The Wedding Officer

36

JAMES WAS shaving when the seismologist came to see him. Or rather, he was trying to shave: The water supply, always spasmodic, appeared to have dried up again, and the trickle of rusty water that came from the tap was nowhere near sufficient for his needs. Irritably, he started to wipe the shaving soap off. There wasn’t really enough stubble on his cheeks to justify a shave, anyway, something which still irked him—although it had been a revelation that Livia actually seemed to like his hairless face and torso, stroking his chest and back with exclamations of pleasure.

At the thought of Livia his irritation deepened. She’d gone back to her family for a few days, and although he would have liked nothing better than to go with her, conditions in Naples were too fraught for him to take leave just at present. At least she was safer where she was, away from the bombing. There had been a particularly unpleasant raid the previous night, and he was suffering from lack of sleep, to add to lack of Livia and lack of Livia’s cooking.

There was a knock on the bathroom door, and Carlo put his head around it. “There’s a professor here to see you. A man by the name of Bomi. He knows all about earthquakes, apparently. Shall I send him away?”

“No, I’ll see him,” James said, wiping his hands with a towel. “Put him in the office, will you?” It might be useful to get an idea of when the earthquakes might stop. They didn’t seem to worry the Neapolitans, but they certainly disturbed the servicemen, who were never sure if what they were experiencing was a tremor or the first salvo of a German raid.

Professor Bomi was a short, distinguished-looking man in a state of some agitation. He had initially tried to speak to the commander of the airstrip at Terzigno, he explained, and had been referred instead to the commander of the supply depot at Cercola, who had in turn referred him to AMGOT, which had sent him around a dozen different departments, none of which had shown the slightest interest in what he was trying to tell them. And so, by an irresistible process of sifting, he had eventually ended up at the Palazzo Satriano. It had taken him three days to get this far, he said, and now he hoped James was going to do him the courtesy of actually listening to what he had to say.

With an inward sigh James settled himself in his chair and prompted, “So this is about the earthquakes, I understand?”

Bomi shrugged. “Possibly, yes. The earthquakes may be part of it, they may not. Pliny says that there were an unusual number before the eruption of ’79.”

“I don’t understand. What does Pliny have to do with it?”

“You have read my report, haven’t you?”

James admitted that not only had he not read the professor’s report, he had until that moment not been aware of its existence.

“But my report—” The professor checked himself. “Never mind. I’m here now, and you’re listening, that’s the main thing. What my report says, essentially, is this: Vesuvius is becoming active.”

“Are you sure?” James glanced out of the window. The mountain looked much as it always had, although he noticed that the little wisp of smoke that usually hung over the summit was absent. “It looks all right to me.”

Professor Bomi made an impatient gesture. “That’s because we’re eight miles away, and you can’t see that part of the cone wall has collapsed right into the crater. It’s completely blocked. That’s why there isn’t any smoke.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“You have heard of Pompeii, presumably?” the professor demanded dramatically.

“Hang on a minute here.” James stared at him. “Are you saying there’s going to be another eruption like the one that destroyed Pompeii?”

The professore became markedly less agitated. “Well, of course one can’t say that for certain. The last time Vesuvius became active, in 1936, we simply saw some new lava flows—very fine lava flows, as it happens, although they didn’t do much damage. But the time before that, in 1929, one flow reached almost to the sea and destroyed two towns. It’s very unpredictable.”

“And what are you suggesting? Presumably your report makes some recommendations.”

The idea that anyone should actually act on his report appeared to take the professor by surprise. He shrugged. “You must certainly evacuate everyone within twenty miles of the volcano.”

“But that would mean evacuating Naples. You’re talking about dozens—possibly hundreds—of military installations. Tens of thousands of people. Where would they all go?”

“That’s not my concern. I’m just telling you what might happen if they remain.”

“But what are the chances of this eruption you’re talking about actually happening?”

The professor shrugged again. “Who can say?”

James felt he wasn’t really getting anywhere. “Let me put this another way—what is it that makes you think that another Pompeii is more likely now than it was, say, six months ago?”

