Written by Edith Martell
To interview a ghost at Pompeii you must have:
- One litre of drinkable water. Do not take from the ocean and boil it in the flames of your hearth, but buy it from a dimly lit tourist kiosk and smile at the teenager who hands it to you.
- Your courage.
- Excavating trowels (3) and at least four years of archaeological experience. The author recommends Roman Vindolanda for a change in weather conditions. 1
You will need to find:
- An open heart.
Q: Salve. (It is important to begin with the correct greeting, lest you get lost among the thousand hungry-eyed vultures with cameras and Panama hats. You should open your water and take a drink.)
A: Hello. (Expect the English form of address. This helps with time’s slipping.) (Do not ask them about their terrible weightlessness, or the floating. Do not stare over long at the sparks and the shawl and the messy hair.)
Q: You have a lovely house.2
A: Thank you, it was beautiful beneath the summer clouds. Are you alive?
Q: (Do not answer this immediately, but rather smile, nod, and make as if to take her hand.) (But do not take it.) Are you?
A: I am not. But it was kind of you to ask; there are so few to talk to now, though I know the world has ended.
Q: Where did you learn this?
A: First, from my mother and father. I learnt my loyalty from dogs and soldiers and my cruelty from the latter. Later, I learnt from ghosts like you.3
Q: Like me?
A: You are not from my time — which is cyclical.
Q: Did it hurt?
A: The death or the dying?
Q: When they found you- filled the jagged hole your body left with plaster — was it healing?4
A: It was absolution. Which as close as any of us will get.
Q: And do you believe in dreaming?
A: No.
Q: But you do dream?
A: Yes, often. Of the moon, and of the night my husband came home dripping red, and the walls of a house nearby were bleeding.
Q: With what?
A: Politics.5
Q: Do you miss the sun?
A: Do you miss the womb? These are things behind me. I do not mind these lights, but they are cold after the heat of the earth from which you freed me.
Q: Yes, heat. When the ash hid the sky from you, were you scared?
A: (a laugh) Would you be? No. I was not — in the end. I lay down and fell asleep as I had when the sun left the sky every day before and after. But I do not want to watch this replay.
Q: I’m sorry.
A: It is all right. Let us not talk of the bitter end. I can tell you in turn of the street-bright mosaics and graffiti shaped like a love confession. I can tell you the way the world ended or the way it began. Of my dog, and my son, and the gods who abandoned us.6
Q: Were you close to them?
A: To my son, and the gods. But the dog would bite my hand and show his stomach in the cobbled courtyard as I wove.7
Q: And were they close to you?
A: The gods were. My son had sailed from me long before.
Q: And did they save you? In the end?
A: I asked for preservation. It is up to you if I received it.
Q: Do you pray?
A: Every day. Except to the ones I have forgotten.
Q: And do you love them?
A: Every day. Except the ones I have forgotten.
Q: And do you miss them?
A: No. Or rather, yes, but not like that.
Q: All right.
A: Vale, friend. I will see you in another time. (Here, she is slipping. Expect a goodbye in Latin.)
Q: Farewell, ghost. I hope you walk these sunny streets again.
If you do record this interview, for your sake or theirs, do it with kindness. It might be interesting to explore the further cobbled streets, or it might not. Do it anyway. Drink the rest of your water and press your hands to the sun-soaked sky. It is how they used to pray, after all.
- The author is a tour guide at Roman Vindolanda and would like someone besides the birds to talk to on slow days. ↩︎
- Pompeii’s Hanging Balcony seems a fine place for a ghost to haunt. ↩︎
- Perhaps this is unfair, but they removed the skeleton of a girl from a soldier’s barracks to lie in Vindolanda’s museum. I often go to visit her. I bring chocolate- though I haven’t yet asked if she likes it. ↩︎
- To preserve their bodies, excavators pour plaster into the curl of the nose and the fabric left behind in the compact ash. This way we are able to hold their hands, even if they are not willing. ↩︎
- The author is only being a little bit funny. People often would paint political slogans during campaign seasons on the sides of the elite’s houses: my favourite is written by ‘the late drinkers’, and another proclaims the stupidity of these endeavours, writing: ‘Oh Wall, I am astonished that you have not fallen over and collapsed since you have to bear the weight of so many inane messages.’ The author acknowledges that this unnamed Roman was funnier than she’ll ever be. ↩︎
- ‘Marcus loves Spendusa’: How wonderful, to be loved so much your name still echoes for generations. I wonder if they know. I wonder if I should ask them next. ↩︎
- There is evidence of women weaving within courtyards. Perhaps the sun was warmer there, perhaps the colours brighter. Perhaps, the sky more beautiful. ↩︎
Featured image credit: “POMPEII” by Heleen Kwant is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
Retrospect Journal 