‘They must both be deaf,’ said Irina.
The old woman slipped out of bed and twirled around the hut in a silent ballet. We wanted to preserve the torchlight so Irina switched it off, but as soon as she did the woman began hissing like a snake and shaking the latch on the door. Irina switched the torch back on and held the beam on the woman, who danced in the spotlight like a girl of sixteen. ‘Joe’ stopped his monotonous self-introduction to applaud her performance and then announced that he wanted to go to the toilet. Irina searched under the beds for a pan, and when she found one, handed it to him. But he shook his head and insisted that he be let outside. I made him stand with one foot in the door and clutched his pyjama shirt while he urinated against the side of the hut. I was terrified that he was going to run off or get blown away by the storm. After he had relieved himself, he stared up at the sky and refused to come back inside. Irina had to keep the torch on the old lady while helping me drag Joe back into the hut. His pyjamas were soaked and we had nothing to change him into. We struggled to pull off his wet clothes and wrapped him in a sheet. But once he was warm again, he flung the sheet off and insisted on remaining nude. ‘I’m Joe like Poe like Poe like Poe,’ he muttered, parading up and down the length of the hut on his skinny legs, bare as the day he was born.
‘You and I are never going to make good nurses,’ Irina said.
‘They’re sedated too. That makes us extra hopeless,’ I replied.
Irina and I laughed. It was the only spot of joy we would know all night.
The howling outside rose to a frenzy. In one gust, an airborne tree was propelled into the hut. It rammed into the wall, denting the metal inwards. The cupboard doors flung open and trays and cups crashed to the floor. The old lady stopped dancing, startled like a child caught playing past her bedtime. She clambered into her bed, pulling the blankets over her head.
The wind was battering the tree against the wall of the hut. Small tears sprung up everywhere and leaves poked through the gaps. Irina and I knocked the books from the table and turned it on its side, jamming the top against the wall as a brace.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Irina, turning off the torchlight. ‘I can hear the waves coming.’
‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘It’s something else.’
‘No,’ said Irina. ‘It’s the ocean. Listen.’
‘It’s Joe like Poe, you know,’ Joe shouted out.
‘Shhh!’ I scolded him.
Joe sniffed and climbed under his bed, continuing to mutter under his breath.
Raindrops struck the sides of the hut and rang like bullets. The screws holding the walls to the cement floor groaned under the pressure of the wind. Irina grabbed my hand. I squeezed it back, remembering what Ruselina had said about not letting go of each other. The old lady threw her arms around me and clung on so tightly that I couldn’t move. The young man and his cat slept on peacefully. Joe retreated somewhere deeper into the shadows. I couldn’t hear him.
Suddenly the door stopped rattling and was silent. The walls slid back into position. The flapping of canvas and trees ceased. I thought I had gone deaf. It took a few moments to register that the wind outside had calmed. Irina lifted her head and turned on the torch. Joe crawled out from under his bed. I could hear voices in the hills, moans and cheers. People were calling out to each other from their positions in the jungle. A man was shouting out to his wife, ‘Valentina, I love you! After all these years I still love you!’
But nobody moved. Even the calm had something evil in it.
‘I’m going to check on Grandmother,’ Irina said.
‘Don’t go out!’ All the feeling had gone from my legs. I couldn’t have stood up if I had tried. ‘It’s not over. It’s just the eye.’
Irina frowned at me. She snatched her hand away from the door latch, her mouth open in horror. The handle was vibrating. We stared at it. In the distance the ocean let out a roar. The voices in the jungle rose in panic. The wind lifted again, moaning through the stripped trees. Before long it changed form and was screeching like a demon, moving in reverse and picking up all the debris lifted by the head of the storm. Branches crashed against the hut. Irina shook the young man awake and dragged him under the bed. She fixed the cat in the crook of his arm. Together we set the table upright and pushed Joe and the old woman under it with us.
‘I’m Joe like Poe. Like Poe. Like Poe,’ he whimpered in my ear.
Irina and I pressed our faces together. There was a fetid odour. Joe had emptied his bowels.
