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Pompeii
by Robert
Harris
The day
it rained fire
A Review by
Ron Charles
One cataclysmic disaster can ruin your
whole day, but at least it has the advantage of surprise. That's
more than can usually be said for stories about cataclysmic
disasters, which lumber toward their climax like some bore telling a
multipart joke you've already heard. Who honestly didn't feel the
urge to push a few heads under water to speed up James Cameron's
interminable Titanic? We endure documentaries about German
aerodynamics because we want to see the Hindenburg in flames. "Oh,
the banality!"
Robert Harris confronts this very problem in his new novel about
the explosion of Vesuvius, called simply Pompeii. When the
story opens on Aug. 22, AD 79, we know that by the end of the week,
none of these characters will be shouting "TGIF." But how to fill
the pages till that moment when the mountain erupts with a force
100,000 times as strong as the Hiroshima atomic bomb, shooting magma
at a speed of Mach 1?
Harris admits that he just barely avoided disaster himself. After
observing the United States for more than a year, he had intended to
write a novel set in the near future. "The story I had in mind," he
says, "might loosely be described as 'The Walt Disney Company takes
over the world': a thriller about a utopia going horribly wrong,"
but "the characters stubbornly refused to come alive and the subject
remained as flimsy as smoke." Or, perhaps he realized that Julian
Barnes had already written that novel brilliantly just three years
ago in England,
England. But for whatever reason, we've been spared another
Brit's satire of America (Vernon
God Little is enough to endure for this season), and given this
terrifically engaging novel instead.
The key to Harris's success is his concentration on a crisis that
preceded the volcano's eruption by two days. Back in 33 BC, the
Romans had constructed a 60-mile aqueduct that eventually served
towns all along the Bay of Naples, giving rise to a culture and an
economy that floated high on the presumption of dependable, clean
water. When a break in the main line begins shutting off one town
after another, only Marcus Attilius Primus knows how to save the
day.
Attilius, as he's called, is a young widower, a water engineer
from a long line of water engineers, who's just been appointed to
Misenum, home to a Roman fleet. His early weeks on the job have been
rough: His predecessor has vanished mysteriously, his staff mocks
his authority, and now the water has stopped flowing for the first
time in 100 years, threatening to plunge a quarter of a million
people into dry chaos.
Piecing together reports from travelers about the status of other
towns along the coast, Attilius quickly deduces that the break must
be some — where near Pompeii. As the reservoir drains in Misenum, he
secures permission from Pliny the Elder (wonderfully brought back to
life here) and heads out with a small, reluctant crew.
The passage of 2,000 years has not diminished the technical
dimensions of this task — nor the social risks of failure. Harris
conveys the modern elements of this ancient life with startling
effect.
One can't help considering the two crumbling tunnels that supply
New York City with all of its water. Let's hope there are many
Attiliuses toiling away on Tunnel No. 3, to be completed in 2020.
(Sip slowly, New Yorkers.)
In fact, what's even more interesting than the mechanical aspects
of this ancient system are the moral developments that Harris traces
through these characters. First-century Romans enjoyed the benefits
of a remarkably advanced system of commerce, science, and art, but
their society was dogged by that familiar triumvirate of corruption,
cruelty, and sloth. Attilius emerges as a timeless hero, a man
driven by duty but animated by compassion, courageous enough to
fight nature, but wise enough to fear its fury. His struggle to
solve this engineering crisis, fend off his mutinying workers, and
resist the grief that always threatens to wash back over him makes
him an utterly fascinating and sympathetic character. And though
he's far removed from the sophisticated economy humming around him,
he demonstrates that essential requirement for a successful market
economy: integrity.
But in the literary tradition of all great struggles, the
flashier part goes to the villain. Numerius Popidius Ampliatus rose
from slave to master the modern way: insider trading. Cruel and
clever, he's both Caligula and Ken Lay. We meet him on the afternoon
he's trying to generate a little entertainment by feeding a servant
to the eels. Attilius interferes, earning Ampliatus's rage and his
daughter's heart. But this self-made crook owns a heavily mortgaged
empire of bathhouses that need cheap water so he pretends to support
Attilius's emergency efforts — at least until he can kill him.
Of course, while our hero races against the clock to stave off a
collapse of the aqueduct and avoid being murdered, we know that his
clock is about to be blasted away by one of history's most
spectacular natural disasters. Harris marks the passing hours and
minutes with fanciful precision at the beginning of each chapter,
along with pithy quotations from volcano experts ancient and
modern.
If the present-day dialogue sounds a bit incongruous in togas and
the romance a bit forced, such minor objections are quickly blasted
away. When the moment finally arrives — a column of magma shooting
miles into the sky — the story rises spectacularly to convey the
surreal conditions that tortured these people for days: the sea
filled with pumice, the ground rolling in waves, whole towns
flash-burned, asphyxiated, and then sealed beneath tons of ash.
But Harris hasn't brought those haunting, calcified forms to life
just for the sport of entombing them again 2,000 years later. The
light he shines on that awesome crisis, and the way good and bad
people responded, illuminates our continued dependence on the most
fundamental elements — a stable earth and a righteous man.
Ron
Charles is the Monitor's book editor. Send comments about the book section.
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