Constant Tides

by Peter Crawley

  “No, not far, now.” Grabbing hold of Lilla’s arm, Prudence sets off up the Cavour. “We’ll turn right in a minute and then it’s only a short walk along the San Agostino to the Via dei Templari. First, I’ll show you where Captain Passino lives.”

  When they eventually reach the house in the Agostino, the façade has collapsed and a fire rages from its basement. Atop a mound of bricks, a cross fashioned from split timbers has been wedged upright.

  “Well, I suppose that tells us all we need to know,” Lock says.

  Again, Lilla glances at Prudence, though this time her look suggests she is now aware of and accepts why her companion felt it necessary to tell the officer a white lie in order to persuade him and his men to accompany them on their journey into the city. And as if to lend added weight to the security their presence supplies, a few awkward paces further on lies the body of the robber, Tulliu. A mangy dog standing guard, growls and then barks at them, baring bloodstained teeth, daring them to steal his prize.

  Lilla pauses and stares.

  Noticing her reaction, the Lieutenant asks, “Do you know this man?”

  “No,” she replies, thinking how best she can explain her sudden fascination without giving away the fact that she and her companion have already trodden the same street on the very same mission. “He is food for the dog.”

  “Sergeant Carson?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Shoot the dog.”

  The sergeant, a tall and deep–chested man, whose impassive features betray no emotion, takes a rifle from one of his men and aims at the dog. “Very good, sir.”

  Lilla flinches at the shot.

  Just beyond the entrance, the narrow Via dei Templari is blocked by a wall of debris seemingly as high as the houses had once been tall, so they retreat back into the Agostino and wend their way on into the Monasterio, where they locate an alley through which they hope to access the Templari.

  The buildings either side of the narrow alley have shifted towards each other so that their gables touch, forming a neat triangular tunnel.

  Lieutenant Lock blocks their way, holding up his hands as one would when attempting to halt a locomotive. “I’m sorry ladies, I can’t let you go down there, it’s too dangerous. The entire structure could come down any minute.”

  Prudence glances at Lilla and subtly inclines her head.

  Lilla steps to her right; Prudence to her left.

  The Lieutenant looks from one to the other. “Sergeant Carson?”

  However, before the burly sergeant can move to restrain either of them, Lilla dodges and rushes past down the tunnel.

  Once more the Lieutenant surrenders. “Does this girl know no fear?”

  “Now you come to mention it,” Prudence replies, a grin sweeping across her face.

  “Right. Men, follow me and if you hear any of these houses as much as whisper, it’s every man for himself.”

  The half–dozen men hesitate and more than a couple stand and look at each other, wide–eyed. “But, sir,” one of them says.

  “No time for the faint–hearted,” Lock replies, visibly nervous. And then, louder than he intends to, he mutters. “Right, for fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

  Carson stiffens to attention. “Beg pardon, sir, but where that angel has rushed, only a fool would dare follow,” he says. “May I ask if we are to steal stealthily or dash boldly, sir?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, sergeant.”

  Carson turns to his troop. “Come on, you men. Let’s be going after that angel.”

  They set off after Lilla, none of them knowing what they will find in the street beyond. Some run, some trot and others walk, slowly, keeping their eyes fixed on the overhanging masonry.

  When they gain the other side, they are faced with the ruins of the old Templar church. The bell tower has crashed down into the street and the gospel wall has crumbled, revealing the austere nave and beyond it the altar table.

  Lilla is standing, waiting.

  Lieutenant Lock arrives by her side. He is panting, whether in fright or from his exertions she isn’t sure.

  “Which is the…” he begins to ask. But when his eyes follow Lilla’s, he realises that there is not one house left intact. The trembling of the earth has brought down each and every dwelling. Walls lean menacingly, roofs suspend in defiance of gravity and furniture balances precariously on ledges, as if placed deliberately by the hand of a giant child.

  “That one.” Lilla points, her eyes watering.

