He hesitated and when the interviewer remained silent, he shrugged again and said that from the point of view of a theoretical someone on one of those distant stars—the ones not already long extinct—we should seem to have vanished.
“Then it is an illusion, since we have patently not vanished,” the hostess announced triumphantly.
The mathematician said he did not know how to explain it so that she would understand, without her having some understanding of math, but that she might endeavor to think of it as a personal extinction: Each thing existing until it ceased to exist, and when one thing ceased to exist, all things would cease to exist.
There had been something growing on the face of the interviewer as he spoke, and the camera panned to her face so that all who watched would have witnessed, as I did, in the sagging of her expression, her aghast realization that this was not just something that could be dissected and made jokes about after all. She was not this time to be a bystander far from the centre of destruction, who would afterwards groom herself and present a follow up story. She was part of the story. She would cease to exist at the same moment as everyone else.
She had utterly lost her larger than life glamour when she asked softly, almost hoarsely, ‘So you are saying there is nothing to be done?’
The mathematician was the sort of person for whom ideas are beautiful and so he nodded calmly and asked with a slight smile if she did not think there was a sort of perfection in it; that the end of the world would come so softly and smoothly, without war or pain or horror.
I do not know how many hundreds of thousands of people saw that interview but it seemed to mark a change in how people behaved. Suddenly almost everyone knew about the sum and what it meant.
There was a shocked hiatus—a sort of false momentary peace—and then the world lurched into its brief, sharp period of madness. A few days during which people killed themselves and one another, looted and burned and fornicated indiscriminately in a mad orgy of terror and denial. I saw brief dreadful glimpses of this in cobbled-together news flashes between repeats of recent day time or late night talk shows featuring politicians making statements or movie stars offering comments, then suddenly, there was nothing but white noise until the power failed on the island. It may have taken longer on the mainland and in other parts of the world, but I have no doubt it soon failed everywhere. Who after all, would choose to man the switches in a power station for their last days of life?
There was ugliness and violence on the island too, but not as much as elsewhere. Some people killed themselves; a predictable response, though stupidly redundant. One man said to me, before he blew his head off with his hunting rifle, that it was his helplessness that was intolerable to him. Suicide, in such an instance, seemed to him to be an act of decisive courage. He was very passionate in his explanation, almost as if he was trying to convince me, though in fact I had not tried to argue with him or change his mind. He was not alone. For a time, the island seemed fairly to resound with explosions and gunshots and screams and crashes.
I was not sorry to see an end to such people with their violent and destructive responses, though I did feel sadness for the children and women and the few men deprived of choice by their partners. There were a very few murders, perhaps because vengeance and hate must have seemed pointless to anyone rational. There was one cringing little woman whom I had seen coming from time to time to the supermarket in the town, when I had been well enough to walk there. I had noticed that she always wore large dark glasses not quite dark or wide enough to hide her bruises. Electra told me coolly that she had shot her big brute of a husband before leaping off a cliff. It seems a pity she killed herself as well as her tormentor, since she might have enjoyed a few days free of terror and pain before the end. Probably that seems a rather immoral observation, but somehow most of the morals humanity has seen fit to construct seem quite beside the point now.
When all of the forceful and truculent dying petered out, a sort of great calm peacefulness descended upon us, which is surprisingly beautiful. People have grown kind and quiet and pensive. If it is not in bad taste to say so, it seems to me that humanity’s finest hour might be its last.
Those that remain have turned to the business of living out their final days in whatever way seems best to them. Of course there will be other suicides, but those are likely to be more artistic and symbolic responses to the end of the world than primitive violence.
Of course, there are no more planes or cruise ships, and no supplies of food coming in. All services ceased immediately the world understood what was happening. This would have been the cause for some alarm, if we had not understood that the world would cease to exist well before supplies on the island are exhausted. Naturally restaurants and shops have ceased to operate. People walked away from businesses and jobs. In one stroke the Sum of Undoing had laid bare the utter meaninglessness of fame and money and power.
It has become very quiet and there is little talk. People seem largely to have retreated into their own homes and heads. I do not see this as a rejecting of others, but as another form of acceptance, for is not the human condition truly to be alone at the end, even in normal circumstances? We are born alone and we must die alone—that has not changed. In truth, Grigori’s Solution has found a way to unite us in our solitude, so that while solitary, we may feel ourselves to be part of collective humanity in a way that has never before been possible.
There is no fear, it seems to me.
Even quite young people like the neighbors’ daughter, Electra—horrid name to give a child, I thought at first, though now it seems to fit her very well for she has a great moral decisiveness—seems to be serene in her acceptance of the end that will come. In Electra’s case, it is not very surprising, for she is an unusual girl, being both self sufficient and naturally inclined to solitude. I had wondered a little if she might suddenly feel vulnerable and cling to her parents, but she has retained her distance with them, only occasionally showing the sudden touchingly awkward spurt of affection. It is they who would cling, if she allowed it, but she does not and they are too respectful of her to trespass, even at this extremity. In the main, she spends her time alone with her iPod plugged into her ears. She had the foresight to power up a number of external devices that will enable her to listen to music to the end if she wishes. “She immerses herself in music,” her mother told me rather wistfully, soon after they arrived, when she came to introduce herself. She explained that Electra wrote and performed her own songs and I was curious enough to ask what sort of songs. To my surprise, she furtively brought out a computer and played one of her daughter’s recorded songs to me.
I had been very surprised by the girl’s voice. It was very husky and subtle, as were the words and music she had composed. I have no doubt she would have been very successful as a singer, had the world lasted long enough to allow it. Aside from being talented, she is extremely beautiful. I like to watch her for such beauty is strangely mesmerizing, though I am careful. Of course I have no sexual interest in the child, but being a man and especially an old man, I must guard myself against any seeming impropriety, even now.
I am not alone in watching her. I have seen others staring at her from their terrace. Even Oleg the Bear watched her when he carried heavy piles of tourist bags up and down the steps to and from their owners’ accommodation. His head never turned in her direction, and his eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses, but I had noticed that he always stopped to rearrange his burden when she was lying on the terrace. Perhaps it is only that he was struck by the absolute contrast between them: She with her long pale, slender limbs and cool expression, her porcelain skin and sleek swath of bronze hair, and he with his hard, hugely muscular brown body, liberally furred with the same coarse black hair that mats his head. He is handsome enough for all his ferocious glower, though in a brutish way. He is only in his early thirties, but far too old for a fifteen year old girl. The Bear was her nickname for him, which I had thought a minor cruelty,
until I realised that she meant it only factually and truly he did seem more bear than human with his surly grunts and growls.
I have not seen him for some days, because like all of the white clad staff of these many tourist villas and hotels, he has vanished, gone to see to his own end. The last time I saw him, he was being accosted by the odd little besuited Asian man staying at the rather shabby Atelier a little further down the hill, whose guests were also served by Oleg and his two companions in the matter of luggage transport. The little man had appeared to be berating Oleg in some incomprehensible Asian language.
I have seen the little Asian man several times since, hurrying up or down the steps always wearing his dark thin suit, looking anxious and harried. I do not know where he goes each day so early, in such a hurry, but sometimes he does not return until the following morning. He is alone in his purposefulness, however. Others move slowly, as if through water, lost in thought. Sometimes there is sadness in their faces, for of course most of them are far from the homes and loved ones they had believed themselves to be parting from only temporarily. But is it a fleeting and dignified grief, rather than the initial outpouring of sorrow that occurred when people realized they must meet the end where they were, strangers in a strange land. Those that did not choose to die grew calm, understanding as they must that this severing was only a foreshadowing of the much greater severing looming over us all.
There are many, of course, who do not understand what is happening—they are either too young or old, or, like old Maria even now in her primitive, efficient little cave of a kitchen with its coal stove, preparing dinner, too stubborn. Her refusal to leave her post means we have not wanted for good cooking, though it is Electra’s parents and some of the other guests of the Olympus who have foraged for supplies. Maria accepts the offerings crossly, asking when old Mario will return to his deliveries since he would ensure she had all the ingredients she needed.
There are others who, while understanding and accepting, have chosen to go on as usual. There is a nurse at the local veterinarian clinic, who I am told continues to treat animals and there is a doctor at the hospital dispensing medications and euthanasia. There is a taxi driver who will take you anywhere upon the island so long as his supply of petrol holds out and there is a woman who is making coffee in what was once a four star restaurant, though it is on the other side of the island. There is a man who gives a free cello concert in the main square of Firostefani each night for anyone who wishes to come and hear him and a painter who sits on a terrace making sketches from morning till night.
These people have made the decision to go on doing their work, either because they have a genuine calling, or because they love what they do. Or perhaps because it is their work that will give meaning to their existence, even in these final hours.
There must be others, too.
This morning, a plane went over and everyone stopped and stared up in wonderment, for who would bother to pilot a plane now, on the eve of the end? Nor could it have been a single person, since it would take a crew to work the thing. It may be that, even now, there are things to connect us and perhaps the connection is all the more profound, being necessarily ephemeral. I am told several other musicians have begun to come in the evenings to play with the cello man and Electra said there is talk of a final concert for anyone who wishes to attend. She has made it her project to learn how as many people as possible will spend their last hours. Some evenings she comes to sit with me and reads what she has learned.
“We are witnesses of the end,” she said, tapping my battered journal.
