The End of the Day

by Claire North

  eighty-nine

  eighty-eight

  eighty-seven

  Once, I was sent to give a box of chocolates to a woman whose husband was beating her slowly to death. She had a sweet tooth, but he told her that chocolates made her fat, so we ate the chocolates I bought her together, secretly, on a bench near her flat. I asked her why she didn’t go, why she wouldn’t just run away, and she said you don’t understand, you don’t get it, I know he still loves me, this thing he does, he still loves me really, it’s just … it’s just he’s going through a hard time. When he stops he’s so gentle, he’s the gentlest, kindest man you’ll ever see, he’s just … We made our life together, we made our home, he knows me so well, it’s just he gets angry, that’s all. He just gets angry. And then it stops.

  I was a warning; I was a courtesy.

  I said, miss, if that’s what you believe, then today I am merely a courtesy, nothing more.

  She moved into a shelter that night, and Death passed her by.

  Once, I met a journalist who’d been kidnapped in Pakistan, and nearly died when the Americans accidentally dropped a bomb on his position in Kandahar. He was in a wheelchair, and still trying to get back to the front lines. I said, why, why would you do that?

  And he replied: I lived. I lived and it is a miracle I lived, and my life is a miracle, a miracle, do you see? Every breath I draw is a miracle!

  fifty-five

  fifty-four

  fifty-three

  The world is ending. Oh God, Patrick told me on the ice, he said the world was ending, a world, the world, what does it matter, and I didn’t listen I didn’t understand please I didn’t understand …

  The pipes creaked, the bulb buzzed, but Maksim wasn’t talking any more.

  I visited a woman up a mountain in Japan. She lived alone, dressed all in grey, no hair on her head. She said, “Is the game over, then? Is the dance done?”

  I gave her a scroll, ancient, fragile, I’d carried it so carefully up the mountain, handled it with cotton gloves, but she took it briskly, unfolded it, smiled, nodded, gave it back to me, told me to set it on fire as the sun went down.

  “It’s for you,” I replied. “It’s a gift.”

  “It is not a gift,” she explained. “It is the contract we signed together, a long, long time ago. I have enjoyed the years, but I am not sure the price I paid was worth it.”

  She shooed me back down the mountain, and I did as she asked, and burned the scroll as the sun went down, and I think I heard Death’s footsteps on the path as he climbed up to her cottage, and she died. Only the curious thing is, when I told the people in the village below that she’d died, no one would believe me.

  “She’s been in that place for nearly three hundred years!” exclaimed one woman, who I assumed was mad, but her son corrected her. “Only two hundred,” he chided. “She wandered a lot more before that.”

  Does Death make bargains?

  Does Death play dice?

  I hear this ticking sometimes in my mind, like the clock that counts down to Armageddon, tick tick tick tick …

  I listened, and maybe Maksim was listening too, or perhaps he wasn’t, perhaps he was just quiet. I couldn’t hear the sound of voices on the telephone. I couldn’t hear his shoes shuffle on the floor.

  thirty-nine

  thirty-eight

  Something else I couldn’t hear. Something else I had heard since coming to this place, what was it? It was hard to describe, a sense of an absence, but I couldn’t put it in words.

  A miracle. Every breath I draw is a miracle.

  Then I heard footsteps on the floor.

  Click. Click. Click. Click. The door didn’t open, the door didn’t close, but sharp footsteps, not the creak of Maksim’s leather shoes or the shuffle of trainers, but bone-hard heels on stone, click, click, click. They stopped. They turned. They walked. They stopped again. And they didn’t move any more.

  Silent now.

  Quiet now.

  The wind had stopped, and the birds were no longer singing in the forest.

  Five.

  Four.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  There was blood running out of my mouth, down my neck, into the collar of my shirt. There was blood behind my right ear, and from a cut in my cheek where a man with a gold ring had hit me. There was blood on my shirt, where a pointy shoe had kicked hard and something had torn.

  I opened my eyes.

  The men in the room. They just lay there. One was in a chair, another sprawled across a leather couch. Maksim was on the floor, curled up, his hands underneath his head, his knees pulled to his chest, like a child, sleeping. Just … sleeping, all of them. Only they slept with their eyes open, the sockets full of blood, and their tongues lolled and there was a look on the face of one man, one man who I think had really wanted to kill me, a look like he had seen …

  They were dead, of course. All of them. Six men, sleeping forever in a nightmare. The phone was next to Maksim’s hand, like he’d carefully positioned it before lying down, so gently, to die. I picked it up; the line was still open, the signal strong.

  Death said, Charlie?

  “Yes, sir.”

  Charlie, I’d like you to contact the office.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tell them what’s happened. Don’t worry about next week’s appointments; you need to rest. Take a bit of time. Get your ticket upgraded to first class for the return flight. There’s a wonderful spa near Leighton Buzzard, if you feel like that sort of thing, the office will carry the cost.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Do look after yourself, Charlie. You are very important to me.

  Death hung up.

  I walked through the house.

  A few birds tried singing again, but their voices were weak and far away.

