The Night Villa

by Carol Goodman

  At the mention of the two goddesses, the slave girl, who was just returning my glass to the table beside my couch, flinched. The glass fell to the marble floor and shattered in as many pieces as the mosaic pattern that decorated the floor. My hostess’s face became like stone and in the flickering lamplight I observed that her features, which had seemed lovely only a moment ago, hardened and turned quite ugly. So a passing cloud may transform a peaceful and beautiful landscape into a gloomy scene of violence and destruction. Calatoria leapt from her couch and slapped the girl’s face.

  “Iusta! Do you have any idea how expensive those glasses were? What a stupid girl—”

  The girl—Iusta, what an unusual name!—fell to her knees and hurriedly began collecting the broken pieces, as if she could put the glass back together again if she moved quickly enough, but her only reward for her haste was a cut hand.

  “And now you’ll drip blood over everything!” With a disgusted sigh, Calatoria sank back down onto her couch and, realizing that I was observing her, tried to resume a placid countenance. “Slaves! This one has received all the training of a patrician, a whimsy of my late husband’s, and yet she can’t even serve a glass of wine without breaking something.”

  “Iusta is a rather unusual name. Another whimsy of your husband’s?”

  “Of the girl’s mother. She bought her freedom soon after the girl’s birth and she celebrated by giving her daughter that preposterous name. I would not have allowed it, but my husband had a weak spot for the slaves and the girl’s mother had belonged to his mother.”

  Throughout this conversation its object kept her head bent steadily to her task, giving no sign that she heard us except for the rising color in her cheeks, which I detected because of the reflection of the torchlight on her face.

  “The mother bought her own freedom, but the girl is still a slave?”

  “Yes, well, she was born while her mother was still a slave, so she remains a slave, although her mother tried to claim otherwise and retain the girl, but I eventually prevailed in court and Iusta came back to me—along with some oyster farms her mother had bought. In fact, the oysters we dined upon tonight are from them. Vitalis’s oysters have proved a better bargain than her daughter, clumsy as she is. Still, I find she has uses…. That’s quite enough, Iusta. Go have the cook bandage your hand before you bleed to death and cheat me of your value once again.”

  The girl rose and with her eyes still on the ground bowed to her mistress. I watched her as she walked across the courtyard and descended the steps to the lower level of the villa. “Yes, I can see what you mean,” I said, turning back to my hostess whose eyes, I noted, were glittering as though she had a fever. “She has a certain charm.”

  “I’m glad you approve. Doesn’t she remind you of the Persephone?”

  I followed my hostess’s gaze to the painting on the west wall of the courtyard, to the figure of Persephone as she was seized by the god of the underworld and saw immediately that she was right. The slave girl did bear an uncanny resemblance to the maiden in the painting.

  Calatoria was clearly pleased by my reaction. “Take a closer look,” she suggested and I did. I rose from my couch—a little unsteadily, I admit, from my hostess’s excellent wine—and approached the painting on the west wall of the peristylium. Calatoria followed me, an oil lamp in her hand, which she held up to the painting. The girl’s expression of horror as she is seized by the god leapt out of the shadows—her open mouth and flashing eyes—and I saw that she could be the twin of the clumsy slave girl.

  Calatoria lowered the lamp slightly and, following the orb of light, my eyes fell on the girl’s breast bared as Hades ripped her stola from her shoulder, his dark hand sinking into the tender white flesh of her shoulder. “A marvel!” I pronounced. “The girl must have modeled for the painter.”

  “It was her mother, actually. See, she modeled for the initiate as well.” Calatoria led me to the north wall where the figures depicted a series of mystery rites. Calatoria held her lamp up to the face of a young girl kneeling beside a trunk upon which the rape of Persephone was depicted. The girl’s posture exactly matched the slave girl’s when she had knelt to retrieve the broken glass. I could have sworn that even the color in the painted supplicant’s cheeks matched the blush of the slave girl Iusta.

  “Remarkable,” I said.

