Saddle the Wind

by Jess Foley

  At last, feeling the level of the water running lower, Blanche opened her eyes and her mouth and breathed again. The water was below the level of her feet, and draining away, the last of it running back through the openings in the façade of the ruined building. To her right floated the body of a child, a little boy, his night-shirt drifting behind him as he slowly turned in the current. She watched as he floated out through the wide, paneless window. The body of a young woman came floating by, naked to the waist, and came to rest against a pile of rubble that lay against the inner wall of the façade. It remained there, caught. Blanche shifted her gaze, eased herself back from Adriana’s body and looked down at her. Adriana was crying. But she was safe. Turning, Blanche looked at the spot where Alfredo had been standing. He was no longer there.

  When Marianne opened her dust-clogged eyes she did not at first realize what had happened. Then memory returned. She coughed, feeling that she would choke on the thick dust that seemed to fill her mouth and nose and lungs.

  All around her there seemed to be darkness, though further away she could see the glow of flames. She realized that she was half-covered with bricks and pieces of broken plaster. Her head hurt and there was pain in her shoulder. From all around she could hear the sounds of wailing and weeping. She opened her mouth to call out for Gentry, but then recalled that he had left the house. Further recollection came back to her and she called out ‘Lisa?’ several times but there was no answer. After a while she kept silent and just lay there, waiting for daylight to come, the air all around her filled with the continuing sounds of crying voices and the occasional crash as the standing remains of buildings toppled and fell. Sometimes the surface on which she was lying trembled as the earth was shaken by further tremors. It’s the end of the world, a voice in her head kept repeating. It’s the end of the world.

  *

  Gentry’s left arm hung useless at his side, the humerus broken just above the elbow in his plunge from the carriage. Also in the fall he had wrenched his right leg. He had to move, though; he had no choice.

  After picking himself up he had stood in a daze, unable to fully comprehend the reality of what had happened. There’s been an earthquake, he said to himself, the realization coming through the fog of his pain and his dulled senses.

  He looked around him. The only light on the scene came from a fire that had taken hold nearby and was beginning to blaze in the ruins of a fallen building. Just yards from where he stood the crushed remains of the carriage were visible above the rim of the gaping fissure that had split the piazza. From all around him came the screams and moans of people in agony, people who cried out over and over for help. No vision of hell had ever prepared him for this.

  After he had stood there helplessly for a few moments he told himself that he must get back home. Marianne would need him.

  As he started painfully away he suddenly remembered that he had been on his way to meet Blanche. He came to a halt. She might be close by – perhaps even in the piazza. He opened his mouth and called out: ‘Blanche … Blanche,’ but his voice was lost amid the continuing ragged chorus of cries and screams that rang all about him. There was no knowing where she might be. She and Adriana might still have been at the house when the shock came … He started off again. The Via Imera was on his way to the Via Gabriele …

  Making his painful way by the occasional light from burning fires was a continuation of the nightmare. Once out of the piazza he found that the surrounding streets were almost totally impassable. There was not a square foot of pavement or roadway that was not covered by dense rubble. Where rows of tall houses had once stood facing each other across the narrow streets there now lay only piles of ruins. In many cases the buildings had been completely razed and lay as pyramids of wreckage, while here and there the shells of buildings still stood, some of their floors intact.

  Skirting the fragile walls that still remained upright, he slowly, painfully picked his way along, climbing over shattered beams, slabs of stone and piles of bricks and plaster. His broken arm throbbing, his wrenched knee crying out in protest against the effort of his exertion, he fought his way forward, clambering over smashed armchairs, sofas, chests, ovens – the wrecked remains of the lives of so many, and all the while as he struggled along the cries of the desperate, the injured and the dying continued to rend the air. The voices came from all around him, from before and behind, and from left and from right; they came from above him, from people stranded high up in the remains of their houses and from below, from those who lay buried beneath his feet.

  By the time he reached the place that had been the Via Imera it was daylight. The house – in fact the whole row of houses – had been completely demolished. Only the odd broken walls here and there showed where one house had been divided from its neighbour. For the rest it was one long, uneven hill of wreckage. Standing before the pile of ruins that had once been Blanche’s home, he looked at it and knew that no one caught inside could have survived such destruction.

  As the creeping light of dawn came Marianne found that she was lying on the floor, half propped against a wall – one of only two walls remaining. The others had gone, fallen away. In the burgeoning light she looked out over the rubble-strewn carpet to open air, air grey with a lowering cloud of smoke and dust, and saw the devastation before her. Gone were the streets of tall houses, theatres, palaces and civic buildings. As far as she could see, in whichever direction she moved her disbelieving gaze, there was nothing left of the city but piles of rubble.

  Closer at hand, down below in the ruined streets, she could see people moving about, crawling, limping, staggering, dragging themselves from the wreckage or lying in it, partly buried in the debris, unable to pull themselves free. And all the while the air was filled with their screaming and sobbing and wailing.

  A sighing groan from her left brought her head around and she saw movement among the rubble a few yards away.

