The Holocaust Survival Manual

 

By Nathan Hobby 1998

 

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my reflection, dirty mirror

there’s no connection to myself

intoxicated with the madness

i’m in love with my sadness

-THE SMASHING PUMPKINS “ZERO”

 

           

            There were nuclear bombs flying all over the place, and basically everyone in the whole world died.  With the exception of me.  Because I built a bunker and sheltered myself from those bombs.

            So now I sit in my bunker all day in the flickering candlelight.  The air stinks of ash.  Burnt up houses, burnt up cars, burnt up bodies.  I’m glad they’re all dead, but it does get lonely sometimes.

            There is a grimy mirror propped against the wall.  On the corner, in faded white type it says ‘To the school, from the 1969 Prefects’.

            I picture that school, far removed in time and space.  The mirror hangs on a side wall in the hall.  It is not 1969, in fact 1969 has nothing to do with this except that it was when the mirror was first hung on this wall.  It is much later than 1969.  There is an assembly in the hall and a bored school boy who looks remarkably like me searches this mirror’s reflection for the girl he loves.  His name is Gerald.  Her name is Ashleigh.

            Ashleigh, ash.  That is strange.  But then again, there are many coincidences here.

            He finds her in the row behind him.  She has a sharp, beautiful face that will haunt his dreams for years to come.  He’s hardly ever talked to her; I don’t understand why he thinks he loves her.  I think it might be just a product of his desperation. 

            He will never have her.  But he cannot know that; he can only see the present and the past, not the future.  If that’s the case, he should be able to live in hope.

            It does not matter what the teacher is saying or what the assembly is about; those things fade out, irrelevant detail.  All that matters is that he captures her image in this mirror. She slouches in her chair, arms folded.  Her angled eyebrows are raised slightly and she is biting her lip. That is what he sees. 

            He will see her again at a school social a few (months, days?) later in the same hall.  Her tanned pencil thin legs thrust from a short black skirt.  A white tight lace top.  Why is he here?  He is a nerd, he does not go to socials.  He is here, I think, only to see her.  He watches her, thinking over things to say to her, as the music pounds and bodies and lights dance. 

            He loses sight of her for a little while and wanders the hall trying to look like he belongs.  He finds her again, sitting on a stool at a table.  He sits opposite her.  She doesn’t acknowledge him.  She is sitting next to Jae.  Jae has long hair that hangs at his shoulders and plays guitar and smokes drugs, all things Gerald does not.  Strangely, Jae is Gerald’s friend - or at least talks to him and they lend books and Smashing Pumpkin CDs to each other.  That’s about the closest Gerald has to a friend.

            She is whispering something in Jae’s ear.   Later on, Gerald learns from Jae that she asked him for a scam and he said no.  Why not? Gerald asked, and he said she was too skinny for him.

            But Gerald doesn’t know this, now.  He only sees her face drop, a frown mid-smile as she pushes the stool out and walks away, lost in the crowd.  A parting butt-shot.

            The music pounds on and stops eventually.  Gerald walks out of the hall into cool night air.  His ears are fritzed, his heart is heavy.  Back home, he tries to sleep but cannot. 

            He reads a book that he hates but has to read because Jae lent it to him.  It’s about a nuclear war which has destroyed the world and killed everyone but one man.  This one man lives in a bunker below the earth, slowly dying of the radiation sickness that killed all the others.  He has only lived this long because he has read The Holocaust Survival Manual.   A book club sent it to him by mistake and he never bothered to return it.  Now it has saved his life, at least for a little while. 

            Propped up against this man’s wall is a grimy mirror and every day he looks in it by the candlelight and thinks bitter thoughts about his past life which he hated, and a girl he loved who is now being eaten by maggots.  He finds it a comforting thought that she is not alive and being loved by someone else.  This last man is happy in thoughts like that.  He is a sick, bitter, twisted, deluded man.

           

*

 

emptiness is loneliness and loneliness

is cleanliness

 and cleanliness is godliness and god is empty

 just like me

- THE SMASHING PUMPKINS, ‘ZERO’

 

*

 

            The next day, Gerald asks Jae what Ashleigh said to him and he tells him, which only makes things worse.  He doesn’t know whether he’d rather Jae had kissed her or not.  Maybe if Jae had, Gerald would be able to move on.

