The End of the Day

by Claire North

  In a land of forests …

  … in a land of endless sky …

  I was sent, said Charlie, to bring him a jar of honey. It came from a small village in the south of the country, and was, he said, exactly like the honey his mother used to make. He was dying, of course. My visit was not a warning—he had cancer, everywhere. My visit was a courtesy, an act of memorial from my employer to a man who, in many ways, embodied something that was worthy of note.

  It was a long drive to his mansion, in the hills north of Brest, a beautiful place, incredible. Ancient oak trees that had survived the passage of so many armies; a constant chorus of birds; still blue waters around the lakes where the wild horses roamed. Spotted deer grazing on the side of the road, sunlight bursting through the forest, the smell of it—leaves and blue skies. I was still new to the job and I had no idea, I’d just assumed, Belarus, prisons and factories, and of course there is that too, but the land … I felt hope that something this beautiful had survived so much of humanity, I really did. That there was still something in humanity that appreciated this. Does that sound strange? I’m tired, forgive me, I’ve had this headache for a while now, it’s been … but you want to hear the story.

  To the north of Brest, then, up an unmarked road. His mansion was all white, high above a lake, with those ice-cream rooftops you see on Orthodox churches sprouting from all four corners, and granite flagstones and potted plants, a little sliver of paradise. But he was also a very rich man who’d come by his money through questionable means, so there was a security gate and men on guard, blue shirts tucked into their trousers, big sunglasses and friendly smiles, who still smiled even as they patted me down, and took my phone from me and said, in bad English, “Harbinger of Death, yes? Yes yes, Death comes, you come, come come come!”

  They didn’t seem surprised to see me. Sometimes people are resigned, sometimes they’re even pleased, but they weren’t just expectant, they were delighted. Before I could even see the boss his men had thrown together a sort of feast, platters of rye bread and caviar, cold meats and salad, all perfectly prepared. I ate with a man I took to be his chief enforcer, Maksim, who had better English than the rest and talked, talked, wanted to know everything about me, where I lived, places I’d been, whether I’d met my employer, what he was like. I didn’t satisfy him. There was something about this situation, this strange place in the hills, that made me quieter than I might have been. None of this was normal, none of it felt right—who is pleased to see the Harbinger of Death?

  “What is Death?” he asked, and I didn’t really understand the question, so he made it a joke. “These things we wonder,” he exclaimed, “they grow old, yes?”

  Finally, once they’d fed me and invited me to use the bathroom, freshen up, they took me upstairs to see Rodion. I knew he was an old man, but the cancer had made him so much older, a bundle of bones tiny in a giant bed, his face already a skull with some skin taped to it, his hair all gone, eyebrows gone, tubes up his nose and in the corner of his mouth, a urine bag against the side of his bed.

  I said what I had been taught to say, in Russian first, which I was told he would speak better than English. I am the Harbinger of Death, I am sent as a courtesy, I bring a gift. He had a nurse, although I’m not sure if she was qualified; there was something … let us say she was beautiful in a sort of … magazine way … and very uninterested in the machines that were sustaining his life—anyway, he asked her to pour a teaspoon of honey out for him, and put the spoon in his mouth, and it seemed a great effort for him to swallow, and when he finally did, I thought, this is it, he’s going to cry, he’s going to tell me all about his mother and his childhood and the terrible things he’s done and how he regrets it, because Death has that effect on people—I don’t mind, really I don’t, it’s good for people to talk, it’s good for humans to listen, it is a very … very humane thing, and humanity is … But he didn’t. He said the honey reminded him of home, and he was grateful for it, and he didn’t really say much else. Then Maksim announced that was it, our time was done, we shouldn’t bother the old man, and out we went.

  My job was done.

  I went downstairs towards the car, making sure to thank Maksim for his hospitality, but he stayed with me, still smiling and beaming bright, and when I got to the front door of the house he caught me by the sleeve and said, still as pleasant as a summer’s day,

  “So what will it take, eh?”

