The Mafia Emblem
Page 56
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Ben throttled back as they rounded the stone mole and headed into Pozzuoli harbour. A strange sight met his eyes. It appeared that the volcanic activity of the last few years had caused the land to rise and this meant that the majority of the harbour was now nothing but dried and cracked mud-flats. There wasn’t a single boat in the whole place. He had to quickly decide where to run the boat aground on the rapidly shallowing shore.
He chose a point near the harbour wall, cut the engines and ran the cruiser firmly on to the hard mud. In the tideless Mediterranean it would probably stay there until they came back for it – if they ever had the chance.
“We’d better get ashore quickly,” he suggested. “We haven’t got much of a lead.”
He jumped over the side on to the hard-baked harbour bed. Then he reached up to help Papa and Francesca as they hurried over the side. He lifted Papa across the slightly slippery surface to a flight of stone steps a few yards away which ascended to the top of the pier. Then he and Francesca took an arm each and propelled the old man up the staircase as speedily as he could make it.
Pozzuoli seemed to be a ghost city. There was no human life anywhere. Along the stone harbourside there were already signs of the huge earth movements which were slowly taking place, tearing the very ground apart under their feet. Just a few yards from the top of the steps the whole pier had cracked right through. They had to jump across a gap at least two feet wide and up a step about nine inches high. As they hurried up the quay they passed a small stone kiosk. One of its walls had collapsed outwards and the roof now sagged in the middle. The windows had fractured and glass littered the ground all around.
But it was when they reached the root of the pier and started to climb the hillside into the old city that they began to realise the full extent of the devastation. Many of the most magnificent old buildings had cracks in their walls. It was not uncommon for fissures to run the whole height of the buildings from road level to the roof. Ben thought that some of the cracks would have been big enough for him to insert his clenched fist into them. Stone copings and cornices had fallen from the tops of walls; rotten frames hung loosely from their openings; doorways and windows had been boarded up; parapets had collapsed; holes had appeared in roofs; signs warned people to keep clear of the dangers. In fact some of the buildings had been completely demolished by the earth movements and now lay in hillocks of rubble. Weeds were starting to appear. The whole place had the appearance of a huge Second World War bomb-site.
They had to pick their way carefully. In places massive wooden shorings had been erected to prevent edifices from collapsing, often half blocking the roads. Scaffolding and timber support work had been constructed around buildings. But what was even more disturbing was that some of the supporting structures were themselves collapsing. Often they littered the pavements and blocked narrow side-streets. Sometimes they were partly covered by the rubble of the buildings they had been intended to support. It was as though Pozzuoli had been abandoned by the human race and had been left to crumble back into oblivion. A civilization which had prospered for three thousand years was in the process of being swallowed up again by nature.
They kept to the centre of the road but even there they felt vulnerable. Over the whole city hung a tense and tingling silence, as if the place was holding its breath and waiting for something catastrophic to happen. One could almost hear the creaks and stresses which the slowly moving earth was putting on the buildings. Even at that moment there came a rumble and a scattering of shallow echoes as another pile of masonry collapsed and for a full minute afterwards they could hear stones and slates and glass clattering and tinkling onto the ruptured and tormented streets all around them. It continued for so long that they wondered whether the whole city was starting to collapse. But it gradually died away and the ominous silence returned. Where would it strike next?
“This place is so lonely.” Francesca sounded frightened.
She was right. The strange thing was that no cacophony of squawking birds rose from the funeral pyre of the latest building; no scurry of rats escaped from the danger. The city had even been abandoned by the scavengers and rodents. Ben and his group felt as though they were the only living creatures left in the place.
“Come on,” urged Ben. “The Vitelli will have landed by now. Once they do, it won’t take long for them to catch up with us.”
They hurried as best they could over the rough surface. Under the circumstances Papa was doing magnificently, but he was being half-dragged and half-carried by Ben and Francesca, tripping over stones and rubble as they went. Obviously it was many months since any vehicle had attempted to pass along the broken and cluttered streets. What purpose would they have had? The population seemed to have moved out completely and taken their belongings with them. There was no longer a living thing within sight.
They came into what must have once been one of the main streets, but which was now a scene of utter devastation. Shop fronts and ground floor windows and doors had all been boarded up, but the upper parts of the buildings were often partly destroyed. In some cases the hoardings themselves had collapsed. Lamp posts had fallen or leaned at strange angles. Electricity cables festooned the roadway and were draped across piles of rubble. Now they presented no danger for the power had obviously long since been turned off in the abandoned city.
At the end of the street was a grand piazza which had once been graced by a splendid central fountain, now sadly deteriorated. This had probably been one of the main meeting places for the populace for centuries and must have been a fine sight before earth tremors had caused the central statue to collapse into the cracked bed of the dried up pool.
“We must stop for Papa to rest,” pleaded Francesca.
When Ben looked at him, the old man was gasping for air and his face had turned grey. It was clear he could go no further at present.
“All right. We’ll have to spare a couple of minutes.”
They helped him to the crumbling wall which had once surrounded the pool. He sat there with his hands on his knees, trying to suck in enough oxygen to keep his feeble frame moving. Francesca sat beside him and loosened his shirt collar.
Ben surveyed the devastation. “When you look round you realise how weak our buildings are when they’re up against the forces of nature,” he observed.
“Isn’t it horrible?” She looked up. “This has happened so many times in Southern Italy. You would think they would learn to build in safe places.”
“It seems strange to find nothing moving anywhere.”
“I remember reading that the whole of the centre of the town is shut off,” said Francesca. “Nobody is allowed to enter. All the entry points are barricaded and guarded. The old city and all the area by the sea is out of bounds except to the police.”
“In that case I’m surprised that someone wasn’t there to intercept us when we landed.”
She shrugged. “Ah, this is Italy. Nobody will do anything about it until there is a problem.”
“Do the police patrol the city?”
“Why should they do that? There is nothing here to be stolen and nobody to keep under control. There may be some police in the area, but they will be outside the barricades, sitting in their huts and drinking wine.”
Ben glanced back down the street. They couldn’t risk remaining here much longer. “Do you don’t know where the nearest police barricade is?”
“I haven’t the least idea.”
“Well, let’s hope we’re going in the right direction.” He checked his watch. “Come on. The two minutes are up. Can your father move again?”
“I’m sure he will do his best.”
As if he understood, the old man stood up as soon as they did. Ben decided to take the road to the left. It still led up the hill but, with the change in direction, they would be less easily seen by their pursuers. After a couple of hundred yards they came to a crossroads and paused. Papa was already gasping like a fish out of water.
He bent down and lifted the light old frame onto his back. Papa had no breath to argue. Ben selected a road going up at an angle to the right and set off at as fast a pace as he could manage with the old man wobbling about on his shoulders.