Last Quadrant

by Meira Chand

  Eiko rushed in that direction and at once rushed back again.

  ‘Just a lot of crackle.’

  ‘Not surprised,’ said Arthur.

  They fell silent as wind rammed the orphanage in a solid body, coming in wave after shrieking wave. The building vibrated like a fragile box. They stood together, children close about the adults, feeling the vengeance of the storm. The light above them, shaded with a towel, shifted uneasily, quivering. Listening, each saw in their minds the churning sky beyond the roof, lurching, rolling, pitching. A sea of venom, heaving up and thrashing down upon them, again and again. They were frail as reeds or flotsam on the tide. Each felt that passage of darkness in themselves, and the thin white rim of fear.

  The wind was many-voiced now, a whole texture of knitted sounds. Of shrieks and wails, of wild drums and the symbols of concussion, a great vicious orchestra in play. A taut thread of tension drew them together. Eva rubbed her hands over the small heads and backs about her, over the nobble of bone and the soft plush of hair. These were her worry now, the children, and quickly then she began to organise the books to be read, and a game to be played to the twirling of a rope. Only action would relax.

  At one time Hanako’s

  Tears poured down

  Poured down,

  Too many tears,

  Too many tears ...

  The children’s voices began hesitantly to pick up strength. The beat of the rope smacked the floor, the small pounding feet threaded between. The rhythm accompanied the storm, the floor shook gently, on the table coffee cups rattled and the children began to relax. Yoshiko Mori and Sister Elaine twirled the rope, calling names. Akiko began to read to a group of older children. Eiko Kubo went into the kitchen to prepare hot orange juice. Eva turned to Daniel.

  ‘I want you to come with me.’

  There was a chill in the upstairs corridor. Draughts shrilled through chinks of the old wooden building. Rain lashed like skeins of leather twine against the windows. She had to raise her voice to speak.

  ‘You must see, you must tell me. They frighten me.’ She opened the door of the room for him to see the trees, as earlier she had seen them. But it was dark now. There was little to be found in the matt black world of the windows. The dusk that earlier illuminated the trees was long dead. In the inkiness only the howl of the storm pressed in about them, wrestling the paltry defence of walls. The trees were lost in blackness, their suffering spasms and groans surfaced sometimes through the wind. The limbs of the willows still whipped the glass in a frenzy of self-flagellation. Eva walked behind Daniel to the window and placed a hand on its polished black surface. The glass trembled coldly under her hand, like a shuddering naked body. Outside the night tore and boiled. She drew back quickly, afraid, but Daniel pressed his face to the glass, cupping it in his hands.

  ‘I can’t see anything. It’s black as hell out there. Not a lamp about.’

  Immediately then, lightning struck, as if obeying his request. It sliced the belly of the sky, ripping open its black night flesh, so that in a single lighted frame they glimpsed the slope of trees. Involuntarily Eva reached out and gripped Daniel’s arm. They both saw it.

  Like a great hand of gnarled fingers thrust up from the earth, the loose roots of a tree were exposed. And the tree itself leaned and lurched like a drunken creature anchored by chained feet.

  ‘Only yards away, one of the first ring of trees. It’ll come right down upon us here. There is rot in the main beams, too,’ Eva told Daniel.

  ‘The children are in the dining room just under us here. If that tree were to come down on this room ...’ Eva worried.

  ‘I’m sure I saw a flattened area in that copse further up, as if smaller trees had fallen, a landslide maybe, the slope is steep.

  ‘Arthur Wilcox said the road was running like a river. There are many mountain streams in this area, the drains that carry them down the hill always overflow in weather like this. We’ve had small landslides before, but it’s the trees that worry me.’

  Even as Eva spoke they heard through the wind a creaking wrench of sound. Eva stepped back, hand to throat, waiting. Then the lightning came again, the tree was still there, at a crazier slant.

  ‘Quick, we must get them out of the dining room. It will fall right on this room,’ Daniel shouted.

  ‘Get them into the recreation room, in the other wing,’ Eva yelled, running behind him down the stairs.

