Pliny's Warning

by Nicholson, Anne Maria

  As the two of them float above her, something drops back into the chasm. ‘My shoes! I’ve dropped my best shoes,’ Camilla bellows. The crowd cheers and whistles as Camilla, her feet bare and wriggling, and the beaming soldier are winched into the chopper. It circles one more time then flies swiftly away. ‘So much for our team leader,’ Frances thinks. ‘Probably heading to the nearest hairdresser.’

  But she has more to worry about. The road has collapsed and she must get to the other side. She stands there, perplexed, trying to see a route through and decides there is only one option. Mustering all her strength, she manoeuvres the bike down the shoulders of the highway. Her feet skid and slip on loose gravel and she pulls hard to stop the bike tumbling away from her. Step by step she edges around the chasm to the other side. She reaches another mound of debris, bitumen and rocks compressed together. Dropping onto it, exhausted and sweating, she guzzles a bottle of water.

  The ground suddenly moves beneath her. Another earthquake, this one small and quick, ripples around her. Above, people on the road cry out.

  She tries to phone Riccardo again but there is no signal and she wonders if Stromboli is still erupting. She rests a few minutes longer, fearing more aftershocks that could cause even greater havoc and knows she has to keep going. She drags herself up and starts the hard ascent with the bike to the road. As she nears the top, she sees cars and trucks stretching into the distance. Most of them have been abandoned. Those who have stayed look tired and anxious yet appear to have banded together.

  ‘The army is coming to get us out. I just heard on the radio,’ a truck driver calls out. ‘Hey, let me help you!’ the driver says spotting her. He slides down to her and heaves the bike up easily and leans it against his truck.

  ‘Thanks. Thanks so much.’

  ‘Where on earth are you going?’ The man stands, square and stocky, dirt stained hands on hips, appraising her.

  ‘Got to help a friend, he’s stranded in one of the villages.’

  ‘We’re all stranded,’ he laughs. ‘But I’m not leaving my rig. We’ve got food.’ He indicates a bucket of oranges on the ground, ‘and some water. I’m staying here for as long as it takes for them to clear the road. I’ll go backwards or forwards. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Maybe if there’s another big shake, you’ll be going up there,’ another driver points to the sky, ‘or down there, to Hades.’

  ‘Whatever will be, will be. Carpe diem.’

  He lifts the flap on the back of his truck and brings out another bucket of oranges.

  ‘Take some,’ he says. ‘From my cousin’s farm in Sorrento. Buono! Beautiful! I was taking them to Rome, but now?’

  She takes two and he grabs a third. He peels it quickly and puts the soft fruit into her hand. She bites into it, the sweet juice quenching her thirst and soothing her dry throat. The driver passes the bucket to the others gathered on the road. ‘Eat some more! Come on, my friends. Eat while you have the chance.’

  ‘Madonna, it might be the last piece of fruit we ever eat in our lives!’ the other driver exclaims.

  ‘Well, at least you will die knowing you have tasted the nectar of the gods, the sweetest oranges in the world.’

  ‘I have to get going,’ Frances says. ‘Does anyone need a lift out?’

  They shake their heads. ‘No, we’re staying with our cars, we don’t want them to be looted. But do you have any spare water?’

  She removes her second last bottle from her bag and hands it to him.

  ‘Grazie, thank you. Travel safely, signorina.’

  Frances drives easily now, travelling around the edges of the banked-up cars and sometimes switching to the middle of the road. Soon she reaches the exit ramp leading to Nonno’s village. It is clogged with cars and people walking in the opposite direction, towards Naples. She remembers the footsteps of the Bronze Age people captured in the ash. How little things change! And do we know any more than they did? The breeze has picked up and she recalls the wind report, predicting the direction of pyroclastic flows from the volcano.

  She stops to stare at the mountain, brooding and stark before her. What if? She dismisses the danger and drives on. Every road is jammed with cars. She wonders if the Civil Defence has started to evacuate the villages. If it has, the result will be disastrous. If Vesuvius does erupt…She puts the idea out of her head.

  The farms and houses on the outskirts of Nonno’s village appear untouched by the earthquake and she is relieved to find his cottage undamaged when she pulls up outside. The door is open but she taps on it lightly anyway and pokes her head in.

  Marcello is sitting cross-legged on the floor and looks up startled.

  ‘Frances!’ He leaps up and holds her tightly. She hugs him close and when she kisses his cheek she tastes his tears.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  He says nothing but takes her by the hand inside. ‘It’s Nonno. He’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Dead. I just found him.’ He inclines his head towards the bedroom.

  Frances walks to the doorway. Nonno is lying on his bed, dressed in his worn suit with the photo of Teresa in his hands. She pauses to look at the body of the old man whose life had been so rich and full and yet one he had been ready to leave behind. So different to Pasquale, his young life so brutally snatched away. The colour has drained from Raphaele’s face, leaving it pale but serene.

  Marcello moves past her and pulls a blanket over him. ‘Poor Nonno. He never recovered from my grandmother’s death.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Marcello.’

  ‘I think he died peacefully. I’ve called the doctor but with the earthquake, I’m not holding my breath that he will be here soon.’

