Pompeii

by Harris, Robert

  He looked across at his former slave, presiding at the head of the table. He was still not entirely sure how it had happened. There had been the earthquake, of course. And then, a few years later, the death of Nero. Then civil war, a mule-dealer as Emperor, and Popidius’s world had turned upside-down. Suddenly Ampliatus was everywhere – rebuilding the town, erecting a temple, worming his infant son on to the town council, controlling the elections, even buying the house next door. Popidius had never had a head for figures, so when Ampliatus had told him he could make some money, too, he had signed the contracts without even reading them. And somehow the money had been lost, and then it turned out that the family house was surety, and his only escape from the humiliation of eviction was to marry Ampliatus’s daughter. Imagine: his own ex-slave as his father-in-law! He thought the shame of it would kill his mother. She had barely spoken since, her face haggard with sleeplessness and worry.

  Not that he would mind sharing a bed with Corelia. He watched her hungrily. She was stretched out with her back to Cuspius, whispering to her brother. He wouldn’t mind screwing the boy, either. He felt his prick begin to stiffen. Perhaps he might suggest a threesome? No – she would never go for it. She was a cold bitch. But he would soon be warming her up. His gaze met Brittius’s once more. What a funny fellow. He winked and gestured with his eyes to Ampliatus and mouthed in agreement, ‘Trimalchio!’

  ‘What’s that you’re saying, Popidius?’

  Ampliatus’s voice cut across the table like a whip. Popidius cringed.

  ‘He was saying, “What a feast!”’ Brittius raised his glass. ‘That’s what we’re all saying, Ampliatus. What a magnificent feast.’ A murmur of assent went round the table.

  ‘And the best is yet to come,’ said Ampliatus. He clapped his hands and one of the slaves hurried out of the dining room in the direction of the kitchen.

  Popidius managed to force a smile. ‘I for one have left room for dessert, Ampliatus.’ In truth he felt like vomiting, and he would not have needed the usual cup of warm brine and mustard to do it, either. ‘What is it to be then? A basket of plums from Mount Damascus? Or has that pastry chef of yours made a pie of Attican honey?’ Ampliatus’s cook was the great Gargilius, bought for a quarter of a million, recipe books and all. That was how it was along the Bay of Neapolis these days. The chefs were more celebrated than the people they fed. Prices had been pushed into the realms of insanity. The wrong sort of people had the money.

  ‘Oh, it’s not yet time for dessert, my dear Popidius. Or may I – if it’s not too premature – call you “son”?’ Ampliatus grinned and pointed and by a superhuman effort, Popidius succeeded in hiding his revulsion. O, Trimalchio, he thought, Trimalchio . . .

  There was a sound of scuffling footsteps and then four slaves appeared, bearing on their shoulders a model trireme, as long as a man and cast in silver, surfing a sea of encrusted sapphires. The diners broke into applause. The slaves approached the table on their knees and with difficulty slid the trireme, prow first, across the table. It was entirely filled by an enormous eel. Its eyes had been removed and replaced by rubies. Its jaws were propped open and filled with ivory. Clipped to its dorsal fin was a thick gold ring.

  Popidius was the first to speak. ‘I say, Ampliatus – that’s a whopper.’

  ‘From my own fishery at Misenum,’ said Ampliatus proudly. ‘A moray. It must be thirty years old if it’s a day. I had it caught last night. You see the ring? I do believe, Popidius, that this is the creature your friend Nero used to sing to.’ He picked up a large silver knife. ‘Now who will have the first slice? You, Corelia – I think you should try it first.’

  Now that was a nice gesture, thought Popidius. Up till this point, her father had conspicuously ignored her, and he had begun to suspect ill-feeling between them, but here was a mark of favour. So it was with some astonishment that he saw the girl flash a look of undiluted hatred at her father, throw down her napkin, rise from her couch, and run sobbing from the table.

  The first couple of pedestrians Attilius approached swore they had never heard of Africanus’s place. But at the crowded bar of Hercules, a little further down the street, the man behind the counter gave him a shifty look and then provided directions in a quiet voice – walk down the hill for another block, turn right, then first left, then ask again: ‘But be careful who you talk to, citizen.’

