“Why wasn’t I taken to a hospital in Naples?”
“My dear, have you ever been to a hospital in Naples? I knew we could take much better care of you here. I sent the Parthenope—the institute’s boat—and Elgin and the doctor brought you back.”
“Yes, I remember that.” Unfortunately I also vaguely recall blathering to Elgin about my mother and the Aquarena Springs Mermaid Show. “What happened to Elgin? Is he still here?”
“He had that appointment to keep in Sorrento.” Of course, I think, a new flirtation. Trust Elgin to find a new girl in every port. “But he only left when I assured him you’d be taken care of. He’s still there, although truthfully I’m not exactly sure what he’s up to. There are no archaeological sites or museums in Sorrento.”
“Knowing Elgin, it’s a girl he met on the plane over…. I’m afraid the UT arm of the Papyrus Project has been a disappointment to you, Mr. Lyros. Do I still have a job?”
He laughs and it’s the best sound I’ve heard in a while. “You’d better have. I’ve got several pages of Phineas Aulus’s book scanned and ready for you to read. I can’t wait to see what you make of it. But first, let’s get you something to eat. We’ve got to build you up. I don’t want you getting pneumonia again.”
For the next few days John Lyros personally oversees the project of “building me up.” He starts by bringing me tea in delicate china cups and ordering me light lunches of pasta in brodo and hard-boiled eggs, brought to me by a unsmiling matronly housekeeper in crisp white blouse and black skirt. On the second day I graduate to crusty rolls spread with fresh mozzarella and thinly sliced tomatoes and the housekeeper rewards me with a smile and her name—Guilia. I smile back. The tomatoes are amazing. I can’t get enough of them. Every time I eat one I can feel my poor dehydrated cells plumping up.
Good for the blood, she says to me in Italian, shaking her fist at me. Then she strikes her own chest. Does she mean that it’s good for the heart, I wonder, or is she offering herself as a example of the healing properties of tomatoes? Certainly she is the picture of good health herself, from her plump oval face to her sleekly coiled black hair. Even her coral earrings and the gold cross around her neck seem to gleam with some special power.
By the third day I’m eating the tomatoes with eggs in the morning, with mozzarella and olive oil for lunch, and heaped on pasta at night. (At night the housekeeper looks tired and doesn’t return my smile.) It’s like getting a blood transfusion, only this red liquid tastes like a mixture of Mediterranean sun and sea air, like it’s got oxygen in it. Everything looks brighter, even the housekeeper, who smiles at me again in the morning and who, I notice, has added a string of coral beads around her neck.
After three days on the Caprese tomato diet I’m strong enough to take a stroll around the courtyard. John Lyros insists I hold on to his arm in case I have another fainting spell. We do a slow circle around the fountain, the cool sprays making prisms in the bright air. Then he takes me out onto the peristylium, which faces the sea. At the balustrade he releases my arm, letting me lean on the marble ledge, and points out the landmarks of the bay: the long arm of the Sorrentine peninsula to our right, the cape of Misenum to our left. In the middle Mount Vesuvius stands placidly against a calm blue sky. The whole setting is so serene—even crowded, boisterous Naples looks tranquil from here—that it’s hard to imagine the violence of a volcanic eruption disrupting the calm. So it must have seemed to the residents of Herculaneum and Pompeii on the morning of August 24, AD 79.
“There’s Herculaneum,” he says, pointing straight ahead. “If it weren’t below sixty-five feet of tufa, we could see the Villa della Notte. That’s why I chose this spot for my restored villa, because it has such a good view of the original. I like to think of the inhabitants of the villa standing on their peristylium looking out across the bay and seeing this spot.”
“It’s eerie,” I say, looking back at the courtyard with its fountain and wall paintings. “It looks so much like what I imagine the original must have that I forgot we weren’t in Herculaneum. Is the rest of the villa designed to look like the original?”
“The lower level is laid out according to the plan of the villa we found in one of the papyri, but it’s not decorated like the original because we won’t know what those rooms looked like until they’re excavated. Besides, we need more modern amenities for the labs. Come, I’ll show you.”
