The End of the World

CHAPTER FOUR



Luka



The next morning I awoke refreshed from sleep and ready to face any challenge my new life placed before me. At least, that’s what I’d tried to tell myself. In reality the mattress was thin and hard, I woke up countless times throughout the night consumed by thoughts of worst-case scenarios, and, unless I was very much mistaken, the person occupying the room adjacent to mine was prone to fits of manic hysteria.

I arrived at the breakfast table at 7:30am sharp, as had been so stringently requested by Mrs. Anna. To my surprise, however, I discovered that not only was I the only person in attendance, there was also no food to be found. I called out to see if there was anyone lingering in the immediate vicinity, but there was no response, only the sound of a child giggling that seemed to emanate from somewhere beneath the floorboards. Just as I began to wonder whether my time-keeping regimen had been disrupted by the foreign nature of my circumstances, the door suddenly opened.

A woman with long, dark, unkempt hair that almost covered her face stood in the doorway. She appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties. Her clothes were worn and tattered, her deportment that of one whose will had been broken. She stood there, staring out ahead for some time before at last speaking, her voice monotone, with an accent that sounded Eastern European to my ears.

“They say it’s going to rain.”

“Well, good morning to you,” I said, brightly. “I’m Valentine – I’m new here.”

She didn’t answer; she simply ambled despondently to the kitchen table and sat in one of the chairs across from me, her expression unmoved.

“What’s your name?” I inquired.

There was another silence. After a while, she looked towards the ceiling, sighed, and said mournfully, “I detest the rain.”

“Do you really?” I replied, hoping that by following her line of conversation, such as it was, I might bring her out of her shell a bit. “I find it quite comforting. There’s nothing I like better than lying in bed and hearing the sweet, melancholic sound of raindrops gently tapping against the windowpane.”

“It is an accursed noise. An indictment of us all. The tears and cries of countless butchered souls, the nameless, faceless dead throughout history come back to haunt us…to remind us.”

My attempt to generate a little light conversation didn’t appear to be working terribly well. But I wasn’t giving up.

“Yes, well that’s…that’s certainly another way of looking at it, I suppose. And a very valid one. What about snow?” I asked, optimistically.

Another silence ensued. Eventually she emitted another deep sigh and attempted to move some of the lank strands of hair away from her face. I was beginning to feel very awkward.

“Did I miss breakfast?” I asked, hoping that a change in tack on the conversation front might help lift her from her doldrums, not to mention the fact that I was genuinely starting to feel quite hungry.

“Hah! How typical of your Western mentality – more concerned with your gut than your conscience.”

It wasn’t quite the response I’d hoped for, but still, it was a start. “Well, no, I just…it’s just that Mrs. Anna was very specific about breakfast time. If I’ve missed it, it doesn’t really matter. I’m never that hungry first thing anyway,” I lied.

“So what? What are you trying to say? That Mrs. Anna is a liar?”

“No, no, of course not. I was simply…I was just trying to abide by the rules.”

“Hah! Rules. What do you know of rules? You’re just a baby,” she jeered, suddenly more animated than before.

“Well…without wishing to sound disagreeable, I am actually a fully-grown adult and I do believe in playing by them.”

“You’re an arrested child – it’s plain for any fool to see. You know not rules. Rules are tools and only as worthy as the hands they’re placed in.”

The conversation seemed to be taking a turn for the worse. However, I certainly wasn’t about to back down on a point of principle.

“Be that as it may, I distinctly remember being told quite categorically that breakfast would be served at 7:30am on the dot, and so here I am.”

“And if someone told you that you were a cow you would squeeze your breasts and offer me milk, I suppose?”

“I…I don’t know that that’s–”

“Words! What are words? Words are not important; it’s deeds that matter,” she cried.

“Yes, indeed. And serving breakfast is a deed.”

“There is no food. You must go hungry like the hordes of wretched souls you never gave a second thought to – except for the few guilt-ridden seconds when reading your newspapers and chewing your toast, only to turn the page to smaller tales of smaller pains that caused you smaller sadness. Here you must go hungry. No matter how you saw yourself before, here…here you are nothing…nothing special.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve no desire to appear difficult, but I paid good money to retain the services of this establishment and I think I have a right to expect what I was promised,” I insisted, beginning to feel a little hot under the collar.

“You can expect what you want but you’ll get what you’re given. Your money doesn’t talk here. The only thing you will get here is what you deserve. Everybody does eventually – at The End of the World.”

Her combative tone triggered an aggressive aspect of my personality that I rarely ever gave public voice to, but in this instance I felt compelled to vigorously express my displeasure.

“Let me say first of all that ‘what I deserve’ has a judgmental tone to it that I find wholly displeasing, especially from someone who has known me for all of five minutes. Secondly, my money is as good as anyone else’s and when I part with it I expect something in return. Now, I was promised a full English breakfast and that is what I intend to receive. However, if you are some sort of agent of Mrs. Anna, sent here to dissuade me from expecting what is rightfully mine, I would respectfully ask that you identify yourself as such now so that we can draw a halt to this ridiculous charade.”

“Strong words from such a small child,” she said, flipping away a greasy lock of hair from her eyes.

I was still feeling decidedly agitated. “I will ask you one more time and I expect to receive a straightforward answer. To the best of your knowledge, have I or have I not missed breakfast?”

“How should I know? I just arrived,” she shrugged.

