The sirens start across the city. They wail through distance, lifting so they hum inside walls if I touch them. Then they fall as if running out of breath. The sound layers over the drumming of traffic and the voices of neighbours upstairs. We have ninety seconds. That’s the recommended time to find shelter. Outside doors slam. People descend fire escapes. They don’t panic the way they used to when the attacks started months ago. Footsteps rattle from the fire escape like water rushing through a downpipe. Yvonne and I stand. I go to the sink to rinse out a coffee cup. Yvonne snaps is a clean cup more important than being blown to pieces.
We go into the stairwell. At the bottom level others have gathered. They stand around. Some smile and nod at us. The sirens fall silent. I hear people’s breath. Body heat warms the space we share. Not far away two explosions thump. Shockwaves roll through me and the ground lurches slightly. People look at each other. One man has an unlit cigarette in his mouth. When he swears it bobs between lips.
We are meant to wait ten minutes. That is the time considered enough to ensure the danger has passed. Everyone ignores it. We hurry back to our lives. Yvonne and I go outside. There is hardly any traffic. A single taxi noses past.
“Death wish,” Yvonne mutters, nodding towards the car. In the sky vapour trails slowly dissolve.
Yvonne and I are always walking out in the middle of something. Some mornings the sirens begin and we leave behind toast. Yvonne’s slice has the symmetry of an orthodontist corrected bite in it. We leave coffees cooling, the brown suds of our lattes melting away. We walk out on cold meat on slabs of heavily buttered bread. Last week we nearly left our bed. Our bony chests wedged together and Yvonne’s arms were flung above her head. She whispered into my ear, her voice low and thick, breath bitter and warm, lifting gently onto me. She said let’s stay like this, the sirens make it dangerous. I tried to peel off her but she gripped me with her legs, rolling me onto my back and laughing. I loved her high pitched laughter, her head thrown back so I could see the lines in her neck.
Last week we stood in the stairwell. I held her hand as an explosion boomed from blocks away. We always stood where there were no windows so there wasn’t a risk of being sprayed with shattered glass. Most people had boarded up their windows by now. I told her let’s not have children. Let’s not bring anyone into this life. She looked at me, sad and conflicted.
The sirens are like voices in an opera. They control us more than calendars or alarms. Hopes for peace dashed the headlines say. There has never been peace. There never will be. If I am out driving and the sirens start, I check the GPS for one of the shelters. Quickly I park, even blocking a laneway or mounting a kerb. The shelters are underground. I glide my palm along a hand rail as I descend into them. Greenish water seeps down walls. The government announced the shelters would survive a direct hit. They also protect us against shrapnel. We pile out after the explosions, checking the sky for the vapour trails of any new rockets. Then we search for what directions the exploded missiles took. Once a woman next to me became hysterical, convinced the direction of the trail meant it had landed in her neighbourhood. Her crying was so loud I felt it in me, as if I was also sobbing.
The rockets are small. Their explosive is fertiliser. No one knows where they will come down. At night we sleep fully clothed, shoes next to the bed to leave quickly. Yvonne sometimes sleeps through the sirens and I have to rouse her awake.
“I’m not going. I’m tired,” she said in the darkness last week. The sirens soared, soprano like. I could not blame her. Our sleep was often interrupted. Perhaps one of their weapons was sleep deprivation. For a moment I begged her but her head lolled to one side, eyes heavy. “Please,” she whispered. I nearly argued but then there was the sound of her breath in sleep, sometimes reminding me of that time years ago when I visited the sea and the waves hissed and rolled like inhaling and exhaling. I went to our small bathroom window, the only one not boarded up. Tiles chilled the soles of my feet. Through the grimy glass I saw two rockets floating soundlessly, arching over the city before falling gracefully. There was a flash of orange light but no noise. It must be far away. The second fell too, picking up speed as it descended. Then there was nothing. Many of them never went off. They slammed into walls or crashed through cars. One exploded recently when a person started touching and looking at it. Later someone told the victim was a child.
At times I examine their anger. Who hates us so much to do this? Someone we don’t know killing people they have never met. How do you become like that? When I used to want children I never imagined them on my knee teething or smiling as I told them about the people across the border they must learn to hate. My uncle once told me he covered my head in a wet towel when I was a child. Bitter breezes of tear gas innocent looking as rain clouds wafted towards us during an anti government demonstration. I still carried a faint recollection of my cart wheeling breath in that damp darkness. But I still lived a life without hate.
Yvonne’s sister visits us late the next afternoon. She jokes about how long we will be able to sit before the sirens start. We eat eggplant tossed with pasta. After dinner we go into the street. Some boys are playing soccer, jostling and taunting each other as someone kicks wildly at the ball. It zooms away crookedly before bouncing and rolling down an alleyway. They tear after it. We laugh at them and see others leaning over balconies watching. I put my arms around the shoulders of both women. I face Yvonne and kiss her on the mouth, tasting the pinot wine we have been drinking. Her lips are liquid and warm. She turns and goes inside, telling me she will be back in a moment. I glance at her sister Maria and see her staring at where the boys had been. I hear them down the alleyway, bantering. Now and then there is the muffled thump of the ball being kicked. Maria asks me will the troubles ever end. She wishes she had the money to leave this place. People in other countries didn’t realise how fortunate they are. They visit shops without wondering whether bread will be in stock. They go to see a film without fears of being killed. Their biggest problem was a weather change, not rockets.
“At times I wish those rockets would blow up in the faces of the people who make them,” I say. Maria faces me and I shake my head, ashamed of saying that. “See what it turns you into? I am becoming like the people who want to kill us.”
We watch the boys return to the street. Some file past us, one has the ball under his arm. A couple of them say hello politely.
“Last week I was visiting friends,” Maria says quietly. “One of the rockets landed in the next block. After we left the shelter we went straight there. Followed the smoke. The house was gone. Nothing but broken concrete. We started going through the rubble because people said the family had been inside. Fire fighters arrived. They found them all where they had been sitting around a table.” I stare at her. Maria’s eyes scan across the skies. “I saw them. Every single body. There was a baby. ” She looks at me. “I have never been filled with so much sadness. And hate. I don’t know what to do.”
Behind us I hear the door open. Yvonne comes out. Maria touches my arm.
“Please don’t tell my sister,” she says quietly.
Yvonne stands with us. Together we watch two jet fighters black and shapeless streaking soundlessly across distance. She asks if we had a nice talk. I smile thinly. We face the horizon turning a burnt orange colour. After awhile Yvonne says it is becoming cold and we should go inside. Mechanically I turn back to the apartments and follow them.
Following having a VCE student in the family Peter Farrar wrote little fiction in 2013 but learnt a lot about legal studies. He has published The Nine Flaws of Affection, which is a short story collection. He hopes to commence grovelling to publishers this year for his next book.