He takes my arm again and we cross the courtyard to the west side and descend a flight of stairs that begin next to my bedroom. At the bottom of the stairs we enter a small enclosed courtyard, a swimming pool at its center. An orange inflatable raft bobs on the surface of the turquoise water and brightly colored lawn chairs and umbrellas are drawn up around one side of the pool.
“I decided that until we know what kind of fountain the lower courtyard had we might as well have the comfort of a pool. If you prefer to bathe in the ocean, though, there’s a staircase down to our own little grotto. Just be careful on the steps—they’re quite steep. The kitchens are through there.” Lyros points through a doorway on the south side of the courtyard. “And the labs are through here.” He leads me to a door opposite the stairs. “We usually have our breakfast around the pool because it’s close to the lab. Perhaps tomorrow you’ll want to join the others.” We walk through a corridor lined with white boards with grids marked out in black erasable ink—like a hospital surgery roster, only the “patients” on these boards are papyrus scrolls waiting to be scanned.
Lyros opens a door to a gleaming lab fitted out with stainless-steel cabinets, glass tables, and several machines that look like a cross between a camera and a microscope, each one perched on long spidery legs above a glass table. The room is a curious mixture of museum, hospital lab, and darkroom. On the walls, held between sheets of glass like laboratory specimens, hang fragments of papyrus scrolls that are the color and texture of dead skin. For a moment the medicinal atmosphere of the room, and perhaps my recent illness, makes me think they are pieces of skin and I shiver at the idea.
“I’m sorry,” Lyros says, “we keep this room cool to protect the scrolls and the equipment.”
“It’s probably the best air-conditioned room in the Campania.” The voice comes from behind one of the hulking machines, startling me because I’d thought we were alone in the room. The man tilts himself sideways and I see why I had missed him: he’s so skinny that he’d been totally eclipsed by the scanning machine. In fact, when he stands up I’m struck by how much, with his large wobbly head, dangling arms, and pencil-thin legs, he looks like one of the scanning machines.
“George Petherbridge,” he says in a British accent, extending his hand to me. His grip is bony and cool. “Glad to see you up and about, Dr. Chase.”
“George is on loan to us from Oxford,” Lyros explains. “He worked on the Oxyrhynchus Project.”
“The scrolls discovered in an Egyptian garbage dump? I’ve read about them. Didn’t you recover part of a lost tragedy by Sophocles?”
“That’s right,” George says, grinning. “And we had a lot worse to deal with than a little burning around the edges. The Oxyrhynchus scrolls had been damaged by water and mud. The papyri we’re dealing with here are remarkably unharmed inside their charred shells—the trick is separating the layers of writing and finding the right spectrum for the ink used on each individual papyrus. Take the Phineas Aulus scroll—”
“Is that what you’re working on there?” I point at the machine George still has one hand on.
“Yes,” he says, patting the metal scanner as though it were a pet dog. “As per your instructions, John, I’ve been concentrating on this scroll. We’ve been able to scan about half of it. Miss Hancock has been transcribing the results into a computer document.”
“Agnes Hancock? Is she here today?”
“She’s gone to make us some tea. I know she’ll be happy to see you; she’s been worried about how sick you were. Would you like a peek at the Phineas scroll while you wait?”<
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“Yeah, absolutely.” Truthfully, I’m more anxious to see Agnes—I guiltily remember that I’d promised Sam Tyler I’d keep an eye on her, and I’ve been in Italy for over a week without giving her one thought—but once I bend down to the machine to look through the lens and see Phineas’s beautifully inscribed letters I feel a tingle of recognition.
“Our friend Phineas used an ink high in iron-gall, which means it shows up best under an ultraviolet spectrum. Here—” Petherbridge adjusts a dial and the outlines of the letters sharpen. I make out the words whip and flagellate and flesh in Latin and suddenly, even though the room is cold, I feel as if I’m back in the hot tufa pit looking at the painted figure of the siren raising her whip over the bare flesh of the suppliant girl. Was Phineas describing the wall painting at the Villa della Notte? But then I notice that the verb is in the first person and I put the sentence together: I whipped the girl until the blood rose to her skin… I lift my head up so quickly that I make myself dizzy. Lyros grabs my elbow to steady me.
