Alva and Irva - Edward Carey [73]
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