He wandered on to the atrium, which was almost completely filled by the ashes which had fallen from the impluvium, although he managed to make his way through. On his left a little shrine was filled with images of divinities and demons, each bearing an Etruscan name. The most impressive was Charu, the ferryman who transported souls to the otherworld. It seemed strange to find such symbols and statues in a first-century Pompeian home. As he lingered to examine the images in the flickering lamplight, he had the clear sensation of hearing a weak sound and then, immediately afterwards, feeling a puff of wind. Could anything still be moving in that dead air, in that timeless space?
Philip stood stock still and listened for a long minute, but he heard only the beating of his heart. He walked to the threshold of the tablinum and drew up short. The master of the house had appeared before him.
The upper part of the skeleton – the head, the arms, part of the ribs and the backbone – lay on a table. The pelvic bones rested on a chair, while the legs and feet were scattered over a lovely black and white mosaic floor. His white robe was intact and still showed faded red embroidery at the hem.
Philip approached on tiptoe and, as he crossed the threshold, saw an odd object out of the corner of his eye, hanging from an arm of the standing candelabrum: it was a perfectly preserved sistrum in black metal, the colour of tarnished silver. The friar’s mention of the earthquake bells echoed in his mind and, as he looked at the instrument, he could almost imagine its silvery sound, as if he himself had heard it once, long, long ago. He reached out a trembling hand and gave it a little swing. The beads slipped along the rods and touched the frame. Just a few notes rang out, on the little instrument that no human hand had touched for twenty centuries, sounding like a sweet, short elegy in that world of ash.
This must be the sound that had made the monks startle out of sleep whenever the earth was about to shake! It was obviously amplified by whatever strange play of echoes was at work down here. A quiet voice, buried through the millennia.
What other marvels did this place hold?
He turned back towards the skeleton sitting at the table and watched as the last bones of his hand disarticulated under his eyes, as the sound waves disturbed the miraculous equilibrium that had held them together until that moment. It was the man’s right hand, crumbling to pieces over a sheet of parchment. He had died in the act of writing.
The inkwell still sat on the table and the reed stylus still rested between the bones of his index finger and thumb. Philip quickly took his Leica from the haversack and captured that stupefying scene in the cold light of his magnesium flashbulb. He walked around the table, then gently moved the bones one by one from the parchment and took another shot. Just as Philip was about to lift the parchment to have a closer look, the noise he thought he’d heard a few minutes before became louder and more distinct. It was the sound of footsteps, and voices. He turned to where the sounds were coming from and saw what he had missed when he had first entered and his attention had been captured by the incredible scene. There were traces of human activity in the dust covering the floor, traces obviously much more recent than that ancient tragedy. He backed up towards the threshold and instinctively grabbed the sistrum, dropping it into his haversack. He had just enough time to extinguish the light in his lantern and retreat behind one of the columns in the atrium when he heard a creak, like that of a door opening. The light of another lamp, and the acrid smell of carbide, flooded the room.
Three men came in. Two of them, miserably dressed, looked like typical Neapolitan lowlifes, while the other had his back turned to Philip. All he could see was that the man was tall and heavy-set, dressed simply but with great elegance.
‘See?’ said one of the first two. ‘It’s like we said. Just take a look at this! And it’s all perfectly intact. Never been touched.’
The man briefly examined the scene. ‘Never been touched?’ he repeated. ‘Look at the bones of his hand. They’ve been moved by at least thirty centimetres. You assured me that no one had ever set foot in here.’
‘Hey, buddy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What we told you was the truth! You’re not looking for an excuse to back out of our deal, are you? If it’s trouble you want . . .’
‘I won’t give you a cent unless you tell me who else you’ve told about this place . . . You buggers thought you could dip into the same nest twice, didn’t you?’ The Italian the man spoke was quite correct, but he clearly had a foreign accent, vaguely Central European.
The first man stepped forward, by no means intimidated. ‘We brought you here, now you pay.’
‘No,’ said the foreigner. ‘Our agreement was clear. Either you tell me who has been in here or I won’t give you a cent.’
‘No one, as far as we know,’ said the second man, who hadn’t opened his mouth until then. He turned to his companion and said in dialect: ‘There’s that American in the monastery who’s always wandering around underground. Could it have been him?’
The foreigner immediately understood the word ‘American’, even though they had been speaking dialect. ‘American? What American?’
‘I do odd jobs sometimes for the Franciscans,’ said the second, ‘and there’s been an American hanging around the monastery the last couple of days. They say he’s studying the stuff that’s here underground. He must get in through the catacombs under the crypt.’
Philip jumped at those words and flattened himself as best he could behind the column, holding his breath. The dust clinging to the stone was so fine that any tiny movement released it into the air and he was afraid he would sneeze and alert the intruders to his presence.
The foreigner seemed calmer now. His attention was attracted to the papyrus open on the table. He went closer and took a long look in silence. The expression of his face changed dramatically. His brow became beaded with sweat and his eyelids blinked faster and faster. His hands neared the sheet.
‘What about our money?’ demanded one of the two men.
