Alva and Irva - Edward Carey [87]
And then all the posters were covered up. And if there were any articles about us now they were mostly unkind articles that said we were backward, that Irva was practically feral, that we had deliberately cut ourselves off from people even as we were amongst them. One article stated, ‘It is a true sign of the insignificance of our city that whilst other cities have artists like Michelangelo who work with marble, or Rembrandt who paints in oils, we must have two introverted women who play with a substance designed for infant usage: plasticine.’
I knew why all this was. It was because it was taking so long to reconstruct Entralla, a year already and still so much of it was rubble. People wanted to forget about the earthquake, they wanted to cheat themselves with lies about it never having happened. They never looked up at the cranes and they cursed the plasticine city. They wanted to get on with their lives, they wanted to forget us.
And they were probably right. It was probably time for the city to die. Jonas said we must forget it, that it had made us ill and that, until we’d forgotten it, we would not recover. Irva and I moved back into Grandfather’s house in Pult Street. Irva didn’t say very much. After we’d been there a few days she never mentioned the city again.
ABOUT THE ACTUAL city, they fixed the Central Post Office. They put Corinthian pillars at the front, taken from another building that had been more completely ruined, they put metal counters inside. It barely resembled our old post office at all, but at least the old steps were still there. What a confusion the postal service was in in those days. Which address exists, which doesn’t? Postmen, people who before had known their individual parts of the city so well, would come back asking where such and such a street was, they couldn’t find it anywhere. A new postmaster came from a nearby town. He was a man who had no understanding or love for Entralla, to him it was always the mound of rubble the earthquake had made of it.
I was frequently confused about the city. I’d stop still in the street sometimes, just stalled there, looking about, not really knowing where I was going. Nobody recognised me as I wandered Entralla, I would have to have been with Irva to be recognised. There is nothing particularly exceptional about a twin alone without her sister, even if she does have a North sign upon her forehead, or a map hidden beneath her clothes.
So we just stayed in Grandfather’s house mostly. Jonas did try to get us to come with him and he did look after us well, and occasionally set Irva talking again, but we couldn’t find the energy to go anywhere anymore, nor barely to look out of the window, not when everything out there was such a mess, not when we recognised so little of it, not when it made no sense. Endless days, surviving on Grandfather’s money and Jonas’s rent, days without purpose. And always we felt so tired.
We would never have survived without Jonas. He was always there, holding our hands, brushing our hair, cleaning up after us. He even bought plasticine for Irva when she asked for it again.
I returned to my old vague dreams of travelling and began to spend hours in Grandfather’s bathroom flopped naked in front of the mirror. I talked again of other countries and other faraway customs. Sometimes Irva would let me walk her up and down the street, once Jonas even carried her piggyback all the way up Prospect Hill, from the fortress she looked out but she didn’t seem to see anything.
And then she started building miniature 27 Veber Streets.
27 VEBER STREETS. One after the other. When we told her it was time to eat she’d shuffle into the kitchen, shovel the meal down her, mutter, ‘Thank you’, and as quickly as she could, shuffle out again. I saw her on so many occasions staring so seriously at those models of 27 Veber Street, as if she were wondering how to get inside. Jonas and I took her to Veber Street once, wondering if that would help. I do not know whether it was because our home was boarded