by Edward Carey
Constantin Brack, our celebrated sculptor, in his studio on Jay Street, just beginning his work, saw various full-length marble people dancing across the floor towards him, never changing their expressions once. He opened his arms to receive them and they crowded in and crushed him to death.
Our mayor at that time, Rinas Holt, sitting at his breakfast table in the mayor’s residence, saw the heavy metal crest of our country lift up from the wall and strike him rudely on the head, spilling his brains into his bowl of cornflakes and turning the milk pink. What a time to lose a mayor, who would look after us now, now that we needed looking after more than ever? Ambras Cetts. Ambras Cetts was the man. Ambras Cetts had been spending the many years of our plasticine building climbing up the political ladder until, as the earthquake struck, he was assistant to the mayor of Entralla. Ambras Cetts, yes, he was the man for the job.
NOW IT IS TIME to consider a map, and, for the sake of familiarity, the map I wish to consider is the map on the wall of Grandfather’s office. I imagine that map of Grandfather’s shaking now also, I imagine it fluttering in the earthquake’s foul breath. And I see, with closed eyes, that as the map thrashes against its drawing pins that Grandfather’s office is going berserk, throwing stamps and envelopes and Grandfather everywhere. And now the electricity cables commence to caper about, sending sparks flying, sparks that even strike Grandfather’s defaced map and even Grandfather himself, igniting his formerly impeccable uniform. I imagine the map ripping apart now, I imagine the heat of those sparks setting fire to parts of the city, whole streets are in flames. Fragments of paper, fragments of a people, fragments which contained so many lives are floating to the ground now, and when these shards hit the ground about the real city they made noise.
And what of the people who were inside the now burning Central Post Office that morning, with its twelve wooden counters which ignited so easily, what of them, these panicking post office workers, among them an elderly postmaster and a postwoman with a mole on her cheek, yes, what of them, with the main entrance door of the post office still locked, since it was several minutes before opening time, and so blocking off their main exit route, yes, yes, what of them? What of them? But concentrate, concentrate, I tell myself, it’s maps I’m talking of now, not people. So I leave the map in the Central Post Office, for it has become illegible, and take another. I remember, because I could never forget it, a certain three-dimensional plasticine map once situated all over the rooms of a Veber Street house.
The plasticine city was shaking too. And as the model shook, it began to spill buildings. The plasticine city was alive! Whole streets now were lifting off the trestle tables, mixing themselves up with other streets as if someone were trying to redesign our city, and as these places leapt from their ordered destinations some casualties were inevitable. Buildings fell to the floor, but once there, though now in strange bent and twisted shapes, would not be content but continued to dance still further and further away from the mass of our still jolting and jerking city, as if they were no longer satisfied with belonging to our city at all and had started journeying towards other distant cities that they believed might suit themselves a little better.
Consider Entralla now: Napoleon Street, the Paulus Boulevard, People Street, simply jiggling to their death. What a sight, unbearable even, or perhaps especially, when acted out by plasticine substitutes. Imagine it for a while, falling apart and then, after three or four minutes, and quite suddenly, the city was still once more.
ALL I HAVE SAID so far is part of the much bigger story of Entralla and its quake, but now I wish to talk not only about our city but also to show how little, commonplace people fit into the large sweep of history. History is not all mayors and sculptors and catastrophes. Sometimes it is long-distance lorry drivers called Jonas Lutt, and sometimes it is even twin sisters as well.
In Veber Street, in 27 Veber Street, in the attic that morning, Irva and I lay on the floor with plasticine buildings all about us. Our long legs bent at unaccustomed angles, Irva’s dress rumpled high about her waist, as if the earthquake had been trying to get inside her.
I wondered if somehow I had leant too hard onto one of the trestle tables and in so doing had set the city rushing away from itself. But then I thought, how was it that we were both on the floor? There was a portion of Entralla University on my lap—I briefly considered that it might be seeking comfort there. I saw two buildings from Pulvin Street leap from the table, bumpily cross the attic floor, hover over the edge of the open hatch and then disappear into the passageway below. And then I heard a great crashing. Surely, I thought, surely those two plasticine buildings from Pulvin Street tumbling down onto the landing would not make such a sound. Then I considered that the crashing must surely have come from way below, from down there in the kitchen, all that way away. I’ll have to go into the kitchen, I thought, I’ll have to travel all the way into the kitchen to see what it was that crashed. Perhaps Mother’s come back. But then I heard another crashing which sounded as if it was coming from outside, all the way outside, past the front door and beyond the doorstep. I began to think then that perhaps it wasn’t only the attic that had been affected, or even only our hallway, or kitchen, or even only our house, perhaps, I thought, my thoughts stretching to allow several houses in now, perhaps Veber Street was affected also. And then I very slowly heaved myself up and I saw the piece of Entralla University equally slowly collapse onto the floor, in a converse motion, and I gradually journeyed towards the window, moving with such unnatural slowness, as if I were one of those foreign men who, on occasions, are sent up into space. And as I trudged towards the window I stepped upon a building by mistake. It was, I think, I can’t be sure, a building from Market Square. I squashed it quite completely. And then I pulled away the bin liner that covered the window and looked out through shattered glass.
