But it had gone the way it had gone—that fateful indifference of the volcano. And so he went to work as never before. He foremanned a crew composed of all the capable hands in the valley. Neighbors put their property-line disputes aside, forgave differences in Christian doctrine, erased financial debts since the ledger at the general store had been destroyed, too. They scrounged for materials and received lumber and steel and concrete mix from the countryside. They borrowed tools from villages up and down the coast. The carpenter led them like a wartime general through the meticulous stages of a lengthy siege. Foundations. Framing. Windows and doors. Roofs and siding. Electrical and plumbing. Insulation and drywall. And, at last, his beloved finish work. Hand planes. Band saws. Dovetail joints. He cherished the words and the tools in his toolshed.
Up they went, thirty-six houses in sixty days. The displaced slept in the chapel, high on the hillside. When the weather warmed, some slept outside in tents and sleeping bags donated by an American manufacturer of environmentally conscious outerwear. By the middle of summer, when the sun barely set, they were back in their homes, and the carpenter was back in his. It had been chaotic, but never hasty. It had been urgent, but never rushed. They had done what was necessary, and they had been blessed with occasionally sunny skies.
Their lives had been upended, but no one was dead, at least not yet. They were small, and the volcano was large, immeasurably so, and one day in the future it would come for them again. That compact between villager and volcano was the one intrinsic truth of their existence. How inconsequential were the lives of the citizens of the valley, how insignificant their free will. And yet they would persist collectively, choosing to exist in the shadow of death and destruction, so long as they could live out their lives in the land of their ancestors. They would look upon the volcano, day and night, and thank it for its presence, for the perpetual charge it provided them, those in close proximity to that judgment. Their lives, after all, were solitary notes in a universe of ceaseless symphony; they were minuscule and fleeting, and it was useful to be reminded how soon they would all ring out and resolve.
And yet still: before bed each night, the carpenter would look out his kitchen window to the looming mass he’d known all his life as the horizon, and, like so many before him in the valley, and all those who would follow, make his negligible appeal for mercy. He’d pray to the volcano on behalf of himself and every neighbor who’d found a way to carry on with life in the wake of disaster. He’d smile and tap the glass with a defiant finger, standing up for the living in a world composed overwhelmingly of rock and metal and swift-moving fire, and whisper to Holudjöfulsins, the volcano through the pane: “Ekki enn. Ekki enn.” Not yet. Not yet.
He still had the repairs to his own house to make. He needed to win back the love of his life. He needed more time. They all needed more time to figure things out and to live the right way, at long last.
“Ekki enn. Ekki enn,” he’d say. Let’s not end this quite yet.
III.After Volcano
Thursday
They woke with a start to their simultaneous midnight alarms, Whitney locked to her side of the bed, Will to his. It was morning all over again, but blackest morning, night-morning. The airport had stacked up the departures so that the flights were running all through the night. They’d drawn their pair of seats on the three a.m. back to New York. Clearing Zone 6. Limited status. But today was the day they’d finally be going home.
The shock of the alarm made Will want to barf. They’d slept for four hours, and he was at the peak of a fresh hangover. Whitney looked worse than when she’d gone to bed. Her skin was leached of color. All that work, all that self-care, was no match for the fallout of blowing up one’s life.
They’d packed in the afternoon to give themselves something to do besides talk about what had happened. When they were through packing, they’d gone for a long walk up to Parc Güell. They’d walked beneath the corridors of twisted-stone tree trunks, they’d looked out from the generous heights over the city from the terrace of broken tiles, and taken a picture together with their one working phone, the one phone left between them. They hadn’t taken a picture together the whole trip, and in this one they smiled gingerly. They were drunk and hadn’t eaten much—but neither of them had a huge appetite. Later, they bought some sticks of salami and two cans of Coke at the Mercado de Santa Caterina, and ate together on a wooden bench beside a dirt soccer pitch
