by Sara Alexi
Lori’s smile grows as she reaches towards her for the customary kiss on each cheek. But as the distance between them narrows Lori’s smiles changes, the corners drop and she begins to grimace. Her eyes narrow as she looks right and left, frowning, and her face distorts. Rallou reaches out to grab the door frame. Her legs become boneless and the ground turns to water.
‘Outside!’ Rallou commands. The ground is moving so much that Lori’s glass slips from her hand and smashes on the tiles, and Lori follows it, her knees making the first impact. The glass cuts into her and blood seeps over the marble floor.
‘Lori!’ Ted shouts, grabbing the table for stability as he reaches for his wife. Greg shuffles to his mother, palms flat against the wall.
‘Outside!’ Rallou repeats, shouting this time as the tremor grows. It feels like a big one. Holding fast to the door, she reaches out to Lori and slides palm against palm, only their fingers gripping. Lori’s other hand is held by Ted. Greg has hold of his mum around her waist and the three of them, Rallou acting as the anchor, sway on wavering legs, slide their feet across the floor towards the door, the urgency showing on their faces. In the kitchen, plates and cups rattle. Something heavy crashes to the floor in the rooms above their heads and the lid of the Turkish chest slams shut.
They all grab the door frame round Rallou. One of the terracotta planters wobbles on its narrow base and topples sideways, and Rallou quickly steps out of the way to save her toes. The pot rolls past her, thuds heavily down the steps. Trees between buildings are rustling madly, and there is the sound of a branch cracking and falling. Screaming can be heard from every corner. Dogs bark frantically and a donkey calls its terror.
‘To the street!’ Rallou is halfway to the gate. Greg and Ted still hold on to Lori as the blood from her knee runs down her shin, covering her foot, curling under the sole of her sandal, and as she tries to walk her foot slides in her own life source. Tiles begin to slip from the roof and one lands on the flags beside them, adding an urgency to their movements. More screams are heard from all corners of the town. Rallou casts a glance around her. Everything is shaking, swaying, and there are voices shouting for help in every direction. Another donkey brays, a tremoring wail of fear, and Rallou crosses herself with her free hand and hopes that Dolly is safe, that fear forces her up the path from the cove. She will be safe in the olive grove. And Baba! What of him?
The tremors grow worse. Crashes can be heard inside the house and inside the other homes around them. A thud comes from the depths of Ted and Lori’s upper floor, through the windows that have been flung open, glass shattering. Visible through the gaping front door, the hall table crashes over, spilling flowers and water over the tiles.
They are not the first to arrive on the street outside. The neighbours who are already there are shouting to each other, arms gesticulating, legs wavering; children and the elderly are being supported by parents and offspring. They are in nightclothes, housecoats, shirtsleeves. One man is wearing just a pair of shorts. Unseen islanders are still screaming in the lanes behind and to the side of Lori and Ted’s house, and Rallou looks around for Christos. Surely he will be there any minute. She will be in his arms and they will be safe. Neighbours up and down are still hurrying from narrow passageways to take refuge in the wide causeway where nothing can fall on them. People stream like rats to the central artery and, once there, watch their feet for cracks that might appear and stare in disbelief at the falling buildings, mesmerised by the horror of it all. They huddle with their backs to each other as tiles cascade off rooftops and buildings crack diagonally. Walls begin to crumble and fall, thunderously booming as they impact, and the sky fills with dust, lacing the air with a smell of age, plaster and fear. Whole sides of houses shift, rumbling as they move in an unearthly manner, leaving black open seams at corners of building where no openings should be. Dogs come yelping, seeking people’s legs for sanctuary. There is not a cat in sight; they have their own ways. The Americans’ house is shimmying to such a degree that the two central pillars between the three main windows both crack, the render splitting away and falling first, leaving exposed stone. Then the stones fall, first one by one, with a trickle of sand and mortar, then as a mass, bouncing as they land on each other. From the end wall, centuries-old plaster shears off, disintegrating as it hits the floor in a cloud of dust.
