Moon over the Mediterranean

by Sheri Cobb South

  “Children, children, don’t fight,” Maggie scolded, as our waiter arrived with a tray containing three small glasses, each filled with a bright neon yellow liquid. He set one glass before each of us, and my aunt lifted hers in a toast. “Cheers!”

  “Lemonade never looked like this,” I said, and followed my aunt’s example. “Lemonade never tasted like this, either.”

  “Too much of this, and I won’t be able to walk by the time we reach Pompeii,” Maggie said, signaling to the waiter for a refill nevertheless. “No, Paul,” she intervened as he reached for his wallet. “You paid for mine in Rome, so I insist on returning the favor.”

  Paul allowed her to override his objections, and soon we returned to the city center for the bus to Pompeii. All three of us were in a mellow mood, no doubt the effect of good company, romantic surroundings, and a beverage the same color as the Italian sun.

  There was still no sign of Sylvia Duprée or Mr. Grimes, but I did recognize several of our other shipmates on the bus, including the couple who had won the dance competition as well as the newlywed Hollises, who waved enthusiastically when they saw us, but made no attempt to join our party.

  After we disembarked outside the ruins, I smiled at the sight of Mrs. Hollis buying a cheap plastic fan from a vendor’s booth. But by the time we’d spent half an hour among the ruins with the sun beating down on our heads, I decided Mrs. Hollis was the smartest one of the lot of us. Many of the buildings still stood, but they had long since lost their roofs—I supposed they had either been set afire by live embers landing on the tiles or, perhaps more likely, had collapsed under the weight of the ash that had buried the city—and therefore offered no shade to speak of.

  When our tour guide led us to the House of the Vetti—a once-luxurious residence, or domus, that had been reconstructed, complete with red tile roof—we eagerly went inside, if only to escape from the sun a little while. We stepped inside and found ourselves in a small vestibule, an enclosed space so dim that it took our eyes a few seconds to adjust. The vestibule led into a larger atrium with a square opening in the middle of its reconstructed roof that corresponded with a sunken area, called an impluvium, directly beneath. This was not for decorative purposes, as I’d first thought, but served to collect rainwater, which drained into a cistern—an ingenious bit of Roman civil engineering that ensured the family would always have a supply of cool water available for their private use. Beyond the atrium, a peristyle—a wraparound porch with a roof upheld by rows of Doric columns—surrounded a courtyard fully open to the sky and, according to our guide, planted with flowers and shrubs that might have been found in Pompeii at the time of Vesuvius’s eruption. The formal rooms opened onto the peristyle, and featured exquisitely detailed frescoes in vivid shades of red, yellow, and black. I found it charming, this glimpse into the lives of first-century Romans, until a room in the back corner jerked me back to reality. There, under a protective layer of plexiglass, lay some half a dozen human skulls.

  “I guess they gathered together in the part of the house where they thought they would be safe,” Maggie said in a subdued voice, putting my own thoughts into words. “It’s so very sad, isn’t it? Even after almost two thousand years.”

  “At least they were together when they died, whoever they were,” I said. “I hope they found some comfort in that.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Yes, there are certainly worse ways to go than being surrounded by loved ones,” she agreed, and I knew she was thinking of Uncle Herman.

  Out in the street once more, we picked our way up the stone-paved street past the remains of more modest homes featuring storefronts along the street, complete with counters inset with earthenware jars from which the family could dish out the first-century equivalent of fast food to paying customers during the day.

  “I see what Sylvia meant about the streets,” Maggie grumbled, stepping cautiously to avoid one of three large stones jutting up much higher than the street in which they were embedded. “I’m sure the ancient Pompeiians had an excellent reason for putting big rocks in the middle of the road, but I can’t imagine what it might have been.”

  “Can you not?” Paul asked, chuckling. “I can tell you that, and I don’t even need Robin’s guidebook. They’re stepping-stones. Pedestrians could use them to cross the street without having to walk through sewage or other effluvia that would have been tossed into the street. The gaps between the stones would allow for vehicles to pass.”