  ‘Lisa …’

  Coughing, choking on the dust that hung in the air, Marianne pushed aside some of the bricks and plaster that lay upon her and moved towards the young girl. Lisa was sitting up, groaning. Lifting the girl’s head Marianne saw that her face was almost black with dust, while bits of plaster, brick and stone lay thick in her hair. She could see traces of blood on her face, her hands.

  ‘Lisa – are you all right?’

  She put her arms around her and spoke her name again. Lisa did not reply; she seemed stunned. After a while she bent her head and began to weep, the crying of a child. Marianne drew her closer, drawing her head down onto her own shoulder, trying to comfort her.

  Releasing her after a few moments, Marianne carefully got to her feet, as she did so the brick- and plaster-dust falling from her in a cloudy shower. The door of the room – that door that had jammed and prevented their escape – was now open and hanging crazily on its broken hinges. She moved unsteadily to it and looked through into the bedroom beyond. It remained, though with its rear and side walls torn away, leaving it open to the cold morning air. The bed remained too, and most of the rest of the furniture – except for the huge wardrobe. Having once stood against the rear wall it had, along with the wall, fallen with the rest of the house. The bed and the remaining furniture were covered in rubble and dust, and looking up Marianne saw that only part of the ceiling remained. Through the gap she saw that part of the upper house still stood, two walls at right-angles, cracked and split and leaning inward, still supporting part of the roof. For how much longer it would all remain so, she had no idea.

  Treading carefully, she stepped through the bedroom to the door leading to the landing and the stairs – only to find that the stairs were no longer there. At the end of the landing the floor had sheared away in a tattered edge of broken timber and torn carpet, and where the stairs had been there was now only an abyss, a hollow well that plunged down into the ruins below.

  Looking up she saw that the stairs ended abruptly some yards above her, just below the floor of the upper landing. So
mething dripped onto her hand, like rain – but then she saw that it was red in colour. Standing back slightly, she saw through the gap in the ceiling the fabric of a dress, a bare arm steadily dripping blood. She thought at first that it was one of the other maids, Maria or Stella, but then she saw that it was the cook, Anunziata. She called the woman’s name, at the same time knowing there would be no reply. She turned and moved unsteadily back to the dressing room.

  ‘Lisa …’ She bent over the girl who sat there, moaning, making little crying sounds. ‘Lisa, we must try to get down.’

  The girl looked at her dumbly, making no reply. Marianne repeated her words, but there was no response. Irritated, impatient, she spoke more sharply and then, taking the girl by the shoulders, shook her. ‘Lisa – listen to me. We have to get down from here. Do you understand?’

  Lisa looked vacantly at her and Marianne gave her another shake. ‘We’ve got to get down! We must! Do you understand me?’ She shook her again and then, raising her hand, sharply slapped her cheeks. Lisa shuddered, sucking in her breath and jerking her head back from the small, sharp pains. Now, though, there was something approaching comprehension in her eyes. She gazed around her in horror and then came back to focus on Marianne.

  ‘Do you understand?’ Marianne asked her again. ‘We’ve got to get down before the rest of the house falls. You understand?’

  ‘Yes …’ Lisa nodded. ‘Yes …’

  ‘Now. We’ve got to get down now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Rising again, moving away, Marianne made her way carefully from the dressing room and through the bedroom to the edge of the sheared-off floor that looked out onto what had once been the Via Gabriele. There were people about, some trying to pull others from the ruins while others limped and staggered by; some just sat looking dazedly into space. She called out to them. ‘Help us,’ she cried out. ‘We are trapped. We can’t get down.’ But those who heard her cries merely looked up at her with blank looks in their eyes, and in the moment that they looked away again she was already forgotten.

  As she gazed desperately around her the tottering remains of a building in the next street fell with a crash. Similar sounds were coming at intervals from every direction. It would not be long, she was sure, before the remains of the house in which she stood fell also.

  ‘Lisa – come here! Quickly!’ As she called to the maid she was already bending to the bed, tearing at the covers, and by the time Lisa had appeared in the doorway the sheets had been torn from the bed. ‘Quickly,’ Marianne said to her, ‘we must tear the sheets to make a rope.’

  Lisa shook her head. ‘We can’t,’ she said. ‘It’s all finished.’

  Marianne rounded on her angrily. ‘It’s not impossible, and it’s not all finished. We’re alive. We can get down if we try.’ Although she gave Lisa the impression of strength she felt like weeping; she wanted Gentry there to take care of everything, to make everything all right. She didn’t know where he was, though, and there was only herself and Lisa. ‘Come and help me!’ she shouted. ‘At once!’

  Lisa came to her side and they quickly set to work. First biting at the linen, they tore the sheets and then tied the pieces tightly together. When they had finished Marianne bent to the bed and tied one end of the long makeshift rope securely around one of the legs. ‘It will hold our weight easily enough,’ she said, ‘and it’s not that far down.’

  Gentle persuasion did not work with Lisa and it took stern words before the girl eventually sat on the rubble-strewn floor and inched her way to the edge. Then, very much afraid, she gripped the sheet-rope and slowly, slowly, her feet finding support where they could on the shattered dividing wall, began to lower herself down.

