The Wedding Officer

37

IT WAS the most awesome thing he had ever seen. The sheer scale of it was breathtaking—nature’s vast power effortlessly dwarfing the puny bombs and bullets of mankind’s insignificant little conflict. He did not feel afraid. It was too mesmerizing for that. Rather, there was a strange excitement at the prospect of plunging into the middle of it, of seeing what it was really like.

Beyond Torre Annunziata, at the foot of the mountain, he seemed to enter a dim fog, like an English winter’s evening. For a moment he thought it was snowing; then he realized that the light gray flakes swirling all around him were not snow but ash. Already it was piling up on roofs, dusting the world with drifts of gray. He braked sharply to avoid a woman who was running across the road in her underwear to retrieve her ruined washing from a line. Instantly the Matchless skidded, sliding away from under him. He must be more careful, he thought, as he picked himself up and remounted; he hadn’t realized the ash would be so slippery.

Refugees loomed out of the grayness, pushing their possessions in carts. Individual scenes stood out in the mayhem: a child stumbling along on crutches; a very old man being pushed along by his daughters in a wheelbarrow; a pig and a gramophone crammed together into an old pram. One family were trying to hitch a panicking donkey to a cart. As James passed it threw itself to the ground, toppling the cart and all its contents into the road. He swerved amongst pieces of broken china.

The nearer he got to the eruption, the more chaotic things became. The stream of refugees became a rout, fear visible in their faces as they tried to flee the roaring cloud of smoke and ash which now hung directly overhead, like a giant pulsing coral, its underneath turned pink by the glow from the crater. Below it, the sky was quite dark. The headlight of the Matchless made little difference, clogged as it was with yet more gray ash.

At Ercolano he overtook a slow-moving procession of military trucks. They were the vehicles Eric had ordered from Cercola, hopelessly lost. He offered to guide them, and they followed him up the winding road.

He felt a light shower of sand. For a moment he thought it was being thrown up by the trucks. Then he realized that, in addition to the soft gray ash, tiny black fragments of grit were now falling from the sky—a light, insubstantial kind of stone, each piece no bigger than a match head. Soon this hail of black grit was quite persistent. He felt it tapping against his uniform as he drove, working its way inside his collar and boots. Some of the bigger bits were hollow, like brandy snaps, and glowed red as they fell.

As he rounded a bend he caught his first proper sight of the lava. There were at least two separate streams—tendrils of glistening fire, pushing down to the north and west, their progress through the pine woods marked by trails of burning, smoking vegetation: He also became aware of a rumbling sensation. At first he assumed it was coming from his engine, then he realized that it was actually emanating from the mountain itself—like an unimaginably deep musical note, lower than the lowest organ pipe, so deep that you actually felt it in your stomach as a kind of pain.

On its way downhill one of the streams of lava had passed right over the road, completely blocking it. He pulled up about a hundred yards away. Even at this distance, the heat was immense. He had been expecting torrents of liquid rock, but this was more like a tumbling landslide of hot coals, nearly twenty feet high, juddering silently forward, pushed down the slope by the pressure of yet more coals behind. The lava had a sort of crust on top of it, like the skin on a rice pudding. Presumably it was already cooling where it came into contact with the air. The skin wasn’t static, though—as the lava oozed slowly down the hill, veins of red, and occasionally brighter fissures of brilliant gold, opened up momentarily, revealing the vast heat underneath.

He turned and indicated to the trucks behind that they would all have to use the other road. Anxiety about Livia gnawed at him constantly, but he tried to put her out of his mind. He would go to her as soon as he could, but first he had to make sure that the towns and military bases were being properly evacuated.

In San Sebastiano an extraordinary sight met his eyes. A twenty-foot-high wall of lava was pushing, very slowly, through the town, cutting a smoking swathe through the houses. Within the front edge of the lava James saw tumbled fragments—a tree trunk, glowing red like a lump of charcoal; a stone window frame; even what looked like the incinerated carcass of a cow. Farther back, the dome of a church, somehow detached from the rest of its building, was being carried along by the lava like a saucepan lid on an overflowing river of porridge.

James watched as another house took the brunt of the lava’s pressure. For a minute it seemed to resist; then, with an audible crack, the walls of the house eased away from each other and disintegrated, the stones added to the rest of the coals, the beams and timbers twisting as they burnt, like matchsticks.