            In the last lesson of the day, Gerald fails a chemistry test that he studied hours for.  He is tired and angsted and cannot think.  His mind is blank but for that parting butt shot from Ashleigh.  His world is disintegrating around him; getting good scores in tests is all he had left in life.  He had forsaken that, tried to be like the rest of them and now he is left with nothing.

            He walks home, depressed.

            Near the service station, he sees a shabby old man picking up cigarette butts and is reminded of the man in the book he is reading.  They are the same person, he realises, separated by time and space.  Except they will eventually become one, because there will be a nuclear war and everyone but Gerald will die and he will become the butt-scab and the last man in the world all in one, sitting in a barren room staring into a grimy mirror, dying. 

 

*

 

i never let on that i was on a sinking ship

i never let on that i was down

you blame yourself for what you can’t ignore

you blame yourself for wanting more

- THE SMASHING PUMPKINS ‘ZERO’

 

*

 

            Once Gerald cut out a picture of Ashleigh from the paper and stuck it in his diary.  Why was she in the paper?  It was something silly, a netball photo or a modelling shot... it does not matter. 

            What matters is that when he gets home, he tears out this picture that he used to fantasise over and puts it in the bin. 

 

*

 

            I’ve been sitting too long in this bunker.  I don’t care if I die any longer.  I want to see the outside world again. 

            I’m afraid that I’ve lost my sight, that the sun will be too bright... but I cannot live in fear forever.

            I climb up the ladder and push at the trapdoor in the ceiling. 

            The Holocaust Survival Manual says that the outside world will be incomprehensible and foreign at first.  It says that isolation breeds madness; that it’s only to be expected.  The way to stay sane is to think good thoughts, it says.  Even if you’re the only one alive and the girl you loved is being slowly eaten by maggots. 

            What matters is that there is hope.  That there is an outside.  That I can push this trap-door open.

            Sunlight leaks through the crack and burns my eyes as I throw it open and emerge into light.

            I stand blinking for minutes, catching flashes of my surroundings, before finally seeing the world properly. 

            A lot has changed.

 

           

*

 

            But Gerald doesn’t want to let me out. 

            He wants to keep me in the bunker in bitterness.

            He is deluded.  He thought that going to the social and trying to win over Ashleigh was the equivalent of emerging from his bunker - and since it only made things worse, he wants us to stay forever underground. 

            He wants us to feel sorry for ourselves. 

            He wants his story to be one that matters, a story of world destruction, mass death.  Of events that change everything and everyone.  But he realises this isn’t possible.

            The Cold War ended.

            There was no nuclear holocaust and there never will be. 

            Ashleigh will live on and he must face it.

            Even the character in the book he is reading didn’t stay moping forever.  I went up into the light. 

            Gerald is slowly realising all this.

            He releases the fantasy.

            The smell of ash fades. 

            The concrete turns to carpet; the darkness to light.   I disappear.  The grimy mirror disappears.   Once more it is back in the school hall, capturing images.  Reflecting.

            All that is left is Gerald sitting at his desk, thinking, and this is a story that matters to no-one but him.  He tried to make this important; he made himself the survivor of a nuclear holocaust.  But the analogy broke down; he and the survivor are different people in different circumstances. 

            Thus, at last, this is revealed for what it truly is: nothing but a story of a girl he loved and a life he needs to change.  Plus a grimy mirror that really has nothing to do with any of it, but for some reason is connected to them in his mind. 

 

*

so save your prayers

for when you’re really going to need them

throw out your cares and fly

-THE SMASHING PUMPKINS “ZERO”

 

*

 

            Now that you know that it doesn’t matter, you probably won’t want to hear the end  -but here it is:

            Ashleigh passes Gerald in a deserted corridor a few days later.

            He smiles and says, “Hi.”  She says hi back.  He keeps on walking.  He realises with a start that he doesn’t even like her any longer.

 

*         

 

             During The Smashing Pumpkins 1998 tour of Australia, lead singer Billy Corgan repeatedly refused to play what many see as the band’s anthem, “Zero”, saying that he had retired the song and that he no longer wore the black ‘zero’ t-shirt that was his trademark at the time of the release of the 1995 album, Melon-Collie and the Infinite Sadness.