Alva and Irva - Edward Carey [82]
It began gradually enough. Jonas Lutt, whose house, like ours, was marked for demolition, and who found himself looking for Mother as much as we did, came to live with us in Grandfather’s old home, bringing all his things, his chest of drawers, his photograph albums. Slowly Jonas and I moved the city into the back of his lorry, stacking it up, he tied the trestle tables down, Irva watching us all the while, wincing every now and then, tutting and muttering to herself, naming the streets and squares and how they joined onto one another. He helped Irva up into the lorry, onto the seat next to his, where Mother had once sat; he belted her in, she didn’t complain. He drove so slowly, while all the time Irva watched him with suspicion. The journey took us about seven hours, before the earthquake it would have taken perhaps twenty minutes, and Irva was unable to relax the whole time. All the real houses around her, all the sunken streets we were passing meant nothing to her; to her those places she saw through Jonas’s windscreen were of scant reality. There was only one place for her, only one place to live. It was dark when we reached Pult Street. Jonas suggested we move the city in the morning, Irva wouldn’t hear of it. We all slept the night in the lorry.
As we moved it in the next day, Irva, conducting our work, would demand every now and then that we pass her a certain box. She’d lift the lid to check the contents, she’d sniff at them and smile. She paid no attention to Grandfather’s house, showed no recognition of having been there before. I do not believe she had any comprehension of it at all, she could focus only on plasticine. When Jonas and I had finished moving in the city, she smiled at the great lorry driver and even held his hand. She’d often hold his hand in the future. And so would I.
SOME PEOPLE had seen us carefully moving the city in and later they knocked on the door and asked to be shown our plasticine miracle. With Jonas’s encouragement, Irva seemed not to mind, as long as they didn’t come too close, as long as they didn’t get in her way.
Our visitors sat around Central Entralla in Grandfather’s sitting room, quietly involved with the business of grieving. Mostly our visitors just sat mutely, but sometimes they pointed here and there commenting, for example: ‘I remember when People Street looked like that,’ or, ‘Do you know I had completely forgotten that that building used to be on Arsenal Street,’ or, ‘How may years do you think before the Opera House will be reopened?’ Then our neighbours began to come without invitation, bringing drink and food, at all hours of the day and night and they would never be turned away. More and more people came to know of the plasticine city, those residents of Pult Street telling their friends and relatives, and soon the house swelled with callers, with people looking at their lives. They understand them more when they are in miniature.
Calamity can have the consolation of bringing people together. In the past people had kept their happiness and their misery to themselves, but suddenly they found they were eager to share these. It became a custom to light candles around the city, the same candles that are found in our churches, prayer candles, candles for the departed souls of our city. And with these tiny flames lighting up the city at night, the congested house became a little dangerous, and once a woman singed her hair, so we had to begin rationing the visitors, and then queues started to form outside in Pult Street. Soon we were forced to refuse all visitors to the plasticine city. They had got so close, they had leant forward and touched even though I begged them not to (why must people always touch, why is it always such a need with them), they had barged about, and ignored us when we asked for some peace. It was on the day that someone accidentally