He had fallen almost entirely upon one great carpet. Experimentally, I lifted a corner and tried to drag it. His weight was immense, but a power was upon me. Somehow, I hauled my father though the doorway and along the corridors which I had come, and thence out into the open courtyard that contains the villa’s well. There is no lip, and the aperture, once I had removed the iron grating, is wide and square. And deep also, so that I could never catch the glimmer of water when I peered down it as a child, nor be sure, when I cast a surreptitious stone, that the faint splash I finally heard wasn’t simply the chattering of birdsong in the near woods. Yet for all of that, I almost doubted that my father would fit into the well. His gross limbs sprawled out as I heaved him off the carpet, snagging on the topmost stones even as the rest of him slid into it. I was forced, like a midwife in reverse, to work and push at his slick flesh until the last part of him gave way. Even then, he was slow in his descent down the dank sides of mossy stone. There was even a moment, looking down, when I was sure I saw the pale glint of movement as he began to climb back out. But then there was a great sound of ripping and sliding, and a gust of foul air as the last of his body’s resistance gave way. That night, I truly did hear a thickly echoing splash as my father’s body finally struck water.
I dragged the carpet back to his quarters, and left the place otherwise as it was, in disarray, and with the well’s iron grating removed. In what remained of the darkness, and unseen by all but the creatures of the night, I rode off toward the hills.
That, my reader, almost marks the end of this bitter little story. I dwelt the next night at a roadside inn, and spoke loudly of how I was heading toward Naples from Rome. I arrived once again at the villa the next noon, to find much commotion. A day-woman’s efforts to draw water had already revealed my father’s presence, and local workmen were already laboring to extract him.
Too swollen to be recovered whole, my father was being hauled up in pieces. It was easy enough for me to display shock and surprise; and secretly to note as the glistening lumps of his body rose out on ropes how well the evidence of our struggles had been obliterated. As to the chaos of empty jars and broken caskets, I was able to offer an explanation that was all too easily borne out by a subsequent inspection of the family accounts: driven by penury and the thought of the loss of our family’s great name, my father had chosen to kill himself. Would, I thought in darker moments as I pondered my future, that he had followed the tradition of older time in such matters, and also killed me.
Once the initial labors and inquiries had finished and a show had been made of grieving, it seemed wise to seek a posting in some distant place before my creditors began to regather—which, by a long route, brings me back here to Cul Holman, to this night where the darkness still hangs, and there is a windless creaking tension. From somewhere, I sense a faint smell of burning, and my body seems to
What was that?
I saw a scorpion scuttle across the floor beside me, and then another. Several moths and gaudy insects have flown out from the window into the darkness instead of, as is their nature, toward the light. A rustling stream of cockroaches have made their way toward some crack in the wall that I do not remember seeing. And now there is silence. At last, even Konchab’s dogs have ceased their barking. In this stillness, the earth seems to hold her breath. From somewhere comes the smell of burning. Looking behind me for a poorly trimmed lamp, I see that all the flames hang still as amber beads—and give as little light. Yet upon the starstones, there lies an intricate pattern of fine silver lines. Oddest of all, clear and almost reassuring amid this blackness, a grey stream of smoke is rising from the sides of my trunk.
I must
There marks a fitting end to that night’s journal, and to the much that has happened since. I assure you, dear reader, that I am still alive and well. Indeed, I am well and wealthier than I could ever have expected.
I should have realized that the dense silence and other strange portents at Cul Holman signaled more than a mere storm. Indeed, I am somewhat angered that Konchab, Taracus, and Alathn, with their greater knowledge of this place, did not see fit to warn me. But they also professed innocence at the greatness of what was to occur, and I am currently in a mood to forgive them.
If, as Virgil contends, earthquakes truly are the restlessness of giants sleeping deep beneath the earth, then what has occurred here must have been caused by the greatest of them all. I can smile now at my unreasoning fear as the world shook loose from her anchors, as the walls that sheltered me moved and the villa’s roof rattled in a rain of tiles, whilst from the darkness beyond came a massive groaning and rumbling that deafened the ears and sickened the belly. A strange glow seemed to rise. The stifled flames of the lamps suddenly spat great tongues of spark. Veins of fire ran along the walls and floor—even through my hands as I looked down at them. After all the portents and horrors I have been subjected to, I truly believed that the universe was coming apart, to be replaced by—I know not what.
But, in echoes and groans, the rumbling slowly died, and then, for the first time that night, fading as if already from some long way off, came the piping and whistling of the wind, to be replaced as it, in turn, died, by the screams of the slaves, and the hiss and clatter of settling dust and masonry.
Dawn came then, as if the sun finally had shaken loose from the earth in the process, and never more grateful was I to see his light. I emerged, as did many others, into a broken and rearranged world. I can see now the dark silhouettes amid the drifting mist—but this journal is not the place to record the damage, and the work of reconstruction that has gone on in these recent days. I am preparing, in fact, a report that I propose to submit to the Senate upon my return to Rome, which will doubtless be copied into other libraries should you wish to refer to it.
For the purpose of this, my truer journal, let me say that the very crudeness of Cul Holman—the low stone dwellings, widely scattered— meant there was none of the vast loss of life that there might have been from an earthquake in a more civilized place. Still, there were numerous injuries amongst freemen and slaves—and in the buildings and workings of their trades.
It was only when I made my first inspection into the hills beyond this valley this morning that I realized the true enormity of what has taken place. Clouded by the risen dust, the light itself had changed, yet had a clarity it had lacked before. The hills seemed more solid. New fissures of rock had reared up, peaks had fallen, cliff-faces had broken.
Truly, the earthquake was the author of strange events, which would have been put down in more primitive times to the work of gods. One of the counting house sheds seems have been bodily moved; more amazing still, a small quantity of gold was found lying upon the scales when all the wreckage was removed. I myself have seen, in the dust around this villa, evidence of incredible stirrings that I could have taken to be dragging clawmarks were I a man of lesser knowledge. And, as far as it is possible to tell amid the new face of the hills that overlook us, the imprisoned slaves were shaken out from their graves by the movement of the earth, and thus released. Of them—and of Alya—there is no sign, although the soldiers who had been stationed to guard them, and also Konchab’s dogs (although I, for one, am glad to be rid of their ceaseless howling) were found strangely beheaded, their torn necks coated in a foul greenish-black ichor, which I can only presume rose up from some deep portion of the earth.
At some point in the afternoon after the earthquake, weary of issuing instructions and the cries of the wounded, deprived of an entire night’s sleep, I went back to this room in the villa that the servants had made some small effort to tidy, and laid myself clothed upon the bed.