  Maggie regarded the narrow spaces between the stones. “The gaps aren’t all that wide, are they? That would take a pretty skilled driver.”

  I laughed, remembering my not-so-long-ago driver’s ed class. “I can just imagine some Roman teenager moaning, ‘I failed the stepping-stone portion of my driver’s license exam! I hit a rock and almost ejected the examiner from Dad’s chariot!’ ”

  “It’s a shame you teach English, Robin,” Paul said. “You’d have made a hell of a history teacher.”

  I shook my head. “Oh, I like history, but not necessarily the famous people and important dates that are taught in class. I’m much more interested in what life would have been like for ordinary people.”

  It was true. The forum, amphitheatre, and baths were impressive, and the plaster casts on display near the forum were heart-wrenching, showing how the volcano’s victims—men, women, and children of all ages, even a dog struggling to escape from its chain—would have appeared at the time of their deaths. Still, I preferred the domūs of prosperous Roman families, with their hints of how these people would have lived before their world came to such an abrupt and terrifying end. And it wasn’t all tragic; the Pompeiians had not been without a sense of humor. The floor of one merchant’s house bore the inscription “Salve, lucru,” or, in English, “Welcome, profit,” while the vestibule of another house featured an elaborate mosaic on its floor with a detailed image of a black and white dog, along with the words “cave canum”—a warning to visitors to “Beware of the dog.”

  As it turned out, it wasn’t a dog that posed the danger. We followed our tour guide past a remarkably well-preserved building with an upper floor jutting over the lower, casting the street into welcome shade. A number of tourists—curiously, they were all men—were lined up at the door awaiting admittance, while a trickle of grinning sightseers, also all men, squeezed past them as they exited the building. It seemed to me that our tour guide was trying to hustle us past with undue haste.

  “What’s that?” I asked. “It seems to be awfully popular. Why aren’t we stopping, do you suppose?”

  To my surprise, the usually unflappable Paul looked uncomfortable. “That building, er, it’s called the lupanar.”

  “What he means, Robin, is that it was a brothel,” my aunt said, not mincing words. “It’s closed to the public, except to men willing to pay an additional fee to, er, admire the paintings on the walls.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling my face grow warm.

  “Being a Mere Woman, I’ve never seen them, of course, but one assumes they served to advertise the services available. Paul, if you’d like to investigate—purely in the name of historical research, of course—we understand.”

  Paul shook his head. “That’s very big of you, Maggie, but I think I’ll pass. I’m in no hurry to exchange the charms of my present company for those of some long-dead ladies of the evening.”

  “And they say chivalry is dead!” exclaimed Maggie, rolling her eyes. “Robin, I’m not sure whether we should take that as a compliment or an insult.”

  “I meant it as a compliment, however clumsily expressed,” Paul said a bit sheepishly. “But if I remember my college Latin correctly, ‘lupanar’ means ‘wolf’s den.’ I wonder what that says about the women who worked here.”

  “Probably that they—oh!”

  Maggie broke off abruptly as she tripped over one of the stepping-stones. It all happened so quickly that neither Paul nor I could grab her in time to stop her as she fell spra
wling in the street.

  “Maggie!” we exclaimed as one. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, I’m just dandy,” she muttered, sitting up with some assistance from Paul. “Just me and the rest of the effluvia.” She lifted her skirt to expose her scraped and bloodied knee. “These stockings were brand new, and now look at them!”

  “It isn’t your stockings that I’m worried about,” Paul said, kneeling beside her in the street. “Where does it hurt?”

  “Other than my pride, you mean? My ankle, mostly. I think I may have sprained it.”

  “It doesn’t seem to be broken,” Paul said, probing her ankle gingerly.

  Our tour guide, no doubt realizing she’d lost some of her group, came hurrying forward, pushing her way through the crowd of well-intentioned tourists offering unsolicited medical advice in a babble of languages.

