Venus in copper

Chapter LVII

First the incredible silence. Then people start to scream.

You have to clear the dust from your eyes first. Shaking yourself makes it worse. You cannot move until you can see. Your senses are righting to catch up with what is happening.

The first screams are the people in the street, startled and shocked, but grateful that they at least still have breath to scream. After that there may be others, from underneath the rubble, but it is difficult to tell until the panic quietens down and someone starts to organise. Someone always will.

There is a procedure to follow. In Rome, buildings often come falling down.

Word goes round the neighbourhood quickly; the noise assures that. In no time men run up with shovels and props. Others will follow with carts, grapplers, barrows from building sites, makeshift stretchers and perhaps even a hoist. But not soon enough. If the building was known to be occupied, those of you on the spot don't wait. Before the men come with shovels you start in with bare hands. It achieves little. But how can you just stand?

All I had in the world to worry about was two pastries in a hatful of dust. I put the hat down on a doorstep and laid my cloak over it. A gesture really; while I tried to cope.

Stay there… Don't stir-stay there and wait for me!

The walk to what had been our apartment seemed to take a year. Others were moving forwards with me. Even if you are a stranger you do what you can.

I wanted to shout; I wanted to roar. I could not bear to speak her name. Someone did shout: a cry, just a noise to say we were there. So next we stood, listening to the debris settling. That is the procedure; you shout or you knock on something; then listen; then dig. With luck, you are digging for someone. But you dig anyway. You wrench away whole beams as if they were cordwood, turn over doors which are still attached to frames, bend jagged spars, and scrabble among tons of anonymous rubble which somehow no longer bears any resemblance to the materials which originally went into the block. All around the air is cloudy. Shapes move. The mass beneath your boots sinks suddenly, with a lurch that makes your heart race, amid more sick clouds of filth. A four-inch nail, still as bright as the day it was first hammered home, gouges your bare knee. The backs of your hands are in shreds from scraping against bricks and concrete. Your sweat can hardly manage to trickle through the thick coating of pale dust that dries your skin. Your clothes are stiff with it. Your boots will never be worth pulling on again. Through their thongs your toes and ankles bleed. That dust clop your lungs.

Every now and then people stop again and call for silence; then somebody who has the heart for it shouts. And you listen to the slow trickle of loose mortar among the broken bricks and tiles and papery lathes that were once your home.

If it was a large building, you know before you listen that there is very little chance of anybody ever answering.

While we are working I hardly spoke to anyone. Even strangers must have realised the place was known to me. When the first spades came I snatched one at once; I had proprietary rights. At one point there was a sudden rattle of subsidence so we all jumped back. I took the lead then, to supervise the forcing of props into place. I had been in the army. I was trained to take command of civilians when they were running round like chickens. Even in a catastrophe, you have to be businesslike. Even if I had lost her, she would expect that. The girl would expect me to do what I could, in case I could save someone else. If she was here, at least I was close to her. I would stay here, day and night if necessary, until I knew for certain where she was.

What I felt would have to come later. The later the better. I was not sure I could ever endure what my brain already said I felt.

When they found the woman's body, everything went quiet.

I never knew who said my name. A space cleared. I forced myself to stumble over there and look; they all waited and watched. Hands touched my back.

She was grey. Grey dress, grey skin, grey matted hair full of plaster dust and fragments of building material. A complete corpse, made of dust. So covered with filth that it could be anyone.

No ear-rings. The wrong curve to the lobe, and no gold there-in fact no tiny hole to take the hook.

I shook my head. 'Mine was tall.'

Besides, once I was certain it was safe to look properly, I could tell that under the grey dust this woman's hair would still be grey. The hair was thin-just a sad trail in a braid no broader than my little finger, which petered out to a few strands after a foot or so. Mine had a thick plait, hardly varying in width, down to her waist.

Someone dropped a neck scarf over the face. A voice said, 'Must be the old woman on the upper floor.' The mad old bag who had so often cursed me.

I went back to work.

It had upset me. I was beginning to imagine now what I was going to find.

I paused, wiping the sweat from my filthy brow. Someone who knew he had more will than me at that moment took the shovel from my hand. I moved aside, as he attacked the swamp of masonry where I stood. Standing idle for a moment, something caught my eye.

It was the handle of a basket. I recognised the shiny black raffia wound round it by my mother when the original canework started to unwind. I dragged it to the surface. Something of mine. It used to hang beside the doorway in our living room.

I walked aside. Bystanders were quietly handing drinks to slake the rescuers' throats. I found a beaker shoved into my hand. There was nowhere to sit. I squatted down on my heels, swallowed the liquid, put down the cup, shook the dirt off the basket and looked inside. Not much. All I had left. The pride of our household: ten bronze spoons Helena once gave me; she had refused to let me hide them in my mattress now they were needed for daily use. A dish that belonged to my mother, put aside for her. My best boots; hidden from the parrot… And a cheese grater.

I had no idea why the grater had been singled out. I would never be able to ask. So much unfinished business: the worst result of sudden death.

I replaced everything in the basket, shoving my arm through the handles right up to the shoulder. Then my bravery ended; no longer any point to it. I buried my head in my arm and tried to shut out everything.

Somebody was shaking my shoulder. Someone who must have known me, or known her, or both of us. I looked up, full of rage. Then I saw him point.

A woman had turned round a corner, just as I did half an hour ago. She had a big circular loaf in her arms. She must have been out to buy something for lunch; now she was coming home.

Home was no longer there. She had stopped, as if she thought she had turned into the wrong street in a daydream. Then the truth of the collapsed building struck.

She was going to run. I spotted her before she started moving, but her intention was clear. She thought I might have been in the apartment; now she thought I was dead underneath. There was only one way to let her know.

I whistled. My whistle. She stopped.

I was on my feet. She had heard me. At first I could see she could not find me. Then she did. There was no need any longer, but I was already shouting. At last I could say it. 'Helena?'

'My lass, my love-I'm here!' The loaf crushed to a thousand fragments between us. Then she was in my arms. Soft-warm-living – Helena. I gripped her skull between my two open palms as if I was holding treasure. 'Helena, Helena, Helena…' Her hair caught on my roughened fingers where I had been dragging beams aside in search of her. She was clean, and untouched, and crying her heart out helplessly because for one fraction of a second she had believed she had lost me. 'Helena, Helena! When I saw the house fall down, I thought-'

'I know what you thought.' 'I said you were to wait for me-' 'Oh Didius Falco,' Helena sobbed,'I never take any notice of what you say!'