  A loud cracking and crashing noise interrupts them.

  ‘It’s coming from Dragorra’s development.’

  Marcello locks the door of Nonno’s cottage and they run through the vineyard to the top of the rise. Below them the massive concrete slab has broken in two as though someone had thrust a giant knife through it.

  ‘The earthquake. It must have been built across a faultline.’

  ‘Or divine retribution perhaps?’ Marcello says.

  As they stand together, hands linked, another aftershock ripples around them. The half-built walls of the shopping centre crumble and fall with a terrific roar.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Two thousand nine hundred dead, ten thousand injured and three hundred thousand homeless.

  Camilla reads aloud a summary of the earthquake’s impact like a shopping list.

  The first jolt measured 7.2 on the Richter scale and there were ninety aftershocks. Two villages in Campania almost completely destroyed, including a medieval church. Dozens of buildings in Naples collapsed including four apartment buildings. Pozzuoli lost three apartment buildings. Two hotels on the coast of Campi Flegrei fell into the sea.

  She paces the room in her now familiar casual garb, her finger stabbing the air as she addresses the members of the Progetto Vulcano team. ‘That was on the mainland. Signor Cocchia, what was the damage on Stromboli?’

  ‘Two killed from rockfalls after the first eruption—tourists climbing near the summit. Three fishermen died when an avalanche of hot tephra rushed down to the sea and engulfed their boat. Severe damage to the Stromboli Observatory and twelve houses destroyed, including my granduncle’s. Ash infiltration was extreme, covering the village, but the islanders are getting on with the clean-up with great optimism.’

  Riccardo talks on the conference phone, his Italo-Australian accent filling the meeting room of the temporarily relocated Naples Observatory. His voice is warm and familiar and Frances remembers how grateful she was to hear it when she had finally managed to contact him, a full day after the earthquake. Stromboli had erupted continuously for twenty hours and communications with the island had been impossible. It wasn’t until the Civil Defence helicopters had flown in that she was able to talk to him on their satellite phones.

  Riccar
do and Olivia had been eating lunch with Gaetano when the volcano had violently exploded and they had run outside to see a volley of massive rocks and fire shooting out of the crater. They had sheltered beneath the doorways until a huge fiery rock had crashed onto the roof, setting the old house alight. With the rest of the village they had fled to the beach, staying there until the explosions stopped, many hours later.

  Riccardo’s humour had survived while the house had not. He told her how the three had celebrated their survival with his new invention, a Tim Tam Sambuca Slam, made from a few of his precious chocolate biscuits and some shots of the aniseed liqueur. He had hollowed out the biscuits with a knife and they used them like straws to suck the liqueur, devouring the alcohol-softened biscuits afterwards. Frances loved his knack of turning adversity to advantage.

  Back in Naples, it had been the darkest of days, as death hung in many doorways and lurked along the roadsides. Her own apartment building had escaped unscathed and the Fogliano family was unharmed. Evidence was emerging that the newer constructions had fared the worst, raising the spectre of unsafe and illegal building practices.

  Thousands of people fleeing in cars were trapped, caught in columns of traffic, unable to move. Forty had died from heart attacks and it had taken two weeks for the emergency services to clear the roadways.

  The vulcanologists worked around the clock, restoring damaged monitors around the region and closely watching the impact of every tremor. On Vesuvius, the earthquake appeared to have had little impact. The rocky plug blocking the volcano’s vent was intact. Some of the fumaroles had been pumping out more gas than usual, but all the vulcanologists could do was watch and wait. As far as they could tell, the magma lake below the region was stable, though no one was game to give guarantees.

  ‘If there’s any upside at all, it’s that we have discovered the weaknesses in our evacuation planning,’ Camilla continues. ‘As well as running the university, I will be keeping a personal eye on a complete restructure of the Civil Defence organization and a tightening up on building in the Red Zone.’

  Frances looks closely at Camilla, ever the chameleon. Strangely, her newly acquired zeal for serving the public good suited her. ‘It is vital that we have a new emergency plan so if Vesuvius erupts, we can evacuate people as quickly as possible.’

  She turns her attention to Frances, flashing her a rare smile. ‘Signorina Nelson. Frances. I would like to thank you for your contribution to Progetto Vulcano by improving all of our early warning systems. I understand you will be leaving at the end of your contract. I hope you will come back to us soon.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The bubbles swirl around her, hot streams of them popping out from the seabed just below. Marcello pulls her arm and she swims after him, kicking her flippers hard to keep up. There has been movement since their last dive here. Aftershocks from the massive earthquake had rippled through the town of Baia and split a huge cliff face supporting a new hotel complex. It had all slid into the sea. Below the waves, the debris had piled up, nudging against the ruins of the Roman Empire’s pleasure palaces.

  They had been searching for half an hour, their sentimental quest made more difficult by the rock shifts and swirling currents. She had begun to doubt that they would ever find the portrait again.