  “My word,” Lock mutters. “How can anyone be expected to survive amid such devastation?” He looks at Lilla and notices her distress. “I’m sorry, signorina, I didn’t mean to…” He takes her hand and ushers her towards the foothills of rising masonry. “Mind your feet. I see you’ve already suffered an injury to your leg. Mrs Robertson, stay close behind me. You men, give the lady a hand.”

  They make their way along the street until they reach what’s left of the Ruggeri house. The walls have collapsed outwards into the street, building their own monumental tumulus; bricks and mortar, tiles and plaster adding to its height with each aftershock.

  Once again, Lieutenant Lock warns against going closer, adding, “I can’t order any of my men to go into the house. As I told you, the Russians have already lost a dozen or so men to… It would be beyond the bounds of common sense. I just cannot sanction it.”

  They stand and survey the ruin, the inside of which they are prevented from seeing because of the mound of debris on which Lilla had slept, her head resting on Lucrezia’s still form.

  “I realise that, Lieutenant,” Lilla says, “and I would not ask you to risk your life for my fiancé. But if he is dead, I have to see for myself. I have to be certain. And that is why I have to go.”

  The capable, stern–faced Sergeant Carson steps forward and comes to attention. “I’ll go with the girl, sir. We won’t be more than a minute.”

  “All right, sergeant, but be ready to return immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.

  “Anyone else care to volunteer? An extra tot of rum for whoever accompanies Sergeant Carson.”

  While others study their mud encrusted boots, a short, wiry individual, his nose ruby–red, shuffles his feet.

  “Is that a yes, Spinetti? Your family are from near here, aren’t they?”

  “From Naples, sir.”

  “Well, near here, then.”

  “If you would call London near to Edinburgh, sir,” Private Spinetti corrects, petulantly.

  “What I mean is,” the lieutenant carries on, clearly irked by his man’s propensity to define near, “you speak the lingo, so be a good fellow and translate for Sergeant Carson, would you?”

  The man nods and like an underfed street urchin promised a hearty meal, he hurries to Sergeant Carson’s side.

  “Very good.”

  Lilla looks up at the sergeant and the man from Naples, the light of admiration shining in her eyes. “Thank you,” she says and, glancing at Prudence, adds, “You’re not to worry.” And as though practised in scaling a heap of jumbled bricks and masonry, Lilla turns around and begins picking her way deftly up the slope.

  The two marines follow more circumspectly, checking their every step and ensuring that wherever they tread they do not risk dislodging or disturbing the debris.

  Once at the top of the mound, Lilla pauses and raising her fist to her lips she bites on her knuckle to stop herself from screaming.

  She had expected to find Lucrezia’s body and had steeled herself. Yet, the poor girl is so startlingly pale and still, she appears to have been sculpted out of the same white marble as that of Neptune’s statue. Lilla’s eyes are drawn to the missing finger.

  “Now, now,” Sergeant Carson whispers. “Do you know this girl, Signorina Lilla? Tell her what I just asked, Spinetti.”
/>   He does so.

  Lilla nods, dreamily. “Yes, she is Enzo’s little sister, Lucrezia. The man we saw near the dog, he cut off her finger to steal her communion ring.”

  The little man, Private Spinetti, rests a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I guessed by the way you were looking at him you must have met him before. Tried to rob you, did he?”

  Lilla nods again, reluctant to relate much of the episode in case the memory buckles her knees. “Yes. One of the Russians shot him. He was a bad man. The worst,”

  “Every city must have its sewers.”

  “What was that?” Carson asks.

  Spinetti translates.

  “Just as well, eh?” the sergeant mutters, before adding in a tone that would embolden the most nervous of recruits. “Right, let’s not tarry. No guessing how long we’ve got.”

  The three of them gaze up at what remains of the Ruggeri household, wondering which section is the most likely to fall. Most of the front wall has already collapsed, as has the roof, which has brought the floors and landings with it.

