by Edward Carey
And one night shortly afterwards, whilst Irva was sleeping, I climbed up the stairs into the attic, I placed the miniature statue, made in China, upon the plasticine city of Entralla. How wonderful it would have been if it were true, how wonderful to wake the city one morning and to see the expressions upon people’s faces, as they rushed hurriedly to work and suddenly stopped short and with gaping mouths and wide eyes, saw that the Statue of Liberty had taken up home on our very own Cathedral Square.
That night in the attic, I suddenly turned around. There was Irva in tears.
TWO LARGE trestle tables held the weight of growing Entralla in the attic. There was a gap between these tables, to represent the River Nir. The Iron Bridge, the Senasis Bridge and the Small Bridge spanned these tables. On the model where the banks of the river ran, Irva attached small chipboard platforms to the trestle tables in imitation of the river’s ancient path. If a plasticine man had inhabited the plasticine city and was in lonely despair, for he would have been the city’s only inhabitant, to have tumbled from any of the bridges down onto the attic floor of 27 Veber Street, the fall would be greater than that experienced by the drop from the Grand Canyon in Arizona, America, and it is certain that he would be dead before his plasticine body dented out of shape on impact.
The model allowed Central Entralla to be seen with fresh eyes and to be seen clearly, for the first time, so comprehensible was it in its reduction. We could observe it from an impersonal distance now, as foreigners almost. Entralla had become strangely collectable. A thief might pass by and in a second pull out the bell tower from Cathedral Square and place it, lost to us for ever, in his deep pockets. The city belonged, now, in its limited size and dreams, to us, to Alva and Irva Dapps.
Central Entralla had been completed, we had reached up to and beyond the old fragments of Lubatkin’s city wall, which, years before, when amateurs at this plasticine art, we first considered as schoolchildren. Irva had built the old town, she had built half of Napoleon Street, and still she was building onwards, onwards. But the trestle tables were full now and so we began to construct Entralla in fractions, chipboard square by chipboard square. When each chipboard square was completed we carefully lowered it into a box, of exactly the right dimensions, and then we placed a lid on that box, and we wrote on the lid exactly which fragment of Entralla was contained within. And the boxes began to stack up. All those boxes, which originally came from the post office, brown cardboard boxes that had once contained envelopes.
Soon it was time to seriously consider the sleeping arrangements of all Entralla, from the pavement to the humble bedsit all the way to the opulent town houses of Arkllitt Avenue. We began to give Entrallans plasticine homes to call their own, plasticine retreats to escape to, little plasticine corners of Entralla, microscopic crumbs of the world which were their microscopic crumbs and no one else’s in which to express themselves, in which to be entirely, absolutely, unreservedly themselves; free from dilution of all other people.
FROM GRANDFATHER, who was told so much of Entrallan life as he sat talking to his customers at the post office, we learnt news of three of our old school friends. Kersty Plint was pregnant. Eda Dapps had married Stepan Dinkin. We never asked for this news, we didn’t want it, it got in the way. Irva stopped letting Grandfather in the attic. When he tried to build some of his matchstick locations in our home, the home of a plasticine city, Irva crushed them.
And then Grandfather stopped coming for a long while. ‘It’s as if they don’t recognise me,’ he said, ‘And they stare at me, just stare, I can’t bare them staring at me. As if they’re growing wild. And Irva never talks to me, if she’s something to say she tells Alva first and then Alva tells me. Something should be done, Dallia, it’s not right.’ ‘Leave them alone,’ Mother would say, ‘they’re fine with their plasticine. They only want to be left alone.’
Since I looked after Irva, and since I would not allow anyone else to look after her, Mother continued to work at the post office, and I began to work there only two or three days a week, as a part-time sorter. We had no room for Mother anymore (the city was taking up so much space), and Mother at first tearfully and then calmly began to separate herself from us. I think it could be said that she was falling out of love with us then. We could feel her withdrawing, and as a punishment Irva no longer allowed her to see the city. She didn’t seem to mind, at least, she never complained.