The foreigner turned and Philip could finally see his face. He was a good-looking man with handsome features, perfectly clean-shaven, but the gelid look in his blue eyes hinted at a capacity for great cruelty. Philip shuddered.
‘I’ll give you your money,’ he said, ‘but first I want to make sure that you haven’t brought any one else down here.’ He picked up the papyrus with the intention of slipping it into the bag he was carrying, but one of the men tried to snatch it away. The fragile sheet ripped in two.
‘Idiot!’ hissed the foreigner. ‘You imbecile! Look what you’ve done!’
‘We’ve never brought anyone down here until now,’ insisted the other.
‘Then we have to look for other passages,’ said the foreigner. ‘If you’ve never brought anyone down here, it means that he got in some other way. He might even still be around. Find him.’
Philip felt his heart sink and he tried to creep back to the collapsed wall, in the dark. But after a few steps he bumped a doorjamb and the sistrum he had with him tinkled. He muttered a curse and continued to feel his way towards the opening that let on to the peristyle.
‘That way!’ shouted the foreigner. ‘There’s someone over there! Quick! Don’t let him get away!’
Philip, realizing that he’d been discovered, set off at a run, stumbling and knocking against all sorts of obstacles in the dark, but he managed to reach the entrance to the cubiculum. He heard the foreigner’s voice shouting, ‘I’ll give you twice as much if you catch him!’ and the sound of hurried footsteps. All at once, he heard a scream of pain, and couldn’t help but look back. The foreigner had run into the balustrade and was holding his right side. His face was twisted into a grimace.
The halo of the carbide lamp was getting dangerously close now, as the other two men continued the chase. Philip crawled up the pile of stone blocks and debris towards the opening he’d made under the beam. As he was trying to get through to the other side, lamplight flooded the room and the dark shadows of his pursuer
s loomed up behind it.
‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ shouted the foreigner, but Philip frantically dropped to the ground and rolled through the hole to the other side of the collapsed wall. He stumbled to his feet and saw the light nearing the opening from the passage on the other side. There was no time left and Philip realized he had no choice. He crawled back up to the top of the heap of debris and, as he spotted one of the two men already peering into the room, he repeatedly struck the wooden beam with his pickaxe. As soon as he saw that the beam was about to give, he scrambled down towards the wall and found the opening to the external pavement. He could hear the entire structure collapsing behind him. A cloud of dust filled his lungs and nearly suffocated him and a hail of stones threatened to crush his legs, but with a final effort he pulled himself through to the tunnel outside and took a long gulp of fresh air. He hacked and coughed at length before he could catch his breath, then rubbed his aching, bloody legs. Thank God, it didn’t look like he had any broken bones. When he had recovered, he put his ear to the wall. There was nothing but silence on the other side. He must have killed them. All three? A sensation of distress engulfed him and his limbs felt numb.
His lantern had broken and was useless to him, but he managed to find his way back out by sparingly using a cigar lighter and then the matches from his haversack.
He emerged into the monastery crypt harrowed by the fatigue, pain and upset he had suffered. The skulls piled up in their niches greeted him with grotesque grins. Right then they looked to Philip like the smiling faces of old friends.
PHILIP MANAGED TO GET to the service exit that led to the laundry and then out to the garden. He tidied himself up as best he could and limped towards the hotel. It was the middle of the night and the streets were completely deserted. He tried to pick up his pace, gritting his teeth against the pain; he couldn’t wait to get back to his room, take a bath and collapse onto his bed.
However, he was soon forced to acknowledge that this endless day was not yet over. The sound of footsteps accompanied his own, stopping whenever he did. A few steps later, at the end of an alleyway dimly lit by gaslight, Philip found his path barred, both in front and behind, by shadows which had materialized out of nowhere.
A voice said, ‘Drop your haversack and get out of here. You won’t be harmed.’
That voice! Philip flattened himself against a wall, shouting, ‘Help! Help me!’ But none of the windows in the nearby houses opened. No one came to his defence. There was no way out. Not only had the man escaped, he’d managed to get out before Philip! And now he wanted to take away everything Philip had struggled so hard to get, cutting him off for ever from all trace of his lost father. Could he mean to take his life as well? Who could he be?
Philip grabbed his pickaxe and backed up against the wall. He’d go out fighting. Shadows began to emerge into the halo of light projected onto the ground by the lamp. There were four of them, thugs, armed with knives, but the man who had spoken remained hidden in the gloom at the head of the alleyway.
The attackers were very close now and one came forward brandishing his knife, while another made a move to snatch the haversack hanging at Philip’s side. Philip landed a kick, screaming out at the pain in his own leg, and escaped the blade slashing towards his right arm by a hair’s breadth. He swung his pickaxe, forcing the cutthroats to back off, but he knew he had no chance. He cursed his foolishness; had he removed the film from the camera he could have dropped the haversack and tried to break away, but it was too late for regrets now.
The four thugs were just steps away from him and their knives were teasingly close when a man appeared from a dark passageway behind him: a figure cloaked in black, his face covered. A deep voice rang out with a syncopated accent – ‘Salam alekhum, sidi el Garrett!’ – as two dark hands shot from under the cloak: the right held a scimitar and the left a jatagan.
