Vesuvius by Night Read online

  Wine – 1 as

  Good wine – 2 asses

  Falernian – 4 asses

  Fellatio – anything between 1 as and 7

  Tips – at your discretion, sir

  Plus bar staff who didn’t pick their noses, or at least not in front of you.

  When Nonius had tickled up a new prospect successfully, or better still a consortium of these idiots, he would come home and change into his grubby clothes, then go back out to the lower class of dive to drink himself silly in celebration, until dawn broke and the painter took his brushes out to work. Then Nonius, with or without female company, could come home again and have the bed.

  The room was a small bare space above a cheap front shop that had been carved out of a once-fine large house. In Pompeii such remodelling was rife. One-time gracious mansions were divided into upper-storey apartments and ground-level bakeries and laundries, fitted with street-side workshops, and flanked with booths and bars. Even their exterior walls were hired out for advertisements and electioneering. This situation both provided for, and in itself encouraged, a shifting population. Families and businesses came and went in the refurbished properties, while a whole new range of entrepreneurs flourished through leasing real estate. Many were freed slaves, flexing their financial muscles and not caring that trade was supposedly dirty. Some were merely from families that had once been kept down socially by an older and more snobbish local élite, but who, since the earthquake upset everything, were emerging into confidence, status and power.

  The entrepreneurs lived in better houses than they rented out, homes which they decorated fashionably. This brought continual work for painters. And Nonius was sure, if he himself could offer the right temptations, it would bring a fortune to him.

  He had noticed his landlord wore a sardonic expression while this was explained. Jupiter’s jockstrap, that dauber thought a lot of himself. He was not from around here. It was said he had been born and bred in Rome. It damn well showed. He was a cocky sod. While he was listening to his customers’ generally daft ideas for décor, this supposedly brilliant artist might appear mild-mannered enough, but clearly he believed himself superior to anyone in Campania. He must set customers straight without them noticing he thought their own taste dire. Presumably the wiser ones just let him get on with it. He preferred to be given a free hand; he knew that when they saw what he painted they would be delighted. He was very sure of his talent.

  In the opinion of Nonius, this arrogant, tight-arsed young Roman was just ripe to have his self-assurance pricked, by Nonius helping himself to all the money that painter had saved up. It was going to happen. When Nonius was ready. When − and even he had to admit this was proving difficult − when Nonius had managed to find out where the painter’s savings actually were.

  In his mind, the future loot had acquired colour, substance, and ludicrous bulk. He had been thinking about his landlord’s money so much that he had lost all sense of proportion. He was now imagining a silver hoard so glorious it needed to be guarded by mythical beasts. He believed that men in the building trade were generally paid with coinage but that sometimes, when a customer had a tricky cashflow, they were offered rewards in kind. Nonius, who could be just as imaginative as any of the best fresco painters and mosaicists around the Bay, now pictured more than mounds of glimmering sesterces; he dreamed of unexpectedly fine works of art, antique Greek statues and vases, tangles of curiously-set jewels …

  The tight-fisted swine had hidden his hoard too well. It was not in the room. Nonius searched everywhere, taking up floorboards one by one, then hammering them down again. Since he had the place by daylight, he could see what he was doing so knew he hadn’t missed it. Nothing was here.

  The landlord did get paid. Nonius had observed him obsessively. The painter always had money in his purse, a little corded leather bag he kept around his neck, from which he took coppers to buy a flatbread or an apple from a street stall. He could pay his way (a concept Nonius viewed askance) and never seemed troubled by financial anxiety in the way destitute people were. Nonius could spot that. He had been there.

  Nonius would get him. In the meantime, until the particular day in question dawned, life continued for them both with its gentle cycle. Like a plumb-bob in motion, they came and went in their terrible bleak room, one swinging in, one swinging out, passing each other with barely a nod, never sharing a meal or a philosophical conversation, yet constantly linked by a mutual thread of existence.

  When Nonius took his turn in the bed, once he finished with any female companion – assuming he could be bothered, and assuming she didn’t order him to screw himself and leave her be – he would sleep like the dead, or at least the hungover. Since being hungover was so regular for him, it passed without too much pain, normally around the time the light began to fade at dusk. He usually woke and was ready to decamp when his landlord’s weary feet climbed the stone steps from the street.

  But on the day in question, it was different. He woke much sooner than he wanted. Nonius abruptly reached consciousness while there was still sunlight streaming through the broken shutters at full intensity. His body sensed it was only about midday, though sounds from outside seemed not quite right.

  Nonius lay spread-eagled, face down. He had ended up diagonally on the mattress, tangled in the sheet, unsure for a few moments where the ends and sides of the narrow bed were in relation to him. He felt a fear of falling out. He would have groaned, but could not summon the energy.

