by Edward Carey
I went back inside. I took hold of one of the boxes, I brought it out. I took hold of a second, a third, a fourth. Irva called out, ‘What are you doing? Where are you taking them? Bring them back!’ Slowly, box by box, each box containing its plasticine jewels, I brought Entralla out onto the street and carefully stacked it as I heard our house chatting away to itself, sometimes gently, sometimes not.
After a while, panicking, as I moved now with five or six boxes at a time, she tried to work out where there were more boxes, in the house or in the street—her loyalty divided now, her love challenged. She was being forced to abandon at least a part of the city, she was being ripped in half. And she never once dared to take a box from me. I had it in my hands, she was too terrified for the contents, she loved them too much. Where should she go, in or out? Out or in, Irva, which is it to be? ‘Please, please stop, I beg you!’ But out it went box by box.
Barely half an hour after the earthquake had struck I set about saving the city.
IT TOOK JONAS LUTT nearly three hours to reach Napoleon Street, the roads had become so confused and misleading and sometimes had completely disappeared. He ignored all the calls for help he heard on his way, he was too busy, he hadn’t time to stop, and to those in distress he answered cordially: ‘I’m sorry, I’m in a rush, later maybe, not now, sorry, sorry.’ Outside the Paulus Hotel on the Paulus Boulevard he saw guests dressed in every conceivable fashion of nightwear, such colourful displays of candy stripes and paisley patterns, floral designs and silk slips, quite unsuitable for the occasion. And as those guests swapped their stories, they looked across to the other side of the street and became suddenly quiet. Half of the Paulus Boulevard had been reduced to steaming rubble. But on Jonas marched and as he marched onwards he passed many other people travelling in the opposite direction surely on hurried missions not dissimilar to his own on this day of a thousand, thousand tragedies. He felt that he might be too late, he felt that something terrible had happened, he thought that he might have lost her, but he prayed he was wrong. Let her be all right, he prayed, let her be all right, God in Heaven let her be all right. But God in his heaven had other things on his mind, as Jonas Lutt finally turned into Napoleon Street.
THERE WERE nearly eight hundred individual boxes in Veber Street, all neatly stacked up, all calm and saved. And then in I went again. Careful, careful. She was sitting on the attic floor, holding onto one of the table legs. Shivering and speechless. I took up the chipboard squares that supported Prospect Hill, I pulled Prospect Hill from the table, Lubatkin’s Tower shaking slightly. Irva looked at me, exhausted, defeated. She let go of the table then, she followed me, a few steps behind, out of the house into Veber Street. And there she stood, in the street. Finally. Irva. Outside.
I gave her Prospect Hill. She nodded. She held onto it. And she waited there in the street for me with the hill and the fortress in her hands, calmer now, with the boxed city all about her. As I went back inside to rescue Central Entralla.
WHEN JONAS LUTT reached Napoleon Street, stumbling and slipping over high rubble, he could not at first, because of the smoke, work out which building was the Central Post Office. He wondered if perhaps he had arrived at the wrong street, surely he had. But then he saw the symbol of the post horn above the portico and beneath it the flames. He was calm then, he was calm when he climbed up the scorching entrance steps. He was calm even when he began to shove his great weight against the locked entrance doors. He took hold of the door handles which burnt his hands. When he kicked and shrieked at the stubborn doors, he was no longer calm, not any more. And he began to wail then, he began to curse that thoughtless God in his heaven and to repudiate him with ever more savage and appropriate sentences. And then he was pulled and tugged away from the entrance by policemen, choking in the cruel heat.
And then he just stood. He stood still from a distance. Just watching, looking at the burning post office. Expressionless.
ON I TOILED, chipboard square after chipboard square, placing them gently into Irva’s waiting hands as soon as I was out in the street again. And with each new square appearing Irva began to smile more and more. And the smile grew into a quiet laugh and the laugh grew into a giggling. And now each time I arrived with a new square there was Irva, giggling away, delighted at each new saved fraction of her city. And I too began laughing with her, together we, in hysterics now, were unable to stop ourselves from cackling in our plasticine triumph, as more and more of the city was safe.
