Alva and Irva (2 page)

The publication of this story, in English, is timed to coincide with the unveiling of a statue, in one of our many city squares, of the dead woman from the trolley bus and of her sister. At their feet, also to be sculpted in clay and cast in bronze, will be a model in miniature of the central portion of Entralla, that portion which holds our most significant pieces of architecture.

So soon, when our precious foreigners come to visit they will see this new statue and wonder if these two young women, Alva and Irva, were Entralla’s version of the more famous twins Romulus and Remus, founders of the city of Rome, capital of Italy. We would
smile at this suggestion, but, without commenting directly on it, steer the foreigners—or perhaps I should say foreigner, it is best not to be too optimistic—in the direction of the university bookshop where a history of the twins—written principally by Alva, the eldest of the twins (but with added interjections by myself, which will always incidentally appear in italic type)—can be found, in English, at a very reasonable price.

For the convenience of our foreign visitors—most of whom, it has been noticed, stay in Entralla for a mere twenty-four hours (some for considerably less)—breaks have been included in this volume, labelled Interludes, one for morning coffee, one for lunch, one for supper—which have been listed in chronological order for the sake of neatness, but can of course be taken whenever required. Please note that at some restaurants and cafés a reduction of 10 per cent will be given to customers carrying this book. However, should the visitor have longer than one day in which to enjoy the various entertainments Entralla has to offer, please feel free to read this book at whatever pace seems attractive. So welcome. Welcome indeed.

The Central Post Office

T
HE OLDER BUILDINGS
on Napoleon Street are like parents to the newer ones. Parents are the beginning, without our parents where would we be? We may not like to think of them in the carnal act, but surely they were at it. Otherwise we should not have happened. Their energy, their youthful exchanges, created us. Before my sister Irva and I there were Dallia and Linas.

We like to think our parents are as vital as buildings to the existence of Entralla. Everybody should be permanently reminded of them. There should be a big sign, just so everyone can know, ‘On this step Dallia and Linas made love.’ For their energies one night on the top step of Central Post Office was the essential first act in our lives. It was not merely the quiet grunting of two employees of the post office—for so Mother and Father were—but the call of something far grander and more significant. How can I explain the magnitude of their physical act? I’m not sure. But now, after a few moments thought, perhaps I have it. Down Napoleon Street is Cathedral Square, and in the square, as well as the cathedral, are two other buildings: the bell tower and the baptistry. The bell tower, and there’s nothing exceptional in this, is tall and thin. The baptistry, and this is unexceptional news too, is short and fat. I think of Father and Mother. I think of the bell tower and the baptistry.

The bell tower looks down and loves the squat baptistry, the baptistry looks up and loves the beanpole bell tower. Now let me cast these buildings in the forthcoming event. Let me label the bell tower Linas-father, for if he was a building rather than a person he would indeed have been a tall, gangly type of structure. And let me label the baptistry Dallia-mother, for were she to be built out of limestone, she too would be only one storey in height, and she too would spread herself out in a horizontal fashion. So now, lower the light of day into a more romantic atmosphere, turn on the moon, and see the beginnings of us, of Alva and of Irva. Hear a faint rumbling as the bell tower pulls himself from his foundations in
Cathedral Square, and lays himself down on top of the baptistry. And as the city vibrates with this act of love, to the happy groans of the bell tower and the baptistry: we begin. That’s how it should have been marked, not by a little panting from two adolescents on the top entrance step of a building, but by the loud ecstatic bellowing of great architecture as it bangs away, building against building.

Down Napoleon Street, all those years ago, before the Benetton shop arrived, before the electric green crosses of the pharmacies flashed on and off, perhaps even before the advent of colour, yes, years ago when the world was black and white, was a time before Irva and me, a time when our father met our mother.

F
ATHER’S WAS
not a happy beginning. Weak and dreamy orphan Linas Dapps, so the records state, was found one morning in the porch of the convent of Saint Inga on the outskirts of the city—in exactly the same manner as fifty or so other babies are found each year. The nun who found the baby named him Linas because Linas had been the name of her lover, who had loved her and spurned her but whom she had continued to love and who was the reason for her voluntary incarceration. She also named him Dapps, which of course is our name too; and also many other people’s name. Dapps is the most common surname in our country, it’s like Smith in Britain, Müller in Germany, Popescu in Romania, Suzuki in Japan. This nun must have wanted Father to fit in, to be anonymous in a crowd, to be just another person, just another Dapps. And so with these two names Linas Dapps, our father (long dead sadly), was sent out into the world. And it was these two names—signifying an earnest, nervous and tall man with a large head—that the postmaster was obliged, by certain civic authorities, to employ in the post office.