  Attilius could guess what that meant and sure enough, from the moment he left the main road, the street curved and narrowed, the houses became meaner and more crowded. Carved in stone beside several of the squalid entrances was the sign of the prick and balls. The brightly coloured dresses of the prostitutes bloomed in the gloom like blue and yellow flowers. So this was where Exomnius had chosen to spend his time! Attilius’s footsteps slowed. He wondered if he should turn back. Nothing could be allowed to jeopardise the main priority of the day. But then he thought again of his father, dying on his mattress in the corner of their little house – another honest fool, whose stubborn rectitude had left his widow poor – and he resumed his walk, but faster, angry now.

  At the end of the street, a heavy first-floor balcony jutted over the pavement, reducing the road to scarcely more than a passageway. He shouldered his way past a group of loitering men, their faces flushed by heat and wine, through the nearest open door, and into a dingy vestibule. There was a sharp, almost feral stink of sweat and semen. Lupanars they called these places, after the howl of the lupa, the she-wolf, in heat. And lupa was the street-word for a harlot – a meretrix. The business sickened him. From upstairs came the sound of a flute, a thump on the floorboards, male laughter. On either side, from curtained cubicles, came the noises of the night – grunts, whispers, a child’s whimper.

  In the semi-darkness, a woman in a short green dress sat on a stool with her legs wide apart. She stood as she heard him enter and came towards him eagerly, arms outstretched in welcome, vermillion lips cracked into a smile. She had used antimony to blacken her eyebrows, stretching the lines so that they met across the bridge of her nose, a mark which some men prized as beauty, but which reminded Attilius of the death-masks of the Popidii. She was ageless – fifteen or fifty, he could not tell in the weak light.

  He said, ‘Africanus?’

  ‘Who?’ She had a thick accent. Cilician, perhaps. ‘Not here,’ she said quickly.

  ‘What about Exomnius?’ At the mention of his name her painted mouth split wide. She tried to block his path, but he moved her out of his way, gently, his hands on her bare shoulders, and pulled back the curtain behind her. A naked man was squatting over an open latrine, his thighs bluish-white and bony in the darkness. He looked up, startled. ‘Africanus?’ asked Attilius. The man’s expression was uncomprehending. ‘Forgive me, citizen.’ Attilius let the curtain fall and moved towards one of the cubicles on the opposite side of the vestibule, but the whore beat him to it, extending her arms to block his way.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No trouble. He not here.’

  ‘Where, then?’

  She hesitated. ‘Above.’ She gestured with her chin towards the ceiling.

  Attilius looked around. He could see no stairs.

  ‘How do I get up there? Show me.’

  She did not move so he lunged towards another curtain, but again she beat him to it. ‘I show,’ she said. ‘This way.’

  She ushered him towards a second door. From the cubicle beside it, a man cried out in ecstasy. Attilius stepped into the street. She followed. In the daylight he could see that her elaborately piled-up hair was streaked with grey. Rivulets of sweat had carved furrows down her sunken, powdered cheeks. She would be lucky to earn a living here much longer. Her owner would throw her out and then she’d be living in the necropolis beyond the Vesuvius Gate, spreading her legs for the beggars behind the tombs.

  She put her hand to her turkey-throat, as if she had guessed what was in his mind, and pointed to the staircase a few paces further on, then hurried back inside. As he started to mount the stone steps h
e heard her give a low whistle. I am like Theseus in the labyrinth, he thought, but without the ball of thread from Ariadne to guide me back to safety. If an attacker appeared above him and another blocked off his escape, he would not stand a chance. When he reached the top of the staircase he did not bother to knock but flung open the door.

  His quarry was already halfway out of the window, presumably tipped off by the whistle from the elderly whore. But the engineer was across the room and had him by his belt before he could drop down to the flat roof below. He was light and scrawny and Attilius hauled him in as easily as an owner might drag a dog back by his collar. He deposited him on the carpet.

