The Bridge

by Enza Gandolfo

  Slowly the more seriously injured appeared, carried on stretchers, groaning and howling. Paolina drew Jimmy closer. They both examined each man. These were living, the survivors. No sign of Jimmy’s father. No sign of Antonello. Where was her husband?

  Antonello, my husband. She’d become accustomed to having a husband. To introducing him: my husband. This is my husband, Antonello. Il mio marito, Nello. He promised they’d be together forever. That they’d make a beautiful life together, buy a house, and have children. He was dependable. He kept his promises. He had to be safe. He had to be. Jesus, please keep him safe.

  She didn’t know what to do. Anchored to the spot by Jimmy’s small hand gripping her wrist, she chanted a prayer in a low whisper. Hail Mary, full of grace, Our Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

  ‘Have you heard anything?’ Emilia asked when she caught sight of Paolina.

  ‘I’ve seen some men stumbling out, but I don’t know who to ask.’

  ‘Do you know what happened?’ Franco asked.

  ‘No, lots of speculation, but nothing … I’m hoping …’

  ‘Sant’Antonio will look after my son.’ Emilia made the sign of the cross over her chest. She coughed. ‘I can hardly breathe.’ Floating around them were flakes of rust and ash, as well as the thick smoke from the fires. Paolina’s throat was scratchy and irritated too. Emilia coughed again — she seemed to be choking — and Franco rubbed her back with his hand.

  ‘You go home,’ Paolina said. ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘Not until I see my son.’ Emilia held her handkerchief over her mouth.

  As the first dead appeared, bodies on stretchers covered roughly with white sheets, an eerie silence fell over the crowd. They stopped asking questions and shouting speculations, and even the most boisterous lowered their voices to whispers, which were drowned out by the noise of the helicopters and sirens, by the shouts of rescue workers and police.

  Like everyone else, Emilia, Franco, and Paolina, with Jimmy holding onto her hand, stared at the bodies lined up on the road. Paolina was close enough to make out the shape of each man, to see the hand or foot the ambulance officers failed to cover. She didn’t turn away until she was sure each time the body wasn’t Antonello’s. She scrutinised the injured; she scanned the wreckage over and over again. Fear thrashed against Paolina’s chest, it pushed against her clenched teeth. She refused to give it voice, to abandon herself to it.

  Around her she heard the cries and screams of family members — wives and parents, children — as they recognised a familiar scratched wristwatch, a pair of steel-capped boots, a red sock, the shape of a body under the white sheet now stained with blood. She imagined those men would’ve been up on the top of the bridge and didn’t stand a chance. Where was Antonello when the bridge collapsed?

  A group of older women, most of them with their aprons on, took their rosary beads from their pockets and formed a circle. Emilia joined them. She brought her own beads to her lips, kissed the small silver cross, and began to pray. Each woman chanted low prayers in her native tongue — in Italian, in Greek, in Maltese, in Spanish.

  Paolina noticed Franco standing alone and glaring at the broken bridge, his face sagged, deep furrows marking the corners of his mouth. He chain-smoked his thin, tight, hand-rolled cigarettes, the small grey butts littered the ground around him.

  When Jimmy’s hand slipped away, Paolina grabbed him by the shoulder, but he shook himself free and was instantly out of reach, lunging towards a man so covered in mud and blood he seemed, at least to Paolina, unrecognisable.

  ‘Dad, Dad! It’s me.’ Jimmy wrapped his arms around the man’s legs so they both almost toppled over. The man took several seconds to react, to recognise his son. Then he patted the boy on the head and embraced him; they inched towards a gutter and sank together to the ground. Paolina reached for her gold crucifix.

  ‘Paolina,’ Carmela, Antonello’s sister, called out as she pushed her pram towards Paolina. ‘Nello will be okay,’ Carmela sobbed when she reached her. ‘Mamma says he’s the lucky one.’

  She rocked the pram that held her youngest child. Paolina squeezed her sister-in-law’s arm. Luck was fickle; she didn’t want to depend on it.

  ‘He wasn’t supposed to be on site. He took the morning off to go to the bank with your father. He went in early to meet Sam and Slav for lunch.’

  Was that bad luck?

  The baby began to cry and Carmela picked him up. He had brown eyes and olive skin. His head was covered in spiky black hair, as dark as Antonello’s. Paolina wanted children, but they’d decided to wait until they saved a house deposit. Now Paolina wished she was already pregnant and Antonello’s child was in her belly. What if something happened to him? What if he were dead? She might’ve lost him and their future, the family they were going to have together.

  She’d foreseen the bridge falling. It fell in her nightmares, collapsing over and over again. It fell on those days when he was late home, when the wind turned into a gust. He told her she worried too much, that the bridge was safe, he was safe. She closed her eyes. Nello, please be alive.

  One hour and then a second hour passed, and with it Paolina’s anxiety rose. One old woman howled as her son limped towards her. A younger woman knelt by the body of her brother. ‘I can’t go home and tell Mum you’re dead,’ she cried. ‘I can’t.’ A woman dressed in a Salvation Army uniform gathered the sister in her arms. ‘My mother loved him best,’ the girl wailed.

  They waited. Some paced. Others leant against fences and cars, talked in soft whispers to the strangers they found themselves next to. The road transformed into a large waiting room, each person praying that their son, husband, father, brother would be the lucky one, the one who defied the odds and survived.

  Paolina closed her eyes to stop herself crying and recalled sitting with Antonello on the banks of the Yarra, watching him draw the bridge. Witnessing the pleasure drawing gave him. He found pleasure so easily. She knew what trauma could do to a man: her father suffered from depression, a result of his experiences as a prisoner of war in Russia. He sulked for weeks, even months, at a time. Her mother coped by keeping the house quiet and dark and still. Blinds rolled down. Doors closed. Television and radios off or barely audible. It was as if the sunlight were scalding, all sound deafening. She and Giacomo spent their childhoods orchestrating outings to escape, to find places out of their parents’ reach where they could play with abandon. Now Giacomo had returned from Vietnam, withdrawn and depressed, all joy leached from his life. Antonello was content and uncomplicated. Not boisterous, just quiet and warm and full of a naïve delight. She loved how he surrendered to life, whether it was dancing at the San Remo Ballroom, going to the movies at La Scala, or taking the train and the tram all the way to St Kilda for a picnic lunch under the large palms.

  ‘Paolina.’ Bob’s wife, Sandy, tapped her on the shoulder and she opened her eyes. They embraced. Paolina sank into Sandy’s shoulder and they both wept.

  The last time the two women had seen each other was at Paolina and Antonello’s wedding. Sandy had danced all night. She was vivacious and funny. While all the other women her age were dressed as Queen Elizabeth lookalikes in their pastel two-piece suits with matching box hats, Sandy wore a flowing purple kaftan, and Paolina recalled the swirl of her dress as Bob spun her around the dance floor.

  Sandy’s face was red and blotchy, and even in her flowing skirt, even with her silver bangles and large shell earrings, she looked old. ‘Any news on Nello?’ she asked, hooking her arm under Paolina’s.

  ‘No. Any news about Bob?’

  ‘No, no news, but I know … I can already feel he’s gone.’

  ‘We can’t give up hope, Sandy.’

  ‘He’s been good at staying out of trouble, but not this time,’ Sandy whispered. ‘He’ll have done everything he could for the crew, es
pecially Antonello …’

  There was nothing more to say, and they both fell silent. Nothing to do but wait.

  Chapter 2

  The air was dense, black, and brittle, and Antonello coughed and coughed, but he couldn’t clear his throat. His lips were dry and swollen, his hands and face coated in a coarse grit and sticky brown mud. His leg throbbed; his eyes were scratchy and difficult to open. He was stunned. There was a persistent ringing in his ears. It muffled but didn’t block other sounds: gas exploding and fuel igniting into flames, the spit and spark of the fires, the rivets popping and the cries and screams of men calling for help, calling out names, groaning in pain. He stretched his arms out in front of him, but the air swallowed them whole. Trembling, he pulled them back. The world was a thick fog, more dense than the winter fogs that descended on his childhood village, cloaking each house in its own mist. As a child, he stood on the balcony during those fogs, imagining he was the last living person in the world, alone, king of the new world. But the fantasies were short-lived. Anxiety crept over him, beginning in his belly, rising like bile, until he was choking. He raced back inside, searching for his brothers, for his sisters, for his mother, calling out their names, relief coming slowly when he heard their voices, soothing him, and felt their touch, his mother ruffling his hair or his brother Vince swinging him around until he was dizzy.

  As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the shape of the devastation. It reminded him of those images of wartime European cities in history textbooks. The aftermath of battles lost. The ground was mud and slush, shards of glass, crushed concrete, twisted steel, and men half buried and motionless, men crawling out of the mud and from under the debris. They stumbled out, dazed and disorientated, trembling and unsteady, from behind cranes and forklifts. These ghost walkers were being drawn towards the fallen span, towards the voices of their trapped mates. He could see that his bridge, smashed and mangled, everything in its way ground to ash and powder, had finally stopped falling. It was a wreck; a ruined battleship, sinking into the sludge.

  He thought about Paolina, about his parents. They’d be in a panic, and he knew he should let them know he was alive. But he could not leave the site — first he had to find the others. ‘A crew is like an army platoon,’ he heard Bob’s voice echoing in his head. ‘You never leave one of your men behind.’ He moved closer to the wreckage. There was work to be done. Men to be rescued. He heard his name, Nello, Nello … but between him and the trapped man there were several fires, their angry flames, the heat, and the bellowing towers of dense black smoke blocking his path.

  Please, please let them be alive. The prayer was a chant, a wish, a hope. Not Bob, not Sam, not Slav.

  Like the other men who escaped injury, Antonello didn’t go home. He joined firemen and police, and men from neighbouring factories who raced down to the bridge to help. Armed with shovels and crowbars, and sledgehammers, they were digging through rocks and rumble, cutting through steel beams with oxyacetylene torches, trying to untangle the mess. They were in dinghies searching the river. They dived under the fallen concrete and steel. The mud clung to them, coating their skin, weighing them down, making it difficult for them to breathe, to keep their eyes open, to find the bodies of their mates and pull them out of the river.

  It might’ve been hours since the collapse, his legs were so heavy and tired, his arms aching. But if someone told him it was only minutes ago, he would’ve believed them too. He avoided talking, communicating with others in gestures, as they struggled to dislodge concrete and steel. Some of the trapped men caught sight of their mates through the dusty fog, recognising them, calling their names, but it was hard, frustrating work and not all the trapped men could be reached — not until the fires were put out, until steel was hauled away, until the emergency workers stabilised the bridge. Bodies accumulated on the roadside in a long line, silent and still. Ten, twelve, then twenty, then twenty-five …

  When Antonello saw Sam, he was sitting on a concrete block, his arm in a sling; a Salvo was handing him a drink. Antonello tried to leap towards him, but his knee buckled and he stumbled.

  ‘Nello!’ Sam yelled as he caught sight of him.

  Sam is alive. The relief choked the breath out of him. Muddy water dripped from Sam’s hair, from his clothes, from his eyes. Even so, Antonello could see he was crying. He had never seen Sam cry. They were best mates. They played together. They fished together. They drank together. They went out dancing together. Once they picked up two girls and the four went to a hotel, booked a room, and spent the night. They were so drunk and shameless. It was before Alice. Before Paolina. They sometimes remembered that night and their brashness. Slav was pissed off with them for leaving him behind. He said they were supposed to be the Rat Pack together — trouble was, Slav said, they were Dean and Frank, inseparable, and he wasn’t sure who he was … Peter or Sammy Jr or Joey.

  Where was Slav now? They had promised him that next time, they wouldn’t leave him behind.

  Sam put his good arm around his friend’s shoulder and pulled him close. ‘I thought I was a goner.’ His voice wavered. His body seemed light and vulnerable, as if all the strength had been leeched out of him, as if he were melting. He leant into Antonello to keep upright.

  ‘Me too,’ Antonello replied, helping Sam sit back down.

  ‘Any sign of Slav? Bob?’

  Antonello shook his head. Behind Sam the mutilated bridge remained imperious, glaring down at the devastation on the bank, at the fires burning, at the men dead and dying, as if it were the one who had been betrayed.

