Alva and Irva

by Edward Carey

  SO THEN I forgot about Piter Soffit and began to concentrate my mind elsewhere. ‘We live in Veber Street. We weren’t born there, we were born in Saint Mirgarita of Antioch Street, in the hospital that’s there. Our father’s dead. He died on Napoleon Street. Where do you live?’

  That was what I said to the fair-haired boy in the library with the maps and guidebooks, with Irva, anxious Irva, trembling Irva, less and less Irva every day, at my side. The boy looked up at us, very seriously for a few moments, and I began to wonder if he too would demand to be left alone, but then his mouth opened and he spoke, ‘I live on Dismas Street. I was born there. My father’s not dead, but he doesn’t live on Dismas Street, he lives on Cletus Street with his second family. I live with my mother and my sister. They don’t understand me. My brother does understand me though, he’s older, he’s twenty-six, but he lives in Canada now. How about you? Can’t you speak?’ Those last questions were aimed at Irva, who nodded almost imperceptibly but didn’t speak.

  His name was August Hirkus and he spent such long hours in the library because he was sure that when he grew up he was going to travel the world. He was solemnly preparing himself for his departure from Entralla which was, he said, ‘the most insignificant, piffling, little zilch of a spot, where nothing happens, where everybody speaks one of the most obscure languages in the world just so that the rest of the world will not understand them. But the life of August Hirkus,’ he said, ‘will not be wasted in such a place. I will be someone, but to be someone,’ he said, ‘I have to be somewhere first. It’s impossible to be someone here,’ he said, ‘everyone here is a complete no one because this place is an utter nowhere. Yes, first I’ll go somewhere, and then, after a while, I’ll be someone. What about you?’

  We just stared, too amazed at August Hirkus, at this boy who could see his future so clearly. He looked disappointed. ‘Christ!,’ he said, ‘a couple of Entrallans, that’s what I’ve got here.’ He closed his library books, pushed out his chair, but before he was quite up, and hurriedly, so I wouldn’t lose him, I spoke. ‘I shall travel to Gaalkacyo, Mudug, Somalia, and to Jinan, Shandong, China. I shall walk down the Avenue Brugmann in Brussels, and the Avenue Insurgentes in Mexico City. And Ramses Street in Cairo. And the Zagorodnyy Prospekt in Saint Petersburg. And the Khiaban-e Akbarabad in Tehran. And Waterworks Road in Brisbane.’

  I could have gone on. I was only just beginning. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you can come.’ We went outside to the library steps—Irva came too, even though she wasn’t invited—and we smoked our first cigarette (sharing one of August’s cigarettes between us, coughing and smiling). That was how it started, soon we spent more and more time with August, who we learnt was, or so he told us, a difficult child. He was frequently getting into trouble, frequently arguing with his mother, and almost always ignoring his sister who was not a difficult child, who was in fact a very easy child, who made her mother proud, who was swimming captain at her school, who knew many different chunks of the Bible off by heart, and came top in divinity, who had many friends and a voice that was considered exceptional. August, however, rarely sang and could barely swim, he had no interest in the Bible (except to hide his sister’s), he had no friends at school. He told us how he would be rude to the teachers in the classroom, that he would ask questions that deliberately embarrassed them. He rarely saw his father, except when he wanted money. He frequently skipped class and was on occasions caught shoplifting; once he was seen dropping stones from a bridge onto a train track. He liked to buy canisters of car paint and scrub out street signs and whenever the word Entralla appeared on posters or signs throughout the city he would write above it the word FOR and beneath it the words READ NOWHERE. He asked us if we’d seen his graffitied signs, we nodded even though we’d never seen them. The Entrallan police, August told us, had a file with his name written on it, just about him, a file that, he said, grew thicker almost every day. I loved him! I’d do anything for him, he was the most astounding person I had ever met. I’d spend hours with August searching through maps and travel guides, sitting so close together, with Irva, a table away, watching us. August and I would have long discussions on the various merits or downfalls of certain famous hotels throughout the world. And it was whilst we were sitting on the marble steps of the Central Library that August said he was able to tell us apart, that it was easy to do so, and in the future whenever we tested him, he always got it right. Irva, he said, was always the one with the anxious expression. And how that seemed to increase the anxiousness upon her face, to burn it there.

  August and I would touch all the time. We’d mock-fight each other. And I’d long for him to kiss me but he never did. I kissed him on the arm one evening, on the library steps, with Irva sitting a few steps behind. I gave him a love bite, a big purple island on his salty skin. (That night Irva gave me a love bite too, also on my left arm, even though I never asked for one.)

