Alva and Irva - Edward Carey [93]
Then followed all the fuss; the photographers and journalists’ visits to the city, the public’s increasing demand that they should be allowed to see it too. Entralla was growing obsessed with its history of Alva and Irva. The photographic negative from which the posters of the twins had been made was eventually found, and more posters were printed. People began to buy plasticine, more and more. The Alva and Irva Museum opened in Pult Street. But it was decided that at all costs the miniature city must be preserved from too much disturbance. To appease the public, Lubatkin’s Tower was carefully cut from the city and a cast was taken of it and from the cast many plastic fortresses were made, which were placed beneath small transparent plastic domes, and the domes were filled with liquid and small white plastic flakes. Plastic fortresses, souvenirs of our city. Five thousand were made. Five thousand were sold. A further ten thousand were made. When these too were quickly purchased, more and more were made, until the whole of Entralla became saturated with these miniature fortresses, and in fact today you will be hard-pressed not to find them in almost every newsagent and gift shop throughout the city. You can inflict snowstorms on them, tiny blizzards, diminutive earthquakes even. But still the craving for plasticine did not die out. (Oh little city, with your peculiar obsession!, a whole city’s population with fingers smelling of plasticine; but then perhaps it is not really so extraordinary, not if you consider the Tulip Fever of Amsterdam.) In the end it was decided that the Museum of Entralla should house the miniature city. The museum was still being rebuilt then after considerable damage from the earthquake. Work was stopped. A special gallery was designed with a special climate that might preserve the city. Work resumed.
SOME GOVERNMENT people believe that this history, which has become part of the folklore of Entralla, might help the limited tourist industry of our city. And so the decision to publish this local legend was approved, funds were provided for my translation of Alva’s autobiography—discovered in a neat stack in her late grandfather’s study. A statue was commissioned from our leading sculptor, Conrad Brack, son of the late Constantin, to be placed in Onne Square, just by the church there. It is hoped in time that this statue will be remembered and visited as much as that of the Manneken Pis of Brussels or of the Lille Havfrue of Copenhagen. People who are not from our city might wonder when they see this sculpture if the twins are our version of the more famous twins Romulus and Remus from the city of Rome in Italy. Let them. (Throughout this book photographs of the memorial sculpture have been displayed; particularly of the buildings at the twins’ feet—based on the actual buildings of the plasticine city to be found in the Art Museum of Entralla. Mr Brack has chosen to depict Alva looking upwards holding a miniature Central Train Station and Irva looking downwards holding a miniature 27 Veber Street.)
As I finish writing this book, I have optimistic fancies of seeing our city streets filled with many foreign visitors each holding a copy of Alva & Irva: The Twins Who Saved a City. And some of those streets, if you look carefully enough, still have scratched in their corners, ‘A & I’.
AS I MENTIONED once before, I do