“I think you’ve been on your feet long enough,” he says, helping me to a chair. “Ah, here’s Agnes with that tea. Perhaps you can get a cup for Dr. Chase….”
“I already have.” Agnes puts down a china teacup at my side. “The intercom was on, so I knew you were here, Dr. Chase.”
I look up from the steaming cup to Agnes’s face and I am amazed by the transformation that a few weeks in Italy has worked. Agnes’s skin has turned golden; her hair is shiny and sun-streaked. She’s put on just enough weight to take the gauntness out of her. Clearly there’s no need for me to feel guilty about neglecting Sam’s charge to watch over her: she’s thriving on a Mediterranean diet of sun and olive oil.
“Thanks, Agnes,” I say, sipping the hot, sweet tea. “It’s good to see you. Capri obviously agrees with you.”
“Isn’t it just the most beautiful place on earth? Wait till you see the Blue Grotto!” Agnes’s eyes shine with the same unearthly blue that the Capri landmark is famous for. “We even have our own grotto. Professor Lawrence and I went swimming there last week. I don’t ever want to leave!”
George Petherbridge and John Lyros share a smile at Agnes’s enthusiasm, but I take another hurried sip of tea, scalding my mouth, to hide the flicker of worry that darts through my mind. Agnes sounds like someone bewitched, and I’m hardly thrilled to hear she’s been spending time with Elgin.
“To tell you the truth, I haven’t gotten to see much of the island yet,” I say.
“Well, when Dr. Lawrence gets back—” Agnes begins, but John Lyros interrupts her.
“We’ll have to rectify that as soon as you’ve got your strength back. For now, though, I think we’d better get you out of this cold room and back upstairs.”
“Yes,” I concede, feeling like an ancient invalid, “but I wish I could start doing something for the project. I’d love to have a look at whatever you’ve got transcribed of Phineas’s scroll.”
“I can make a copy of the file and send it to your laptop,” Agnes offers. “I haven’t translated it yet, but the bits I was able to sight-read sounded fascinating. The Petronii really got up to some wild goings-on here…I mean…there.” She giggles. “Sometimes I forget that this isn’t the original villa.”
“Why don’t you do that?” Lyros says to Agnes. Then, putting a hand on my elbow as I get up, he says to me, “Why don’t you take a nap and then when you wake up it will be ready for you.”
“I’ll get right on it,” Agnes says eagerly. “It will be the perfect thing to keep your mind occupied while you’re recuperating.”
I return Agnes’s smile, but as John Lyros steers me from the room I can’t help but think that from what I’ve just seen of Phineas’s book, it won’t be restful reading.
I go back to my room and find the housekeeper setting up a tray for me.
“I’ll be eating with the rest of the staff from now on,” I tell her in Italian, “so you won’t have to keep bringing me my meals. You’ve been very, very kind,” I add, hoping to earn one of her rare smiles. But the face she turns to me is dour and I notice that she’s not wearing the coral necklace. Is it that wearing the necklace makes her smile, I wonder, or that she wears the necklace on days when she’s feeling happy? It’s a mystery.
When I finish my lunch—a delicious pasta dish with a sauce made from eggplants, sardines, and raisins, bread, and, of course, a plate of tomatoes and mozzarella—I try to read some of the Phineas volumes I brought with me, but the heavy lunch has left me too sleepy. I curl up on my bed, planning to take a short nap, but when I wake up it’s dark already. I had slept so soundly I hadn’t heard anyone come into my room, but there’s a tray on a chair by my bed with a covered dish and a note from Agnes that says, “Look in your e-mail—I’ve sent you the Phineas!”
Not trusting myself to eat another meal without yielding to its soporific effect, or to read in bed, I transfer the tray to my bed, drag the chair to the doorway, use it to prop open the door so that I’ve got plenty of air from the courtyard to keep me awake, and sit down on it with my laptop in my lap. I check to make sure the courtyard is empty. It is; the only light comes from a full moon that has just risen above the eastern edge of the villa. I open my laptop, download the document Agnes has sent me, and open up the file labeled PHINEAS. Two columns appear: the Latin text transcribed from the scroll, and a “rough” translation she’s prepared. I start out by reading back and forth between the two, but after noting how good her Latin translation is I read the English, only glancing occasionally back at the Latin to check a word or two.
