‘Perhaps it will not,’ Katina said.
They lay and listened for noises in the walls.
‘Miss Theodora, are you sleeping?’ asked the child.
‘No,’ Theodora sighed. ‘Why?’
‘If we are ever to die,’ Katina said, ‘I think it will be an island, in which there are many pines, and we shall make a long picnic in a little cart, to the Temple of Athena, and the water will be cold, cold, amongst the stones.’
Ohhh the long night rolled but studded with islands. Then the sudden door-knob stood in the pale morning. Still for a moment. But you knew it was not for long. It would happen soon. Now.
The morning light saw the drawers fly out of the chest. Its tongues lolled. The whole cardboard house rejected reason. Then there was a running. They were calling on the stairs, Yanni the Moustache, and his daughter Science.
‘Come,’ they called. ‘Run. It is the will of God. The earth is going to split open and swallow the houses of the poor.’
Whether the implication of this was moral or economic, Theodora did not discover. Hairpins scattered. There was no time.
‘Miss Theodora, what is it. Is it necessary for us to die?’
‘No,’ said Theodora. ‘But there is a serious earthquake. They are telling us to leave the houses. We shall lie on the beach.’
In her arms the child’s body, still limp with sleep, was like her own nakedness. Their hearts beat openly and together, in the astonished morning, in which people ran, over the dust, on naked feet. Aie, aie, Science the daughter of Yanni cried, her face quite featureless beneath her skirt. They were thrown out, all of them, out of the functionless houses on to the little strip of sand. Their bodies lay on the live earth. They could feel its heart move against their own.
Theodora held the body of the child. She felt the moment of death and life. Across the water a black island moved, quite distinctly, under a chalky puff of cloud.
‘There was an earthquake,’ the girl said. ‘Do you remember?’
In the jardin exotique a wind was creaking through the fingers of the cactus. Their elbows groaned.
‘Do I, indeed!’ the square woman said. ‘It was an ’eavy responsibility for yours truly. Thank ’eavens your parents ’ave better sense than to make their ’ome in a country that is all quakes. Besides, the people are ’airy and uncivilized. Though there are exceptions in this case as any other.’
‘I shall die,’ cried the girl, holding her head.
And you could see it was a matter of life and death.
‘People don’t die of affectations,’ said the square woman.
People lay on the ground, and heard the shuddering of the earth, and hoped. When the horizon had once more tightened its wire, and it was no longer a matter of life and death, it was difficult to say where one began and the other ended. We like to imagine doors that we can shut, because we are afraid of space, decided Theodora, who lay with her arm protecting the child, with whom she had just experienced the moment of death. Over the opposite island the same small cloud was as ordinary and unmoved, as simple and touching, as a handkerchief.
‘Anyway,’ said the square woman, grating on the gravel, ‘let us go in and ’ave an early lunch. It’s always nicer, an early lunch.’
‘Look,’ said Theodora to the girl, ‘you have dropped your handkerchief.’
She bent and touched the body of the cloud.
‘Thank you,’ said the girl, who had just returned, her eyes almost asked the time.
‘Thank you,’ said the square woman too. ‘She’s always losing ’andkerchiefs. Now, come along, Katina, before the General gets at the sardines.’
So they were going in over the gravel, into the hotel, the square woman and the upright, contemplative body of the girl, who questioned Theodora in silence as she went.
To Theodora, who continued to sit in the garden, where black flies collected on the crimson flowers that the limbs of the cactus oozed, the air was no longer altogether dry and hostile. It stroked her. It said: See, we offer this dispensation, endless, more seductive than aspirin, to give an illusion of fleshy nearness and comfort, in what should be apart, armed, twisted, dreamless, admitting at most the echoes of sound, the gothic world.
Theodora unfolded her hands, which had never known exactly what to do, and least of all now. Her hands, she often felt, belonged by accident, though what, of course, does not. She looked at them, noticing their strangeness, and their wandering, ingrained, grimy, gipsy fate, which was the strangest accident of all.
‘You have just come from the train.’
‘Yes,’ said Theodora.
She answered almost without turning to discover whose voice had taken possession of her situation. It was a comfortable statement that it pleased her to accept. Then the woman stood beside her, bending, or rather sagging, to examine through her pince-nez, till you noticed the yellow pores in her large nose.
‘I can see it in your hands.’
‘I know, and I should wash them,’ Theodora said.
‘Don’t bother,’ said the pince-nez. ‘It will work in.’
The voice sighed. You felt it would never willingly pass judgement, though the glasses might accuse.
‘My name is Bloch,’ said the pince-nez. ‘And this is my sister Berthe. It is not necessary for me to explain that we are twins.’
It was not. You saw, now, the one was two. But in reverse. It was obvious, subtract one from two and the answer would be nought.
‘Like most people, Marthe, she is perplexed,’ remarked Mademoiselle Berthe with pleasure. ‘The likeness, Miss Goodman — we looked in the book and found your name — the likeness is so striking, we have often, we regret to say, made it the occasion for practical jokes.’
The Demoiselles Bloch giggled, for many past crackers let off under the visitor’s chair. But Theodora was less perplexed than thoughtful. In this landscape a familiar rain descended, on to the palms and crossword puzzles. Somewhere in the interior, springs groaned for Sunday afternoon.
‘We have been walking,’ explained Mademoiselle Marthe, who knew from experience in many hotels that the new or timid guest must be warmed with words. ‘In the mornings it is safe, if not always in the afternoons. This part of the coast, you will find, is subject to alarming climatic changes. But in the morning, l’air est doux. So we put on our boots, and took our work. On the coast road there is a small round tower which has some connection with Napoleon, though we forget what.’
‘It is agreeable to sit there, in the scenery,’ said Mademoiselle Berthe, ‘and talk about things that happened while the world was still comparatively safe to live in.’
It was a leisurely but melancholy ping-pong that the Demoiselles Bloch had begun to play.
‘They say, you know, that Hitler will make a war.’
‘Or the Communists will take over.’
‘Or perhaps we shall be subjected to both events.’
Doubt continued to express itself. For the Demoiselles Bloch there was much doubt beyond the bounds of their duplicated self. Their consolation lay in worrying wool and cotton into deeper tangles. String reticules, safety-pinned about the level of the navel, spilled trailers of crochetwork or tatting. Under their flat hats cotton repeated itself in thick skeins, wound, and wound, and wound.
‘Today we are sad,’ said Mademoiselle Marthe. ‘I have lost a little stylo, presented to me by the President of the Republic the season we spent in a hotel at Vichy. Sometimes at five o’clock we used to discuss language and food under a potted palm, while eating cucumber sandwiches. So you will understand.’
‘Quite often,’ said Theodora, ‘arm-chairs will disgorge a great variety of objects.’