  MORE AND MORE Irva would begin to fall behind. She wanted to stay with us, but we couldn’t bare to have her there all the time, she got in the way, she crowded us, she couldn’t keep up but she was always somewhere, just behind us, lagging away, saying, ‘Can I come too? Can I come? Can I?’ I so loved her, of course I always loved her, but then, in those days, I loved hurting her too. I’d whisper to her with a confident smile, ‘Who are you Irva? Will you please tell me who you are because, to me, it doesn’t seem you’re anyone at all, not really.’ Sometimes walking with August, I’d suddenly stop, turn around on the pavement, march the few steps back to where Irva was and say, ‘Go home, Irva, go home,’ as if it were only a dog and not my sister who was following us. Once we all went to the McDonald’s restaurant on the Paulus Boulevard. I sat her down at a table, and August and I went to buy our food. She wanted to come with us, but I insisted she guard the table, and instead of buying food August and I simply walked out of the back entrance onto Toller Street and we were free, we were running away, laughing at our ingeniousness. Two hours later we happened to be walking down the Paulus Boulevard and we looked through the windows of McDonald’s, and there was Irva, still there, waiting, still seated at the table.

  Those days were the great days of my wildness. I started to miss class. August and I would spend school mornings and afternoons wandering from shop to shop, stealing little things that we had no real use for. Sometimes we’d run about the train station together, or squeeze ourselves inside the passport photograph cubicle in the station hall and make grimaces for the camera and afterwards out would plop four photographs of squashed and happy friends, so close together in such a small space. And sometimes on those days as we hurtled through the city we’d catch Irva somewhere behind us, just a few buildings away. And then came the nights when August and I used to buy car paint and spray onto brick walls the messages, ‘FINLAND, LAND OF LAKES’, or, ‘ITALY: CULTURE AND CHIANTI’, or, ‘FIND ADVENTURE IN ALASKA’.

  And every night when I got home I’d tell Irva all about my fresh experiences until she cried.

  IT WAS ON one of those days of our earliest separation that I went up to the attic to find the city of Alvairvalla in ruins. Irva had smashed it. There were visible imprints of her misery all over the city, misshapen houses lay winded, sprawled now off the pitted streets, imprints of her fists visible in their distorted faces. Some buildings had been pulled out of the city and scraped for long centimetres flat against the walls, or were on the floor covered with the stamp of Irva’s shoes. I could see on the ruined streets great gashes in the plasticine from where Irva’s clawed hands had scratched.

  Poor Irva, I thought, how sad.

  ONCE AUGUST AND I visited the Civic Bakery, which was the place where August’s father worked, but we didn’t go to visit him, instead we went to visit the great Bakery Clock Tower and to look on Entralla from above, and August from that great height took out his willy and pissed down upon the city and I laughed so much my giggles became cackles. And down below on the ground was Irva. Did she wonder that day why it began to rain a little
, even though there were no clouds in the sky?9

  Mother, who by then must have returned to work at the Central Post Office, began to be ruled again by her private terrors. She would still go to the school gates and often she’d be waiting there until the entire school had left Littsen Street and the gates were even closed up for the night, and still she wouldn’t have seen us because neither I nor Irva would have gone to school all that day. And then more and more often Grandfather would be waiting at home when we finally returned, me first and then Irva always a few minutes behind, always with such a strange expression on her face. Grandfather would try to frighten us with gloomy predictions of our future lives and sometimes we’d be shown letters from school and sometimes a teacher would come and I’d hear Mother saying, ‘I don’t understand them … they barely talk to me anymore … they won’t talk to me.’ But I didn’t care about all those people. They were merely Entrallans. They didn’t count.

  ON THE STATION steps I showed August the extraordinary piece of paper I had ripped from a library book when no one was looking, just for him. Grand Central Station, New York, more like a palace than a train station. But the cerulean blue ceiling, that was the most beautiful thing, spotted with the celestial globe. The stars, all the signs of the zodiac, but not just the stars, many of which were lit up by tiny bulbs, there were also outlines of the people and the things the stars were named after. Then August had his idea: ‘Why don’t we paint the stars on the ceiling of our train station?’ ‘Do you think we could?,’ I asked. He said, ‘I don’t see why not.’ ‘Wouldn’t they stop us, surely they would.’ ‘Not if they don’t know, not if we paint it at night when the station’s closed and locked up.’

  That night, when the station was cleared, when the station gates were bolted, August and I arrived holding a pot of white emulsion paint and two brushes. There was a small side gate and then a turnstile, which we climbed over. And then we were inside the train station. And so our work could begin. We climbed way up a metal ladder bolted onto the wall and we sat with our feet dangling on one of the metal girders that supported the ceiling. It was like sitting on the ribs of a huge man, a great skeleton made of iron. We were alone in the station, it felt like alone in the world, only me and August and the pigeons trying to sleep. There was so much mess on those metal rafters, soot and dirt and rust and the pigeons had claimed them as if they were built for them alone; there were feathers and shit everywhere. We carefully stood up, balancing ourselves with one another, we took our paint brushes and using the photograph of that famous ceiling in New York as our guide we began to paint. The paint went everywhere, dripped all over us, dripped on the pigeons’ shit, dripped on the pigeons, as if it were our own shit and we, much bigger birds, were shitting on them. It dripped all the way down to the station hall too, we heard it fall, sounds that seemed to us like a bum being smacked (a warning, perhaps, of what was to come). August’s coat had great streaks down it, and so did his hair and so did his face. The station ceiling wasn’t easy to paint, it was so filthy up there that the paint had to be laid on thickly or no marks would be made, and the brushes soon became gunked up. Our constellations weren’t accurate. They were too bunched up and all in a tiny part of the station ceiling. But, all the same, we were very proud of our work.10

