The Dust Never Settles, page 35
The mountain watched us through the window – me lying, spilling open, Rupert searching for whatever it was he thought he could mine from me. I could sense the mountain’s disapproval. It derided me for capitulating. This little man? it seemed to say. THIS little man? It was breathing, and its exhalations were deep and resonant, rumbling like thunder, quaking the earth, juddering the bed, rattling the windows in their frames. The spotlights in the ceiling flickered on and off, on and off, and down in the street a car alarm wailed. (The next day I would wake to news that there had been a storm that felled trees, inundated train tracks: out in the street, wheelie bins crashed into car windows and roof tiles sliced through the air, leaving notches in the power cables.)
The mountain came so close that I could see its face, the ledges of its brows, the proud high arch of its nose, its broad angular jaw, the buzzards’ nests in the crags of its skin, the long black hair flowing down its back, towns built on its shoulders, huts in bright colours creeping down its arms and thighs. Up the cliff faces of its abdomen, green creepers. On its chest, lush fields of amancaes, and around its waist, a belt of hanging, jangling skeletons. Powerful shins and calves of rock, up and down which sea creatures scuttled and slid, shoals of anchoveta circling its kneecaps, limpets and mussels clinging to the ankles, its feet wet as if just dredged from the sea.
The mountain climbed in through the window and lumbered above us, rising monolithic behind Rupert, dwarfing him in its shadow. Rupert did not notice. The room was filled with the earthiness of its loam, rising petrol, the salty rottenness of sea and the warm, baking scent of hot sand. I reached up my hands and it pulled me up, dangling me like a rag doll from its fingertips, sliding me out from under Rupert’s thrusting, away from the creaking bed, from the apartment and its flickering lights, lifting me through the ceiling up into the night, high above the city, which crumbled away beneath its titan feet, cathedrals crushed to dust, bridges snapping like twigs. As it lifted me, I transformed, became enormous, unscalable. The dawn broke out of my mouth, my uvula a sun, rays of citrus light bursting from the gaps between my teeth – teeth of stone, colossal boulders. Stars nestled in my hair, falcons perched on the tips of my lashes. From every pore and follicle, a tree sprang; in every line of my skin was a valley where a river meandered, each a salamander beating its watery tail. Curling where my breasts should be were pumas the size of hillocks, gently growling as they slept. The mountain woke them, made them bare their teeth and roar.
The wamani took me out into the ocean, where we waded together, deeper and deeper. From its own hands, it fed me creatures of the deep – giant squid and sperm whales, which I popped with my tongue – and it smeared my lips with crystals of salt. As we lay back in the water, our bodies rising above the waves like new land masses, the wamani interlinked its fingers with mine, showed me my own hands, how the veins on my palms flowed with copper, with silver and gold, streams that flowed through my wrists and arms, along my torso, down my legs, lacing through my body in glittering threads. My heart was a knot of molten metals pumping. Out of the ocean, forgotten creatures were clambering out of the deep and onto my shores. I fell asleep with the waves beating against me, caressing, lapping, and the sea monsters clicking and moaning in my ear.
Now the little pink fish is a lobster curled against me, purring, nipping at me affectionately with its pincers. I stroke its crust, tickle its playful swimmerets, speak to it in baby language. Agoo, agoogoo. You are my sunshine. My only sunshine. Aroo. Aroorooroo.
The guests have returned. It is time to cut the cake, they say, and they drum the table with the butts of their forks. They sing – jovial, robust – to the tune of ‘The Death and Burial of the Invincible Marlborough’:
¡Queremos que partan la torta!
¡Queremos que partan la torta!
¡Queremos que partan la torta!
Si no, nos vamos de aquí.
It is a protest chant, defiant. They will not leave until their demands are met. The forks are enormous now – pitchforks, torches, blazing links. They have come to slay the beast. Or the cake. They want to kill the cakebeast, feast on its flesh. I am confused. The cake is not a cake, I want to tell them. It is the lobster, my lobster, held by force onto the table by many hands while it screams and Rupert stands above it with a carving knife ready to pierce and crack. A chorus of voices sings a lament, about a man who went to war and never came back, not for Easter or Christmas or Trinity Feast, qué dolor, qué dolor, qué pena, until he came home in a coffin and was buried with much pomp and wailing, mironton, mironton, mirontaine! Yes, Mambrú se fue a la guerra and we want a piece of cake. Above his tomb a little bird sings, chibirín, chibirín, chibirín, chin chin, pío pí pío pí pío pa.
