Living Memory, Dead City

The boy watched as the ground shuddered, groaned and quaked as it teetered on the precipice of rupture. The reverberations seemed to liquify the steadfast stone structures while trees teetered precariously on the slopes in the distance. He was too young to grasp the perilousness of the situation; too young to comprehend that he too would soon be a victim of not just mother nature but also of the hubris of man. As he watched, the earth seemed to splutter much like a smoker whose lungs no longer withstood the punishment it had endured. And yet he rode the tremors and watched in awe - too captivated to realize that it would soon be too late to run, too late to hide and much too soon to die. 

The image flickered as if the tape had jammed and for an instant it was a cacophony of white noise through which the boy glimpsed the monochromatic aftermath of the tragedy. The tourists had left, taking with them fast fading memories of the novelty they embraced in what was a macabre tragedy - bodies splayed over worktops, counters, steps and even the streets frozen for eternity. The silence spoke louder — almost a mockery of the moments before they had been engulfed — the boy not comprehending why the adults prayed for death while caught in the fear of dying. The city today was a graveyard of lost souls - littered with reaching hands and ashen forms displayed like sculptures in a garden for misguided hope. 

The boy saw colour again as he weaved through cobbled stone streets avoiding the cart ruts from memory alone. The forum had been thriving at daybreak as was its norm. The rich indulged at the Stabian Baths while the locals availed themselves to simple pleasures of fresh-baked bread and children laughed in innocent play. He basked in the sounds and aromas that made up the melody of the day and the sweet perfume of the morning. The boy remembered naught anymore of the reason for his crinkled smile - only that he did. The atmosphere had been electric; elated even, as throngs made their way to the amphitheater - the prospect of blood sport lending fire to their veins. Little did they know of the fires that would soon turn all-consuming. 

It had happened then - the thunder from the earth. He recalled watching with fascination as an ashen umbrella had bloomed atop the mountain like a peculiar mushroom after a rainy day. Like a tree the pillar had climbed to the billowy white clouds above before seeming to lose its determination and collapsing in on itself, spreading outwards towards them. It had rained then - soft billowy flakes of crumbling ash. The sky had turned grey, and he could not smell the bread anymore. It was in his mouth, his eyes, his hair and it stung, smelled and soured his mouth as he wandered blindly. He knew not what he was to do, where he was meant to go, how he was to avoid this unsavory blizzard.

The boy watched as the curious eyes around him morphed into fear. There was desperation that clouded those eyes, tears that cascaded down dusty cheeks and wails that had begun to wring out from the walls around him. The cheerful chatter was replaced by hoarse coughing and yet he did not understand what they had grasped. Women rushed to gather their jewels, mothers ran to collect their children and husbands hurried to their tools even as the roofs crumbled under the sheer weight of the pumice that had since accumulated atop them. . 

Even as the boy frantically tried to shake off the grey soot that seemed to be everywhere he didn't know that there were far worse prospects ahead. The cloud had been the opening act to the crescendo of the main event. Like a racehorse unleashed at the tracks the pyroclastic flows flowed with no hesitation over sloping terrain to the city beneath. The boy did not see it coming - blinded still by the ashes but he would not have known what it entailed. In the distance wails had turned into screams. He was coughing now. The air felt hot and heavy. He stumbled past both rich and poor humbled and on their knees gasping desperately for air. In the distance there were screams. He understood then - instinct recognizing the primal fear that carried in the voices of his kin before they were abruptly cut off as if they had been extinguished. 

Fear lent him strength as the boy followed the crowds down cobbled streets, no longer able to avoid the cart ruts, stumbling clumsily as they rushed out to the beach. Those who could not muster the strength lay down where they were while some sheltered or bent to pray. They were soon buried or suffocated by the debris or deadly fumes. The slower more thicker flows that followed immediately after, along with mudslides combined together with an incredible power to destroy. 

The salt water was a welcome respite from the scorching heat that seemed to cling to their skin, but the water was not their friend. The choppy seas and compromised boats marooned them while those who ventured out in their boats were soon claimed by the uncooperative waves. The boy remembers clinging and being clung to by strangers, united in a shared comradery borne out of fear. The sea seemed to mock them, their mouths parched and tongues rough and swollen in their mouths. A night they spent in the water, desperately grasping at the hope that it wasn't their last night alive. In the distance broad sheets of flame were lighting up many parts of the city, their light and brightness more vivid in the darkness of the night. 

Even as daylight approached the darkness was darker and thicker than any night. Those of whom balanced torches above the water soon saw them flicker ominously. Then came the smell of sulfur. The second rain of ash arrived thicker and faster and those with weak lungs choked on the very air they could not help but draw in. Hundreds of maybe thousands perished that way. The boy remembers crawling along the beach but instead of sand it was the hateful grey powder that clung to his palms. The sea itself seemed subdued by a blanket that floated on its surface. Far above them the sun struggled to make its presence known through the dense clouds and it see that nature was competing against itself. But to the boy it mattered not as he too soon welcomed the blissful oblivion that followed the pain. 

When he next awakened, it was to witness the plunder of the city he no longer recognized. Nature had cared not for caste or creature - laying waste to the city from the largest villas to the humble home. He watched as scavengers chipped away at the frozen figures and imagined that they were trying to free them from the casts that nature had encased them with. The boy was not sad. He had lived his life with no grand aspirations and had little to mourn. What was to people today a monument of history meant nothing to him anymore and he cared not why they chipped at the tiles with greedy gazes. 

Forevermore a victim of Vesuvio, the boy was a memory from a time past, an echo trapped in the hollow shell of a city, who was destined to walk the winding streets unheard and unseen. If you asked the boy of his experience, he would recant tales told by mothers whispering in the candlelight under covers of the blacksmith Vulcun residing in the depths of his fiery forge beating out thunderbolts for Jupiter, the king of gods and weapons for Mars, the god of war. While those who visited his city sympathized not with the tragedy that had befallen the boy they empathized with the fear of the threat of facing a similar eruption. A wise man of the time, Pliny the elder had written in his letter that “Grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened, but we fear all that possibly may happen.”