The Night Villa

by Carol Goodman

  After examining my paperwork twice, the clean-shaven man looks over the rims of his eyeglasses at his mustached comrade. Lifting his bushy eyebrows, he says something I can’t make out. A heated exchange follows that I imagine goes something like this: “You take her.” “No, you! I took the last one.” “Your ass, you did!” “Go to hell!”

  The mustachioed gentleman loses. With barely a glance in my direction he picks up a set of heavy keys from an ashtray on top of the desk and brushes past me uttering the single word Vieni! Although his posture is indolent, I have to hurry to catch up to him at the back gate behind the office. He unlocks the gate that marks the boundary of the public excavations and we cross a narrow street where laundry hangs off the balconies of apartment buildings and a group of barefoot children are taking turns crowding onto an ancient Vespa to ride it up and down the street. It throws up a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes that hangs in the still air like a small mushroom cloud—like the cloud Pliny described as crowning the peak of Mount Vesuvius on August 24, AD 79. I check my watch and see it’s half-past noon. No wonder the custodians were so disgusted to see me. It’s time for the afternoon riposo. Only an idiot—or an American—would go out in this noonday sun.

  “Mi dispiace,” I begin as my escort unlocks a series of padlocks on a high chain-link gate posted with Ingresso Vietato signs and topped with concertina wire. But I can’t figure out how to finish the sentence. The heat seems to have settled behind my eyes, like a wall between my brain and the rest of my senses, impeding any dialogue between the two. “Perhaps it will be cooler down below,” I say aloud in English. My escort laughs, whether from the futility of the hope or the hopelessness of him understanding, I’m not sure.

  As we start down the steep path into the pit that holds the Villa della Notte, he seems to take pity on me—or maybe he’s given this tour so many times before that the guidebook speech is automatic. “Ecco,” he says, pointing to the water dripping down the tufa wall that borders the path, “Uno dei due fiumi di Ercolano che è stato deviato per consentire gli scavi di questa zona.” He’s telling me that the river was diverted to make way for the excavation. He points out where pipes are fitted into the wall. I remember that Herculaneum was built on a promontory between two streams—a situation that made it scenic and cool in the summer, but that ensured its doom when Mount Vesuvius unleashed its final ground surge and volcanic matter flowed down the mountain following the streambeds. At the bottom of the stairs we pass over a metal grate that covers the ill-omened stream. My guide points into the ditch and says, “Ecco—i rani.”

  I look at the green stagnant water, trying to remember what rani means, and then the guide kicks a pebble into the ditch and the viscous surface stirs, the green scum writhing like a snake and then breaking into a roiling mass. “Rani,” he repeats, chuckling and kicking in some more pebbles. Is rani Italian for some mythological creature—a scylla or a medusa—I wonder? And then I remember.

  “Frogs,” I say out loud. Identifying the slimy inhabitants of this underground river does little to reassure me. Wasn’t the River Styx full of frogs? I feel as if I have descended into the underworld and I recall that according to mythology the house of Night is indeed in the underworld. “There also stands the gloomy house of Night,” Hesiod wrote, “ghastly clouds shroud it in darkness.”

  I turn away from the dead river to where the guide is now pointing. “La Villa della Notte,” he says. No ghastly clouds shroud it, only stagnant, greenish air through which I squint at the far wall of the ditch. It’s hard to make out the lines of the building emerging from the tufa like a body trapped in rock. It reminds me of Michelangelo’s “Captives”—those half-finished statues in which Titans struggle against the imprisoning rock—and I recall that in Hesiod’s version of the underworld the Titans are indeed chained to the subterranean rock as punishment for rising up against Zeus. I make out a number of gaping holes on the first level, then the diamond-shaped pattern of opus sectile on the wall of the second level, and, on the third, a row of columns that would have lined the peristylium that faced the sea, but which now face the blank wall of tufa. And although I know that the villa rests on the same ground it always did—that it’s the ground that’s risen around it—I have the feeling that the villa has been cast beneath the earth, just as the Titans were, as punishment for some unspeakable transgression.