The inhabitants of San Sebastiano were kneeling about fifty yards in front of the lava, clustered around a white-robed priest who was holding aloft the statue of Saint Sebastian from the church. The priest was chanting a prayer in Latin, his words almost drowned out by the crackle of flames and the din of the eruption. Many of the congregation had flowerpots or saucepans tied to their heads. James soon realized why: The hail of sand was falling less densely now, but the individual fragments were getting bigger. A stone the size of a fist smashed to the ground directly in front of him, where it lay smoking fiercely. If something like that hit a B-25 it would have much the same effect as a shell from an antiaircraft gun. The airfield wouldn’t have this rock storm yet, he guessed; it would spread out gradually from the center of the cloud, like rain in a storm. If he could get a message to them, they might still get the bombers to safety.

Behind him, the convoy of trucks pulled into the square. “Evacuate everyone you can,” he called to the driver of the first one. “Women and children first. I’m going on to the observatory.”

“Here, take this.” The man offered him a mess tin. James crammed it onto his head and stuck the handle down his collar to keep it in place. He waved his thanks and turned the bike round.

The stones were falling everywhere now. Several bounced off his makeshift helmet, and it was a relief when the observatory finally loomed out of the grayness. More stones clattered and bounced on its roof. Inside, a group of soldiers were crouching around a radio set. “Thank God,” James gasped as he staggered through the door. They stared at him. He supposed he must look a bit of a mess by now, what with the tin clamped to his head. He glanced down at his uniform: It was completely covered in gray ash. “I’m an officer,” he said. “Captain Gould. I need to get a message to Terzigno airfield.”

“Radio’s down,” one of the men said. “There’s been no reception since this thing started.”

“Damn.” There was nothing for it: He would have to go to the airfield himself. He turned to leave.

“Sir?” the soldier asked.

“Yes?”

The soldier spread his arms hopelessly. “What shall we do?”

“Keep trying Terzigno. If you get through, tell them to get their planes into the air.”

He drove back through San Sebastiano, where the evacuation was proceeding in a reasonably orderly fashion. Somebody, somewhere, was evidently implementing the plan: There were fire engines fighting the worst of the fires, and military policemen directing the convoys of trucks, while human chains of soldiers rescued possessions from the houses in the lava’s path. James kept going, taking the road that led around the mountain. The column of cloud was directly above him now, clearly visible through the falling ash. He remembered the seismologist saying that Pliny had thought it resembled a pine tree, but here, underneath it, it looked more like a vast Medusa’s head floating in the sky, her face turned toward Naples.

In front of him, and a little higher than he was, another lava stream was oozing down the mountain. It seemed from this distance to be barely moving, yet it was soon clear that it was actually covering quite a lot of ground. He had the disadvantage of following a winding road, while the lava simply followed gravity and the contours of the landscape. When it came to a sudden drop the lava flowed sluggishly over it, like treacle dripping off a spoon, before resuming its downward path.

He lost sight of it momentarily as he rounded a corner. Another corner…He slammed on the brakes.

Just ten feet ahead, the road disappeared under a red river of smoke and fire. The Matchless skidded from under him. James rolled clear, the mess tin taking some of the force as his head banged the ground, but the momentum of the bike was still carrying it on its side toward the lava. He heard the tires burst as they came into contact with the hot coals. Flames licked at the frame. Desperately he crawled away from the heat. As he did so he heard the petrol tank going up with a soft “crump” behind him.

Slowly he got to his feet. Well, at least he was alive. Apart from the clatter of tiny rocks as they fell to the ground, and that ever-present rumble, it was eerily still.

To get to Terzigno, he was going to have to outpace the lava on foot. He set off at a jog.

In Fiscino, the realization that the volcano was erupting caused the same kind of mayhem as it had elsewhere. People rushed to and fro, frantically gathering together their possessions. As smoke and ash began to spew out of the mountain’s summit, some chose to flee down the road to Boscotrecase. But most stayed, anxiously waiting to see what would happen.

In the darkness, the rim of the volcano could be seen above them, glowing white hot from the heat inside it. Gradually, the glow swelled and spilled over the edge as the first streams of lava began pushing through the woods. One seemed to be heading in their direction, but it was hard to be sure. The villagers redoubled their prayers.

As the hours passed, the lava snaked from side to side during its slow descent, but every time it seemed to be heading away from Fiscino, it would eventually turn and tack back in that direction. Eighteen hours after the eruption started, the anxious villagers could see the lava only a quarter of a mile above them, like a fiery golden road winding up to the summit of the mountain. Now it was possible to say with certainty that it was heading directly for their village.