  ‘I’m going back to look for them,’ Antonello said, as he turned to limp towards the bridge, leaving Sam alone. ‘You stay here, mate.’

  Sam was safe; now he’d search for Slav and for Bob. He was prepared to shift and carry concrete and steel until he found them. He didn’t want to think about what he’d seen: the piers collapsing and the span cracked in half as the men fell to their deaths. He didn’t want to think about Bob, standing on the top with the crew. He didn’t want to think about Slav either, about him falling and the full weight of the span coming down on top of him. After all, Sam had been up there too. Sam was alive. There was hope.

  When a policeman asked him his name and if he’d contacted his family, he noticed for the first time the people gathered on the road behind the barriers. Paolina and his parents would be there waiting, worrying. Reluctantly, he moved towards the crowd. He heard his mother call out his name before he saw her, and then he saw Paolina, and his sister, Carmela, and his father and other people, and they were running towards him. Paolina reached him first. She held him and sobbed. His mother touched his face again and again, as if she didn’t believe he were real. He should’ve been glad to see them, especially Paolina, but he felt only shame. The sensation of it was overwhelming and persistent, its tentacles around his neck, pressing down on his heart.

  ‘I need to go back and help,’ he said, pulling away from his mother and Paolina. ‘I can’t leave them.’

  But before he could go, Sandy called out to him.

  ‘I saw Sam,’ she told him. ‘He said Bob was up the top. Arguing with the bosses about the bolts.’ She held his hand. ‘I know he’s gone. They tell me not to give up hope. But I know.’

  ‘I won’t stop looking until we find him,’ Antonello promised.

  ‘I’m glad you’re okay,’ she said, raising her other hand and patting Antonello on the cheek. Her skin was ice against his hot and gritty face. ‘Bob told me … He said he was worried about the bridge, a couple of days ago. He never talked bad about that bloody bridge. Not to me. He said he wouldn’t forgive himself if something happened to you — to the other guys as well, but especially to you, his favourite. You’re like a son to him.’ She whispered the last six words.

  ‘I know. I know. I’ve got to go back, Sandy.’ He pulled away and she let go of his hand.

  ‘Please.’ Paolina stood in front o
f him. ‘Please don’t go back. There are plenty of rescuers, your brothers are helping — they’ll find the others.’

  ‘I can’t leave them,’ he said, moving away. As he made his way back towards the wreckage, slowly, picking through the rubble, he noticed a crushed helmet, several odd boots, a pair of thick prescription glasses, the lenses intact, and a mangled red lunchbox. He kicked the lunchbox out of his way, but it only moved a couple of inches. He imagined a woman, a mother or a wife, packing the lunchbox earlier that day: ‘Cheese sandwiches, love.’ Would that man come home again? The ground was sludge — mud and oil and blood. The emergency workers were carrying in sacks of sand to cover the ground, but there’d never be enough sand.

  There were men everywhere now — the survivors, the rescuers, ambos, cops — but the initial frenzy had passed. And as the sun set, and the darkness, a black shroud, descended, hope dissipated. There was no chance of finding anyone else alive. Exhausted, Antonello joined a group gathered around a makeshift campfire. His knee was swollen and throbbing; his mouth was dry and powdery. One of the Salvos, an older man, pointed to a small stool and handed him a cup of tea. ‘You should get that knee seen to,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, it’ll be fine,’ Antonello said. The tea was bitter, but it was hot and soothing.

  ‘It went like a pack of cards,’ he heard someone say.

  No, he thought, not like a pack of cards. No, that wasn’t how it went.

  Another man, his arm in a sling, his face covered in mud, said, ‘“Pull the bolts out,” they told us, and some of us said it was a fucking bad idea, but no, they did it anyway. The steel turned blue, fucking blue.’

  ‘They realised too bloody late it was a mistake, the biggest mistake ever,’ another guy added, ‘and that dickhead engineer calls out, “Put them back!” But there was no puttin’ them back — the holes had disappeared and the whole fucking bridge was slipping away under our feet. I knew we were rooted.’ He shook his head, and a bloke sitting next to him put his arm around his shoulder.