Robert Harris - Pompeii

“All right. Never mind that.” The boy was only about sixteen—a scrap of humanity, as thin as a stray dog—and Attilius regretted his roughness. “Come on. Get up off the floor. I need you to take me to the magistrates.” He held out his hand but the slave ignored it, his eyes still flickering wildly back and forth. Attilius waved his palm in front of Tiro’s face. “You’re blind?”

“Yes, aquarius.”

A blind guide. No wonder Corax had smiled when Attilius had asked about him. A blind guide in an unfriendly city! “But how do you perform your duties if you can’t see?”

“I can hear better than any man.” Despite his nervousness, Tiro spoke with a trace of pride. “I can tell by the sound of the water how well it flows and if it’s obstructed. I can smell it. I can taste it for impurities.” He lifted his head, sniffing the air. “This morning there’s no need for me to adjust the gates. I’ve never heard the flow so strong.”

“That’s true.” The engineer nodded: he had underestimated the boy. “The mainline is blocked somewhere between here and Nola. That’s why I’ve come, to get help to repair it. You’re the property of the town?” Tiro nodded. “Who are the magistrates?”

“Marcus Holconius and Quintus Brittius,” said Tiro promptly. “The aediles are Lucius Popidius and Gaius Cuspius.”

“Which is in charge of the water supply?”

“Popidius.”

“Where will I find him?”

“It’s a holiday—”

“Where’s his house, then?”

“Straight down the hill, aquarius, toward the Stabian Gate. On the left. Just past the big crossroads.” Tiro scrambled to his feet eagerly. “I can show you if you like.”

“Surely I can find it by myself?”

“No, no.” Tiro was already in the alley, anxious to prove himself. “I can take you there. You’ll see.”

They descended into the town together. It tumbled away below them, a jumble of terra-cotta roofs sloping down to a sparkling sea. Framing the view to the left was the blue ridge of the Surrentum peninsula; to the right was the tree-covered flank of Vesuvius. Attilius found it hard to imagine a more perfect spot in which to build a city, high enough above the bay to be wafted by the occasional breeze, close enough to the shore to enjoy the benefits of the Mediterranean trade. No wonder it had risen again so quickly after the earthquake.

The street was lined with houses, not the sprawling apartment blocks of Rome, but narrow-fronted, windowless dwellings that seemed to have turned their backs on the crowded traffic and to be looking inward upon themselves. Open doors revealed an occasional flash of what lay beyond—cool mosaic hallways, a sunny garden, a fountain—but apart from these glimpses, the only relief from the monotony of the drab walls were election slogans daubed in red paint.

THE ENTIRE MASS HAVE APPROVED THE CANDIDACY OF CUSPIUS FOR THE OFFICE OF AEDILE.

THE FRUIT DEALERS TOGETHER WITH HELVIUS

VESTALIS UNANIMOUSLY URGE THE ELECTION OF

MARCUS HOLCONIUS PRISCUS AS MAGISTRATE

WITH JUDICIAL POWER.

THE WORSHIPPERS OF ISIS UNANIMOUSLY URGE THE ELECTION OF LUCIUS POPIDIUS SECUNDUS AS AEDILE.

“Your whole town appears to be obsessed with elections, Tiro. It’s worse than Rome.”

“The free men vote for the new magistrates each March, aquarius.”

They were walking quickly, Tiro keeping a little ahead of Attilius, threading along the crowded pavement, occasionally stepping into the gutter to splash through the running stream. The engineer had to ask him to slow down. Tiro apologized. He had been blind from birth, he said cheerfully—dumped on the refuse tip outside the city walls and left to die. But someone had picked him up and he’d lived by running errands for the town since he was six years old. He knew his way by instinct.

“This aedile, Popidius,” said Attilius, as they passed his name for the third time, “his must have been the family that once had Ampliatus as a slave.”

But Tiro, despite the keenness of his ears, seemed for once not to have heard.

They came to a big crossroads, dominated by an enormous triumphal arch, resting on four marble pillars. A team of four horses, frozen in stone, plunged and reared against the brilliant blue sky, hauling the figure of Victory in her golden chariot. The monument was dedicated to yet another Holconius—Marcus Holconius Rufus, dead these past sixty years—and Attilius paused long enough to read the inscription: military tribune, priest of Augustus, five times magistrate, patron of the town.

Always the same few names, he thought. Holconius, Popidius, Cuspius . . . The ordinary citizens might put on their togas every spring, turn out to listen to the speeches, throw their tablets into the urns and elect a new set of magistrates. But still the familiar faces came round again and again. The engineer had almost as little time for politicians as he had for the gods.

He was about to put his foot down to cross the street when he suddenly pulled it back. It appeared to him that the large stepping-stones were rippling slightly. A great dry wave was passing through the town. An instant later he lurched, as he had done when the Minerva was moored, and he had to grab at Tiro’s arm to stop himself falling. A few people screamed; a horse shied. On the opposite corner of the crossroads a tile slid down a steep-pitched roof and shattered on the pavement. For a few moments the center of Pompeii was almost silent. And then, gradually, activity began again. Breath was exhaled. Conversations resumed. The driver flicked his whip over the back of his frantic horse and the cart jumped forward.

Tiro took advantage of the lull in the traffic to dart across to the opposite side and, after a brief hesitation, Attilius followed, half expecting the big raised stones to give way again beneath his leather soles. The sensation made him jumpier than he cared to admit. If you couldn’t trust the ground you trod on, what could you trust?

The slave waited for him. His blank eyes, endlessly searching for what he could not see, gave him a look of constant unease. “Don’t worry, aquarius. It’s been happening all the time this summer. Five times, ten times, even, in the past two days. The ground is complaining of the heat!”

He offered his hand but Attilius ignored it—he found it demeaning, the blind man reassuring the sighted—and mounted the high pavement unaided. He said irritably, “Where’s this damn house?” and Tiro gestured vaguely to a doorway across the street, a little way down.

It did not look much. The usual blank walls. A bakery on one side, with a line of customers waiting to enter a confectionary shop. A stink of urine from the laundry opposite, with pots left on the pavement for passersby to piss in (nothing cleaned clothes as well as human piss). Next to the laundry, a theater. Above the big door of the house was another of the ubiquitous, red-painted slogans:HIS NEIGHBORS URGE THE ELECTION OF LUCIUS POPIDIUS SECUNDUS AS AEDILE. HE WILL PROVE WORTHY. Attilius would never have found the place on his own.

“Aquarius, may I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Where is Exomnius?”

“Nobody knows, Tiro. He’s vanished.”

The slave absorbed this, nodding slowly. “Exomnius was like you. He could not get used to the shaking, either. He said it reminded him of the time before the big earthquake, many years ago. The year I was born.”

He seemed to be on the edge of tears. Attilius put a hand on his shoulder and studied him intently. “Exomnius was in Pompeii recently?”

“Of course. He lived here.”

Attilius tightened his grip. “He lived here ? In Pompeii?”

He felt bewildered and yet he also grasped immediately that it must be true. It explained why Exomnius’s quarters at Misenum had been so devoid of personal possessions, why Corax had not wanted him to come here, and why the overseer had behaved so strangely in Pompeii—all that looking around, searching the crowds for a familiar face.