Enza Gandolfo - The Bridge

Back in the bungalow, Paolina wrapped the sketch in newspaper and put it away in the top shelf of the wardrobe, underneath her rarely used dowry linen. From the bungalow window, she gazed out into the backyard. Her father was clearing a garden bed ready for the next planting; Giacomo was sitting on the small brick fence that surrounded the fig tree, smoking. His hand was trembling. The bridge collapse was an accident, it was not a war. With time she hoped that Antonello would return to the man he was before the accident, the man she fell in love with.

‘I was worried,’ Paolina said when he finally came home.

‘I’m sorry I yelled at you,’ he responded, collapsing exhausted onto the bed.

‘I understand you’re angry.’

‘I’ve never been this angry. I want to punch something, someone. I want to find the person responsible and hit them as hard as I can.’

‘Nello, that isn’t going to make anything any better,’ Paolina said. She lay alongside him on the bed so they were looking at each other. She caressed his face with one hand.

‘I know… But how could they let this happen? They killed so many men. They could’ve killed all of us, they didn’t give a damn. I’m angry at them. I’m angry at myself. Bob and Slav and Ted and so many others are dead and I’m not…’ He was sobbing now, the tears streaming down his face.

‘Nello, please don’t say that. If you… When I think that you might’ve… you might’ve died too…’ Paolina inched closer and wrapped her arms around him.

Antonello buried his head in her shoulder. Death, willful death, at his own hand, was impossible. He’d made a commitment to Paolina; whatever happened now happened to the two of them. He wasn’t Eleftherios, he would not drop dead from grief. He would not leave Paolina.

‘We let the bridge collapse. We knew there were problems… and we didn’t do enough,’ he whispered.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she whispered back. ‘Not yours or Bob’s or Slav’s or Sam’s.’

Paolina held Antonello until he fell asleep. In the early morning when he woke, the bungalow was unfamiliar and he was as disorientated as an orphaned child waking up on his first morning in a dormitory. In Vizzini, his childhood bedroom was on the top floor, up three flights of stairs. The room was wall-to-wall beds, a double bed and a single bed, pushed together. There were no windows, and the wall was a partition that didn’t reach the ceiling. On the other side, his sisters’ room was identical. He was surrounded by the sounds of his brothers and sisters breathing, snoring, farting. He heard their dreams and nightmares. He belonged in that room. They should’ve stayed in Sicily. What madness had possessed his parents, what madness had made them take the family away from their home?

Ten days after the collapse, Antonello gave the eulogy at Bob’s funeral. Bob as a boss. Bob as a mate, like family, like an uncle. Bob as a joker, as a dyed-in-the-wool Bulldogs fan. He talked about Bob’s love of the bridge, because Sandy asked him to. Bob was proud of being a rigger and a bridge builder , Sandy said to him before the funeral. Don’t forget. So he held back his anger; he didn’t mention betrayal, he didn’t criticise the companies or the engineers. It was there on the tip of his tongue, but he held back.

After the funeral, the mourners gathered in the front bar of the Vic. Paolina and Emilia helped the other women to pass around trays of sandwiches, while the men drank and smoked too much as they told their favourite jokes and stories about Bob.

The men also talked about Bolte’s long speeches on grief and tragedy. He had guaranteed that a Royal Commission would investigate, and that workers would not return to the site until it was safe. And he had declared that finishing the bridge would be a way of honouring the dead.

‘Well, the job does have to be finished,’ he heard Johnno say. Antonello watched the men down their beers and make pledges to return. He was shocked and disappointed that so many of them seemed to have bought the Premier’s empty promises.

As soon as he could, Antonello slipped out of the pub and headed for the riverbank, keeping his back to the ruined bridge. Behind him, the punt was crossing from east to west. Once the bridge was built, there wouldn’t be any need for the punt. He would miss it. On weekends, there was a carnival atmosphere. From a small food stall on the side of the road, a father and son sold fish and chips, party pies and pasties. Drivers lined their cars up, waiting for the ferry, and went to buy hot fried food. It was here Antonello ate his first Chiko Roll, hot and peppery. And his first ice-cream from the local Mr Whippy van — not as good as the gelato back home, but sweet and soft and creamy.

On the ferry, he loved to hang over the rail, watching the river and feeling the spray on his face. As the punt forged a channel through the water, children ran in between cars and bicycles, and adults lit cigarettes and caught up with neighbours and workmates, as if they might be on a yacht sailing the Pacific instead of an old punt chugging across the Yarra.

He tried to picture the river and the bank long ago, when it was called Birrarung and the only way across was in canoes. Was it possible to turn time back? He imagined destroying what remained of the bridge — blowing it up, or pulling it down, every last piece. He imagined gathering all the survivors together so they could tear the bridge down. They were the bridge builders: they had built it, and they could take it apart. Return the river to itself. If only he could make a ghost of the bridge. He would go back for that. He would go back to obliterate it.

He kept going until he was almost in Williamstown. From a phone booth, he rang his brother Vince. Vince didn’t ask any questions. He arrived in his old Holden, picked Antonello up, and without a word drove him home the long way, through Newport and Altona, avoiding the bridge.

At Slav’s funeral, Antonello gave another eulogy, and as he spoke the words floated over the congregation, shrouding the church. He couldn’t hear his own voice above the sound of Slav’s Aunt Marisa sobbing.

In the fortnight after the collapse, Antonello attended eleven funerals: Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Presbyterian, and even Jehovah’s Witness. There was no difference — each family was heartbroken. There was nothing to say, nothing that could be said. The survivors — some in bandages and casts, or leaning on walking sticks — turned up dressed in suits and ties and sat behind the families of the dead, wounded sentinels unsure of their obligations. Outside, after each service, some were as silent and withdrawn as Antonello; others were loud and angry; some were militant, their voices punching fists of rage into the crisp spring air. Their bridge was in ruins, their mates dead. They were all lost.

As if orchestrated by a callous conductor, the morning came crashing into the room. First the warning bells of the railway gates, followed by the blaring horns of the first trains — one city-bound, one headed for Werribee. Then the screech of the exhaust brakes as the semi-trailers, weighed down by replenished tanks from the refineries and the CSR sugar plant, were caught by the lights at the intersection of Francis and Hyde on their way to the freeway. Mrs Nguyễn’s aging alsatian, Wes, his deep bark setting off other dogs in a call-and-response. The rasping cries of the wattle birds. The neighbourhood was waking from its slumber as grumpy as an old man after a big night: joints aching, belly churning, and head screaming. It was 6.05 am. Mandy Neilson sighed and wrapped the pillow around her head to block her ears, and imagined the quiet stillness in the neighbourhood when her grandmother first moved into the house as a young bride in the 1940s, almost seventy years ago.