The Power Of The Dog (36 page)

She grabs the woman by the hand to try to pull her down the hall but the woman won’t budge. She yanks her hand back and starts to press the elevator’s Down button again and again.

Nora leaves her and finds the exit door to the stairwell. The floor ripples and rolls under her feet. She gets into the stairway and it’s like being in a long, swaying box. The force knocks her from side to side as she runs down the stairs. There are people in front of her now, and behind; the stairwell is getting crowded. Sounds, horrible sounds, echo in the confined space: cracking, breaking, the noises of a building tearing itself apart—and screams—women’s screams and, worse, the shrill keening of children. She grabs on to the handrail to steady herself, but it’s moving, too.

One floor, two, she tries to count by the landings, then gives up. Is it three floors, four, five? She knows she has to go seven. Idiotically, she can’t remember how they number their floors in Mexico. Do they start on ground and go first, second? Or is the ground floor the first, then second, third, fourth … ?

What does it matter? Just keep moving, she tells herself, then an awful lurch, like a ship rolling, slams her into the left wall. She keeps her balance, gets her feet under her again. Just keep moving, just keep moving, get out of this building before it comes down on top of you. Just keep going down these stairs.

She thinks, oddly, of the steep stairs going down from Montmartre through the Place Willette, how some people take the cable car but she always takes the steps because it’s good for her calves but also because she just enjoys it, and if she walks instead of rides it justifies a chocolat chaud at that pretty café at the bottom. And I want to go back there again, she thinks, I want to sit at a sidewalk table again and have the waiter smile at me and watch the people, see the funny cathedral, the Basilique du Sacré Coeur at the top, the one that looks like it was made from spun sugar.

Think about that, think about that, don’t think about dying in this trap, this crowded, swaying, rolling deathtrap. God, it’s getting hot in here, God, stop screaming, it doesn’t do any good, shut up, there’s a breath of air, now people are jammed in front of her and then the jam breaks up and she moves behind the people in the lobby.

Chandeliers drop from the ceiling like rotten fruit from a shaken tree, falling and shattering on the old tile floor. She steps over the broken glass toward the revolving doors. So jammed—she waits her turn—she gets in. No need to push, it’s being more than pushed from behind. She gets a scent of air—wonderful air, she sees dim sunlight, she’s almost out—

Then the building comes down on her.

He’s saying Mass when it hits.

Ten miles from the epicenter, in the Cathedral of Ciudad Guzmán, Archbishop Parada holds the host above his head and offers a prayer to God. It’s one of the perks and privileges of being archbishop of the Guadalajara Archdiocese, that he gets to come out here to say the occasional Mass in the little town. He loves the cathedral’s classic churrigueresque architecture, Mexico’s unique adaptation of the European Gothic into the pagan Aztec and Mayan. The cathedral’s two Gothic towers are rounded into pre-Columbian polyforms, flanking a dome decorated with a panoply of multicolored tiles. Even now, as he faces the retablo behind the altar, he can see the gilded wood carvings—European cherubs and human heads, but also native scrolls of fruit and flowers and birds.

The love of color, of nature, the joy of life—this is what makes him revel in the Mexican brand of Christianity, the seamless blending of indigenous paganism with an emotional, unshakable faith in Jesus. It is not the dry, spare religion of European intellectualism, with its hatred of the natural world. No, the Mexicans have the innate wisdom, the spiritual generosity—how shall he put this?—arms long enough to wrap themselves around this world and the next in a warm embrace.

That’s pretty good, he thinks as he turns back toward the congregation. I should find a way to work that into a sermon.

The cathedral is crowded with worshippers this morning—even though it’s a Thursday—because he is there to celebrate the Mass. I have, he thinks, enough of an ego to enjoy that fact. The truth is that he’s an enormously popular archbishop—he gets out among the people, shares their concerns, their thoughts, their laughs, their meals. Oh, God, he thinks, how I share their meals. He knows that it’s a village joke in whatever town he visits, and he visits all of them: “Widen the chair at the head of the table—Archbishop Juan is coming to dinner.”

He takes a host and starts to place it on the tongue of the worshipper kneeling in front of him.

Then the floor bounces beneath him.

That’s exactly what it feels like, a bounce. Then another and another until the bounces blend into one constant series of jolts.

He feels something wet on his sleeve.

Looks down to see wine hopping out of the cup held by the acolyte beside him. He puts his arm around the boy’s shoulders.

“Move first under the arches,” he says, “then outside. Everyone go now, calmly, quietly.”

He gently pushes the altar boy. “Go on.”

The boy steps down from the altar.

Parada waits. He will wait there until the rest of the crowd in the church has filed out. Be calm, he tells himself. If you are calm, they will be calm. If there’s panic, people might crush one another to get out.

So he stays and looks around.

The carved animals come to life.

They hop and quiver.

The carved faces nod up and down.

A frenzied agreement, Parada thinks. On what, I wonder?

Outside, the two towers tremble.