“Ah. A very good question.” The professor took off his glasses and polished them. “Well, we’ve seen some very interesting portents recently. Not just the earthquakes. There have been some unusual sulfuric emissions. Wells have run dry, or been tainted. This may be a sign of tectonic movements.”

Sulfur. That explained the sour water James had smelt out at Cercola. A thought struck him. “These emissions—could they kill sheep?”

“Possibly. Pliny describes a kind of poisonous miasma close to the ground. Grazing animals would be particularly at risk.”

So the sheep he had thought slaughtered by bandits might simply have been suffering from gas poisoning. “This is Pliny the Younger we’re talking about, presumably?”

“Exactly.” The professor beamed his approval at James’s classical education. “He witnessed the whole thing from his uncle’s boat. Ever since, that pattern of activity—lava fountains, and a great plume of smoke that he described as being shaped like a pine tree—has been known as a Plinian eruption.”

“And if the volcano does erupt, which way will the lava flow?”

The professor threw up his hands. “Who knows? It depends on the underground pressure, the way the land falls, even the winds. Do you have a map?”

James got a map of the area, and the professor showed him where previous lava flows had gone. “San Sebastiano and Massa are the towns most frequently affected,” he explained. James remembered the frozen, black, glassy lava streams he had seen in San Sebastiano. “Then Terzigno, Cercola, Ercolana and Trecase.”

There was an airfield at Terzigno, and Cercola was a military base. “I’d better warn them,” James decided. “What about Fiscino? Is that in any danger?”

“Not especially, but who can say? The one predictable thing about a volcano is its unpredictability.”

For a scientist, James reflected, Professor Bomi seemed to take considerable satisfaction in his lack of knowledge. “And when is the situation likely to resolve itself, one way or the other?”

“Who can—”

“Just give me your best guess,” James added quickly.

“There is some evidence that eruptions are most likely around the time of the full moon,” the professor said reluctantly. “When the tidal pull is at its greatest. The best thing would be to keep the crater under close watch, but unfortunately my observatory has been taken over by the military.”

“Do you want me to see if I can get it back for you?”

The professor expressed such effusive gratitude that James began to suspect that a desire to observe any activity at close quarters, rather than the issuing of a warning, had been the main reason behind his visit. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “But don’t expect any miracles. There’s a war on, and I doubt whether any amount of seismic activity is going to make people stop doing what needs to be done.”

When the professor had gone James went to the window. He had become so used to Vesuvius as simply a picturesque part of the view that it was a shock to remember that it was, in fact, a vast bomb—a bomb more powerful, and potentially more destructive, than any that man had ever devised. Now that he thought about it, there was a kind of brooding malevolence in the way the volcano squatted over the city, like some gargantuan looming stronghold, dominating the lives of every citizen. He felt a momentary twinge of fear for Livia. If it did erupt, what would happen to her? He wished there were some way of getting a message to her, but so far as he knew there were no telephones in her village.

He could, however, telephone the airfield at Terzigno. Eventually he got through to the American commanding officer, who informed him that an entire wing of B-25 bombers had recently arrived there—eighty-eight in all, the largest concentration of air power in the south. James asked if there was anywhere else they could be moved to, and explained about the professor’s warning.

“You’re not seriously saying we should change our dispositions just because some Italian’s got the wind up?” the man asked incredulously.

James murmured that it might be as well to have some contingency plans, just in case.

“Only last week someone wanted us to evacuate because a statue in the local church had started crying,” the other man pointed out. “These Italians are extraordinary. The German raids don’t seem to faze them at all, but if they see two magpies in a row, or there’s a ginger cat sitting on the steps of the church, they’ll confidently predict that the end of the world has started.”

James had little more success with the troops stationed at the observatory, who informed him that the volcano was, if anything, less active now than it had been in the previous few months. “Apart from a fairly unpleasant smell, all’s quiet up here,” an officer told him. “We don’t even get these earthquakes they’re reporting in Naples.”

“When you say a smell—is it sour, like something rotten?”

“That’s right.” The officer seemed surprised. “How did you know?”

“It’s sulfur.” James managed to persuade the officer to let Professor Bomi have one room of the observatory back, but he felt increasingly uneasy about the situation.