  “I … don’t understand.”

  “Come on. Five years, maybe ten, what will it take?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Still smiling, always smiling. He tilted his head back towards the way we’d come. “The boss, the boss, what will it take? I heard Death sometimes plays games; we can play, if you like. You want life? I’ll give you life. Say … one life for every year? You can choose, young, old, pretty, stupid, virgin, mother—it’s all the same. Just name your price.”

  “I’m sorry, I think there’s been a misunderstanding …”

  He held a little tighter now to my arm. Smiling. “No, there is no misunderstanding. That man up there, the man you just met? He is not my father, but he is greater than my father. He is a father of his nation, he is a father of a great new world. I would die for him; if you wanted my life, I would give it, of course, my life for him, no doubt. You think I’m joking? I’m not. Not about this. Not about him. So tell me—name your price.”

  I swallowed, and wished he wouldn’t smile. “You are … attempting to negotiate with me for your employer’s life?”

  “Yes yes yes,” clicking his fingers in the air, impatient now, “come on, what price?”

  “I’m sorry. I am not authorised to negotiate for my employer.”

  Maksim put his arm around my shoulder now, pulling me away from the door, flicked with the tips of his fingers at a scuff in my shirt that I couldn’t see. “Hey, Charlie, I know you have to say that. For the ordinary people, maybe, for the little people, but this is Mr. Rodion, this is the boss, he is the king of this country. I know your boss respects that, so don’t treat me like I’m one of them, eh? Don’t put on that act for me.” Still smiling, but only with his mouth.

  “You have been … very courteous,” I replied. “I know that these things are important to my employer, and I’m grateful, but you see I just can’t … I don’t have that sort of authority.”

  “But you can find someone who does?”

  “I … No. I’m the Harbinger of Death. It’s me and then it’s … I’m sorry, I thought this was all understood, I thought that …”

  “You can talk to your boss, tell him not Mr. Rodion, not yet, name the price.”

  “No.”

  “No?” Still smiling.

  If he’d been shouting, screaming, crying, I felt sure I would have known what to do, but not this smile. I wondered if he’d seen Death before, if he knew what Death looked like, and felt like maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he’d sent other people to do that bit of work for him, maybe he’d been away when his parents died. Maybe he’d just never looked.

  “Charlie …” He had this way of saying my name. The first part goes down, Char, a disappointed sound, then up again, Lie, like we were a married couple bickering over whose turn it was to hang the laundry out: Char-lie. “Charlie … why don’t you get your boss on the line, hm? Why don’t you just give Death a bit of a call, tell him that it’s important, that we’re willing to pay, ten, twenty, a hundred lives, or something else, anything he wants, you name it, we can do it, that’s how things work, yes?”

  Mouth dry, but there weren’t any other words. “I can’t. That’s not how it …”

  His fingers dug into my shoulder, hurt, I gasped, mostly in surprise, but he still kept on smiling. “Call your boss. You call him. Tell him it’s important.”

  “I can call Milton Keynes …”

  “Are you taking the piss?”

  “No, I mean, it’s, it’s the office, it’s where …”

  “What the fuck d
o I want with Milton fucking Keynes?”

  This is a question many people have asked, and I tried smiling too, thought maybe I could make a joke out of it, make something funny, find something between the two of us that mattered, say something like …

  “I’d die for the boss, Charlie,” his voice, still pleasant, cutting through my thoughts. “I’d die for him. I’d make other people die too.”

  “I can’t, it’s not my …”

  He hit me round the side of the head. It was an oddly playful thing, an open slap, the kind of thing old friends do when they’ve been caught doing something ridiculous—except this had power, knocked me to one side. Still, it was absurd enough that I found when I straightened I was smiling too, not understanding, thinking maybe it was just some sort of gesture, some laddish prank going wrong.

  Second time he hit me, still like a kitten playing with its dozy friend, I stopped smiling.