  “Yes, so you can see why I insist upon keeping her. Her mother—and her mother’s mother and her mother before her—have all participated in the rites of the maiden which we honor here. In exchange for their service they have each in turn been granted the opportunity to buy their freedom, but only after they have provided their replacement. The rite can only take place when the girl attains the age of seventeen, which she just has. And so, you see how remarkable it is that you have arrived at just this time.”

  “You mean the rites of the maiden will be conducted here—and soon?”

  “Yes, this household has hosted the rites for many years, twice since I became its mistress. It is an honor.”

  “And when do the rites take place?”

  “In three days’ time, on the evening of Dies Martis, nine days before the Kalends of September.”

  I didn’t have to translate the Roman date into our calendar. I knew full well that nine days before the Kalends of September was August 24, the day Vesuvius erupted.

  “I am truly blessed by the gods, then!”

  “And we, too. It must be a good sign that only days before the rites Poseidon has delivered you—a man who has been initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis! Of course our rites don’t pretend to that grandeur. Rather they are modeled on the Little Mysteries of Agrai, which prepare the initiate for the Greater Mysteries of Eleusis.”

  “Ah, yes, I attended the Little Mysteries at Agrai. They are most interesting as they combine the worship of Dionysus with the veneration of Demeter and Persephone.”

  “As do ours, although in a somewhat unique form. You would honor our house by participating in our own rites to the maiden.” My hostess bowed to me formally and I noticed this time that the pearl diadem in her hair was shaped like a squid with long tentacles that wrapped around her head.

  “The honor will be all mine,” I told her.

  She smiled. Youth and beauty were restored to her face in the glow of the lamp. Did her own participation in the rites of the maiden endow her with youth? I wondered. But I could see it was not the right time for more questions. Calatoria turned and led me to the door of my chamber, just off the courtyard. “I would love to hear more of your experiences in the East and see the books you’ve carried with you, but for now you must rest and regain your strength,” she said as my eyes followed the path of light her lamp made on the walls. “Participation in the mysteries requires a clean soul and a great deal of stamina.” As she spoke these last words, the light from her lamp fell on the god as he approached the maiden and I couldn’t help but wonder what part I would play in the mysteries to come.

  Later that night, as I was lying in bed writing this account I heard a noise at the door. I called for whoever was there to enter and the door opened. When I looked up I thought that the winged siren of the rites had come to life, but when the figure on the threshold stepped forward I saw the source of my delusion. Diagonally across from my doorway was the painted figure of the winged siren and Iusta, standing directly in front of her, had so perfectly fit the painted figure’s outline that she seemed to have sprouted wings. So convincing was the illusion that even when I had uncovered the trick I checked to see if she held the whip that the painted figure brandished in her hand. She did not. But the thought that she might made me shiver and for a moment I saw an image of us—a presentiment of the rites to come?—in which I whipped the girl until blood rose to her skin. I shook the vile image from my mind, sure that it had been placed there by the strange influence of the house.

  “Well,” I asked the girl, “what is it? Has your mistress sent you with a message? You’re not a mute, are you?
What a shame it would be if Justice was mute as well as blind!” I laughed at my own joke, but it must have been above the girl’s comprehension because she didn’t even smile.

  “No,” she answered, “I am not mute. But my mistress’s message requires no words or package to deliver. I was told to deliver…myself.”

  It took me a moment to understand what she meant and when I did I confess that I blushed. I am not ignorant of the custom of offering an honored guest the company of a slave girl, but I’d never been offered the gift by the mistress of the house. I considered refusing Calatoria’s kind offer, but then looking at the girl—in the lamplight her gauzy stola had become quite transparent—I realized that not only might my refusal offend Calatoria, but it might appear that I had found the girl inadequate and result in the girl’s punishment. Always in such situations I try to respect the customs of my hosts. And so I accepted Calatoria’s gift and bade Iusta enter.

  Although I try to scroll down to the next line my cursor blinks stubbornly on empty space. I’ve come to the end of the scanned section transcribed by Agnes. I can’t help wondering if Agnes stopped here because she balked at describing what would have come next—Iusta’s forced submission to her mistress’s guest. It’s just as I had feared on the day I went to the excavated villa; the house was a corrupt place. Without the tempering influence of her husband, Calatoria abused the girl, no doubt punishing her for the lawsuit she had finally lost. And I had to wonder if the abuse ended with a night spent with Phineas. What part would Iusta play in the rites? Would she be literally raped by the God as played by Phineas? Would she be held down by Calatoria and her attendants and whipped?