  I’m gasping in the pea-soup air as I follow the guide across the bottom of the pit, my ears ringing so loudly I’m unable to hear what he’s saying. He points at the gaping holes near the ground and I assume he’s telling me about the tunnels the eighteenth-century excavators dug until they found something worth taking. I nod stupidly at whatever he says, and parrot the stray words I catch: i tombaroli, i ladri…Presumably he’s talking about how the original tunnelers were no better than thieves and tomb raiders. I wish I had thought to bring water. As I follow him up a steep flight of crumbling steps I feel my ears pop, like a diver surfacing too quickly. I close my eyes and try to imagine what this seaside terrace would have felt like on any day before August 24, AD 79. I try to feel the cool sea breeze fanning the terrace and hear the splash of a fountain from the inner courtyard, but all I hear is the croaking of frogs and all I feel is the smothering cloak of fetid air covering my nose and mouth.

  “Attenzione, signora!” my guardian cries as I trip over a loose stone and stumble head first onto the peristylium.

  My bare knees bang down hard onto the stone floor. What little breath I had flies out of my lungs like a swallow swooping out of my mouth. For a second I don’t know if I’ll be able to take in the next breath. Everything goes still around me as if suspended in time. I’m facing the far left wall of the courtyard where I see pale and ghostly shapes flitting across its deep red surface. Pompeian red: the color of the Roman underworld. In a flash I take in the struggling form of a girl being pulled into a chariot—Persephone seized by Hades—her mouth open in a soundless scream, and on the far right, her companions, their mouths gaping in horror. The whole scene appears wreathed in black like a mourning tableau, but then I realize it’s my vision that’s dimming from lack of oxygen. I put my hand on my chest and gingerly, slowly, take a shallow sip of air. It’s like trying to drink tea that’s too hot. I feel as though the air might burn up what’s left of my lungs. It occurs to me that this is how many of the residents of Herculaneum died, choking on the poisonous gas let loose in the eruption.

  My guide whacks me on the back and the air gusts into my lungs and out and in and out again. I cough and splutter until my throat is raw and my chest feels hollow. The guide offers me a sip of water from a metal canteen, which I take gratefully. He sits on a toppled column like he has all day, as if all visitors to the Villa della Notte came to it this way: on their knees and gasping for breath.

  When my breathing has returned to something like normal, I get up and approach the wall painting. I feel light-headed and feverish, but no longer care. Although I’ve seen digital images of the Persephone frieze, they didn’t capture the shock on Persephone’s face, the lust in Hades’s eyes, or the horror of her companions. There’s also a feature to the story I’ve never seen depicted before. Grieving Demeter, leaving in her wake a trail of dead vegetation and scorched earth, strides toward her daughter’s three companions, who cower in fear before her. In the next frieze the three women rise into the air, transformed into shrieking bird-women. Demeter has turned them into sirens as punishment for their negligence.

  It’s a rather unconventional telling of the myth, but not nearly as unconventional as the subjects on the back wall of the courtyard. I’m sure I’ve never seen pictures of this wall painting.

  “E stato reinvenuto…. recentemente?” I ask, pointing toward the back wall. This must be the part of the villa only recently excavated.

  “Sì, l’estate scorsa.” Last summer. “Non si possono fare foto, signora. Capisce?” he adds, “Signore Lyros says no photos.”

  So Lyros hasn’t made the find public yet.
I recall that for her paper Agnes had to write to him for the barest descriptions of the wall because he said he didn’t want any pictures published before the entire wall was excavated. I notice that portions of the wall are still covered with tufa. From what I can see of it, I can imagine why he’s keeping it under wraps.

  In the first frame, a young girl kneels before a trunk—the trunk itself is painted with another rendition of the Rape of Persephone. Above the kneeling girl are the three winged sirens. One carries a liknon and one carries a thrysus—the traditional basket and wand of Dionysian revels that Agnes had mentioned in her report—but I don’t recall her mentioning the object held by the third siren. She brandishes a phallus-handled whip that is arched in the air like an angry cat’s back, about to descend on the girl’s naked shoulders. In the next two scenes the girl is helped to disrobe by the three sirens and then bathed. The bath she is helped into is shaped like a sarcophagus and adorned with scenes of maenads—female worshippers of Dionysus—dancing and running through the woods in pursuit of some horned animal. Or perhaps, I think, leaning closer, it’s a man, wearing a horned mask. It could be a rendition of the scene in The Bacchae in which Agave chases and dismembers her own son. Waiting in the next frieze is a naked man with pointed ears sprawled on a couch and holding a lyre, a wreath of grape leaves around his head. From his pointy ears and lascivious grin I would guess he’s supposed to be Dionysus.