  Third time, I tripped over my own feet, fell to the floor.

  He stared at me, surprised and friendly, offered me one hand to get back up, which I took, because it was there, because that’s what you did, you accepted hands that offered to help, that was how the world worked.

  “Oops,” he said, dropping me as I climbed to my feet, and then offering me his hand again, which again I took, and again he dropped me. “You seem to be having some trouble there, Charlie. You seem to be in difficulty. Do you need me to get help?”

  “No, no, I’m …”

  When do you stop making these things a joke?

  He was smiling, so I was smiling.

  I thought I was going to die, and I was smiling because it was absurd, I couldn’t die here, there was no reason to think I was going to die here, and of course I was, it was as clear as day and utterly unbelievable.

  I’ve got better at recognising the truth of these things, I think, as the years go by.

  “Hey! Charlie keeps falling down!” he called out, to the house at large. “Come give him a hand!”

  Others came. The other servants of their dying master, Mr. Rodion’s boys.

  They were eager to help.

  I think …

  … looking at my job …

  … that I have been kidnapped eight times in total.

  I have been imprisoned five times.

  Held at gunpoint twelve times.

  My travel insurance is nearly sixty pages long. Milton Keynes handles that.

  Milton Keynes—what the fuck does anyone want with Milton Keynes?

  One time, when I was trying to cross into Uzbekistan, the customs official managing my documents just flipped out when I told him my job, he just lost it, he pulled a gun and started shooting—not really at me, just around the room, shouting and shooting until one of his own guys hit him with a chair. I didn’t understand why. Afterwards they said his daughter was ill, and he had been coping very well. I don’t know what happened to the daughter. I imagine she was fine. You imagine that kind of thing, don’t you? You imagine a normal life, a reasonable outcome, that’s how …

  Departures, arrivals, departures, arrivals

  being reasonable is how you get through U.S. Customs. I have been detained eleven times by U.S. Customs, and every time they ask the same thing—what is the purpose of your visit?

  I’ve got the visa, I’ve been into the country many times before, but

  “What is the purpose of your visit?”

  “I’m the Harbinger of Death.”

  “What does that involve?”

  “I am the one who comes before the rider of the Apocalypse. Sometimes I come as a warning, sometimes as a courtesy.”

  “Yeah, but what’s your actual job?”

  When I interviewed for the job, Harbinger of Death, one of the most important attributes it highlighted on the form was interpersonal skills.

  I found that odd, at first.

  If you’re going to travel the world, bringing news to those who are about to die, surely it makes sense not to care.

  It took me a long time to realise why that was wrong. You have to care. It’s your job to care. You are the human, you are the … you are the thing that is imaginable, that comes before, you are …

  real.

  Where Death isn’t.

  Death is real, of course, Death is …

  I always try to be reasonable. And I make sure there’s at least two hours between my arriving and any connecting flights, especially when changing planes in Atlanta.

  The men in Belarus—they were not reasonable.

  It wasn’t reasonable to beat me.

  It didn’t make any sense.

  That’s what I struggled with, more than anything, I think. It just didn’t make any sense. What would hitting me achieve? But they hit me anyway, I think that was how they knew to negotiate, I mean, that was how their world worked. They’d never come up against a force which couldn’t just be pummelled into defeat, they’d never met a thing that didn’t simply curl up in fear.

  Death doesn’t fear.

  Death doesn’t stop.

  As Harbinger, it’s part of my job to be …

  … when I filled out the application form, I was asked to list an example of a situation where I had demonstrated strong communication skills. I chose writing for my university newspaper, though I’d only ever written three articles and they’d all been about concerts. Saga—she was the Harbinger before me—said she wasn’t sure it counted. I said she was probably right, that I only did it because I liked listening to music.

  What kind of music? she said.