We didn’t notice it at first, but after a time there could be no denying it: our mother, after twenty years, was growing independent and confident. She was letting go. She had her hair cut and dyed. She started dieting. She said to us in the kitchen one day, ‘You mustn’t forget your looks, because you have been caring for baby is not sufficient excuse, your husband won’t appreciate a messy, sloppy wife. You should try letting him baby-sit whilst you spend a relaxing hour at the hairdressers. It will raise your morale a hundred fold and make you feel so good.’
SOMETIMES NOW, as a rest from my efforts, I would visit one of the cafés in Market Square. I usually went to Café Louis because Postman Kurt Laudus was often there, and he would always come over to talk to me. Sometimes I longed to speak to someone other than Irva. I’d sit at a table with a coffee and a croissant or a bagel or a baklava, still yearning a little, still yearning enough sometimes to lock myself in the bathroom to look at my map, and on those occasions, when Irva knocked on the door, I wouldn’t always answer. In Café Louis I would gently chew those foreign morsels, close my eyes and relax. And whenever I visited Louis’s I always felt guilty and in recompense I always brought back Irva’s favourite for her, an Entralla bun.13
ALL OUR PLASTICINE buildings may not have been mathematically accurate, but they were, let there be no doubt about this, emotionally precise. And I should also explain that because Miss Stott once measured us so precisely with her tape measure, I began to understand that buildings could also be measured in this fashion. So often now—with a much longer tape measure than Miss Stott’s, in a little metal box in which the tape coiled around itself—I would measure the widths of buildings and calculate the height by measuring the length of the ground to the first window and then multiplying it, because so often the different storeys of buildings were precise repetitions of each other. But mostly I just guessed, accurate guesses. (The fuss people make when they saw me measuring their homes, even if I didn’t actually touch them. ‘What are you doing?,’ they’d ask. ‘Just measuring,’ I’d say, ‘I’ll be done in a minute.’ ‘Why are you measuring my home?,’ they’d demand to know. ‘Just because,’ I’d say. ‘But it’s my home,’ they’d all say, ‘it’s mine, how dare you!’ ‘Yes,’ I’d say, ‘I know that, but I want to measure it all the same.’ ‘But it isn’t yours,’ they’d say, ‘it’s mine, it’s mine!’ Is it any wonder that I often had to work late at night, when such hystericals were dreaming of thieves in their troubled sleep?) And of course I used our heights as a ruler also, I’d measure exactly how many Alvas or Irvas tall a building was.
Out of plasticine we built the ever growing cemeteries of Entralla, lines and lines of tiny squares, whole districts made up only of the dead, a whole city in itself. I never counted them all. There were simply too many little squares, just too many, too many dead people, too many living people. We couldn’t fit everyone in.
Whilst making plasticine buildings it is important to warm the plasticine up first, to soften it. Before work, plasticine must be packed against the naked skin of hands, slowly warming it. If you are in a hurry it is advisable to roll two balls of plasticine and place one in each of your armpits. But never allow the plasticine to overheat for then it will stick stubbornly to your fingers, it will refuse to leave them, it will disallow any straight lines, it will refuse to be cut, it will mock you—buildings then will slouch and droop. You know that you have almost reached fluency in the pure language of plasticine when you begin to wonder, do I smell of plasticine or does plasticine smell of me?
Sometimes now, looking down on the plastic
ine city, to encourage Irva with thoughts of outside, I would read to her from the local newspapers. Together we would see, for example, where the robberies or murders had been happening, and if a robbery or murder had not occurred in the old town or in that part of Inner Entralla on the tables in the attic, I’d fetch the box holding the unfortunate street and we would stare suspiciously at the buildings, trying to seek out clues. But when I asked her to come out with me, just for a little while, just up Veber Street, as far as the bakery and back, she refused, she retreated into herself, wouldn’t speak again for hours, and when she did, she yelled at me, ‘You promised, you promised, you promised not until the city was finished. Don’t break that promise now. Not after all this work. So stupid! I’m not ready yet. I’m not ready. I will be, I’m sure I will, I feel closer everyday, but not yet, it’s not time yet, the city’s not finished, is it? Is it? So don’t be cruel. I’ll smash it, I’ll crush it, see if I don’t. We made a promise!’ And so I wouldn’t ask Irva outside again for several weeks. And yet every day she travelled in amongst the deep grooves of Entralla, her thoughts wandering through those many streets. She would set out on long walks, moving from box to box, studying from above the canals of streets, her confidence returning. She’d stroll round and around Entralla for hours every day and when she traced her thoughts back to Veber Street, when she closed the lid on the box of our street, it seemed to me she was a little out of breath.