One of his assailants, the first to spin around to meet the newcomer, took two deep cuts to his face and fell to the ground howling, hands clutching at his cheeks, which had been slashed from temple to jaw. Another was hamstrung before he could even turn and he collapsed in a twisting, screaming heap. The two remaining took to their heels.
The warrior regained his stance instantly and sheathed his weapons. He turned to Philip and bowed his head, briefly touching his chest, mouth and forehead with his right hand.
Philip was still backed up against the wall with his pickaxe in hand, stunned and unable to move.
‘Pure folly, el sidi. They would have gutted you like a goat and your father would never have forgiven me,’ said the man, baring his face. ‘Luckily I thought of following you on these night-time jaunts of yours, when peril is at its height.’
Philip looked at the square jaw, the straight nose, the big, black, shining eyes. ‘El Kassem! Oh, my God, I can’t believe it’s you!’
‘It’s best we leave,’ said the Arab warrior. ‘This city is more dangerous than the medina in Tangiers.’
‘Did you say “your father”? Is it true, then, that he’s still alive?’
‘If Allah has kept him from harm, yes, he is.’
‘Where is he?’ asked Philip as they walked off in great haste. He couldn’t help but glance around for more attackers.
‘This I do not know. He has surely walked a long path since I left him and we will have to find him again. Come now, follow me. You can no longer stay in your serai. Your things have already been moved to a safe house.’
THE SKY WAS beginning to pale to the east when they reached an old house with chipped walls. They went in and found themselves in a large courtyard crossed by long lines of fluttering laundry.
‘This way,’ said El Kassem, slipping around the obstacles with familiar ease. They reached a staircase and started up.
‘Strange folk, these Naples . . .’ observed El Kassem, the steep rise of the stairs not taking away his breath in the least.
‘Neapolitans,’ corrected Philip, gasping.
‘Yes. How can they think to win a fight with such short jatagans? At our oasis, only the children play with those.’
‘We’re not in the desert here, El Kassem. I can’t understand how you’ve managed to get around dressed like you are in a place like this, where everyone sticks his nose into everyone else’s business.’
‘Oh, it is not difficult,’ said El Kassem. ‘If you remove the rope from your keffiyeh, wrap it around your shoulders and walk with your head down, you look like one of their widows.’
They stopped at a landing on the third floor and Philip leaned against the wall to catch his breath.
‘If we are to find your father you must strengthen your muscles and your limbs,’ said El Kassem. ‘If three flights of stairs take such a toll . . .’
Philip knew it was no use answering. He had known El Kassem since, as a boy, he had accompanied his father as far as Oran, before one of Desmond’s many departures into the desert. El Kassem was his father’s guide and bodyguard, bound to him by the loyalty that only the men of the desert are capable of. Stalwart and untiring, he could ride for days without a sign of weariness, catching a bit of sleep now and then without leaving his horse’s saddle. He was extraordinarily skilful in the use of any weapon and could bear up under any hardship, heat or cold, hunger or thirst.
El Kassem knocked at the door and the shuffle of slippers could be heard on the other side. An old man’s voice called out, ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s us,’ answered El Kassem in passable French.
The door opened and an old man greeted them. He was wrapped in a creased dressing gown, but his hair was neatly combed.
Philip recognized him and opened his arms. ‘Lino!’
The old man looked puzzled for a moment, then said, ‘Is that you, master Philip? Oh, Holy Virgin, it is you! Come in, come in. But look at you! Look at what a state you’re in!’
‘My dear old friend,’ said Philip, embracing him.
The old man dried his eyes with his sleeve and had them sit down s
o he could make them coffee. El Kassem sat on a carpet with his legs crossed, while Philip settled in an old armchair with worn upholstery. Everything in the little apartment seemed frayed and shabby, and Philip couldn’t help but think of how things had changed for the old man. When he’d met Lino, Philip was an adolescent, living in Naples in an elegant residence on Via Caracciolo with a stupendous view of Mount Vesuvius and the bay. Natalino Santini had worked for them back then as his father’s valet and driver. He would accompany Desmond to the Piazza Dante bookshops that specialized in rare and antique books and manuscripts, and introduced him to all the city’s hidden secrets. There was not an alleyway in the Spanish quarter that Lino was not perfectly familiar with. When Philip and his father left Naples, Lino was living respectably and had found another job.
The caffettiera began to perk, so Lino took it off the flame and turned it upside down, in true Neapolitan fashion.
‘I’m sorry, signuri,’ he said, ‘to receive you in such humble surroundings but, you see, when my poor wife fell ill with consumption, I spent my last penny trying to help her.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve lost her, along with everything I had, and no one will hire me any more at my age. But I scrape by with a few odd jobs now and then . . . Ah, the good times are long gone, signuri . . .’
He served their coffee in elegant porcelain cups, a reminder of better times, and sat down himself to sip at the steaming black brew, closing his eyes. It was one of the few luxuries he could still afford.
‘What brings you back to Naples?’ the old man asked Philip.
The Tower Page 8