The World of the End

by Ofir Touché Gafla

  Marian, each day that passes without you in our midst pains me, not least because of the pure magic we unknowingly brought into this world. I am simply in love with him and have gotten used to the annoying name Grandma Catherine gave him. The kid fills my days with smiles and, in all honesty, I admit that he made a great deal when he had himself “born” into the extinct Mendelssohn clan. He gets love from all over. Catherine moved in to Marian’s apartment, ten minutes from here, and they come over to visit every chance they get. Sandrine, your biological mother’s best friend, sewed him wings so that he can get more hang time when he basejumps off the roof. Yossef and Miriam take him traveling all over the Other World. David made him a mini multi-wheel and he drives it around the special paths in the park, and that’s not the half of it. As far as the kid is concerned, life may not have been a picnic, but death …

  I’m laughing again. Last time I laughed because in a flash of sincerity Henri asked if I could be Aunt Marian’s boyfriend. “They look almost exactly alike and they already have the same name,” he gushed. Kids. I wish it were so simple. And then today I laughed again when I served Marian her birthday cake. Our eyes met and for a moment a shiver went up my spine. For a fraction of a second the amazing likeness paralyzed me. Seems I wasn’t the only one who noticed the innocent exchange of glances. The whole clan hushed and stared, trying to interpret what was happening. It’s not the first time our eyes have locked like that. She thinks of the poor nurse who murdered her when she looks at me and I … well, you know what I think of. And in these miniscule icebergs of time, where consciousness slips away in freezing drops, there I understand almost all of it. How our private associations rear their heads without warning and shake our logic, seeking to confront us with indelible historical snapshots of happiness or darkness, to pull us down to dangerous depths at the spur of the moment, and freeze us. Why’d I laugh? Because her eyes don’t tell what yours once did, when they still had the knack. Because her pupils reveal much, but not of you. And then I see that only the very discerning can tell the twins apart. And in that tumultuous moment of identifying the difference, I grin like an idiot, pass the slice of cake, and sit down to chat with Samuel, embarrassed by the artificial intimacy imposed by imagination.

  Even when Catherine first proposed a meeting between the two of you, when you refused to leave the room and left the television on, the differences were clear to me. When you stood one beside the other, I knew I’d never be able to find you in her. Even though today, after ten months of acquaintance, I can definitively say that the two of you would have made great friends. Both of you know a ton about modern art and, more to the point, you both love it wholeheartedly, and I have no doubt that you would have spent days and nights at the movies, the bookstores, the concert halls, the open air stadiums …

  Marian and Samuel supported me no end during the first two months after I stopped coming to Worldly Rest. They ripped out the degrading, selfish feeling that had taken root inside me and encouraged me to get back to writing. Marian got back to her arts and literature reporting (over the course of the past six months she’s landed two interviews with Orson Welles about two different films he’s working on as part of his plan of ousting Citizen Kane from the top of the all-time list) and Samuel continues to investigate strange mysteries even as he works on his masterpiece A Guide for the Deceased Detective.… You see, sometimes I forget that you’re not interested in all the tiresome details and I find myself communicating like in the old days, back when you would have done anything to get a ticket to an unknown Orson Welles movie and worked the name of an actor or a character from it into one of your smashing crossword successes. Marian, have you forgotten the down-and-across joys you loved to craft? Will you really ignore Shakespeare’s new play? Will you embrace the ignorance your solitary cell provides you and turn your back on the cornucopia offered by the universe outside? Will you, like the faithless and the low-browed, refrain from looking beyond the keyhole? Will you, like them, experience conventional, stultifying, cold, monochromatic, rotten death? Will you turn into a lazy, stone-necked corpse that only gazes in one direction—back—a woman without the will to walk on, a goddess of intellect who ceased using her intelligence?

