My dear Negar,

I arrived in Naples today.

From the train window, I could see Vesuvius in the distance. The sight of it brings up old memories, fantastical tales from primary school about people and pets forever frozen in ash. It also reminds me of childhood Latin class, the word “Vesuvius” often the only word I could recognize in an otherwise inscrutable sentence. I hated Latin. I preferred Greek.

Did I ever tell you that I wrote my thesis at university on this volcano? I spent a whole year in Naples, trying to understand how people might survive another major eruption. I suppose I was playing the young and modern Plinius, studying Vesuvius from afar. Luckily, I didn’t suffer the same fate he did.

For me, Pompeii was and continues to be the most vivid example of mass tragedy I know. Coming back years later in the midst of this annus horribilis, I’m once again reminded of life’s unpredictabilities.

I’m here to visit the site, and its archives. The site is closed to the public, but fortunately Laura is going to let me in. Can you imagine walking around an empty city, as if stuck in another century, another time? I’m thrilled to be here.

It’s been exactly one year since you and I started our conversation, and I want to share this experience with you.

We’ve talked about Italy a lot, and we’ve walked around my city, Milan. I know that you’ve never been to Pompeii, so I hope that you might begin to experience this story, this place, all these fresh and buried memories, through my photos. As if you were walking with me.

G

Dear Giovanna,

I’m imagining you arriving in Pompeii, the summit of Mount Vesuvius coming into view like an upside-down ice cream cone with its bottom fallen out.

You did tell me that you wrote your thesis on Vesuvius in one of our earliest exchanges. You told me that if you were ever to get a tattoo, it would be of a volcano. Then you asked me if I have a tattoo. The conversation zigzagged from there and may or may not have included a thought about how both Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf made adjectives out of the volcano, as in a “vesuvian face,” pace Dickinson. Her poems are full of volcanic imagery. Metaphors, probably, for her stifled but bubbling sensuality. Can you imagine a vesuvian face? I’m trying to.

I’ll try to imagine you as the reincarnation of Plinius. But did you mean the younger or the elder? From what I understand, the elder was a savant and naturalist and polymath — a little like your beloved Alexander von Humboldt. Apparently, he died while choking on volcanic ash, but not before communicating that he had seen a cloud of “unusual size and appearance” in the shape of the umbrella pines of Rome. Or did you mean Pliny the younger, who offered up the only eyewitness account of the eruption that we have in his letters? I’ve always thought that letters are the most perfect art. I think you might agree.

I suppose that for Italians, Pompeii is shorthand for the unthinkable. Apropos the unthinkable, I wrote to you last March just as Milan was declared the epicenter of the European pandemic. I was in sleepy Los Angeles, unbelieving that the horror would eventually spread to those shores, too. You were locked in your apartment, restless, a hamster spinning in her wheel. I wondered how you were faring.

I didn’t tell you, but a few weeks ago I started consulting a psychic. Okay, she’s not really a psychic, but a spiritual teacher and shaman with an extravagant name and an even more extravagant accent. Without knowing much about me, and certainly not knowing about this letter exchange, she told me that I would soon be alighting in Italy. I told her that I had no such plans to be in Italy and left it at that. And yet here I am, poised to visit Pompeii, with you as my proxy.

There’s a lot more to say, but first, I’m looking forward to receiving photographs of your view. Without all the chatty thick-calved American tourists, et al. What a dream!

Negar

Dear Negar,

This morning I woke up and found Naples wrapped in a thick fog. This gave my visit a special twist. I’m from the city of fog; Milan is often dismissed as an ugly, fog-filled place. At football games, one of the chants against our teams is C’avete solo la nebbia, or ‘You have only the fog.’ In other words, I’m used to it. It was amusing to see surprised Neapolitans waking to this surreal atmosphere. Naples is normally so hectic and noisy, but suddenly, it looked to me as if everything had been dipped in whipped cream, smothered in silence.

I met Laura at the train station. The station was empty and we jumped onto the circumvesuviana, the same shitty old train I used to take while I was living in San Giovanni Teduccio during my thesis year. We chatted about our lives while the landscape outside flew by, glimpses of the modern city at the foot of Vesuvius occasionally coming into view.

We were the only people to get out at the Pompeii stop and immediately noticed that all of the touristic shops, usually overflowing with people, were closed. My attention was caught by a Coca-Cola sign, presumably a copy of an old advertisement, featuring a curvy blonde woman from the 1950s. She’s sun bathing in front of the ruins, and the Coca-Cola logo sits next to her naked feet.

Love,
G

PS I was Pliny the Elder, of course!

Dear Negar,

About my parents the analysts, you’re right, they’ve probably unconsciously trained me in the art of digging for buried truths. I spend my life looking, though for what, I’m not exactly sure.

After the Terme Femminili, we entered the Terme Stabiane, which I believe are among the most ancients baths of the Roman period. Standing there, I felt as if I was hallucinating naked bathers all around me. At school, we learned of the importance of the baths for the ancient Romans, how they weren’t for bathing alone, but also venues for debate and decision-making. I mourn the loss of this ritual! We’ve become so chaste. So with regard to the bones speaking, yes, they’re chattering away here in the baths.