Something crashed onto the roof. Shreds of metal fell around us. Rain began to drip inside. A few drops at first, then a waterfall. The wind thudded against the walls. I cried out when I saw the side of the hut lift, held to the ground only by the screws on the other side. The metal screeched and the hut opened up like a bread box. We gaped at the furious sky. The books fluttered around us before being flung to all corners of the room. We clung onto the table legs but the table began to inch along the floor. Joe struggled from my grasp and stood up, reaching towards the sky.
‘Get down!’ Irina screamed. But it was too late. A flying branch struck him on the back of the head. The shock knocked him to the ground. He was blown across the cement floor like a leaf. Irina managed to catch him, scissor-like, between her feet before he was forced between the jaws of metal and the floor. If the wall came down again, he would be sliced in two. But Joe was wet and slipped from her grip. I tried to reach for his hand but the old lady was holding me and I couldn’t reach far enough. I grabbed him by the hair. He cried out because it started to tear in my fingers. ‘Let him go!’ Irina shouted. ‘He’ll pull you with him.’ I managed to slip one hand under Joe’s arm and grip him by the shoulder, but in that position my head was out in the open. Leaves and sticks stabbed into me, stinging my flesh like marauding insects. I closed my eyes, wondering what object would strike me. What piece of flying debris would end my life.
‘I’m Joeee,’ Joe cried out. He slipped from my grasp and was blown against the cupboard. It toppled over but fell onto the bed under which the young man was hiding. The cupboard missed Joe’s head by an inch. He was trapped, but as long as the bed didn’t shift, he was safe.
‘Don’t move!’ I cried out. My voice was drowned by an ear-splitting shriek. I watched as the wall was ripped off its last hinges and flung into the air. It seemed to spin for ages, an ominous shadow floating in the sky. I wondered where it would land. Who it would kill.
‘God help us!’ Irina screamed.
Then, with no warning, the wind stopped. The wall dropped from the sky and spliced through a nearby tree, becoming stuck in the branches. The tree had given its life for ours. I could hear the ocean toss and roar, summoning the storm back into it.
Something warm dripped onto my arm. I rubbed it. It was sticky. Blood. I thought it must have been from Irina because I didn’t feel anything. I turned on the torch and searched her head with my fingertips but couldn’t find a wound. Still the blood continued to drip. I turned to the old woman. My stomach heaved. She had put her teeth straight through her bottom lip. I tore my petticoat and folded the material into a wad, holding it against her mouth to stop the bleeding.
Irina pressed her face into her knees, trying not to cry. I blinked the water from my eyes and surveyed the damage. Joe was sprawled on the floor like a fish stranded on the beach. There were grazes on his forehead and elbows but otherwise he seemed unhurt. The young man was awake but quiet. His kitten stood, drenched, back arched, hissing in the corner.
‘I’m Joe like Poe, like Poe,’ Joe muttered to the cement.
Nobody else said anything for a good half-hour.
TEN
Countries of Settlement
The storm had transformed the island into a stagnating swamp. At first light we emerged from the wreckage and gathered in the square. We looked small among the fractured and tottering trees. Muddy roots protruded from deep, gaping holes in the earth. People were staggering down the path from the mountain, th
eir clothes ripped and wet and their hair caked with sand. I searched for Ivan, holding my breath until I saw him towards the rear, coils of rope slung over his shoulders like limp snakes.
The hospital was still standing and a crowd milled around it. Ruselina was stationed in the doorway, directing people into groups with her walking stick. There were hundreds of them, dishevelled, hobbling, bleeding. The doctors and nurses, themselves bedraggled and weary, administered whatever they could from their meagre supplies. A young doctor sat on a crate opposite the dusha-dushi woman, stitching her lip. The procedure must have been excruciating painful without strong anaesthetic, but the woman sat quietly, her agony given away only by the trembling hands she clutched to her chin.