He drafted a brief note which summarized the professor’s predictions, together with a suggestion that contingency plans should be made for a limited evacuation of both the military and the civilian population, and submitted it to Major Heathcote. The major’s response, not surprisingly, was an eruption on a scale which, had it been recorded by Pliny the Younger, might well have become known as Heathcotian, in which the words “incompetent,” “foolhardy” and “nothing better to do” featured several times. James was left in no doubt that the major did not consider the professor’s observations to be a military priority.

To settle his mind, he spoke to Angelo, who smiled when he heard Bomi’s name. “Don’t worry, my friend. That professore is always saying that a big disaster is overdue—he’s been saying it for years, to my knowledge. But that’s his job, isn’t it? It’s just like a priest saying that if you don’t go to church the sky will fall in.”

“One day, statistically, he’s going to turn out to be right,” James pointed out.

“Sure, but in the meantime he’s worrying, so we don’t have to.”

There was something wrong with the logic of this, but James had given up trying to fathom the fatalism of the Neapolitan mind.

As he sat alone in his room that night, he could not shake off the thought of Livia, perched up there on the mountain as if on the shoulder of a sleeping giant. If it woke, what would become of her? What would become of all the Vesuviani? It was the most extraordinary folly that led them to repopulate the mountain after each eruption in any case. But that was Italians for you. They lived for today, cheerfully improvising a response to whatever calamities their lack of organization or forethought had brought down on them.

But it wasn’t his way. Abruptly, he pulled a notepad toward him. Bomi had said there would probably be two phases to the eruption, one in which the mountain spewed lava and ash, and another, potentially much more deadly, in which gases and smoke exploded into the air. That meant there would be a brief window of opportunity in which to deal with the situation. First there would have to be a reconnaissance to establish which towns and villages were directly threatened. Trucks would be needed to evacuate the population—no, not trucks, not immediately: The first thing would be fire engines, to deal with burning buildings. Then the trucks could come in—say a hundred of them. There would have to be military police to direct the traffic—perhaps even a temporary one-way system, one road taking trucks up the mountain, another bringing them back…He was making notes on his pad now, compiling a neat list of what would be needed. Temporary HQ…food distribution centers…fresh water…fodder for displaced animals…the list went on and on. People wouldn’t want to abandon their possessions; the army would have to help them load up onto the trucks what they couldn’t bear to leave. And then they must be prevented from going back too soon, by force if necessary. That meant army units, with weapons and ammunition in case there really was a panic. There would have to be temporary accommodation, perhaps in cinemas…. He was planning a battle, he realized, a battle in which the enemy was a force of nature rather than a division of Germans, but the principles were the same. Establish objectives, work out a strategy, organize a chain of command. It was strangely exhilarating.

It was several hours before he was done. His plan was over twenty pages long, meticulously detailed. But it had been, he realized, a complete waste of time. He had become that most contemptible of creatures, a jobsworth; an armchair general, buried in his paperwork. The best that could be said of his plan was that it had filled the Livia-less hours between work and sleep.

He tossed the document onto the floor and put it from his mind.

If she was honest, Livia had to admit to herself that one reason she had gone back to Fiscino for a few days was because she needed to think about what was happening with James. What had started as an affair based on friendship and flirtation—and yes, since she was now being honest, an opportunity to fulfill a long-neglected physical need—was quickly becoming much, much more. It was not only because James was inexperienced that she had insisted on a courtship along traditional lines. She had imagined that by putting a limit on their physical intimacy, it would also put a limit on her emotions. But it hadn’t worked out like that.

Sometimes her growing passion frightened her—not because she didn’t want to fall more deeply in love with James, because that was exhilarating and wonderful, but because she could see more clearly than he could what the consequences might be. And soon, inevitably, she would have to make a decision. Would she be one of the thousands of Italian girls crowded onto the war bride ships, heading off for a new life in a cold, foggy country? Or would she be like Elena, whose self-sufficiency she admired, but who would be left all alone after the war? And what would it mean for her family if she did go back to England with James—for her father and Marisa, and the restaurant, which couldn’t possibly survive without her?

