Alva and Irva - Edward Carey [84]
They were so interested in us during those days. How they noticed us! How they looked at us and marvelled: two long women in the darkness of the crypt, sitting quietly on a pew together, surrounded by boxes, illuminated by the candles around a plasticine metropolis. Perhaps some of them even wondered if we were saints. Perhaps Irva was beginning to believe she was a saint, she could certainly hold a solemn pose for the longest time and she never once pulled her hand away when an old woman wished to kiss it. Sometimes we’d sit quietly with Jonas in between us, his hands around our shoulders, gently stroking.
ABOUT A MONTH after the plasticine city had taken up its new residence in Saint Onne’s crypt, a man in a perfectly fitting suit, woke us early one morning. We crawled out from under our blankets. He told us in pronounced whispers, to add to the import of his message, that our mayor, Ambras Cetts, had been informed of the existence of the plasticine city and had even visited the crypt of Saint Onne’s, two days ago. We had noticed him; did the man talking to us now, think that we wouldn’t notice this new visitor wearing chains of gold around his neck? Ambras Cetts, we were told, had been very impressed with what he had seen. ‘Yes?’ Irva yawned. (She was so used to impressed people by then.) Ambras Cetts had even insisted the Reconstruction Committee visit the city. So that was the party of men, we realised, in perfectly fitting suits. ‘Well?’ The model, the man told us, was potentially most useful in their work, particularly since so many maps and photographs of the city had been destroyed in the People Street fire. The plasticine city had answered many questions for them, and it was useful in arguing against the international officials when they wanted only to put simple cheap buildings up where once great architecture had stood. With the help of the plasticine city, with the international officials actually viewing the entire city as it once was, our politicians would perhaps make major progress. Something as simple, our visitor informed us in his ponderous whispers, as plasticine was swaying grown men. It had become their blueprint for rebuilding the city, it had become indispensable to them. ‘In a way the plasticine model had’, he said, ‘saved our city.’ And Irva nodded with equal seriousness, she entirely believed him.
The man wanted to ask permission to have the city moved again. To a lighter place where it could be more easily viewed. It had all been thought through, he said, we had only to agree. It would be taken to one of the conference rooms in the City Hall, the public would no longer be allowed to visit it. It was called to higher things, reconstruction architects and politicians wanted it now. Besides, it would be better looked after, the man whispered, in the City Hall. ‘But,’ Irva said, ‘Do you want all of the city or only the central part?’ He didn’t understand. She showed him the other boxes. ‘What’s in those boxes?,’ he asked. ‘Entralla,’ she said, and opened a box so he could see. The man looked shocked, no longer in whispers he said, ‘But all the boxes … It’s enormous … All Entralla?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘We didn’t finish, we were unable to finish because of the earthquake.’ The man scratched his head. He said, ‘It won’t fit in any of the conference rooms.’ Irva said, ‘No, most probably it won’t, it’s very big, you see, very big.’
OVER THE NEXT few days different men in suits came to visit Saint Onne’s and to measure the boxes and to do sums