Irina and I embraced Ruselina and then ran ahead of the others to the camp. The sight of it struck us with mute heartbreak. Torn flies and strips of canvas flapped in the morning breeze like rotting clothes on a skeleton. The roads were deep gullies, their surfaces stamped with the pulverised remains of bed linen and broken crockery. Many of the things people had struggled so hard to salvage from China had been devoured. The endless piles of broken chairs and tables, upturned beds and scattered toys was too much to bear. An old woman brushed past us, holding up the torn, water-damaged photograph of a child. ‘It was all I had left of him. And even it is gone,’ she cried, looking at me. Her sunken mouth quivered as if she expected an answer. But I had no words to say.
Irina returned to the hospital to help Ruselina. I walked through the camp towards the Eighth District, loose stones rattling under my feet. I had nothing to fear from the coconuts any more. The trees were bare of fruit and the shells lay cracked and scattered on the ground. There was an unpleasant scent in the air. I traced it to the body of a puppy on the path, a snapped tent pole speared into its swollen stomach. Ants and flies were busy at work on the wound. I shuddered when I imagined a child searching for her pet. I picked up a strip of palm bark and dug a shallow grave. When I had finished, I tugged the pole from the dog’s belly and dragged her by the paws into the hole. I hesitated a moment before covering it with sand, unsure if I was doing the right thing. But I remembered my own childhood and I knew that there were things a child should never see.
The dense jungle surrounding the Eighth District had saved it. The tents had collapsed and drifted limply to the ground, but they weren’t shredded beyond repair like those in the Third and Fourth Districts. Beds were strewn across the area but few of them were broken, and at one site, although the tent itself had been flung into the trees, the furniture was upright and neatly arranged, as if the owners had only stepped away a minute before.
I bit my cracked lips until they bled when I saw my trunk. It had been lashed against a tree with a skilfully knotted rope and was still intact. I was filled with gratitude to whichever girl had taken the trouble with it in my absence. The lock was jammed and I couldn’t pry it open. I grabbed a nearby rock and smashed the clasp with it. The evening clothes inside were damp and gritty with sand but I didn’t care about them. I fumbled underneath the fabrics, praying that my hand would find what I searched for. When I touched wood, I screamed with relief and pulled out the matroshka doll. It was unscathed and I kissed it over and over again, like a mother who has found her lost child.
The sea was the colour of milky tea. Bits of vegetation and flotage bobbed on its surface. The morning light glinting on its surface made it seem harmless, nothing like the enraged monster that had threatened to swallow us last night. Nearby, on the small strip of sand that remained, a priest was leading a group of people in a prayer of thanks. I didn’t believe in God, but I bowed my head in respect anyway. We had a lot to be grateful for. By some miracle, not one human life had been lost. I closed my eyes and gave in to the balm of numbness.
Later I found Captain Connor standing in front of the IRO office. The metal walls were full of pits and some of the filing cabinets were overturned. He looked surreal in the midst of the catastrophe, with his neatly pressed uniform and the part in his hair so straight that the red of his sunburned scalp shone through. The only sign of the storm on him was a splash of mud on his boots.
He smiled at me as if this was just another day and I was arriving for work as usual. He pointed to the cluster of Nissen huts that were used for storage. Some were in worse condition than our office, their walls bent so badly out of shape that they probably could no longer be used. ‘If one good thing comes of this disaster,’ he said, ‘it will be that they realise they have to get us off this island sooner rather than later.’
By the time I returned to the hospital, the Filipino and American soldiers from Guam had arrived to help. Ivan and the other officials were lifting jerry cans of fuel and drinking water from the back of an army truck, while the soldiers busied themselves erecting tents for the patients who couldn’t fit into the hospital. Volunteers were boiling water to sterilise the hospital instruments and bandages, or preparing food under a makeshift canopy.
The beaten, soggy grass was crowded with people sleeping on rugs. Ruselina was one of them. Irina sat next to her, stroking her grandmother’s white hair. Ruselina had said that she would sacrifice herself for Irina or me, and that we were all she had in the world. I watched the two women from behind a tree, clutching the matroshka doll to my chest. They were all I had too.
