Saddle the Wind (67 page)

‘Lisa …’ She bent over the girl who sat there, moaning, making little crying sounds. ‘Lisa, we must try to get down.’

The girl looked at her dumbly, making no reply. Marianne repeated her words, but there was no response. Irritated, impatient, she spoke more sharply and then, taking the girl by the shoulders, shook her. ‘
Lisa
– listen to me. We have to get down from here. Do you understand?’

Lisa looked vacantly at her and Marianne gave her another shake. ‘We’ve got to get down! We must! Do you understand me?’ She shook her again and then, raising her hand, sharply slapped her cheeks. Lisa shuddered, sucking in her breath and jerking her head back from the small, sharp pains. Now, though, there was something approaching comprehension in her eyes. She gazed around her in horror and then came back to focus on Marianne.

‘Do you understand?’ Marianne asked her again. ‘We’ve got to get down before the rest of the house falls. You understand?’

‘Yes …’ Lisa nodded. ‘Yes …’

‘
Now
. We’ve got to get down
now
.’

‘Yes.’

Rising again, moving away, Marianne made her way carefully from the dressing room and through the bedroom to the edge of the sheared-off floor that looked out onto what had once been the Via Gabriele. There were people about, some trying to pull others from the ruins while others limped and staggered by; some just sat looking dazedly into space. She called out to them. ‘Help us,’ she cried out. ‘We are trapped. We can’t get down.’ But those who heard her cries merely looked up at her with blank looks in their eyes, and in the moment that they looked away again she was already forgotten.

As she gazed desperately around her the tottering remains of a building in the next street fell with a crash. Similar sounds were coming at intervals from every
direction. It would not be long, she was sure, before the remains of the house in which she stood fell also.

‘Lisa – come here! Quickly!’ As she called to the maid she was already bending to the bed, tearing at the covers, and by the time Lisa had appeared in the doorway the sheets had been torn from the bed. ‘Quickly,’ Marianne said to her, ‘we must tear the sheets to make a rope.’

Lisa shook her head. ‘We can’t,’ she said. ‘It’s all finished.’

Marianne rounded on her angrily. ‘It’s not impossible, and it’s not all finished. We’re
alive
. We can get down if we try.’ Although she gave Lisa the impression of strength she felt like weeping; she wanted Gentry there to take care of everything, to make everything all right. She didn’t know where he was, though, and there was only herself and Lisa. ‘Come and help me!’ she shouted. ‘At
once
!’

Lisa came to her side and they quickly set to work. First biting at the linen, they tore the sheets and then tied the pieces tightly together. When they had finished Marianne bent to the bed and tied one end of the long makeshift rope securely around one of the legs. ‘It will hold our weight easily enough,’ she said, ‘and it’s not that far down.’

Gentle persuasion did not work with Lisa and it took stern words before the girl eventually sat on the rubble-strewn floor and inched her way to the edge. Then, very much afraid, she gripped the sheet-rope and slowly, slowly, her feet finding support where they could on the shattered dividing wall, began to lower herself down.

Marianne, watching from above, was terrified that the girl would fall, but after a few moments Lisa was safely down and standing in the rubble. At once Marianne began to draw up the rope.

As she did so she felt the floor quiver beneath her
feet as a tremor shook the earth. The quake was met by frightened cries from those about her while from across the street came a crack and crash as the surviving walls of another wrecked house fell in a cloud of dust and rubble. Almost in the same moment there came from above her a loud crack like the report of a gun. It was followed in a split second by a further crash as a great piece of one of the chimneys came crashing through the ceiling above her head and plunged onto the bed at her side. Under the impact the bed collapsed like a toy. In another moment the wall beside her was cracking, splitting, bellying, tilting inwards. A beam from somewhere above fell and hit the floor on the far side of the bed while a shower of plaster and brick fell in a heap beside the open door. The remaining part of the building was coming down around her head. There was no longer time to let herself down by means of the sheet-rope. Even as the realization went through her mind there came another deafening crash from above her head. With a cry she ran to the edge of the sheared-off floor and leapt off into space.

