World of the End - Softcover

Gafla, Ofir Touché

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765333570 ISBN 13: 9780765333575

Verlag: St. Martins Press-3PL, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

The American debut of a bestselling Israeli novel about a man who crosses into another world for the sake of love.

As an epilogist, Ben Mendelssohn appreciates an unexpected ending. But when that denouement is the untimely demise of his beloved wife, Ben is incapable of coping. Marian was more than his life partner; she was the fiber that held together all that he is. And Ben is willing to do anything, even enter the unknown beyond, if it means a chance to be with her again.

One bullet to the brain later, Ben is in the Other World, where he discovers a vast and curiously secular existence utterly unlike anything he could have imagined: a realm of sprawling cities where the deceased of every age live an eternal second life, and where forests of family trees are tended by mysterious humans who never lived in the previous world. But Ben cannot find Marian.

Desperate for a reunion, he enlists an unconventional afterlife investigator to track her down, little knowing that his search is entangled in events that continue to unfold in the world of the living. In Ofir Touché Gafla's The World of the End, the search will confront Ben with one heart-rending shock after another; with the best and worst of human nature; with the resilience and fragility of love; and with truths that will haunt him through eternity.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ofir Touché Gafla

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1

The End

Some fifteen months after Marian lost her life under bizarre aeronautical circumstances, her husband decided to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Their old friends, well aware of the couple’s love for one another, were not surprised to find, amid the daily monotony of their mail, an invitation to the home of the live husband and the late wife. They also knew that he had yet to have his final word on the matter, and that, beneath the emotional prattle and the love-soaked murmurs, Ben Mendelssohn was a man of action. His friends, put at ease by the invitation, saw the party as classic Mendelssohn, which is to say a come-as-you-are, be-ready-for-anything affair. After all, Ben paid the bills with his imagination, crafting surprise endings for a living. Writers of screenplays, writers at the dawn and dusk of their careers, letter writers, graphomaniacs, poets, drafters of Last Wills and Testaments—all used the services of Ben Mendelssohn, righter. In intellectual circles he was known as an epilogist; among laymen he remained anonymous, never once asking for his name to appear at the close of the work he sealed for others. Over time, experts were able to recognize his signature touches and, within their own literati circles, to admit to his genius. Marian, who recognized his talent from the start, had a keen distaste for her husband’s enduring anonymity, but he, chuckling, would ask, “Do you know any famous tow-truck drivers? All I do is drag miserable writers out of the mud.”

After his wife’s funeral, Ben asked his friends to let him be. At first they ignored his requests, stopping by his house and leaving messages on his machine, even though he had made clear, from the moment his wife had been tucked into the folds of the earth, that he had no interest in salvation. He lived reclusively, and they, in turn, stopped harassing him, convinced that he meant for his mourning to be a private affair. At their weekly get-togethers, they would bring him up and discuss his antics in the past tense of the posthumous, occasionally wondering what he was up to in the present. It took some time before they realized that they were, in a sense, simultaneously mourning both Ben and Marian, who, in death, had stolen the refreshing animal blue of her husband’s wide eyes. The day she died, his enormous pupils narrowed, his eyes dimmed, and his muscles seemed to release their hold on his frame, sinking his shoulders, curving his back, pointing his forehead downwards. His hands, limp at his sides, told a tale of detachment. Their friends tried to bring back the old Ben, the live Ben, but were forced to make do with alcohol and nostalgia, trudging down the alleys of memory and avoiding the cross streets of today, which were guarded by a mute wall, a wall of no-comment.

And then, out of the blue, the invitations arrived and put an end to their exile. A sign of life! Ben was back from the dead. They met immediately to discuss a delicate question—what to get a dead woman for her birthday? The poetic friends pushed for something Marian would’ve loved; the practical ones advocated for a gift for their cloistered friend. After three packs of cigarettes, twenty-six bottles of beer and fifteen variations on the word idiot, they arrived at a decision. No gift could make Ben happier than a painting by Kolanski.

Kolanski’s lovely wife turned out to be the perfect hostess. She did not ask for their names or their intentions, led them to a living room lined with artwork, served fruit and soft drinks, and then excused herself to call her husband from his backyard studio. His arrival brought Ben’s friends to their feet. The great Kolanski had put his work aside, crossing the room quickly in his electric wheelchair.

His black eyes filled with disgust. “Who are you and why are you eating my fruit?” he boomed.

His wife told him to settle down, but he lashed out at her. “What do you want from me? Maybe they’re murderers. She opens the door for anyone. What would you do if they were terrorists?”

His wife smiled tenderly. “As you can see, my husband suffers from paranoia.”

“When we’re butchered, will you still call me paranoid?” he barked.

“Can’t you see that these people are harmless?” She pointed to them, rolling her eyes to the ceiling.

“We are…,” Kobi, the self-chosen representative of Ben’s friends, began, before losing his nerve at the sound of the artist’s hate-doused voice.

“Art students? Art teachers? Art critics? Artists? I can’t stand any of them.”

Tali, Kobi’s wife, cleared her throat. “Mr. Kolanski, we have nothing to do with the art world.”

The artist swiveled in her direction and shouted, “What do you want?”

“Mr. Kolanski, we have a very close friend; his name is Ben. He has always admired your work, never missed an exhibition. A year and two months ago his wife Marian died. They loved like children. The kind of love you don’t see every day. Ben mourned her so intensely he severed ties with the outside world. Till yesterday. Yesterday we were all invited to her birthday party. We thought about what would make the best present and came to a decision that nothing would make him happier than a portrait of him and his wife, drawn by his idol.… We know that…”

“Okay, I’ve heard enough,” the artist said, “You want me to paint your wacko friend and his dead wife. Love conquers all and all that shit. She’s dead, he’s alive, and they’re still in love. Kitsch. Camp. Colors. Romance. Get out of my house or I’ll vomit on you.”

“Rafael!” his wife called, giving his chair a kick and stiffening her lips.

“Oh, of course,” he mocked, “you’re probably moved by this nonsense, right? Think about it, Bessie. If I were dead, would you be happy to get a portrait of the two of us?”

She responded at once, “Absolutely.”

“Absolutely,” her husband mimicked, “but not for one moment do you consider what he will do with this portrait? Shove it up his ass? Stare at it all day? And since when do I paint portraits? I’ve never done a portrait. I don’t believe in portraits. They stifle creativity. They habituate the mind to a single paralyzed expression, and over time your loony friend will look at the portrait and forget, more and more, what she really looked like. All he’ll have left of her is a single, awful expression. Listen to me—don’t document a thing! Not a thing! The more a person documents, the faster his memory betrays him. He knows he can rely on his wretched little photo album. You follow? You’ve all grown accustomed to indulgence! You can keep everything, everything, up here!”

Ben’s friends huddled together, exchanging bashful glances. Tali, summoning her courage, pulled out a picture of Ben and his wife and extended it to the artist. She whispered, “Just in case you change your mind…”

The artist snatched the picture, glanced at it, and nodded. “Hmmm … your friend was a lucky man. The woman, on the other hand, must have had some trouble with her eyesight. Or maybe there’s really something special. This is good, like me and Bessie—the flower fell in love with the thorn, that’s the strongest love. The thorn pokes the flower and the flower drugs the thorn. Awake and asleep. Clamorous and quiet. No other love can endure. Two flowers bore each other to death, two thorns prick each other to death, and all the rest are just weeds. I’ll give you some free advice. You say the thorn...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0765333570
• ISBN 13: 9780765333575
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland