Eating Air

by Pauline Melville

  ‘Going down. 1917. Going down.’

  The controller heard a sound he could not identify until much later when the tape was replayed and he understood it to be the intermittent buzzing signal of the ground-proximity warning system.

  *

  Ma Tem was the first to respond to the approaching growl of the plane as it drowned out the sound of the TV:

  ‘My god. This thing is falling.’ She let the plate shoot off her lap, grabbed her husband and ran with him into the bedroom. They flung themselves on the floor but were too big to fit under the bed and lay next to it with their hands over their heads.

  In her bedroom in the neighbouring block a young girl recently arrived with her mother from Ghana sprawled on her bunk-bed listening to Snoop Dogg’s rap on her iPod. She could hear a sort of vibrating hum over and above the music. She took off her earphones and sat up. The noise grew unbearably loud. The whole room juddered.

  Her mother, standing in the front room, felt that her ears were splitting open and peeling outwards from her head. The room suddenly darkened. She could not understand what she was seeing. The light from the window was blocked by the outline of the enormous Boeing 747 which filled the entire space between the Groningen block opposite and their own. She saw the laminated white nose of the aircraft slanting downwards and tilting to the right. She even had time to register the over-painted studs of the aircraft’s door. For two or three seconds the great body of the plane seemed to hang immobile in the air at a downward angle outside the woman’s window. Then the enormous blade-shaped wing of the plane sliced down towards the apartment like a giant executioner’s scimitar.

  *

  Only when Felix saw the children’s playground below him did he realise his mistake. Paralysed with horror and disbelief he made a weak and futile attempt to guide the roaring uncontrollable monster through the small gap between apartment blocks.

  *

  Standing at her window in Groningen block opposite, Marthi Brandt was immobilised by the deafening roar of the descending plane. Way over her head the great belly of the plane, landing gear hanging uselessly out, slid down over the roof of her own block. It plunged downwards at the same angle as the children’s slide in the playground below. The evening light caught the underbelly which gleamed grey as it lunged towards Groningen and Kampen blocks. And all the time, the engines revved at higher and higher speeds giving the impression that at the last second it could defy gravity if it chose and climb upwards again.

  At the moment of impact she blinked. When she opened her eyes there was sky where there had previously been buildings. Across the way there was now a gap in the shape of a broken outline of India. The sight was almost instantly obliterated by billowing mushrooms of black smoke. The bang when it reached her was deafening. It blew all the glass out of her windows and reduced her apartment to darkness. Still she stood there with fragments of glass on her clothes and in her hair, aware of the cold breeze on her face.

  At the crash site a gigantic unstable flaming outline of the plane’s nose reared up over the top of the apartment blocks. A blazing ragged figure of dark orange fire like some raging phantom of the plane itself hung in the sky before disintegrating into a myriad of separate fires. There were more minor explosions. Showers of sparks flew through the air like tiny brilliant hyphens only to be swallowed up by the smoke. Then beneath the billows of black smoke which erupted continually into the sky she saw the mountain of rubble that had been the halves of Kampen and Kasteel estates glowing like lava from a volcano. The cold breeze was replaced by heat on her face through the broken window.

  She had no idea how much time elapsed before the sound of approaching sirens wailed through the night: ambulance sirens, police sirens and fire engines all rushing to the scene. The estate had been built in a curve. What greeted them was a vast and blackened theatre that was both stage-set and auditorium. The balconies and front walls of the surviving apartments on either side of the epicentre of the crash had been ripped off leaving the charred interiors of people’s homes exposed like tiers of boxes at a theatre, several with curtains on fire, some with wallpaper torn off the walls. The explosion had left the adjacent buildings looking as though they were made of fluttering rags. In a few minutes, Kampen and Kasteel had been transformed into an infernal coliseum.

  For the first ten minutes even the emergency services did not know what to do. Fires burst from windows like so many divas leaning out to perform an aria. Little flames fluttered coquettishly against the dark background before being extinguished by smoke. The flames became a dancing chorus appearing gaily everywhere as in the opening scene of a light opera. There was a fuzz of pinkish fireballs visible in what was left of some apartments and in the rubble at ground level she saw row upon row of rippling flounces, flurries of white gaseous flames, frills, ruches, the swirling petticoats of a fiery can-can.

  Marthi Brandt turned away from the window. Her own room was unrecognisable, bizarrely lit by this new light source. Her limbs moved slowly as if she could not wake from a deep sleep. She knew she had to find her son. She snatched his photograph from the mantelpiece. When she opened her front door residents were hurrying silently down the stairs as if they no longer trusted lifts or any mechanised form of transport.

  On the ground outside people gathered and stood in informal groups. People held on to each other. There was not a lot of talking, just a sense of disbelief.

  *

  One mile away in the cold night air Shahid and Mark Scobie stood arguing desperately with the policeman at the roadblock close to the HCB bank. The Dutch policeman insisted that access to the whole area was now restricted to keep routes clear for the emergency services and to see that the fire did not spread. The roads would not be opened until the crash investigation was completed. The men had tried other routes to the HCB bank but it was the same everywhere.

  They walked back to their vehicle. Shahid was nearly crying. Massoud looked grim. In a fit of temper and frustration Shahid threw his backpack over the fence of a construction site as they passed. He walked ahead of the others with his head bowed. When they reached the car Sadiq leaned out of the window with a worried expression to ask them what had happened.

  ‘We could try again in a few days,’ suggested Massoud. Sadiq shook his head:

  ‘We’ve been seen by too many Dutch police. We’ll have to abort it until we can plan something else.’ He started the car and they drove back to Javastraat. They stopped in an area of forested wasteland and buried the explosives.

  As soon as he was able Mark made a phone call to Buckley in England and told him about the debacle.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  At the site of the crash one of the crowd of onlookers pointed to one of the stricken flats in what remained of Kampen block. From the ruin of her apartment a woman, in flames, threw her child who was also in flames from the fifth storey and then jumped herself. She fell like an expended Roman Candle, loose yellow flames from her clothes twisting vertically upwards as she plummeted to the ground.

  Firemen aimed their hoses at the centre point of the crash. Grass and plants were on fire in front of them and so was the pond where some of the fuel from the aircraft had fallen. Marthi Brandt pushed through the crowd clutching her son’s photograph:

  ‘Have you seen this boy?’

  Fifty yards away ambulance men led survivors to safety. People whose homes were destroyed were shepherded to transport that would take them to a nearby sports hall for the night. Marthi turned around the corner of Groningen block. As soon as the glare and heat of the fire were cut off she could feel the cold wind blowing. She hurried towards the underground car park, night-time haunt of crack-sellers and addicts. It was empty. The click of her heels echoed as she walked through calling Hans’s name. She walked up the ramp and out into the open again.

  This side of the estate was largely deserted. It was some distance from the source of heat. Two hundred yards away flames wrestled with strong winds. The flames which had,
at first, been crimson and pink turned yellow and orange under the powerful hoses of the fire brigade. The end flats of each block were not too badly damaged. The plane had struck in the middle. Marthi looked around in vain for a sign of Hans. She noticed the silhouette of a woman standing next to a concrete bollard facing towards the fire. Marthi stumbled towards the woman.

  ‘Excuse me, but have you seen my boy anywhere?’ She held out the picture.

  The woman turned. She had pretty blonde curls. Her mouth was soft and innocent but with some of those merciless cracks around it that come with age.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t speak Dutch.’ The accent was American.

  Marthi repeated her request in English. The woman studied the photograph and then looked directly at Marthi:

  ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t seen him. Isn’t this just awful?’ She put her hand up to the side of her face in bewildered horror. ‘I asked the police if I could help but they just told me to stay away.’