  He had disturbed a party. Two men lay on couches. A negro boy was clutching a flute to his naked chest. An olive-skinned girl, no more than twelve or thirteen, and also naked, with silver-painted nipples, stood on a table, frozen in mid-dance. For a moment, nobody moved. Oil lamps flickered against crudely painted erotic scenes – a woman astride a man, a man mounting a woman from behind, two men lying with their fingers on one another’s cocks. One of the reclining clients began trailing his hand slowly beneath the couch, patting the floor, feeling towards a knife which lay beside a plate of peeled fruit. Attilius planted his foot firmly in the middle of Africanus’s back, Africanus groaned, and the man quickly withdrew his hand.

  ‘Good.’ Attilius nodded. He smiled. He bent and grabbed Africanus by his belt again and dragged him out of the door.

  ‘Teenage girls!’ said Ampliatus, as the sound of Corelia’s footsteps died away. ‘It’s all just nerves before her wedding. Frankly, I’ll be glad, Popidius, when she’s your responsibility and not mine.’ He saw his wife rise to follow her. ‘No, woman! Leave her!’ Celsia lay down meekly, smiling apologetically to the other guests. Ampliatus frowned at her. He wished she would not do that. Why should she defer to her so-called betters? He could buy and sell them all!

  He stuck his knife into the side of the eel and twisted it then gestured irritably to the nearest slave to take over the carving. The fish stared up at him with blank red eyes. The Emperor’s pet, he thought: a prince in its own little pond. Not any more.

  He dunked his bread in a bowl of vinegar and sucked it, watching the dextrous hand of the slave as he piled their plates with lumps of bony grey meat. Nobody wanted to eat it yet nobody wanted to be the first to refuse. An atmosphere of dyspeptic dread descended, as heavy as the air around the table, hot and stale with the smell of food. Ampliatus allowed the silence to hang. Why should he set them at their ease? When he was a slave at table, he had been forbidden to speak in the dining room in the presence of guests.

  He was served first but he waited until the others had all had their golden dishes set in front of them before reaching out and breaking off a piece of fish. He raised it to his lips, paused, and glanced around the table, until, one by one, beginning with Popidius, they reluctantly followed his example.

  He had been anticipating this moment all day. Vedius Pollio had thrown his slaves to his eels not only to enjoy the novelty of seeing a man torn apart underwater rather than by beasts in the arena, but also because, as a gourmet, he maintained that human flesh gave the morays a more piquant flavour. Ampliatus chewed carefully yet he tasted nothing. The meat was bland and leathery – inedible – and he felt the same sense of disappointment that he had experienced the previous afternoon by the seashore. Once again, he had reached out for the ultimate experience and once more he had grasped – nothing.

  He scooped the fish out of his mouth with his fingers and threw it back on his plate in disgust. He tried to make light of it – ‘So then! It seems that eels, like women, taste best when young!’ – and grabbed for his wine to wash away the taste. But there was no disguising the fact that the pleasure had gone out of the afternoon. His guests were coughing politely into their napkins or picking the tiny bones out of their teeth and he knew they would all be laughing about him for days afterwards, just as soon as they could get away, especially Holconius and that fat pederast, Brittius.

  ‘My dear fellow, have you heard the latest about Ampliatus? He thinks that fish, like wine, improves with age!’

  He drank more wine, swilling it around in his mouth, and was just contemplating getting up to propose a toast – to the Emperor! to the Army! – when he noticed his steward approaching the dining room carrying a small box. Scutarius hesitated, clearly not wanting to disturb his master with a business matter during a meal, and Ampliatus would indeed have told him to go to blazes, but there was something about the man’s expression . . .

  He screwed up his napkin, got to his feet, nodded curtly to his guests, and beckoned to Scutarius to follow him into the tablinum. Once they were out of sight he flexed his fingers. ‘What is it? Give it here.’

  It was a capsa, a cheap beechwood document case, covered in rawhide, of the sort a schoolboy might use to carry his books around in. The lock had been broken. Ampliatus flipped open the lid. Inside were a dozen small rolls of papyri. He pulled out one at random. It was covered in columns of figures and for a moment Ampliatus squinted at it, baffled, but then the figures assumed a shape – he always did have a head for numbers – and he understood. ‘Where is the man who brought this?’

