Pompeii

took so much pride in showing him everything it was almost as if he was soliciting an investment. And the truth was that if the engineer had had any money – if most of his salary had not already been sent back home to his mother and sister – he might well have given him every last coin, for he had never encountered a more persuasive salesman than Numerius Popidius Ampliatus.
    'How soon before you're finished?'
    'I should say a month. I need to bring in the carpenters. I want some shelves, a few cupboards. I thought of putting down sprung wood floors in the changing room. I was considering pine.'
    'No,' said Attilius. 'Use alder.'
    'Alder? Why?'
    'It won't rot in contact with water. I'd use pine – or perhaps a cypress – for the shutters. But it would need to be something from the lowlands, where the sun shines. Don't touch pine from the mountains. Not for a building of this quality.'
    'Any other advice?'
    'Always use timber cut in the autumn, not the spring. Trees are pregnant in the spring and the wood is weaker. For clamping, use olive wood, scorched – it will last for a century. But you probably know all that.'
    'Not at all. I've built a lot, it's true, but I've never understood much about wood and stone. It's money I understand. And the great thing about money is that it doesn't matter when you harvest it. It's an all-year crop.' He laughed at his own joke and turned to look at the engineer. There was something unnerving about the intensity of his gaze, which was not steady, but which shifted, as if he were constantly measuring different aspects of whomever he addressed, and Attilius thought, No, it's not money you understand, it's men – their strengths and their weaknesses; when to flatter, when to frighten. 'And you, aquarius?' Ampliatus said quietly. 'What is it that you know?'
    'Water.'
    'Well, that's an important thing to know. Water is at least as valuable as money.'
    'Is it? Then why aren't I a rich man?'
    'Perhaps you could be.' He made the remark lightly, left it floating for a moment beneath the massive dome, and then went on: 'Do you ever stop to think how curiously the world is ordered, aquarius? When this place is open, I shall make another fortune. And then I shall use that fortune to make another, and another. But without your aqueduct, I could not build my baths. That's a thought, is it not? Without Attilius: no Ampliatus.'
    'Except that it's not my aqueduct. I didn't build it – the Emperor did.'
    'True. And at a cost of two million a mile! "The late lamented Augustus" – was ever a man more justly proclaimed a deity? Give me the Divine Augustus over Jupiter any time. I say my prayers to him every day.' He sniffed the air. 'This wet paint makes my head ache. Let me show you my plans for the grounds.'
    He led them back the way they had come. The sun was shining fully now through the large open windows. The gods on the opposite walls seemed alive with colour. Yet there was something haunted about the empty rooms – the drowsy stillness, the dust floating in the shafts of light, the cooing of the pigeons in the builders' yard. One bird must have flown into the laconium and become trapped. The sudden flapping of its wings against the dome made the engineer's heart jump.
    Outside, the luminous air felt almost solid with the heat, like melted glass, but Ampliatus did not appear to feel it. He climbed the open staircase easily and stepped on to the small sun deck. From here he had a commanding view of his little kingdom. That would be the exercise yard, he said. He would plant plane trees around it for shade. He was experimenting with a method of heating the water in the outdoor pool. He patted the stone parapet. 'This was the site of my first property. Seventeen years ago I bought it. If I told you how little I paid for it, you wouldn't believe me. Mark you, there was not much left of it after the earthquake. No roof, just the walls. I was twenty-eight. Never been so happy, before or since. Repaired it, rented it out, bought another, rented that. Some of these big old houses from the time of the Republic were huge. I split them up and fitted ten families into them. I've gone on doing it ever since. Here's a piece of advice for you, my friend: there's no safer investment than property in Pompeii.'
    He swatted a fly on the back of his neck and inspected its pulpy corpse between his fingers. He flicked it away. Attilius could imagine him as a young man – brutal, energetic, remorseless.