Resurrecting Pompeii by Estelle Lazer Read Free Book Online

catastrophe effaced by twenty centuries of forgetfulness impressed him like quite a recent misfortune; the death of his mistress or of a friend would not have moved him more, and a tear, two thousand years late, fell … upon the spot where had perished, stifled by the hot ashes of the volcano, the woman for whom he felt himself filled with retrospective love. 65
    That night, the three men engage in a discussion of their ideal woman. Octavian confesses a preference for inaccessible women, usually in the form of statues, or dead or mythical individuals. 66 He then went on to provide examples. On seeing the Venus de Milo in the Louvre, he was inspired to exclaim: ‘Oh who will give you back your arms, so that you may press me to your marble breasts.’ 67 On another occasion, he uses a medium to attempt to return the spirit of a woman, using a few head hairs he has obtained. The one thing that links his forays into love is that they are all marked by failure. Still, this does not deter him in his quest for love.
    Octavian, his poetic heart beating fast, decides on a nocturnal visit to the site. He finds Pompeii strangely restored to its previous incarnation as a living town and realizes that he has been transported back to the days of Titus. He establishes the AD 79 date from the graffiti on the walls and he is struck with the notion that the woman whose impression he so admired in the Naples museum must now be alive and it might be possible for him to find and speak to the owner of those ‘divine contours’. 68
Luckily, Octavian is an award-winning Latin scholar and has little trouble conversing with the local Pompeians, though he is instantly marked as a foreigner by his odd nineteenth-century garb and his Parisian accent. In fact, his accent is so strong that his first acquaintance offers to speak to him in Greek.
    His new friend invites him to see a performance at the theatre. He is distracted from the play by the sight of a pair of breasts that appear to correspond to the imprint in the ashes on display at the Naples Museum. He is so aroused by these bosoms restored to life that not only is he convinced that they must be the very pair that he observed in reverse in the Naples Museum but that they also belong to his first and only true love. His passions appear to have been reciprocated and, by means of her slave, the owner of the divine assets entices Octavian to follow her home. Octavian has correctly identified her and she is introduced as Arria Marcella, the daughter of Arrius Diomedes. He is so mesmerized by Arria Marcella’s extraordinary anatomy that he barely registers the fact that he is following her through parts of Pompeii that have not yet been excavated. 69
    Octavian is taken to Arria Marcella ’s chamber where he finds her reclining ‘in a voluptuous, serene pose’. 70 She explains that his desire for her has restored her to life. Just as they are improving their acquaintance, Arria Marcella’s father bursts into the chamber. Diomedes has converted to Christianity and is rather fervent. He proceeds to berate his daughter for continuing her dissipation beyond her lifetime by bombarding her with a series of questions:
‘Can you not leave the living within their sphere? Have your ashes not cooled since the day you died unrepentant under the volcano’s rain of fire? Have two thousand years of death not quieted you and do your greedy arms still draw to your heartless bosom the poor mad men intoxicated by your spells?’ 71
    Diomedes then proceeds to exorcize Arria Marcella and to Octavian ’s horror she is returned to the state she was in when she was discovered during the excavation of the villa, ‘a handful of ashes and shapeless remains mingled with calcined bones, among which gleamed bracelets and golden jewels’. 72 Octavian reacts by swooning and only regains consciousness when his worried friends find and rouse him the next day.
    Octavian never recovers from his adventure. He is haunted by