Saddle the Wind (66 page)

Caught up among the stampeding hordes, she and Alfredo continued on their dash towards the sea, very soon leaving the ruined houses behind and emerging onto the seafront. There the magnificent row of uniform palaces with their great soaring columns was now only a façade; behind their standing faces there lay only ruin.

Alfredo was gasping for breath as he came to a stop, while Adriana clung to him, wailing. All about them people were pouring onto the docks, running from every direction, all of them terrified of remaining in the area of the buildings in case there should be further shocks.

‘We – we’ll be safe here,’ Alfredo gasped.

Blanche, also gasping for breath, nodded. Before them lay the sea, the Messina Straits, but like no sea that she had ever seen before. Now beneath the dark sky she could see it heaving and dipping while on its surface the
moored boats and anchored ships were tossed about like tethered corks. Instinctively she stepped back and, turning; looked back at the ruined city behind them. Most of it had already collapsed, while here and there on the seafront, as far as she could see along what remained of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, fires were breaking out.

Alfredo’s voice came, breathless, staccato:

‘Forgive me, Blanche. For everything.’

She turned to him. He stood gazing intently at her over Adriana’s head.

‘
Please
…’ he said.

‘Yes – yes …’

He nodded, then: ‘It wasn’t true, was it?’

‘What … ?’

‘– About Adriana – and me. You said that I was – was not –’

She broke in quickly: ‘No – it was a lie. I – I wanted to hurt you. I’m sorry.’

‘I thought so,’ he said, and he smiled, but in spite of his smile Blanche could see in his eyes that he knew she had spoken the truth.

The very next moment she heard him cry out in awe and horror, ‘Dear God!’ – and turning back she followed his gaze and saw far out on the sea a wall of water rushing towards them. In the same moment she realized that most of the other people on the docks were unaware of it; nearly all of them were standing with their backs to the sea while they gazed at the ruins of the city.

‘
Quick!
’

Alfredo turned and, with Adriana held tight in his arms, began to run from the sea front. In seconds Blanche was with him as he dashed towards the façades of the ruined palaces. Reaching the nearest one he ran
between the cracked columns and in through an open doorway. Beyond it the rest of the once-magnificent building lay in total ruin, a mass of plaster and broken stone.

Alfredo did not hesitate. Climbing over the heaps of debris he struggled towards the broken remains of a once grand and elegant staircase that still reared a few feet above the wreckage. Gasping for breath from his exertion he struggled through the dust and rubble and, reaching up, thrust Adriana onto the stair above him where still clung some of the carved stone balusters and the remains of the sweeping marble rail.

‘Hold on!’ he ordered her. ‘Hold on!’

He turned and grabbed at Blanche’s arm, pulled her roughly towards him and then half-pushed, half-lifted her up onto the step where Adriana knelt holding on. Scrabbling up behind the child – there was only just enough room for her – Blanche knelt at her back, her arms reaching out on either side of her, clutching at the supports.

Alfredo had no chance to get up beside them. Even as Blanche’s hands closed around the stone balusters the wall of water came roaring onto the shore. Through the open spaces in the building’s façade Blanche saw in the dim light hundreds of people running before the wave, their mouths opening in cries of terror, cries drowned by the roar of the water and the splintering and cracking of timber as boats were picked up from the water and hurled forward on the crest of the wave.

With Adriana held fast in the circle of her arms Blanche braced herself and held on. And then the wave, over thirty feet high, came roaring over the quays and was upon them.

The wall of water struck the remains of the palaces. Some gave beneath the force, the columns and the façades cracking, toppling back to fall on the masonry
that had already been brought down by the quake. Other façades shuddered under the onslaught and miraculously held, the water rushing around them and through their open windows and doorways, carrying in its flood the remains of wrecked boats, tons of debris from the ruined customs sheds and other port buildings, and the bodies of the drowned men, women and children.