  What makes me feel sickest of all is my own desire to read more—a desire that I tell myself is scholarly, but then that sounds as weak an excuse as Phineas blaming his flagellation fantasy on the influence of the house. I look back at the transcript and see that the Latin word Agnes translated as influence is potestas. Power. That’s what I had felt in Herculaneum, the villa’s power, still potent after its centuries-long sleep under hardened lava.

  I close the laptop and stand up in the doorway to get a fresh breath of air. The moon, which had barely cleared the eastern wall of the villa when I began reading, is now directly overhead, its light streaming in through my open door so brightly it feels like a presence. It makes me think of Phineas opening his door to find the slave girl Iusta, the lamplight turning her gauze dress transparent, a pair of painted wings springing from her shoulders. Something about that image strikes me. I put the laptop down on the chair and walk out into the courtyard, following a diagonal path to the back wall. I walk straight to the figure of the winged siren holding aloft the phallus-handled whip. It’s the image Phineas was referring to, which means that the room I’m in corresponds to the room Phineas stayed in at the real Villa della Notte.

  In the morning I meet the other two members of the Papyrus Project: Simon Bowles, a British art restorer who’s working to re-create the wall paintings from Herculaneum here on Capri, and Maria Prezziotti, an Italian archaeologist from the Pontificia Instituto Sacra Archeologia—PISA. If I’d been expecting a dour old nun as the Catholic Church’s representative I couldn’t have been more mistaken. Maria Prezziotti is no older than thirty. She’s dressed impeccably in a dark skirt and crisp cotton blouse; pearls gleam on her earlobes and a gold cross nestles between her ample breasts. It occurs to me that her outfit is nearly identical to the one the housekeeper wears, only on Maria it looks chic and sexy.

  I realize right away that I’ve seen Simon before. He’d been working on the wall painting when I wandered into the courtyard yesterday morning. I’d mistaken him for a satyr and now I see why—he has the fleshy, sensuous lips and full belly of that mythological creature and the fringe of curly red hair crowns his brow like a satyr’s wreath. When I enter the lower courtyard where the morning buffet is laid out he’s tucking into a full English breakfast of fried eggs, sausage, toast, and jam.

  “Ah, she arises like the dawn,” he says, patting a splash of egg yolk from his chin. “I was afraid I caused you to faint yesterday morning, Dr. Chase. I’m glad you weren’t damaged by the fall.”

  “It was the verisimilitude of your paintings that startled me,” I explain, taking a seat across from the painter. “I thought I’d died and woken up in Hades.”

  “My paintings have been pilloried by the press before, but never once have I been told they sent their viewers to Hell.”

  “I can assure you I mean it as a compliment. I looked at them again this morning. The Rape of Persephone looks exactly like the one at the Villa della Notte and the new mural, the one of the mystery rites, it’s…” I hesitate, recalling the more lascivious details of the painting. I notice that Maria Prezziotti is looking at me as if I’d dribbled egg down my front. Maybe it’s just my clothes—a Waterloo Ice House T-shirt and khaki shorts—she disdains.

  “Yes,” she says before I can finish my sentence, “the mystery rite paintings will no doubt be the images that the press choose to exemplify the villa once they’re released. A rutting goat-man and a winged dominatrix. By next summer they’ll be on every American tourist’s T-shirt.” At the word T-shirt she curls her upper lip at mine.

  Agnes, coming out onto the terrace with a pot of coffee, comes to my rescue. “I’d buy one of that winged siren,” she says. “I just love her face, and now we know from Phineas that it’s a portrait of that slave girl who lived at the Villa della Notte—Iusta.”

  “Of her mother actually,” I say. “Calatoria tells Phineas that the painter used Iusta’s mother as a model, but the daughter must have looked just like her since Phineas mistakes the girl later that night for the winged siren….”