She sat outside on the terrace and talked it over with Marisa, whose view was that she should make the most of it. “You could always start another restaurant in England,” she suggested.

“I don’t think I could,” Livia said. “James says they’ve had rationing for so long, they don’t remember what proper food is. They boil their vegetables for twenty minutes—can you imagine?—and they only eat tomatoes once or twice a year, always raw, in salads. How can one cook for people like that?”

“If you love him,” her sister declared, “that’s all that matters.”

Livia made a face. “It’s easy to see you’ve never been married.”

Marisa threw up her hands. “And when did you become so practical?”

Livia was about to reply when her attention was distracted by a cloud of black, fluttering objects that poured out of the woods above the house. “Bats,” she said, puzzled. “Why are they coming out in the sunlight? And so many of them too.”

Marisa followed her gaze. “They’ve been doing that all week,” she said. “At night we don’t see them, but during the day they come out in swarms and fly over the trees. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Something must have disturbed the caves where they sleep. Perhaps it’s the bombings.”

“Perhaps.” Marisa paused. “Livia, I’ve been seeing things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Fires. Burning. People. I can’t see the faces, but I know they’re terrified.”

Livia caught her breath. “Vesuvius?”

“I don’t know. But have you noticed the summit isn’t smoking? And then there’s Priscilla’s milk.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

Marisa took her into the kitchen, where there was a bucket of water containing the previous day’s mozzarelle and a pail full of the latest batch of milk. Livia tried the mozzarella first. It broke open in her hands as it should do—soft white chunks, as light as bread. But when she put some in her mouth it had a faintly sour taste.

“Sulfur,” she said at once. She tried the milk next. It had the same taint.

“This is last night’s milk,” Marisa said. “This morning, she wouldn’t give any at all.”

“It must be coming up into the grass,” Livia said.

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps something is happening underground, something that has disturbed the bats’ caves, and it’s somehow making sulfur seep out of the ground as well. But I think we should tell someone.”

“Who?”

“I’ll try to get a message to James. He’ll know what to do. We could go up to the observatory—there’s a radio there.”

They set off after lunch, keeping to the woods where it was shady. In addition to the strange behavior of the bats, there were other unusual phenomena. A stream which brought spring meltwater down the side of the mountain had dried up. But farther up the path, a meadow that was normally dry was now soggy and wet, steaming where the sun caught it. And the upupa birds, the hoopoes which normally filled the woods with their bubbling call, were strangely silent.

Emerging from the trees, they followed a goat track that spiraled around the south flank of the mountain toward the summit. Occasionally they crossed black, glittering lava flows from previous eruptions. Livia tried to imagine them as molten rivers of fire, burning everything in their path, but it was impossible. The mountain was simply too peaceful.

It was early evening by the time they finally reached the observatory. It was a grander building than its name suggested, built in the ornate style in which the Bourbons designed all their public buildings, somewhat incongruous here on the summit of a mountain. Beneath them, the bay stretched out to the horizon, and Naples itself looked very small.

The observatory was full of the usual military clutter—radios, binoculars, camp beds, makeshift tables and chairs. As the two girls entered, a British officer got to his feet and doffed his cap politely.

Livia explained why they were there. He listened attentively, asking an occasional question.

“So to summarize,” he said when she had finished, “you think that the behavior of the animals may be linked to an increased possibility of eruption?”

“Exactly,” Livia said.

Emboldened by his interest, Marisa said, “And I’ve been seeing things—premonitions.”

Livia had feared that the officer might be put off by Marisa’s visions, but he only said, “Really? Would you tell me about them?”

Marisa explained what she had glimpsed, and he nodded. “I see. Well, what do you think we should do?”

Livia asked if he could get a message to James at FSS headquarters, and he said that he would include it in his evening report. “In the meantime,” he added, “would you stay and have a drink with me? There’s a bottle of wine around somewhere, and the sunsets up here are spectacular.”

Livia explained that they needed to get back to Fiscino before dark. Thanking him profusely, they left.