  Everyone was dead. The cooks, the cleaners, the nurse by the bed. One man was slouched over his desk, head on his keyboard, napping, not breathing, no pulse. A woman lay on a recliner by the pool, hat over her eyes, ankles crossed, a bikini and false tan, going cold. I don’t know why I walked through the house, dripping blood as I went. I don’t know why I needed to see, needed to know. Perhaps something compelled me, something that … but I doubt it. I think I looked for my own sake, too frightened to get into my car until I knew they were all dead, every single one.

  Not quite every one.

  Mr. Rodion was still alive.

  Taped into his machines and tubes, still alive, still breathing, the nurse resting on the end of the bed, blood running out of the corner of her mouth, head turned towards him. He was still alive, mute and trapped in that morgue.

  He lived for five more years, just like he had wanted. Everyone he had known and loved—they died. But he lived. Death does not take kindly to being ordered around, you see.

  I didn’t go to the spa near Leighton Buzzard, in the end.

  I listened to music.

  I listened to requiems for the dead.

  And one day, when I was still healing, I went to this park in Streatham, just by chance, just because I needed to walk, needed to move, needed to not sit and think. They were having a kite festival, all these kids and ribbons and colours and music and barbecue food, and I sat and watched it, and until that moment all I had seen was death

  death in my dreams

  in every face in the street

  death in the sky and in the earth

  but that day

  watching the kites

  I saw life, and understood that it was a miracle.

  Life is a miracle.

  My life is a miracle.

  That feeling, that sense of …

  … how could anyone ever walk away from that?

  How could I ever give this up?

  Chapter 72

  “Charlie?”

  Leaving the hotel, Lagos, bags packed, body aching, a voice. “Charlie?”

  Charlie looked up.

  “Patrick?”
>
  Patrick Fuller. Straight back, steady eye, heels together, straight dark hair. Today he wears a coal-black suit that seems unrumpled from his time spent on the plane, and an assistant stands behind him, auburn hair, bags around her eyes. How has Patrick kept his own eyes so fresh? What is it about business-class ginger beer?

  “What are you … why are you …?” Charlie is tired; so, so tired. He knows he’s slept, but he can’t remember, he isn’t sure if that sleeping was … There’s a place he knows somewhere where the pain in his body stopped and the sleeping began, but it all blurs, everything seems to blur these days, he’s got a headache you would not believe, but anyway …

  “Business,” replied Patrick. “I have some work here, I’ve been … You look terrible.”

  “I’m … fine.”

  “Charlie,” tutted Patrick. “Are we … may I consider us friends?”

  “I … hadn’t thought about it. But yes, I suppose.”

  “Then as a friend, let me tell you, you look terrible. Can I get you a drink? Something to eat? The restaurant in the hotel is …”

  Charlie shook his head quickly, a little too quickly, fluids sloshing around inside his ears. “Thank you, but no. I have a plane to catch and I have to … I have to persuade someone else to catch a plane.”

  “Are you sure? When you’re back in England, call me, I’m serious, call me and we’ll …”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that,” replied Charlie, and knew he was probably lying.

  Chapter 73

  Death comes to Lagos.

  Perhaps the policeman was right: this is not a city that gives a damn about the world beyond it, this city, this city! It is life and joy and pain and suffering and beauty and kindness and wonder and care, all unto itself, a universe of its own devising; what does it care for the world beyond, what does it care for the laws of men, it is Lagos! Lagos laws, Lagos rules, the city lives!

  And yet.

  Even to Lagos he comes, he comes, Death comes to us all, in the end.

  A shopping mall like any other, a woman with bright red lips and deep black eyes. The Harbinger of Death gave her a book of law, and she was fearful because, even though she does not fear terrorists, because fearing terrorists means you have lost, she is afraid of terrorists, and will never admit it. “Is it Boko Haram? Are they going to shoot this place up, like they did in Nairobi?”

  Maybe they will, but not today. Today she will go home safe, and tomorrow too, and in a few months’ time she will discover that her husband has been stealing money from her, all her meagre savings gone, and when she goes to the police they laugh her away and say so what, he’s your husband. Then she looks at the legal code; then she understands, and that day, a dream fades for ever, and Death sits by her side and hands her a tissue as it dies.

  Death visits Mushin on the back of a mildly illegal okada, a motorbike taxi, clinging on to the driver as they weave through the endless go-slow of Lagos streets, until they come to the slums. It’s a long and uncomfortable way for Death to travel, but he feels it is appropriate, necessary, to take the path that others walk. There he finds a house where a woman was given, of all things, a tape measure and a trowel—or rather, he finds the ashes, for the house has burned to the ground, and so did nearly a hundred properties all around, the fire engines never coming, for why would they come to Mushin? But just this once—in a rare moment of unity—the people come together, all of them, all at once, and build something new, something with bricks and mortar, not timber panels and rusted nails, and the swaggering area boys chip in some of their stolen cash and only mug and hijack travellers in other districts, for a little while, because the people of those streets are their people, and this is their home, and there are some things that matter more than money. And the woman found the trowel in the burnt-out remains of her life, and realised it wasn’t meant for gardening, but for smoothing cement. And for a little while, the old world dies, and the new world is born, and for this sort of business Death likes to put in an appearance, and spends a few hours happily hauling concrete. Here too is the ending of a world, in one way or another.

