bag, and threw me inside. Two days have passed and I’m still in the dark. I hope with all my heart that she’ll be kind to me and, for heaven’s sake, will pull me out of this gloomy place.