When they had gone the officer picked up his binoculars and followed their progress down the track. What a shame, he thought wistfully. He had been sitting up here for tedious hour after tedious hour, scanning the horizon for German planes and warships, and the two beautiful Italian girls had been a welcome distraction. Now that they had gone there was once again absolutely nothing to do. He had no intention of passing on their anxieties to HQ—he knew what the intelligence people would say if he started including that sort of nonsense in his report. There was an Italian professor due to come up here to take a look at the volcano sometime, once his papers had been processed. He’d tell him about the bats. It was just the sort of thing a professor would get excited about.

The girls were almost out of sight, walking in that lovely sensual way Italian girls had. Then they reached a bend in the track, and were gone. The officer sighed, and redirected his binoculars toward the empty sea. It really was a most remarkable sunset. It would be a beautiful night, as well: They were due a full moon.

In Naples, people were more fearful than usual, but only because of the moon. These full moons were called “bombers’ moons,” when cloudless days gave way to bright, silvery nights which needed no flares to illuminate the German aircrews’ targets. Many citizens, fearing the worst, went to the air raid shelters to sleep.

In his bedroom, James stared out of the window at the silhouette of Vesuvius. He had heard nothing from Livia, and nothing from the professor, so perhaps he was worrying unnecessarily. But he could not shake off a sense of dread. Touching his breast pocket, he found the bone the priest had given him in the cathedral. He wished he had thought of giving it to Livia, then checked himself. You’re becoming as superstitious as an Italian, he thought. He closed the shutters and climbed into bed.

He awoke just before dawn to the sound of bombs falling. No, not bombs, he thought; there were no air raid sirens. It must be a summer thunderstorm. A series of deep booming cracks were rolling across Naples, each one collecting its own echoes as it did so, so that after a little while they seemed to become one continuous rumble, punctuated by further booms. But it was a strange time of day for a storm. He went to the window and pulled back the shutters.

Yesterday, the top of Vesuvius had been round, like an egg in an eggcup. This morning the tip of the mountain had been sliced off, and a great bulbous cauliflower of ash gray smoke sat on top of it, glistening in the first faint light of dawn. From here it appeared motionless, but the rolling waves of sound indicated the continuing force of the explosions within. Underneath the ash cloud, the top of the mountain was actually glowing red hot, like a wick inside a candle. Two jagged, fiery trails spilled from the rim. James stared, mesmerized by the immensity of what he was witnessing.

The phone was ringing. He ran through to the office and snatched it up. A distant voice said, “I wish to report some observations of unusual activity in the vicinity of Mount Vesuvius.”

“It’s erupted, you idiot,” he shouted. “Get off the line.” As he put it down it rang again.

“I don’t suppose you did anything about those contingency plans?” Major Heathcote asked.

“As it happens, sir, I did.”

“Now might be a good time for me to take a look at them.”

James went and pulled on his clothes, his mind racing. Eric ran in and headed straight for the window. “Holy smoke,” he said, awed. “It’s true.”

“The first thing is to get out there and find out which way the lava is heading. Then we’ll need to evacuate the area. It’s all in the plan.”

While James dug out his plan and organized a stenographer to make copies, Eric got on the telephone. “They’ve got lava fountains in five different places,” he reported. “Mainly around San Sebastiano and Massa.”

“Can we get trucks?”

“There are forty K-60s at Cercola.”

“Let’s get them moving toward San Sebastiano.”

“I’m onto it,” Eric said, dialing.

“And I’ll go out there and see what’s happening.”

“I’ll come too. We’ll take one of the jeeps.”

“A jeep will never get through the traffic,” James said. “I’ll take the Matchless—it’s quicker.”

“I could get on the back.”

“It’ll make it less maneuverable. And besides, if you come with me I won’t have any room to bring Livia back.” He suddenly remembered. “Oh Lord—there’s a whole wing of B-25s at Terzigno.”

“Should we get them to take off?”

James shook his head. “The eruption could last for days. We shouldn’t move them unless we absolutely have to, or they might end up with nowhere to land. I’ll take a look while I’m out there.”

He ran down the stairs and pulled the motorbike off its stand.