The big front gates of the Sacré-Coeur had been blasted open and there was nothing in the courtyard. She went up to the first floor and through the corridors till she found four nun's habits on knobs, stuffed one into the bedspread and went out through a side door into Youssef Hani, turning right toward the Life Building, the Place des Martyres three blocks on her left, across the Green Line, Mohammed and his men only three blocks further.
Unless they'd pulled back. If they had, it wouldn't matter what happened to the snipers at the Life Building. Mohammed would be beyond their range, beyond hers.
A Katyusha struck in the next block before she could cover her ears and the wham seemed to slice off the top of her head. She crouched on steps going down to a cellar, crying and clasping her ears till the pain dimmed. She took off her gown and put the black habit on. It was dark and confining, like wearing chains; her body couldn't breathe. She hid the bedspread under the stairway and went to Nahr Ibrahim, looking down it to the Place des Martyres where the gut-shot man had fallen, two hours ago, in the glow of the Amal tank.
Mortars were falling there now. She took the trench across Nahr Ibrahim, the habit cloying at her knees. There were Phalange in the basements going up to the Life Building and machine guns at both ends of the street. Bullets and rockets kept ricocheting down into the street. A Phalange grabbed her arm. “No more.”
“My father's in that basement, by the Life Building.”
“A 240 went all the way to the basement before it exploded. There's nothing there, sister.”
“He could have moved to the next basement ... the Life Building. I've got to try.”
“I've been there. It's just storage.”
“Storage?”
“You can't stay here, sister. Please.”
She pulled the two halves of the crucifix from her habit. “See what they did? They broke the tree on which the Lord died. But we will join it back together. I swear to you, on this broken cross...”
He backed away a little, watching her, slightly raised the rifle. “I can't let you in, sister. You go home now. Back up to Sacré-Coeur.”
She scanned the Life Building, the other streets coming in, all guarded. With a chuckle another rocket left the top floor, swooshing toward Muslim lines. The key to Mohammed. She backed away. “You should have more pity.”
“Don't beat a dead horse...”
She went round the corner and halfway up the back street till she found a sewer manhole but she couldn't pry it open. At the corner of Nahr Ibrahim she was back in the view of the Phalange at the Life Building but here was an open manhole with steel rungs down into moldy cold darkness. At the bottom, ten feet below the street, tunnels led off in five directions. In one direction, toward the Life Building, was a tiny distant light. Not using the flashlight, she crawled toward it. Tendrils of mud and wire hanging from the ceiling dragged across her face, snatched her hair. The sandy muck at the bottom was jammed with plastic bottles and plastic bags in clumps of twigs and broken glass bottles and again something dead – another rat, she thought. Her fingers bumped a fat, soft, short stick that she tried to pull out of the way but it was someone's hand.
She pulled back in pure terror then realized it was swollen, dead. That was the smell. And the reason why she hadn't been able to see more light was that he was blocking it.
She lay trying to catch her breath, the top of the tunnel heavy on her back, cold muck soaking her chest. She could hardly breathe, her lungs wouldn't open.
She'd have to slow her pulse somehow and calm down but she was dying from no air. She had to breathe, let the thick cold air go slowly in and out. Slowly, she told herself, feeling the blood slacken, the arteries relax. It's just a bad idea that you're dying.
She crawled closer and tried to peer round the dead man. The light was from a wider tunnel beyond him, one that angled toward the Life Building. Taking a grip with her feet and knees at the sides of the tunnel she squirmed hard against him; pushing his shoulders, his blubbery face against hers.
He wouldn't move. She squirmed backwards, inched the habit up round her hips and finally over her shoulders, and crawled forward dragging it behind her. She jammed tight against him, forcing her shoulders forward along him, her belly against his, his soft slippery flesh rolling against her, bubbling gas each time she pressed herself along him, making her hold her breath against the horrible stink. It wouldn't go away and finally she just breathed it, squeezing herself along his wet bulbous mass, pushing the air from her lungs and his to inch her way down him. She caught on his belt buckle and it was too narrow to breathe and she couldn't back up with his face in her crotch and hers in his and she realized someday someone would find them like this, two skeletons enmeshed, and the terror of it jammed her forward past his fat legs, free, gasping and free, dragging her legs away from him, down the tunnel into the light.
14
SHE SQUIRMED to the edge of the larger tunnel, lay sucking in air. There was a light up ahead, out of sight, and one far behind, barely glimmering. A black cable ran along the tunnel. She waited a few minutes longer but no one appeared and she squirmed into the larger tunnel, dirt tumbling down each time a shell hit overhead.
The light was a bulb pinned halfway up on one side. Beyond it was a wide faint corridor that led to an open chamber loud with the fighting above. Voices were coming down, boots thumping wooden stairs, a flashlight darting and stabbing. Four men came into the basement and in their light she could see a series of open-faced rooms stacked with artillery shells, rockets, jerry cans of fuel, crates of rifle cartridges. The men loaded rocket shells on wooden frames on their backs, slid tumplines up their foreheads, and climbed slowly, unsteadily, back up the stairs.
Had the dead man in the tunnel stunk also of cigarettes? It seemed that he had but she couldn't remember. She scrambled back up the lit tunnel and squeezed up to the dead man. In his shirt pocket were cigarettes but no matches. Again she squashed herself along him, wormed a hand into a trouser pocket. A box of matches that rattled when she shook it. She crawled back to the main tunnel, checked the matches in its light. Four, skinny and blue-headed in their little cardboard box.
In the main basement she unscrewed jerry cans and tipped them over, the foul liquid soaking her feet, rising up her socks, sinking into the soil and sliding out into the ammo rooms, and with each new mortar hit above she thought it was people coming down. Trying not to breathe the fumes, she lugged one jerry can back along the main tunnel, pouring it out, then up her side tunnel, squeezing past the man. She dragged the can behind her and all the way to the end, poured the rest of the gasoline down the tunnel, and climbed the steel rungs up to the street.
It was quieter, tracers departing and arriving, the skies darker. She went back down the ladder, lit a match and tossed it into the tunnel. There was quiet whuff then a hiss that slowly died out.
She did not dare to look for fear it would blow in her face. But when she did there was only darkness. She fell against the ladder, felt the sting of tears but they wouldn't come. She couldn't go down there again. It would explode any second. She'd done her best.
She opened the matches. Three. She tossed another in and it huffed and went out. She squirmed back into the tunnel toward the dead man.
It was faster this time, she kept telling herself. The man was easier to crawl past, most of the gas had been pushed out of him. The main tunnel was slippery with gasoline and she was afraid of knocking the light bulb down into it, which might blow it.
There was no one in the basement. She poured out part of another jerry can and carried it back to the main tunnel, cautious not to bump the concrete, cause a spark. She poured more gasoline in the main tunnel and the rest up the small tunnel and over the man.
This is it, she told herself. If it doesn't blow this time I'm leaving.
There was no change in the street. She lit the third match but the stem snapped