Pompeii
Author and narrator: John E. Potente
The room remained unchanged for many years. It had a musty odor, courtesy of mold that took up residence on the walls and furniture within it. The door and windows were still sealed, confining the stained bedsheets, the dusty cupboard, the proud oak desk, and the leaning bookshelf. There, on the shelf, sat idle, the books. And alongside them, lay some old tapes of the Italian language and albums of photographs that had been seen by few.
The troubled tenant of the second story apartment hung around the room for a while, but went, never to return. The pots and soup spoons waited. The pens rested on papers on top of the desk. The bed, unmade, was still sleeping. The room resigned its expectations to a solitary state, without joy or laughter or quiet conversation. It was a time that the room had to itself, to experience a simple reality of growing old alone, apart from the world outside, of the festivals, the wars and baptisms, apart from the catering halls, the opera houses, the offices, and even the other apartment rooms adjacent to it. It had plenty of time to reflect on its brief relationship with its departed tenant. And to accustom itself to the stillness of the air and the spores that colonized the contents of its space within the four walls.
The room on a hillside in Tuscany took the opportunity, of undisturbed time, to sift through belongings that had been dragged in, one by one, many years ago. The items accumulated and were organized in their own stacks and shelves. During this interlude of years, unoccupied by a living soul, the room raised its awareness of the utilitarian value of each item abandoned, unapologetically, on the countertop. It drifted its attention to the choice of clothing, still hanging in the closet or folded in the bureau drawers. But, most interesting of all, was the desk, with its notepapers, its souvenirs, the photographs pinned to the wall above it, and its books.
The notes, neatly piled in a corner under the lamp, still held the handwriting on them. The paper, with its outdated messages, was bleached by sunlight that snuck through the curtains, and still hosted the India ink that lost its luster. The room had no knowledge of language, the words and phrases had no meaning. But that mattered little. For the room had no want for the many languages that visited it through the years. Its curiosity went straight to the sounds made by voices and the way the ink of penmanship traveled across the pages.
When the voices that visited the room spoke, they gave sounds of comfort or anxiety, or pleasure. It was the voices, themselves, that gave the room the messages that mattered, messages that were exchanged between those speaking in its presence. The voices affected the room. Voices carrying comfort relaxed the room, regardless of the language spoken or even the topic of conversation. Anxiety in the voices jarred the space within the room. It was anxiety that lingered and needed an open window. A favorite voice was that of pleasure. For words were absent when voices spoke of pleasure. It was a universal voice, devoid of speech, where the sounds were of a primordial music that the room understood the best.
When the languages were written by hand, the room ignored the intent of the language. Rather, it was interested in the feelings expressed in the curves and connections between the letters. For the way the hand that held the pen and glided it across the papers was what told the room what it needed to know. Were the curves freely drawn and showing care and relaxation for the travel of the pen and the allowance for the expression of the calligraphy and the full bodiness of the letters? Were the letters tied together in a way that united them, yet gave them individual freedom? Was the final appearance of the written words one of aesthetic beauty that held the admiration of the reader, transferring a feeling of harmony, or was it a hurried script, that had nervous and cursory turns and the isolation of detachment? The room, in its leisure, poured its attention over the notes and noticed that some notes were hastily written, revealing times of stress, while others were written with a fuller artistic flair. No doubt, the author was as proud, at those times, of the craft of writing as much as of the intention that was written. It was the last note written that concerned the room. Gone were patient loops and strides of the letters. Gone were easy strokes that unified the letters at their base. And missing was the graceful flow of ink across the paper. The pen seemed to dig deeper into the cellulose strands of the paper, imprinting a message of abandonment of faith and future.
The souvenirs on the desk were few: a small framed photograph, a college trophy, and a stack of postcards collected from travels abroad. The photograph was perched in a small frame that stood on its own. It had been taken many years ago and was often picked up and gazed at. The room enjoyed the post cards, with their colored images of mountains and monuments and museum artifacts. They lent a sense of worldliness to the room that never strayed from its foundation. Its only access to the cultures and wildlife and news of the world came from the pictures and collections carried through its door and rested on its mantel by the tenant. The college trophy intrigued the room. It was a sculptured symbol of an earlier achievement and recognition, something the room understood.