  ‘Waiting in the vestibule, master.’

  ‘Take him into the old garden. Have the kitchen serve dessert and tell my guests I shall return shortly.’

  Ampliatus took the back route, behind the dining room and up the wide steps into the courtyard of his old house. This was the place he had bought ten years earlier, deliberately settling himself next door to the ancestral home of the Popidii. What a pleasure it had been to live on an equal footing with his former masters and to bide his time, knowing even then that one day, somehow, he would punch a hole in the thick garden wall and swarm through to the other side, like an avenging army capturing an enemy city.

  He sat himself on the circular stone bench in the centre of the garden, beneath the shade of a rose-covered pergola. This was where he liked to conduct his most private business. He could always talk here undisturbed. No one could approach him without being seen. He opened the box again and took out each of the papyri then glanced up at the wide uncorrupted sky. He could hear Corelia’s goldfinches, chirruping in their rooftop aviary and, beyond them, the drone of the city coming back to life after the long siesta. The inns and the eating-houses would be coining it now as people poured into the streets ready for the sacrifice to Vulcan.

  Salve lucrum!

  Lucrum gaudium!

  He did not look up as he heard his visitor approach.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘it seems we have a problem.’

  Corelia had been given the finches not long after the family had moved into the house, on her tenth birthday. She had fed them with scrupulous attention, tended them when they were sick, watched them hatch, mate, flourish, die, and now, whenever she wanted to be alone, it was to the aviary that she came. It occupied half of the small balcony outside her room, above the cloistered garden. The top of the cage was sheeted as protection against the sun.

  She was sitting, drawn up tightly in the shady corner, her arms clasped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees, when she heard someone come into the courtyard. She edged forward on her bottom and peered over the low balustrade. Her father had settled himself on to the circular stone bench, a box beside him, and was reading through some papers. He laid the last one aside and stared at the sky, turning in her direction. She ducked her head back quickly. People said she resembled him: ‘Oh, she’s the image of her father!’ And, as he was a handsome man, it used to make her proud.

  She heard him say, ‘So, it seems we have a problem.’

  She had discovered as a child that the cloisters played a peculiar trick. The walls and pillars seemed to capture the sound of voices and funnel them upwards, so that even whispers, barely audible at ground-level, were as distinct up here as speeches from the rostrum on election day. Naturally, this had only added to the magic of her secret pla
ce. Most of what she heard when she was growing up had meant nothing to her – contracts, boundaries, rates of interest – the thrill had simply been to have a private window on the adult world. She had never even told her brother what she knew, for it was only in the past few months that she had begun to decipher the mysterious language of her father’s affairs. And it was here, a month ago, that she had heard her own future being bargained away by her father with Popidius: so much to be discounted on the announcement of the betrothal, the full debt to be discharged once the marriage was transacted, the property to revert in the event of a failure to produce issue, said issue to inherit fully on coming of age . . .

  ‘My little Venus,’ he had used to call her. ‘My little brave Diana.’

  . . . a premium payable on account of virginity, virginity attested by the surgeon, Pumponius Magonianus, payment waived on signing of contracts within the stipulated period . . .

  ‘I always say,’ her father had whispered, ‘speaking man to man here, Popidius, and not to be too legal about it – you can’t put a price on a good fuck.’

  ‘My little Venus . . .’

  ‘It seems we have a problem . . .’

  A man’s voice – harsh, not one she recognised – replied, ‘Yes, we have a problem right enough.’

  To which Ampliatus responded: ‘And his name is Marcus Attilius . . .’

  She leaned forward again so as not to miss a word.

  A fricanus wanted no trouble. Africanus was an honest man. Attilius marched him down the staircase, only half listening to his jabbering protests, glancing over his shoulder every few steps to make sure they were not being followed. ‘I am an official here on the Emperor’s business. I need to see where Exomnius lived. Quickly.’ At the mention of the Emperor, Africanus launched into a fresh round of assurances of his good name. Attilius shook him. ‘I haven’t the time to listen to this. Take me to his room.’

  ‘It’s locked.’