D
ALLIA
G
RETT
, that’s Mother, worked behind post office counter number twelve. She was very young to work behind a counter, only nearing the end of her sixteenth year, and this made her early life at work somewhat strained. Some of the other workers were jealous and made unconvincing attempts to hide their jealousy. This meant that Mother had no friends at work and loathed the long day’s toil
there. She had been awarded this job, as she was acutely aware, not by merit but simply because her father, our grandfather (sadly he’s no longer either), was the postmaster of our city and had decided, without consulting his daughter, that as soon as he could get away with it he would employ her in the post office. Grandfather was a frugal man and had determined, without consulting his wife, our grandmother (a bit part if ever there was one, long-long ago snuffed out), that he would have only one child. He was sure in his mind that his progeny would be male and would in turn become the next postmaster, and the moment Grandmother was confirmed pregnant he immediately ceased his nocturnal pokings. But fate is cruel, Grandmother’s efforts at bringing a life into this world proved too much for her (goodbye, Grandmother, sorry I never knew you), and it was with such a sad heart that Grandfather lifted the wriggling female lump from his stationary wife’s bedside in the hospital ward. He peeked between the tiny, plump legs. He sighed. No, there could be no confusion. A little slit. A girl.

But Grandfather soon cheered up (always an onwards-onwards sort of man our grandfather): an idea had come to him, and the idea made him smile. Grandfather was not a man of many ideas, and generally he did not trust such extravagances, but this idea, it seemed to him, was a good one. His daughter would be employed, at the earliest possible opportunity, in the post office, and once inside the post office he was sure that this daughter of his would trap a sensible young man and that sensible young man would be sure to marry his daughter and become in time our city’s next postmaster. A son-in-law as postmaster was an acceptable compromise. That was the idea, and he was so pleased with it that it had scarcely altered when he sent his daughter to work at the age of sixteen, with a smile on his face. But Grandfather didn’t notice, as the sixteen years crept slowly by, that no one was going to put a hot iron in the fire in order to brand Mother beautiful. Mother had uneven teeth, a large mole on her right cheek and freckles all over her face. The mole was roughly circular and Grandfather used often to comment that it was by some surely meaningful coincidence the exact shape of our city. In fact, its shape bore a remarkable similarity to that of the old
city of Culemborg in the Netherlands, even though Culemborg is a city Mother never once visited.

M
OTHER WORKED
behind a post office counter, Father delivered letters, the post office was where they met and where they fell in love. I can boast no beautiful backdrop to their courtship; I will not pretend that the Central Post Office is or was in any way comparable to the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy, where the great Dante fell in love with Beatrice. Rather, our post office was a large dusty hall, which no matter how often its floor was swept and mopped always somehow remained dusty, and remains dusty to this day. There were twelve counters—today there are thirty-two—and back then they were made of wood; today they are of metal and have glass divides between the office and hall. But customers wishing to thump a post office assistant in the old times could feel free to do so without any let or hindrance. And this, in fact, did occasionally happen.

Grandfather considered the army of his employees, wondering which one his daughter would trap. Would it be Tomas, a fine boy but a little too headstrong? Or would it be Kurt, a bit fat perhaps, but undeniably a good sort? Or maybe Victor, serious and proud and never one to waste a moment of the post office’s time? ‘Dallia and Victor!,’ Grandfather shrieked to himself in his bath one night, spilling the water over the sides. That was it, it was certain to be Victor. And in these delightful contemplations he never once considered the weak and dreamy orphan Linas.

But his daughter made little impression on either Tomas or Kurt. And Victor’s mind was far too occupied ever to consider girls or courting; he was simply too busy, and if the female form did ever enter his consciousness it was only when illustrations of women appeared on stamps, and in these instances he simply distorted their image with the aid of the post office franking machine and they were immediately forgotten.

O
N THE HISTORIC DAY
Linas Dapps, our tall father, approached desk twelve, where our mother, our short and squat mother, worked, it was not love that was in his mind, but stamps. Some men love
power, some men love women, some men love boys, some men love cars, some men love firearms, some men love matchstick buildings; well, Father was one of those men who love stamps, a small breed admittedly but a breed nevertheless. On the day he approached Mother he was concerned only to glimpse the new set of stamps that had just been issued and he knew that he would not be welcomed at any of the other counters. During his one and a half years at the post office he had slowly worked his way from counter one to counter twelve, bothering each of the workers in turn, pleading with them to show him a set of new stamps.

At first the employees behind the counters had tolerated him, even laughed at his demands—particularly Marta Stroud of number three, an unfortunate woman with a disease called psoriasis. No one else in the post office showed such enthusiasm for stamps. But after a time the yearning of this orphan boy had become tiring to them. They shunned him, they pushed him away, they complained that they were busy, that he would see the stamps in due course on his delivery rounds. This was true—soon Father would have as much time as he desired to linger over each new stamp as he went about the city, from house to house. But those stamps, Father would protest, had been franked; they were no longer the pure virgin stamps that could be found at the post office counters. Oh, he would sigh, there was something magical about those unused stamps arranged neatly in blocks, still with their serrated edges untorn and their glue unlicked. They were the nearest thing, he believed, to innocence. Father absolutely had to see the stamps on the first day of their issue, he had to be by them when they were first shown to the world, he had to make their acquaintance before the ink of the franking machines sullied them. But these post office clerks were harsh, principled people.

So Father came to Mother, and Mother did not send him away. He asked her politely if he might view the new set of stamps, and she, innocently, and despite the chuckling that could clearly be heard from all the other counters—particularly from Marta Stroud at number three—allowed him. Father bowed his large head over the new stamps, so that his nose was just millimetres from their surface;
he carefully studied the complete pages of stamps one by one, with his eyes and with his fingers, sighing and purring all the while.