  “I have to keep the group on schedule,” she said apologetically, after seeing for herself that Maggie’s injuries were not serious. “If you wish to return to the ship, here is a card with a number you can call for a taxi. Otherwise, just meet the group back at the entrance at four o’clock for the bus back to Naples.”

  Paul thanked her and took the business card she offered. After she had led the tour group off, he looked up at me. “Robin, get rid of them, will you?”

  He jerked his chin to indicate the tourists who showed no inclination to leave and miss all the excitement.

  I turned and thanked them for their concern, explaining that my aunt was quite all right. “He is a doctor,” I assured them. For the sake of those who didn’t understand English, I gestured toward Paul and then pretended to listen to an invisible patient’s heartbeat through a stethoscope. The crowd reluctantly dispersed, and once my aunt could be assured of relative privacy, Paul draped her arm over his own shoulders and stood up, raising her to her rather shaky feet.

  “I can walk,” Maggie assured him.

  Unfortunately, it soon became obvious that the injured ankle would not bear her weight.

  “It’s back to the ship for you, my girl,” Paul told her.

  “But—”

  “No buts,” he said in a voice that brooked no argument. “You need to elevate that foot and ice that ankle down. If you can make it as far as the entrance, I’ll get us a taxi back to Naples.”

  “I’m coming, too,” I said, taking up a position at Maggie’s other side.

  “Oh Robin, if I make you miss your day in Pompeii, it’ll make me feel that much worse,” she protested. “Stay here, take lots of pictures, and then you can show me what I missed.”

  I reluctantly agreed, but insisted on accompanying them as far as the entrance to the ruins.

  “All right, you can carry my purse,” Maggie said, surrendering her handbag.

  We slowly retraced our steps, Maggie hopping on one foot while Paul supported her with his arm around her waist. After what seemed an eternity, we reached the entrance, where Maggie sank gratefully onto a stone bench while Paul communicated our need for a taxi. Feeling helpless—and more than a little bit guilty for remaining in Pompeii while my aunt’s holiday was so rudely cut short—I gave her a piece of slightly bruised fruit from my bag and once again offered to return to the Oceanus with her.

  “Not on your life!” she declared. “I’ll be just fine, and I’ll expect to hear all about your adventures this evening. Oh, and Robin—”

  “Yes, Maggie?” I prompted eagerly. “What is it?”

  “If you tell anyone back home that I was injured outside a Roman brothel, I’ll cut you out of my will!”

  “I promise,” I conceded, laughing.

  I waited with Maggie and Paul until the taxi arrived, and then, after seeing Paul settle Maggie tenderly on the back seat and climb in beside her on the other side of the vehicle, waved them on their way before returning to my interrupted tour of the famous ruins. The tour group, unsurprisingly, was nowhere to be seen, and so I decided to explore on my own rather than spend the rest of the afternoon chasing up and down the ancient streets in search of them. Strange as it seemed, I almost envied my aunt, her injury notwithstanding. True, her day in Pompeii had been cut short, but the chance to be cosseted by a handsome and charming man of her own generation was surely nothing to sneeze at. I found myself wishing I had someone close to my age with whom to explore the ruins, and my thoughts turned, not to my fiancé, as might be expected, but to Markos. I wondered if he had stayed on the ship today, and decided probably not; after all, he seemed to do hardly any work on board that I could tell. He was probably somewhere in Naples at this very minute, sketching statues, or else he was one of the “art connoisseurs” leering at the frescoes in the lupanar. The snake, I thought. I’m better off without him.

  Dismissing him from my thoughts, I consulted the crude mimeographed map we’d all been given at the beginning of the tour, and found my way back to one of the streets where several of the better-preserved domūs had been. They were not so crowded now, and I was able to explore at my leisure, taking note of some of the details I had missed the first time. I was especially drawn to one dwelling place that had been given the romantic designation of House of the Tragic Poet. Along its façade, two storefronts flanked the entrance—poetry, after all, was not the steadiest way to make a living, even in ancient Rome—and between them the familiar vestibule led to another atrium, with its open roof and ingenious water collection system, as well as the frescoes featuring the almost life-sized figures from Roman myth-ology for which this particular house was famous.