The photographs tacked to the wall had curled and faded to blurry gray. Never-the-less, the room had known them since they were freshly fastened. Recollections, of the smiles that accompanied the mounting of the paper photographs, pleased the room. Some photographs had telltale pinholes of prior pushpins that held them to another room far away. The hanging photographs were looked at less and less over time, but were studied intensely on the tenant’s last day there. Since then, the room, with nothing better to do, gazed at the photographs daily, recalling memories of the tenant, and reminiscing over them on this fateful day.
Among the books in the room, the one that called for the most attention was “Pompeii”, written and published in 1957 by archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri. The book sat flat on the bottom shelf of a collapsing bookcase.
Inside of its now mildewed cover were the accounts and discoveries of the ancient seaside town, that flourished under Roman rule and was vanquished in two days in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. Over the heads of the wealthy people, in and about their villas, a snow of ash was seen in the sky, emitted from the distant mouth of Mount Vesuvius. The vent in the center of the volcano spit out roasting rock and pumice-gray ash that covered the streets and houses and those that hadn’t fled the carnage. Pompeii was smothered and its lives and accomplishments and culture were consumed by smoldering and suffocating burning earth.
And so, just like Pompeii, the room remained quiet and undisturbed for years with its furniture and cutlery and reading material resting unused and veneered in dust and mold. That was until footsteps and conversation were heard outside its entrance. Suddenly, the door opened. A busy group barged in and the stillness was broken. The mold spores were swept by the swift entry of wind across the room. Among the visitors were the building’s landlord, a real estate agent, and a prospective female buyer. The room had been left in its abandoned condition. The elder landlord didn’t have the means to empty it, and, after a long interlude, hoped a buyer might want the room with its furniture and kitchen cutlery and small library of books that the tenant, who deserted it years ago, had left behind.
The landlord stood by the door and the real estate agent went on about the value of the apartment, of the exceptional view overlooking the hardware store, and how wonderful the room would look after a fresh coat of paint. The browsing woman shook her head in consent, courteously agreeing, as she approached the bookshelf, attracted by a flat-lying book. Of all the books, “Pompeii” called out to be picked up, not so much for the content within it, but rather for its condition. The other books appeared in good condition. But “Pompeii” lay with the edges of its pages stained and bordered by dark fibrous debris. Trails of rounded soil led from the wall to the book. The books with printing dates more recent than that of “Pompeii”, with their chemical additives, seemed to be ignored by the direction of the tiny earthen tunnels. The trails with their fragile tunnels were domed with dirt and minute pebbles. In a thousand different directions, the tiny jaded pebbles turned the refracted sunlight, that dared to enter the musty room, into microscopic fractals of glisten. The tunnel trails wound their way from the foundation of the house, up through the wooden floor joists, onto the plaster wall, across the photos of the departed tenant and into the pages of Pompeii.
As the fragile trails crossed the photographs, their edges curled the inks that gave only faint images of the tenant in his younger years. Within the dark of the dirt tunnels the worker termites passed over the tenant’s history, his proud moments now a disappearing image, as the termites covered over them with fine grains of soil, carried from the yard behind the Italian apartment house. As they continued their construction of the dirt channels, these blind orange-bodied termites were the last visitors to the unmarred memories, captured on photographic print of the troubled tenant of many years ago.
The woman glanced at the trails that coursed across the hung photographs. But was even more driven, by curiosity, to reach for the book, Pompeii, and hold it in her hand. As she put her finger on the cover’s edge to turn it, the front cover came freely off the book and termites ran for cover behind and within what was left of the chapters. The pages and their printed type were eaten away leaving a maze of tunnels and termite topography.
