he clung fast. The ground carried him up, shifted him to the side, but he lay motionless. The bellow rose again, shattering him. And though his throat convulsed with cries, though his hands clawed into the rubble, he heard no sound from himself, felt no life in himself as he became part of the mountain and the roaring cauldron within it.
7
THE SUN WAS WARM on his face.
Smoke hung in the air in thousands upon thousands of tiny particles. Yet far off the birds were singing. And it was not early morning. It was noon, he could tell by the slant of the sun, by the feel of it on his face and his hands. And the mountain gave off but a faint murmuring.
He had just opened his eyes. For a long moment he lay very still, and then he realized that a man was standing before him. The figure wavered against the blue sky, and so consumptive was it, so pale, so wild of eye, it seemed the very visage of death itself, while behind it lay the lush green slopes, knotted with trees, that melted down to the fertile plain in which lay the jumbled facets of color and light that were Naples.
But it wasn’t the figure of death. It was only that man who had come out of his hut the night before to warn Tonio to go no higher.
And mutely, he extended his hand. He caught Tonio up out of the dirt and led him slowly down the mountain.
As soon as Tonio reached the city, he went to one of the better alberghi on the Molo, and rented for himself an expensive suite of rooms in which he could bathe, after sending a servant to purchase fresh linen.
When he was finished with the bath, he had the tub taken out and he stood alone for a while, naked, in front of the mirror. Then he put on his clean shirt, arranging the lace neatly at the collar and at the cuffs, and having had his frock coat brushed, he put that on too and his breeches and stockings and went out onto the veranda.
Fruit and chocolate were brought to him for his breakfast, and the Turkish coffee he had liked so much all his life in Venice.
And there he sat in the open air, looking beyond the morning traffic to the white beach and the blue-green water.
The sea was a swarm of fishing boats and vessels drifting into port.
And beneath him the open space called the Largo was full of all that minute and busy life he had grown accustomed to seeing here.
Tonio was thinking.
But seldom in his life had he so little need to do so.
For fourteen days, he had been at Naples. And for fourteen days on the road before that, after leaving that filthy room in Flovigo. And during all of this time, it was entirely possible that he had never once really used his reason.
All that had happened to him weighed on him totally. And yet he could not see it as a whole, nor see around it. Rather all its aspects beset him like so many buzzing flies come from hell to drive him out of his mind and they had almost succeeded. Torn with hatred, torn with grief for the man he would not be, he had flailed against everyone around him, even himself, without purpose, and without hope, rectifying nothing and vanquishing no one.
Well, that was over.
That had changed.
And he was not entirely sure why it had changed, either.
But after a night of lying on Vesuvius, of moving only when the mountain chose to move him, it had all of it done its damnedest to him, and now it was over.
And central to this change was the realization—not made in the heat of anger or pain, but coldly, in the midst of danger—that he was entirely alone now.
He had no one.
Carlo had done evil to him, irrevocable evil.
And that evil had separated Tonio from everyone he loved, completely. He could never live among his family or friends as he was now. If he did, their pity, their curiosity, their horror would simply destroy him.
Even if he were not banished from Venice, an inalterable fact that caused him excruciating humiliation, he could never return there. Venice and all those he knew and loved were lost to him now.
All right. That was the simpler part.
Now came the harder part.
Andrea, too, had betrayed him. Surely Andrea had known Tonio was not his son.