Irva placed each part of the rescued centre of our city on the top of boxes until the trestle tables were free to be moved. The legs of the tables were easy, but the table surfaces had to be slid down the stairs and splinters cut into my fingers. But still I laughed, we laughed, we couldn’t stop ourselves.
Once the tables were erected again, Irva began to put the puzzle of Entralla together.
JONAS LUTT WOULD stop that afternoon and help anyone who asked for it, he even attended to those who did not call for him or even perhaps did not really require his attentions. He made himself useful, pulling away small boulders of masonry, alerting other men to places his strength could not reach alone. He attempted to comfort the tearful, he thought about nothing other than those poor scarecrow people around him. He gave a little boy his jacket and would perhaps have undressed himself entirely if that would have been of use. He helped other men tugging out the heavy, swollen corpse of a fat man who had died crushed in his bath. He saw a man dancing a waltz with the body of his dead daughter, calling out, ‘I’ve found my daughter! I’ve found my daughter!’ He saw rubble both sides of a street, no houses left at all, and in between a stilled and lonely trolley bus.
And it was only later, when he saw an elderly couple holding tight to each other that he began to shake. Delayed reaction, that’s what it was. And it was only then that he remembered what he had seen when the flames of the Central Post Office had finally been extinguished.
WE SPENT THE entire day, quietly working on, our joyful cackling ignited again by the slightest thing, recovering the city of Entralla from its trauma. About us people made such noise it started our hands shaking, and we had to keep our hands steady then, it was most important. And then finally with the buildings back in the correct places, we allowed ourselves a little rest, while back inside our home Mother’s room had slouched into the kitchen, and the whole house was lifting slowly up from the street, threatening to fall backwards. We’d have to jump up a little to reach our entrance step. But we didn’t care then, not then, by then it was finished: a whole city in a street. How we laughed.
JONAS LUTT, SEEING that elderly couple holding fast to each other, suddenly remembered that he had been one of the first to enter the Central Post Office on Napoleon Street. And suddenly he was able to remember quite clearly what it was that he had seen. Postman Kurt Laudus, who had once been a possible marriage candidate for Mother, who was a friend of mine from Café Louis, was buried under a fraction of the ceiling, but some of him was still visible, his face, for example, which was already bruised, even before the earthquake had happened, smashed by Louis in a jealous fit. Aged Grandfather, the postmaster, lay still and rigid in his office, with a strange grimace on his face, with his mouth open, with his clenched teeth showing, in an expression that would have suited an animal better than a human. And then Jonas saw, on the floor, burnt post office workers. From one of the steaming pockets a gloved fireman was able to pull out a post office personnel card which said on it, ‘Marta Rena Stroud’. On the face of another body a small patch of unburned skin remained on which could be seen a roughly circular patch of black dirt, but perhaps it was not dirt but a rude fly perched there, but looking closely Jonas Lutt was able to see that that was not a patch of dirt or a fly at all, but actually a mole, which somehow curiously resembled the shape of a city far away in the Netherlands, a mole just like the one our mother had on her cheek, coincidentally in exactly the same place too. That was what Jonas Lutt remembered as he saw that old couple holding each other in front of him. H
e shook then with all his nerves as if an aftershock was being experienced in his person alone. He shook and trembled and quivered and could not steady himself. He would shake like this for three days and nights. He could not stop it. Some kind man gave him a bottle of brandy but as he brought it to his lips he was unable to stop himself from shaking it all over the street. Some kind woman tried to hug him but then she began to shake also and had to let go. He shook himself then in small, shaking, mechanical steps all the way to Veber Street. On his way, oblivious, he passed signs saying ‘Do not enter this street—epidemic threatened,’ or, ‘Ottila’s hospital now re-opened,’ or ‘Looters will be shot’, but on Jonas shook, onwards to Veber Street.
Other people were in Veber Street by then trying to clear away the debris. He would not help them. He sat on an upright metal-framed plastic seat that had been flung from some house or other. The chair jiggled up and down beneath him. And then he saw our little city, and then he saw us. And he shook his heavy way down the street, and then we learnt about Mother, who, before that moment, we had not even thought of once, and then we stopped laughing and Jonas Lutt passed his shaking onto us.