  Marianne, watching from above, was terrified that the girl would fall, but after a few moments Lisa was safely down and standing in the rubble. At once Marianne began to draw up the rope.

  As she did so she felt the floor quiver beneath her feet as a tremor shook the earth. The quake was met by frightened cries from those about her while from across the street came a crack and crash as the surviving walls of another wrecked house fell in a cloud of dust and rubble. Almost in the same moment there came from above her a loud crack like the report of a gun. It was followed in a split second by a further crash as a great piece of one of the chimneys came crashing through the ceiling above her head and plunged onto the bed at her side. Under the impact the bed collapsed like a toy. In another moment the wall beside her was cracking, splitting, bellying, tilting inwards. A beam from somewhere above fell and hit the floor on the far side of the bed while a shower of plaster and brick fell in a heap beside the open door. The remaining part of the building was coming down around her head. There was no longer time to let herself down by means of the sheet-rope. Even as the realization went through her mind there came another deafening crash from above her head. With a cry she ran to the edge of the sheared-off floor and leapt off into space.

  She hit the rubble below heavily and awkwardly and fell sideways into a well formed by fallen beams and collapsed masonry. Seconds later the remains of the house began to fall. Lisa, standing open-mouthed, saw Marianne lying there one moment; the next, in a thundering crash of bricks, beams, plaster and stone, the remaining walls and floors fell in. When the dust had cleared Lisa could see nothing there but the rubble.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  When at last Blanche and Adriana left the shell of the wrecked palace daylight had come.

  Emerging from the ruins Blanche stood and looked out to the Straits. Although the sea was calmer it was still turbulent. In the harbour floated hundreds upon hundreds of bodies – men, women and children, all drowned when the wave had swept them from the quays. Naked, half-naked, they lay in the water, moving with the swell of the waves. Blanche tore her eyes away, but there was no escaping the sight. The bodies of the crushed and the drowned lay all about her on the quays, too. Death was everywhere.

  Adriana, standing at her side in the thick mud left by the wave, was crying softly, a low, mournful little wailing sound. Blanche bent to her and quickly stripped her of her soaking wet clothes. Then, wrapping her for the moment in her own wet, wrung-out coat, she wrung the water from Adriana’s clothing as well as she could and then dressed her in them again. At least now they would dry more quickly.

  ‘Come,’ she said. Taking the child’s hand she led her away from the sea, towards the ruined town.

  And all of a sudden Blanche was catching at Adriana’s hand more tightly, drawing her towards her. Adriana made no protest, and Blanche turned their steps, leading them along a different route, away from the clutch of bedraggled bodies that lay in the mud of the ruins, away from the body of Alfredo as he lay there, grotesquely twisted in death, eyes half open as if casually contemplating the sky.

  Walking on, they felt further tremors of the earth. It appeared that there were no longer any buildings left intact to fall, but the tremors caused the standing remains of some already wrecked buildings to totter and collapse into the rubble-strewn streets. The extent of the mud showed that the water had gone many yards inland, and still there were the bodies, the dead and the dying. In whichever direction Blanche looked she could see ruins burning, flames and smoke leaping into the air. Everywhere was ruin and devastation. An old woman came limping along. ‘Messina is finished,’ she muttered as she slowly passed by. Blanche could hear her voice continuing into the distance: ‘Messina is finished …’

  Blanche and Adriana walked on. If anyone had asked Blanche where they were going she could not have answered with any certainty. The only thing she knew was that they could not remain still. Somewhere in the city were Gentry and Marianne. Perhaps she could find them. Where were they, though? Even when the city had been whole she had not known her way about its streets. Now that the whole place was nothing but rubble she had no real idea of where she was. She had a vague idea of the direction in which lay the Via Gabriele, but it was doubtful that Gentry would be there. Surely by the time the quake had
come he would already have left to meet her. She must keep going; it was the only thing to do.

  As she walked on through the mud and the debris a woman, wearing a torn nightdress, came to her, clutching at her sleeve.

  ‘I’ve lost my son,’ she said. ‘Help me find him, my Paolo.’

  Immediately she had spoken she turned and walked quickly away, stopping in front of a man who sat, head bowed, in front of the ruins of a house. She tugged at the man’s arm. He did not respond and after a few moments she gave up and went on her way.

  A man came by carrying a young girl in his arms, weeping as he walked, the girl’s head lolling back. A middle-aged woman knelt near a pile of ruins while she stretched out her arms hurling curses at the sky. ‘There is no God,’ she cried out; ‘there is no God.’ As they passed the ruins of a house Blanche’s eye was attracted to a dark shape and she saw a crow swoop down to the body of a young man who lay with only his head and shoulders above the wreckage. He was obviously dead. She saw the crow alight on a stone in front of the dead face, and in one swift, easy movement the crow’s head drew back and darted forward, sinking into the eyesocket of the corpse. With a little cry of horror Blanche closed her eyes and turned away. And all the time she could hear the sounds of the groaning and wailing, and the cries for help, many of them muffled and distant, coming from below the surface of the ruins, from those who lay trapped beneath them.