Robert Harris: Pompeii

He went into the stores, dropped his tools on the earth floor, and rotated his aching shoulder, then wiped his face on the sleeve of his tunic and reentered the yard just as the others trooped in. They headed straight for the drinking fountain without bothering to acknowledge him, taking turns to gulp the water and splash their heads and bodies—Corax, then Musa, then Becco. The two slaves squatted patiently in the shade, waiting until the free men had finished. Attilius knew he had lost face during the course of the day. But still, he could live with their hostility. He had lived with worse things.

He shouted to Corax that the men could finish work for the day, and was rewarded with a mocking bow, then started to climb the narrow wooden staircase to his living quarters.

The yard was a quadrangle. Its northern side was taken up by the wall of the Piscina Mirabilis. To the west and south were storerooms and the administrative offices of the aqueduct. To the east was the living accommodation: a barracks for the slaves on the ground floor and an apartment for the aquarius above it. Corax and the other free men lived in the town with their families.

Attilius, who had left his mother and sister behind in Rome, thought that in due course he would probably move them down to Misenum as well and rent a house, which his mother could keep for him. But for the time being he was sleeping in the cramped bachelor accommodation of his predecessor, Exomnius, whose few possessions he had had moved into the small spare room at the end of the passage.

What had happened to Exomnius? Naturally, that had been Attilius’s first question when he arrived in the port. But nobody had had an answer, or, if they had, they weren’t about to pass it on to him. His enquiries were met by sullen silence. It seemed that old Exomnius, a Sicilian who had run the Augusta for nearly twenty years, had simply walked out one morning more than two weeks ago and had not been heard of since.

Ordinarily, the department of the Curator Aquarum in Rome, which administered the aqueducts in regions one and two (Latium and Campania) would have been willing to let matters lie for a while. But given the drought, and the strategic importance of the Augusta, and the fact that the senate had adjourned for its summer recess in the third week of July and half its members were at their holiday villas around the bay, it had been thought prudent to dispatch an immediate replacement. Attilius had received the summons on the ides of August, at dusk, just as he was finishing off some routine maintenance work on the Anio Novus. Conducted into the presence of the Curator Aquarum himself, Acilius Aviola, at his official residence on the Palatine Hill, he had been offered the commission. Attilius was bright, energetic, dedicated—the senator knew how to flatter a man when he wanted something—with no wife or children to detain him in Rome. Could he leave the next day? And, of course, Attilius had accepted at once, for this was a great opportunity to advance his career. He had said farewell to his family and had caught the daily ferry from Ostia.

He had started to write a letter to them. It lay on the nightstand next to the hard wooden bed. He was not very good at letters. Routine information— I have arrived, the journey was good, the weather is hot—written out in his schoolboy’s hand was the best he could manage. It gave no hint of the turmoil he felt within: the pressing sense of responsibility, his fears about the water shortage, the isolation of his position. But they were women—what did they know?—and besides, he had been taught to live his life according to the Stoic school: to waste no time on nonsense, to do one’s job without whining, to be the same in all circumstances—intense pain, bereavement, illness—and to keep one’s lifestyle simple: the camp bed and the cloak.

He sat on the edge of the mattress. His household slave, Phylo, had put out a jug of water and a basin, some fruit, a loaf, a pitcher of wine, and a slice of hard white cheese. He washed himself carefully, ate all the food, mixed some wine into the water, and drank. Then, too exhausted even to remove his shoes and tunic, he lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and slipped at once into that hinterland between sleeping and waking that his dead wife endlessly roamed, her voice calling out to him—pleading, urgent: “Aquarius! Aquarius!”

His wife had been just twenty-two when he watched her body

consigned to the flames of her funeral pyre. This woman was younger—eighteen, perhaps. Still, there was enough of the dream that lingered in his mind, and enough of Sabina about the girl in the yard for his heart to jump. The same darkness of hair. The same whiteness of skin. The same voluptuousness of figure. She was standing beneath his window and shouting up.

“Aquarius!”

The sound of raised voices had drawn some of the men from the shadows and by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs they had formed a gawping half-circle around her. She was wearing a loose white tunica, open wide at the neck and sleeves—a dress to be worn in private, which showed a little more of the milky plumpness of her bare white arms and breasts than a respectable lady would have risked in public. He saw now that she was not alone. A slave attended her—a skinny, trembling, elderly woman, whose thin gray hair was half pinned up, half tumbling down her back.

She was breathless, gabbling—something about a pool of red mullet that had died that afternoon in her father’s fishponds, and poison in the water, and a man who was being fed to the eels, and how he must come at once. It was hard to catch all her words.

He held up his hand to interrupt her and asked her name.

“I am Corelia Ampliata, daughter of Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, of the Villa Hortensia.” She announced herself impatiently and, at the mention of her father, Attilius noticed Corax and some of the men exchange looks. “Are you the aquarius?”

Corax said, “The aquarius isn’t here.”

The engineer waved him away. “I am in charge of the aqueduct, yes.”

“Then come with me.”

She began walking toward the gate and seemed surprised when Attilius did not immediately follow. The men were starting to laugh at her now. Musa did an impersonation of her swaying hips, tossing his head grandly: “ ‘Oh, aquarius, come with me!’ ”

She turned, with tears of frustration glinting in her eyes.

“Corelia Ampliata,” said Attilius patiently and not unkindly, “I may not be able to afford to eat red mullet, but I believe them to be seawater fish. And I have no responsibility for the sea.”

Corax grinned and pointed. “Do you hear that? She thinks you’re Neptune!”

There was more laughter. Attilius told them sharply to be quiet.

“My father is putting a man to death. The slave was screaming for the aquarius. That is all I know. You are his only hope. Will you come or not?”

“Wait,” said Attilius. He nodded toward the older woman, who had her hands pressed to her face and was crying, her head bowed. “Who is this?”

“She’s his mother.”

The men were quiet now.

“Do you see?” Corelia reached out and touched his arm. “Come,” she said quietly. “Please.”

“Does your father know where you are?”

“No.”

“Don’t interfere,” said Corax. “That’s my advice.”

And wise advice, thought Attilius, for if a man were to take a hand every time he heard of a slave being cruelly treated, he would have no time to eat or sleep. A seawater pool full of dead mullet? That was nothing to do with him. He looked at Corelia. But then again, if the poor wretch was actually asking for him . . .

Omens, portents, auspices.

Vapor that jerked like a fishing line. Springs that ran backward into the earth. An aquarius who vanished into the hot air. On the pastured lower slopes of Mount Vesuvius, shepherds had reported seeing giants. In Herculaneum, according to the men, a woman had given birth to a baby with fins instead of feet. And now an entire pool of red mullet had died in Misenum, in the space of a single afternoon, of no apparent cause.