They are made of old stone. Beautifully handcrafted by local artisans. So much love went into them, so much care. But they stand in the town of Ciudad Guzmán, in the province of Jalisco, a name that comes from the original Tarascan inhabitants and means “sandy place.” The stones in the tower are fine, strong and level, but the mortar was made from that sandy soil.

It could hold firm against many things, wind and rain and time, but it was never meant to hold up against a 7.8 earthquake, thirty kilometers deep and just ten miles away.

So as the worshippers patiently file out, the towers quiver, the mortar holding them together shakes loose, and they collapse on top of the great-grandchildren of the men who carved them and set them in place. The towers crash through the tiled dome and come down on twenty-five worshippers.

Because the church is crowded this morning.

For the love of Bishop Juan.

Who stands on the altar, untouched, in shock and horror as the people in front of him just disappear in a cloud of yellow dust.

The host still in his hand.

The body of Christ.

Nora is pulled from the dead.

A steel support beam saved her life. It fell diagonally onto a broken piece of wall and stopped another column from crushing her. Left a crack of space, a little air, as she lay buried beneath the rubble of the Regis Hotel, so she could at least breathe.

Not that there’s much to breathe, the air is filled with so much dust.

She chokes on it, she coughs, she can’t see a thing, but she can hear. Is it minutes later, hours? She doesn’t know, but in that time she wonders if she’s dead. If this is what hell is—trapped in a small, hot space, unable to see, choking on dust. I’m dead, she thinks, dead and buried. She hears the sounds of moans, cries of pain, and wonders if this will last forever. If this is her eternity. Where a whore goes when she dies.

She has just enough space to lay her head on her arm. Maybe I can sleep through hell, she thinks, sleep through eternity. It hurts. She finds that her arm is caked with moist blood, then she remembers the mirror shattering and the glass flying into her arm. I’m not dead, she thinks, feeling the wet blood. Dead people don’t bleed.

I’m not dead, she thinks.

I’m buried alive.

Then she starts to panic.

Starts to hyperventilate, knowing that she shouldn’t, that she’s only using up the small supply of oxygen more quickly, but she can’t help it. The thought of being buried alive, in this coffin under the ground—she remembers some stupid Poe story they made her read in high school. The scratch marks on the top of the coffin …

She wants to scream.

No point in using up my air freaking out, she thinks. There’s better things to do with it. She yells, simply, “Help!”

Over and over again. At the top of her lungs.

Then she hears sirens, footsteps, the sound of feet right above her.

“Help!!”

A beat, then, “¿Dónde estás?”

“Right here!” she yells. Then thinks, then yells, “¡Aquí!”

She hears and feels things being lifted above her. Orders being given, cautions issued. Then she reaches her hand up as far as it will go. A second later feels the incredible warmth of another hand grabbing hers. Then she feels herself being pulled, out and up, and then, miraculously, she’s standing in open space. Well, sort of open. There’s a ceiling of sorts above. Walls and columns slanting crazily. Like standing in a museum of ruins.

A rescue worker holds her by the arms, looks curiously at her.

Then she smells something. A sweet, sickly smell. God, what is that?

A spark hits the gas and sets it off.

Nora hears a sharp crack, then a bass boom that rattles her heart and she falls over the hole. When she looks up again, there’s fire everywhere. It’s like the freaking air is on fire.

And moving toward her.

The men yell, “¡Vámonos! ¡Ahorita!”

Let’s go! Right now!

One of the men grabs Nora’s arm again and pushes her, and they’re running. Flames are all around them, and burning debris falls on their heads, and she hears a crackling sound, smells an acrid, sour smell, and a man is slapping at her head and she realizes that her hair is on fire, but she doesn’t feel it. The man’s sleeve catches on fire but he keeps pushing her, pushing her, and then suddenly they’re in the open air and she wants to fall down but the man won’t let her, he keeps pushing her and pushing her because, behind them, what’s left of the Regis Hotel tumbles and burns.

The other two men don’t make it. They join the other 128 heroes who will die trying to rescue people trapped in the earthquake.

Nora doesn’t know this yet as she trots across Avenida Benito Juárez into the relative safety of the open space of La Alameda Park. She drops to her knees as a policewoman, a traffic warden, throws a coat over her head and pats out the fire.

Nora looks around her—the Regis Hotel is a pile of burning rubble. Next door, the Salinas y Rocha department store looks like it’s been cut in half. Red, green and white streamers, decorations from Independence Day, are floating in the air above the truncated shell of the building. All around her, as far as she can see through the clouds of dust, buildings lie toppled or cut in half. Huge chunks of stone, concrete and twisted steel lie in the streets.

And the people. All over the park, people are on their knees praying.

The sky is dark from smoke and dust.

Blocking out the sun.

And over and over again, she hears the same muttered phrase: “El fin del mundo.”

The end of the world.

The right side of Nora’s hair is scorched black; her left arm is bloody and studded with tiny shards of glass. The shock and adrenaline are wearing off and the pain is starting to come in for real.

Parada kneels over the corpses.

Giving them, posthumously, the last rites.