  I passed through the atrium on my way to the sunlit courtyard where, according to my guidebook, the shell of a tortoise had been found when the house was excavated—perhaps the remains of a family pet that had been kept there. Just before I emerged onto the peristyle, I realized I was not alone in the house. Apparently a couple of tourists, a man and a woman, had reached the courtyard before me, and had taken advantage of the relative privacy to indulge in a heated argument. They were speaking in a foreign language—I thought perhaps it was French, although my one year of studying that language in college was insufficient to follow a rapid and vehement exchange between speakers far more fluent than I. Which was probably a good thing, now that I thought of it. I stood there in the dimly lit atrium, debating whether to make my presence known or make a discreet exit, when the matter was settled by two little words, the only part of the conversation that I had understood.

  The words were “Mademoiselle Fletcher.”

  I froze, afraid to move, afraid to breathe for fear that even so small a sound should betray my presence. Remaining where I stood, however, was not an option. The House of the Tragic Poet was not so well-preserved as the House of the Vetti had been—or, rather, had not undergone a similar reconstruction—and within its broken walls and gaping doorways, I felt almost nakedly exposed. More to the point, if the other ruined domūs I’d seen were anything to judge by, any rear exit from the courtyard would be chained off, closed to the public. The quarreling pair, whoever they were, would have only one way to leave the house: through the atrium, where they would have to walk right past me. Choosing my steps with care lest I kick some loose stone or flaking bit of floor, I stepped slowly away from the opening onto the courtyard. Still, I could not quite bring myself to abandon the house altogether—not without at least trying to catch a glimpse of the couple who had spoken my name in an obviously hostile context. I looked about for a likely hiding place, and noticed a dark doorway in one corner of the room. I ducked inside and waited. In the atrium just beyond my hiding place, the painted figures on the walls seemed to gaze down at me with the wisdom of the ages in their faded eyes.

  At last the sounds from the courtyard indicated the pair was ready to leave, although to judge by their clipped voices and short, snappish speech, their disagreement was by no means settled. I waited in my hidey-hole, and soon was rewarded with a look at their retreating forms. I couldn’t see their faces, but then, I didn’t have to.

  I would have recognized S
ylvia Duprée and Konstantin Devos from any angle.

  Chapter 7

  Beware of entrance to a quarrel.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

  I’d thought Sylvia and Devos were merely chance-met acquaintances, like the rest of us assigned to that particular dining room table. I couldn’t imagine what they might be arguing about, much less what their disagreement might have to do with me, any more than I could guess why Devos insisted on once again wearing long sleeves in spite of the sweltering heat. Was it possible Sylvia was jealous because he’d danced with me? Granted, I couldn’t imagine myself as much of a threat to a woman like her, but Sylvia Duprée struck me as the sort of female who would expect masculine admiration to be focused exclusively on herself, whether she was interested in the man or not. Only witness the way she’d shoehorned herself into our day in Rome: Once she’d established herself as one of our party, she’d shown very little interest in attracting Paul’s attention, just so long as she kept Maggie from having a monopoly on him.

  I don’t remember anything about the next few hours. I suppose I must have stumbled up and down the ruined streets until time to meet the bus for the trip back to the ship. Eventually, I climbed the steps onto the vehicle and sank onto a seat against the window. The Hollises claimed the seat behind me, and the need to be friendly to my shipmates forced me to thrust the strange quarrel to the back of my mind, at least for a while.

  “That was fascinating!” declared Mrs. Hollis, wafting her fan to and fro. “I used up a whole roll of film—I can’t wait to show the pictures to my friends at church.”

  I closed my eyes, enjoying the breeze she created. “Mrs. Hollis, you’re a genius! I wish I’d been smart enough to buy a fan.”

  “I wouldn’t call myself a genius,” she protested modestly. “I expect I paid too much for it—I don’t know how liras compare to dollars—but I figure when we get back home, I can send it to Henry’s little granddaughter. She’s almost six.”