  Before they reached the bottom there was a crash of glass and screams and voices. But it was only a window in the dining room, hit by a windblown object. Glass, loose dirt and leaves showered the floor. The wind rushed in, flinging curtains to the ceiling, flapping them wildly like great grey wings. Large slices of broken glass, held by sinews of brown tape, hung loosely, moving in the gale. The wind snaked about, lifting the hair of frightened children, moving skirts, brushing papers from the table, parting and blowing them across the floor. The children huddled against a wall behind Akiko and Sister Elaine. The little ones clung to each other, whimpering, while older ones looked on in agitation and excitement.

  ‘Some thick newspaper,’ Arthur shouted to Eiko, who rushed to the kitchen. He grabbed the nearest two boys, Jiro and Kenichi.

  ‘Get the brown tape,’ he ordered, as Daniel and Eva appeared.

  ‘The trees,’ Daniel said as calmly as he could. ‘The storm has uprooted a tree. It may fall over this room.’

  ‘Come, everyone, to the recreation room. Quickly.’ Eva ordered them out. The children hurried to her in the corridor, their voices and bodies throbbed about her in excitement and anxiety.

  ‘Will we stay up all night?’ Takeo, Nobuo, and Jun began at once to ask questions.

  ‘Will the tree really fall?’

  ‘What happens to the birds in it then?’

  ‘They fly away, stupid ...’

  ‘ ... or get killed.’

  ‘Can we have more orange juice?’ Kimiko interrupted.

  ‘Will we get killed if the tree falls?’ Emiko demanded.

  ‘And can we have biscuits, too?’ Kimiko added.

  ‘How will we live here if the tree breaks the roof?’

  ‘Quiet. Quiet.’ Eva put her hands over the ears. ‘No questions, just run along quickly.’ She patted Hiroshi’s fat behind and shook Emiko’s plaits. The children jumped in excitement.

  ‘Mariko, take Ruriko.’ Eva gave the older girl the small blind waiting hand. Akiko and Sister Elaine hurried the children forward. There was a holiday mood, and some children began to sing as Junko started dancing again.

  ‘I’m the wind, blowing down the house.’ She pirouetted about. But Toshio stood terrified, apart from the children, fear holding him taut. Yoshiko Mori scooped him up and soothed him. Tami pulled at her skirt.

  ‘I’ll look after him.’

  ‘Do you want to go with Tami?’ Yoshiko asked. The child nodded and she put him down. Tami led him away, bending to him maternally.

  Eva turned into the dining room. At the far end Daniel and Eiko Kubo stacked mattresses in a pile while Jiro and Kenichi finished patching the window with Arthur Wilcox. She saw Jiro speak to Kenichi in his gentle way, and Kenichi listened without his accustomed belligerence. At least there seemed progress there. The responsibility of mending the window gave him a chance to change his stance. But there was no time to consider Kenichi.

  ‘Come along, quickly. That tree could come down any moment,’ she ordered, but the words seemed unreal in her mouth as she said them in the empty solid room. She tried not to think about the tree and what might happen if it fell. The darkness was convulsed outside, a world she did not know.

  9

  The room was a dim landscape of sleeping shapes, closed and stuffy. The children turned restlessly and threw off their covers. They were squeezed onto the tatami-matted floor; the room barely accommodated them all. Nothing had happened, it had been well over an hour.

  Eva shifted position, her legs cramped from sitting on the floor. Beside her, Ruriko slept,
head on a cushion. Eiko and Yoshiko played cards with Daniel and Akiko. Kyo, Sister Elaine and Arthur Wilcox dozed upright against the walls. Arthur snored gently, a long end of moustache lifting with his breath.

  Perhaps nothing would happen, thought Eva. Perhaps she had hustled them into an uncomfortable night in this room for no reason. Outside, the gale hammered on, swelling and tossing. Was there nowhere to escape it, she wondered. Would it ever end?

  Beside her, Ruriko stirred and sat up. ‘I want a drink. I want the bathroom.’

  ‘Come.’ She guided the child from the room towards the bathroom.

  ‘I want orange juice,’ said Ruriko. ‘Please.’ From where she sat on the toilet she wiggled her knees demurely in the confines of her lowered pants.

  ‘Only as it’s a special night,’ Eva agreed. ‘Now, just wait there.’