Tiny, and as soft-bodied as they may be, the termites did a formidable job dissecting the parchment and hard cardboard of the book. It was their strong, yet harmless jaws that slowly bit the book apart. They took their time and it was through an organized manner that they went to task. Over photographs of the 2,000 year old amphitheater, the termites scurried, chewing the seats and corridors of the theater. They rambled around the stadium where gladiators once brandished their swords to cheering crowds. Over the shoulders of stone statues, the termites made their next meal. In frenzy, they went through the villa gardens and up the marble columns. Much like the busy Romans, who worked in cooperation to raise the chunks of marble and lay the marble steps, the worker termites toiled in harmony as they peeled the fibers of the monument photographs apart and ate them.
It was a replay of the commotion that filled the galleries, as gladiators huddled and wondered what their fate would be as they faced the open arena. So, too, did the worker termites wonder what was behind each page as they chewed their way through the text. Sightless as they were, they relied on their antennas to tell them what was in front of them. And what danger might lie on the other side of the next page. Eyes would be of no use, anyway, as their lives were lived in the dark passageways of galleries they dug through darkness of the closed book.
Roman gladiators peered over each other’s shoulder to see how the mortal contest was faring in sunlight with their companions. Who was slain? Who survived? The termites spoke to each other with their antenna, passing news from the front entrance of their hidden gallery of any breaches bearing predators, such as ants, or birds, or spiders. It was in the galleries, the dark chambers of activity and uncertainty, that the survival of the amphitheaters and termite colonies depended. The galleries held the gladiators, the muscular combatants, some who were put to the arena as slaves or prisoners, others who were aspirants of grandeur. The termite galleries in Pompeii were filled with foraging workers who digested paper as food for themselves and as food they would feed to their nest mates.
When the cover of the book was opened by the buyer, the termites became alarmed and disoriented. Their scent trails within the book were disrupted as the book lay flat open. While they had no eyes, their sense of smell told them that they were now lost. Where were they to go? They rushed to contact each other and recover the chemical trails that guided them through the maze work they created in the book when it was closed. While the maze may have appeared random, it was well mapped by scented walkways, but they were now muddled by the disarray of their communication system.
Some termites walked to the edges of the pages looking for scent tracks. Others were able to find coworkers to talk to who were equally confounded. There were those who poked their heads up to find their way. And still others who crawled back into holes in the paper pages to scurry through the catacombs to find help. The result was mass confusion amongst the team of termites. A few who were at the broken ends of the dirt trails were able to retreat back into the tunnels and report back to the colony, outside the house, of the disaster that occurred in the book.
As the woman held on to Pompeii, she saw the termites scattering and quickly laid the book back on the table by the wall. Little was left of the book, except for strewn words and jig-saw-puzzled fragments of photographs. The stories of the Pompeii excavations were mined by the hungry termites. The black and white photos of the ruins of Pompeii became remnants of Pompeii’s documentation. Just as the remains of the people and places of ancient Pompeii became nothing but voids in ashen debris, the stories of its archaeological discovery of the home life, theater and gladiatorial barracks became empty spaces in the book.
The pages were eaten to pieces. The photographs were carved into abstracts, and the binding was reduced to strewn fibers of cloth. Pompeii was quickly becoming abandoned by the hungry termites. The mass of termites dwindled rapidly as some found their way back home and others wandered hopelessly off the book. Those that managed to find the scent trail returned to the main tunnels and made it safely to the main colony. And shortly Pompeii was deserted once more, this time in form of a dismantled documentary.
And so the room watched on, as the landlord and agent and prospective buyer walked around the floor. The landlord kept quiet, as the agent talked excessively about the house and how it wouldn’t last long on the
market. The buyer laid down the book and kept picking up the personal items that were left behind by the tenant. When asked why the tenant didn’t take anything with him, the landlord simply replied that the tenant told him that where he was going he wouldn’t need them anymore. They all left the room. The termites went home, the real estate agent left with his client, and the landlord went back downstairs to finish his soup. And the book Pompeii lay open on the desktop in the closed room.
And so life, with its stories and endings, went on. Pompeii was buried in ash and uncovered by archaeologists, Rome fell and rose again as Italy, Amedeo passed away and left his book for history. The tenant had his time in the Tuscan apartment and was never to be seen again. The buyer bought the house with everything in it, and the termites enjoyed the book.
John E. Potente
Costa Rica 2023