  Marthi Brandt thanked her and hurried away. A moment later, she felt an arm link into hers. It was Hans, tears streaming down his face. They clung to each other for a while. Then mother and son made their way back to what was left of their home.

  *

  Hetty Moran continued to gaze towards the fire. She had seen Hans running from the flats in panic but could not resist the opportunity to let the woman remain in torment for a little longer. She shivered and pulled her jacket closer round her shoulders. She had been in the apartment purloined from Stephen Butterfield when the noise of the crash reached her. Almost immediately the news appeared on television.

  Hetty walked towards the relatively undamaged end of Kampen block. She ducked under the red and white ribbon that police used to keep people out and let herself quickly through the heavy swing doors of the apartment block. Residents had been evacuated. It was dark inside. Water from the fireman’s hoses and from burst water pipes ran everywhere. The lift door was jammed open and the rank smell of urine filled the lobby. Hetty found the stairs next to the lift. She started to climb, feeling her way slowly with her hand on the wall. Suddenly from above there came the sound of descending feet. A beam from a torch came round the corner and dazzled her. A family was running down the stairs towards her, all wearing anoraks shining with damp.

  ‘We’re looking for Jaap,’ they said, hardly pausing to wait for a response. Hetty stood back and let them pass. The family had disobeyed police instructions and run back to look for their son. They ran out into the night.

  Hetty slipped quietly up the stairs. On the third floor she hesitated, wondering how dangerous it was. Then she decided to risk it and went on up to the fourth floor. She stood in the corridor. There was a warm mist in the air which she mistook for fire smoke and then realised it was steam where water from the firemen’s hoses had encountered the heat of the building. The floor was slippery. Light from arc lamps outside penetrated unexpected cracks and fissures in the walls. She tried the front door of one of the flats but it was stuck at an angle and impossible to open. She moved cautiously on. Further along she found a front door that was open. Plaster fell down as she pushed her way in.

  Once inside she could just make out the wreckage of an apartment. The front wall was entirely blown off so that the place was open to the skies. There was no sign of the inhabitants. The firemen’s hoses had been trained on the flats for nearly five hours and everything was drenched, charred and unrecognisable under piles of wet plaster rubble. The side wall had partially collapsed giving a direct view into the kitchen where the ribbed plastic interior of a dish-washer lay exposed. Even the most everyday object seemed strange. Everything was transformed. What she assumed to be a clothes horse turned out to be a shattered chair.

  Keeping well in the shadows so that she would not be visible in the floodlights on the ground, Hetty clambered over debris to sit down against the back wall of the wrecked home. The night breeze felt fresh and sharp on her face. She was reasonably sure that she could not be seen from the ground. A certain amount of danger was necessary. It gave a sort of moral balance to what she was doing. Where she sat bits of jagged plaster stuck into her back. She tried to make herself more comfortable as she looked out onto the scene below. The enormous curve of the coliseum surrounded her and an extraordinary feeling of power crept over her as if she were centre stage and in control of the world. For a while she looked out from her eyrie. Below, the small figures of the emergency workers moved ceaselessly to and fro around the pond in the floodlights. Ambulances waited, rotating lights flashing. Vehicles moved off taking the homeless to a sports hall. It was now half past three in the morning. The initial gigantic pall of smoke overhead had cleared. Above she could see the purple sky over the city and stars between the clouds.

  She inspected her surroundings. A splintered chair leg caught her eye. That would do. She tore her skirt with it. She tried to cut her legs and thighs and the back of her neck with a rough piece of plaster. Some blood came but not enough. For the next ten minutes she tried banging her head against the wall as violently as she could bear, stopping for a bit and then doing it again, trying to take herself by surprise. Suddenly it occurred to her that the whole edifice might collapse and she had an urge to scrabble out of it. The panic passed and she lay down and pulled some of the wet rubble and plaster on top of her. The plaster retained some heat from the fire. A feeling of great peace and contentment came over her.

