Alva and Irva (24 page)
Authors: Edward Carey
Other people were in Veber Street by then trying to clear away the debris. He would not help them. He sat on an upright metal-framed plastic seat that had been flung from some house or other. The chair jiggled up and down beneath him. And then he saw
our little city, and then he saw us. And he shook his heavy way down the street, and then we learnt about Mother, who, before that moment, we had not even thought of once, and then we stopped laughing and Jonas Lutt passed his shaking onto us.
‘Mother!’ ‘Mother!’ ‘Mother!’ ‘Mother!’ ‘Mummy!’ ‘Mummy!’
T
HAT FIRST
night, we huddled and shook together in a makeshift home, not far from our old home, because Irva could not bear to leave the plasticine city. Jonas made this home for us from a canvas and old coats and jumpers. We sat on chairs which had once belonged to Miss Stott. Who could sleep, we wondered, with all that noise about the city, the great clatter of people saving other people? Seek out the sleepers, kick them awake, there should be no comfort, not until things begin to make sense again, because suddenly, within a few minutes, sense had been capsized, suddenly we lived in a nonsense city without electricity or water with thousands upon thousands of smashed homes and people, and we wondered: is this really our city? They should change all the names. Broken Street. Fallen Street. Bits and Pieces Street. Too Late for Help Street. No People People Street. Upside-down Square.
People called out into the night: ‘Where’s our home? Where has it gone to? Give us back our home.’ And I, close by our plasticine city, thought, ‘Here it is, here it is.’
O
N THE NINTH
day after the earthquake, we huddled around a radio, like the rest of surviving Entralla, to hear the wonderful news that even now a survivor had been found buried beneath the rubble of Trinity Square. A hospital porter named Alvy Phipps. That same day, when it was officially proclaimed that anyone left beneath the rubble must now be dead, we listened to a speech by Ambras Cetts—our acting mayor—which we would, in time, learn by heart.
‘It is the saddest, most savage, heart-gutting of a city that could ever be contemplated. So many of our people have lost their lives. We remaining will never be the same again. But we have no time to
lick our wounds, to comfort ourselves. We must forget for now all our very real tragedies and turn our minds to rebuilding at once. If there is rubble in our hearts, rubble that can never be cleared away by a million bulldozers, we must ignore it for now. In the next year alone I calculate that 2 million square metres will have to be built. There are around two thousand historic buildings in the earthquake zone, they must be rebuilt not torn down, we must resurrect our city even as we resurrect ourselves. I call on all the wealthy nations of the world, to be united in the one effort. To pull together with all your skills, to make Entralla rise again from its bloodied ground.’
I
N THOSE
humpbacked days, we became used to the people of Veber Street gathering around the plasticine city and, silently, watching it. Whilst all about them was destruction something was giving them a little hope. It was as if the model was capable of pulling back time, so that as they watched it, if only for an instant, they could see themselves believing that everything was all right still, that nothing had happened. ‘Don’t come too close!’ Irva always instructed, ‘Stay back now! Step back!’ They pointed here and there—‘Look the library isn’t burning,’ or, ‘Look the Opera House is still standing,’ or, and this from Jonas Lutt, ‘I can see the Central Post Office, I can see it how I wish to see it.’ Miniature things do move people.
The news of the plasticine city on Veber Street spread and soon people came from the neighbouring streets to view it. But amongst those people were some who were not so happy with our work, who crowded noisily around it, pointing too closely and said in loud, unhappy voices: ‘That’s not right, that shouldn’t be there, take it out, take it out!’ Why indeed should they stand quietly and regard upright buildings when their mother or father, wife or husband, son or daughter had been murdered inside such places? ‘The city,’ they said, ‘no longer looks like that, this plasticine city is full of lies.’ How they wished to smash the city with their bare fists, or feel it give way under their heavy boots; to pulp it even more than our city
had been pulped. They considered that they could place all their heartbreak and misery onto the plasticine city; the plasticine could have their agony, they didn’t want it. And some of those people pointing out various buildings that had been crushed or burnt or both, actually did lean forwards and seize them with their dusty hands, pulling the structures clear from the table, pinching them between thumbs and forefingers and replacing them in squashed and unrecognisable lumps. But they would not be happy with the removal of just one or two sacrificed locations, they began to get an appetite for crushing plasticine—anyone can do it, the substance gives such little resistance. They wanted our city to resemble yet another piece of the ugly and the broken; such things as we had at that time all over our city.
At first it was only Jonas and I who protected the city amid Irva’s howls. Then the people of Veber Street who had known us and had lived just by us for nearly thirty years, and had heard of Mother and Grandfather’s death, began to protect it too. They stood around the city, forming a barrier. Our neighbours said: ‘Come on now, they’re just children really, two girls who’ve never understood very much, it’s not their fault, and their mother’s just died, be reasonable, leave it alone, it’s a play thing, it’s all they have.’ But the others called back: ‘We’ve lost our mothers/fathers/children/friends too, that play thing offends us, we don’t like it, we want it gone.’ And the noises were getting louder and louder, the shrieks of the defenders, the shrieks of the attackers, and we were terrified that a riot would break out, for plasticine cannot stand up to riots. But it was because of this great noise that someone alerted the police, and the police did come and eventually dispersed the crowd. And it was perhaps because of those policemen that slowly the rest of the city began to hear of the plasticine replica.
