Pliny's Warning

by Nicholson, Anne Maria

  ‘He’s always been good at talking to the girls, as you can see Frances. I don’t think you were that scared, Nonno!’ Marcello nudges him.

  Raphaele grins. ‘I was so keen I walked all the way to her village and back again, just so I could talk to her.’

  ‘Were they all walking?’

  ‘Everyone walked! Everyone went on foot. There were no buses or trains or cars like today. You know, people would walk for hours with huge heavy baskets of fruit on their heads to sell them at the market in Naples. We thought nothing of it.’

  ‘So were you together when Vesuvius erupted?’

  ‘Not at first. I was with my friends here. But later, on the last day we watched it together.’

  ‘What do you remember?’

  ‘Everything, it was springtime, the eighteenth of March. It was my mother’s birthday, so I never forgot. They were terrible days. It was wartime and the Germans had been bombing us. The night before the eruption they bombed the middle of the city and hundreds of people were killed.

  ‘The first thing we saw was this red-hot lava pouring down the slopes. We thought at first it was the bombing and that the crater had been blown up. The lava flowed down the mountain and into our towns. On the third day we heard lots of explosions and at night the sky was lit up with burning cinders and we had to keep running away because there were showers of ash. A huge tree-shaped cloud filled the sky. The lava flowed for five days. Many houses were destroyed and all the crops but we were luckier than most. In those days I lived around the corner, with my parents, on the second floor of an apartment. We escaped damage but we lost our grapes and olives and the local church. Most of the houses, including this one, were rebuilt afterwards.’

  ‘How shocking for you.’

  Raphaele laughs. ‘It should have been but I was just a teenager. Me and my friends, we thought it was exciting. We were running everywhere, having fun watching the lava hit buildings and destroy them. We didn’t really understand the terrible blow for the people who lost everything. We were innocents.’

  He shrugs his shoulders and looks at her. ‘It was only when I was older I realized what grief it had caused. There were dozens of people killed, mainly old people. Like me now, I suppose.’ He dabs his eye with the handkerchief. ‘They must have been trapped in their houses and suffocated by the gases.’

  Marcello stands. ‘Nonno, let’s show Frances what’s left of the church.’

  The old man looks at his watch and nods. ‘Yes, why not? It’s still early.’

  The sun is high in the sky as they walk along the dusty street and pass a row of small shops busy with people shopping for lunch. At the town square, a group of men is gathered outside the central café sipping coffee. A woman selling newspapers calls out. ‘Buon giorno, Signor Vattani!’ He waves at her.

  They cross the square and Marcello takes Raphaele’s arm as they climb a steep path lined with houses. Soon they reach the ruins of the old church. Clumps of spindly vegetation poke out from cracks in the grey granite and a flock of small birds flies in and out of the once glorious house of worship.

  Raphaele stares at it in silence. He runs his fingers down one of the walls. ‘I remember this church well,’ he says at last. “The Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, the protector of our town.’

  They follow the old man as he wanders around the outside of the building. The entry is barricaded shut. He turns to Frances. ‘I haven’t been here for years. It brings back so many memories—the processions, the laughter. This is where I met Teresa.’

  He peers inside through a gap in the mortar and pulls back when a bird suddenly flies close to his head.

  ‘We watched the lava coming from over there.’ He points to an apartment building on a street higher up. ‘The building wasn’t there then. It was just a hill. But the lava moved quite slowly so you could find a place to get a good view. The lava flowed straight into the church and smashed it. Everything inside was lost. After it was wrecked, the American and British soldiers were here guarding it. They wouldn’t let us in. Probably too dangerous but we didn’t know it then. We really believed in the power of the Virgin Mary and the saints.’

  ‘And do you still?’

  ‘I have to admit it was dented on that day. But yes, without doubt. Don’t you?’

  ‘I wasn’t brought up in the Catholic faith, so I don’t have those beliefs.’

  ‘Come on, you two,’ Marcello says, ‘let’s finish our philosophical discussions back at the house.’