  And I told her. I figured, I’m not going to get this job, I might as well be honest, so I told her about music, about the way it made me feel, not just listening, but singing, all these voices, every voice unique, every sound that comes from every throat on the planet a unique, incredible instrument and how it was a language we all spoke, how it was a truth that every human born shared and it was …

  so in Belarus they beat me, a lot. I wasn’t so worried about dying, but I thought, I’m going to be a cripple, aren’t I? I’m going to have to retire and have false teeth that I need to glue onto my gums every morning and never be able to walk properly ever again because something will be severed in my spine and never use my hands or speak clearly or see, I’ll be blind by the time this is done, I’ll be blind and why are they beating me? What the fucking hell is the fucking point of it?

  Anyway.

  They stopped, eventually.

  There wasn’t any point killing me. There wasn’t any point to any of it.

  They gave me a phone and Maksim said, “Call your boss. Tell him. Tell him we’ll fucking rip you to pieces. Tell him he doesn’t come here. Not for ten more years. You tell him.”

  I couldn’t hold the phone properly, I kept on dropping it. The boys all laughed at that, but in the end Maksim held it up for me and I dialled the number.

  Saga had given me the number on my first day, her very last.

  She said, “Don’t use it. Death will answer.”

  I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to but they put a gun against my head, right here, they put it against my head and I didn’t want to die, couldn’t believe, didn’t understand, knew that they meant it, didn’t know why, what could possibly make people be this way

  (human human rat)

  (sometimes people don’t see other people the way they see themselves)

  so I dialled the number.

  The phone rang a very long time. I started to cry, because I thought I’d got it wrong, that this was it, the end of me, that there was nothing reasonable and nothing mad I could do to live, and I wanted to live, even if it meant being in pain for the rest of my life, I wanted so badly to try and live

  Then Death answered.

  His voice is …

  … everyone sees their own Death, their own way. Everyone hears Death in their own manner.

  I hear him as soft, quiet, a man, English, like me, rich, perhaps, I think he’s rich, but also … like someone off the TV. So
meone who reads important books and says important things and knows that he’s right. Death knows that he’s right, when I hear him speak.

  And Death said, hello?

  “Hello, sir, it’s Charlie.”

  Tears and blood on my face, he could hear me crying, but seemed like he didn’t care.

  Ah yes, Charlie. Of course. How are you?

  “Not so good, sir. There’s … I’m in Belarus, sir, for Mr. Rodion …”

  Mr. Rodion, of course, I went driving with him once through the streets of Prague, a long time ago.

  “I … I am … thing is …” I couldn’t get the words out, my voice sounded strange, my tongue didn’t fit in my mouth.

  Take your time, Charlie. Take your time.

  “He doesn’t want to die, sir. And … they’ve got me in this room and there’s … this man, he’s …”

  Are they threatening you?

  “Yes, sir.”

  Have they hurt you?

  “Yes, sir.”

  Are they going to kill you?

  A gun against my head, I can tell you exactly where it was, though at the time it felt huge, it felt bigger than my whole skull. “Yes, sir.”

  I see. That displeases me.

  “I’m … I’m sorry, sir.”

  Oh Charlie, don’t worry so—this isn’t your fault at all, this is rather an unpleasant reaction of discourteous people to what I am confident was an entirely professional and civilised visit on your part. Look, I am rather in the middle of things right now, but do you mind putting one of Mr. Rodion’s men on the line?

  “Yes, sir …”

  And Charlie?

  “Yes, sir?”

  Close your eyes, and count backwards from one hundred.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Now hand me over.

  I handed the phone over. “My employer wants to speak to you,” I stammered.

  Maksim beamed, a proud son fulfilling his father’s wishes, and took the phone. The gun was removed from the side of my head. I closed my eyes, buried my head in my hands, curled up into my own knees, and counted.

  One hundred

  ninety-nine

  ninety-eight

  When your eyes are shut, you hear the world differently. Maksim’s voice, speaking Russian, loud, bluster. The creak of his shoes on the ground. The tick-tick-tick of hot pipes cooling. The rush of water somewhere else in the house. The buzz of the bulb.