Lori screams at the sight, breathes sharply and then lets out a shout of surprise and disbelief. Other similar shrieks can be heard to the left, to the right, in front, behind: the air is filled with shock.
Beneath their feet the stone paving creaks, and people cling to each other. A small girl in a blue dress urinates down her leg and her mama pulls her close, pushes her child’s face into her stomach, her arms around her for protection.
As another wave rattles through the earth, Lori’s legs give way and she is on the floor again, as is old Kyria Vetta from next door but one. Kyria Vetta’s son is also on his knees, holding and trying to calm his mama. Kyria Vetta is screaming, her arms outstretched towards her house.
‘Baba, Baba, Baba!’ the girl in the blue dress cries. The girl’s mama has lines of tears on her dust-covered cheeks. Greg and Ted are by Lori, supporting, holding. Rallou looks back to Harris’s house; it hasn’t moved but it shimmers like a mirage, and looks unreal. As the trembling subsides, her anxiety is no longer focused on herself. Where is Christos? Where is Harris?
‘Baba, Baba, Baba!’ the girl continues to scream. The rumbling is quieting, which allows the shouting from all parts of the town to be heard more clearly.
A man covered with debris comes out of a cloud that was his home. He clutches four kittens. The mama leaves the child, runs and hugs him. The girl shouts ‘Baba’ again, but this time with relief.
But where is Christos? Her legs want to run. But in which direction? Where is he?
Another tremor.
‘Aftershock!’ someone shouts. The people on the street freeze for a moment, then they turn to each other with fear in their eyes as they take hold of one another for support and reassurance. There is a high-pitched splintering, friction of wood on wood. Behind them is a telegraph pole; it begins to topple, the cracking and screeching increasing as it gains momentum and crashes across the breadth of the street. People dart out of its way; a man grabs a boy who would otherwise have been crushed, his legs dangling from the ungainly hold the man has on him. Rallou watches with her mouth open as the telegraph pole’s end smashes straight through Harris’s roof, accompanied by crackles and fizzes and sparks of electricity. The earth’s vibrations increase again. Where is Christos? Rallou’s nose is thick with dust, and her mouth opens again, partly so she can breathe but partly at the sight of her home, which is wavering, threatening to fall. Then slowly, almost gracefully, one wall falls outward and half the roof collapses. The dust that was created by the collapse of the first wall hides what is left of the house, but Rallou can hear the rumble that tells her the whole lot is going to go.
‘Christo!’ Rallou’s scream is automatic. Greg grips her arm, stops her, before she has even realised she is running towards her home.
Tiles slide off the roof, which is now at an odd angle, and the wall by the front door is cracked, a jagged black line that grows before her eyes. Now she can see through it to the blue walls of her kitchen and now out to daylight and the pomegranate tree in her back garden, next to the washing line, with Lori’s sheet still hanging, flapping.
It will collapse. The whole house is going to fall. Where is Christos?
‘Christo!’ she shouts again and tries to wriggle from Greg’s hold as her stomach knots and twists. Greg coughs from all the dust in the air. Rallou’s nose is now completely clogged and her heartbeat is in her throat. Where is he? He is not in the street. He has not run out of the building. Her house is going to fall! What is left of one wall crumbles, and another seems to concertina vertically. The walls that remain fall inward and, with nothing left to support it, the roof crashes down. It breaks apart, the wo
od and the tiles separating, sliding and shearing over one another until the end of her old brass bed is left poking through the roof beams, with rubble and tiles and dust on her mama’s bedspread. For a second the front door is left standing. Then it falls backward in a cloud of dust at the foot of the bed. Rallou’s nails dig into Greg’s fingers and her feet propel her forward.
Chapter 16
‘Christo!’ It is her own voice screaming his name into the dust and rubble. Rallou falls sideways after a new tremor, scrambles forward on liquid ground, her feet fighting to gain purchase.
‘Christo!’ she calls for the tall, capable, good-looking, caring Christos she married, the man she knew on her return from London. Other names are being shouted all around her.
‘Dimitri!’
