Everything Beautiful Began After (17 page)

“Stop! Stop! Stand where you are!” screamed the professor. “Don’t move, the ledge may be unstable—there’s been an earthquake and there may be another any second.”

But from where you were standing you could see enough.

Athens had disappeared under a cloud of dust.

The professor was shouting.

“I have to secure the artifacts. I have to secure the artifacts.”

He turned to you and George.

“Go and get Rebecca—bring her up here where it’s safe.”

The Renault had rolled backward into the rock face. The entire back end was smashed in.

The professor said to abandon the car if you got to something you couldn’t drive around. He also told you to steal whatever you needed in order to survive. Then he handed you a small gun.

“For emergencies,” he said, shoving it into your hands. “Use it if you must.”

Then he disappeared.

“Try and start the engine,” George said. “I’ll push it off the rock.”

It started after a few attempts. George jumped into the passenger seat.

“The whole back end is smashed in,” he said. “Totally smashed in.”

Approaching Athens, you saw that the stream of cars leaving the city had become a stationary line of vehicles on both sides of the road. There were at least thirty helicopters in the sky. You drove most of the way along the steep grass embankment, stopping only to steer around steaming cars packed with panic-stricken Athenians.

For a two-mile stretch you drove along a sidewalk, blasting the horn. People scattered like insects. Entire houses had slid onto the road and there were small fires everywhere. You passed two men having a fist fight.

When you arrived at your apartment, it was intact, with only a few cracks up the walls. You both rushed around calling Rebecca’s name. Then you glanced at something on the kitchen table.

Dear Henry,

I am going home for a bit to think about all this. If you can, come over when you get back. I want you to know you can tell me anything about your life. I could never hate you for anything you’ve done. We should also talk about what we’re going to do. I want it to be our decision. I care about your happiness, so please be honest, Henry.

I love you.

See you for dinner.

R

P.S. Maybe don’t tell George yet.

It took a further four hours to reach Rebecca’s apartment. You stopped twice. Once to change a flat tire, and the other to help lift a section of roof off a family who were having lunch. The mother had managed to crawl out—but the others were trapped. When there were enough people to lift the roof, it was clear the children were dead. They were still in their seats like dolls.

It was hard to find Rebecca’s road. Everything looked different. The air smelled of sewage and burning plastic.

Young men were directing traffic and trying to keep lanes open for troops now coming in by the truckload. Army helicopters patrolled the city in menacing formations.

You and George ditched the car a few blocks from Rebecca’s house and ran the rest of the way. You hugged and shouted when—from a distance—her building looked perfectly intact. You even looked for her among the faces on the street. As you ran toward the entrance, a young boy called out to you and pointed up. Somehow you had missed seeing it. The walls of the building were standing, but the building had collapsed in on itself.

You just stood there.

Then you looked into the crowd for anyone who didn’t seem to be doing anything. You grabbed a teenage boy and asked him something.

“Answer me!” you screamed, but then he pushed you off and ran away.

“We have to go in,” you said to George. “She might be trapped.”

The only way to get in was through a broken window in the first-floor lobby. The entrance was blocked with rubble—but strangely, the glass in the front doors wasn’t even cracked. George pulled his shirt over his mouth because the dust had not settled. You could smell electricity and steered George around a live cable dangling from beneath the staircase. The elevator shaft was open and filled with bricks, pieces of marble, and books. There was a hammer on the floor and George picked it up.

You found what remained of the staircase and, before ascending, looked at one another, knowing that the building could collapse at any time. A cold, logical voice kept telling you that she probably hadn’t survived and that you should get out, but the impulse to save drove you blindly on.

It’s difficult to explain what it was like inside because everything was smashed and topsy-turvy. You were able to climb to Rebecca’s floor because the nature of the collapse formed a sort of natural ladder. In the places that were too high, George piled up rubble or found some furniture to stand on that would take you both to the next level.

When you reached what you thought was Rebecca’s floor, it was uneven, but largely horizontal. You realized there was going to be no quick way of getting to her room because of several collapsed beams. Your fingers were already pierced and bloody. The dust higher up was not as thick, otherwise it would have been impossible to breathe.

You took turns smashing the beams with George’s hammer. You remember George saying he thought you were in her hallway. You were both sweating. George had taken his shirt off. His skin was covered in dust, and there were dark circles of blood, from where he’d torn his skin open. The path you made for yourselves from the hall was tiny. It was so dark you could hardly see what you were doing. There were pieces of broken marble everywhere. George hammered through a length of ceiling tiles, kicked through some drywall, and you found yourselves in her bedroom, which seemed to have escaped damage, except for the dust everywhere. Although you could smell gas, George kept lighting pieces of paper and bits of rag in order to see.

A wall had fallen out, or been ripped out with her balcony. You remember looking out into Athens from a fourth-floor apartment now only two stories up. The air was very cool and there was something calm about being so open to the night. It felt good to breathe. You could hear the roar of traffic, endless police sirens, and the occasional scream.

A bowl of oranges lay on the side table white with dust. Then you realized you were in Rebecca’s bedroom. A few inches from the bowl, a slab of ceiling lay where Rebecca’s bed should have been. Then you noticed a hand on the ground. It must have been severed by the impact. When you began screaming, George didn’t know what to do. Then you felt his weight on your back.

You shook free and started smashing a block of rubble with the hammer.

“Stop it,” George commanded in a low growl. “You’re going to kill us both, stop it, stop it.” He lunged for your swinging arm, but you stopped before he could grab on.

“We have to get out of here,” he said.

“Not without her,” you pleaded. “I’m not leaving without her.”

