by Meira Chand
There were the last few children in the room, Arthur, Kyo and herself, clustered round the door. The middle of the room was empty. Eva turned flashing her torch about the room. In its beam she saw the ceiling opening slowly in a black wound, as a net of balloons might open over the heads of merrymakers. The ceiling gaped and emptied suddenly down upon them, innards overflowing in a spew of solid matter and a cloud of dust.
Arthur Wilcox flung himself protectively upon Kyo, pressing her before him to the wall. Eva pushed the children through the door and crouched against the frame, her hands shielding the top of her head. The wind flung itself about in unbridled flurry. She pressed her arms to her ears as a final vomit of plaster and splintered wood collapsed in one huge belch upon them.
A shroud of dust enveloped her and debris showered upon her head. Her nose was filled with fine, thick silt; she could not breathe and sank down on her knees, a great sob bursting within her.
‘God. Please help us. Help us.’ She choked upon the words, and suddenly then was aware of silence. Silence. She took her arms from her head and lifted her face. There was a low, strange mewl of wind, which died suddenly and stopped. Then nothing. Nothing.
Slowly, she got to her feet. In her mind was the scene of a biblical miracle she had seen in a film long ago. She saw again the shape of God in technicolour, and a monstrous parting of the waves.
In the silence was only the light sift of dust as it still trickled from the ceiling, and a fall of grit from her skirt. Arthur stepped back and Kyo unfolded from beneath him, looking about in wonderment.
‘It’s God’s own miracle. Nothing less,’ Eva whispered hoarsely. ‘It’s over. Thank God. Over.’ Relief filled her.
Arthur bent his head and waggled a finger in his ear, dislodging a plug of dust. He brushed the dirt from his moustache and cleared his throat.
‘The worst, Dr Kraig, is yet to come. This is merely the eye.’
11
‘The eye. The eye of the typhoon,’ breathed Eva. She remembered the satellite photo on the television, and the black hole of the eye: a sinister, vacant thing. In the strange sudden silence she leaned against the door, and let the stillness wash through her. Arthur Wilcox cleared his throat again. Beneath his foot a sod of plaster grated and collapsed.
‘According to the books, the worst is yet to come,’ he repeated.
‘The worst yet to come? Oh surely ... no ...’ Eva echoed disbelievingly.
‘If we were now to look at a barometer, we should see the lowest reading of our lives,’ Arthur informed her.
Daniel appeared suddenly before them. ‘It seems to be over, at last.’ He smiled, brushing dirt from his sleeve.
‘Just the eye, lad, the eye.’ Arthur shook his head.
‘And the worst, according to Mr Wilcox, is yet to come,’ Eva said quietly. Her mind was beginning to work again.
‘Jesus,’ Daniel exclaimed, and repeated the word as he saw the fallen ceiling behind them.
‘We must bear in mind the winds are rotating. Therefore they will reappear now from the opposite direction, and stronger,’ Arthur said.
‘What are we to do?’ Eva twisted her head anxiously.
‘There’ll be nothing left of the house ...’ Daniel said, horrified. ‘Those trees are like loose teeth, so much top soil has been washed away. There have been landslides, I could see it with the torch. There is mud all piled up at the back of the house. More trees could fall.’
‘We must leave,’ Arthur decided. ‘We must evacuate without delay.’
‘How long do we have?’ Daniel asked.
‘Where can we go?’ Eva demanded.
‘We have maybe twenty or thirty minutes at the most. It varies, but not more. We must go to the nearest solid structure. We must go to the Coopers,’ Arthur announced.
‘The Coopers? That house on the beach?’ asked Daniel.
‘They are on the sea, is it safe?’ said Eva.
‘That house is a ferroconcrete fortress, there is nothing it will not withstand. It is the nearest house. We shall be much safer there than here. If we hurry we can just do it. There is not a moment to waste. Hurry,’ Arthur said.
‘Come along now. Come along,’ he ordered, propelling them from the room, his voice rising desperately. ‘Try the phone, young man, let them know we are coming. Maybe they can send some help,’ he suggested to Daniel. In the torchlight he danced on his toes in great agitation.