For me, of course, the fact that I am old and have pancreatic cancer means the end of the world holds no great terror for me. I had already accepted the reality of my own not too distant specific personal death, so the idea of a more generalized extinction seems almost an elegant reprieve from what I fear would have been an ugly, painful death. Lacking regrets or fears, I have been removed enough to be, as Electra puts it, a witness. Like her, I have enjoyed making my notes for an article that will never be written. I had originally thought that what I would like most of all to do at the end would be to be editing an article about the end of the world, honing and perfecting syntax and meaning. I had thought to take a final walk up to the top of the hill to one of the ubiquitous little Orthodox blue-domed churches that sits up there, and read my final notes through. But a foolish fall put an end to the ill-conceived plan. I am glad, for I wince a little at the image of myself inching up the steep path with my walking frame, white hair blowing in the wind. That is vanity of course, and absurd, yet it does seem to be an inescapable part of the human condition.
I have a more humble plan now.
I do not think the end will happen quite so fast and dramatically as was thought initially. Nor do I think it will be an approach of darkness. I think non-existence will slowly converge upon us like the humidity that thickens some evenings until it coalesces into the strange mist that boils across the island in an endless eery rushing white tide. I think non-existence will come like that, from all sides, a beautiful clammy tide of cloud that will isolate us first from one another, turning us each into little islands of existence, then will envelop and consume us.
By my calculations, the end will come just before dusk this evening. I have been watching the vanishing of the stars and the rate of disappearance is quite steady; Electra’s father, an engineer, concurs that it will come at about the pace of a slow stroll. He intends that he and his wife will arrive an hour or so before the end, so that they may enjoy a final swim.
When I see the outer Cyclades begin to go, I will go down to my bedroom and make a pot of tea on the primus I have been using. I will carry it up to the terrace to sit. I am hoping one of the little cats that Electra has been feeding and wooing will come and curl in my lap, finding the girl absent. I will give it some milk in my saucer as an enticement.
Electra is still lying on her terrace lounger listening to her music. She has been swimming in the little infinity pool of the hotel next door, and she is quite alone, her parents having left this morning.
They were initially distressed that Electra would not accompany them, but she told them decidedly that they must all do as they wanted, but that she wished to remain at home. They made her promise to come and sit with me at the very end, and she agreed. Of course she has no intention of staying with me. It was merely that she did not want her parents to imagine her alone at the end, and they know she is fond of me in her cool way. She told me what she intended to do when she brought up some fruit her parents had foraged last night. She was not asking permission, of course. That would have been absurd under the circumstances and in any case she knows me well enough to know it would not be necessary. But she offered me a few sheets of paper, saying with innocent offhanded egoism that I might like to read about all the ways that people told her they planned to meet the end. Hers was at the bottom. I read the last line and smiled up at her before I anchored the sheets under a lump of pumice, saying I would save them for later in the day. I asked if she would come and say goodbye before she left and she nodded.
She went a few steps then glanced back over her smooth shoulder to tell me she had discovered why the little Asian man had been rushing about. He had been looking for his wallet. “His wallet,” she marveled, shaking her head.
At this point, everyone who accepts what is coming has decided how they will meet their end. Not the little Asian man, whom I saw hurrying up the steps again this morning with the same anxious expression. Not the old senile woman on the terrace below, tended to by her wizened older sister. Not Maria, who is even now down in her kitchen baking bread, as certain that the sun will rise on a tomorrow as she is that God exists. And truly it seems to me that meeting the end in a warm, ancient kitchen scented with rising dough is as good a way as any.
I THINK OF Adolphine and the affection in her voice when she spoke of Grigori. It is my hope and belief that she and the boy will see out the extinguishing of life tha
t will result from his response to her grandfather’s rage, together. Perhaps they will sit on her porch swing, holding hands and drinking homemade lemonade until the end.
The end matters, you see. How it is accomplished.
DREAM LONDON HOSPITAL
TONY BALLANTYNE
YOU CAN’T BE too ill if you want to get into Dream London Hospital.
The building has grown along with rest of the city, so the entrance now sits six stories up. Someone has built a concrete ramp—they’re still building it, in fact: they pour on a little extra every day—so that people can spiral their way up to the entrance.
Standing outside the Victorian doorway, the moon enormous in the purple Dream London sky, you can read the words engraved into the stone of the lintel—Dream London Hospital—by the generous benefaction of the Healthy.
There are people hurrying up the ramp as I tell you this: a family by the looks of them. Father, tall and thin and out of breath from pushing a rusty old pram; Mother fat, red faced and panting as she hurries to keep up. She keeps one hand on the large egg squeezed into the mouldy interior of the pram that Father is pushing. Behind them comes Daughter, ginger hair in pigtails. She’s holding on to Brother’s hand. He’s still in his pyjamas and carrying—how sweet—a teddy bear in the other arm.
Fearsome Magics Page 9