  As they walk back across the square, a truck loaded with gas tanks is blocking the road. A line of cars builds up quickly behind it. The drivers sit waiting, faces set with resignation. Two women get out of their cars and chat on cellphones.

  ‘You see how difficult it is here to pass through? Just a single small truck can hold everything up. It would be impossible to escape quickly if the volcano erupts,’ Marcello says.

  They stand a moment and watch the truck driver remove three tanks and take them into a hardware shop. A second line of cars has built up in the other direction and nothing can move. The driver returns to his truck, waves sheepishly at the cars and moves on. Gradually, the cars disperse.

  ‘You know, Nonno, we might all have to walk if the mountain goes. That might be the best way out if you have half a million people on the move.’

  Frances locks arms with Raphaele as they walk. ‘Are you afraid of the volcano?’

  ‘Absolutely not! Nor is anyone else around here. I know Marcello doesn’t agree. He’s always on at me to make plans to leave. But at my age, what’s the point? There’s nowhere else I want to go. Anyway, I think it will be many decades before anything happens. These phenomena come in cycles every one or two hundred years and it hasn’t been a hundred years since the last one. The people here are not afraid physically because the lava is slow and takes more than a day to move just one kilometre. It’s hot and destroys everything in its path but there’s time to get out of the way. People who haven’t seen it like me, hear from their father or their grandfather. They’re only worried about losing their houses and property. And we have faith. We believe God will look after us.’

  ‘Faith! Really, Nonno, I’ve told you before that the danger is much greater than the lava flows of 1944—don’t forget Pompeii. That’s much further away than here. These villages could be wiped out by a pyroclastic flow. Everyone would be killed.’

  ‘That’s why we’re relying on you scientists with your good educations!’ Raphaele snorts. ‘You will have to give everyone time to leave. We know about the danger of gas and ash that killed everyone at Pompeii, but I don’t believe the same thing could happen again from one moment to the next. Let’s say the people here are fatalistic and don’t really believe in the danger.’

  When they reach his house, Raphaele invites them back inside. ‘Frances, I want to show you something before you go.’

  She and Marcello return to the table, where Raphaele removes three bunches of the grapes from the bucket and puts them into a paper bag. ‘Here, look at these. Smell them. Taste them.’

  Frances bites into a grape. It is sweet and juicy.

  ‘You ask me if I am afraid of the volcano. These grapes are Aglianico, the oldest in all of Italy. They grow because of the fertility of the mountain. The Greeks and the Romans made wine with them and we have eaten them for more than two thousand years.’

  He chuckles. ‘We have a saying here—carpe diem—seize the day. It’s how people who stay near the volcano live their lives. We make the most of every day.’ He hands the bag to Frances. ‘Take these home. And remember what I told you when you eat them.’

  Marcello and the old man embrace once more.

  Then he kisses Frances on both cheeks. He takes a step back, still holding on to her shoulders. His face is weathered but his skin is shiny and strong and his eyes twinkle. ‘What on earth is there for me to be afraid of? Teresa is waiting for me.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As she rides into t
he centre of the old Roman town of Pozzuoli, Frances can see the tips of three ancient columns rising from the ruins. The day is hot and still and the rows of yachts anchored just off the seafront are barely moving. She edges her motorbike into a spot between two cars parked in the street and looks around. ‘Safe enough,’ she thinks, and with her helmet tucked under one arm and her day pack over the other she walks towards the park leading to the ruins. The second she does, she hears a voice behind her.

  ‘Prego, signorina…’

  A man of sixty or so is at her elbow. His face is burnished from the sun and seems to blend with his old but well-pressed brown suit. ‘One euro. For your motorbike,’ he says proffering his hand.

  ‘You’ll look after it?’

  ‘Of course, signorina. And your helmet.’ He smiles broadly, revealing a dazzling set of white dentures. She passes the coin to the unofficial parking guard and threads the helmet strap over the handlebars, sensing there is no option, and anyway, it’s a safe investment. ‘Grazie.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll be back soon,’ she replies.