Then let them eat cake, I say, but not my child, chibirín, chibirín, chibirín, chin chin, and I rise like a monster of old (do re mi, do re fa), scoop up the little pink fish in my arms and release the ants, yes, enormous ants I call up from the earth and they arrive with their armour, trampling the place underfoot as they march. The guests all scatter, their tiny feet pitter-pattering away.
She should not have done that.
They will return.
Force for force.
And they are right. The birds sense it first and flap away in a panic. From Los Polvos, there is frantic barking, the squall of car alarms piercing and shrill. A vibration commences that sets the conchas to rattling in the kitchen sink, makes an alabaster statuette bounce along the shelf and then fall, shattering into pieces that go skittering against the majolica. From the ceiling, the chandelier begins to swing of its own volition.
Something, someone, is coming. I must hide but I cannot remember where. I should stand in the doorway – no, wrong. It’s too late. My arms extend involuntarily to steady myself but the ground jerks away and I am upended, landing heavily on my side. The earth has creaked and shifted, the house is aslant. Furniture jumps across the parquet like crickets. Walls undulate, billowing sails. Through a window, a tree crashes, roots first, showering me with glass shards. I try to crawl away but the earth tips and I slide towards the open window. A pianoforte skids past me, playing the ‘Moonlight Sonata’, then, with a riot of twanging and reverberation, smashes through a set of oak doors and tumbles into an abyss. Is the house turning? It seems to be revolving very fast on one of its corners, like a spinning top. Meanwhile, inside, I am here being spun, and around me the artefacts of Echeverría history – floral china plates, vials of perfume, Spanish lace mantillas, vinyl records, pictures of the dead in frames, wooden crucifixes, jars of strawberry conserve and bottles of pisco, playing cards, denuded book covers, crystal rosaries, statuettes of saints – fall and explode or are swept away by centrifugal forces.
Suddenly, amidst the chaos, there is a blossoming of pain in my belly. It makes me cry out and reach for something. My hand closes around a fish knife and I cling to it for purchase, though it cannot anchor me to anything. In my bowel, magma stirs. Tectonic plates are shifting, parting, viscous things gurgle, breaching their borders, rearranging. Continents are colliding, possibly, and opening great gashes in the underworld with their friction. My entrails reposition themselves while around me the world is torn apart.
The lobster is terrified, backing into a corner, its black eyes fixed on me, and I sense its betrayal. It thinks I did this – that I brought on the earthquake. All around us, the ground is bubbling, tiles buckling, geysers of soil and sand bursting up through the holes. Armoires fling open like exploded ribcages and pour out their contents (crockery, tins of paint, beaded evening gowns); the debris of life keeps on spilling and spilling over. From the dining room, I hear the smashing of plates, teacups, soup tureens; in the library, the thudding of what remains of the encyclopaedias hitting the ground. From all around, I hear the tortured scraping of furniture cutting gouges into the parquet floor as the house rocks. And we, the lobster and I, here inside, reach for each other across the gulf of the room. She is coming to me. She is arriving.
I breathe through the screaming. When did it begin? Who is screaming? I am not sure, but there are desperate cries. Plucked by a sudden racking, I double over, thrust out a hand and the wall of the room buckles like cardboard, then I am exposed – I can see the Sevillian courtyard, the fountain shaking uncontrollably and then erupting, all twelve heads exploding into a mushroom cloud of dust then raining slowly down in pinkish puffs. A chunk of the external wall on the first floor has fallen away and several bedrooms, side by side (Tía Consuelo’s, Tío Ignacio’s), hang open like bedrooms in a doll’s house, but looted and turned over. I run my eyes across them, ticking them off in my mind until one is gone, just a hole through which I can see the sky, like a missing tooth. I can see bathrooms, too, and hear the tiles crackling as they break, the crunch of the wooden spindles of the balustrade as they snap one after another. Iron bars splinter and crack, steel bars give a hee-haw of agony as they bend into unnatural shapes, marble columns buckle, broken femurs stick out at angles, wishbones snap through ruptures in crumpled plaster. Shutters swing precariously then surrender and fall, saluting, mournful, as they go. Terracotta tiles slide from the roof like raindrops and splash onto the majolica. Mamabue’s bedroom is exposed to the street, flesh through a laceration.
