The Skin (34 page)

The faces of the crowd that filled the square were shiny and flat-looking; they were seamed with shadowy black and white lines, as in a flash-light photograph. There was something of the harshness and frozen immobility of a photograph in those wide, staring eyes and intent faces, in the façades of the houses and the other impersonal features of the scene, and almost, one felt, in the people's gestures. The fierce light of the flames beat down upon the walls and illuminated the gutters and cornices of the balconies; and the contrast between the bloodshot sky, which had a sombre purplish tint, and the red-rimmed roofs was illusory in its effect. Crowds of people were hurrying down to the sea, pouring into the square from the hundred alleys that converge upon it from all sides. As they walked they gazed up at the black clouds, swollen with glowing lava, that rolled across the sky immediately above the sea, and at the red-hot stones that ploughed their way noisily through the murky air like comets. A terrible clamour arose from the square; and every so often a deep silence would fall upon the crowd, broken at intervals by a groan, a wail, or a sudden cry—a solitary cry that died away instantly without leaving behind it a trace of an echo, like a cry that goes up from a bare mountain-top.

Over on the far side of the square hordes of American soldiers were making a violent assault on the railings that block the entrance to the harbour, trying to break the great iron bars. Hoarse, plaintive cries for help came from the ships' sirens. Pickets of armed sailors were rushing to take up their positions on the decks and along the sides of their vessels. Fierce scuffles were breaking out on the moles and gangways between the sailors and the hordes of fear-crazed soldiers who were rushing the ships that they might escape the wrath of Vesuvius. Here and there, lost in the crowd, were American, British, Polish, French and negro soldiers, wandering about in bewilderment and terror. Some tried to force their way through the press, clutching the arms of weeping women, whom they appeared to have kidnapped; others allowed themselves to be swept along on the tide, dazed by the ferocity and novelty of the awful scourge. Scores of negroes, their broad nostrils red and dilated, their round white eyes starting out of their black heads, milled around in the confusion, almost naked, as if they had rediscovered their ancient forests in the crowd. They were surrounded by swarms of prostitutes, also half-naked, or wrapped in the ceremonial cloaks of yellow, green and scarlet silk worn by the women in the brothels. And some chanted their own private litanies; others uttered mysterious phrases in loud, piercing voices; others in rhythmic tones invoked the name of God—"Oh, God! Oh, my God!"—frantically waving their arms above the sea of heads and distorted faces, and keeping their eyes fixed on the sky as if, through the rain of ashes and fire, they were watching the slow flight of an Angel armed with a flaming sword.

By now the night was waning, and a delicate pallor was suffusing the sky over towards Capri and above the wooded slopes of the mountains of Sorrento. Even the fires of Vesuvius were losing something of their terrible brilliance and were beginning to appear green and transparent; the flames were turning pink, and looked like huge rose-petals scattered by the wind. As the nocturnal mists gave way to the uncertain light of dawn the rivers of lava ceased to glow; they grew dim, and were transformed into black snakes, just as red-hot iron, when it is left on the anvil, gradually becomes covered with black scales, which emit dying blue and green sparks.

Slowly the dawn was lifting that infernal panorama,- still dripping with red darkness, out of the deep bowl of the flaming night as a fisherman raises a clump of coral from the bed of the sea. The virgin light of the day was washing the pale green of the vineyards, the antique silver of the olive-trees, the deep blue of the cypresses and pines, the voluptuous gold of the brooms. In such a setting the black rivers of lava shone with a funereal radiance, glowing darkly as some crustaceans do when they lie on the sea-shore in the sun, or like certain kinds of dark stones when the rain has restored their lustre. In the distance, beyond Sorrento, a patch of red was gradually climbing above the horizon. Slowly it dissolved into the air, and the sky, which was full of yellow, sulphurous clouds, was suffused with a transparent blood-red glow, until unexpectedly the sun, white as the eyelid of a dying bird, broke through the turbulent mists.