‘The phone is dead,’ Daniel shouted from the hall.
‘Quick. Get the children out. All keep together. We must be quick, or we shall be caught on the road in that backlash. It’ll be vicious, just vicious when it starts again.’ Arthur jigged about, gesturing with his arms. A great wave of feeling filled him, he saw himself already at the head of the orphanage battalion.
From the open door of the surgery the children stared in terror, the smaller ones crying. Kimiko’s voice rose hysterically as Yoshiko Mori tried to calm her. Akiko and Eiko appeared with armfuls of clothes.
‘We dashed up to get these, the children will need them, they’ve only pyjamas on. It’s such a mess up there. We could only get to the small dormitory, the tree has smashed in right through the corridor. That rot must have made it all so brittle. This is all we could manage to get.’ Akiko spoke breathlessly.
‘Kimiko, Kimiko. Here is your rabbit.’ Eiko Kubo waved a toy at the crying child.
‘We have to get out of here,’ Eva said desperately.
‘And quickly,’ Daniel added. ‘The calm of the eye won’t last long.’
‘Get some things on the children,’ Akiko said to Eiko.
They began to pull clothes on the children, regardless of size. Small Toshio stood rigid with fear, unable to cry or move. Tami bent to him.
‘We’ll be all right, Toshio. I don’t think we will die. What a good boy you are.’ She buttoned him into the jersey Yoshiko gave her.
‘Put your arm in here, Toshio.’ But the child could not move. A puddle formed about his feet.
‘What a time to wet yourself,’ Tami exclaimed and gave him a sudden smack.
‘Tami. No.’ Yoshiko took charge of the child.
Emiko tearfully nursed her arm, embellished with first-aid plasters. Kimiko sucked her thumb, quiet now, hugging the rabbit. Junko strained to be gone, hovering on her toes. No jersey could be found to accommodate Hiroshi’s plaster cast, so they wrapped a blanket around him.
Arthur Wilcox strode manfully about, as the children were clothed and organised.
‘Enough. Come on. There is no more time. They’ll have to go as they are.’ With Daniel’s help he herded the children into a rough file.
‘Quickly. Quickly. Get those children outside. We’ve fifteen minutes at the most.’ He snapped out his orders through a dusty moustache. Movement began about him.
12
There was no wind, not a breath. The air was motionless. They paused outside the gate, taking deep breaths of freshness. It was not completely dark. On the horizon of the bay a great white bank of clouds rose up, like the wall of some huge dome, closing in about them. High above was a torn and jagged aperture through which they saw a deep black sky, the moon and some brilliant stars. The moonlight was silent and cold, it lifted the dark and cut a liquid path across the bay. Within that streak they saw the boil of spume about the bodies of trapped ships.
As they spoke their voices sounded strangely in the dark, still vault of the night. The wall of motionless cloud seemed to hold them captive at the base of a great white cup. It hung before them over the sea, the mad gyration of the elements locked away behind it. Only when they listened could they hear again, faint and far away, the low moaning of the storm. It was another world. They became conscious now of other sounds: the odd, sudden movements of dropping, rustling, scuttering noises, and sometimes the crack of twigs. But above all it was water they heard, rushing and rapid.
Arthur shone his torch onto the road, and they saw the fast reflective surface of a shallow flowing river. Th
e narrow open drains each side of the road that carried the water of mountain springs and streams were engorged and blocked with debris and overflowed the road. Under the light the steep descent looked like a polished slide.
‘It’s not deep of course, but fast-moving and slippery. See the children hold onto one another,’ Arthur ordered. ‘And hurry. We have already wasted five minutes. Hurry.’
Slowly then, like an ungainly creature getting to its feet, they grouped, drew breath, and set off from the orphanage gate.
13
Arthur led the way, his torch a long liquid snout before them. Eva illuminated the middle of the crocodile and Daniel backed up the rear. In the darkness their torches wheeled and cut like searchlights on the night. Arthur’s feet were still bare in a pair of green plastic Japanese slippers; the water eddied and gushed about his heels, slipped over his feet and swam on. The toes of the slippers squelched and squeaked. He stumbled over a stone and almost lost his balance, the torch dipped and swayed precariously.
