ESTATE OF POMPEII
191
been made to accommodate the consummations of some race of
voluptuous dwarfs.
"Roderick, do look, honey, here are the mills where the flour
was ground !-and the ovens, see, there's even a petrified loaf of
bread!"
"Si, first bread, then wine, then woman on this-a street," Signor
Salacci was nodding importantly, "first elements of life,
all
sym–
bolic!"
Roderick was aware now of a certain blase obtuseness. Still, a
whole street of dead brothels, that had so miraculously survived–
relatively-the wrath of god-that was perhaps something to stimulate
the lower reaches of the mind after all! Or if not, the ruined phar–
_macists, which the guide was pointing out so conveniently placed
on the corner, might have indeed. It was abundantly clear too, that
once again, so far as Signor Salacci was concerned, these places
not merely existed, but were, for him, doing a lively, if ghostly trade.
Particularly their guide seemed pleased by the Cyranesque-Priapic
trade emblem that, set from time to time amidst the cobbles, in–
dicated waggishly the direction in which even now the phantom ba–
chelors of Pompeii were perhaps proceeding to their grisly quarters
downstairs where, once ensconced, past them an eternal ascending
procession of marrieds, priests and shamefuls floated on their way
to be vampired and counter-whored upstairs. Signor Salacci's
r~
mantic attachment touched and delighted Roderick. He was making
the afternoon a success. It was not even impossible-Roderick saw
him once brushing away what might have been a tear-some great
grief,
some romance, survived, for him, here. Nonetheless Roderick
found himself suddenly hating this street with an inexplicable vir–
ulence. How he loathed Pompeii! His mouth positively watered with
his hatred. Roderick was almost prancing. It seemed to him now
that it was as though, by some perverse grace, out of the total inun–
dation of some Pacific Northwestern city, had been preserved a bit
of the station hotel, a section of the gasworks, the skeletal remains
of four or five palatial cinemas, as many bars and several public
urinals, a fragment of market place together with the building that
once housed the Star Laundries, what was left of several fine in–
dustrialists' homes (obscene paintings), a football stadium, the Church
of the Four Square Gospel, a broken statue of Bobbie Burns, and
