The Potter’s House. Rosie Thomas

sand.

      The next thing I know I am lying head down, my torso twisted so I can’t breathe or cough to expel the water from my lungs.

      Move. But I am pinned by rocks and the notion flutters in my weary mind: stay still. Let go and then rest.

      I gather a knot of strength from somewhere within myself and strike out against the rocks. Somehow I break free of the weight and the sky steadies overhead. I can see stars, pinpricks in the dark-blue span. I am lying among boulders in what was once the garden of my hotel, where the huge wave that followed the earthquake has disgorged me.

      It is no longer a garden. Tables and broken beach beds and the snapped stalks of parasols lie in a reeking jumble with sand and mud and a wreckage of fencing and pedalos and torn-up trees. Among the debris, close to my face, is a woman’s body. I can’t see her head, but from the angle of her hips and her stillness I know that she is dead.

      I lie with one side of my face in the mud, shivering with fear and cold, and the beginnings of comprehension.

      The earthquake must have been massive and devastating. It has not just happened in my head or in the immediate envelope of space surrounding me. The line of hotels is destroyed, the whole of Branc must be in ruins.

      Maybe I am the only person left alive.

      I must move. Do something.

      ‘Move.’ I hear my own voice croaking out the word. And in obedience to the command I lever myself on to my hands and knees, and crawl to the woman’s body. She is every bit as dead as she looks. I couldn’t see her head when I first noticed her, because it isn’t there.

      I am not the only person left alive. There are shapes awkwardly moving in front of what remains of the hotel and I can hear shouting. Meshed with the shouts are thin, high screams for help. I struggle towards the figures and a shaft of light strikes across the mess in front of me. A man clambers past, dressed in fisherman’s clothes and carrying a big torch, and I struggle in his wake, drawn like a moth to the beam of light. He half turns and shouts a stream of Turkish commands, waving towards the side of the hotel.

      ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand,’ I shout back. He takes no notice of me at all and another man scrambles past me to answer his instructions.

      Belongings and passport. The thought comes back to me and fighting disorientation I veer towards what was once the door to what were once the stairs leading to my room.

      Slabs of marble facing and chunks of torn concrete and twisted rods of metal make an impenetrable barrier. There is no entering the building because there is no entry left, and nothing recognisable remaining of this corner of the hotel. Everything has sheared away and toppled into a mess of rubble, and the acrid dust from the collapse hangs in the air like poison gas. I can’t reach any of my possessions because they are buried under tons of masonry. If I had been asleep in my bed, I would be buried there with them. But instead I am outside in the darkness, unable to speak the language of the cries for help I can hear rising all around me. People are stumbling and shouting, and hauling at the wreckage.

      I can’t communicate with them. I don’t know what to do. I am invisible.

      I sit down in a heap against the spars of what was once the terrace bar. Only yesterday I was perching here on a tall stool, dipping my spoon into an ice cream that – after Andreas – I saw no reason not to allow myself: pistachio and almond ice cream, palest sea-green, speckled with nuts.

      Now there is broken glass, a flag of half-buried awning.

      The full scale of the devastation is becoming clear. I can read it in the anguished flailing of a man who is tearing handfuls of mud out of a bank of silt washed up against collapsing walls. He is shouting a name, over and over. It sounds like Oma, Oma.

      There must be scenes like this all over Branc, and how far beyond that?

      There are more people now and bobbing lights weaving across the ruined garden. The beams swing across a woman who is standing alone, screaming at the sky, her fists clenched above her head. They light up a man’s face, caked with grey dirt and blotted with blood. In another place I see a knot of men with garden spades who have begun to dig at the mud bank. The man in fisherman’s clothes is pointing and shouting directions but he is the only one who seems capable of organising any rescue attempt. And in the face of this devastation, rescue of any sort seems an impossibility.

      Help. Sluggishly, my reactions impaired by shock, it dawns on me afresh that I should also try to help someone. Once I am on my feet I move clumsily towards the nearest light. A woman in a torn and bloodied nightdress is crouching over the wreckage of the bar. I can see her hair hanging forward in a grey coil over her shoulder, and the filth caking her wrists and arms, because there is a girl of about twelve holding a tiny torch with the narrow beam shining on her. The woman is muttering and frenziedly hauling at a painted pole that once supported the bar canopy.

      I shout at her, ‘I’ll help. Who is in there?’ but she is too intent to hear me. The girl stands her ground, shivering and sobbing. When the pole comes loose the woman throws it aside without even noticing the weight. She kneels down and peers into the space and then doubles her efforts to haul away the rubble. Her hands are bleeding, but she is oblivious.

      I can see a third hand, curled in the dirt.

      The woman seizes it, her muttering becoming a moan. The child is shaking so much that the torch beam is jumping. There is a warning shout from further off and then a crack and rumble of a further collapse. I don’t even look around to see. I crouch down by the woman instead and begin furiously digging with my hands, hauling away debris to expose an arm and shoulder dressed in a white waiter’s jacket. The woman is pulling on the limp hand as if she could drag the buried weight out by it.

      ‘Stop. Help me like this,’ I order her. She doesn’t hear or can’t understand what I am saying so I labour on, moving the fallen spars as carefully as I can to spare the person beneath. It is a hard struggle, shifting the cumbersome pieces. I can see more of the waiter now. He is lying on his side with his back to us, part of his shoulders and head exposed by our efforts.

      Tears are streaming down the woman’s face. She looks up beyond me and shouts for help, her mouth pulled square with desperation. Two men run to her and join their efforts to hers. Within a few minutes enough of the man’s body is freed to enable one of the rescuers to reach into the hole and work his arms under the shoulders.

      I am standing to one side, my hands hanging loose.

      I can’t watch this, but I must.

      The waiter’s body is dragged out of its resting place and laid on the ground. His head lolls as they move him and the old woman runs to cradle it. The skin of the face is waxy, covered with mud and dirt. She rubs at it with a fold of her nightdress, whispering words of faith and encouragement, and as she smooths away the mess I recognise him. It is Jim. And I can also see that he is dead. It takes longer for the truth to dawn on his mother and sister because they fend the knowledge off with hugging the inert body and rubbing their cheeks against his.

      One of the men mutters to the other and they move off to where another group of people is frantically digging and calling out. When I try to look away from Jim’s mother I see that the same scene is repeated all along the beach front. Knots of rescuers have started to claw at the fallen buildings and disorientated survivors rush from one group to the next, crying out names.

      Jim’s mother is on her knees beside his body.

      She can’t any longer hope that he is alive. She gathers him up in her arms, holding him against her like a baby. And she wails, a raw note of desolation that cuts the noise around us and turns everything else to silence.

      I can’t bear to listen, but I can hear nothing else. The same deafening, despairing note has been in my head for ever.

      Jim’s mother becomes my mother. The debris of Branc is an English garden and the fallen hotel just a stone statue.