‘Anna!’
‘Constantino?’
‘Moro mou!’
The cries come from every corner as if a roll-call is being carried out. The voices sound strained, choked, full of fear and the dread of loss. The dust hangs in the air, the town engulfed in a thick mist even now the ground has solidified. Rallou makes progress, on her knees, onto her feet, every step taking her nearer their home. She must get home, open the front door that now lies flat on the floor and let him out.
‘Christo.’ The call is more to herself, to hear his name. The ground is quite solid now but the shouts from all corners do not diminish – quite the opposite. New calls start and people begin to run now the ground no longer moves, but this time towards the buildings, not away from them.
‘Mama?’
‘Theia?’
‘Nectario?’
‘Papous?’
Rallou reaches what was her home and starts to climb over the debris, the stones and plaster pieces, roof tiles and wooden beams. Ted, who has followed her, grabs her arm to pull her to safety, but the terror in her heart gives her strength and she jerks free to grab the knob of her own front door and wrench the horizontal slab of wood up and open, then drops it with a dull thud, creating a cloud of dust. The open frame reveals more rubble, one of her best shoes with just the toe showing, a piece of blue plaster from her kitchen, the corner of a pink cushion from Natasa’s old bedroom. Her life, broken.
‘Christo!’ she shrieks at the top of her voice, throwing her head back.
Similar cries can be heard all around the town.
‘Oh my God!’ Ted is by her side. ‘Greg!’ he calls behind him to his son, who comes running, leaving Lori where she is sitting by the side of the road. Kyria Vetta’s sons also run and Kyria Vetta attempts to stand. Rallou pulls up stone after stone. He has to be here somewhere. Did he seek refuge under the kitchen table, under the stairs? None of this remains standing. She pulls out from between roof tiles one of her scarves, a pale dusty version of itself. They must get to him before the air runs out – wherever he is. Stone after stone she lifts and hurls away. Her skirt, her hair, her face are white with dust. And where is Arapitsa? She would not have been caught inside the falling house, but would have run out, and should be barking.
Rallou pauses in her futile task to look around for the dog.
‘Arapitsa? Arapitsa!’ If she finds the dog she will find Christos. Other people are also shouting for loved ones. Their cries become increasingly hoarse as lovers, children and parents do not reply. Wails of grief begin to flow and fill the silence the earthquake has left. The echoing sounds pull Rallou up short in her own search and she turns atop her own pile of stones and mortar to look upon Orino town. A cloud of dust hangs in the air, pillars rising here and there, and between them there is still clear blue sky and the sun is still shining. Here and there, too, structures are still failing, crashing sounds confirming the damage done. Where taller houses once stood, pillars of rubble now act as markers. Where rows of tender flowers in pots once lined the path, bricks, stones and piles of debris now mark the way. Electricity lines fizz and worried dogs run this way and that, but of Arapitsa there is no sign. Accepting her absence, Rallou suddenly has the darkest of feelings and sinks down abruptly, on the edge of her own flattened front door. She idly plays with the handle that she will turn no more to enter her home. That choice has been taken from her.
‘Rallou?’ Greg asks, a stone in each hand. Ted is pulling away rubble as fast as he can and now that the ground has stopped shaking Lori is there too, showing strength Rallou would never have imagined, pulling away stones she herself would struggle to move.
‘It is no use,’ Rallou says.
‘There is a chance, if we dig quickly enough …’ Greg pulls away another stone. Underneath it, broken, is the photo frame that held a picture of Christos’s mama and baba with her own children. It hung on the kitchen wall, beside the socket where she would plug the iron in. Greg pulls out the photo, blows the dust from its surface and passes it across. All that time and energy Rallou spent devoted to those children, to the exclusion of everything else. Why did she not save just a little of that energy, put a little of that effort into being with Christos? The sight of Christos’s baba, so like Christos, bring tears to her eyes, which roll down her chin; she can feel them cutting through the grime. She must dig! She cannot give up. On her feet again, she renews her effort with vigour. She wants the chance to give him the focus she never gave him, devote to him the energy that until now she has used up on everything and everyone else. She wants it to be like when they were first married.
