Alva and Irva - Edward Carey [75]
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