Rumours of it spread about the smashed Entralla. Rumours whispered down tilted chimneys and through burst windows. Rumours scattered down every broken street and square. Rumours along Napoleon Street. Rumours up the Paulus Boulevard. Rumours
into the roofless cathedral swooping about it. Yes, these impossible rumours tumbled through every slanted doorway; into every twisted room; into every Entrallan that still moved. And some people said that it was a miracle; and others simply a story; and others still that it was a lie. And then, finally, someone must have told a priest called Father Hoppin.
14
LOST TREASURES OF ENTRALLA. THE CHEST OF DRAWERS OF JONAS LUTT. Jonas Lutt looked suspiciously at that chest of drawers so many times in the years following the earthquake, waiting for the malignant force to set it moving again, as if the fate of the city could be determined by the activity of a single bedroom object. Sometimes, waking after bad dreams, he would lurch for the bedside light to check whether the chest had begun to live again. It watched him sleeping on so many nights with an attitude quite out of keeping with objects of domestic usage. About ten years after the earthquake, he woke up once again to stare at the chest but this time he had had enough. He heaved the thing out of the bedroom and into the passage. The next morning he pulled out its drawers. He took it drawer by drawer and then finally its empty cage into the street and dismantled it with an axe, happily chopping the thing to splinters. And then he burnt it. And as he burnt it he considered that he was by this act ridding Entralla of any future calamities.
Supper
Tectonic House, Television Tower, Le Grand Lubatkin
Tectonic House, Napoleon Street 112.
Open 12:00-23:30, tel. 316 34 26;
Television Tower Restaurant, Bank Street 5–7.
Open 12:00-23:00, tel. 316 66 66;
Le Grand Lubatkin, Pijus Street 2.
Open 20:00–24:00, tel. 316 21 23.
For the final interlude of this tour our distinguished visitors have been given the opportunity to decide for themselves. There are many restaurants throughout Entralla, some catering to specific world cuisines for those foreign visitors of ours whose stomachs, unlike the rest of their bodies, are perhaps not prepared to travel. We have restaurants serving Italian, Thai, American, Chinese, Spanish, Polish, Japanese and Indian dishes, so that even in Entralla foreign stomachs of those nationalities
may be allowed to feel at home. However, I would like to recommend three restaurants which range across the spectrum of pricing from the extremely cheap to the monstrously expensive. These recommendations may of course be ignored, but all three of these eateries have been happy to offer a 10 per cent reduction for those people seen clutching, the perhaps by now slightly dog-eared,
Alva & Irva: The Twins Who Saved a City.
But whichever restaurant is chosen, or perhaps none at all-in which case there are various supermarkets for the self-caterer-I would like to take this opportunity to urge our visitors to enjoy a digestif or a final coffee at Café Louis on Market Square. It is the perfect
place
to end twenty-four hours in Entralla.
TECTONIC HOUSE, with its glass brick roof (repaired), used to be an indoor flower market, but the flowers, lacking water and buyers, faded and died during the earthquake period. The International Red Cross, people trained in misery, set up one of their many centres here. In this building names of the deceased were published, and also photographs of the nameless dead. Soon people arriving in their sorry states would be provided with water and coffee and food also, until, over time, the building became the cheap restaurant it is today and was renamed Tectonic House.
The walls of the ground-floor rooms of Tectonic House are decorated with a vast list of names, some fifteen thousand, skilfully painted in black, of those people who lost their lives in the earthquake. A few names, of the more influential citizens, are painted in red—for example, Rinas Holt, our former mayor; Constantin Brack, the famous sculptor; and Mircas Grett, postmaster general. Among this list of names in the less exceptional black it is possible to pick out Krina Stott, tailor; Kersty Plint, single parent; Artur, Clura, Piter, Prina Misons, toy shop owners and their progeny; and even post office workers Marta Stroud, Kurt Laudus, Victor Urdin and Dallia Dapps.
There is no menu, only one dish is available here at a time, generally
soup, served with our local black bread. But it is good wholesome soup and excellent strong-tasting bread. This is a subsidised restaurant and you will find your soup and bread will cost you roughly US$ 1.50. Backpackers extremely welcome.
TELEVISION TOWER, remarkably a survivor of the Great Entralla Earthquake. Few people frequent the Television Tower’s famous revolving restaurant for its food. It specialises in averagely priced fare (a typical meal costing around US$ 10–15), of which but little skill has gone into its preparation. Nor do people ascend the lift here for the excellence of the service found at the top. But despite the service, despite the food, this is a popular place; for Entrallans positively do visit the top of the Television Tower for the view. As their meal is consumed our people look down on Entralla and try to work out exactly where their homes fit in amongst that maze of buildings. At night, with Lubatkin’s Fortress floodlit, it is an extremely pleasant sight.
The proprietor of this restaurant has pointed out to me that since the Plasticine Galleries were opened in the Art Museum of Entralla, he has suffered a fall in customers.
LE GRAND LUBATKIN. Even with a 10 per cent reduction, the Grand Lubatkin restaurant is really only for our most well-heeled visitors. Subtly furnished, with exceptionally attentive service, only the elite of Entralla have been privileged enough to taste its culinary masterpieces: red pepper mousse with aubergine caviar, crab flan in a parsley emulsion, red mullet cooked with aniseed and homemade pasta, coddled eggs with asparagus, terrine of rabbit with stuffed artichokes. Reservations are generally necessary, and the restaurant is often booked up for months in advance, but every effort will be made to squeeze in visitors carrying
Alva & Irva: The Twins Who Saved a City,
but, to aid success, discreet donations to the maitre d’ are welcome and advised.
