Apocalypse for Beginners

197 Pages·2016·0.8 MB·English

by  Dickner Nicholas

Copyright © 2010 Éditions Alto
English Translation Copyright © 2010 Lazer Lederhendler
Published by arrangement with Éditions Alto,
Quebec City, Quebec, Canada All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical
means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the
publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2010.
Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited.
Vintage Canada with colophon is a registered trademark.
www.randomhouse.ca
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Dickner, Nicolas, 1972–
Apocalypse for beginners / Nicolas Dickner; translated by Lazer
Lederhendler.
Originally published under title: Tarmac.
Issued also in electronic format.
eISBN: 978-0-30739943-4
I. Lederhendler, Lazer, 1950– II. Title.
PS8557.I325T2713 2010 C843’.6 C2010-902047-2
v3.1
For Z and G
N.D.
—
For David, my son
L.L.
“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
YOGI BERRA
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
1. Vaporized
2. The Pet Shop
3. The Randalls
4. Purely Accidental
5. A Disturbing Logic
6. Teach Yourself Russian at Home
7. Struck Down by Fate
8. Einstein’s Twenty-Five Suits
9. The Last Great Mania
10. Cold Fusion
11. Perfectly Livable for Extended Periods
12. Termites
13. Please Avoid the Verbs To Be and To Have
14. Grenzmauer
15. Kaboom!
16. The Dawn of a New Era
17. Megalemons
18. An Ordinary Component of Everyday Reality
19. Einstein was Wrong
20. Tora! Tora! Tora!
21. A Little Prayer
22. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Psychiatry
23. A Fairly Optimistic View of the Universe
24. Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum
25. Mayhem at the Saint Vincent De Paul
26. Chimps in the Closet
27. Hunter-Gatherer
28. Disturbing News
29. Amenorrhea Mysteriosa
30. Randall Thinking
31. One Day at a Time
32. Texture
33. In Friendly Territory
34. Anything that Burns
35. I am Shiva
36. In the Baths of Rome
37. The Most Natural Event on Earth
38. Spices and Colouring
39. Marcus was Here
40. Television is the Enemy
41. The Ophir III
42. Banished from Eden
43. Details on Page 47
44. Satellite TV
45. The Beginning of the World
46. Plutonium
47. A Tiny Oasis of Warmth
48. Crumbs and Foam Rubber
49. The End is Nigh
50. More Reliable than a Package of Ramen
51. The Most Unpleasant Publisher in the Known Universe
52. A Rapidly Expanding Niche
53. Mission
54. Greyhound
55. Menu for Travellers
56. There Were No Good Old Days
57. Labyrinth
58. Poor Chuck Starts to have Problems
59. Supercharged
60. You are Leaving the American Sector
61. May I Borrow Your Gas Mask?
62. The Great Primal Soup
63. Cul-De-Sac
64. 1945
65. An Impossible Angle
66. An Increasing Tolerance for the Unlikely
67. Raid
68. Mutation
69. Modern Art
70. The Gyre
71. Carpet Bombing
72. In Space and Time
73. Better Equipped Than in 546
74. Killing Time
75. Scientific Discovery of the Day
76. The Nineteenth Stop
77. Madame Sicotte
78. Thirty-Seven Minutes
79. Crosswords Weekly
80. Distorting the Collective Psyche
81. A Unique Ability
82. The Speed of the World
83. Under a Different Light
84. A Three-Thousand-Year Voyage
85. Weapon of Mass Destruction
86. Does Anyone Still Talk about Nuclear Winter?
87. Incandescent Waves
88. A Serious Dent in Reality
89. The Burden of Perpetuation
90. Kiln
91. Only about Thirty Hours of Anxiety Left
92. Madame Hikari
93. An Ordinary Day
94. Take Heart!
95. Ethnological Observation No. 743
96. Today’s Active Young Japanese Woman
97. What Came Next
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1. VAPORIZED
August 1989. Ronald Reagan had vacated the White House, the Cold War was
winding down and the outdoor municipal swimming pool was, once again,
closed for maintenance.
Rivière-du-Loup was immersed in a chicken broth of pollen-saturated,
yellowish air, and I wandered glumly around the neighbourhood, my towel
around my neck. Just three days remained before the start of the new school
year, and nothing but a few good laps through chlorinated water could have
boosted my morale.
I ended up at the municipal stadium. Not a soul in sight. The lines on the
baseball field were freshly drawn and the scent of chalk still wafted around. I’d
never cared about baseball but, for no particular reason, I loved stadiums. I
walked past the dugout. On an old sun-bleached newspaper a column of tanks at
Tiananmen Square could just barely be made out.
That was when I noticed the girl sitting up in the very last row. Her nose was
buried in a book, as though she was killing time waiting for the next game to
begin.
Without giving it too much thought, I climbed up the bleachers in her
direction.
I’d never seen her in the neighbourhood. She was thin, with bony hands and a
face studded with freckles. The visor of her Mets cap was pulled down low over
her eyes and the left knee of her jeans was ripped. The jeans were not of the
trendy acid-washed variety, but rough-cut work pants, an ancient pair of Levi’s
salvaged from some coal mine in the New Mexico desert.
Her back pressed against the guardrail, she was reading a language-learning
manual: Teach Yourself Russian at Home, Volume 13.
I sat down without speaking. She made no sign of noticing me.
The wooden benches scorched our behinds. The sun poured down so
mercilessly I was tempted to turn my towel into a turban, but I was afraid of
appearing ridiculous. High overhead I could see a 747 tracing long parallel lines
of cirrus clouds in the sky. Dry weather ahead.
I was on the verge of spouting some meteorological small talk when the girl
tilted up the visor of her cap.