  After a while she became uncomfortable. She changed her position. This she did several times during the night. Eventually, just before dawn, she moved nearer the front so that someone would be able to see her. She pulled more rubble over her body and arranged herself in the position in which she intended to be found. The rubble was damp and warm and smelled of lime. She lay staring at the stars. She felt remarkably alert. Truly alive. It was as if this great shattered arena was a stage-set especially constructed for her performance. She shut her eyes and tried to doze.

  It was nine in the morning, in the grey light of day, when the youngest member of the fire crew spotted her. He was with his colleagues in a huge yellow crane that had been brought up to the front of the building with a clench claw to take away some of the wreckage. His eyes were alight with triumph as he pointed to where some rubble lay half covering a woman’s body. They could see that her eyes were shut.

  Hetty heard the excited shouts. She allowed her eyes to open the merest crack and saw the men shouting and gesticulating to other emergency workers. She began to hyperventilate so that her pulse would be irregular when help arrived. She drew deep breaths until she felt dizzy.

  It was not more than a few minutes before she heard the scrunch of boots in the rubble and reassuring voices. She lay absolutely still making her breathing as shallow as possible. Solicitous hands quickly removed the pieces of debris and plaster that covered her. This was it. The wonderful moment of recovery. Someone was feeling for her pulse. She felt her left eyelid being raised as a paramedic tried to determine her level of consciousness. The voices around her spoke earnestly in Dutch. She was lifted with the utmost care onto a stretcher. Someone was stroking her head.

  Hetty Moran was carried down the four flights of stairs. The stretcher felt as if it were floating on its own. She was a princess on a palanquin. The stretcher-men made their way to the ambulance with their precious burden. Seated inside the vehicle were Pa and Ma Tem. Someone had placed a jacket around Pa Tem’s shoulders.

  Every disaster has its heroes. After the crash Pa Tem had gone looking in their part of the building, which was relatively undamaged, for neighbours or children who might be trapped. His face and hands were badly burned. The brown skin of his face had come off in strips showing pink flesh below. The palms of his hands too were bright pink with third degree burns. He had stayed all night with people watching outside, helping where he could. In the morning his pain was so acute that Ma Tem insisted on bringing him over to the ambulance. The ambulance men explained that there was a serious stretcher case coming in. He w
ould have to wait. They would come back for him.

  Pa Tem, half-blinded by the effects of the fire, raised his hand in acknowledgement. They climbed down from the ambulance. Pa Tem settled on a bench to wait patiently with his wife’s arm around his shoulders.

  In the ambulance a transparent oxygen mask was quickly fitted over Hetty’s face. She was wrapped in tin foil in case of hypothermia and tucked cosily under one of the red ambulance blankets. The oxygen began to make her high. It was hard not to giggle. A wave of exhilaration swept through her. Voices spoke Dutch over her head. The ambulance siren wailed. Someone took hold of her hand. After ten minutes or so she felt the ambulance slow down. The doors were opened and once more she felt herself being lifted. A chill morning breeze brushed her face as she was carried to the hospital entrance. She opened her eyes a fraction. An arm was holding open the transparent swing doors of the casualty department. The stretcher was lifted onto a trolley and there was the hollow echo of rubberised wheels as she was pushed through draughty corridors. She suppressed the urge to laugh.

  After a preliminary examination which revealed no major injuries the hospital staff, overstretched with the sudden influx of patients, hurried off to deal with more serious cases. An auxiliary nurse was appointed to clean her up and she was taken to one of the private rooms that had been requisitioned for the emergency. As her trolley was pushed into the room the raised square white pillow on the bed beckoned to her like an empty canvas on which she could paint a new portrait of her own choosing. She had not spoken. When the nurse tried to take her details she just shut her eyes. Three doctors stood in the doorway.

  ‘Generalised shock,’ said one of them.

  When they had left Hetty Moran snuggled down in the warm bedclothes delighted by the feeling of being absolutely safe.