The word “Vesuvius” evokes images of lava spurting from a massive volcanic crater, people running in terror and succumbing to the suffocating clouds of ash that descended on the city of Pompeii in 79 CE. Lesser known is the town of Herculaneum, a locale similarly destroyed by the wrath of Vesuvius. But hardly anyone mentions the once-buried towns of Oplontis and Stabiae. They’ve been almost eclipsed. These forgotten places are time capsules full of drama and intrigue, if one knows where to look.
The class wandered through the sweltering heat, hardly able to focus on what the tour guide was saying about Villa San Marco. Giovanna’s girlfriend Paola whispered in her ear—a halfhearted proposal to sneak off to the air-conditioned comfort of their hotel room. As Giovanna considered the idea, the guide was leading them into the atrium of an Augustan mansion. Her thoughts trailed off at the mesmerizing sight. Gentle sunlight streamed through a cubic tunnel in the ceiling, which was supported by four fluted pillars. The ruins had been almost impeccably preserved by volcanic ash—Giovanna could make out colorful pictures worked into the plaster of the walls. It was as if she had stepped over the threshold into another epoch, squeezed through the aperture in an ancient camera oscura. The heat was hardly noticeable anymore. Over their weeklong trip to mainland Italy from their Sardinian hometown, Giovanna and her friends had become almost jaded about ancient architecture—they’d been incessantly bombarded with crumbling buildings and raving tour guides—but there was something about the obscure town of Castellammare di Stabia, something refreshing, something that resonated in your ears and drowned out everything else.
Giovanna didn’t notice when the tour guide stopped talking and gave them permission to explore the Villa San Marco independently—Paola had to nudge her out of her reverie. The girls and a few other classmates strolled in and out of the rooms in a talkative cluster, but Giovanna eventually fell behind. Hardly anyone noticed—she was too enthralled to contribute much to the conversation anyway. She lingered in a room with bench seats and a loom, recalling from her Classical History class that Roman girls had to spend lots of time engaged in weaving. How ironic, she thought to herself. I’ve been educated about things that women like me used to do in lieu of education. A familiar fresco on the far wall caught her eye—a golden-haired woman and a raucously flapping white bird. Giovanna marveled that despite being nearly two millennia old, the piece was easily recognizable as Leda and the Swan. But something about the fresco was distinctly upsetting. In most depictions of the myth that Giovanna had seen, Leda was looking lovingly at the swan. Here, her expression was distraught and she had turned away defiantly from the aggressive bird. As Giovanna pondered why the inhabitants of Villa San Marco would commission such a candid and unconventional illustration, evoking the woman’s pain and fear, the tour guide called out for everyone to reconvene. She found her way back to the atrium and left with her classmates.
That night, Giovanna lay next to Paola in their hotel room overlooking the sea. She was on the precipice of sleep, wishing she could join her girlfriend in the realm of dreams, when someone knocked on the door. It sounded like knuckles on glass, not wood. Someone’s out on the balcony, thought Giovanna, but maybe it’s just my imagination. She pulled the covers up higher and shut her eyes tighter, but then another knock cut through the silence. Giovanna knew it was stupid and dangerous to answer, but curiosity overpowered her. Heart beating, she got up, grabbed her pepper spray from the nightstand, and crossed to the balcony door. She eased it open, half expecting some burly, masked aggressor. Instead, her eyes fell upon a trembling woman loosely wrapped in white fabric, her golden hair disheveled and soaking wet. “I’m so sorry to bother you at this hour, but I’m all alone and I don’t know where to go,” she whispered in a strange yet distantly familiar accent. “Can you help me?”
Giovanna nodded and let her in. She could see white feathers floating in the puddles of briny water on the floor.