A tremendous clamour arose from the square. The crowd stretched out their arms towards the rising sun, shouting "The sun! The sun!" as if this were the first time the sun had ever risen over Naples. And perhaps the sun was indeed rising now for the first time on Naples from the abyss of chaos, amid the turmoil of creation, climbing from the bed of a sea whose creation was not yet complete. And as always happens in Naples after a time of terror, grief and tears, the return of the sun, following a night of such endless agony, changed horror and weeping into joy and jubilation. Here and there arose the sound of the first applause, the first glad voices, the first songs, and those sharp guttural cries, attuned to the age-old melodic themes of elemental fear, pleasure and love, with which the people of Naples, in the manner of animals, that is to say in a wonderfully naive and innocent way, express joy, amazement, and that happy fear which men and animals always feel when they have rediscovered the meaning of joy and are astonished to be alive.

Gangs of boys were running among the crowd, chasing from end to end of the square and crying
"E fornuta! è fornuta!"
Those words —"It's over! It's over!"—announced the ending not only of the scourge of the war.
"E fornuta! è fornuta!"
answered the crowd, for always the sun's appearance deludes the people of Naples, inspiring them with the false hope that their misfortunes and sufferings are about to end. A cart drawn by a horse entered the square from Via Medina, and the sight of that horse filled the crowd with joyous amazement, as though it was the first horse ever created. One and all shouted: "See that? See that? A horse! A horse!" And as if by magic there arose on all sides the voices of the itinerant vendors, offering for sale sacred images, rosaries, amulets, dead men's bones, postcards representing scenes from former eruptions of Vesuvius, and statuettes of St. Januarius, who with a gesture had halted the stream of lava at the gates of Naples.

Suddenly the hum of engines was heard high up in the sky, and everyone looked up.

A squadron of American fighters had taken off from the air-field at Capodichino and was attacking the enormous black cloud or "cuttle-fish," which, swollen with fragments of glowing lava, was gradually drifting in the direction of Castellammare. After a few moments the rat-tat of machine-guns was heard, and the horrible cloud seemed to stop and confront its assailants. The American fighters were trying to break up the cloud with the salvoes from their machine-guns so that it would be forced to jettison its load of red-hot stones over the stretch of sea that lies between Vesuvius and Castellammare. In this way they hoped to save the town from certain destruction. It was a desperate enterprise, and the crowd held their breath. A profound silence descended on the square.

Through the gaps which the salvoes of machine-gun bullets tore in the sides of the black cloud torrents of glowing lava hurtled down into the sea, throwing up lofty jets of red water, Columns of vivid green vapour, comet-like trails of red-hot cinders, and marvellous rosettes of flame, which slowly dissolved in the air. "See that? See that?" cried the throng, clapping their hands. But meanwhile the horrible cloud, propelled by the wind, which was blowing from the north, drew nearer Castellammare every moment.

Suddenly one of the American fighters, looking like a silver hawk, darted with the speed of lightening straight at the "cuttle-fish," tore a gap in it with its nose, passed through the gap, and with a fearful explosion blew up inside the cloud, which opened like a huge black rose and hurtled down into the sea.

By now the sun was high in the heavens. Little by little the atmosphere was becoming thicker, a grey pall of ashes obscured the sky, and green lightning rent the blood-red cloud that was forming on the brow of Vesuvius. Streaks of yellow zigzagged across the black wall of the horizon, from behind which came the rumble of distant thunder.

In the streets surrounding the Allied General Headquarters, the congestion was such that we had to use force to get through. The crowd, massed in front of the G.H.Q. building, mutely awaited a sign of hope. But the news from the districts stricken by the scourge was growing graver from hour to hour. The houses in the villages situated near Salerno were collapsing beneath the hail of lava. A blizzard of ashes had been raging for some hours over the island of Capri, and was threatening to bury the villages that lie between Pompeii and Castellammare.

During the afternoon General Cork asked Jack to go to the Pompeii area, where the danger was greatest. The ribbon-like main road was covered with a thick carpet of ashes, on which the wheels of our jeep revolved with a soft, silky, rustling sound. A strange silence was in the air, broken at intervals by the hollow rumbling of Vesuvius. I was surprised at the contrast between the movement and shouting of the people and the mute immobility of the animals, which stood firm beneath the hail of ashes and looked about them with eyes that were full of melancholy bewilderment.