She hit the rubble below heavily and awkwardly and fell sideways into a well formed by fallen beams and collapsed masonry. Seconds later the remains of the house began to fall. Lisa, standing open-mouthed, saw Marianne lying there one moment; the next, in a thundering crash of bricks, beams, plaster and stone, the remaining walls and floors fell in. When the dust had cleared Lisa could see nothing there but the rubble.

When at last Blanche and Adriana left the shell of the wrecked palace daylight had come.

Emerging from the ruins Blanche stood and looked out to the Straits. Although the sea was calmer it was still turbulent. In the harbour floated hundreds upon hundreds of bodies – men, women and children, all drowned when the wave had swept them from the quays. Naked, half-naked, they lay in the water, moving with the swell of the waves. Blanche tore her eyes away, but there was no escaping the sight. The bodies of the crushed and the drowned lay all about her on the quays, too. Death was everywhere.

Adriana, standing at her side in the thick mud left by the wave, was crying softly, a low, mournful little wailing sound. Blanche bent to her and quickly stripped her of her soaking wet clothes. Then, wrapping her for the moment in her own wet, wrung-out coat, she wrung the water from Adriana’s clothing as well as she could and then dressed her in them again. At least now they would dry more quickly.

‘Come,’ she said. Taking the child’s hand she led her away from the sea, towards the ruined town.

And all of a sudden Blanche was catching at Adriana’s hand more tightly, drawing her towards her. Adriana made no protest, and Blanche turned their steps, leading them along a different route, away from the clutch of bedraggled bodies that lay in the mud of the ruins, away
from the body of Alfredo as he lay there, grotesquely twisted in death, eyes half open as if casually contemplating the sky.

Walking on, they felt further tremors of the earth. It appeared that there were no longer any buildings left intact to fall, but the tremors caused the standing remains of some already wrecked buildings to totter and collapse into the rubble-strewn streets. The extent of the mud showed that the water had gone many yards inland, and still there were the bodies, the dead and the dying. In whichever direction Blanche looked she could see ruins burning, flames and smoke leaping into the air. Everywhere was ruin and devastation. An old woman came limping along. ‘Messina is finished,’ she muttered as she slowly passed by. Blanche could hear her voice continuing into the distance: ‘Messina is finished …’

Blanche and Adriana walked on. If anyone had asked Blanche where they were going she could not have answered with any certainty. The only thing she knew was that they could not remain still. Somewhere in the city were Gentry and Marianne. Perhaps she could find them. Where were they, though? Even when the city had been whole she had not known her way about its streets. Now that the whole place was nothing but rubble she had no real idea of where she was. She had a vague idea of the direction in which lay the Via Gabriele, but it was doubtful that Gentry would be there. Surely by the time the quake had come he would already have left to meet her. She must keep going; it was the only thing to do.

As she walked on through the mud and the debris a woman, wearing a torn nightdress, came to her, clutching at her sleeve.

‘I’ve lost my son,’ she said. ‘Help me find him, my Paolo.’

Immediately she had spoken she turned and walked quickly away, stopping in front of a man who sat, head bowed, in front of the ruins of a house. She tugged at the man’s arm. He did not respond and after a few moments she gave up and went on her way.

A man came by carrying a young girl in his arms, weeping as he walked, the girl’s head lolling back. A middle-aged woman knelt near a pile of ruins while she stretched out her arms hurling curses at the sky. ‘There is no God,’ she cried out; ‘there is no God.’ As they passed the ruins of a house Blanche’s eye was attracted to a dark shape and she saw a crow swoop down to the body of a young man who lay with only his head and shoulders above the wreckage. He was obviously dead. She saw the crow alight on a stone in front of the dead face, and in one swift, easy movement the crow’s head drew back and darted forward, sinking into the eyesocket of the corpse. With a little cry of horror Blanche closed her eyes and turned away. And all the time she could hear the sounds of the groaning and wailing, and the cries for help, many of them muffled and distant, coming from below the surface of the ruins, from those who lay trapped beneath them.