‘Oh stop. Stop,’ Eva shouted, for already a child was down and cried loudly. She picked her way across to Arthur. ‘It’s Ruriko, our blind one. She just can’t get along like this, on her own. It will be much quicker, Mr Wilcox, if you carry her.’ She emptied a wet quivering bundle of child into Arthur’s arms. Her light turned and she was gone.
For a moment he dare not move, he had never held a small child before. It was not just her tininess that appalled him, but the independence of life within such a minute frame. He did not know if he could move. He felt the frailty of her weight in his arms and the throb of her body against him. The torch lit her face, her skin was the flesh of flowers. In the beam the pupils of her eyes did not contract, but stared at him, dilated and unseeing. Hesitantly he took a step and then another. He felt her arms fold round his neck and a small hand gently touch the contours of his face, climbing by the fingers over peaks and valleys. She pulled at the hair of his moustache.
‘Is this your decoration? They told me about it.’ The voice was small and sounded right in his ear. He jumped at hearing her speak. She slipped her fingers between his lips, feeling the crevice of his teeth. They touched his eyes, then delicately examined his nostrils. Something deep in him turned and uncoiled. His life was narrow as a cell, and the human touch was not included. The fingers returned to his moustache.
‘What a lot of hair! How can you eat your food through it? On my birthday, last week, they tied a white bow in my hair. Do you tie bows on this?’
Arthur gave a gruff negative grunt. And something tightened in his throat, for she could not know what colour white was, and just repeated what she was told. A bow was a bow, was a shape in her hand, but white could mean nothing to her.
‘If you don’t hold me tighter I shall drop,’ Ruriko informed him. Arthur nodded mutely and strengthened his grasp. The child gave a small sigh, tucked her head under his chin, and gave herself up to the ride. Arthur walked carefully forward, and rubbed his cheek gently on the silken head of the child. A strange soft tendril of emotion formed in his body, warm as the touch of velvet.
Before them was a surrealist landscape, black and twisted, gleaming under their torches. The dense trunks of trees flared up before them; torn branches and boulders strewed the road. The world was a slippery battered mess and lay like an exhausted body around them. The road swam underfoot.
Behind him Arthur heard the slap of the children’s feet. Once he looked back in the dark, and saw the whole line of them in the torches’ light stretched out behind him in a soggy array of pyjamas and dressing gowns, like a hurrying crocodile of midgets. They slowed behind his momentary pause and looked up in anxious question. He saw then his stature in their eyes, the immense conviction of belief in him. Ruriko moved her nose against his neck. All at once he felt like a clumsy Pied Piper in an Oriental Hamelin.
‘Is everything all right there, Mr Wilcox?’ Eva Kraig called anxiously.
‘Tally ho!’ Arthur waved his torch in the air, and lumbered on again.
They passed Mrs Okuno’s house, shuttered and locked, a pile of dark shapes; she had gone to her daughter in Tokyo the night before. After the house one side of the road plunged steeply into a sharp ravine gaping black in the torchlight; a stream swilled somewhere down below, hardly audible above their own gushing road. On the other side the bank rose steeply. The wet trunks of trees, wrinkled and grey with mildew, were like the great stretching necks of reptiles now, unrecognisable. The air was thick with the smell of soaked undergrowth and leaves. The splash of small feet hurried diligently behind Arthur, who looked at his watch and quickened his pace as much as he dared on the slippery road.
‘Hurry. We must hurry,’ he shouted over his shoulder.
A crow rose up from the undergrowth with a loud flapping caw, and flew low over their heads like a great black moth. The movement of its wings stirred the motionless air.
Arthur heard the woman Kyo give a little scream. She was there not far behind, clothed again in her green cocktail dress, slipping and sliding with the rest. At the thought of her strength flowered in his blood. He relived again the few moments when he had pressed her to the wall, as the ceiling collapsed in the recreation room. Just the remembrance multiplied his will. He pulled himself up and drew fresh breath.