THERE WAS another reason, besides our forced exclusion, for Mother’s growing independence. Jonas Lutt. All this time Jonas Lutt continued to call on 27 Veber Street. He had long ago stopped bringing plasticine with him and he began instead to come with wine and flowers. If he ever happened to see either of us while he was at home, he always asked, ‘How’s the plasticine?,’ and Mother would say, ‘Oh, they just love their plasticine those two, they couldn’t live without it, they just love it, go on then, you two, back to your work, Jonas and I would like some peace.’ And wordless and appalled we would build on. And then one day Mother knocked on the attic hatch, she told us to come down, that she had something to show us. We almost yawned in anticipation but what she showed us surprised and shocked us. Mother had a passport! Soon Mother was going to go with Jonas Lutt in his Scania lorry all the way to Germany. Jonas had asked her, Mother told us with a smile, and she didn’t feel it would be polite to decline.
WE HEARD a great honking noise, we looked out of the window to discover Jonas Lutt there and his evil, stinking Scania lorry, and then Mother came out holding a suitcase, and she climbed into the lorry and Mother, for the first time ever, was going abroad. Mother was leaving us, in that monster of locomotion, disappearing up Veber Street, out into Pilias Street and away, away. And I was running after her until she was out of sight.
WHEN MOTHER was gone Grandfather came to visit us again. We hadn’t seen him for many months. When he saw Irva he said, ‘This has got to stop, this has to stop. Neglect, that’s what it is. Pure and simple neglect.’ He tried to come close to her, I stood in his way. ‘When did you last go outside, Irva? How long is it since you were last out? You can’t stay locked up in here, it isn’t right. It’s not right.’ We didn’t answer of course. ‘You’re coming out now, you’re coming out this minute.’ He pushed past me and took Irva’s hand, he was going to force her out. ‘Don’t touch her!’ I warned, ‘Don’t touch her!’ But Grandfather wouldn’t listen, so I had to bite him, so I had to kick him and pull at his grey hair. And he was too old for us now and he couldn’t beat us. He slipped down to the floor and when he was down there we both kicked him. He managed to scramble out of the house, his nose was bleeding slightly. I slammed the door. He sat on the doorstep for a while, I watched him through the keyhole, holding his handkerchief to his nose. Then he stood up, carefully brushed down his post office uniform and went away.
WHEN MOTHER came back, only two days later, we pretended we hadn’t missed her. She gave us identical T-shirts saying ‘FRANKFURT AM MAIN’ (Irva never wore hers), but she hadn’t actually seen the city itself, only a depot on the outskirts. She showed me endless photographs of motorways, and foreign people in foreign motorway cafés.
IN ALL THE CIRCLES of Outer Entralla there were so many unremarkable streets, each seeming first cousin to the last, so much similarity that I sometimes found myself confused. And so now for the first time, just to make sure, I began to claim a little piece of every street or square in that place called Outer Entralla, so threatening in its vastness. I began to take a screwdriver with me always and as soon as I’d finished noting down or photographing a street, when no one was looking, I’d do my version of cocking legs to mark territory. I scratched onto the surface of brick or concrete at one end of the street, small autographs. I scraped: ‘A & I’. It seemed only right since the plasticine buildings had Irva’s fingerprints all over them, that I should mark them too.
How Irva missed me when I was away, how she sat at home waiting for my return. A life made up of anxious waiting. Each time I was gone she’d be unable to stop herself from imagining me dead, somewhere far from Veber Street, helpless Alva dead on a pavement.
