The
Last Night
of the World
“WHAT would you do if you knew that this was
the last night of the world?”
“What would I do? You mean seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought.”
He poured some coffee. In the background the
two girls were playing blocks on the parlor rug in the light
of the green hurricane lamps. There was an easy, clean aroma of the brewed
coffee in the evening air.
“Well, better start thinking about it,” he said.
“You don’t mean it!”
He nodded. “A war?”
He shook his head.
“Not the hydrogen or atom bomb?”
“No.”
“Or germ warfare?”
“None of those at all,” he said, stirring his
coffee slowly. “But just, let’s say, the closing of a book.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“No, nor do I, really; it’s just a feeling.
Sometimes it frightens me, sometimes I’m not frightened at all but at
peace.” He glanced in at the girls and their yellow hair shining in the
lamplight. “I didn’t say anything to you.
It first happened about four nights ago.”
“What?”
“A dream I had. I dreamed that it was all
going to be over, and a voice said it was; not any kind of voice I
can remember, but a voice anyway, and it said things would stop here on Earth.
I didn’t think too much about
it the next day, but then I went to the office and caught Stan Willis looking
out the window in the middle
of the afternoon, and I said a penny for your thoughts, Stan, and he said, I
had a dream last night, and
before he even told me the dream I knew what it was. I could have told him, but
he told me and I listened
to him.”
“It was the same dream?”
“The same. I told Stan I had dreamed it too.
He didn’t seem surprised. He relaxed, in fact. Then we started
walking through the office, for the hell of it. It wasn’t planned. We didn’t
say, ‘Let’s walk around.’
We just walked on our own, and everywhere we saw people looking at their desks
or their hands
or out windows. I talked to a few. So did Stan.”
“And they all had dreamed?”
“All of them. The same dream, with no
difference.”
“Do you believe in it?”
“Yes. I’ve never been more certain.”
“And when will it stop? The world, I mean.”
“Sometime during the night for us, and then as
the night goes on around the world, that’ll go too. It’ll take
twenty-four hours for it all to go.”
They sat awhile not touching their coffee.
Then they lifted it slowly and drank, looking at each other.
“Do we deserve this?” she said. “It’s not a
matter of deserving; it’s just that things didn’t work out. I notice you didn’t
even argue about this.
Why not?”
“I guess I’ve a reason,” she said.
“The same one everyone at the office had?”
She nodded slowly. “I didn’t want to say
anything. It happened last night. And the women on the block talked
about it, among themselves, today. They dreamed. I thought it was only a
coincidence.” She picked
up the evening paper. “There’s nothing in the paper about it.”
“Everyone knows, so there’s no need.”
He sat back in his chair, watching her. “Are
you afraid?”
“No. I always thought I would be, but I’m
not.”
“Where’s that spirit called self-preservation
they talk so much about?”
“I don’t know. You don’t get too excited when
you feel things are logical. This is logical. Nothing else but
this could have happened from the way we’ve lived.”
“We haven’t been too bad, have we?”
“No, nor enormously good. I suppose that’s the
trouble—we haven’t been very much of anything except
us, while a big part of the world was busy being lots of quite awful things.”
The girls were laughing in the parlor.
“I always thought people would be screaming in
the streets at a time like this.”
“I guess not. You don’t scream about the real
thing.”
“Do you know, I won’t miss anything but you
and the girls. I never liked cities or my work or anything except
you three. I won’t miss a thing except perhaps the change in the weather, and a
glass of ice water when
it’s hot, and I might miss sleeping. How can we sit here and talk this way?”
“Because there’s nothing else to do.”
“That’s it, of course; for if there were, we’d
be doing it. I suppose this is the first time in the history of the
world that everyone has known just what they were going to do during the
night.”
“I wonder what everyone else will do now, this
evening, for the next few hours.”
“Go to a show, listen to the radio, watch
television, play cards, put the children to bed, go to bed themselves,
like always.”
“In a way that’s something to be proud of—like
always.”
They sat a moment and then he poured himself
another coffee. “Why do you suppose it’s tonight?” “Because.”
“Why not some other night in the last century,
or five centuries ago, or ten?”
“Maybe it’s because it was never October 19,
1969, ever before in history, and now it is and that’s it; because
this date means more than any other date ever meant; because it’s the year when
things are as they
are all over the world and that’s why it’s the end.”
“There are bombers on their schedules both
ways across the ocean tonight that’ll never see land.”
“That’s part of the reason why.”
“Well,” he said, getting up, “what shall it
be? Wash the dishes?”
They washed the dishes and stacked them away
with special neatness. At eight-thirty the girls were put to
bed and kissed good night and the little lights by their beds turned on and the
door left open just a trifle.
“I wonder,” said the husband, coming from the
bedroom and glancing back, standing there with his pipe for
a moment.
“What?”
“If the door will be shut all the way, or if
it’ll be left just a little ajar so some light comes in.”
“I wonder if the children know.”
“No, of course not.”
They sat and read the papers and talked and
listened to some radio music and then sat together by the fireplace
watching the charcoal embers as the clock struck ten-thirty and eleven and
eleven-thirty. They thought
of all the other people in the world who had spent their evening, each in his
own special way.
“Well,” he said at last. He kissed his wife for a long time.
“We’ve been good for each other, anyway.”
“Do you want to cry?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
They moved through the house and turned out
the lights and went into the bedroom and stood in the night
cool darkness undressing and pushing back the covers. “The sheets are so clean
and nice.”
“I’m tired.”
“We’reall tired.” They got into bed and lay
back.
“Just a moment,” she said.
He heard her get out of bed and go into the
kitchen. A moment later, she returned. “I left the water running
in the sink,” she said.
Something about this was so very funny that he
had to laugh. She laughed with him, knowing what it was that
she had done that was funny. They stopped laughing at last and lay in their
cool night bed, their hands clasped,
their heads together.
“Good night,” he said, after a moment.
“Good night,” she said