Now and again we passed through yellow clouds of sulphurous vapour. Columns of American vehicles were slowly going back up the road, carrying help in the shape of food, medical supplies and clothes to the unfortunate people who lived on the slopes of Vesuvius. The sombre countryside was shrouded in a green murk. Just after we had passed Herculaneum our faces were lashed by a shower of warm mud, which persisted for a considerable time. Directly above us Vesuvius snarled menacingly, spewing up lofty jets of red-hot stones, which fell to earth with a roar. Shortly before we reached Torre del Greco we were taken unawares by a sudden shower of lava. We sheltered behind the wall of a house near the sea-front. The sea was a wonderful green colour; it looked like a turtle made of ancient copper. A sailing-vessel was slowly ploughing its way through the hard sea-crust, from which the descending fragments of lava rebounded with a resonant crackling sound.

We were now in the vicinity of a small meadow, dotted with clumps of rosemary and flowering brooms, and backed by a high rock which sheltered it from the wind. The grass was of a very harsh green colour, a crude, bright green so vivid, so unexpected and so fresh in its brilliance that it looked as if it had only that moment been created—a green still virginal, glimpsed without warning at the instant of its creation, in the first moments of the creation of the world. This grass descended almost to the edge of the water, whose greenness seemed in contrast already faded, as if this sea belonged to a world already old, a world created long, long ago.

The countryside about us lay buried beneath the ashes. It had been scorched in places and turned topsy-turvy by the mad violence of nature, by the return of chaos. Groups of American soldiers, their faces concealed behind masks of rubber and copper like the helmets of ancient warriors, were roaming about the countryside, carrying stretchers, assembling the injured, and directing groups of women and children to a column of vehicles parked in the roadway. A number of dead were lying on the roadside near the ruins of a house. Their faces were encased in shells of hard white ash, so that it looked as if they had eggs in place of heads. Their bodies were those of men still without form, men only partly created. They were the first dead in creation.

The cries of the injured came to us from a world that lay beyond the reach of love and pity, beyond the frontier erewhile set between chaos and nature in the divine order of creation. They expressed a feeling not yet known to men, a grief not experienced by the living beings hitherto created. They were a presage of suffering, coming to us from a world still in the process of gestation, a world still plunged in chaos.

And here, in this little world of green grass, that had but lately emerged from chaos, and was still fresh from the travail of its creation, still virginal, a group of men who had escaped the scourge lay on their backs asleep, their faces turned to heaven. They had very handsome faces, with skin that was not begrimed with mud and ashes, but clear, as though washed by the light: faces that looked new, as if they had just been modelled, with lofty, noble brows and bright lips. They lay sleeping on the green grass like survivors of the Flood on the summit of the first mountain to appear above the waters.

A girl stood on the sandy shore, at a point where the green grass merged into the waves. She was combing her hair and looking at the sea—looking at the sea as a woman gazes at herself in a mirror. Standing on the young, newly-created grass, she who was herself young, she who had but lately been brought into the world, gazed at herself in the ancient mirror of creation with a smile of blissful wonder; and the faded green of the immemorial sea was reflected in her long, soft hair, her smooth white skin and her small, strong hands. Her movements as she slowly combed her hair were already those of a lover. A woman dressed in red sat beneath a tree suckling her child. Her snow-white breast protruded from her red blouse, splendid as the breast of the first woman in creation, or the first fruit from a tree that has but lately emerged from the earth. A dog lay curled up near the sleeping men, following the woman's slow, placid movements with its eyes. Some sheep were grazing, and every so often they would raise their heads and look at the green sea. Those men, those women, those animals were alive and safe. They had been purged of their sins. They were already immune from the degradation, misery and hunger, from the vices and criminal tendencies of men. They had already died the death, and descended into hell, and risen again.

We too—Jack and I—were survivors from chaos. We too were living beings newly created, newly called into existence, newly risen from the dead. The menacing voice of Vesuvius, that loud, hoarse bark, came to us out of the blood-red cloud that enveloped the monster's brow. It came to us through the crimson darkness, through the storm of fire. It was a pitiless, implacable voice. It was in truth the voice of a tumultuous, malignant nature—the voice of chaos itself. We were on the borderland between chaos and creation, on the confines of "la bonté, ce continent énorme," on the outer fringe of the newly-created world. And the terrible voice that came to us through the storm of fire, that loud, hoarse bark, was the voice of Chaos, who was rebelling against the divine laws of creation, and biting the hand of the Creator.