  I’ve been too busy pouring my coffee to notice the silence that’s settled around the table, but when I look up I see that Maria and Simon are staring at me while George and Agnes are exchanging guilty looks.

  “And where did you read this, Dr. Chase?” Maria directs the question to me, but her gaze is firmly rooted on Agnes. “I thought the scroll wasn’t ready to be distributed yet. Did you give Dr. Chase a copy of the scanned material?”

  Agnes blanches at the note of accusation in Maria’s voice. “Well, yes—” she begins, but Maria interrupts her.

  “I see, you Americans really do stick together.”

  The color returns to Agnes’s face as though she had been slapped. “I gave Dr. Chase the transcript because Mr. Lyros, the American who’s paying your salary and preserving your country’s heritage, asked me to. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you talk to Mr. Lyros.” Agnes’s voice wobbles at the end of this shockingly, for Agnes, brazen retort, but she holds her ground under Maria’s stare. I’m staring at her, too, wondering why usually meek Agnes would talk back to her elders like this. Had Maria done or said something before I got here to make her this angry?

  “I certainly will talk to John—”

  “Talk to me about what?” The question comes from the doorway that leads from the kitchen to the courtyard where John Lyros, in slim faded jeans and a soft white shirt, stands sipping a cup of coffee. “Is there a problem?”

  Maria turns from Agnes to her boss, her expression smoothly morphing from disdain to polite inquiry. “I just wondered why we haven’t all gotten to see the scanned portions of the Phineas scroll. It’s my job to look for any Christian references in the material recovered. It is why my organization agreed to fund this project,” she finishes with a pointed look at Agnes, no doubt to remind her that John Lyros isn’t the only benefactor of the Papyrus Project.

  “Actually I forwarded the file to everyone this morning; you should find it in your e-mail. I’m looking forward to hearing what you all think of it at dinner tonight when perhaps we’ll get the next installment. What do you think, George? Can you and Agnes get the next bit scanned and transcribed by this evening? I’m afraid that once you get started reading it, it’s hard to put down. Right, Dr. Chase?”

  “Yes,” I sa
y, “especially knowing that in three days—”

  “Enh, enh.” Lyros holds up a hand to stop me. “No spoilers! Why don’t we let Simon and Maria catch up with their reading while George and Agnes get to work in the lab. As for you, I bet you’d like to stretch your legs and see a little bit of the island. We wouldn’t want you thinking you’re in Hades when you’re actually on one of the most beautiful places on earth.”

  “No,” I say, wondering just how long Lyros had been listening to our conversation. “I’m sure a walk would do me good.”

  It is true, I soon see, that Capri is indeed one of the most beautiful places on earth, but it’s not true that the walk Lyros has planned for us is little.

  “There are really only two choices,” he says when we step outside the villa’s wrought-iron gate onto a narrow path. “Up or down. Down leads to the town of Capri—La Piazzetta, the Gran’Caffe, shops, droves of tourists—and up leads to the Villa Jovis.”

  “The palace of Tiberius,” I say. “I’d like to see that. But won’t it be too crowded?”

  He shakes his head. “Most of the tourists are content to stay in the town and shop for duty-free Gucci or take the boat excursion to the Blue Grotto. It’s a bit of a hike, though, are you sure you’re up to it?”

  I look up the path, which slopes gently but steadily uphill between bougainvillea-covered walls and oleander bushes. Taking an experimental breath, I find the air sweet and light and oddly intoxicating. “Absolutely,” I say.

  We walk slowly and Lyros stops often at water fountains to drink and at benches to retie his sneakers, or at tempting vistas to point out the Marina Grande below us and Monte Solaro towering behind us, or to point past a gate at some villa that lies drowsing in a lemon grove behind mounds of fuschia and azalea, geraniums and jasmine. He always picks a spot well shaded by an umbrella pine or cypress to regale me with a piece of Caprese history and give me a chance to catch my breath. “And this,” he says at one gate, “is the Villa Lysis, once home to Count Jacques d’Adelsward Fersen, who so scandalized the Caprese that he had to leave the island. He did return eventually and lived here until he died of an opium overdose at forty-five.”