‘Mother!’ ‘Mother!’ ‘Mother!’ ‘Mother!’ ‘Mummy!’ ‘Mummy!’
THAT FIRST night, we huddled and shook together in a makeshift home, not far from our old home, because Irva could not bear to leave the plasticine city. Jonas made this home for us from a canvas and old coats and jumpers. We sat on chairs which had once belonged to Miss Stott. Who could sleep, we wondered, with all that noise about the city, the great clatter of people saving other people? Seek out the sleepers, kick them awake, there should be no comfort, not until things begin to make sense again, because suddenly, within a few minutes, sense had been capsized, suddenly we lived in a nonsense city without electricity or water with thousands upon thousands of smashed homes and people, and we wondered: is this really our city? They should change all the names. Broken Street. Fallen Street. Bits and Pieces Street. Too Late for Help Street. No People People Street. Upside-down Square.
People called out into the night: ‘Where’s our home? Where has it gone to? Give us back our home.’ And I, close by our plasticine city, thought, ‘Here it is, here it is.’
ON THE NINTH day after the earthquake, we huddled around a radio, like the rest of surviving Entralla, to hear the wonderful news that even now a survivor had been found buried beneath the rubble of Trinity Square. A hospital porter named Alvy Phipps. That same day, when it was officially proclaimed that anyone left beneath the rubble must now be dead, we listened to a speech by Ambras Cetts—our acting mayor—which we would, in time, learn by heart.
‘It is the saddest, most savage, heart-gutting of a city that could ever be contemplated. So many of our people have lost their lives. We remaining will never be the same again. But we have no time to lick our wounds, to comfort ourselves. We must forget for now all our very real tragedies and turn our minds to rebuilding at once. If there is rubble in our hearts, rubble that can never be cleared away by a million bulldozers, we must ignore it for now. In the next year alone I calculate that 2 million square metres will have to be built. There are around two thousand historic buildings in the earthquake zone, they must be rebuilt not torn down, we must resurrect our city even as we resurrect ourselves. I call on all the wealthy nations of the world, to be united in the one effort. To pull together with all your skills, to make Entralla rise again from its bloodied ground.’
IN THOSE humpbacked days, we became used to the people of Veber Street gathering around the plasticine city and, silently, watching it. Whilst all about them was destruction something was giving them a little hope. It was as if the model was capable of pulling back time, so that as they watched it, if only for an instant, they could see themselves believing that everything was all right still, that nothing had happened. ‘Don’t come too close!’ Irva always instructed, ‘Stay back now! Step back!’ They pointed here and there—‘Look the library isn’t burning,’ or, ‘Look the Opera House is still standing,’ or, and this from Jonas Lutt, ‘I can see the Central Post Office, I can see it how I wish to see it.’ Miniature things do move people.
The news of the plasticine city on Veber Street spread and soon people came from the neighbouring streets to view it. But amongst those people were some who were not so happy with our work, who crowded noisily around it, pointing too closely and said in loud, unhappy voices: ‘That’s not right, that shouldn’t be there, take it out, take it out!’ Why indeed should they stand quietly and regard upright buildings when their mother or father, wife or husband, son or daughter had been murdered inside such places? ‘The city,’ they said, ‘no longer looks like that, this plasticine city is full of lies.’ How they wished to smash the city with their bare fists, or feel it give way under their heavy boots; to pulp it even more than our city had been pulped. They considered that they could place all their heartbreak and misery onto the plasticine city; the plasticine could have their agony, they didn’t want it. And some of those people pointing out various buildings that had been crushed or burnt or both, actually did lean forwards and seize them with their dusty hands, pulling the structures clear from the table, pinching them between thumbs and forefingers and replacing them in squashed and unrecognisable lumps. But they would not be happy with the removal of just one or two sacrificed locations, they began to get an appetite for crushing plasticine—anyone can do it, the substance gives such little resistance. They wanted our city to resemble yet another piece of the ugly and the broken; such things as we had at that time all over our city.
