mould proof. The package design, on the other hand, was a hazard for the eyes: a pink and yellow astronaut with a cretinous smile behind his visor, orbiting a planet made of noodles. True, this was bunker food, but anyone stuck forty metres below ground surrounded by shelves stacked full of these obnoxious astronauts was in danger of losing his mind before succumbing to malnutrition.
We opened the ramen packages and put the kettle on to boil. Hope fidgeted with the empty wrapper while she continued to ruminate.
“What about March?”
I hesitated. It wouldn’t work. March was the Ayers Rock of the calendar—an enormous red, smooth month stranded in the middle of nowhere. Hope nodded.
“You’re right.”
“Listen … why not simply trust the dice?”
Hope didn’t answer. Absently, she toyed with her ramen package, folding it over and over with her thumbs. From a distance, she might have been taken for someone playing with a Chinese abacus. Suddenly, she stopped. She smoothed out the wrapper with the edge of her hand and thrust it under my nose, her index finger pointing to where it said, Meilleur Avant—Best Before 2001 17 JUL .
I smiled. An amusing coincidence—that’s all. Hope spread her arms out excitedly.
“An amusing coincidence?! Do you have any idea what the odds are for such an amusing coincidence ?!”
No, I did not have any idea. Nor did Hope, for that matter, but she swore she would calculate it when she had a couple of minutes.
She grabbed the kettle, splashed some boiling water in her bowl, and watched the mushroom cloud of steam rise toward the ceiling. She said no more on the subject of the apocalypse, but folded the wrapper four times and carefully slipped it under her belt.
21. A LITTLE PRAYER
The weeks passed; winter was fast approaching. In Berlin, sections of the Grenzmauer disappeared one after the other and gave way to a long series of vacant lots, promising a spike in real estate speculation. On the Potsdamer Platz, construction cranes were concentrated in numbers unequalled anywhere else in this part of the galaxy. Nothing looked more like the end of a world than the beginning of another.
Meanwhile, Hope was radiant. Her slightest gesture was charged with youthful electricity, as if the little girl that she had never allowed to come out was emerging after a long hibernation. She smiled from morning to night, whistled softly, lobbed snowballs at me—and the girl was a good shot, too.
The December sleet pelted down, and Hope blossomed amid the frost for the pleasure of my eyes alone, since none of my classmates seemed to notice the spectacular transformation. Were they so severely nearsighted that they failed to see how dazzling Hope was? Oh well, their loss was my gain.
Of course, as with all good things, there were some minor annoyances. Hope had taped the treasured Captain Mofuku ramen wrapper inside her locker (beside the picture of David Suzuki) and scribbled the numbers 17 07 2001 everywhere: in the blank spaces of her notebooks, in her books, on her arms, her desk, her jeans, and even in the cafeteria’s infamous ravioli sauce.
It was as if the numbers 17 07 2001 no longer represented the date of the apocalypse, and even less the expiry date of a package of ramen, but something like one of those little prayers that Buddhists would copy onto scraps of paper, which they then sent drifting on the four winds.
In the end, though, it was a small price to pay to see Hope so radiant.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Mrs. Randall, whose attempts to find fault with the Gregorian calendar had resulted in a long string of failures. The facts had to be faced: the date showing on the calendar was neither May 1988 nor February 1987, but undeniably December 1989.
As a result, she had abruptly lost interest in her calendars and almanacs. But in spite of this, certain clues suggested that she was still not rid of her obsession. Once a Randall, always a Randall. One night,
We opened the ramen packages and put the kettle on to boil. Hope fidgeted with the empty wrapper while she continued to ruminate.
“What about March?”
I hesitated. It wouldn’t work. March was the Ayers Rock of the calendar—an enormous red, smooth month stranded in the middle of nowhere. Hope nodded.
“You’re right.”
“Listen … why not simply trust the dice?”
Hope didn’t answer. Absently, she toyed with her ramen package, folding it over and over with her thumbs. From a distance, she might have been taken for someone playing with a Chinese abacus. Suddenly, she stopped. She smoothed out the wrapper with the edge of her hand and thrust it under my nose, her index finger pointing to where it said, Meilleur Avant—Best Before 2001 17 JUL .
I smiled. An amusing coincidence—that’s all. Hope spread her arms out excitedly.
“An amusing coincidence?! Do you have any idea what the odds are for such an amusing coincidence ?!”
No, I did not have any idea. Nor did Hope, for that matter, but she swore she would calculate it when she had a couple of minutes.
She grabbed the kettle, splashed some boiling water in her bowl, and watched the mushroom cloud of steam rise toward the ceiling. She said no more on the subject of the apocalypse, but folded the wrapper four times and carefully slipped it under her belt.
21. A LITTLE PRAYER
The weeks passed; winter was fast approaching. In Berlin, sections of the Grenzmauer disappeared one after the other and gave way to a long series of vacant lots, promising a spike in real estate speculation. On the Potsdamer Platz, construction cranes were concentrated in numbers unequalled anywhere else in this part of the galaxy. Nothing looked more like the end of a world than the beginning of another.
Meanwhile, Hope was radiant. Her slightest gesture was charged with youthful electricity, as if the little girl that she had never allowed to come out was emerging after a long hibernation. She smiled from morning to night, whistled softly, lobbed snowballs at me—and the girl was a good shot, too.
The December sleet pelted down, and Hope blossomed amid the frost for the pleasure of my eyes alone, since none of my classmates seemed to notice the spectacular transformation. Were they so severely nearsighted that they failed to see how dazzling Hope was? Oh well, their loss was my gain.
Of course, as with all good things, there were some minor annoyances. Hope had taped the treasured Captain Mofuku ramen wrapper inside her locker (beside the picture of David Suzuki) and scribbled the numbers 17 07 2001 everywhere: in the blank spaces of her notebooks, in her books, on her arms, her desk, her jeans, and even in the cafeteria’s infamous ravioli sauce.
It was as if the numbers 17 07 2001 no longer represented the date of the apocalypse, and even less the expiry date of a package of ramen, but something like one of those little prayers that Buddhists would copy onto scraps of paper, which they then sent drifting on the four winds.
In the end, though, it was a small price to pay to see Hope so radiant.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Mrs. Randall, whose attempts to find fault with the Gregorian calendar had resulted in a long string of failures. The facts had to be faced: the date showing on the calendar was neither May 1988 nor February 1987, but undeniably December 1989.
As a result, she had abruptly lost interest in her calendars and almanacs. But in spite of this, certain clues suggested that she was still not rid of her obsession. Once a Randall, always a Randall. One night,
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