  He thought he knew what was going on. He realised that what had woken him was a peculiar sensation, a sense of his bed shifting beneath him during unnatural reverberations. Anyone who experiences this, even for the first time, knows it must be an earthquake. Even in places where earthquakes have never happened before, the occurrence is so strange it is unmistakeable. It ought to be unsettling, yet Nonius had lived through seismic activity, so he felt neither alarm nor surprise. People said, ‘This is Campania, what do you expect?’ Earthquakes regularly happened. In the past, the street level in Pompeii rose or sank by several feet. The shoreline changed. On the way out to Cumae lay fiery, sulphurous fields and lakes whose dead air killed birds overhead. The earth was rocky and barren there; it stretched and heaved, spewing hot fumaroles of steam or gas. Poets wrote of it as the entrance to Hades.

  For the past four days minor tremors had been felt. Locals cursed, but were used to it. Noises cracked and grumbled deep underground. The credulous believed giants were walking the earth. The racket was growing louder but as the days passed people took less notice.

  Was there now to be another significant earthquake? Nonius knew that when the ground began rippling in waves, as if solid earth had turned to water, the sensible rule was to leave your building. Best not to be indoors when your house falls down. Even if somebody eventually dug you out, if anyone bothered, you might be dead of fear and suffocation by the time they pulled off the rubble.

  He still felt too hungover to move. He just thought about it. Staying put was the way to get killed. Nonius ought to evacuate. Still, he told himself that being out in the open was dangerous too. This particular house had survived in the past. It was shored up, with walls and ceilings patched, but the fresco painter, who knew about building stability, had once said it only needed maintenance; he reckoned it looked safe for the time being.

  Nonius must have slept through some upheaval. The noise seemed to have ceased now, yet he guessed what had been happening. Sod it. If it was midday, he had not yet rested long enough to want to rouse himself. Last night’s girl had gone. She had raided his purse, damn her; with one eye, he could see it lying on the floor, obviously empty. If he went out he would only get a bite to eat if he cadged off some old acquaintance, and most of them were wise to him.

  So Nonius stayed where he was, prone on the bed, not troubling himself to go outside.

  So far, he had no idea that this time everything was different.

  Chapter 2

  Next the painter, who reg
ards himself as a less raffish character. However, he has had his moments.

  The painter witnessed what happened. He had left the room where he was about to start once the plaster was ready, and walked outside. The tremors of the past few days had unsettled him. Though he pretended to ignore his tension, the recent subterranean activity had been growing worse.

  ‘Come and see!’ his daughter had called from the street doorway, sounding more curious than alarmed, yet excited. ‘Father, look at this!’

  He had been standing back from the main wall of the big room, taking the measure of its central panel where he was ready to paint a mythological scene. The new top coat of plaster was just reaching its critical stage. Even so, he went to find out what she wanted, after first encouraging his junior, Pyris, who was putting a black wash on a panel. It was well within the boy’s competence, so the painter could leave him to it.

  Hylus, the other man in their team, was crouched down by the dado touching up a merry scene of cupids racing in chariots drawn by little goats. ‘Fresco cupids have a bloody hard life. I hope this bunch are grateful I’m letting them be boy racers. They’re constantly at it, working their wings off, making perfumes, weaving at looms, being goldsmiths. I bet their pay stinks too,’ joked Hylus, who often wittered on while he was working.

  ‘One’s got a boil on his bum,’ commented a plasterer. He was up on the scaffold, annoyingly. That ought to have been done by now, way back when the coffered ceiling and coves were put up and painted. They were supposed to finish first so the decorators could move top-down. Anyone other than a crack-brained plasterer would see that was the sensible way to programme a job.

  ‘Shit, it’s a drip; thanks, Three Coats. Fetch me a rag, will you, Pyris?’ Hylus was clearly thinking only a plasterer would make such a big deal of pointing it out. Three Coats, named for his endless lessons on how to build a fine surface, smirked. A sound wall in fact had six coats, three in the rough and three smooth with marble dust, but the painters, who were competent plasterers themselves, never let him finish telling them.

  That smirk from Three Coats had irritated the painter more than usual, so it had been a good idea to move away. Popping out to see what his daughter wanted avoided snapping at the other man. As team leader, he liked to keep the peace.

  He could not afford to disappear for long. Frescos must be painted at the right moment. Now that Three Coats had filled in his panel and its design was roughly marked out, he had to work fast, before the wet plaster went off. In fresco, colours were not simply laid on the surface but were sucked into the glossy final layer of the finish while it remained moist. This made the paint survive household knocks better, and it could be washed down without losing colour. They always assured their customers it would last forever.

  Sometimes they completed details dry, but that was for a reason, or so they claimed. Actually they might not have finished in time and had no wet cloths to keep the plaster workable. They pretended to be using a ‘specialist technique’. Painters knew how to preserve their mystique.

  The recent shudders from deep within the earth had disturbed and annoyed the team leader. He possessed a sense of danger, though he could live with risk. He just worried about their work. The current site had suffered before; next door, where they had also been working this month, the bakery oven had sustained major cracks in the big earthquake and was now being repaired yet again. Most of the flour mills were completely out of action. This morning, when he and his team turned up here, they had anxiously inspected all the walls; having to check every day for overnight disturbance made him depressed, even though everyone who worked in Pompeii routinely endured their work being damaged. At least the townsfolk tenaciously rebuilt; shockwaves meant a surge in property renovation, which was excellent, although you never knew if what you finished for your customer would survive the next upheaval.

