Mozzarella Most Murderous

There were nine of us in all in the limousine taking the SS145 north, the heavily traveled, twisting road to Castellammare di Stabia, where we turned onto the A3, the Naples-to-Salerno highway with the Pompeii turnoff. The chauffeur and the tour guide sat up front, separated from the rest of us by a glass window. In back were Constanza, Hank, Eliza, Albertine, Carolyn, me, and Charles de Gaulle, who was assigned a place where luggage could be stored behind the last seat. Evidently thinking the dog would sit with Albertine, Carolyn leapt in first and scooted to the back, which is how she ended up with Charles de Gaulle’s head resting on her shoulder. I suppose it must have been a shock to her when the chauffeur opened up the back and let in the dog. It immediately gave a low, lovesick woof and nuzzled Carolyn’s neck.

“Lovely seats,” said Carolyn politely. “Much nicer than the plastic ones on the Circumvesuviana.” She was trying to edge away from the dog, but there was no room to do so because I was taking up the rest of the seat.

Constanza was, of course, amazed to learn that Carolyn had ridden, with her luggage, from Naples to Sorrento on the little train. I was just glad it hadn’t been me; I’d been on the Circumvesuviana and knew that it was no place for an expectant mother, whereas this delightful limousine made traveling like floating down the road on a cloud. I even dozed off while Carolyn, Constanza, and Albertine discussed opera in Catania and Palermo. Composers’ names drifted into my sleep—Verdi, Mozart, Puccini, Donizetti, Bellini. I dreamt that I was in the opera house in Palermo, with Johnny Stecchino, played by Roberto Benigni, in the balcony threatening the audience with a banana. After waking up with a start, I said, “I saw that movie.”

The three women looked at me in surprised confusion. Then Carolyn said, “Oh, for goodness sake!” after glancing down at her blouse. “He’s drooled on me. Madame Guillot, would you please tell your dog—”

I spoke quickly to the dog in French because I could see that harsh words were about to be exchanged. Charles de Gaulle actually lifted his head and turned to look at me, so I continued to talk to him in French, but how much can you think of to say to a dog, especially a French dog? Finally I murmured softly, “Look you ill-behaved, froggie mutt, if you don’t leave my friend alone, I’m going to climb back there and hang you up by your designer dog collar.”

“I don’t know what she said to him,” Carolyn intervened, “but his head is off my shoulder, and I think he’s moved away.” She glanced into the back compartment, where Charles de Gaulle was now lying down, staring at me in an unfriendly way. Does he bite? I wondered. He hadn’t so far.

Nobody got into a squabble because the tour guide turned on her microphone and began to tell us the history of Pompeii. Iron Age settlements in the ninth and eighth centuries BC, influence of Etruscans, Samnites, Greeks, Romans, the 62 AD earthquake—nap time again. I knew all that. Carolyn woke me up by exclaiming, “I didn’t know they thought Vesuvius was just a green mountain until it erupted!” The guide continued by describing the awful plaster casts made of agonized people who had tried to escape and died and the excavations of the city that had begun in the eighteenth century.

She droned on, and again I dropped into a pleasant snooze. Naps are good for pregnant women, and I needed to store up strength for hiking through dust and clambering over stones on a very large site, carrying my very large baby. At least, I hoped that my mountainous stomach was mostly baby; if it wasn’t, I had a lot of dieting to look forward to if I wanted to retrieve the body my husband was so fond of. I was very happy to hear Constanza announce that we would break for lunch around one. I was hungry already, and I’d certainly need a rest by then.

Evidently the plan was to see major civic and religious ruins in the morning, so of course we looked at a lot of pillars without roofs, something I’d seen so many times in Rome: the remains of temples to Fortuna Augusta, Jupiter, Apollo—that was a good one because the statue was of Apollo naked except for a scarf over his arms, and he had a nice butt, but his bow and arrow were gone—and Isis, who had a lot of worshippers in Pompeii before they were gassed or buried under falling buildings when Vesuvius exploded. The temple had little rooms in which to keep water from the Nile and sacrificial ashes and a big room for worshippers. It’s a wonder Europe ever became Christian when the Roman soldiers kept bringing new religions home from the East.

There were theaters and amphitheaters holding from a thousand to twenty thousand people, not enough for soccer, but not bad. Near the amphitheater were a gymnasium and a pool for gladiators with graffiti left from their stay. I imagined them, coming in from practice, all sweaty, scratching things into the wall. The guide didn’t translate the graffiti. In her place, I would have, if it had been interesting. Needless to say, I did not climb up and down any crumbly, grass-choked amphitheaters. I was watching out for myself and the baby.

Probably the most unsettling sight was the view of Vesuvius, gray and forbidding, through the columns of the Forum. Or maybe it just looked gray because the clouds had rolled in, shadowing everything beneath. Of course we visited the thermal baths at the Forum, which had statues, carvings, pools of different temperatures, heat from boilers under the floors, dressing rooms, and separate sides for men and women. It was very elegant in its day. I remember reading that, after the earthquake when the baths were rebuilt, they dropped the separate sides for different sexes. I wonder how people felt about that? Titillated? Embarrassed?

I was thinking about that when we went out into the streets, which in Pompeii were full of obstacles. Big stepping stones had been set crosswise so the citizens could get from sidewalk to sidewalk without stepping into rushing water that couldn’t be contained by an inadequate sewer system. Down the center ran a rise in the stone pavement low enough that the wheels of carts and chariots could roll along with the stones in between. You could see the tracks worn in the road by the heavy traffic.

Those streets are not easily negotiable, not only because of the obstacles but also because the step down from the sidewalks in front of the buildings was often a long one. When I made the attempt, disaster struck: I lost my balance, stumbled toward one of those large stones, and would have fallen stomach-first onto it except that Constanza was right behind me. She grabbed me under the armpits and jerked me onto my feet, right off the ground, in fact. I don’t know when I’ve been more frightened. She’d saved my baby, and yet she just shrugged off my thanks and said in a surprisingly kind voice, “Be more careful, Bianca. How sad it would be to lose a baby from a misstep.”

From there to the limousine either Hank or Carolyn walked beside me, holding onto my arm to keep me from falling again. It occurred to me as I plodded along, still a little shaky and keeping an eye out for anything that might trip me up, that Constanza was not only quick for a woman her age, but also very strong. Lifting me up and off my feet was no small accomplishment. I’d gained twenty-five, maybe even thirty pounds with this pregnancy. Is Constanza one of those women who exercises and lifts weights? I mused. No wonder she has such a good figure.

I mentioned the thought to Carolyn as we waited at the Porta Nocera for the limousine, and she nodded thoughtfully. “That might mean that she’s strong enough to have thrown Paolina over the waterfall.”

I didn’t much like her saying that about the woman who had saved me from a miscarriage or a stillbirth, and I made a point not to sit with Carolyn at lunch. She, however, made a point of sitting beside Constanza, and I got stuck with Albertine Guillot, who gave me a lecture on my responsibilities as a prospective mother. A woman with no children! I told her that dog owners had responsibilities, too, and hers had drooled all over Carolyn’s blouse. She turned her back on me and struck up a conversation with Eliza Stackpole. Just what Albertine deserved, in my opinion. She got an earful about the cacti outside Eliza’s balcony, while I flirted with Hank Girol, which was a soothing pastime after my frightening tumble.