The Mephisto Club

brick walls and the faint glimmer of moving water far below.
    “There’s a subterranean lake under this basilica,” she said. “And you can see the underground river here, which never stops flowing. Beneath Rome is another world, a vast underworld of tunnels and catacombs.” She gazed at the rapt faces staring at her through the gloom. “When you return to the surface, when you walk the streets, think about that, about all the dark and secret places that lie right beneath your feet.”
    “Can I get a closer look at the river?” one of the women asked.
    “Yes, of course. Here, I’ll hold the light while you each get a peek through the grate.”
    One by one, the people in her tour group took turns squeezing in beside Lily to peer into the tunnel. There was nothing much to see, really. But when you travel all the way to Rome, for perhaps your once-in-a-lifetime visit, it’s a tourist’s duty to look. Today, Lily had only six on the tour, two Americans, two Brits, and a pair of Germans. Not such a good haul; she wouldn’t be taking home much in the way of tips. But what could one expect on a chilly Thursday in January? The tourists in Lily’s group were the only visitors in the labyrinth at the moment, and she allowed them to take their time as they each pressed against the metal grate, their crackling raincoats brushing against her. Damp air whooshed up from the tunnel, musty with the smell of mold and wet stone: the scent of ages long past.
    “What were these walls, originally?” asked the German man. Lily had pegged him as a businessman. In his sixties, he spoke excellent English and wore an expensive Burberry coat. But his wife, Lily suspected, was not so fluent in English, as the woman had said scarcely a word all morning.
    “These are the foundations of homes that were here in Nero’s time,” said Lily. “The great fire of A.D . 64 reduced this neighborhood to charred rubble.”
    “Is that the fire when Nero fiddled while Rome burned?” the American man asked.
    Lily smiled, for she’d heard that question dozens of times before and could almost always predict who in the group would ask it. “Actually, Nero didn’t fiddle. The violin wasn’t invented yet. While Rome burned, he was said to have played the lyre and sung.”
    “And then he blamed the fire on the Christians,” the man’s wife added.
    Lily shut off the flashlight. “Come, let’s move on. There’s a lot more to see.”
    She led the way into the shadowy labyrinth. Aboveground, traffic was roaring on busy streets, and vendors were selling postcards and trinkets to tourists wandering the ruins of the Coliseum. But here, beneath the basilica, there was only the sound of the eternally rushing water and the rustle of their coats as they moved down the gloomy tunnel.
    “This type of construction is called
opus reticulatum,
” said Lily, pointing to the walls. “It’s masonry work that alternates bricks with tufa.”
    “Two-fer?” It was the American man again. The stupid questions were always his. “Is that, like, stronger than
one-fer?
” Only his wife laughed, a high, annoying whinny.
    “Tufa,” said the Englishman, “is actually compacted volcanic ash.”
    “Yes, that’s exactly what it is,” said Lily. “It was used quite often as a building block in Roman homes.”
    “How come we never heard of this tufa stuff before?” the American woman asked her husband, implying that, since they did not know about it, it could not possibly exist.
    Even in the gloom, Lily could see the Englishman’s eyes roll upward. She responded with an amused shrug.
    “You’re American, right?” the woman asked Lily. “Miss?”
    Lily paused. She did not like this personal question. “Actually,” she lied, “I’m Canadian.”
    “Did
you
know what tufa was before you became a guide? Or is that, like, just a European word?”
    “Many Americans aren’t familiar with the word,” Lily said.
    “Well okay, then. It’s just a European thing,” the woman said, satisfied. If Americans didn’t know it, it couldn’t possibly be important.
    “What you’re seeing here,” said Lily, quickly moving on with the tour, “is what’s left of the villa of Titus Flavius Clemens. In the first century A.D ., this was a secret meeting place for Christians, before they were openly accepted. It was still an early cult then, just gaining popularity among the wives of noblemen.” She turned on her flashlight again, using the beam to direct