The sound of truck engines cut through the roar of the eruption. A line of Allied trucks was rumbling up the road from Boscotrecase, their blackout headlights almost invisible in the gloom. The front one stopped, its engine still running, and a soldier leaned out. “We’ve come to evacuate you,” he yelled. “Jump in, capeesh?” He gesticulated at the back of his lorry. “In fretta, molto in fretta.”

A few of the villagers ran to the lorry, where willing hands hauled them up. “Wait,” Livia cried. “If we go now, the village will be destroyed.”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Don Bernardo said gently. “Except pray, and we can do that just as well from a place of safety.”

“We can dig a trench.” Livia looked around. “A moat to channel the lava away. It’s worth a try, isn’t it? It’s either that or let our homes burn.”

“Livia’s right,” Nino said. “We can dig.”

“What about praying?” someone wanted to know.

“We can dig and pray at the same time.”

“We can’t hang around for you,” the truck driver warned. “We have to get on to Cercola. If you want to be evacuated, it’s now or never.”

“We’ll take that risk,” Nino said. The truck driver didn’t wait to be told twice.

The remaining villagers took their pickaxes and spades and climbed to the vineyards above the village. “Here,” Livia said, pointing to a slight depression in the land. It followed the fall of the mountain, but at an oblique angle. “If we can make that deep enough, and wide enough, it might just take the lava to one side of the houses.”

They used sticks to mark out a twenty-foot-wide ditch. “So,” Nino said, spitting on his hands and hoisting his pick.

Livia swung her pickaxe over her head, punching a tiny bowlful of stony earth out of the ground. Could this ever work? She swung again, and again, her pickaxe flashing in the firelight, one of a dozen that rose and fell rhythmically as the people of Fiscino battled the mountain.

They all dug—men, women and children, although there were still precious few of the former. It was slow going. The ground was stony, and the work hard.

As they dug, the sky bombarded them with a hail of tiny stones. Livia looked up to wipe sweat from her eyes and realized with a shock that the lava was now only a few hundred yards away, close enough for her to smell the burning pine trees. “The channel isn’t deep enough,” she said helplessly.

“Get some mattresses. Anything to hold it back,” her father called. She ran to the shed and harnessed Priscilla to a cart, then piled it high with mattresses and furniture. Forcing the terrified animal to haul the load toward the lava was no easy matter, and it was several agonizing minutes before she was able to dump her load against the sides of the ditch. The others were picking up boulders and branches, desperately trying to give the ditch a raised edge.

Above them, the lava reached the fields on the outskirts of Fiscino. It leant against a stone cowshed and crushed it like a box. Fruit trees yards ahead of it ignited spontaneously, the flames roaring through the branches and stripping them, leaving only the blackened trunks for the lava itself to devour. Livia could feel the heat scorching her face, and her throat was dry from the smoke. The heat went from uncomfortable to unbearable in a matter of minutes. One by one, as the wall of lava bulldozed everything in its path, the villagers were driven back from their places.

Sparks danced in the air, thousands of them, cascading onto the village like tiny burning arrows. The hay barn where she and Enzo had first rolled around together went up with a terrible crackling sound, the bright yellow of the burning hay a stark contrast to the deep red of the lava. More sparks poured from the burning roof, and on the ground, fires raced across the dry grass. The villagers tried to beat the ground fires out with spades, old sacks, even their clothes, but the flames were as nimble as cats, scurrying between their legs. They ran to the well with buckets, forming a human chain to douse the fires, but after a few moments there was a shout from someone who had allowed some water from his bucket to splash onto his skin. It was scalding hot. A few minutes later the well itself was dry, a great hissing coming from its depths as the mountain sucked the liquid into its core and breathed back only steam and smoke.

Now we are defenseless, Livia thought to herself.

Then the lava seemed to pick up speed. The wall of fire touched the ditch and paused, hanging there for a second, before spilling down into the narrow trench, filling it. A ragged, exhausted cheer went up from the villagers. Moments later, a red ooze of fire appeared at the trench’s nearest edge and spilled over it. Most of the ditch wall was holding, but a tiny section no more than six feet across had collapsed and was acting like the spout of a saucepan, a rivulet of lava pouring from its rim toward them.

“The cart,” Nino shouted. “Get the cart.”

Priscilla was still harnessed to the cart. Livia helped her father to get the harness off the panicking animal. They put their backs to the cart and tried to push it toward the gap in the ditch. Others joined them. The cart rolled into the ditch and caught fire. The villagers leapt back—all except Nino, who held on for just a moment longer than the others, steering the cart toward the gap.