‘Rallou.’ The voice is behind her.
‘Harris!’ There is a brief wave of relief that her sister is unhurt, before the crushing weight of needing to find Christos returns.
‘You are safe,’ Harris states.
‘Help us,’ Greg puffs. He does not stop pulling at the rubble.
Harris frowns, a look of confusion. Her hair is all white too, from dust, and there is a tear in her blouse that shows her wide bra strap. But she does not hesitate, she is on her knees pulling at stones.
‘Who is under here?’ Harris asks as she digs.
Rallou finds she cannot answer. Her nose is blocked with dust, her throat is closed with fear; the terror in her heart has sealed her mouth shut.
‘Christos!’ Ted replies. Rallou’s vision starts to blur afresh.
‘No, no. It is okay. He is not here.’ Harris sounds relieved and stops digging. Rallou looks from one of her sister’s eyes to the other. Hope allows her heartbeat to stabilise, but she is breathing fast. Behind Harris, Lori pauses, a heavy rock held in both hands, her back arching with the strain. The shouting from around the town has calmed. Now the people of the town begin to wail and cry. Lori’s face is smeared with tears and her nose is running. She drops the rock and drags a hand across to wipe her face dry. Rallou notices that her neatly painted nails are broken, stone dust whitening her tan.
‘Thanks and praise to all the saints and gods,’ Lori says and crosses herself several times. ‘Where is he?’
Rallou’s world is spinning, the tightness in her throat is releasing. Her love, who she thought was dead, is alive. The thought gives her lungs air, the hope brings strength. Her voice is released and she lets out a wail of relief and sinks back on her heels, her hands loosely in her lap.
‘Oh my, oh my.’ It is Stephanos, Harris’s husband, who comes running, in the direction of Harris. Then he sees Rallou’s house. ‘Oh my.’ He seems unable to say anything else as he looks at her flattened home ‘Oh my!’ he repeats once again and then adds, ‘Thank goodness you are safe. Where is Christos?’ He turns to her, his face anticipating the horror of what she might say. She in turn faces Harris.
‘I saw him yesterday. He said to tell you he has left a note on the kitchen table.’ Harris says, turning to look back at her own house. Rallou’s heart leaps. She can feel its pulse in her parched throat. The reprieve flows like cold water through her veins and an involuntary shivers runs down her back. He is safe. He is not in the rubble.
‘So where is he?’ she asks.
‘Where is he?’ Ted echoes her question. They have all stopped digging now and
have turned to face Harris. There is an urgency in Ted’s voice that Rallou appreciates, and it brings more tears.
‘He mentioned something about Corfu. But he said he explained it all in his note. He didn’t seem to want to say any more.’ But she is distracted as she speaks. Buildings are still falling. People still running, voices still wailing.
‘Hey! Hey!’ Harris’s husband steps in, as his wife’s legs begin to give way. ‘Oh, my love, you must sit,’ he says, helping her to the ground and fanning her with his hand.
‘Corfu?’ Rallou feels the earth move again but she knows that this time it is her own balance that is at fault. ‘But he has never been off the island in his life!’
Harris mutters something.
‘What did she say?’ Lori asks Stephanos.
‘I didn’t quite make it out. Something about young love or new love. Did you say neos or nea, Harris?’
Harris’s eyes roll in her head.
‘Oh, my love. Someone help me to get her in the house to lie down. This heat will not help.’ Stephanos has such a quiet voice. Even when he shouts it is breathy and faint.
‘The house? It might not be safe.’ Ted is at Harris’s feet.
‘The kitchen at the back is untouched. Put her on the table there.’
Greg takes Harris’s shoulders from Stephanos. Harris’s husband is so slight he would not manage. People are still calling, but not so urgently now, and the dust is starting to settle.
Rallou walks by Harris’s side as they carry her. Her concern for her sister mingles with the need to know why Christos is in Corfu. But at least he is safe. What of her brothers? Her baba?