I knew it was a lucky day that delivered me from shipwreck and brought me to this safe harbor, he wrote, dating his entry DIES SATURNI AD XII KAL. SEP DCCCXXXIII A.U.C., which Agnes has translated as August 21, AD 79, but I did not know how lucky until last night when the mistress of the house told me its secret.
I smile at Phineas’s teasing introduction and look out the doorway to the courtyard where the bronze statue of the goddess Night gleams in the moonlight. The patter of the fountain and the more distant sound of the sea fade away as I enter Phineas’s world.
My hostess Calatoria Vimidis began the evening by apologizing for the fare. “Since my husband’s death, and with the children in Rome, I live here quite simply.”
“I am most sorry to learn that Gaius Petronius Stephanus is no longer with us. He had a reputation as a man of great learning and discrimination and I would have liked to have seen what he thought of some of the works I have brought back with me…. But you mustn’t apologize for your more than generous hospitality. Everything is delicious,” I told her with perfect veracity. “I have never tasted oysters so fresh! And you would have needed an excellent soothsayer to predict my arrival as I did not know myself that the gods would drive my ship here.”
She looked away toward the sea and I was afraid I’d offended her, but before I could apologize she said, “You see, that’s the oddity of your arrival. I believe there were signs that told of your coming, but I stupidly misread them. Seven days ago I went to the sibyl.”
“At Cumae? How exciting! I am most anxious to pay a visit there myself.”
“Well, I wish you better luck reading her meaning than I had,” she said, taking a sip of wine.
“What did she say?”
“She said nothing. She scribbled on a leaf three sentences: Poseidon will enact his wrath. The sea will take back what belongs to it. The maiden shall be returned to her mother.”
“Ah, so you think Poseidon’s wrath might have referred to the storm that caused my ship to founder?”
“Perhaps, although really it wasn’t much of a storm. I’m surprised your crew was destroyed by it.”
“Perhaps from the safety of this beautiful villa it didn’t seem like much of a storm, but from where I stood on the deck of the ship as we passed between the point of Surrentum and the isle of Capreae it felt like all the winds of Aeolus had been let loose and that the whirlpool of Charybdis was trying
to drag me down to my death. I even glimpsed the white bones that litter the rocks of the sirens that Homer spoke of. Believing that I must have done something to anger the gods, perhaps by taking from their native shrines the records of their mysteries, I poured a libation into the sea to Minerva whose temple crowns the Surrentum heights. Then I had myself and my trunk put in a small rowboat, hoping that my contagion wouldn’t doom the whole ship. I fully expected to perish, but then my little boat found its way to this shore. I can only assume that the gods smile on my endeavors, especially since I was brought here.” I toasted my hostess and she inclined her head modestly, showing off as she did an exquisite pearl diadem fastened in her dark hair.
“But the sea did claim the rest of your crew,” she pointed out, signaling to a slave girl to refill my wineglass. “Perhaps you had trespassed against some native God…. You say you’ve brought back records of the mysteries?”
“Yes, my own impressions recorded in a journal I have kept over the years and some other texts…old books sold to me by priests to increase the wealth of their shrines, sacred texts that I found moldering in bookshops, philosophical treatises copied over by temple slaves and sold on the black market of Alexandria. You’d be amazed at the traffic in magical secrets practiced in the bazaars of the East—it’s enough to tarnish one’s belief in these religions when so often there’s a price attached to their mysteries.” I noticed that the slave girl, who was filling my glass, had paused to listen to what I was saying, a becoming blush on her face, and that Calatoria was watching her carefully. A favorite being trained to serve at table? I wondered. “I see by your fine paintings that you honor Demeter and Persephone. You are a follower of the Eleusinian Mysteries, perhaps?”
The Night Villa Page 12