  I still don’t believe it. Don’t believe in the forced separation. Don’t believe we lost the power to communicate. But I believe in you, otherwise I wouldn’t have snuck into your room while you were asleep and left you this letter and a birthday present. I have no use for it anymore. Let’s hope it can help you. And just before you get to the last lines and press play on the Vie-deo machine, I’ll have you know that two weeks ago I wrote a prologue. If you were back at your best you’d laugh and call me a liar. But I swear, darling, a prologue. The beginning of a story. It takes place here. In the Other World. The potential for storytelling in this world is simply endless. I won’t reveal the details but I will confess that I have no idea how it’s going to end. For the first time since I ever took up a pen and started to write, I don’t care about the end. It’s meaningless to me. After all, who says that every journey, whether real or fictional, has to have a destination point? Sometimes we just long for the journey and nothing more. And actually, now that I think about it, the starting point is the decisive one, no? That’s what has sent us off on out adventuresome, aimless wandering, just like life, my love. I believe it’s high time we looked into the beginning of things, and before that the introduction, to discover the roots of the motives and why the teller decided to embark at one point and not another.

  You’ll find my address on the back of the tape, if and when …

  Yours,

  Ben.

  Marian turned on the TV, pressed PLAY, and leaned forward with interest. The figure of her husband, in the purple silk shirt and brown corduroy pants she’d bought for him with her shop-aholic friend Tali, filled the screen. In the background loud, unfamiliar blasts could be heard, accompanied by shouts of encouragement and hoots of happiness from an unseen crowd. The ruckus did not distract the righter, who held a gun in his right hand and pulled a note from his pants pocket, gripping it firmly in his left. The table by his side was laden with snacks and the ceiling just above him was decorated with a colorful strand of balloons. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his left hand, scanned the room in terror, opened his trembling lips, and shoved the gun deep down his throat. His eyes closed, his unsteady finger caressed the trigger three times before finally squeezing it all the way back. The sharp tenor of the shot was muffled by the deafening explosions of fireworks; the TV screen went dark, the Vie-deo machine, with a slight beep, announced that the tape was over and, in the partial darkness, Marian recognized the reflection on the screen of a woman crying softly, her smile lost and gone.

  Acknowledgments

  I wish to express my thanks to those who provided support and joy over the years:

  Biological family: Menachem and Hadassa (parents), Atzmon, Gil, Orit, Dalia, Noa, Omer, Yamit, Yaniv.

  Other family: Ori Brenner, Lior Elbo, Lior Gefen, Eitan and Racheli Shavit, Gil & Moti, Shay Leon, Dganit Saar, Renana Sofer, Ran Meirovich, Noam Shavit, Dan Morgenstern, Avshalom and Clarissa Caspi, Koby Israelite, Idan Talesnik, Orna Shamia, Christopher Kloeble, Saskya Jain, and Chandrahas Choudhuri.

  Feline family: Pele, Pupu, and their whiskered posse.

  Many thanks to Shimon Adaf, the man and the myth.

  Thanks to all IWP members, staff, and dreamscape.

  Thanks to all at Keter Publishing House.

  Thanks to Iris Mor.

  Thanks to Adam Friedstein.

  Thanks to Norbert Pariente and the angels from France.

  Thanks to all at Tor Publishing House.

  Thanks to my wonderful agents, Deborah Harris (Israel) and Kathleen Anderson (United States).

  Thanks to Katharine Critchlow for such a warm welcome.

  Thanks to Stephan Martiniere for the gorgeous cover.

  Many thanks to Lisa Davis (production editor) and Edwin Chapma
n (copyeditor) for their dedicated work.

  Big thanks to my extraordinary translator, Mitch Ginsburg.

  Special thanks to Marco Palmieri, my excellent editor, for his superb work and for being there.

  About the Author

  Ofir Touché Gafla is a national bestselling author in his native Israel. His first novel, The World of the End, won the 2005 Geffen Award for the best fantasy/science fiction novel of the year and the 2006 Kugel Award for Hebrew literature. His later novels include The Cataract in the Mind’s Eye, Behind the Fog, The Day the Music Died, and The Book of Disorder. He teaches creative writing in the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem.