Summer School
‘How clever of Marcus and Julia to have spotted this place!’ Nicholas thought. Nestling in the arms of the bay with the purple cone of the mountain rising behind and the terraces and groves of cypresses sweeping down to the sea in front. Admittedly, it was surrounded on all sides by the vulgar villas of the super-rich with their obscenely opulent vehicles and huge yachts and marinas, not to mention the odious presence of some of Italy’s seamiest and randiest politicians. And at the outer fringe of vision the sprawl of the coastal city could be glimpsed, that rats nest of gangs and corrupt cartels. But a blind eye could be turned to all those things – indeed, as the Master taught, turning a blind eye to such things was part of the discipline and one of the keys to the good life.
True, a veil should be drawn over what had enabled Marcus and Julia to buy the villa in the first place: their agribusinesses and mining concerns in the old imperial colonies. But what a fine and striking couple they made all the same! Marcus, now an old man of fifty-five winters with a rich and varied life behind him. A great traveller and linguist, he had served in the army before transferring to state service for the government abroad, where it was rumoured he had had masterminded many undercover missions in the Middle East. Then, it was said, sickened by what he had witnessed, he had thrown it up and settled in this villa, devoting his energies to setting up the Philosophy School. His new wife, Julia, a strong and independent-minded woman born into the oldest of old money, had been only too keen to lend her support.
And how generous of them to have invited here so many keen young minds from all around the world as summer scholars-in-residence. All summer long they had talked and argued in the classes and debates moderated by Marcus. That very morning, after only the most Spartan of breakfasts they had gathered on the terraces shivering in the rosy grey light. Marcus, with his white and beard close cropped, his wrinkled wiry body naked except for a pair of trunks, had stood in the middle alongside other senior fellows of the School and Julia in her simple elegant white dress, her dark hair bound up, her only ostentation the thick gold rings on her delicately tapering fingers.
‘Society – what is it fundamentally?’ Marcus had begun. ‘Nothing but a machine, a blind mechanism that represses our personalities and constricts our minds. Its mindless spectacle controls us constantly, traps us inescapably in the present. An endless round of games and grain and title-tattle about the rich and famous to divert the populace from their empty lives.’ He snorted. ‘To put it bluntly, it is no more than con, a gigantic unthinking con. Since there is no way of switching off the machine, one’s only choice is to jump off. Fix that thought firmly in your minds, all of you, and hold onto it at all costs!
‘There will always be suffering and injustice. Beneath us the masses will always toil for without the muddied root there can be no flower. Such, though, is the price of the pursuit of truth in this world. All seek fame for the immortality it confers. But what an ignis fatuus fame truly is! Truth alone endures. Who in ten thousand years except a handful of old scholars will remember Achilles and Hector?’ He paused and coughed softly. ‘Let alone our own dear Titus. We can – indeed we must – only take responsibility for ourselves and for those in our elected circle. If there is one thing I learned working for the state it is that intervention only makes matters worse. I used to think that one more act – one more interrogation, one more betrayal or necessary assassination would solve the problem.’ He scowled. ‘But, believe you me, they never did, they never do and they never will. They only serve to plunge one deeper into the moral quagmire.’
‘Pleasure is the alpha and omega of all things. So the Master taught. But by pleasure he meant, not indulgence, not gross and superficial sensuality, but rather the real lasting pleasures of independent thought and reflection. Of course a basic measure of security and autonomy is a precondition, but once that has been attained one should withdraw from the distractions of modern life. One should shun the thoughts that obsess and distract us and banish the neuroses that drive and distort our lives. The fewer and simpler one’s desires, the easier it is to satisfy them. All that are needed are health and reason – and of course friendship. Truly disinterested friendship underpins the good life, far more than the selfish constraints of family love or of sex with its havoc of depression, jealousy and violence.
‘But are there no powers beyond to which we can turn?’ asked Simon, the young scholar from Jerusalem. Marcus laughed. ‘A father in heaven, do you mean?’ He shook his head. ‘No, I fear not. There is only what is the case -the here and now. The universe is merely a blind tumult of particles, and we part of it. When we die we will simply dissolve once more into the eternal flux. If greater powers exist – and, yes, possibly they may – they live their lives far from all human concerns.’ He smiled. ‘They issue no commandments out of burning bushes. They look for no obedience or worship from us. Indeed if they offer us any lesson it is surely to live in a similar state of indifference. Religion is a man-made construct, a human power structure, one more cog in the social machine. Postponement and deflection are key to its functioning, replacing present pleasures with some notional and non-existent future bliss.’
All morning the session had proceeded, skilfully steered by Marcus. Then when the sun reached its burning August zenith, Julia clapped her hands, and servants came out of the villa carrying plates and glasses. Setting up tables under shades, they laid out dishes of oysters, clams and fishes netted that very morning from the waters of the bay, tiny loaves and small spicy sausages and creamy, chewy rounds of mozzarella together with snails and mushrooms, garnished by Julia’s exquisite shellfish and garlic sauce – the secrets of which she and her band of cooks closely guarded – all accompanied by a light summery vintage and followed by grapes and raisins, figs and walnuts.
As the company reclined round the tables Nicholas was struck how different in mind and body were its members despite their shared devotion to the seeking the truth: among them, Anthony, the aristocratic eldest son, tall and haughty, turning his back on the career of public service marked out by his family; Rufus, the ginger haired giant, the muscular son of a wealthy ceramic manufacturer outside London; Theodore from Athens, bearded, short and squat and quizzically sceptical – the very image of ancient Socrates; Simon, small, dark, restless and shrewd; and finally Felix, nicknamed ‘fat cat’ by the members of the summer school, slightly older, obese and indolent, an irreverent wit and aesthete, lover of all the arts and also of both men and women. Then, among the women: Phoebe, snub-nosed and auburn-haired, thoughtful and quietly incisive, taking time out for a year to find herself; and Berenice, the reckless trustafarian, volatile and vivacious, a daring, risk-taking experimenter and defier of convention, one of life’s frantic dancers.
All, though, were for the summer season children of the sun, free spirits chasing truth untrammelled. Casting off the shackles of their pasts, soared high in the sky, their loves and hates circling constantly despite the Master’s austere teachings, flaring suddenly and just as fast forsaken and extinguished: between their young skins only the heat and light of the south.
And he, Nicholas wondered, what was he? Merely a medium man, a man in the middle, one of life’s mesomorphs: neither tall nor short, handsome or ugly, bright enough maybe but no genius. An immigrant to boot, a refugee without a country to call his own, a man displaced and dis-planted until taken under the wing of Marcus and Julia. Where would he be without their generosity? Scraping a living in his cramped apartment block in the capital, giving tutorials to the idle and ignorant sons of foreign oligarchs and oriental millionaires.
As lunch progressed the wine flowed and with it talk and jokes. Then, at a gesture from Julia a troupe of local musicians emerged from the villa, took up their places and began to play, at first some sentimental local ballads of the bay, then sensing the restlessness of the younger audience launching into wilder trance-like rhythms. The whole company leapt up and joined in the rave, until worn out by their exertions they fell back exhausted on their couches. It was an entirely pleasing scene – as perfect, thought Nicholas, as an exquisitely chiselled, rounded cameo. Even the ground itself and the glasses on the tables, seemed to him to shake and dance, sharing in the merriment.
Felix leaned towards Nicholas and began to intone in a high quiet voice:
‘Oh slender feet and calves – I am fairly brought to ruin! –
White loins and cheeks, oh Venus mound and shaded quim.
Oh pale arms and ample breasts, oh tapering neck,
Oh delicate hands, and – I go mad! – dark ox eyes.
Oh the sweet sashaying of the body, the trembling voice
And – may I die! – the passionate deep throat kisses.’
‘And is it not sweet and fitting,’ Felix continued, tittering, ‘that in the courtyard next door is a statue of a satyr doing something unspeakable to a wild goat? Overhearing him, Berenice giggled and rolled her eyes.
Leaning closer still, he whispered hotly in Nicholas’s ear: ‘My dear, I tell you, I mean to “pluck the day” this afternoon with a vengeance.’
‘Fuck the lay, don’t you mean, fat cat?’ Nicholas replied, laughing.
Felix winked fatly. ‘Yes – and why not? After this morning’s austerity I need some outlet. All this talk of burning bushes has got to me. Why not come along? Enjoy yourself. After all, what did our poet sing: “Drive out Mother Nature with a pitchfork but she will always come running back”?’
After lunch, the School staff, having been discreetly tipped, bore off Felix, Rufus and Berenice to the nearby port, there to stroll its street markets, view the newly docked yachts in its harbour, and later perhaps release the tensions of their young bodies in one of its more upmarket houses of pleasure. Nicholas, though, lingered behind on the terraces, looking out over the bay, lulled by the rays of the sun dancing on the gentle waves and the sea and sky merging bluely on the far horizon.
Could he entirely embrace Marcus’s teaching, he wondered, emulate his serene indifference, his cheerful solipsism? And was it just possible Marcus was wrong? Was he too in denial, a man on the run, fleeing the horrors that he had witnessed and indeed instigated? Another casualty, yet one more traumatised victim of the past, as blind and confused as the social conformists he affected to contemn?
And was there not another path? Could not the world one day become a place of universal reason, peace and harmony, all the little glints of enlightenment like their own joining up and girdling the dark and restless globe in a net of lights, sage and ruler guiding its course benignly and serenely hand-in-hand forever? That would be a golden age indeed – but one in the future not the past!
By now the afternoon heat had become oppressive and the rich scents from the gardens heavy and overpowering. Nicholas turned and walked back to the tiny cubicle in the villa reserved for him. There he lay down and stretched out, letting his thoughts roam. What if Marcus were wrong in other ways? Was death the end of all? What are lives for? And love? Are we doomed to lose forever those whom we love? The questions hung, burning, in the hot dark. Then, as he finally fell asleep, an image slipped into his mind: a flight of gulls, wheeling high above the bay, turning and circling higher and higher till finally lost to sight in the infinite air. Soothed by the vision, he fell into a deep slumber, rocked it seemed, by some gentle, giant hand.
*
Nicholas woke with a start. In his dream the great hand had spread and darkened, grasping the thorns of a myriad thickets, snapping and crackling them in its giant fist. Then, through the eerie crackling came thunder, thunder a thousand times louder than any natural tempest, a deep bass note that pierced and vibrated along every nerve and sinew in his body and jolted him awake. Jumping up, he raced out. Violent tremors were shaking the earth. He heard screams, feet, the crashing of dislodged tiles. Those cool sunlit debates of the morning seemed to have taken place in a different world, a different age. Was the whole universe reverting to that primordial flux of which Marcus had spoken?
The occupants of the villa, servant and guest alike, were chasing this way and that yelling in terror, among them Marcus and Julia trying to impose some calm and order. Raising his voice above the din, Marcus shouted that the library must be saved and the words and wisdom of the Master preserved at all costs. He ordered the remaining servants and members of the company to gather up the scrolls from the shelves and stack them in chests. As instructed, they reluctantly set to work, the darkness and stench of sulphur thickening around them. The servants dipped torches in pitch and lit them, their yellow flames bleared by the murk. Somehow and from somewhere, carts were found and some oxen lowing in terror in their stalls. With difficulty the oxen were yoked and hitched to the carts and the first of the chests loaded on to them.
As he laboured, Nicholas glanced for a moment at the mountain behind the villa. A massive pillar of smoke had sprouted from its shattered cone, spreading out in the shape of a monstrous mushroom or rather a gigantic pine tree, its dark leaves and branches lit by glinting forks of lightening, reaching up mile upon mile and filling the whole sky with its shadow. From that sinister canopy pumice and ash were pattering down on roofs and courtyards. To the south, Pompeii had already completely disappeared, shrouded behind a dark dense curtain. Alas for poor Rufus, Felix and Berenice!
Nicholas bent back to the task. Meanwhile, on the slopes above burning clouds of smoke and gas had gathered and were even now beginning to race down the slopes, blindly pawing their way towards Herculaneum.