At that moment the torch picked up the barricade of his car across the road. Until he saw it before him, he had not given the car a thought since he left it near the orphanage gate. It had slithered down the flooded road, and now wedged against the bank, one wheel down the drain, a pile of wet debris stacked up against it. The fallen limb of a tree had dented the top and lay balanced upon the bonnet still. Arthur groaned at the sight, but could not stop.
The road was narrow, the recumbent car left only a single file track around it. Arthur led the way, holding tightly onto Ruriko. He felt a sudden tugging at his trouser leg, and looked down upon Hiroshi.
‘Where’s the carburettor?’ Small eyes looked up at him.
‘Get away,’ responded Arthur roughly, shaking free his captive leg. But within him suddenly a finger of confusion bloomed into a strange regret. He looked down at the child and his plaster. ‘I might show you. Maybe. After this typhoon. Can’t promise.’
Hiroshi nodded sagely to this gentleman’s agreement. And slapped his foot down with a splash that drenched Arthur’s fingers round the torch.
Arthur turned back and trudged masterfully on. Soon he felt again a clutching at his trouser and a slight dragging weight as Hiroshi silently positioned himself and walked on beside him into the night. Above them the black hole in the moonlit clouds moved along its destined path.
14
Tottering ahead of Sister Elaine, Kyo stopped, tipped several small stones from her orphanage slipper and hurried on. She carried her spiky red shoes in her hand.
‘Quickly. Quickly.’ Arthur Wilcox’s voice sounded back down the line. The children half ran, half walked, heads lowered, concentrating on their feet.
‘Carefully. Hurry Nobuo. Itsuko, hold Masako’s hand,’ Eva called and encouraged.
The torchlight cut about tensely, illuminating the scurrying faces and figures, revealing Akiko’s back, the crocheted border on Yoshiko’s sleeve and the patched velvet ears of a rabbit Kimiko clutched. Its blue face and button eyes bobbed above the child’s shoulder.
Sister Elaine half stumbled over a protruding log. The hem of her habit was heavy and wet, and wrapped about her knees. Her brogues squelched water. It was all madness. Madness. She could see, moment by moment, the black disc of sky above drifting slowly to their right. They would never make it. The scampering army of tiny legs, splashing along the streaming road, pulsated in her head. They should have stayed where they were. There was some chance, some protection there, but here, on this flooded road, there would be no hope. They would all be destroyed.
Set against the bank on the right the torches illuminated a jizo-bosatsu, a tiny wayside shrine, with its bald-headed deity to children. The cotton bibs o
f red and white, tied to the statue by bereaved mothers, were blown askew around his stone neck; the petals of offering flowers were battered far and wide. The children splashed by.
Before Sister Elaine ran the boy Kenichi. Every so often he looked up at the sky, fear in his eyes. As they ran, the slippery shapes of the night jerked up and down about Sister Elaine. The breath pounded in her chest; her body was a hollow cage knotting with her nerves. Liquid shadows streamed past and through them her flight cut a path, sinking and falling within a dark tunnel. It seemed the blackness of all the years behind turned tail and chased her now, washing down through the empty core of the storm. The road was steep and veered round each bend as if the ground was pulled suddenly from beneath. She was without hope. She was alone in a narrow passage.
Help us. Help me. God. But the words were limp in her mouth as never before. And she knew she was alone. Alone. She had reached an end.
As she ran now, her mind threw up weird fragments of memory, a rag-bag of unrelated snippets. She remembered the moss-covered wall of her childhood home, a farm in County Kerry. In a tumbledown house the other side of the wall lived the madwoman, Izzy O’Hara. Chickens and dogs roamed her one room, a pig sat in an armchair. She remembered the pig with its bald pink eyes, its naked piggy stare, that noticed yet ignored her. She remembered a knitted grey dishcloth she made for the poor in a convent near Dublin. She remembered the bared wet gums of the boy Kenichi, closed like a dog upon her wrist when he bit her the day before.
Unexpectedly then, she remembered the stained glass of the chapel in Osaka, where the wounds on Christ’s figure on the cross flowered like a bunch of crimson grapes. Light streamed down upon her, sanctifying her hands with a gentle, rosy glow. The pictures slotted in and out of her mind, like the unreeling of a spool of film. They streamed behind her and mixed with the shadows, dissolving into the night.