by Will Adams
‘Izzo’s gone,’ he said. ‘We’re on our own.’
She nodded, too spent to talk. The lights had gone out. He used his torch instead, taking them through darkened passages to the portico. Its corrugated roofing had been taking such a beating from falling rocks that whole sheets of it were now hanging free, allowing waterfalls to splash onto the floor and offering terrifying glimpses of a black velvet sky shuddering with lightning. The bombardment continued outside too, the volcanic fallout being funnelled by the steep escarpment walls down to the lake at its foot, sending up huge plumes of water.
‘Stay here,’ said Cesco. ‘I’ll go get us a car.’ He gave her the ghost of a wink. ‘That misspent youth you’re so mad at.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘No need. I’ll be straight back.’
‘I know,’ she said. Hobbled as she was, she was sure to hold him back a little. But better that than making him drive all the way back down to pick her up, as he undoubtedly would. ‘I’m still coming.’
He nodded and took her hand. They went out together. The storm was astonishing in its force, even braced for it as they were. They slipped and skidded down the quagmire ramp to the lake, waded and swam it to the other side. But they’d barely started up the track when a blue Fiat Uno appeared round the bend ahead and reversed down to meet them. They hauled themselves in the back. ‘You were supposed to leave us, you arse,’ said Cesco.
‘I tried,’ said Izzo. ‘Believe me, I tried.’ He looked around. ‘Lucia?’
‘She wouldn’t come,’ said Carmen. ‘We did our best, I swear.’
A large rock crashed into the lake behind them, drenching their roof and rear window. Without another word, Izzo set off upwards, spurting along the straights, braking sharply into each turn. ‘Where to?’ he asked.
‘The ferry,’ said Cesco.
‘It’ll have left by now. At least it bloody well better have.’
‘Maybe there’ll be another. If not, we’ll take the coast road.’
Izzo nodded and sped across the apron, scraping out the gate onto the Via Mare, then screeching downhill towards the sea.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I
The bombardment from Vesuvius continued to rage, chunks of fallout rock pounding the ferry with terrifying force and noise, sending great shudders through the crowded passenger lounge, exploding huge plumes of water from the sea to splash across their deck. But as they put more distance between themselves and shore, the rarer and smaller these grew, until they passed beyond what seemed to be the outer edge of danger, bringing a cautious relief. The clouds thinned too and then suddenly they found themselves bathed in glorious if incongruous sunshine and relief turned to euphoria.
Not for Valentina Messana, however. She kept replaying in her mind the moment Isabella had fallen backward onto the dock, her wizened hands clawing at thin air, the soft thud of her head against concrete. Nor Mario neither, distraught for his grandmother and terrified for his father, wailing and fighting her as she tried her best to comfort him. She found a space beside a window with an angled view of Herculaneum. At first it had receded quickly. Now it seemed barely to shrink at all. Distance did at least offer a better view of the huge grey geyser still blasting upwards from the volcano, hurling unimaginable quantities of pulverised rock a dozen kilometres or so straight upwards, before spreading out into that iconic mushroom shape. How many Hiroshimas was that? How many Nagasakis? The town was itself so dark that she struggled to make out the roads and other features, despite her good eyesight and her years living there. But the general districts were easy enough. There was the marina. There the port, where they’d left poor Isabella. There the old town and the archaeological park. That, then, must be the Villa of the Papyri, hidden though it was behind a line of grey polytunnels; which meant that that short squiggle had to be the Via Mare.
If Izzo was to make it out, that was the route he’d take.
‘Your father’s going to be fine,’ she assured Mario, stroking his hair but with her eyes remaining fixed upon the shore. ‘He’s going to be fine. He’s the bravest and most resourceful man I’ve ever met. It would take more than a volcano to stop him.’ But her own heart ached. Not just her boss. Her closest friend too, and the person she thought of late at night when in need of comfort.