  A rich condo on Victoria Island. A wealthy man who loves his new gun, his beautiful silver gun, so good, so right, no one lays a finger on him, not him, he’s protected, he’s sweet, he’s safe, he’s …

  … while cleaning his gun, whispering sweet nothings to his favourite toy, the man accidentally blows his own brains out, and Death tutted and rolled his eyes, before moving swiftly on.

  A policeman who runs a roadblock for no good reason. He received three thousand dollars, and had no idea what to do with such a sum, so having no idea, he carried on doing what he’s always done, taking dem dash the day after, and the day after that, and the day after that, until one day he’s gunned down by a thirteen-year-old kid who’s trying to impress the local gang with his bravery, who has dreams of being Robin Hood and saving the lagoon from corrupt and evil men, and he dies of his wounds in the middle of the street, the ambulance stuck in traffic, no one in a real hurry to save him.

  Funny thing, he muses, as he bleeds out. With three thousand dollars, he could have stopped for a while, maybe found some other path.

  Maybe that was the point.

  Ah well, too late now.

  Death holds his hand as he dies, and smiles without reproof.

  Nine months later, his wife finds the money, still untouched under his bed, and thinking that it came from corrupt doings, gives it away to charity.

  “Jesus! Jesus commands you! Jesus heals you!”

  A mother dies in a hospital bed, her daughter asleep from too much weeping.

  In the end she took the chemo, because she wanted to live, after all this, she wanted so badly to live, but the drugs were too little, too late.

  Death sat down beside her, as she breathed her last.

  “Jesus … loves me …” whispered the woman. “Jesus … protects me. I feel … his love. I am not afraid.”

  Death smiled, and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

  She died quietly, aged forty-one, and the church held a fund-raiser in her name.

  The pastor didn’t specify where the money would go.

  And Patrick?

  Patrick Fuller has come to Lagos, for business, certainly. He is building condos by the edge of the lagoon with a business partner (who unfortunately blew his brains out, but it’s okay, an accident, not a sign of financial irresponsibility); he is attempting to develop land for a new factory near Mushin, the locals don’t want it, say that the chemicals will poison the water, but Patrick knows when to give and when to take, and in his gut he feels that this one is a winner.

  He’s shopping in a mall like any other in the world, buying designer clothes priced like any other, Louis Vuitton; he once tried to move into luxury goods, but LVMH has the market sewn up good, and like he said, Patrick knows when to walk away.

  He attends a church, and listens to the music. He is not a believer, and the entire thing leaves him utterly unmoved.

  He visits a comedy club, but the place is silent, and his security don’t like the look of the area, so no sooner has he arrived than he goes away. He’ll admit, maybe not to Charlie, though he can’t say why, that these last two visits have nothing to do with work. An email came, inviting him to see the end of a world, and so he came, and he wasn’t very impressed, and so he moves on, to make the next deal, and doesn’t understand what it is that has made Death so interested in such things.

  And Isabella and Kemi?

  Isabella said: this is my city, my country, my home, this is my life, my battle, my war, my world. This is my struggle to be seen as a person, to be human, this is my human body, this is my human life, this is my everything, this is my all, this is …

  And Kemi said: this is my city, my home, my life. And here is the woman I love.

  For a long time, they’d sat silent, the three of them. Isabella, Kemi and the Harbinger of Death, waiting in the foyer of the hotel.

  Then Isabella
said: if we run, then who will fight these battles? If we leave, who will speak for our people, in this country? The conservatives will win. There will be no freedom to choose who you love, there will be no safe place for people like us. There will only be the law and lies. We should not run. We must not run.

  Kemi stared at the ceiling for a while, then down at the floor. Finally she looked at the Harbinger of Death and said, “What would you do?”

  “That’s not important. Your choices are what matter here.”

  “Don’t be an idiot; I’m not asking for instruction, I just want to measure some opinions.”

  “I would live,” Charlie replied. “More than anything, I would live.”

  “There is great cowardice in abandoning a cause.”

  “I don’t think you’re abandoning it. I think you abandon the cause when you abandon the will to live.”

  Silence, for a while.

  Then Kemi reached into her handbag, and pulled out the envelope of postcards. She shuffled them quickly behind her back, turned them upside down so only the white could be seen, fanned them out in front of her towards Isabella and said, “Pick one.”

  Isabella picked one. Kemi turned it over, revealing a picture of high cloud-striped mountains above glowing blue lakes. “Tsk,” she muttered. “Rwanda; out of the frying pan, abi?”

  Charlie said, “Let me help with the tickets. I’ve got a lot of air miles.”

  Isabella and Kemi leave their life behind.

  Death watches the plane go, and is perhaps, in as much as she is ever pleased by anything, satisfied with the outcome. In the departures hall, grubby, noisy, a mess of a place, she thinks she glimpses a figure, bruised and aching, but walking proud, heading for the security line.

  The man does not see Death, and they pass each other by.

  And later that night, Death goes to the comedy club where once Isabella played, and sits on the empty seats in the dark, and listens to the silence.