  Terraced rows of pink, yellow and white apartments overlook the park on three sides. She strolls across the soft green grass towards a huge sign.

  Macellum of Pozzuoli

  This is the site of the ancient covered marketplace built by the Romans in 200 AD. It was destroyed by the volcanic phenomenon of bradyseism, from the Greek: bradi = slow and seimos = tremor. Bradyseism occurs when pressure exerted by a deep mass of magma below the earth’s crust causes deformation of the rocks above. This leads to the ground rising and then falling. This site is a snapshot of 1500 years of bradyseism in the Campi Flegrei region where the ground has moved many metres up and down and hundreds of buildings have been lost to the sea. When the ground rises quickly, it can indicate an imminent eruption. This occurred in 1538 when the ground rose nearby by five metres and formed Europe’s youngest volcano, Monte Nuovo. More recent movements occurred in the early 1980s, followed by a massive earthquake that destroyed much of this town of Pozzuoli and left 30,000 people here homeless.

  Frances scrambles down a flight of marble steps into the old marketplace. Immediately she can see how far the earth has slumped below the new town. The three tall pillars and a large circular grouping of smaller ones tell more of the past. Each is pockmarked with wide bands of holes from the base upwards. She walks to the tallest pillar and pokes her fingers into the holes. They’re rough and sharp and it’s clear from the markings that they’ve been home to marine life, probably mussels. She looks up. The same markings are high above her. All of this must have been below sea level and has risen again. The ground is muddied from recent rain and she bends over to rub away the dirt and uncovers patches of a mosaic floor. The same black and white pattern of mosaics she saw underwater in the sunken villa at Baia emerges. That was kilometres away. The extent of the destruction of the coastline is far worse than she imagined.

  She scans the apartment buildings around the site, guessing they were built in the last hundred years or so and must have survived the recent earthquakes. As she’s trying to estimate the distance the ground has dropped, her phone rings.

  ‘Where are you? I’m waiting at Solfatara for you.’ It is Riccardo.

  ‘Sorry, I’m on my way. I’m in Pozzuoli looking at the old Roman marketplace. I’ve been meaning to come here for weeks. It’s extraordinary.’

  ‘It certainly reveals the extent of bradyseism and what we’re up against. Did you realize that Pozzuoli is almost at the centre of the old caldera of the eruption of thirty-five thousand years ago?’

  ‘The Campanian Ignimbrite?’

  ‘Exactly, Frances.’

  ‘It’s hard to imagine the whole place erupting here.’

  ‘You won’t feel like that when you come to where I’m standing. It feels as if it could go at any time. How long will you be? It’s really hot here.’

  ‘Fifteen minutes.’

  ‘I’ll be down by the testing equipment in the crater. Follow Viale delle Ginestre and you’ll find me.’

  Frances races up the steps two at a time then stops, pausing to look at the apartment buildings again. How vulnerable they look.

  She walks back to her bike and the parking man is waiting as though he has never moved from the spot. He insists on helping remove her helmet from the handle bars and passes it to her. ‘Were you here when the earthquake hit?’

  ‘Si, it was terrible. Many people lost their homes—so many.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No. My family was spared. But our building was badly damaged. Over there.’ He points to the apartments near the ruins.

  Frances climbs onto her bike and turns to him. ‘Do you worry about it happening again?’

  He screws up his face and laughs, raising his weathered hands. ‘No. What’s the point? What can I do about it? Life, it goes on. Buon viaggio, safe journey, signorina.’

  Following the road northwest, away from the old port, rows of modern apartment buildings mark the new town boundaries. She accelerates as the road rises sharply, then dips again, and steam floats high into the air.

  Soft umbrella pine trees form a shady canopy over the entry to the Solfatara volcanic park, where Riccardo’s motorbike rests against one of the trunks. She parks next to it and as soon as she takes off her helmet the smell of sulphur fills her senses. A breeze rustles through the trees and a short way ahead, swirling steam rises and blends into the blue of the sky. A sign marks the path to the crater and she walks quickly towardsit, brushing against broom bushes covered in yellow flowers that crowd the edges.