‘There’s nothing left,’ a man observed to her with a strange, dazed smile on his face as she walked past him. Sadly she shook her head in agreement. Others called out to her as she went by. One chorus of voices came from above her head, and looking up she saw a little group of people standing precariously on a narrow balcony of a ruined hotel, The Trinacria. Help us, they called down to her; they were trapped; there were no stairs. What could she do, she asked herself. She could do nothing. Holding Adriana’s hand more tightly she walked on.

After a time Blanche found herself on the Via Imera,
standing beside Adriana and gazing at what had once been their home. A section of the lower part of the front wall was still standing, to a height of about eight feet, part of its window frame still in place. On the left side a curtain moved in the breeze. In the tangled wreckage of the rubble Blanche could make out the remains of a picture that had hung on the wall of the dining salon.

‘Wait here,’ she said, letting go Adriana’s hand. But Adriana snatched at her hand again, holding on, crying out in a mournful, keening sound.

‘Only for a moment, darling,’ Blanche said. ‘And I won’t leave your sight.’

Pulling her hand from the child’s grasp she climbed up over the heap of rubble, casting her eyes about her and calling out: ‘Anna… Anita. Anna… Anita. Anna … Anita…’

There was no response. Standing quite still in the midst of the ruins Blanche listened for the voices of the maid and the cook. There was nothing. After a moment she called out:

‘Edgardo … ?’

No answer. After a few seconds she turned and moved back to where Adriana waited, took her hand and led her away again.

The previous day Blanche and Adriana would have been able to walk the distance between the Via Imera and the Via Gabriele in less than half an hour. Now Blanche thought they would never come to the end of their journey. Since her arrival in the city only days before she had seen its streets busy with traffic of all kinds – not only its people, but its vehicles – trams, horse-drawn cabs, mule- and goat-carts, motor cars. Every sign of transport had gone now. Roads and vehicles had been destroyed, and buried under the ruins. Now there was only one way to move, by foot. And
even this means of travel was fraught with difficulty and peril. Not only was there danger from overhead with the ever-present risk of collapsing buildings, but underfoot the way was also full of danger. Like everyone else in the ruined city, Blanche and Adriana found that in order to go anywhere they had to pick their way carefully and laboriously through acre upon acre of wreckage, to climb one hill of debris after another.

Blanche came upon the remains of the Duomo without at first being aware of what it was. And then she realized. The magnificent cathedral lay in ruins. The great granite columns, once part of Neptune’s Temple at Faro, and which Blanche had gazed at in awe, now lay shattered, covered in the debris of priceless mosaics, frescoes and cornices. Only one wall was still standing – that in the apse at the east end. And on it still the serene, mosaic figure of Christ remained, hand uplifted in blessing, as it had been for the past five hundred years; now, Blanche thought, a terrible irony among the ruins.

On the shattered steps of the cathedral stood a woman, beating her bare breast with one hand while she clutched a naked dead baby in the other and screamed her misery to the skies. Beyond her at the side of the piazza men and women worked pulling away the rubble, and as Blanche watched she saw them bring out a young girl of seventeen or eighteen, covered in blood and with her nightclothes hanging from her in shreds. There seemed no end to the suffering and the death and destruction, and suddenly, as if reaching the point where she could take no more, she sat down on a stone and buried her head in her arms.

In seconds, though, she lifted her head once more. She couldn’t give in to despair. She started to rise, and as she did so there came to her a voice, calling from some distance away.

‘Blanche – oh, Blanche … Thank God …!’

Turning her head she saw the figure of Gentry moving slowly and unsteadily towards her over the debris.

‘Gentry …!’

Blanche got quickly to her feet and hurried towards him. She could see that he was walking with difficulty, limping on his right leg, while his left arm hung at his side. They met and Gentry put his right arm about her and drew her to him. Feeling his touch, his strength, her own arms encircling him, her last resolve went and she burst into tears. Alfredo, she told him, was dead, killed by a great wave that had come onto the shore. Her head against Gentry’s shoulder she remained there, weeping.

He released her after a while and bent to Adriana and she came to him and he put his arm around her and pressed his begrimed face to her own.

‘Your arm –’ Blanche said as he straightened, and he nodded and told her briefly how he had come to injure himself. It must be set, he said: he knew how it had to be done, but he couldn’t manage it himself; she would have to do it for him.