  When I get to the next scene my face goes hot. I suddenly become aware of the warm fetid air, the croak of the frogs, and my mustachioed escort standing quietly behind me. It’s not that I haven’t seen Roman erotica before. There’s a whole room of it in the Naples Archaeological Museum (Gabinetto Segreto, as it’s referred to: the Secret Cabinet). But I’ve never seen an example so brutal.

  The girl from the previous scenes lies spread-eagled on a couch. Her arms are held by one of the winged sirens while the other two each hold one of her ankles. Dionysus is climbing onto the edge of the couch, his penis curved like a saber, aimed at the girl’s exposed vagina. The girl’s eyes are rolled up in their sockets, her mouth open in a scream, but the sirens only smile down at her, their wings beating the air into a lather of white down. For a moment I hear the sound of their wings, but then I realize it’s the sound of blood rushing in my ears.

  “Il resto è nascosto.” The guide gestures toward the right end of the wall, still covered with the putty-colored tufa. The rest remains hidden.

  “Bene,” I say, meaning Okay, I’ve seen enough, but when the guide laughs I realize he thinks I mean that I’m glad the rest of the story is still covered. Am I? Then why is it so hard to look away? Why is it that the longer I look at the girl’s face the harder it is to tell what I read there: pain, pleasure, fear, knowledge? Or some stranger mixture of them all?

  “I Misteri,” I say primly, trying to regain a bit of scholarly distance and save face in front of the guide. After all, I know all about mystery rites, from the veneration of the phallus in the Dionysian rites to the ritual whipping in the Lupercalia and the castration of the Galli in the rites of Cybele. By AD 79, most of those rites would probably be more symbolic than actual. The presence of this mural doesn’t necessarily mean that such scenes were reenacted here at the Villa della Notte.

  Still, I suddenly want to be far away from the villa—out of this tufa pit—and back at my hotel in time for a dip in that rooftop pool, to wash away the heat I feel rising off my skin.

  “I’ve seen enough,” I try to explain to my guide. “A me questo basta.” But he either doesn’t understand or he feels obliged to do the whole tour. He proceeds to show me around the courtyard, pointing to the circle that marked the center fountain and the plinth where the statue of the goddess Nyx would have stood.

  “A Napoli,” he says, by which he means that the statue of Night is now in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. I’m almost glad. I’d rather not have that gloomy goddess’s eyes watching as the guard continues the obligatory tour, pointing out wherever a fragment of painted fresco still clings to a wall. Most of the images seem innocent enough at first—playful cupids riding horses and pulling carts—but when I look closer they’re strangely suggestive. In one the tiny cupids are riding sea horses. Charming enough until you notice one is actually copulating with his mount. In another a winged woman offers a bunch of grapes to a cupid, but if you look closely the grapes appear to be shaped like miniature breasts and one of the cupids is reaching out to pinch the woman’s breast.

  By the time we’ve completed the tour and begun the climb up to the modern street level, I feel as though the whole villa is infused with a spirit of corruption that I want to escape. No wonder Vitalis wanted to get her daughter out of here! I shudder, recalling that Iusta had ended up back in Calatoria’s clutches, and wonder if she were forced to partake in the villa’s depraved rites. Unless, I think as I fish in my purse for a few euros to give my guide, Vesuvius erupted before the rites could take place. I almost hope it did.

  When I hold out a five-euro bill the guide shakes his head. “Non è necessario, signora,” he says. “E stato una grande piacere fare conoscere questi misteri a una carissima amica del Signor Lyros.”