  She crossed the dining room to the kitchen and stood at the door, listening to the laceration of the wind outside, and the shudder of the walls. The dark warren of rooms and passages stretching out above and around her seemed to echo her own tension. The spirit of the storm had turned malevolently upon them and closed around them now.

  Her heart began to palpitate and she turned into the kitchen quickly. There the storm beyond the windows seemed about to enter the room, and when she put on the light, the glass reflected images that threw her back upon herself. The gleams of pots and ladles and the bare working surfaces of tables took on a sinister tone.

  She leaned against the door and shut her eyes, trying to calm herself. Then she forced herself to straighten, walk across the room, and make a cup of orange juice. She replaced the bottle on a shelf and heard Ruriko’s whimper. The child had got herself off the toilet and had come by herself as far as the dining room door.

  ‘Wait there. I’m coming.’ Eva saw the child through the kitchen hatch smile at the sound of her voice, reassured. Stretching out her hands, she set off across the dining room.

  ‘Wait,’ Eva called again.

  Then it happened, like a bolt of thunder from above, as if the sky was ripped apart, a massive retort, shaking the bones from the flesh of the house. Then a terrible tearing and grating, the house shuddering like an earthquake. Great cracks shot across the ceiling of the dining room, opening and widening. Plaster began to drop in clumps from above, the lamp swung wildly. Ruriko screamed, standing blind and tiny in the midst of the room, covered white by a shower of plaster dust.

  Eva ran, snatched the child up, dived under a table and crouched there. For a moment she thought it over, but the wrenching and tearing began again. A great splitting and grinding racked the building, as if it doubled up like a house of cards, folding and falling in upon itself. It seemed the sky came down above her. Chunks of plaster fell thudding on the table top, the dust rose up in clouds, coating her face and mouth. The room was in blackness. She clutched the child to her, shielding it with her body. They clung to each other until it was over and there was only the bawl of the wind again. And waited some more. But nothing came. Then Eva crawled out from beneath the table.

  They came running from the other room then, crunching over the debris, encircling her, leading her out. Someone took the child from her arms, her mouth was dry and thick with dust. The voices were confused about her, she was conscious of shadows, swinging rhythmically over the walls behind the beam of torches. The rubble on the floor reminded her strangely of the crumble of icing from a demolished birthday cake. Looking up she saw a huge yawning wound split the ceiling. Within it, the dark wet trunk of the tree swelled out obscenely. The rain dripped through about it, and formed puddles on the floor. They led her back to the other room.

  Daniel sat her in a chair. From a flask Eiko filled a cup with warm Japanese tea, and pressed it into her hands. The children were astir again within the room. There seemed nothing but bodies and voices, she wished she could push them all away.

  ‘I’m all right. All right,’ she kept repeating. In a corner she saw Ruriko crying upon Yoshiko’s lap. On the wall, a clock stared over their heads, beating on, indifferently, in the room.

  10

  Afterwards, of the next few moments she remembered only the sound of that clock, and the sight of Daniel’s grey suede moccasins, implanted firmly by her chair. She remembered a tear in the seam of the shoe, she remembered thinking to remind him to have it repaired.

  Then the world blew up about them. Another tree fell, not upon the house, but across the back yard, smashing down on to the bottles of propane gas, exploding a cylinder there. But this they knew only later. At that time there was again just the sickening grind and split of wood, the floundering noise of the tortured trees, in that breaking dying moment. Hearing it Eva felt a sudden calm take hold of her as she gave herself up to whatever fate awaited them all. The spell of the storm was upon them; there could be no escape.

  The savagery of the blast of the exploding gas cylinder threw them to the floor. All at one moment, in a great wave of sound, was an eruption of glass and plaster and wood. Something seemed to pulverise the room, and left it in a second, maimed and mauled.

  She thought they must be dead, and dared not raise her head from her arms. Before her the room resembled the desecration of a battlefield, with limp strewn bodies and a residue of rubble. Wind and wet lashed in like scavengers through the torn-out windows, stirring dust and mixing mud with splintered wood. But miraculously they began to stir, one by one uncurling, standing, moving limbs testily, brushing off grit and dust.