Every day it took me longer and longer to reach new sites, every day I had to travel so far. But on I’d go, onwards and onwards, so that the city could be built. I was out so far, I hardly knew where I was, but still these distant streets were a part of Entralla, still these people called themselves Entrallans. To think of all those Entrallans I had seen over the years! All those many Entrallans I had passed—the weight of seeing so many people, the endless busy numbers of them. The inertia they cause, how many little fragments of conversations I had heard, how many different shadows of words from behind doors and windows, how many times I had heard other people’s telephones ringing inside other people’s houses, how many times I had heard people fucking at each other (for there are only a limited number of things humans can do together), how many condoms I had seen wrinkled in the streets, how many car alarms I had started as I walked Entralla, how many dirtied syringes with rusting needles I’d passed, how much I’d seen, the weight of collecting everyone, causing me such tiredness, such sadness.
And all the rooms of our home were filling up, from Central Entralla on the trestle tables in the attic to all the other boxes of streets and districts in every room in the house. All those boxes and boxes of Entralla! We were running out of space to put them, where could we fit them all? Where could they all be put? We worried more and more about space. The model had reached so far from Central Entralla that we had finally come upon the endless tall lines of the high-rise homes, cruel space upon cruel space. But where could we house these tower blocks of ours in 27 Veber Street? The spare bedroom, my old room, was completely full (on the bed, under the bed, around the bed), and even Mother’s room was half filled with boxes of Outer Entralla (a whole half of the room cut off now by stacks of boxes) and some of the kitchen too, but we had been careful to leave a corridor between boxes, paths to the cooker, to Father’s stool. And all those boxed were marked, DO NOT TOUCH. DO NOT TOUCH written all about the house. We had no choice, we had to pile them up, these towers, one on top of the other, and store them in their boxes in the cellar, out of sight, where we didn’t have to look at them every day (just like the city planners).
And the city kept on changing, challenging us to keep up, old houses would be knocked down and new houses would be built on streets we had already completed. And so we would have to study that street again, add the new buildings. The city kept on changing, it wouldn’t keep still.
IN SUMMER the greenflies and the mosquitoes and the house flies would come. They always knew where to find us. Mother would open the front door or leave windows open in the kitchen, and up they’d come. We’d watch them walk over our city, we’d see a hunched mosquito poised on some rooftop, we’d see a fat fly walking blackly, arrogantly down a boulevard. They’d swoop and hum around our ears, we’d long to crush them, we’d yearn to squash them against hard surfaces but we couldn’t, we mustn’t, w
e had to let them fly about us for fear, in our anger, some building, some precious square or even a humble plasticine pavement might be dented through our vengeance. We longed to kill them but we had to be patient, above all else we must keep patient. Can it be imagined how much patience is required to build a city? I bought fly papers. Our victims screamed and twitched on the sticky strips as we worked on beneath them, stopping occasionally to look up and smile.
But it was not only insects that we grew to fear. One winter came a new terror. When we were carefully checking through all the stacked boxes, as we happened to on irregular intervals, we came across one—of sector five including much of Bernadinn Street—which had a hole in its side. Something had eaten its way into the box, we could see scratch marks, teeth marks even. We placed the box on a table, and, trembling, lifted the lid. The horror of it! Poor Irva had to look away, had to sit down with her head between her legs immediately. The intruder had left its footprints all the way up Bernadinn Street; it had pressed its pestilential way deep into our carefully smoothed plasticine, it had casually pottered pitted footprints upon our work. But there was worse still: it had defecated along the streets, small lozenges of brown shit on our city! And worse of all, worse even than the shit, wrapped up in the corner of Bernadinn and Duvis Streets, at least where the corner had once been, for there was no remnance of it left, was the offending creature itself, curled up in a bed consisting of torn shreds of the persecuted box.
A mouse, if you please.
When woken, it fled through sector five, causing yet more damage, then leapt from the box and into the darkness.
We bought poison, we bought mousetraps. We raised our boxes from the ground using wooden boards and bricks, we carefully inspected them everyday. We cheered when we found a hairy corpse, twisted on the floor. We felt no pity for its pain or for its tininess. Its length after all, including tail, equalled a quarter of many of our smaller streets.
