Alex Bobl - Memoria

He fell and cried out from the agonizing pain in his side. Turning face up, he saw the coach straddle the wall next to a dislodged coil of barbed wire.

Now everything fell into place. When he’d helped Maggie, tossing his body this way and that, his belt had caught on the wire which ripped through his side as he jumped.

“Quit lazing about and help her!” the coach shouted.

By the time Frank scrambled back on his feet, Max was already standing next to him. Together, they picked up the girl, and, with her arms over their shoulders, carried her across the overgrown railway tracks.

Behind the wall, tires screeched, motors idled and voices came from the patrol cars.

“Upstairs,” barked the coach when they’d dragged Maggie into the building.

“Wait up,” Frank turned his head this way and that in the dark stairwell, blinded by the lack of the bright midday sun they’d left outside. He didn’t see the stairs and lagged behind.

“What’s up,” the coach stopped.

“It’s all right now,” Frank blinked the darkness from his eyes and took the first step. “Come on, then.”

“Mind your step. Make sure you don’t drop her.”

“I can carry her on my own, if you want.”

“No, I don’t. This way she’s secure.”

They lugged her all the way up to the third floor and lay the girl down by the wall.

“Stick your head out the window and get our bearings,” Max commanded and bent over the girl, his hands gingerly feeling her neck and arms for fractures.

Frank unbuckled the attaché case and walked to the window opening on the south side of the building. There, he could get a glimpse of the concrete wall with the cops behind it, the overgrown tracks and, far off, the squat remains of what used to be either the rail yard or some derelict warehouses.

“What can you see?” the coach asked.

“Not much,” Frank winced and felt his ribs. Moving clockwise, he headed for another window. What he saw made his heart jump. The street to this side, too, was overgrown to the point where the trees and shrubbery ripped the tarmac open concealing the remains of what used to be blocks of flats. In the desolation bursting with green and wild flowers, a few old jalopies rusted in front of the house like large spots of sunlight. Instead of the missing wheels, their frames rested on neatly stacked bricks. The cars had been taken to bits neatly and meticulously — no missing parts lying around and no junk — as if the men who’d left them there planned on coming back to restore everything to its working order.

So this is what the Bronx was like? Frank could hardly take it all in. He was so used to living in his noisy, glass-and-concrete metropolis that at first, he couldn’t work out what had moved him so much.

Silence. A deafening, strange silence pressing against his ears.

“Frank? Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he shook it off and walked to the east window. “You can’t see jack shit there. Everything’s overgrown. I had no idea the Bronx was so green.”

The coach patted Maggie’s cheeks. Her eyelids twitched, and she opened her eyes.

“Did we… make it?”

Frank paused by the window. He could barely hear her voice.

“We did,” the coach said. “You all right? Nothing hurts? Try to move your arms and legs, but easy.”

Slowly, Maggie raised her arms and bent her elbows. She then attempted to scramble back onto her feet, and almost succeeded, but immediately slid down the wall onto the floor strewn with shattered bricks.

“Take it easy,” Max told her.

Frank turned back to the window and froze. The stadium rose up behind the trees, not even a mile away.

“Sir,” he said without looking at his coach. “Climbing that wall saved our guts. That was really good timing. We couldn’t have escaped them faster even if we’d tried.” Hearing Max’s steps behind his back, he moved aside.

Max took his place, his powerful fists resting on the chipped window sill.

“You can say that again,” he finally said. “We’ve been lucky indeed.”

“What happened?” Maggie asked. They turned to her.

“You fell off the wall,” Frank lowered his guilty eyes. “I failed to hang on to you properly.”

“You know you have blood on your shirt?”

Ah, so that’s what she was going on about. The girl was worried about him .

“Just a scratch from that wire.”

Max grabbed Frank’s shoulders and inspected his back. “Does it hurt a lot?”

Frank waved it off.

“Now,” the coach stepped to the middle of the room, arms akimbo. “What we now need is a good wash, something to lick our wounds with and each a set of decent clothes. Then we can go and look for that Council of theirs. Frank? You’re the migrant expert.”

“I don’t know that much,” Frank shrugged and winced with the sharp pain in his side. “I was present at the talks, true, but I’ve never been to the Bronx.”

“But you must remember something, surely? What do they do here? Anything at all.”

“Ah! Water. They supply New York with purified water. So they must have hydrants on the streets,” he paused, remembering, “if I’m not mistaken.”

“Good,” Max concluded. “If we don’t find a functional hydrant, we’ll knock at a door and ask for some water. Come on, then.”

“But how about the police?” Maggie looked at them. “Won’t they hand us over to the cops?”

“Let’s hope not,” the coach hesitated and checked the gun in his belt.

They went back downstairs. Max walked first, followed by Frank who grasped the attaché case in one hand and supported Maggie with the other. A breeze rustled in the tree tops and sent fallen leaves back into the air. Warm sunrays touched their faces.

“So quiet here,” Maggie whispered.

“It is, isn’t it?” Frank said. “Very unusual.”

Max stopped. “We can discuss the unusual later,” he gave both a meaningful stare and stole through the waist-high grass, leaving in his wake a trail of disturbed green. Instinctively the other two ducked and followed. They soon passed the rusty car skeletons, skirted a thicket and found themselves on a deserted tree-shaded street.

Frank had missed the moment when the coach pulled out his gun. Something had alerted him, a distant sound had made him stop. In front, in the opening between decaying houses overgrown with wild ivy, another street lay. It looked totally different.

A clean pavement, the curb painted white, fronted a neat little house with cheerful curtains in its windows. It had an almost antique feel.

“Let’s go,” the coach said.

Without saying a word, Frank and Maggie followed him. A few minutes later, they stood at a small intersection looking at a white signpost with blue pointed street signs.

“Where to now?” the coach said, rather to himself.

To their north stretched Nelson Avenue. To their east and west, 167th Street. The house they’d just seen stood on its corner, its front door ajar.

Max looked around them and opened his mouth to speak when a little black boy ran out from behind the building. He was laughing, trying to escape a tall girl who was chasing him. He wore light-colored shorts, a tank top and a pair of dusty, worn-out shoes; the girl had a summer dress on. She nearly caught up with him and raised her hand to give his backside a hearty slap, but the boy escaped, darted for the front door and froze, his large eyes staring at the strange adults.

The girl didn’t notice them. She raised her hand again and rushed at the boy, but he screamed out, pointing at the filthy Maggie, Max and Frank. Her hand slowed in mid-air and although the boy did get his comeuppance, the slap was too weak and unenthusiastic.

For a moment she didn’t move, studying them. Her intelligent eyes glistened. She hugged the little urchin, trying to cover him, and stole a worried glance at the front door.