rattle and thud making the ground pulse like a heart. With a prehistoric roar a Syrian T-34 ground up the hill of ruined houses, its turret gun swinging down Rue Nobel as its treads shuddered and clanked toward the mound where she hid, and all the greatest fears she'd ever had came to one, the great crushing treads, the engine's throaty snarl coming toward her, but if she got up and ran they'd surely shoot her. She had to stay, stay in this hole as it crumbled in the tank's nearing vibration. She had to use the grenades, that would stop them, but the sack wouldn't untie and she should have thought of it earlier. Thrashing the earth the tank passed her by, concrete and steel crunching and writhing under its great steel paws, its sour exhaust in her face. It halted, swung its gun uphill.
They're looking for me, she thought, hearing the rumble of a second tank, a louder higher engine. It swung over the top of the hill and down the flattened street behind her and she darted up and across Rue Madame Curie hoping maybe they wouldn't see her, for a half-fallen building was blocking them. The tank's snout came round the edge of collapsed stones as she leaped into a well, smashing down some kind of stairs that broke the grenades loose when she fell. I'll die now, she thought, scrambling down the stairs after the grenades, they'll explode and me with them. She found the sack and there were three, five, six, seven – they were all there, the thirteen grenades. Holding her breath, she felt for the pins – all there. If they hadn't been it would already have been too late.
Loose stone banged down as the tank neared, shuddering the earth. She scrambled feet first down the stairs into the blackness – it was a courtyard, not a well, this earth above and around her the debris of houses. Fumbling along a wall, she found a window, barred, then a door to smash open and here was an open corridor, chunks of ceiling and something – dishes? – on the floor. Chairs, furniture in the way but she scrambled over them as with a white wham a grenade went off in the courtyard and a wall cascaded down between her and it. The tank overhead ground into gear and rumbled away.
Plaster and rock clattered down around her, the air thick with dust. Her ears roared, deafened. Bent over the grenades, she held her breath as long as possible then tried to breathe through her veil. When the air cleared and things stopped falling she tied the grenades up again under her raincoat and peered round her in the shallow darkness. Along one wall was a buffet with dishes and crystal, along the next a coat rack with a man and a woman's long coats and children's jackets. In the middle of the room was a wooden table, set with six plates, silverware, and glasses, all covered with dust.
6
THE GRENADE the tank crew had thrown into the courtyard had imploded the front wall of the living room and the facade of the other floor had dropped in on it. Rosa could find no way out. She felt her way back through the dining room to the kitchen but the next building had fallen in and filled the back door and windows. Her watch said 19:21; already she was late. She put the sack of grenades on the table and began to dig a hole through the rubble blocking the courtyard.
Every handful of rubble she pulled aside only made more tumble down. But cool air was coming in and she scrambled up to it – a fistful of night. She pulled and punched at it, forced the hole wider, slid back down for the grenades and squeezed out through the hole, went down into the courtyard then carefully up its stairs to the gap she had earlier thought was a well. Beneath this opening she listened. There was no sound of the tanks, of footsteps, bullets, or shells. For a moment there was no sound at all, no rifle or mortar anywhere, nothing but the night. Then one round hissed down. No bang: a dud. Or a delay. She tried to decide where it had landed.
A flare burst, half-lighting the street and across it a stairway. Without thinking she crossed the street and climbed the stairs, the light shifting up the steps as the flare fell. The flare died and darkness leaped out at her from the head of the stairs as she caught a glimpse of a vast low room of hunched machines.
She stepped into the room. No sound. Slowly then faster she walked down the aisle alongside the machines. They were like huge animals sleeping, making her afraid to wake them.
Another long low room to the right, then a corridor climbing beyond, then stairs to a dark passage; beyond it a broken door, another dark room.
Wind came through the broken door and chilled her back. She could just see the rectangle of greater darkness that was another door beyond. In between was dark shadow, lumpy, rubble maybe, from the roof through which the tiles had fallen, leaving only a few rafters with splintered crosspieces, a skeleton's ribs black against the sky.
Toward Ras Beirut a machine gun opened up, throaty bursts like migraine jolts, then a long twisting fusillade, answered by the metallic chatter of Kalashnikovs, the hot spat of Galils. She imagined the bullets smashing and clattering through shattered walls and piles of concrete, snatching innocent flesh by hazard, tearing and splattering it.
Someone came through the door behind her and stood, panting.
Whoever it was hadn't seen her. Or he'd seen her and was waiting. To see what she'd do.
She twisted round silently to face him, sinking to her knees to drop her profile from view. He hadn't seen her because he was just standing there. Now he was looking around – she saw the dark shadow of his head move. Automatic rifle in his right hand, smell of burnt oil and powder. Pale shirt, stink of his sweat, cigarette breath. Surely he must smell her too?
He coughed softly, his head moved, and he spat spraying her face. He lunged on ahead, down the corridor into the night.
When his footfalls had cleared the room ahead she followed, toeing her way in and around the smashed concrete, along a path many feet had hardened. Before the next door she halted, expecting him to be there. But he'd gone on, a stripe of moonlight skidding off his shoulder. Twenty yards ahead now, moving fast.
Three more rooms, rubble, splintered beams, starlight, silence, the quiet of roaches and rats, of all that feed on corpses. She imagined them eating, the little shreds of flesh, flesh that had made love, had held children and danced to music, then felt the chill of death.
Ahead a sudden scuffle, a gasp, grunts, three men at least, a voice: “Calm down, brother! Tell us, what religion are you?”
The man in the pale shirt kept gasping, trying to gain time to decide if these men who had grabbed him out of the darkness were Christian or Muslim, Druze or Hezbollah, Sunni or Shiite, Maronite, Syrian, Palestinian or Israeli.
“Answer right and I kiss you,” one of them said. “Answer wrong and you die.” The others closed up behind him, one's shape blocking the corridor. Rosa edged back into the rubble of the room, knelt down, reached under her raincoat and untied the sack of grenades.
“Just going to Rue Hamra,” whispered the man in the pale shirt. “Please, brothers.”
“What religion?”
“Truly, brother, I don't care about religion.”
“One last time, brother, before I shoot. What religion?”
“Allahah akbaar,” the man sighed.
Clink of pistol cocking. “Recount the faiths.”
“Do not hurt. Do not lie. Do not steal.”
“Which of those are you doing tonight?”
“I was just going to Rue Hamra. My family –”
“You are truly a Muslim, brother?”
“Truly.”
“You're in luck, brother: so are we.”
