Didn’t they know that to speak of death was to call it forth, to bring it into being?
Paolina ignored the voices and the questions, and the smoke, now a long towering mushroom in the sky, and focused on getting to the bridge.
‘Mrs… Mrs.’ There was a child tugging at her dress. He grabbed her arm and she almost tripped. It was her student, Jimmy.
‘What are you doing here? You were supposed to stay at school.’
‘But Mrs, you said it was the bridge. My dad works on the bridge. I want to make sure he’s alright.’
‘I don’t know what’s happened,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it’s the bridge.’
She should take him back, but they were already closer to the bridge than to the school. He barely reached her waist, a skinny boy. Skinny as a rake: silly phrase, but it described him perfectly. They kept moving forward. And now they were part of a thick swarm of people heading for the West Gate. As soon as they turned onto Hyde Street, the crowd gasped. A huge span had fallen and crashed, a concrete column had collapsed. The air was dust and smoke and grit. And thick with the stench of diesel and petroleum. She could see flames and flying sparks; the riverbank was a mountain of mangled steel and concrete; there were crushed buildings and overturned cranes. Mud from the river flats was splattered on the road, on the cars parked along the street, and on the weatherboards of the small row of houses across the road; the thick black sludge hung from awnings, windowsills, and fence posts like sleeping bats from trees. Windows and windscreens were shattered. The ground was littered with debris, and they had to watch where they walked. In the distance, sirens and alarms, as police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks sped towards them. A TV news helicopter circled above. The emergency workers were already rushing onto the site.
One young policeman was left to manage the crowd. ‘Get back, stay back,’ he said, waving them across the road.
Jimmy and Paolina stopped. Even over all the noise she heard the voices of men, shouting, screaming, wailing.
‘My son works on the bridge,’ an elderly man said as he moved towards the policeman. ‘I have to find him. Please, they’re calling for help.’
‘Please stay back.’ The young officer put his arm on the man’s shoulder and softened his voice. ‘We need to let the rescuers do their job. You’ll get in the way, and it’s dangerous. They know what they’re doing. They’ll help your son.’ The man inched back.
A small group of men carrying sledgehammers and shovels pushed to the front.
‘Members of the public, please stay back.’
But the men didn’t stop. ‘We’re from the foundry and we’re here to help.’
The officer let them through.
‘What happened?’ a woman called out.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Please move back.’
‘We’ll have to wait here,’ Paolina told Jimmy. They struggled to see the site through the smoke, but they could hear the cries for help, the calling out of names, the calling out of instructions and directions.
As the first of the men, covered in dust, in mud and oil, came stumbling through the rubble and smoke — ghostly figures, disorientated and dazed — the crowd gravitated towards them. Some of these men were limping; they had broken arms and legs, dislocated shoulders; they were bruised and bleeding. But they were finding their way out, helping one another to find a way out.
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.’