I saw Ivan drag a sack of rice to the cooking tent. I wanted to assist too, but all the courage had drained out of me. Ivan straightened up, rubbing his back, and his eye caught mine. He strode towards me, a grin on his face and his hands on his hips. But his expression changed when he saw my face.
‘I can’t move,’ I said.
He reached out his arms. ‘It’s all right, Anya,’ he said, clutching me to his chest. ‘It’s not as bad as it seems. No one is seriously hurt and things can always be repaired or replaced.’
I pressed my face against him, listening to his steady heartbeat and letting his warmth flow into me. For a moment I was home again. A treasured child in Harbin. I could smell freshly made bread, hear the fire crackling in the parlour, feel the softness of bear fur under my feet. And for the first time in a long while I heard her voice: I’m here, my little girl, so close you could touch me. A truck engine started up and the spell was broken. I stepped back from Ivan, opening my mouth to speak but unable to utter a word.
He took my hand in his rough fingers, but gently, as if he were afraid of breaking it. ‘Come on, Anya,’ he said. ‘Let’s find somewhere for you to rest.’
The weeks following the storm were full of hopes and heartaches. The American navy based in Manila arrived in ships laden with supplies. We watched the sailors march up the beach, sacks slung over their broad shoulders, and in a matter of two days re-erect Tent City. The new city was much more orderly than the old one, which had been laid out in a hurry, with no forward planning and insufficient tools. The roads were rebuilt with deeper gutters and paving and the jungle was cleared from around our bathroom blocks and kitchens. But the neat construction filled us with unease rather than pleasure. There was something uncomfortably permanent in the way the new camp was built and, despite Captain Connor’s hopes, there was still no word from our ‘countries of settlement’.
The Russian Society in America heard about the disaster and sent us an urgent message: ‘Tell us not just what you need to survive, but what you need to be happy.’ The society gathered material from its members, many of whom had become wealthy in the United States, but also from companies who were prepared to donate spoiled stock. Captain Connor and I spent a night working on a wish list that included one small present for each person. We requested records, tennis rackets, playing cards, pencil sets and books for our library and lending store, but also asked for scented soap, chocolate, writing journals, sketchpads, hair combs, handkerchiefs and a small toy for each child under twelve. We received a reply within a fortnight: ‘All items requested have been obtained. We are also sending you Bibles, two guitars, a violin, thirteen bolts of dress material, six samovars, tw
enty-five raincoats and one hundred copies of Chekov’s play The Cherry Orchard with the cover missing.’
The barge was due to arrive a month later and Captain Connor and I waited for it, excited as two mischievous children. We watched for the ship for six weeks but it never arrived. Captain Connor made investigations through the IRO office in Manila. All the goods had been intercepted by corrupt officials and sold on the black market.
Ivan came to see me at the IRO office one afternoon. I squinted at his figure in the doorway, not recognising him at first. His shirt was pressed and his hair was clean, not sprinkled with sawdust and leaves as usual. He was leaning idly against the doorpost, but his fingers were thrumming on his hip and I knew he was up to something.
‘You’ve been spying on me,’ I said.
He shrugged and glanced about the room. ‘No, I haven’t,’ he said. ‘I just came to see how you are.’
‘Yes, you have,’ I said. ‘Captain Connor left just a minute ago on an errand. And then you appeared. You must have watched him go.’
Ivan’s eyes fell on a frayed wicker chair we saved for guests. His face was turned away from me but I could see him smile. ‘I have a plan to boost everyone’s morale,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t know if Connor would approve.’
Ivan dragged the chair in front of my desk and then perched on it like a giant on a thimble. ‘I’ve built the projector and the screen. All I need is a movie.’ His hand moved to his eye. I didn’t like the way it hovered there, as if he were trying to mask it. Was he still conscious of his disfigurement in front of me? He needn’t have been. The scar was prominent but you only had to know Ivan for a day before you stopped noticing it. His personality was the thing about him that stayed in your mind. My own cheek twinged. I didn’t like to see weakness in Ivan, or vulnerability. He was my rock. I needed him to be strong.
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