RuKsaK

A calming scent of dust kicked up from their lazy heels and their sandals looked so soft and oldened by it. He looked forward to the reminiscence he’d get from cleaning them a day later, brushing off the grains of Pompeii. They held hands, the heat so dry there was no sweat between them – two pieces of gentle leather wrapped up, rather than human hands. He spoke first. He always did nowadays.

‘This is gonna be great. I’ve wanted to see this as long as I can remember. Those lava-covered bodies must look so amazing.’

She just nodded to show she was listening, somehow, but not to agree probably. Otherwise she watched her summer dress fly around her legs as her slow moving knees moved inside it. It looked funny to her, not her kind of thing, but this was Europe – she was allowed to look down her strange holiday legs as the hot breeze cooled between them.

They turned the corner, and he pointed and broke their hands apart.

‘There’s one there! Wow – come on, let’s have a look.’

He was bending in front of the buckled, stony body before she even got halfway to it. For the most of her remaining steps towards him she kept watching the small flowers wave on her dress, like she was wearing a swaying field of distant daisies.

‘This is amazing. You should feel it. It’s kind of cool in this shade. Imagine the heat, to capture you here, the pain, and here it is fixed solid – this man, or woman, I don’t know. Anyway nailed to this spot forever. People will be coming to see this for so many centuries and all they had to do was die in flames, choking. I reckon there must be some tiny warm piece inside, right in the heart of this thing – the years slowly cooling it down.’

His hands were slowly working over the stone, circling the chest, down the arm, caressing the head, like a doctor over a hopeless patient.

‘It’s really quite cold considering the heat around here. You should touch it. Come on.’

He moved down the leg and seemed to tickle the feet as though the thing might move, revive. He squatted and looked over it with loving eyes, searching every bit of it.

‘Imagine the pain though – knowing you’re dying and thinking the Gods are blasting fire and brimstone on you. Wow! Two thousand years and you can still see the face – the last face it ever wore.’

She hardly noticed the teardrop coming, but saw it fall through the curtaining folds of her dress. Hitting the floor it turned the faint brown, ancient dust to black, and it hardened. She sniffed quickly and so he turned to her.

‘I know, my sweet. What happened here and to think there is a body in there is terrible.’

He wiped below her eye and dust from the lava-covered body stained her cheek.

But she felt the next one coming immediately , it was bigger and felt cold. The patch on the ground was about to be blacker and harder.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Pompeii