DAUGHTERS OF VESUVIUS

Rosetta’s peasant grandfather was sitting on their couch trying to play Star Wars on PlayStation with the twins. He had spent most of his life working on an olive grove in the hills of Naples. Someone took a photo and the rest of the family laughed. Rosetta didn’t even giggle. She might have been the only one who noticed the small dark stain around grandfather Niccolo’s crotch in the photograph.

His hands always had a tremble to them even when he was motionless, and he walked carefully as if his bones might crumble into ash at any sudden movement. There was nothing useful he could do anymore so he drifted around their Toorak mansion finding places to sit quietly as the bustling Battista family, sometimes ten or twenty strong, filled the rooms with the noise of an endlessly celebrating village.

The walls had always been crowded with framed photographs. Mainly of Rosetta, Matteo and Mauro from the cradle to now, and many of the Battista nephews and nieces. There were also portraits of the family from Naples. It was like her Nonno Niccolo had stepped out from one of those photographs. He still looked more sepia than full colour.

Rosetta wanted to see Naples. She wondered if it would somehow feel familiar. The family had been planning a trip for years but then there were Father’s hotels and they could barely spare him for more than a long weekend. Rosetta was fascinated by Vesuvius, which she knew was near her grandfather’s olive groves, and she got her mother to ask Nonno if they had relatives who died there, in the famous eruption, even though her mother had already told her it was too long ago. Her mother started laughing when she translated Nonno as saying he remembered the eruption. Niccolo looked at his laughing daughter and granddaughter without smiling.

Vesuvius last erupted in 1944 and it was probably that eruption Niccolo meant when he said he remembered the explosion. Rosetta was enthralled by images of the exploding mountain she’d seen on the internet, and especially with photographs of the Ring Lady. She was a young woman they had unearthed recently who was still wearing emerald and ruby rings, two gold bracelets, and gold earrings. Another pair of gold earrings lay by her side, and those ones had pearls.

Nonno placed a small leather envelope on her lap and Rosetta opened it to find similar pearl earrings. She had shown her grandfather images of the Ring Lady on the computer screen. Rosetta kissed Niccolo on his forehead and thanked him for the gift with a jump and a spin, diving for a view in the nearest mirror. She wore them around the house the whole morning and as soon as her mother came home from shopping, Rosetta showed her the pearl earrings.

After lunch her mother told her there had been a mistake. Nonno had wanted to show his granddaughter the earrings— he had not intended to give them to her. Rosetta removed them from her ears and placed the earrings back into the leather envelope. When she returned the pearls to her grandfather he let them sit on the kitchen table before him as if he had no idea what the envelope might contain. Rosetta thought that perhaps he had given her the jewellery as a gift after all, and that his age was the cause of the confusion. Niccolo levered himself to standing, using the edge of the kitchen table. He shuffled away to the toilet and the pearl earrings were still waiting in the leather envelope.

The family didn’t make many concessions to Nonno’s lack of English and often watched films that he would not understand. Rosetta wanted to explain some of the details to him but her Italian was worse than basic. She understood her grandfather’s favourite expression, piano, piano con calma and that it meant ‘quietly, quietly and calmly’. She’d never heard him actually say it. Her mother told Rosetta that, back in Naples, Niccolo used to say it all the time.

That evening, Nonno watched a science fiction film with the family and it went on late. The twins were now asleep on the carpet and her father had long since stumbled off to the bedroom to snore in peace (since everyone kept shouting at him to shut up) and Rosetta’s mother had her chin on her chest.

Nonno watched the screen. It was impossible for Rosetta to know what he was making of post-apocalyptic Earth and the synthetic human beings trying to rebuild it. Whether it made sense to him that the Synths were divided by a faction called the Neverborns, and that these rogue Synths wanted to eradicate the last natural humans because they were born as animals and would never be more than beasts.

The screen’s images flashed across Nonno’s face. No matter how many people got blown away or how catastrophic the explosion or how romantic a love scene or suspenseful a dune buggy chase sequence—his face never changed. He barely blinked as the immense plasma washed his face in special effects. During family uproars he was able to sit at the kitchen table or in an armchair, close his eyes and fall asleep for an hour or more.

Rosetta sat next to him and put her hand on his. She patted it and asked him if he wanted anything. ‘Maybe aqua. Aqua?’ she asked. He smiled and placed his other hand on hers and they sat that way a moment. It would have been a lovely photograph for the walls of the Battista house.

Rosetta put her head on her grandfather’s shoulder and he reached out a trembling hand to her chin and lifted it and kissed her on her cheek and maybe because she had started to giggle, his hands reached for her ribs. She thought it was to tickle her. His trembling hands found their way through her bathrobe and reached up for her breasts.

His strength surprised her. His sudden urgency, as he pushed her back on the couch with his head and shoulder and lifted her pyjama top and brought his face down as if to devour her torso. He made sounds like he was eating ice cream.

Rosetta didn’t want to scream because of the twins sleeping on the carpet before the television and especially because her mother, Niccolo’s daughter, was sleeping on the other couch with her chin to her chest. She wanted to believe this was something other than what it was, even as the old man reached for his pants. Nonno fumbled around with his old leather belt.

Rosetta didn’t scream. She didn’t make a sound. She gritted her teeth. Then she quietly reached out a hand and gripped his ear as if it were a page she wanted to rip from a book. She tore down slowly and Nonno squealed.

‘Shhh,’ Rosetta said into his other ear. ‘Piano, piano con calma,’ she said as she continued to pull that crumpled page from its book, dragging his face over the edge of the couch and forcing him to tumble to the floor. By the time the twins woke up, Rosetta had pulled her pyjama top back down and was standing over him as though she was concerned.

Mauro asked what happened. When Rosetta said Nonno had fallen from the couch, Matteo got up to see what had happened to the old man, frightened by the childlike moaning sound the patriarch was making. Mauro started laughing and Matteo decided to join him. Rosetta’s mother still had her chin on her chest. Nonno had his knees pulled to his stomach with his hands protecting his face as if he were about to be covered with a blanket of ash.