As the water struck the façade behind which Blanche, Adriana and Alfredo cowered, Blanche took a deep breath and closed her eyes against the onslaught. The wall held. And the water, ice cold, poured into the space behind the wall through every possible aperture. As it struck Blanche and the child, pounding over them, several feet above their heads, Blanche gripped the rails with all her might, at the same time pressing her arms together and her body forward, imprisoning Adriana within the rigid circle of her arms.

Head well down, eyes shut tight against the force that threatened at every moment to tear her hands from their grip, she felt as if the rolling wave of water would never come to an end. She could not breathe, and her whole body was buffeted by the debris that was carried on the current. After what seemed an age (but was in fact only seconds) when she felt that she could hold out no longer, the power of the water slowed, and changed direction. Then, its pace increasing again, it began to run back to the sea. And this time Blanche felt the strength of the current at her back, pressing her and Adriana against the banister, threatening to sweep them both away and into the sea.

At last, feeling the level of the water running lower, Blanche opened her eyes and her mouth and breathed again. The water was below the level of her feet, and draining away, the last of it running back through the openings in the façade of the ruined building. To her
right floated the body of a child, a little boy, his night-shirt drifting behind him as he slowly turned in the current. She watched as he floated out through the wide, paneless window. The body of a young woman came floating by, naked to the waist, and came to rest against a pile of rubble that lay against the inner wall of the façade. It remained there, caught. Blanche shifted her gaze, eased herself back from Adriana’s body and looked down at her. Adriana was crying. But she was safe. Turning, Blanche looked at the spot where Alfredo had been standing. He was no longer there.

When Marianne opened her dust-clogged eyes she did not at first realize what had happened. Then memory returned. She coughed, feeling that she would choke on the thick dust that seemed to fill her mouth and nose and lungs.

All around her there seemed to be darkness, though further away she could see the glow of flames. She realized that she was half-covered with bricks and pieces of broken plaster. Her head hurt and there was pain in her shoulder. From all around she could hear the sounds of wailing and weeping. She opened her mouth to call out for Gentry, but then recalled that he had left the house. Further recollection came back to her and she called out ‘Lisa?’ several times but there was no answer. After a while she kept silent and just lay there, waiting for daylight to come, the air all around her filled with the continuing sounds of crying voices and the occasional crash as the standing remains of buildings toppled and fell. Sometimes the surface on which she was lying trembled as the earth was shaken by further tremors.
It’s the end of the world
, a voice in her head kept repeating.
It’s the end of the world
.

*

Gentry’s left arm hung useless at his side, the humerus broken just above the elbow in his plunge from the carriage. Also in the fall he had wrenched his right leg. He had to move, though; he had no choice.

After picking himself up he had stood in a daze, unable to fully comprehend the reality of what had happened.
There’s been an earthquake
, he said to himself, the realization coming through the fog of his pain and his dulled senses.

He looked around him. The only light on the scene came from a fire that had taken hold nearby and was beginning to blaze in the ruins of a fallen building. Just yards from where he stood the crushed remains of the carriage were visible above the rim of the gaping fissure that had split the piazza. From all around him came the screams and moans of people in agony, people who cried out over and over for help. No vision of hell had ever prepared him for this.

After he had stood there helplessly for a few moments he told himself that he must get back home. Marianne would need him.

As he started painfully away he suddenly remembered that he had been on his way to meet Blanche. He came to a halt. She might be close by – perhaps even in the piazza. He opened his mouth and called out: ‘Blanche … Blanche,’ but his voice was lost amid the continuing ragged chorus of cries and screams that rang all about him. There was no knowing where she might be. She and Adriana might still have been at the house when the shock came … He started off again. The Via Imera was on his way to the Via Gabriele …

Making his painful way by the occasional light from burning fires was a continuation of the nightmare. Once out of the piazza he found that the surrounding streets were almost totally impassable. There was not a square
foot of pavement or roadway that was not covered by dense rubble. Where rows of tall houses had once stood facing each other across the narrow streets there now lay only piles of ruins. In many cases the buildings had been completely razed and lay as pyramids of wreckage, while here and there the shells of buildings still stood, some of their floors intact.

