Pompeii

the top of the ramp. He groped through the dusty twilight until he found a corner of heavy masonry and felt his way around it, into the low tunnel which was all that remained of the great entrance to the town. He could have reached up and touched the vaulted roof. Someone lumbered up to him from behind and seized his arm. 'Have you seen my wife?'
    He was holding a small oil lamp, with his hand cupped around the flame – a young man, handsome, and incongruously immaculate, as if he had been out for a stroll before breakfast. Attilius saw that the fingers encircling the lamp were manicured.
    'I'm sorry –'
    'Julia Felix? You must know her. Everyone knows her.' His voice was trembling. He called out, 'Has anyone here seen Julia Felix?'
    There was a stir of movement and Attilius realised there were a dozen or more people, crammed together, sheltering in the passageway of the gate.
    'She's not been this way,' someone muttered.
    The young man groaned and staggered towards the town. 'Julia! Julia!' His voice grew fainter as his wavering lamp disappeared into the darkness. 'Julia!'
    Attilius said loudly, 'Which gate is this?'
    He was answered by the same man. 'The Stabian.'
    'So this is the road which leads up to the Gate of Vesuvius?'
    'Don't tell him!' hissed a voice. 'He's just a stranger, come to rob us!'
    Other men with torches were forcing their way up the ramp.
    'Thieves!' shrieked a woman. 'Our properties are all unguarded! Thieves!'
    A punch was thrown, someone swore and suddenly the narrow entrance was a tangle of shadows and waving torches. The engineer kept his hand on the wall and stumbled forward, treading on bodies. A man cursed and fingers closed around his ankle. Attilius jerked his leg free. He reached the end of the gate and glanced behind him just in time to see a torch jammed into a woman's face and her hair catch fire. Her screams pursued him as he turned and tried to run, desperate to escape the brawl, which now seemed to be sucking in people from the side alleys, men and women emerging from the darkness, shadows out of shadows, slipping and sliding down the slope to join the fight.
    Madness: an entire town driven mad.
    He waded on up the hill trying to find his bearings. He was sure this was the way to the Vesuvius Gate – he could see the orange fringes of fire working their way across the mountain far ahead – which meant he could not be far from the House of the Popidii, it should be on this very street. Off to his left was a big building, its roof gone, a fire burning somewhere inside it, lighting behind the windows the giant, bearded face of the god Bacchus – a theatre, was it? To his right were the stumpy shapes of houses, like a row of ground-down teeth, only a few feet of wall left visible. He swayed towards them. Torches were moving. A few fires had been lit. People were digging frantically, some with planks of wood, a few with their bare hands. Others were calling out names, dragging out boxes, carpets, pieces of broken furniture. An old woman screaming hysterically. Two men fighting over something – he could not see what – another trying to run with a marble bust cradled in his arms.
    He saw a team of horses, frozen in mid-gallop, swooping out of the gloom above his head, and he stared at them stupidly for a moment until he realised it was the equestrian monument at the big crossroads. He went back down the hill again, past what he remembered was a bakery and at last, very faintly on a wall, at knee-height, he found an inscription: 'HIS NEIGHBOURS URGE THE ELECTION OF LUCIUS POPIDIUS SECUNDUS AS AEDILE. HE WILL PROVE WORTHY.'

    He managed to squeeze through a window on one of the side streets and picked his way among the rubble, calling her name. There was no sign of life.
    It was still possible to work out the arrangement of the two houses by the walls of the upper stories. The roof of the atrium had collapsed, but the flat space next to it must have been where the swimming pool was and over there must have been a second courtyard. He poked his head into some of the rooms of what had once been the upper floor. Dimly he could make out broken pieces of furniture, smashed crockery, scraps of hanging drapery. Even where the roofs had been sloping they had given way under the onslaught of stone. Drifts of pumice were mixed with terracotta tiles, bricks, splintered beams. He found an empty bird cage on what must have been a balcony and stepped through into an abandoned bedroom, open to