I fling back my head and bray. Enormous chunks of ceiling are falling around me. I should find cover, but the rumbling of my womb will not let me move and my haunches are slick with insides flowing out. I am going to die here, deep in this house where room after room is succumbing to an ancient violence, where the world within is trying to erupt into the world without, where what is underneath is reaching up and the world above is collapsing onto the world below – all is turning over, my womb is stirring, inverting, but what is the use, little one? You will come out only to suffocate: the air is granular, thick with dust and ash floating heavily in clouds. The house is ejecting me, miscarrying me, or perhaps it is trying to keep me in, I am not sure. Either way, rejected or stifled, I will die here.
The room above, my mother’s old room, falls through the ceiling, but I am preserved, miraculously, under an unsnapped floorboard. Her bed, like a boat run aground, leans, wretchedly askew, its headboard wedged into the rubble, its spine extending at an angle, feet in the air. In the interval between the contractions, I am able to shuffle myself over to it and take shelter under its base, where the mattress, disembowelled, is miraculously still balanced on the slats. Nearby are the remains of the baúl that, during its descent, flipped over, discarded its lid and emptied its contents in a shower. Paloma’s face flutters down a dozen times, her bottle of perfume smashed nearby.
As I wait for the next wave of pain, I look up: above me, naked rafters, great holes in the ceiling through which I can see a dash of blue, the dart of a seagull. Somewhere outside, the world continues. At this hour, Rupert is at the apartment, waking up or showering or perhaps packing up my things into boxes, dividing our DVDs, separating out my books, cutting me from photographs – unless the end of the world is happening there, too. But I know it isn’t. This is my apocalypse. What will they tell him when they excavate me, ashen and cold, from the rubble? Perhaps I will remain here for centuries, buried into the foundations of some new apartment block, encased in cement, stepped upon, pressed down upon, while above me the living eat and mourn and fornicate, feed their children, watch television, excrete, do all the things that constitute a life. Below I will lie – baby half in, half out – waiting to be discovered, perfectly preserved in some cadaveric spasm like the crusted bodies of Pompeii, displayed in a glass case in a museum of the distant future. Mother interred in childbirth. They will give me a cute name – Juanita or María – but the teenagers will come to gawp, thrilled by the double voyeurism, a simultaneous death and birth mummified for posterity.
Mon Dieu! Even now, she thinks too much.
Rupert, though, will be buried, peaceful, many decades from now under a mound of green English grass. Here lies Rupert Napier, who had a very elegant wallet—
Vaya, pobre niña, she thinks she is dying.
She is not dying.
She might be dying.
Pour l’amour de Dieu!
Of course not, but it is her first labour:
it is natural to think she is dying.
A hand reaches into my abdomen and twists. I cannot do anything but cry out. My feet dig into the rubble and I wrap my toes around something firm. I heave my strength into the earth – so much strength it could, perhaps, move a mountain, but it seems to have no impact on you, little one. You are clinging to me. You are going to break me in two.
Tranquila, Nanita
Tranquiiiiiila, tranquiiiiiila
There are women in the room with me. They are working, peeling me out of my clothes, wiping me down with hot cloths, inspecting between my legs, sticking fingers inside, saying there is still time. They are unaffected by the fragments of house that fall around us. They do not cough or wheeze in the clouds of silt that swirl in the air. One of them (I do not recognise her) sits nearby straddling a washtub, her skirts pulled back to reveal muscular thighs. She is the one who takes the cloths, soiled with my fluids, and plunges them into the steaming water. With algal-green eyes (kind eyes, eyes I feel I should know) she smiles at me. She tells me I should thank God for a daughter. A daughter will never leave me. Standing above her, two women – one in an ermine coat, glossy black hair pressed into finger waves and an eight-legged tamarin reclining on her shoulders; the other, statuesque, long-necked, birthmark of a bird in flight on her cheek – are ripping sheets and dropping the shreds into the tub. They argue back and forth with the sturdy, white-haired woman who barks orders in French about hot towels and bloodletting.