Skirting the fragile walls that still remained upright, he slowly, painfully picked his way along, climbing over shattered beams, slabs of stone and piles of bricks and plaster. His broken arm throbbing, his wrenched knee crying out in protest against the effort of his exertion, he fought his way forward, clambering over smashed armchairs, sofas, chests, ovens – the wrecked remains of the lives of so many, and all the while as he struggled along the cries of the desperate, the injured and the dying continued to rend the air. The voices came from all around him, from before and behind, and from left and from right; they came from above him, from people stranded high up in the remains of their houses and from below, from those who lay buried beneath his feet.

By the time he reached the place that had been the Via Imera it was daylight. The house – in fact the whole row of houses – had been completely demolished. Only the odd broken walls here and there showed where one house had been divided from its neighbour. For the rest it was one long, uneven hill of wreckage. Standing before the pile of ruins that had once been Blanche’s home, he looked at it and knew that no one caught inside could have survived such destruction.

As the creeping light of dawn came Marianne found that she was lying on the floor, half propped against a wall – one of only two walls remaining. The others had gone, fallen away. In the burgeoning light she looked
out over the rubble-strewn carpet to open air, air grey with a lowering cloud of smoke and dust, and saw the devastation before her. Gone were the streets of tall houses, theatres, palaces and civic buildings. As far as she could see, in whichever direction she moved her disbelieving gaze, there was nothing left of the city but piles of rubble.

Closer at hand, down below in the ruined streets, she could see people moving about, crawling, limping, staggering, dragging themselves from the wreckage or lying in it, partly buried in the debris, unable to pull themselves free. And all the while the air was filled with their screaming and sobbing and wailing.

A sighing groan from her left brought her head around and she saw movement among the rubble a few yards away.

‘Lisa …’

Coughing, choking on the dust that hung in the air, Marianne pushed aside some of the bricks and plaster that lay upon her and moved towards the young girl. Lisa was sitting up, groaning. Lifting the girl’s head Marianne saw that her face was almost black with dust, while bits of plaster, brick and stone lay thick in her hair. She could see traces of blood on her face, her hands.

‘Lisa – are you all right?’

She put her arms around her and spoke her name again. Lisa did not reply; she seemed stunned. After a while she bent her head and began to weep, the crying of a child. Marianne drew her closer, drawing her head down onto her own shoulder, trying to comfort her.

Releasing her after a few moments, Marianne carefully got to her feet, as she did so the brick- and plaster-dust falling from her in a cloudy shower. The door of the room – that door that had jammed and prevented their escape – was now open and hanging crazily on its
broken hinges. She moved unsteadily to it and looked through into the bedroom beyond. It remained, though with its rear and side walls torn away, leaving it open to the cold morning air. The bed remained too, and most of the rest of the furniture – except for the huge wardrobe. Having once stood against the rear wall it had, along with the wall, fallen with the rest of the house. The bed and the remaining furniture were covered in rubble and dust, and looking up Marianne saw that only part of the ceiling remained. Through the gap she saw that part of the upper house still stood, two walls at right-angles, cracked and split and leaning inward, still supporting part of the roof. For how much longer it would all remain so, she had no idea.

Treading carefully, she stepped through the bedroom to the door leading to the landing and the stairs – only to find that the stairs were no longer there. At the end of the landing the floor had sheared away in a tattered edge of broken timber and torn carpet, and where the stairs had been there was now only an abyss, a hollow well that plunged down into the ruins below.

Looking up she saw that the stairs ended abruptly some yards above her, just below the floor of the upper landing. Something dripped onto her hand, like rain – but then she saw that it was red in colour. Standing back slightly, she saw through the gap in the ceiling the fabric of a dress, a bare arm steadily dripping blood. She thought at first that it was one of the other maids, Maria or Stella, but then she saw that it was the cook, Anunziata. She called the woman’s name, at the same time knowing there would be no reply. She turned and moved unsteadily back to the dressing room.