  She catches Marcello as he slows and runs his hands over the bottom. He turns, excited, and beckons her down. Her face gazes at them through the turquoise water. Venus, the goddess of love has survived yet another earthly cataclysm. Her mysterious smile configured from the tiny mosaic tiles is intact, her almond-shaped eyes unblinking. Seagrass has sprouted through the yellow chips that form her golden neck chain. Marcello plucks them out. He removes a roll of thick blue plastic attached to the weight belt around his waist and spreads it across the mosaics, securing it firmly into the rock with sharp metal pegs. He was adament that they wouldn’t risk losing the submerged treasure a second time and intended to return and remove it so it could be preserved for all time.

  Many weeks had passed since the earthquake and as the time came closer for Frances to leave, both of them had thought often of the woman at the bottom of the sea and wondered if she had continued to realize her immortality. Frances is happy that she has, feeling her survival might prolong her connection to Marcello.

  She was leaving Italy with mixed emotions. Her contract was up and she was being called to another wild volcano, where her skills were needed on the increasingly unpredictable slopes.

  Marcello points up, signalling an end to the dive. She follows him slowly, pinching her nose and feeling her ears pop as they swim to the surface. They remove their respirators and use their snorkels to swim to shore.

  The water along the beach is warmed by the volcanic activity and people float in it, laughing, gossiping and seemingly unworried by the continuous threat to the entire coastline.

  The weight of the air tanks pulls on her as Frances wades out of the water. She flicks off her weight belt and Marcello helps her remove her tanks. They strip off their wetsuits and carry their equipment to the dive shop above the beach where they shower and change.

  The hot afternoon sun bears down as they stroll hand in hand through the town of Baia, along the narrow street of shops behind the harbour front, past cafés where couples eat gelati and sip coffee.

  Rising in front of them are the golden brick ruins of an ancient Roman building.

  ‘The Temple of Venus,’ Marcello says. ‘Except it wasn’t really a temple at all but a huge Roman bathhouse.’ Octagonal with huge arched windows, the edifice has defied yet another searingly destructive earthquake. Modern buildings around it haven’t fared as well—cracks streak through their walls like jagged bolts of lightning.

  Marcello guides her around the ruins to a plaque embedded into one wall.

  Frances reads the inscription aloud. ‘Anima feli vivas. What does it mean?’

  ‘Live happily.’ He smiles at her and kisses her lips.

  ‘That’s beautiful. I don’t think anyone could wish for more.’

  ‘And I don’t know if I can be happy if you leave, Frances.’

  She puts her arms around his neck and meets his eyes.

  ‘Nor me,’ she whispers.

  They walk to the edge of the town, content in each other’s company, neither speaking, neither wanting to break the spell of Venus. The road rises steeply and they climb to the top where it bends sharply.

  They scramble through a low wooden fence to a clearing, where a white marble statue of a child stands in the centre of a well-tended garden, surrounded by a low clipped hedge. The voluminous folds of the girl’s dress are intricately sculpted around her slim form. Her air is melancholy and in one hand extended into the air she holds a butterfly.

  Frances moves closer but reels back when she sees her eyes. ‘They’re the same as Pasquale’s—not the colour but the expression. Eyes of infinity.’ She runs her fingers over the girl’s hand.

  ‘She was the daughter of the Emperor Claudius, struck down by illness,’ Marcello tells her. ‘This portrays her at the moment of her death, when life departs. The butterfly represents her soul, released by her body as she accepts her death.’

  Frances remembers the serene expression she saw on her friend’s face after he died. ‘Just like Pasquale.’

  They walk through the clearing to a park bench overlooking a steep limestone cliff across the Gulf of Naples to Vesuvius, and sit side by side, gazing at the volcano.

  ‘This is near where Pliny watched Vesuvius erupt,’ he says. ‘It was seventeen years after a major earthquake had devastated Pompeii.’

  ‘Was that earthquake our warning? Is that what lies ahead?’

  He squeezes her hand but does not reply.

  Frances closes her eyes and soaks in the warmth of the sun. A year has passed since she had come to this ancient land where people lived just as uneasily with the forces of nature as their ancestors had thousands of years earlier.

  She starts as somethin
g runs across her foot and glances down to see a tiny green lizard, the same species that had thrived here for millennia, sliding away into a thicket of trees.

  As she looks again towards the volcano, the sun blinds her. Through the glare, she imagines a massive mushroom-shaped cloud rising above Vesuvius. But in a moment, the illusion fades along with the sun. An umbrella pine on the cliff edge is silhouetted against the sky, its branches spreading like tendrils across the land of fire.

  THE END

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the many people who helped me along my journey of writing Pliny’s Warning. I thank them for their generous encouragement, knowledge and hospitality.

  In particular, I am grateful to Anthea Bulloch, Benedetto de Vivo, Jean-Pierre Brun, Nicola Severino, Giuseppe Rolandi, Pier Paolo Petrone, Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo, Lucia Pappalardo, Grete Stefani, Vittorio Scribano, Robert Bodnar, Katherine Owen, Verica Jokic, Aniela Kos, Catherine De Vrye, David Neilson and Taute Tocker.

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  First published in 2009

  This edition published in 2010

  by HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1, Auckland

  Copyright © Anne Maria Nicholson 2009

  Anne Maria Nicholson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

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