  My face turns hot again. I remind myself that carissima amica may mean any dear female friend, not a girlfriend. I start to explain that I’ve never even met John Lyros, but the guide has turned to unlock the gates to the main excavations and is shouting a greeting to his colleague, who appears to be awakening from a nap. So I say my thousand thank-yous—grazie mille—and wave as I start the walk back to the train station. At the gate I turn back in the direction of the villa and glimpse the bay above the high tufa wall that nearly two thousand years ago sealed this town in its rock tomb. It occurs to me that Phineas Aulus might have come here expressly to witness the rites practiced at the Villa della Notte. He was, after all, a connoisseur of the exotic and the depraved. And now, I think as I turn my back to the sea, those mysteries lie curled tightly in on themselves within a charred papyrus roll, like a butterfly asleep in its chrysalis, awaiting the light of modern science to set them free.

  I buy a cold Aranciata at the station and sit by an open window on the train ride back, but I still feel as though I’m wearing the day’s heat like a winding cloth made out of the same green scum that coats the frog river. When the train stops at Portici, a voice comes over the loudspeaker announcing a delay. I can’t make out the reasons given—if any—or how long we’re supposed to be stuck here. Without the breeze generated by movement, the car simmers in the heat. I look around to see if any of my fellow passengers are bothered by the delay and to see if I can gather from their conversations any more details about its cause and duration, but no one seems the least bit surprised to be sitting here in a stalled train baking in the midday sun.

  An old man takes out a salami and pares a thin circle off with his penknife. The smell of the garlicky meat makes my stomach rumble and I remember I haven’t eaten since breakfast. Two girls returning from the beach sleepily braid each other’s damp hair and the tropical scent of their suntan oil mixes with the garlic. Everyone else on the train—a pair of nuns, three elderly women who look enough alike to be sisters, and a half-dozen workmen—appears to be dozing. I close my eyes, hoping to pass the time in sleep as well, but the moment I start to drowse off a loud plaintive bleat startles me awake. I open my eyes and see that an accordion player has entered the car. As he pumps air in and out of the instrument, a small girl walks up and down the aisle holding out a grimy paper cup for money. Most of the occupants of the train ignore her; one man gives the girl a push and shouts “Vai!” The girl’s dark eyes narrow and she spits out a curse that, while I can’t understand it, sounds way beyond her years.

  Not that I can really tell how old she is. She has the height of a seven-year-old, the walk of a preteen, and, when she curses, the face of an old woman. When she approaches me I see how her ribs emboss the thin, stained cotton of the T-shirt she wears as her sole garment. I reach in
to my purse to extract the five-euro note I was going to give to my guide when I hear a high-pitched keening coming from outside the train. A woman in a long dress, wrapped like a sari, is striding back and forth on the station platform, emitting short, sharp shrieks. I can’t identify the nationality of her garb, but I notice she has the same olive skin, lank black hair, and dark eyes as the accordion player and the little girl. Nor can I make out her language. She sounds like a seagull or, I can’t help but think, like what I imagine the sirens might have sounded like when they saw themselves turning into birds.

  Her cries don’t draw the accordion player toward her, though. He folds up his instrument and swoops down on the girl, who’s still standing by my side waiting for her five-euro note. As the accordion player picks her up she shoots out her hand and I feel her little fingers clasp onto my wrist with a pincerlike grip.

  “Wait!” I say as the accordion player starts to carry her away. I find the five-euro note and press it into the girl’s other hand—the one not clamped onto my wrist. “Per lei,” I say, meaning, I suppose, keep this for yourself, but as I watch her carried off I realize how futile my gesture was. Of course any money she gets will go to the accordion player, and now I wonder, as the long-skirted woman sweeps into the car, whether the accordion player is even the girl’s father. The way the woman is chasing after them he might have snatched the child to use as a lure for begging, and now the girl’s mother is trying to get her back. Certainly the way she sweeps through the car, her skirts and long hair flying, her dark eyes flashing, makes her look like a mother whose child has been stolen from her. When I look down I almost expect to see her footprints seared into the train floor—Demeter’s feet scorching the earth—but instead I see something almost more surprising: she’s barefoot. And yet she’s striding through the car as surefooted as a general in riding boots, her gaze swiveling up and down to locate her lost daughter. When her gaze lights on me it’s like being swept by a searchlight.