On the north side of the baths, I found the Frigidarium, or cold pool. It’s where people would go after having dipped into the tepidarium, or hot bath. Apparently, this is good for the pores of the skin. On the ceiling of the Frigidarium I can see hundreds of stars, a little like the fluorescent plastic star stickers children stitch onto the ceiling of their bedrooms. I’m obsessed with stars, and have tried many times to learn the basic tenets of astrology. I fail every time.

Do you remember when Virginia and Sally went stargazing in Mrs. Dalloway? Unfortunately interrupted by Peter and yanked back to ugly reality.

G

Dear Giovanna,

Shamefully, I only read Mrs. Dalloway for the first time very recently, but how could I not remember the “stargazing” scene you mention? As a reader, I really wanted Peter to disappear! He’s the bumbling interloper at a near perfect romantic moment. Thinking about it now I’m reminded of a certain Titian painting at the National Gallery in London, perhaps you know it, that captures Actaeon walking in on a group of goddesses and nymphs in … a bath. Diana may be one of them? I imagine they’ve been having a fine time washing, touching, chatting about both high-minded and quotidian things.

I love the notion of the bath as a civic space. A crypto-agora. Not least for women. As you say, it’s a relic of the past given the wages of modernization, modern plumbing and all that. As for the chastity that you bemoan, I remember reading somewhere that Pompeii had long served as a synonym for sin, a sort of Dionysian resort town serving wealthy Romans and Neapolitans. Did you know about that? Apparently, the words Sodomo Gomora were found years later, scrawled on some wall …

I’m sitting in Los Angeles looking at your photos of these once bustling spaces, and though they’re evacuated of people, I hear voices. I imagine much of Pompeii has that effect.

Negar

Dear Giovanna,

I’ve never experienced a volcanic eruption, but as someone who has spent unusually large amounts of time in California, I am familiar with earthquakes. I believe I even texted you during some of the most terrifying tectonic events of this past year. I know I did.

My mother always warned me to never sleep naked, in case I need to shoot out of bed in the event of an earthquake. Similarly, she tells me to always brush my hair because ‘You never know who you will run into.’ A classic mom comment.

In her novel Corrine or Italy, the story of two 18th century lovers who wander around the recently excavated ruins at Pompeii, Madame de Staël writes eloquently of “death’s abrupt invasion.” Naturally, one thinks about the awkward things people may have been doing during any given disaster, whether its committing a crime, liaising with an illicit lover, or … all of which is to say, I imagine some residents of Pompeii were taken by surprise mid-bath. Google reveals that the eruption lasted 18 hours, but began in the morning time.

Your images of Casa del Menandro are dreamy. I love the Roman color palette. I read somewhere that Marie Antoinette borrowed from Pompeii revivalism in decorating her own rooms at Fontainebleu. For all her sins, she obviously had good taste. I suppose there was a sort of Pompeii fever in Europe around the time Herculaneum was unearthed, a little like how the discovery of King Tut’s tomb inspired Egyptomania among the Victorians. Mummy unwrapping parties and so on.

I understand that the House of Menander is also referred to as “the house of silverware,” because of the copious amount of silver found inside. Imagine future archaeologists puzzling through our intimate spaces: House of Cat Hair, House of Doughnuts, House of Smutty Magazines. For you, it would be “House of Books,” since you live in a sea of them.

Have you ever been to the Getty Villa in LA? It’s J. Paul Getty’s decadent revival of a Pompeii villa that had been buried in the ashes of 79 AD. It offers an unusual visual experience of the classical world; everything is shiny and new rather than timeworn in the way we expect traces of the Greco Roman world to appear. The building inspired one of my favorite lines in all of Joan Didion’s work. It goes something like this: “The Getty is a palpable contract between the very rich and the people who distrust them the least.” Isn’t that great? I guess Getty believed in that line from Proust: “The only true paradise is the paradise we’ve lost.”

Tell me, where did you go next?

Love,
Negar

PS I shall look up Christa Wolf’s Cassandra.

Dear Giovanna,

I’m interested in those red zone dwellers who live, in theory, seconds away from death and destruction. I would have loved to have heard you speak to them, to hear you puzzling over what makes them tick. You hail from the same tribe after all. I remember the lone man in Herzog’s La Soufrière, the one who wouldn’t budge, even as every last islander scrammed in the face of impending eruption. What could have been going through his head?

I’ve been thinking, maybe there’s something salutary in every mess. Pliny the Elder wrote about how Vesuvius and its eruptions probably contributed to the lushness of the Campania region—think of all those vineyards and olive trees and fields. A nice idea. Wasn’t it the pandemic that gave us our correspondence?

Meanwhile, I’m so happy to see the Casa del Frutteto and, as you say, its frescoes destined for private eyes. Do you know that in Persian architecture there’s a dichotomy between the inside and outside, what we call “andarouni” and “birouni?” Persians privilege the inside, adorning their inner courtyards with sumptuous gardens and burbling fountains and the like while erecting exteriors that tend to be bland. I’ve always liked that: keeping the best for you and your intimates, especially at a historical moment, which is to say now, when everyone seems to be a performing peacock.

As for your conjecturing, you can be an Egyptologist in the next life. Egyptology-Marxism-Psychoanalysis: my favorite trinity. Once again, an ardent belief in the invisible structures that rule this world.

I love imagining that the owner of the house was a devotee of Isis. The entanglement of Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt is like a meeting between two blockbuster movies. Tell me, what God or Goddess would you worship in Ancient Egypt?

I’ll wait to learn how the rest of your day went …

Love,
Negar