Free The World of the End by Ofir Touché Gafla Page A

picture. “I’ve got no use for it,” he said, shrugging.
    “Marilyn” smiled faintly. “Do you know how much this picture is worth?”
    Ben snatched the picture, glanced at it, and stared at her condescendingly. “I’m sorry, Ms. Monroe. I’m of the mind that you earned every compliment you ever got … but I swear, I am not a fan. I came here with one thing in mind, to find my wife.”
    “Your wife? Why did you think you’d find her here?”
    Concentrating on her face, he responded with a question. “Why do you live here? Shouldn’t you be living in 1962?”
    Her face soured. “Don’t you think I’m tired of moving from place to place? I have no choice. They always find me. They always find their way to my new apartment and force me to move.” After a ponderous silence, she asked in astonishment, “You’re really not a fan?”
    Ben shook his head. “This place belongs to my wife, Marian Mendelssohn. I actually still don’t understand why you took her apartment; it seems a lot like trespassing.”
    “You think I need to trespass? I have a good friend who finds abandoned places with my initials for me. I move every year. And before you even ask, yes, a lot more people loiter around apartments with the initials N.J.B., thinking I’m undercover with my old name.”
    “Did you ever consider changing your name?” Ben asked, immediately regretting the question.
    A tremor of desperation slipped into her gleaming smile. “Even if my name was Florence Nightingale they’d find me. The move just buys me two or three months of quiet till they come again.”
    “If your fans find you everywhere, why don’t you just go live with Arthur? The way I see it, all your problems would be solved if…”
    “Marilyn” raised a finger to her lips. Her face dull with boredom, she answered in a sleepy voice, as though she were saying this for the thousandth time, “because of the AACM.”
    She groaned at the sight of Ben’s blank face, and said, “We’ll make this short, okay? As I’m sure you know, in the Other World you can change your name in one direction and one direction only. You can cut it short but you can’t make it longer. I’m talking about the name you had when you left the previous world. Mostly it’s for people who had three names and more. Like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He, for instance, had no intention of changing his name in any way. And from what I hear, he led a fascinating death until the Association for the Appreciation of Classical Music caught up with him. The AACM is full of musicologists, amateur composers, musicians, and just ordinary aficionados. Fanatics all. If you’re a famous composer, they’ll do anything to convince you to keep writing music. They’ll never let you be. Their love for music borders on a pure hatred for musicians. They decided they wanted Mozart to finish the Requiem , as though he’d never gotten sick. He refused outright; said he was happy with Süssmayr’s work and that no one would convince him otherwise. But that didn’t make much of an impression on them. They wrote petitions, staged protests, hounded him wherever he went. But he stuck to his guns. The real victim here is actually Süssmayr, who couldn’t handle their insults and, despite his teacher’s praise and encouragement, punched in a seven over three. Mozart was crushed. He blamed the AACM for his student’s eternal sleep, but they just brushed it off, and as if that wasn’t enough, later that day they went on the air, on the evening news, and urged him to write a brand new requiem, because “now more than ever,” he had the best possible reason: He could compose a requiem for the composer who had finished his own requiem! Naturally, Mozart refused … He said nothing would sway him. Everyone thought it was over, but they wouldn’t let him be. They came after him everywhere, harassed him constantly. He moved five times and they found him each time. Mozart thought about going back to his