  The wind foamed, spraying the room as it blustered through the shattered windows and staggered about. Beneath its racket the children began to whimper in the dark demolished room. Eva reached for the torch, and flicked it on. Its scanty beam passed over the room, throwing up ragged facets of disorder, the stricken dusty faces of children, an arm, an ear, a blooded hand, Hiroshi’s cast with its playful brown paper lattice, a crimson stain on Sister Elaine’s white habit, the powder of dust on Arthur’s moustache. The noise of the wind howled on about them.

  ‘Is anybody hurt?’ Eva called into the darkness.

  To her great relief, there were no more than minor cuts and bruises, and only Yukio bled badly from some flying glass. Arthur produced a pencil torch and guided Yoshiko by its delicate wand in search of the first aid box.

  The shock began to subside, fear seeped back into the children. They unleashed words and sobs all at once, and surged towards Eva’s one small light. There was the crush and crumble of glass and dust, and a loud cry again from an injured child.

  ‘Just stand quite still until we find some torches,’ Eva ordered. When Arthur and Yoshiko returned with the first aid box, she left the room with Daniel.

  In the corridor, chill and wind consumed the building, thrusting in through great ripped vents. It lifted Eva’s skirt and the loose hairs at her neck, slapping wetly about her face.

  ‘It’s like the Blitz,’ she said, swinging the torch about. The dust whipped up by the wind settled thickly on her lips. ‘What could it have been? What could have caused this?’

  ‘Give me the torch.’ Daniel walked to a shattered window.

  ‘It’s the gas cylinders. Another tree has fallen across the backyard, onto those bottles. I can see them. One must have exploded.’ Daniel swung the torch from the window. There was a thick dense smell of smouldering wood.

  ‘Is there fire?’ Eva asked, alarmed.

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be. Probably the rain squelched it.’

  ‘It’s a miracle nobody’s hurt,’ Daniel said, coming back.

  ‘Only because we are in the other side of the house. If we had been in the dining room ...’ Eva could not finish.

  ‘We have three more great torches, two in the kitchen and one in the surgery.’ Eva put her mind to the present. She led the way, stepping over a litter. A great shard of wood swung from the dining room door and Daniel pulled her quickly back. Inside the room, every window had been blasted out.

  ‘It’s like a bomb has dropped,’ Eva said again, un
able to move from the metaphor, there was no other way to describe the havoc. The gale snaked and whined through it all, so that in her mind Eva saw the wrecked building like some ruined, windy catacomb, and shivered.

  In the kitchen a part of the wall had collapsed. The room blended at last with the savage night that howled and lashed, insatiable. Pots and bowls and smashed chinaware were strewn amongst the rubble, and Arthur Wilcox’s sock hung limply from a splintered cupboard. Plaster and brick and struts of wood mixed with the contents of the garbage bucket, blasted over the room. A ladle still swung from its hook in the wind and knocked against a tiled wall. Wire poked from crumbled plaster.

  ‘Oh God,’ Eva gasped and hid her eyes.

  Daniel stepped carefully over the mess, to the drawers where the torches were kept. Eva waited in the doorway, shielding her face from the wind and flying grit. They went next to the surgery and here the damage was minor. Except for one cracked window the room still stood intact.

  ‘We must get them in here. We must think what to do. Oh God,’ said Eva. And again. ‘Oh God.’

  They returned to the children, the torches flaring out before them, great searchlights opening up the night. Now they could see the recreation room was a total disaster. Cracks patterned the walls, the ceiling bulged dangerously above them, still unable to decide its fate. Every so often it creaked and offered up a shower of dust. The children quivered in fear, their limbs patched with first-aid plasters.

  ‘Yukio is bleeding badly. We’ve done the best we can. But I’ve already had to change his dressing once. Mariko is a bit concussed, something fell on her, but I think she’s all right. Apart from them it’s just minor cuts. It’s unbelievable, considering,’ Akiko told Eva.

  Daniel returned from another reconnoitre. ‘It’s all charred at the back. I can see it from the window. There must have been a great flare of fire we didn’t see from here. But it didn’t last long in that rain, thank God.’

  ‘We must get out of here, it’s an utter mess. The surgery is in better shape. We’ve water and towels there, we can clean up the children,’ Eva told the women. The light of the torches reassured the frightened children and they began to file from the demolished room. Eva waited by the door, counting them out, calming where she could.