Conor Fitzgerald - The Namesake

Blume, fed up with driving, decided Konrad was sober enough to get back in the driver’s seat. This seemed to cheer the BKA man up somewhat. He disappeared into the back of the camper and emerged with a packet of wholemeal biscuits and black Vollkornbrot, a piece of which he offered to Blume. Blume declined the bread and pointed instead to Konrad’s SatNav. ‘Use your navigator to get us out of here and plot a route to the hotel. Put in Campi Flegrei to Positano, see if it forces us to pass through the middle of Naples, which it probably will.’

Konrad was pleased to do this, and they were soon on their way again, bouncing down a crumbling lane, branches scraping the sides of the van. By Blume’s reckoning the pointless expedition to Lake Avernus, a place far below Konrad’s classicist expectations, had cost them no more than an hour and a half.

After ten minutes of driving, Blume stopped believing the SatNav and told Konrad to take a left, then another. The SatNav announced that it was recalculating, and then instructed them to go right where no right was to be seen. Blume realized they must have missed a turn, and were now heading inland, away from the Naples Tangenziale.

Konrad, who had maintained a beautiful silence all this time, now stopped dead in the middle of a crossroads and read out the road signs: ‘Quarto, Manano. We are in Campi Flegrei now, I think… where is Pozzuoli? It must be behind us.’ He pulled the camper to the side of the road.

‘That’s your stupid navigator for you.’

‘I have very good orienteering skills, but I need to be outside the vehicle,’ said Konrad.

‘No, you stay there. I’ll do this,’ said Blume. He got out of the camper van and stood on the bonnet to see over the hedges. He caught a glimpse of the sea, which was enough. If they headed that way, they couldn’t go wrong.

Konrad got out too.

‘No, you get back in. I don’t want advice from you or your navigator.’

Konrad stayed where he was. ‘I got out because I think your reckless driving damaged the engine,’ he said. ‘I think it is beginning to overheat.’

Blume had noticed the burning smell, too, but had put it out of his mind. He sniffed at the bonnet. Nothing.

‘I think it’s coming from somewhere over there,’ he said. ‘Someone is burning stubble in a field.’

Konrad tilted his head back and sniffed. ‘It is melting plastic,’ he announced. ‘Naples is famous for this sort of behaviour. But perhaps it is a house?’

‘It’s not.’

‘You will run that risk?’

‘More of a risk for whoever’s in the house than for me.’

‘That’s your attitude?’

‘Jesus. Look, I’ll show you it’s not a house. Come on.’

The pair of them walked in the direction of the smoke, now getting thicker and yellower and sweeter. It reawakened Blume’s headache.

‘There,’ said Blume, pointing. ‘Someone is burning plastic in a field.’

‘Like that, in broad daylight. In front of neighbours,’ marvelled Konrad. ‘In Germany…’

‘This isn’t Germany,’ said Blume.

‘No. In Germany we have a society and the law is the same for everyone. Gesellschaft is the word. Here it is all Gemeinschaft. The law is not equal and justice is achieved through private channels.’

They had reached the edge of the field, on the far side of which a pile of plastic sacks was smouldering. There were houses about, but no one in sight. Blume waved his hand at the dreary dump and said, ‘Satisfied?’

‘If we were in Germany and I was showing you my country, and we discovered something like this, I would intervene as a policeman.’

Blume clambered over some woody briars and stood at the edge of the field, watching the white and yellow plumes of poison floating straight up, until a breeze from the sea caused them to swirl and drift towards him. He covered his mouth and nose with his arm and walked forwards. There was no one about, and there was no way of knowing to whom the field belonged. The wind changed direction again and blew the air clean, allowing him to breathe and see better. He could probably stamp on the smouldering heap and put it out.

He turned back and looked at Konrad, who had moved closer to the camper van. Another stream of air from the sea lifted up a new type of blacker and harsher smoke, smelling of diesel fumes, which clung to the ground, turning over and over on itself. Fuck this, he thought to himself, and turned back.

A sudden dull thump made him look around as, fanned by a crosswind, the rubbish heap burst into orange flame. The heavy oily smoke merged with the faster-moving yellow clouds to create an opaque fog that billowed outwards and upwards, far higher and faster than the quantity of material seemed to justify. There was no question now of approaching to investigate. If the blaze became any more intense, maybe one of the neighbours, or the arsonist himself, would call the fire brigade and ask them to save his house. If they turned up too late, he would appear on national television to denounce the government authorities for his misfortunes.

The subsiding black soil in the middle of the flame seemed to writhe and emit a hissing and screeching sound. As Blume stood fascinated, something scampered across the top of his shoe, and a moment later another object, soft but with compact mass and moving at speed, knocked against his ankle.

Blume felt his flesh tighten against his bones. Fleeing rats, many of them, were rushing towards him, escaping the fire and smoke. The writhing mass on the ground was almost upon him, as he broke into a run.

He was far too late to escape the living tide. Hundreds of rats overtook him, fanning out in front of him as if he were the pursuer and they the pursued. As he drew near the camper, gathering pace all the time, he saw Konrad leap in and slam the driver’s door behind him and vanish.

Faster rats from behind mounted the backs of the slower ones in front, sometimes leapfrogging them, sometimes tumbling in the process, causing a pile-up, into which other rats would run until three or four of them stacked on top of each other, momentarily as high as his kneecaps.

Konrad was invisible, still deaf to his appeals, so Blume adjusted his flight and headed for the side of the camper van, which he hit at full speed. The door was unlocked, but he had to stop and pull it outwards. He jumped in and kicked it closed, but had the feeling that something else had leapt in with him. He surveyed the floor, the walls, and thought he saw a movement near Konrad’s suitcases. Well, one or two rodents wasn’t a problem. He shoved his head through the curtain separating him from the cab, where Konrad lay across the two seats, as white as if he were dead. When Blume appeared, Konrad let out a low moan of abject terror, before making a slight recovery, edging himself out of his prostrate position into one that was merely slumped.

‘Keys,’ demanded Blume, climbing with difficulty through the gap and into the front.

Konrad started fumbling around in his pockets. The soft thuds against the side of the camper and the dancing and trembling sensation from the ground beneath were like heavy rain. Blume manoeuvred himself into the driver’s seat. Konrad was now waving the keys in front of him, but Blume was staring transfixed out the window. The rats had gone already, and the sea wind had snatched the toxic smoke and whipped it away into the clouds to poison the raindrops.

Blume, still pumping adrenalin and overcome with a desire to laugh and whoop, found it difficult to keep his hands steady as he inserted the key in the ignition, and started the engine. He turned the steering wheel slowly, to give any lurking rodents a chance to escape. He did not want to spare them, but he did not quite relish the idea of driving over their hunched grey backs like they were furry cobblestones. As he reversed he felt a suspicious bump under a wheel, then another.