pompeii

We were given an assignment in my grade nine science class, to write a scientific report on a natural disaster. In my usual fashion, I chose the most unusual topic I could think of, assuming that once the teacher had read twenty-four assignments about the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, my exhilarating report on a 79AD volcanic eruption would be a welcome kindness to his poor, tired eyes. I'm sure I was an annoying child. 

When it was my turn to discuss my draft with the teacher, I pranced (I'm sure I spent much of high school prancing) to his desk and plopped myself down in the hot seat. I was content in the knowledge that, as usual, I had created a masterpiece. The teacher pulled up his knee socks to meet his shorts and grimaced at me. He told me it was a case for total rewrite. He said I hadn't written a scientific report. He said I'd written a horror story. He was right, of course. I suppose fancied myself a horror writer after winning some prize for a wild yarn about a rogue cuckoo. God, I must have been an annoying child. 

But oh, I wish I had a copy of the Pompeii draft to show you, because I seem to recall it began something like, It was a sunny August day on in the idyllic coastal city of Pompeii, Italy, and the merry townsfolk were going about their business, chatting gaily, unaware that an horrific disaster was about to strike their peaceful, contented, honest lives, or some such nonsense. 

Anyway, don't worry. I figured out that a scientific report shouldn't have that many adjectives (it wasn't 'til years later I realised nothing should have that many adjectives). I won the prize for science. Then I proceeded to forget each carefully researched detail of the disaster, along with everything else I learnt in high school. 

Years later I find myself walking around the place I had (gruesomely, vividly, advective-ly) described. My grubby Docs kick up dust. The streets are scattered with skinny dogs and  tourists. I'm sure I'm imagining it, or maybe it's the heat and the salt carried from the ocean, or the dust, but the air feels heavy, like it's mingled with ash. This was a buried city. The awareness of that hangs over me. The whole day I feel like I'm in a tomb that's been opened to the sun. 

I'm acutely aware of the looming presence of Vesuvius. The volcano appears at the end of streets and over the top of buildings. It's a character in the story, the power that buried this city. It has survived long since. It has its own life. It's thrilling to think that it might choose today as the next day. And to wonder if, with all our volcanology and such, we'd make it out in time. I like to think we wouldn't. It doesn't suit Vesuvius to be understood.

The intense sunlight in the city is striped with shadows cast by stone and marble columns. We wander through the temples of Isis and Apollo with a boy we met on the train, and one who joined us at the stand outside that sold leaflets and trinkets. We collect solo travellers like playing cards. One of them seemed to be incredibly well informed about the complex. And about everything else ever, actually. He politely corrects our pronunciation of 'Ceasar' in his gentle Austrian accent. 



We sweat our way through the mummified town. The building that has survived perhaps the most perfectly is the city brothel. The bottom level is lined with small cells, each with its own stone bed. The walls above the doorways are adorned with faded stone images of pleasure. It is (I'm pleased to say) the only brothel I've entered, so I have little comparable material. But it's not particularly romantic. The solid furniture doesn't look very forgiving. It looks like it'd hurt.



Near sunset we walk through a crumbling amphitheatre that rivals the Colosseum. It's huge and still solid. There's only a handful of other people. It's peaceful. And it's different to ruins, really. The whole city is more like an impression, a ghost town. The civilisation was captured at its peak like a freeze-frame, and because of that it doesn't feel so far away.