SOMETIME BETWEEN the end of the noise of the buildings and the commencement of the noise of the people there was a silence. All clocks were stopped. Time too needed a little rest. People now were getting up over so many different floors considering this: it’s stopped, it’s over, we’ve somehow made it through. But they could not speak. Not quite yet. Many others tried to call out but no sound came, it was too soon, there had to be a silence. Around the city, dust clouds began to thin a little. Peace, peace, it’s over.
Now everyone could move under their own will, nothing else commanded them, they were learning how to use their arms, their legs, their heads all over again. But they moved with heavy, unhurried gestures as if in slow motion. They were not yet able to comprehend what it was that had just been done to them, why their homes no longer resembled their homes, why their entire world had been turned upside down. How long did the silence last? A second? Ten minutes? More? I cannot say exactly, it’s impossible to really say, and some people found that this silence was for them a continuous silence.
Then, finally, perhaps under the struggling determination of the minute hand on the miraculously still functioning clock of the City Hall, a measurement was possible. That minute hand moved from seven forty-nine to seven fifty, and beneath it there was a mounting rush of wind that was really the wind of sound being put back inside us. And immediately we found ourselves moving at more natural speeds and we opened our mouths to call out, some people called out for help, others called out people’s names, others still called out in frustration at buildings, buildings that had moved, without permission, to places they shouldn’t be, or they called out in blame, in rabid blame because a building, which looked as if it belonged in Market Square, had been mistakenly stepped upon, had been defeated by a foot.
‘A BUILDING! A whole building!’ As my sister screamed at me for my carelessness, I turned round to her and said, ‘Irva, it was an earthquake, there’s been an earthquake.’ ‘I don’t care,’ she said, ‘look what you’ve done.’
‘Irva, we have to get out.’ ‘A whole building ruined! Hours of work! Such clumsiness!’ ‘We have to go outside.’ ‘Fix it n
ow!’ ‘We must go out now.’ ‘What are you talking of? Get to work!’ ‘Listen, Irva, there’s been an earthquake. We have to get out.’ ‘I don’t go outside, Alva, you know that.’ ‘But that doesn’t count any more, don’t you understand?’ ‘We made a promise.’ ‘Come out with me, it’ll be all right.’ ‘No, Alva. Draw the curtain and we’ll forget all about it, even about that building you stamped on.’ ‘Out you come.’ ‘Seal up the window!’ ‘Give me your hand.’ ‘I will not.’ ‘Give me your hand, Irva.’ ‘I can’t. I can’t, Alva. Stop it now. Stop it and get back to work!’ ‘Your hand, Irva, your hand!’ ‘Never, never, never, never, never, never!’
And then we heard our home humming to itself and then wheezing and then moaning in its unhappiness. And then there were snaps about us, strange shrieks of wood.
‘Irva, quick now, don’t fuss.’ ‘I can’t. I CAN’T!’ ‘You can, Irva, you will.’ ‘THERE IS NO OUTSIDE!’ ‘Come on, girl, come on now.’ ‘My heart!’ ‘Out, Irva, now!’ ‘OUT?’ ‘That’s it. Come on.’ ‘OUT!’ ‘Good girl, that’s my Irva.’ ‘Out and leave the city? What are you saying? I can’t leave the city! Who will look after it?’
And then I was pulling her, tugging her, pushing her, dragging her away from the city, out of our home, into Veber Street.
INDEED, EARTHQUAKES are unfathomable phenomena and in them, and falling out of them, odd things happen. Earthquakes lose so many objects, everyone knows that, but also, they find many objects too. For example, whole chunks of the ancient wall that used to surround Lubatkin’s city burst out of newer buildings, destroying them in the process. For example, within the cracked playground of the school on Littsen Street, time capsules deposited there by so many generations of schoolchildren were beginning to peak out now. For example, people who have disappeared for many years suddenly turn up again.
The door of 27 Veber Street was pushed, heaved open because it had suddenly become so stiff, and standing there on our doorstep were pink Alva and pale Irva.
Outside again.
Under the naked sky.
And Irva said, looking about her, holding onto me with both hands, confused and offended and terrified: ‘This is not Entralla! This place—where is it?’
NOTHING WAS familiar to her. She had no idea where she was.
During the construction of the plasticine city, Irva had slowly begun to trust again. She believed in all those plasticine streets, they represented a certainty, a profound truth, she could imagine herself walking down them. She could make no sense of the affront she saw before her now. She frowned at what she saw. Her nose wrinkled up. Her eyes, adjusting to larger objects than she had seen in so long, hurt her.
If the plasticine city did not represent what was outside our home, if that too lied to her, then what could she trust? And, worst of all: where could she live now?
WHAT IRVA SAW that morning was of course, once upon a time, Veber Street. And who could blame her for her confusion, for where had Miss Stott’s tailor shop gone? And wherever it had gone, had it taken Miss Stott and all those stories and dresses and suits away with it? And what had happened to the baker’s and why was the butcher’s shop missing its front?