  “Ask the young lady where she thinks this fiancé of hers might be?”

  Spinetti does so. The creases and lines about his eyes suggest he has passed much of his life staring in the face of wind–driven saltwater and his ruddy complexion advertises his affection for rum.

  “If he’s anywhere,” Lilla replies, warming to the man, “he’ll be in the cellar. His father shut him in there before the earthquake.”

  Like thieves sneaking into a house, they step soft–footed across the threshold and inch their way inside. The stairs have come away from their fixings and the cellar entrance is buried beneath an avalanche of timber and masonry.

  “Sergeant, you are too large for this sort of thing and the girl, well… You two stay here,” Spinetti says, “I’ll see if I can’t find a way in.”

  “Steady as you go,” Carson whispers.

  The diminutive man picks his way towards the back of what used to be the ground floor. He pauses occasionally, looking around, assessing which of the timbers he can move without dislodging others and grasping the odd brick, piling each one carefully to the side. He struggles with a timber, grunting and groaning, and then once it is secure, he bends and crawls beneath an upright table, and disappears from their view.

  Lilla looks up at Sergeant Carson, her concern reflected in his expression. Both would like to call out and encourage the brave man not to venture too deep into the house in case they cannot reach him should the building start to fall; however, the eerie silence seems to be the only brace holding up the walls and they are nervous of fracturing it with their jitters.

  They listen to Spinetti scrabble about, the rasping of his boots against dusty surfaces, the scratch and scrape of brick against brick, the thud and clink of loose stones dropping into the cellar.

  “I have…” he calls, softly. “If I can only… shift this… block, then I can reach…”

  Lilla and Sergeant Carson hear an exasperated sigh, followed by a sharp intake of breath, as if the man is setting himself for some intense physical task. And whether the courageous Private Spinetti nudges a supporting beam or eases out a loaded brick, they do not know, but the old house shivers and moans like a bereaved husband and what’s left of the roof takes leave of its precarious moorings and plummets down towards them.

  “Out, Spinetti. Get out,” shouts Carson.

  Lilla is not so fast to react and the wall beside them shudders and collapses, a slab of bricks and snapped wood slipping and sliding onto her already wounded leg.

  Sergeant Carson grabs Lilla round her waist. Dragging her to him, freeing her leg and lifting her clean off the ground, he throws her onto his shoulder and clambers as fast as the uneven terrain permits out of the house. Huge blocks of masonry, lumps of plaster and mortar, and wooden beams as thick as a man’s trunk tumble towards them.

  “Mr Spinetti?” Lilla screams, reaching out.

  The sergeant, though, ignores her plea. He is focusing all his concentration on staying upright, knowing that one slip, one stumble and the pair of them will end their lives entombed in the ruin.

  They make the top of the hill of rubble outside and, facing the way they have come, Lilla sees Lucrezia’s marbled form.

  She looks away and watches the last moments of the house she once dreamt she might live in with Enzo; a home she hoped she might grow up in with Enzo and their children. Now though, as she bounces and bumps against the sergeant’s shoulder, Lilla realises that hope is for fools, that dreams do not come true and that there is an end to love.

  “Oh, Enzo,” she sobs. “Enzo, my love.”

  Behind them, the walls fall, throwing up yet another veil of powdery fog which pursues them down the slope. Before they reach the bottom, they are overwhelmed and Carson kneels, drops her from his shoulder and cradling her as though she is little more than an infant, he clutches her face to his chest.

  They shut tight their eyes. They cup their mouths with their hands. And they wait and wait and wonder whether they have done sufficient good in their short lives that God will see fit to spare them.

  Chapter 23

  Ashes and Dust. All is ashes and dust; the smallest specks of everything that once, when joined together, amounted to a person. Wasn’t that what Enzo had told her? Hadn’t he said that we were all little more than a fortunate union of little specks of dust?