“She’s dead,” George kept saying, and you then realized exactly what he meant—that Rebecca was no longer alive, that you would never have any contact with her again, that any child growing in her womb would never live, never be delivered, never run around the garden of your imaginary house.

Her life would wear the mask of paradise.

“We can’t leave her here,” you said desperately.

“We have to get out,” George said.

“Listen to me, George—we can’t leave her here. She’ll be trapped in here for days, maybe weeks. We can’t leave her body here like this.”

“And if we dig her out, what then? Where are we going to take her?”

“We’ll take her to my apartment.”

“Henry, no, absolutely not.”

You picked up the hammer, but George got hold of your arm. His strength was enormous. “Put it down,” he said. “We’ll take her to Aegina.”

You imagined the secret beach glistening in moonlight, perfect and serene. And you knew without any doubt that George was doing this for you—not for Rebecca, nor for himself, but for you, only you.

It was the greatest act of friendship you would ever witness.

When it seemed impossible to move the block of marble, you found some knives from the kitchen and began slicing your way through the mattress. If you could cut open a path in the fabric, you could somehow wriggle her out.

You mapped the position of her body and worked quietly. You lost your breath when blood poured through the foam and springs and onto your arm. George said you must have nicked her body. And then the blood stopped and you both kept cutting.

When you finally got to her, it was a relief to find that her body was in one piece. But it was very stiff, like a store mannequin, and it didn’t look anything like the Rebecca you knew. Her eyes were open and her face was a hard, pale wax. No trace of the woman you loved, just a body, just a shell from which all life had escaped.

You went to the other side of the room and sobbed.

George watched.

Then he came over and tried to console you.

“I killed him,” you said.

George looked at you with no expression.

“I killed him,” you said again. “I gave him a toy and it strangled him and he died.”

“Who?” George said.

“My baby brother.”

George looked horrified. “You never told me.”

“Because you would have hated me.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“But it was my fault.”

He let you sob for a while and then started wrapping Rebecca’s body in artist’s canvas.

“Help me with this,” he said.

You hadn’t actually thought how you were going to get her out. But there was only one way—so you tied the canvas at each end with clothes you found lying around. Then you checked to make sure there was no one standing in the rubble below. There was some movement, but George said it was a dog.

The canvas landed with a thud. The dog began to rip at it with its teeth and then barked and barked. You felt a burst of panic, so you pulled the pistol from your trousers and cocked it. The dog must have sensed the impending gunshot, because it ran away before you could steady your arm.

It took an hour to crawl back through the building and into the cool morning. George went to find the car and some water. The sky was beginning to lighten.

Your throat was so dry, you could hardly breathe without coughing. You waited with the body. A man who said he was a cop came over and asked if you had been trapped in the building. Then he asked if it was a body wrapped up on the ground. You told him it was. He nodded and told you to wait with it until someone came to take it away. You just stared at him. You think he was lying about being a cop. And you think he knew that, which is why he disappeared before George got back.

There were quite a few people out, mostly going somewhere carrying things. Nobody was wandering in a daze anymore. A new day had begun and brought purpose. The majority of Athenians had been evacuated, but parts of the city still burned.

George said the car was gone, so you carried Rebecca’s body through the streets, setting it down every few hundred yards to rest. George’s shoulder was bleeding badly. Then a truck full of soldiers pulled over and asked if you wanted help.

“Piraeus,” George said.

“Not hospital?” the blond driver said in English.

“No, Piraeus, please take us to Piraeus,” George said.

The driver said something to someone in the passenger seat and then said okay.

“That’s where her people are,” George said to the driver, who then understood immediately that you had a body wrapped in the canvas. He honked and several soldiers climbed down from the back and helped load Rebecca into the back. Some of the soldiers were speaking Turkish.

The soldiers were about your age. They looked at the body and then at you. As you neared the port, one of them took the crucifix and black beads from around his neck and offered them to you.

“I don’t believe in God,” you said blankly.

“He’ll catch you in his net,” the soldier said and slipped the crucifix and beads into the canvas with Rebecca’s body.

You explained to the soldiers that you were going to Piraeus in order to get her to Aegina. You told them you were taking her to the place where she had been happiest.

They seemed to understand.

The truck stopped only once to pry a female corpse from a car crushed by a wall. It happened moments before you arrived. The man who implored the truck to stop was her husband. He had been buying something at one of the few kiosks that was open. He saw it collapse. The soldiers lay the body of his wife on the street. Bits of glass had stuck in her face and they glinted in the morning sun.

By the time you reached Piraeus, the canvas was starting to smell. The soldier who offered the crucifix helped lower the body to the street, and then several soldiers found a boatman who was standing on the deck of his small ship watching everything quietly. George stayed with the body.

You begged the boatman in broken Greek to take you to Aegina. He shook his head that he wouldn’t. The soldiers eyed him with quiet intensity. He looked past you at the body and the army truck in the square. “Sorry,” he said in English.

Then one of the soldiers pulled out his revolver but without raising it above his waist. The boat captain shrugged calmly and went into his cabin. A minute later the engine started and the soldiers helped carry the canvas on deck.

The engine was very loud and the boat shuddered as black smoke surged from the rear engines.

Within ten minutes, you were way offshore. There were no other boats and the sea was quiet. The soldiers watched from the harbor wall. When they had lessened to a smudge of green in the distance you heard the snapping of rifle fire.

The captain stayed in his cabin, emerging only once to hand George a bottle of some Greek liquor. George gave you the bottle first and then gulped half the contents.

On reaching the port at Aegina you both realized you had been asleep.

It was evening.

There were hundreds of people at the harbor, as if waiting for your boat. You didn’t know what they were doing and were afraid for some reason that they would attack you. After docking, you realized they were praying for people on the mainland.