Authors: Martin Amis

Einstein's Monsters (17 page)

Grouped around the poisoned well, the people yawn and mumble. They are the last. They have tried having kids—I have tried having kids—but it doesn’t work out. The babies that make it to term don’t look at all good, and they can’t seem to work up any immunity. There’s not much immunity around as it is. Everybody’s low.

They are the last and they are insane. They suffer from a mass delusion. Really, it’s the craziest thing. They all believe that they are—that they are eternal, that they are immortal. And they didn’t get the idea from me. I’ve kept my mouth shut, as always, out of settled habit. I’ve been discreet. I’m not one of those wellside bores who babble on about how they knew Tutankhamen and scored with the Queen of Sheba or Marie Antoinette. They think that they will live forever. The poor bastards, if they only knew.

I have a delusion also, sometimes. Sometimes I have this weird idea that I am just a second-rate New Zealand schoolmaster who never did anything or went anywhere and is now painfully and noisily dying of solar radiation along with everybody else. It’s strange how palpable it is, this fake past, and how human: I feel I can almost reach out and touch it. There was a woman, and a child. One woman. One child.… But I soon snap out of it. I soon pull myself together. I soon face up to the tragic fact that there will be no ending for me, even after the sun dies (which should at least be quite spectacular). I am the Immortal.

Recently I have started staying out in the daylight. Ah, what the hell. And so, I notice, have the human beings. We wail and dance and shake our heads. We crackle with cancers, we fizz with synergisms, under the furious and birdless sky. Shyly we peer at the heaven-filling target of the sun. Of course, I can take it, but this is suicide for the human beings. Wait, I want to say. Not yet. Be careful—you’ll hurt yourselves. Please. Please try and stay a little longer.

Soon you will all be gone and I will be alone forever.

I … I am the Immortal.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Martin Amis is well known on both sides of the Atlantic as the author of the novels
Money, Success, London Fields, Night Train
, and
The Rachel Papers
, among others, as well as
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America
, a collection of articles,
Experience
, a memoir, and four other works of nonfiction. He has contributed to such periodicals as
Vanity Fair, The Observer
, and
The New Statesman
. He lives in London.