  Now, though, there is dust which amounts to nothing. It is all that is left of someone once treasured, and it settles on her face and sticks in the corners of her eyes.

  Lilla tries to breathe and finds she cannot.

  St Francis has clutched his lamb so hard against his chest that not only is Lilla unable to expand her own chest, but her right hand is also crushed flat like a stopper against her mouth.

  She wriggles, not unlike a new–born lamb, and Sergeant Carson, embarrassed by his zeal, relaxes his iron grip. “Begging your pardon, miss.”

  She should thank him, rough though he was in his handling of her. Except, how can she thank him for saving her life when she isn’t absolutely sure she wants to be alive. Wouldn’t it have been kinder to leave her in the ruins of the house with Enzo? To end her life right then so that she could start the next with him? Surely, the two lovers would have been released. Two winged angels. Two free spirits. Free to soar up into heaven to love again, to be reborn together and to live again in that next world promised to them by the scriptures.

  Lilla is crying, her tears dribbling down her cheeks like rainwater dribbling down a dusty window.

  “Enzo!” she cries, wrestling herself from her saviour’s arms.

  They stand, as the last blankets of the dust begin to settle, ghostly statues in a barren landscape, and turn to look at the ruins of the once beautiful house in the Via dei Templari.

  For a few seconds, in a silence of nothing, they wait, wiping the dust from bleary eyes, coughing and spluttering, unsure of how they have survived.

  And then, as if by some illusion of smoke and mirrors conjured from the shuffling hands of a diabolist, they perceive a spectre standing on top of the mound they had just seconds ago scrambled down.

  A surge of hope rises within her and Lilla toys with the ring in her pocket. She closes her mind to possibility and then very quickly opens it again, the battle between that which her heart wants so desperately to see and the image of that which she truly sees, swaying in favour of her desire.

  “Enzo,” she whispers, softly. “Is it you?”

  However, the sway in momentum does not last and, like a negotiated truce during which two warring factions are permitted time to comprehend the ridiculous futility of their differences, the fog of battle clears and the truth becomes more real. This pale spectre who has walked through the maelstrom of the collapsing house cannot be Enzo, for he is both too short and too thin.

  “Spinet
ti,” Carson says, a mixture of relief and affection conspicuous in his tone. The affection, though, is short–lived. “Don’t just stand there, man. Get back in line this instant.”

  The little man treads carefully down from his elevated position, patting his uniform and shaking the dust from his hair.

  Lilla, like her hopes, crumples to the ground and raises her hands to her face.

  Spinetti ignores the orders of his sergeant and makes his way over to her. He stands, patiently waiting for her to set aside her distress and when she does not, he bends and places a paternal hand on her shoulder. “I am sorry, I could not help them. The walls, they… I did not have time. I’m sorry.”

  Slowly, she looks up. “Them? You said them. Who do you mean? What did you see?”

  “In the cellar…” Spinetti replies, his eyes downcast, although not towards her. “There was a young man. I’m sorry. There was nothing more I could do.”

  Lilla stifles a howl of sorrow.

  “You must not worry,” Spinetti consoles. “Now, he is with God. He is at peace; in a better place.”

  “Did you see his face?”

  The diminutive marine looks away towards the rest of his group, either pretending not to have heard her question or imploring them to tell him how he should answer.

  “Please, Mr Spinetti, did you see his face?”

  Tears leak through the dust caked in the corners of his eyes as he crouches down so that she will be able to read his expression and will therefore not mistake or misinterpret what he is about to say.

  “Yes, a young man. I could only see his shoulders. He had dark hair and he was wearing the uniform of a sailor. Please, I beg of you, Signorina, spare the eyes of a man who knows too well when another man is dead, do not ask me for further description.”

  For a minute or perhaps two, they stay holding each other, their mud–streaked cheeks touching, their tears meeting and mixing; one bereaved, the other bewildered, both of them lost and alone and yet united in their misery.