A glint in the gloom. Headlights on the Via Mare. She couldn’t make out the make, the colour or even the nature of the vehicle, but who else could it be? Hope flooded through her. ‘There!’ she cried, holding Mario up so that he could see for himself. ‘Didn’t I tell you he’d…’ But then she faltered. A section of Vesuvius’s upper slopes suddenly caved in on itself to reveal a lake of molten orange beneath, spewing out magma like solar flares. Then that too vanished beneath an outpouring of volcanic material, the dreaded pyroclastic flow of superheated gas and ash that every citizen of the Red Zone feared above all else, the one that could race downhill at terrifying speeds, the one that had buried their town twice before, the thermal shock from which would instantly kill all living things in its path. Mario screamed when he saw it. She turned him back round again, hugging him against her chest even as her mind, unbidden, made the simple yet devastating calculation. Three kilometres from Vesuvius’s peak to Herculaneum’s outskirts. Another three to the shore.
Six minutes, that was all they had. Six minutes to find refuge or escape.
Six minutes at the most.
II
The fallout kept coming down ever harder and heavier, rocks and even boulders slamming down every few moments, smashing roofs, crushing cars, punching huge craters in the road before bounding off like wrecking balls or exploding into shrapnel that pinged off their windows and bodywork. Hunched down in the driver’s seat, Izzo screeched into a left turn, only to find the full width of the road ahead blocked by cars and trucks. Not that it much mattered, for they could see the last ferry already well out at sea, spotlit by sunshine. He offered up a silent prayer that Valentina had got Mario safely aboard even as he braked to avoid rear-ending an abandoned green minivan.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘Naples,’ said Cesco.
Easier said than done, what with the road blocked. He looked over his shoulder, put the Fiat into reverse. Even as he set off, however, the ground beneath them suddenly began to lift upwards, giving them that weightless humpback bridge sensation for a moment before they crashed back down again so hard that their undercarriage scraped tarmac and a tyre burst. The road around them yawed violently too, ripping like paper, burst pipes spraying water and sewage high into the air. A waterfront warehouse behind them creaked and then collapsed, ancient brickwork spilling out into the road like a jigsaw puzzle tipped onto a table, blocking their retreat. He looked up through the gap where it had been in time to see the great wave of gas and ash already on its way down the volcano’s slope towards them. ‘Son of a pig,’ he muttered, trying in vain to restart his stalled engine.
‘Leave it,’ said Cesco. ‘No time.’
‘Then where?’
‘The marina.’
They threw open their doors and ran. The gates to the marina had been closed and locked until some enterprising soul had rammed them with their car. Izzo saw it a little further on, left abandoned on the fence. His heart twisted when he recognised it. ‘Valentina,’ he muttered. He was trying to calculate the distance to the ferry, how long it would have taken them to cover it, when a ghostly white figure appeared in the gloom. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Isabella.’ The ground seemed to fall away beneath him. He felt woozy and nauseous, like drunkenness without the pleasure. He ran unsteadily towards her. They met by the Renault. Her face and clothes were grey with dust and ash, though streaked red in places with blood. ‘Where are they?’ he demanded.
‘The boat,’ said Isabella, gesturing vaguely out to sea, at the ferry sunlit upon the horizon.
‘Valentina left you behind?’ he asked incredulously.
‘I fell,’ she said, putting a hand to her blood
ied scalp. She sounded befuddled, bewildered. ‘It wasn’t her fault. I couldn’t hold on.’
‘But Mario?’ he said, helping her across the fallen fence, then putting an arm round her waist to hurry her after Cesco and Carmen, who’d already reached the marina and were scouring its berths for a likely prospect. There was hardly anything left to choose from, for all the most valuable boats had been sailed away upon news of the evacuation. ‘He’s safe? You’re sure he’s safe?’
‘I got him on,’ she told him proudly. ‘Your girlfriend too.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend.’
‘She should be.’
