Vassily P. Aksyonov
DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII
A Story
faT
Bella
Every time you approach Pompeii you think: "Now
here's a little corner of paradise." The platitude is inescapable, for
prior to plunging down into Pompeii from a high point on the road
above the city, you catch sight of the marvelously chiseled shoreline
and white houses rising from the bay in terraces interspersed with
the eternally verdant flora. The eye is captivated: greenery swirls
above the city with abandon and climbs the steep gray-white
wall of the mountain range that shelters the town and the shore
from the north winds. And each time "all these things" (as
modern idiom would have it) loom before you, you sense a power–
ful uplifting of the soul, some half-forgotten moment of ecstasy,
and the expediency of your own presence here. And inside the
car, in the space between the windshield and your own forehead
that little platitude flashes by: "Now here's a little corner of
paradise. "
In
early spring that year I set out for Pompeii with the most
serious of intentions. I had made detailed preparations to
spend no less than a month here, far from the frantic noise and
dirty slush of Rome, in the hope of bringing a three-year project
to completion, that of polishing off a major opus in my specialty.
I had meticulously selected books and manuscripts and loaded them
into the trunk, which also contained the clothes necessary for the
"sundry occasions in Pompeiian social life." Now with respect to
these "sundry occasions in Pompeiian social life," well, I must
confess that I was jerking my own knee a bit there, for as I packed
my suitcase, I kept saying to myself sternly-now none of those
"social occasions in Pompeii." Only a jog in the mornings, work
in the afternoons, a walk in the evenings, and a bit of listening
to the radio before going to sleep. Track shoes with thick soles,
Translated from the Russian
by
Joel Wilkinson and Slava Yastremski.