Now Veber Street began to fill with other people, slow, slow people. And with such people as we had never seen before. Were these truly the inhabitants of Veber Street? How different they looked, these half dressed and dishevelled ones, who stumbled about, limping into the centre of the street, huddling around each other. Deathly quiet. What a variety of strange possessions they were holding. As the earthquake struck, as people left their homes, they took with them whatever was nearest. One old woman held her chamber pot; one girl a hot water bottle (cold now); one man a canister of shaving foam; another a bottle of vitamin tablets; another a box of eggs. As if these objects were the most precious things in the world to them. These were our people of Veber Street, look what had happened to our people of Veber Street, look what had been done to them, all dressed in the same uniform grey, grey from the exhalations of crumbling buildings, grey skin and hair, unhappy faces peering out through the misty light. And this was the worst of it: they all had the same expression. Every single person of Veber Street looked the same, as if they had all come from the same womb. They looked hurt. Not with physical pain. But offended. Their sensitivity badly stung. They looked betrayed, like Irva, as if something or someone they trusted had cruelly wronged them. Slowly, slowly the people of Veber Street were able to understand what had happened. If not by sight, then by smell. They could smell the scent of freshly bled buildings, brick dust, smoke. They began to look about them and saw people lying silently in the tipped street. They should’ve got up by now, they thought, if they were going to. How their stillness was resented. Stilled people in our street hanging out of half dead buildings, people in our street flopped over walls, their shirts and skirts gently moved by the wind. But sometimes it wasn’t whole stilled people whom they saw in our street, sometimes it was little bits of people, often not recognisable as the bits of people until they looked harder: a hand peeping out of rubble, with an eternity ring still on its finger, or a buried leg with a perfectly usable shoe at its end. And they saw, standing on the doorstep at one end of this street of ours, this street which we have lived in for so long, this street which is our home in the world, they saw twin women. One of them in a post office uniform, the other in a dress with long greasy hair and a face so white it looked as if it had been painted on. Strange, they thought on this strangest of days, we had only seen one twin for such a long time now that we presumed the other one must have died.
NOW FROM our doorstep vantage point we saw someone we instantly recognised: Jonas Lutt. The presence of Jonas Lutt was yet another reminder that earthquakes certainly do not only concern sculptors and mayors, collapsing apartment blocks and female twins, sometimes they are even about our street, and sometimes they are even about long-distance lorry drivers.
Irva looked at me briefly in terror and rushed back inside our dying home.
JONAS LUTT, in 12 Veber Street, alone in his bedroom—which our own mother had recently quietly tip-toed away from that morning to journey to her work at the Central Post Office—had been woken by the earthquake. His initial earthquake experience was not one of horror but of mild amusement. He was woken by a terrific banging. As he opened his eyes, he saw that somehow his chest of drawers was alive. Jonas watched it as the quake bounced him up and down naked upon his bed. The chest of drawers, which was a Lutt family heirloom and was an expensive piece of genuine Rococo furniture, originating in France, and built in the year 1720 (approximately), moved around the bedroom, turning on itself, spinning on a single corner, bowing to Jonas, its drawers moving in and out as if some invisible force were desperately searching for a piece of its clothing, slamming the drawers shut, and then pulling them open again. Just as the thing decided to march straight towards him, the rumbling halted and, as if suddenly shocked, it collapsed, falling with a crash onto its back, its little legs quite still again.14
As Jonas leapt out of bed he noticed that great gashes had appeared on his bedroom walls and as he stood at his window he heard the crashing begin all about the city. And then in a panic he remembered our mother and called out our mother’s name, ‘Dallia, Dallia!’
And I watched him that morning, briefly, from our doorstep, charge up the place that used to be called Veber Street, and then I looked away and hurried inside our home after Irva.
OUR HOME mumbled and whined but still, for the moment, kept upright. Irva was inside, in the listing attic, by the city, returning the buildings to their correct places, trying to make everything right again.
The city of Entralla was missing a few of its key monuments, and certainly in many places it had been jumbled about, but it was mostly still there, still noticeably its triumphant self, still an undoubted miracle: our plasticine city. And Irva would not leave it. She turned her back to me and continued her work. No. 27 Veber Street muttered and sang to her, as it foundered.
She wouldn’t come out, we’d made a promise she kept repeating, she couldn’t leave the city, who’d look after it if she didn’t. I tried to force her out, but she kicked now and bit and wouldn’t be persuaded. I explained the terrible danger, but all she would consider was her plasticine city, which she could not, she implored, could not abandon.
I ran back out into Veber Street, I begged our neighbours to help, to drag my sister from our home, but they looked away. ‘She’s all right,’ they said, they had seen her just a moment ago. They were more concerned with people they hadn’t seen since the night before. ‘Don’t bother us now.’
What could I do? I looked around, asked more people for help, I begged them, but they ignored me, or pushed me away. I saw people carrying their expensive objects out into the street, I saw an old woman heaving a grandfather clock as if it were her fainted husband, tall and stiff. And suddenly, in that moment, I realised that there was only one way that I could bring Irva out, one certain way.