At first it was only Jonas and I who protected the city amid Irva’s howls. Then the people of Veber Street who had known us and had lived just by us for nearly thirty years, and had heard of Mother and Grandfather’s death, began to protect it too. They stood around the city, forming a barrier. Our neighbours said: ‘Come on now, they’re just children really, two girls who’ve never understood very much, it’s not their fault, and their mother’s just died, be reasonable, leave it alone, it’s a play thing, it’s all they have.’ But the others called back: ‘We’ve lost our mothers/fathers/children/friends too, that play thing offends us, we don’t like it, we want it gone.’ And the noises were getting louder and louder, the shrieks of the defenders, the shrieks of the attackers, and we were terrified that a riot would break out, for plasticine cannot stand up to riots. But it was because of this great noise that someone alerted the police, and the police did come and eventually dispersed the crowd. And it was perhaps because of those policemen that slowly the rest of the city began to hear of the plasticine replica.
Rumours of it spread about the smashed Entralla. Rumours whispered down tilted chimneys and through burst windows. Rumours scattered down every broken street and square. Rumours along Napoleon Street. Rumours up the Paulus Boulevard. Rumours into the roofless cathedral swooping about it. Yes, these impossible rumours tumbled through every slanted doorway; into every twisted room; into every Entrallan that still moved. And some people said that it was a miracle; and others simply a story; and others still that it was a lie. And then, finally, someone must have told a priest called Father Hoppin.
14LOST TREASURES OF ENTRALLA. THE CHEST OF DRAWERS OF JONAS LUTT. Jonas Lutt looked suspiciously at that chest of drawers so many times in the years following the earthquake, waiting for the malignant force to set it moving again, as if the fate of the city could be determined by the activity of a single bedroom object. Sometimes, waking after bad dreams, he would lurch for the bedside light to check whether the chest had begun to live again. It watched him sleeping on so many nights with an attitude quite out of keeping with objects of domestic usage. About ten years after the earthquake, he woke up once again to stare at the chest but this time he had had enough. He heaved the thing out of the bedroom and into the passage. The next morning he pulled out its drawers. He took it drawer by drawer and then finally its empty cage into the street and dismantled it with an axe, happily chopping the thing to sp
linters. And then he burnt it. And as he burnt it he considered that he was by this act ridding Entralla of any future calamities.
INTERLUDE 3
Supper
Tectonic House, Television Tower, Le Grand Lubatkin
Tectonic House, Napoleon Street 112.
Open 12:00-23:30, tel. 316 34 26;
Television Tower Restaurant, Bank Street 5–7.
Open 12:00-23:00, tel. 316 66 66;
Le Grand Lubatkin, Pijus Street 2.
Open 20:00–24:00, tel. 316 21 23.
For the final interlude of this tour our distinguished visitors have been given the opportunity to decide for themselves. There are many restaurants throughout Entralla, some catering to specific world cuisines for those foreign visitors of ours whose stomachs, unlike the rest of their bodies, are perhaps not prepared to travel. We have restaurants serving Italian, Thai, American, Chinese, Spanish, Polish, Japanese and Indian dishes, so that even in Entralla foreign stomachs of those nationalities may be allowed to feel at home. However, I would like to recommend three restaurants which range across the spectrum of pricing from the extremely cheap to the monstrously expensive. These recommendations may of course be ignored, but all three of these eateries have been happy to offer a 10 per cent reduction for those people seen clutching, the perhaps by now slightly dog-eared, Alva & Irva: The Twins Who Saved a City. But whichever restaurant is chosen, or perhaps none at all-in which case there are various supermarkets for the self-caterer-I would like to take this opportunity to urge our visitors to enjoy a digestif or a final coffee at Café Louis on Market Square. It is the perfect place to end twenty-four hours in Entralla.
TECTONIC HOUSE, with its glass brick roof (repaired), used to be an indoor flower market, but the flowers, lacking water and buyers, faded and died during the earthquake period. The International Red Cross, people trained in misery, set up one of their many centres here. In this building names of the deceased were published, and also photographs of the nameless dead. Soon people arriving in their sorry states would be provided with water and coffee and food also, until, over time, the building became the cheap restaurant it is today and was renamed Tectonic House.