Suddenly, as Livia watched, her father seemed to burst into light. Flames sprouted from his back like wings, and black smoke gathered around his head. Livia heard a terrible scream, and realized that it was coming from her own mouth. She ran, together with Marisa, to drag Nino clear, forcing herself into the scorching heat as if into a solid wall. They pressed themselves against him to extinguish the flames.

The cart burnt fiercely for a minute, and then that red bulge of fire was surging inexorably over it, gathering momentum as it headed straight for the center of the village.

It was another hour before James reached the airfield at Terzigno, out of breath and exhausted. At first the guards assumed that he was a refugee, seeking medical treatment; it was only when he wiped some of the ash and mud from his uniform that he was able to make them understand that he was an officer, and that he needed to see the base commander on a matter of urgency.

By the time he was shown into the commanding officer’s presence he was outwardly more composed, though his frustration was growing with each precious minute that passed. It was hard to make the man believe that an incipient fall of rocks from the sky was really going to put all his aircraft out of action, and when he had succeeded, harder still to organize eighty-eight aircrews for takeoff, many of whom were not even on call. By the time the first bombers taxied down the runway the hail of light stones had started, pattering down onto the tin roofs of the temporary airfield buildings like a torrential storm and bouncing off the wings of the B-25s as they queued to take off.

“Doesn’t seem so very terrible,” the CO commented, giving James a sideways glance. “Still, better safe than sorry, I suppose.”

“This is just the beginning,” James said. “In half an hour, those stones will be ten times their present size.”

“Well, that should give us—” the commander began. But his words were drowned out by a sudden cacophony as the patter of falling stones turned into a deluge. It felt, James thought, as if they were being buried alive—as though the Nissen hut they were standing in was a very small box in a very large hole, and some giant hand were shoveling huge quantities of gravel on top of them. Speech was almost impossible. Out on the airfield, one more plane managed to take off, its wings visibly shaking under an onslaught of rocks the size of walnuts. Initially the stones bounced on the runway; then the first layer settled and provided a thick, black carpet which absorbed those which came after, rapidly increasing in depth. The planes queuing for takeoff ground to a halt, one skidding wildly as it fought for speed before pitching nose-forward.

The commander opened the door of the hut. Half a dozen stones immediately bounced inside. Quickly closing the door, he bent down and picked one up. “Light as a Ping-Pong ball,” he yelled. Then he let it fall from his fingers. “Blast! It’s hot.” Across the airfield, the crews of the stranded B-25s were sprinting for the safety of the buildings, their arms raised over their heads against the pummeling rocks.

“Do you have a vehicle I can take?” James yelled. “I need to get back up the mountain.”

The base commander looked at him as if he were mad. “Why?” he shouted.

“There are some civilians I have to check on.”

The base commander waved his arm at the black deluge of clinkers. “You must be joking. You won’t get ten yards. Nothing could get through this lot.”

“I still need to try.”

The commander shook his head. “You’re not going anywhere until this is over. That’s an order.”

There was little the villagers could do now except wait for the lava’s approach. They made a stretcher to carry Nino, mercifully unconscious, to safety, where Marisa cleaned up the scorched, withered flesh as best she could. Even his breathing was painful, as though he had sucked the flames deep into his lungs. Then they organized a human chain to rescue the most precious possessions from the houses that were threatened. Livia saved from the osteria a couple of mattresses, clothes, some of Marisa’s medicines and the serving dish that had belonged to Agata’s own mother, which she had always used to serve the Sunday ragù.

It took twenty minutes for the lava to travel the last two hundred yards. First the vines on the terrace caught fire, the leaves withering in the immense heat as if vaporized. Then the doors and window frames of their neighbor’s house burst into flame. The lava nudged a corner of the osteria, and rolled up alongside it as if against a bank. For a moment it seemed as if the building might actually withstand the lava; then the juddering and jiggling of those hot coals, as big as boulders, seemed to pass into its fabric. It, too, juddered and shook; the roof splintered and capsized; the lava wrenched the kitchen wall from its foundation. It came cascading down in a tumble of stones and furniture, all of which fell into the blaze as the lava continued on its inexorable way downhill.

Minutes later the hail of light stones from the sky suddenly turned heavier, carpeting everything—the lava, the burning building, the woods, the watching villagers—with a thick layer of clinkers. The villagers were forced indoors, but there was one small mercy: Like shoveling sand onto a fire, the flames of the burning buildings were instantly smothered by the all-enveloping grit.

Standing in the doorway of a neighbor’s house, watching, Marisa put her arm around Livia. “We did all we could,” she said gently. “Now we need to look after our father.”