Page 26 of Never Tear Us Apart
Then bright light glares, fires burn, voices cry in torment. I collapse, and when I do, it’s Sal who catches me, staggering a little as I fall into his arms.
‘I think I’m dying,’ I tell him, tears streaming down my cheeks.
‘Not quite,’ he says. ‘Not quite death, not yet.’
Chapter Nineteen
Sal leads me back through the still-trembling half-house. I follow him into the cool of the tiled hallway, where he pauses in front of the longcase clock, looking up at its face as if in apology. Opening the body of the clock, he begins to wind it with some kind of chain mechanism. I watch as he sets the pendulum in motion, restarting time.
‘This isn’t your house, is it?’ I ask as he carefully closes the case, dusting off the latest shower of debris with his handkerchief. It’s a pretty clock with a painted face – once someone’s pride and joy.
‘It isn’t anyone’s house anymore,’ he says very solemnly as he leads me into a simple kitchen. ‘The family who lived here . . . they were on the bus when it was targeted by a Messerschmitt Bf 109.’ He sighs deeply, bowing his head. ‘I often think about the young man who attacked them – what must have been in his mind when he turned around and bore down on that bus. They can’t all be monsters, those boys up there in the sky. And yet there is such cruelty. This war has numbed so many to their own humanity. They have become so lost that even after a bombing raid is complete, some of the pilots still search out victims to plough down in the street. Well, you have experience of that tactic yourself.’
‘I have a lot of experience of the cruelty of war,’ I say, looking up at the sky. ‘It frightens me how very little it takes to make men into monsters.’
‘You are a . . . soldier in your own time?’
‘I’m a journalist, and I work in war zones. I try to find individual stories amidst the conflicts, to show other people these awful things in a way that’s relatable. Or I did. I lost nerve after . . . well, I lost my nerve after . . .’
I won’t share her; she is my burden to carry.
Sal looks at me with a profoundly sorrowful expression.
‘And here you are, in one of the most sustained and heavy bombing campaigns of the Second World War. Our creator is mysterious indeed.’
‘I read once that a dying brain can create a lifetime’s worth of dreams and images in its last few seconds,’ I tell him. ‘That’s what I think this is. Somewhere, outside of my head, something catastrophic has happened to my body, and this is the film my mind is showing me.’
‘Perhaps it is,’ Sal says gently. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised to discover I am a figment of someone’s imagination.’ He glances around. ‘In any case, you are quite right: this is not my house. I had an apartment in Senglea. It wasn’t much, but it was all I needed. Unfortunately, it was turned to dust some months ago. We moved what we could of our studies and archives underground. It was my colleague’s brother’s family who lived here. He asked me to move in, take care of it for as long as it’s safe to do so. He can’t bear to come and see it himself. So, I live on the ground floor and in the shelter to protect it for him. One day, my friend will want to come and retrieve the belongings of the people he lost. I am no looter or thief, Maia. Do you believe me?’
‘I do,’ I say, feeling quite suddenly profoundly at ease. I have given up fighting whatever this is, deciding to let the current take me where it will. It’s not as if I have anywhere to be or anyone left to miss me. Dad would rather be rid of me, and I’ve only known Kathryn a short time.
‘I live as quietly as I can,’ he continues. ‘No wife, no family – not here. Not when I still love the woman I lost, or who lost me.’
‘It sounds like a sad existence,’ I say.
‘I am sad, yes, but not for myself,’ Sal tells me. ‘Sad for my people. Sad for my island that must endure so much. Sad for that future young man who will leave behind the woman he loves – a woman who is carrying their child – without even realising he will never see her again. As for myself, I take pleasure where I can in books and my work and the camaraderie of people I never thought would become my dear friends. People like Christina. And you’ – he snaps out of his more wistful state and instead into one of productivity – ‘well, you will need the right clothes and papers while you are here. We must take you to Christina. We will see what the dear girl can do with . . .’ He gestures at my entirety. ‘If anyone can work a miracle, she can.’
‘She is onto us, you know,’ I tell Sal. ‘Christina knows that you are not a Kathryn. She half-thinks I’m a spy already. She just likes me for some reason. Taking me to her for a makeover might not help.’
‘Perhaps,’ Sal says. ‘But Christina always looks so lovely, even when there is nothing on the island. I don’t know anyone else who might be able to pull it off.’
Chapter Twenty
‘Christina only lives a few streets away,’ Sal explains as we bisect the Gut again and turn onto a wide, elegant street – ortriqin Maltese, ‘in an apartment on the edge of Floriana. The grand buildings that line the street look as if they have escaped any severe damage from the air raids. The lines of palazzos and palaces hide courtyard gardens and cool vaulted rooms.
I follow Sal, grateful with every step that my feet meet solid ground. People who just minutes ago were crammed into shelters emerge blinking into the sunlight. Store owners open their shops. Children gather in a loosely organised group on the street in front of a rickety blackboard, where a woman begins to teach them their times tables. Older ladies, all dressed in black, sweep the grime off their front steps or sit on chairs, talking and making complicated-looking lace in their laps.
This is the other side of war. For every violent fury spent, there are just people, picking up the shards of their lives two or three times a day, every hour a little more diminished. Perhaps it’s just surviving, as we are all programmed to do, even in the midst of horror. But I like to think it’s more than that: it’s ordinary people refusing to let go of the ordinary freedoms some stranger is bent on depriving them of.
‘Professor!’ A young girl looking hardly more than seventeen skips up to Sal. She’s wearing a slash of red lipstickthat looks as if it’s been stolen from her mother. ‘I finished the book you gave me – may I read another?’
‘Of course.’ Sal smiles benignly at her as he gestures at me. ‘This is my cousin, Maia. Maia, this is Vittoria. I taught her at school until . . . well quite recently. Vittoria often assists the good doctor and wishes to be a nurse after the war. You still do, yes, Vittoria?’
‘I do.’ Vittoria nods. ‘When the war is over.’
‘Did you enjoyTess of the d’Urbervilles?’
‘So much,’ Vittoria tells him. ‘Though the end made me cry. The world is very cruel to young women, Professor.’