He looked around. The grey avalanche was still pouring down the mountainside behind them, accelerating over its steep slopes, swallowing without pause all the cottages and farm buildings it met along the way. His mind did the calculation in the same unconscious way that hands go to catch a ball. They weren’t going to make it. Not at this pace. He picked Isabella up and hoisted her rudely over his shoulder, despite her cries of protest, then set off after the others, his already tired legs protesting at the extra weight, his hand to his side to nurse his stitch. He reached the slatted jetty and staggered along it to the motorboat they’d chosen, a battered old fibreglass job covered by a tattered green canvas cover so tightly strapped down that it made tent-pole bulges from the tops of its seat backs. Cesco unbuckled it at the rear even as they arrived, peeling it back far enough for him to get at its outboard.
He set Isabella down. Carmen helped her aboard. He jumped down after her, sat with her on the canvas cover, turned again to look at the avalanche as it slammed into the first line of industrial sites and residential blocks like a tidal wave against a sea wall, not stopping so much as being sent splashing high into the air, yet with the bulk of it still roaring on, impelled by its own momentum, spilling over roofs and parks and roads, covering it all – including his own apartment – beneath its vast grey shroud, undaunted, implacable, indifferent.
III
As a boy, Cesco had spent his summers at his grandfather’s holiday home, a sprawling low villa set in the hills above the Calabrian seaside town of Scilla. There’d been an old motorboat and trailer in one of the outhouses there, no longer used by anyone since the family had upgraded to a newer model, the better for waterskiing. He himself had found it fascinating, though, spending countless hours pretending to be its captain, tinkering with its engine. And though he’d not been allowed its key, he’d worked out how to start it with a frayed length of emergency starter rope that he’d found inside its casing.
Accuracy not haste, he murmured to himself, aware of the pyroclastic wave coming to engulf them, deliberately not looking at it. Accuracy not haste. He turned on then primed the fuel valve, set the throttle. He looped the knotted orange starter rope round the flywheel and gave it a sharp tug. Not sharp enough. It didn’t catch. He gave such a rip on his second go that it roared but promptly stalled. A more measured attempt now, and finally it caught and held. He looked up at Carmen. There was no time to unstrap and remove the motorboat’s canvas cover, so she clambered over it instead to cast off their mooring ropes. The moment they were free, he steered them away from their berth and towards the marina mouth, scraping the stonework as he took them out into the open swell. At once they started to yaw and buck and slap. He negotiated it as best he could, trying not to lose momentum. But then he caught a glimpse of Izzo’s bleak expression as he sat on the canvas cover and stared back towards the shore. He couldn’t help himself. He glanced round in time to witness the immense grey wave wash over the town centre, burying beyond hope of rescue the Villa – and Lucia too. But still it wasn’t satisfied, still it came on.
‘Get below,’ he yelled, lifting up the lip of the still strapped-down canvas cover.
Izzo nodded and helped Isabella beneath, urging her in as far as she could go, following after. Carmen crawled in too, turning in the cramped space, beckoning Cesco to join them. He looked around again as the avalanche arrived at the harbour road, slowing just a fraction now that gravity was no longer driving it onwards, a sprinter relaxing into the tape, but with such momentum already built up that it still reached out after them over the sea like the hand of a wrathful god. He waited until the last possible moment, then ducked down and drew the cover over himself and the outboard too, keeping his hand upon its throttle, steering them as best he could away from the coast, even though he was now blind and the swell kept nudging them this way and that, confusing his sense of direction, so that perhaps it was as well when finally the engine clogged and stalled, and they began to drift upon the current.
The cloud of ash and dust had by now completely enveloped them, taking away what little daylight had previously managed to penetrate the canvas. He could hear its furious whispering all around them as it lost yet more heat and force, shushing the waves that lapped against their side, flakes of it now pattering like rain upon the cover, making it belly alarmingly beneath its weight, hot enough to make an oven of the small space and set threads of the canvas smouldering, so that the smell and smoke grew pungent in their nostrils, choking in their throats, burning tears from their eyes. He put his arms round Carmen and hugged her against him, taking some small comfort from the fierceness with which she hugged him back.
‘Together,’ he murmured.