  We were up there for perhaps an hour, possibly more, maybe two, moving carefully between the metal ribbing, positioning white dots. It would probably have been better if one of us had stayed down below and called out directions, since once back on the hall floor we could see just how inaccurate our daubing was. But I’m glad we were both up there, there was something so good about getting dirty together. When we did finally descend exhausted, we stood in the centre of the hall, looking up at our non-fluorescent stars, visible only because of the lights of the lavatory signs and the Coca Cola machines which were always lit up, and looking down at the mess we’d made on the floor. Such a huge place all for us. And we pulled the drying paint out of each other’s hair. And then we began to pull off our paint-covered clothes. And to kiss each other everywhere, all over.

  That night something else moved in the darkness. Someone else was there. But we didn’t hear anything then, we were completely deaf, too busy with ourselves to hear. But as August and I kissed, and as we pressed against each other, then, at that moment, just then, when I felt that August and I were all that existed in the world, yes, just then, just at that moment, there was a scream from the darkness, a wail of such enormous unhappiness, a cry of such absolute misery and hurting, so loud it brought the night-watchman running.

  THE NIGHT-WATCHMAN, a man of supreme joylessness, didn’t like what he found in his station hall. Perhaps he might have been more understanding if there hadn’t been paint everywhere. But the combination upset him. There was too great an intimacy on the station floor and too much mess that went with it. He could not allow it to remain there, it was against the rules, there were too many people where he expected and wanted none. He shone his torch into us, rasping obscenities under his breath, he called the police on his radio, he stood by us with his torch until the police came.

  The police, tired and angry, muttered and grimaced and ordered us to scrub the paint from the floor. But they never looked upwards, they never looked at the ceiling, never imagined that we’d been up there, August and I, and they never looked around the hall either to see if someone else might be hiding.

  When we’d finished cleaning they took us to the police station, silent and guilty now and ashamed, even August was shaken for once, so shy suddenly that it was impossible for us to look at one another, because a shared look then might have shattered our spines.

  AUGUST AND I WAITED on a bench screwed into the ground, we waited for such a long time, not speaking to each other, until finally I was ordered into an office.

  A little desk and a little man who looked bored and sad. He gave me a long talk which came with a warning, only a warning for me because I had never done anything wrong before, a warning and a fine. I asked him what they were going to do with August, whether they were going to take him away. He said it didn’t concern me. When I left the office August was no longer there. His position on the bench had been taken by Grandfather.

  Grandfather had come to pick me up in one of the post office vans. He didn’t say anything, he just drove, as if it were a package and not a person beside him. Poor grandfather, he must have been thinking about those panties he found one morning on the post office steps years back, he must have been thinking that somehow these two events were connected. Poor grandfather, he was always happier with matchsticks than with people.

  Irva had come home hours ago.

  FOR A WEEK after the Train Station Adventure I was forced in my disgrace to remain home. Grandfather came to Veber Street just to see me, to tell me that August had gone away to live in Canada. ‘Which is all for the best,’ he said, ‘since neither his parents nor his school can control him. He’s gone away to start a new life with his brother. He shan’t be coming back.’ ‘But,’ I protested, ‘that can’t be, it isn’t true. He told me that he’d never go without me. He promised me. He promised.’ ‘Well,’ said Grandfather, ‘he lied then, didn’t he?’

  We hadn’t even measured him. How many centimetres made up August?

  I stole a map of Canada from the map shop on Donkey Street, I slept at night with that map underneath me. Irva lay next to me with her eyes open. I said in my sleep, ‘Niagara Falls, Lake Ontario, Quebec, Toronto, Newfoundland.’

  ‘I’m going away,’ I kept saying to Irva, ‘I’m going away.’

  She stopped talking to me and I never went anywhere.

  I needed to mark myself from her, I wanted there to be a sign, something to prove that I had experienced other things, something to stop the sameness. I wanted everyone to see that there was such a difference between Irva and me. I wanted everyone to know.

  WE HAD REACHED the age of sixteen, it was time for our class to split and, at the end of the school year, for some stu
dents to prepare themselves for further learning, and beyond that for university, and for others to set out into that place termed by uninspired adults the Real World. The lower half of the class was dismissed to seek employment. Irva and I were to work in the post office, in positions found for us by Grandfather, not serving customers in the hall of the Central Post Office but instead delivering letters about the city.

  On one of our final days at the educational establishment on Littsen Street, during one of the breaks between lessons, I took myself into the lavatory with my school compass. Fifteen minutes later, five minutes into the next lesson, I calmly walked into the classroom and sat down at our desk.