Titi Consuelo is here too, pacing, fretting, wringing her hands, muttering to a blue-eyed, flaxen-haired woman that I look too pale, too weak – that I need donkey milk. But where are we to get donkey milk at a time like this? They kneel together and pray to Santa Margarita of Antioch declaring that just as she was spat from the mouth of the dragon unharmed, so too will my baby be delivered safely. They petition the Virgin Mary, Dios te salve, María, and Santa Rosa de Lima, in whose jurisdiction we find ourselves in desperate need. Their frenzied muttering weaves in and out of the cacophony of destruction, the creaking and groaning of the very bones of the earth. There are teaspoons being pressed against my lips. Teaspoons of mazamorra morada and nettle tea, manjar blanco and agua de azahar. The woman who feeds me has sharp, expressive eyes. Black eyes like mine, perhaps. She tells me, Eat, you need your strength. By my side, stroking my knee, instructing me on breathing, is Tía Paloma. She tells me I am doing well, that I will not die today. I remind her, between gasps, that the house is falling. Forget about the house, she says. Forget that.
‘I cannot do it,’ I tell her. ‘I cannot get my daughter out of me.’
The sturdy Frenchwoman overhears. She scolds me, tells me this is no time for wallowing; I must get the child out of me one way or another and if I do not extract her in this world, I will spend eternity extracting her in the world to come, so what will it be? Now, once and for all? Or later, eternally, incessantly, cracking open again and again until the end of time? How would I rather have it? I should make my choice.
‘She will break me to pieces.’
She will not break you.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Tranquiiiiiila, tranquiiiiiila
This is Mama’s voice, but I cannot see her. Sweat is dripping soot and ash into my eyes. Someone tips water into my mouth. I swallow it, grateful, and then tip back to rest for a moment. Under my back I feel not the jagged edges of rubble or the wooden skeleton of a bed but the softness of a body. She who is behind me – certainly a she – lets me lean against her, lets me thrust my elbows into her when I arch my spine in response to each contraction, lets me crush her arm, digging my fingers into her skin when the pain is at its worst. Her fingers stroke my cheeks, grazing only gently. She speaks soothing words, tells me she knows me. Even if I come in disguise, she knows me. From the beginning, she knew me. And at the end, too, she will know me.
Blessed art thou amongst women.
She is coming out now.
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
Somewhere far off there are voices shouting, calling for auxilio, the yowl of an emergency siren, then a voice telling me to push, and I do.
Diecisiete
The people of Lima called it a miracle. To rescue a mother and a newborn child from the rubble and find them both alive and without serious injury, with nothing more than a few scratches and a little bruising – it had to have been an act of God. The other remarkable fact (though a sad one, something more like the inverse of a miracle) was that la Casa Echeverría had succumbed to the earthquake. The yellow house on the hill, which had survived for so long, which had not fallen in the earthquakes of 1940 or 1974, had yielded to this, which by all accounts had not been a major seismic event. It was particularly surprising since none of the houses of Los Polvos had fallen, and most of those were still unfinished.
Thanks be to God that Los Polvos had been left untouched because, without their own tragedies to attend to, it was the Polvorinos who had been the first to arrive at the destroyed casona to rescue the woman interred within it. They had sprinted up the hill, clambered over the part-fallen walls on the perimeter of the Echeverría land (walls that had, for decades, divided the mansion from the shanty town), torn through the orange groves and immediately begun sifting the rubble piece by piece, working cautiously lest they unbalance the mound of wreckage and cause it to crush the survivors inside. They laboured quietly, guided by the faint cries of an infant rising from the dust and debris.