‘Together,’ she said.
The canvas cover bellied lower, kept off them only by the seat backs. They hunkered down ever further so as not to let it scald them, until – to his surprise – he noticed that the oven wasn’t getting hotter any more, that the boat wasn’t rocking so much and that it had even grown a little less dark around the outboard where the canvas cover was imperfectly sealed. Cautiously, he poked it up a little and saw not a volcanic cloud but rather a patch of hazy sky. He peeled the cover slowly further back, dislodging the ash that had settled upon it, which now fell splashing in congealed clumps into the sea, adding to the thick layer of scum that floated all around them like so much melting ice, slowly waterlogging and then sinking away. He threw back more of the cover and yet more, the acidic mist dispersing to allow a little thin sunlight to fall upon their faces. Almost in a daze they stood up one by one, the better to gaze back at the shore, at the occasional plume of seawater still being sent up by sporadic fallout, at the great grey scar that now marked where a whole town had once been, at the molten orange threads bleeding freely from the volcano’s suppurating wound, making their slow way down the slope.
Carmen’s hand slipped into his own. He felt an extraordinary elation at having made it safely out, barely dimmed by the knowledge that Lucia and so many others hadn’t. And his ears played a curious trick on him, an echo of the avalanche’s roar that sounded almost like cheering. Then he realised it was no trick at all, and he turned to see the ferry in the distance, its deck thronged by passengers and crew with front-row views of the entire event, now jumping up and down, whooping and waving their arms in celebration of their escape.
Epilogue
I
Six weeks later
No charges had yet been brought against Zeno D’Agostino and likely never would be. It wasn’t a crime, after all, to rant drunkenly to your cousin about the man screwing your wife, and it would be hard for prosecutors to prove anything worse. Sure, he’d provided a false alibi; but even that was too contestable for an easy conviction.
Yet everybody knew.
His students, colleagues and neighbours now all looked at him with fear, disdain or disgust. Resignation from the university and associated posts had been inevitable, and anyway had felt fitting. He needed a fresh start, somewhere smaller and less prestigious, where his disgrace would haunt him less. But he was still too toxic for the moment. And with no income to speak of, and with Emanuela having moved in with her mother, it made sense to sell the apartment.
Apart from anything else, it held too many memories.
He’d promised Emanuela to be out by five, for her to take her turn. But packing took longer than he’d
expected. He’d forgotten how many books she’d bought him over the years, for his birthday, for Christmas and just because. She’d written a message in every one of them too, offering encouragement and love. He couldn’t help but pause to read them all and remember how good it had once been. He was still at it when he heard a key in the lock. He turned towards the door. All their recent contact had been by email or phone, so that this was the first time he’d seen her in weeks. It dismayed him how radiant she looked. Or rather, her radiance didn’t dismay him. What dismayed him was that it had taken their parting to achieve it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he told her, gesturing at the shelves. ‘Too many books.’
‘You always said there was no such thing.’
‘For a home, yes. For a Mercedes, on the other hand…’
‘Have you decided where you’re going yet?’
‘Pescara. Sandro’s letting me use his place there while I sort myself out.’
‘That’s kind of him. What will you do?’
He gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘No one will hire me for a while. Or publish any of my textbooks or histories. So I thought maybe that potboiler of mine.’
‘Cassius and Miriam.’
‘That’s the one.’ For years, he’d toyed with the idea of a series of bawdy mysteries set in first-century Naples, about a maverick one-legged senator called Cassius who threw wild orgies and kept exotic animals, while investigating a series of grotesque murders with his sidekick, an outspoken Judean slave girl called Miriam. But he’d never had the time. ‘And you?’
‘I took that copywriting job I mentioned.’
‘I’m glad. You’ll be great at it.’ He meant it too. Oddly, it hadn’t been her looks that had first made him take notice of her, but rather an assigned essay on Tiberius. Its content had been unremarkable, but the sweetness of her language compared to all the others had been like Mozart after a bin collection. ‘It suits you. You look stunning.’