“Oh. Oh, I…I just assumed that–”

“Of course you did. You people always assume you know so much about those around you when the truth is you know nothing.”

“Actually, I think it’s you that’s doing the assuming, but never mind. Anyway, it looks like we’ve both missed breakfast.”

For the first time she looked me directly in the eye, her plaintive expression unchanged.

“I am not missing breakfast. I am not missing food. How can I miss breakfast when I am missing my stomach?”

“You’re missing…I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I have no stomach for food. I have no stomach. You understand, yes? It was blown apart by a 12-gauge shotgun.”

“Your…your stomach?”

“A man from a neighbouring village – a man I had known since I was a child – he blew it to pieces in search of a Greater Serbia. Overnight I changed from being a fellow resident to a filthy rodent. People can be so fickle, no? And grudges run so deep. Then he turned his gun on my daughter – my screaming, petrified little girl. So, yes, now I am missing my stomach…and my child.”

I stared at her in shock and disbelief. “I…I don’t know what to say, I’m…I’m quite speechless.”

“And I am quite stomachless.”

“But…but doesn’t it…hurt?”

“What’s to hurt? There’s nothing there.”

“But how…how could anyone…do such a thing?”

“Why not? People can be dead and living at the same time, no? Don’t you know that by now? He was living but feeling nothing – nothing but resentment and suspicion and anger. There are those that are dead inside but still take breath. You would do well to remember this, little boy,” she said, her eyes squinted as if to underscore the weight of her words.

“But it makes no sense. It’s senseless – cruel and senseless.”

“You ask for reason from such people? I was Muslim – that was all that mattered. He saw my faith as skin deep. So he thought if he destroyed the skin he destroyed the faith. But as you can see…he was mistaken.”

She threw her head back with exaggerated pride, as people sometimes do when trying to convince themselves they’ve won, while knowing full well they lost.

“I can’t…I cannot believe someone could be so…I mean, how could they? How could that happen? Why didn’t someone stop him?”

“What, you don’t have television? All your Western advancements don’t include the television set? You see, you hear, you know. Don’t pretend you don’t.”

“Yes, but…”

“What, you don’t like reality TV? Or it’s not reality until you find yourself sitting face to face with it at the breakfast table, is that it? Well, who can blame you really, sitting there in your comfortable home, looking at the terrible images and feeling so bad? It’s not your fault. You didn’t cause it, after all – who can blame you? Except me…looking at you – all of the power and asleep at the wheel. Do we intervene or don’t we? What will it cost us? Will we be re-elected if we act? It’s a human catastrophe. It’s abhorrent. We deplore it. We condemn it. We do nothing. Better to wait…wait until the killing is done. East Timor, Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sudan…so many conflicts, so many conflicting opinions, so much talk, and so much death. So they pick and choose their humanitarian gestures with the steely eye of a seasoned gambler. The scales of power are laden with guilt, cleansed by a moral cause, and replenished by a lucrative book deal upon retirement. And on it goes. But I am too tired for this. I’ve had enough.”

She stood up and looked around the room with cold detachment. “I will go to my room now,” she said, impassively.

“It’s…it’s a miracle you’re alive…to have gotten here…to be able to tell your story,” I said, part of me not wanting her to leave, secretly hoping she might feel inclined to go into more detail on her harrowing ordeal.

“Where? Here? It’s The End of the World – we all get here eventually.”

“Be as modest as you like, I think you’re…I’m in awe.”

“You’re in shock. You have no idea, do you? You are like a canvass half started – the rudiments are there but it will remain forever incomplete.”

She eyed me up and down for a while and then said something that even under these circumstances I still found the ability to be shocked by.

“And yet I find you unconventionally attractive,” she said, toying with one of her greasy tresses. “Perhaps you want to have sex with me?”

I was completely taken aback. “Oh, I-I…um…”

“Yes?”

“Nothing, it’s just that I…I…”

“What? You don’t have the stomach for it?”

“No, no, I-I-I just…”

“Forget it. It wasn’t important. I don’t care for the sex anyway – just the connection, you understand.”

As she began to cross towards the door, I felt relieved but also acutely embarrassed at the same time. I mumbled a stuttering apology.

“I’m sorry, it’s not that I’m…or that you’re…I mean, you’re very…”

She stopped and turned back, wearing something that vaguely resembled a look of irony on her face.

“Little boy, when I was 6-years old I was raped by my uncle. When I was all grown up I was raped by seven drunken Serbs at gunpoint, then with a gunpoint, then later with an empty vodka bottle – so don’t try to spare my feelings…they’re long gone.”

She contorted her face into a kind of half-smile.

“Another time, perhaps?” she said, wearily.

Before she’d completely disappeared out of the door, I suddenly leapt from my chair and called out to her, realising something very important.

“Wait! You…I don’t even know your name.”

She looked back, dismissively. “Names? What good are names? We all have the same one eventually.”

“Yes, but…but even so.”

“Very well,” she shrugged, just before taking her leave. “If it makes such a difference to you. My name is Luka – I live on the second floor.”

Why did that ring a bell? Had I met her before? It seemed unlikely given the limited contact with the outside world my parents had permitted me. Nevertheless, it was all beginning to feel like a bad dream with no alarm clock to draw it to a halt. I considered going back to sleep and trying to wake up again, but the thought of that mattress quickly undermined what little motivation I had for the idea. I concluded that food depravation must surely be the root cause of my mental disorientation. I decided to raid the refrigerator.