  The path opens abruptly into a vast emptiness. Columns of smoke escape from unseen holes and the air is thick with fumes. The size of the crater amazes her—a massive field of stone, denuded of vegetation, stretches in an almost rectanglar shape until it disappears beneath scrubland that rises up the walls. High above, silhouettes of apartment buildings crowd the ridge on one side and spindly pines on the other.

  She scans the barren landscape for Riccardo but can’t see him as her footsteps echo on the hot ground. The tip of a satellite dish rises out of the steam.

  ‘Frances, up here!’

  Following the voice, she sees him examining the dish behind a crude enclosure of chicken wire, the rusty fence contrasting with its bright whiteness. She finds the gate and watches him cleaning a control panel beneath the dish.

  He stops and walks towards her, arms held out. ‘Welcome to the home of Vulcan, God of Fire and Volcanoes. This is the place he called Hades,’ he says as he hugs her. ‘I think you can see why.’

  ‘I wonder what Vulcan would make of all of this gear. And us. Are we the modern guardians of the underworld?’

  ‘The sentinels? Yes, I think so. Come over and look at the dish. This picks up the readings from the reflectors planted around the crater and then transmits the data to a space satellite. From there it’s relayed to our observatory, part of the national network assessing seismic risk. The data we capture here can be downloaded by observatories and Civil Defence agencies throughout Europe.’

  A loud explosion echoes around the crater. ‘It’s coming from the Bocca Grande.’ Riccardo points to a huge spraying geyser in the centre of the crater. ‘Let’s go over.’

  Frances notices the likenesses to White Island, the boiling mud pools and furious steaming fumaroles, spewing out yellow sulphuric fumes. And yet Solfatara is also very different, so much part of old Europe. She glances up at the apartment buildings and wonders how many thousands of people live near the rim.

  ‘This crater was formed maybe five thousand years ago,’ Riccardo explains. ‘There hasn’t been an eruption at Solfatara since the eleven hundreds and in the wider area since the one in the fifteen hundreds which formed Monte Nuovo. But we believe all of Campi Flegrei is getting more active. You saw it for yourself when you went diving at Baia.’

  ‘Do you think it’s as dangerous as Vesuvius?’

  ‘Campi Flegrei is linked by the magna lake
about twelve kilometres below us that stretches all the way to Vesuvius. While a massive eruption there would be a catastrophe for Naples, there’s plenty to worry about here too. This is earthquake central.’

  ‘The big one that wrecked Pozzuoli in the 1980s—what happened in the lead-up?’

  ‘They monitored more than fifteen thousand quakes in the two years prior. It must have been extraordinary, shakes all day and all night.’

  As they walk, their feet sound as if they’re beating a drum. Riccardo picks up a rock the size of a football and heaves it into the air. It booms as it hits the ground. ‘There’re a lot of holes underneath from all the rainwater gathered there. That’s why it sounds hollow…My God, look up there!’ Riccardo is pointing above the apartments. ‘I don’t believe it. Those lying bastards!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Look, the cranes. They’re building more blocks of apartments. They’re crazy!’

  ‘Surely it’s no longer legal to build there?’

  ‘Not if you have the right connections. The authorities know how dangerous it is. And they promised not to after…’

  Riccardo is silent and staring into the distance.

  ‘What? After what?’

  ‘After the deaths.’ Riccardo strides on leaving Frances standing alone, feeling left out of the loop. It’s a sensation she often has in Italy—as a foreigner you’re told half the truth, always left with a feeling that something else is going on. Another agenda.

  He calls back to her over his shoulder. ‘You want to know why people are afraid? Come, I’ll show you.’

  She can feel her heart racing as she follows Riccardo towards the lip of the geyser. Hot water is spurting high into the air. It plops onto the gritty ground and trickles into a bubbling pond.