Alva and Irva - Edward Carey [78]
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