  An artist who cared could end up having a breakdown. At this point in the job, any flying dust was a nightmare. And what was the point of putting your soul into your work, if your efforts might be cracked apart or even brought down? If people liked your style they would call you back for repairs, but creating a scene for a second time was unsatisfactory. You could get tired of constantly redoing jobs. Artists dream that what they produce will last for generations – small hope in the Campanian earthquake zone.

  Anyway, when customers had something done twice, even if the fault was unavoidable, there was always a niggle about the extra payment. He hated the stress.

  So these past four days of tectonic agitation had left him restless. The uncertainty had made him surly and unable to paint well. He needed to settle before he started the new panel. As team leader, he did not need to ask anyone’s permission. He had moved away from his paints, as if to take a pee or find a bite to eat from his knapsack.

  In reply to his young daughter’s call he stepped right outside the building. For a moment he stood quietly and looked up and down the side-street. It was being dug up in several places: there was already a long trench for what seemed like endless work to the water supply, god knows what engineer had thought that up. And now, next to the house, a cess-pit had been excavated, its ghastly contents piled up everywhere. That made the third in the sidestreet.

  Householders would be glad if their indoor toilets stopped smelling, but they were not pleased about the haphazard dungheaps. This was even worse than normal. Pompeii’s streets could be foul. Sometimes a frustrated householder put up a sign on his exterior wall, saying Do not shit here, stranger, move on! It only gave passers-by ideas, and if it didn’t work for individuals, it was hardly going to deter the dead-eyed, cack-handed, bloody-minded workmen who carried out civic contracts, not when they had mounds of stupendously ponging sludge to store somewhere while they dug a big hole.

  He stepped around the piles carefully and went in search of his daughter. She wasn’t to be seen on the main road, so he turned and cautiously retraced his path. He had to go right to the other end of the side street before he found her, standing stock still at a corner, balanced on a stepping stone. Unlike the more sedate town of Herculaneum where his wife lived, Pompeii had no proper drainage; the town sloped steeply down to the sea so when it rained, surface water just dashed along its streets towards the port, carrying every kind of rubbish. The stepping stones were handy, though a magnet to children. One more worry …

  ‘What have you seen, chuck?’

  ‘There’s a fire behind the mountain.’

  His daughter Marciana, eight years old, was the original reason the painter had rented a room of his own. She stayed with him sometimes. It gave him an excuse to limit how much he fraternised with his colleagues, being something of a loner. Even before he decided to sublet, his daughter had camped out downstairs at the lodgings. Now, no way was he having her come into contact with Nonius. Nonius, with his various unpleasant habits, had no idea Marciana even existed.

  When he found her outside, the curly-haired little girl was rapt, staring towards the dramatic view of Mount Vesuvius; the tall local mountain, beloved of Bacchus and one-time refuge of Spartacus the rebel slave, dominated sightlines, elegantly framed by the distant city gates. Lush to its familiar high, craggy summit, packed with prosperous farms and vineyards, Vesuvius was one of many peaks in the area, yet it stood slightly isolated from the rest, with special charm. That must be why it had its own name. Five miles from the sea, it was always touched by threads of incoming cloud, dreaming in sunlight as it had done for generations.

  ‘Come out of the road!’

  Many a child in the Empire was killed by an accident with a cart; drivers were madmen, utterly thoughtless, often drunk or dozing too. Anxious to retrieve his moppet, the painter was nevertheless distracted by what had so fixed her attention.

  Behind the mountain as they saw it from Pompeii, clouds of grey smoke were filling the sky. If it was a forest fire, this was a strange one. The painter remembered hearing a sharp bang, but it had been distant and at the time he’d been concent
rating on mixing a paint colour.

  Nobody had ever suggested Vesuvius was volcanic, as far as he knew. If that had ever been true, it was long extinct. Most hills in the Italian landmass looked similar in form, from the long barricade of the Apennines to this circle of ancient peaks around the Bay of Neapolis. The Apennines were unstable, with regular landslides, rockfalls, mudflows and sinkholes. But the painter believed Italy had only one active volcano, the legendary Etna in Sicily. He dreamed of going south to see it, so he could paint Etna spewing fire, with the philosopher Empedocles throwing himself into the crater in order to prove he was immortal – while the mountain contemptuously hurled one of his sandals back to show he was not. The possibilities for contrast between dark and fiery light, the chance to show violent activity, were seriously alluring. Well, one day …

  Not here though. Not here, despite recent warning signs. When, this very week after the Rustic Vine God Festival, growers had returned to town after inspecting their Vesuvian grapes before harvest, they claimed to have seen the ground bulging and even seen fumaroles like those that boiled and steamed in the Phlegraean Fields. They reckoned their vines were being scorched, ruined by unusual ash deposits.

  Many chose to disbelieve them, which was the convenient response. A straggle of nervous folk did take fright. Everyone else said they were only looking for an excuse to visit relatives or to escape nagging spouses. Many of their neighbours were trapped in inertia, because if they left, where could they go? People had to live.