"The Vesuvian Affair" (excerpt)

 At the next stop a group of women pushed through the sliding doors, filling her private space with their leopard-print suitcases and chatter. Some wore furs, some wore faux, and some wore the shimmery, hooded fashion parkas of this
year’s Roman mom. In rapid-fire Italian, they lit up each other's cigarettes to the roar of the engines, then took out iPads to snap group selfies as the buildings slid by. Trying not to look, Carla could see the women were having what she’d planned for herself: a girlfriend’s reunion, a mid-life adventure. One even seemed to be the birthday girl.

Carla’s husband Matt gave Carla a trip to Italy for a milestone birthday with Grace, a college girlfriend, to visit another college girlfriend, Violet. Violet is also a friend of mine, who I met through other American ex-pats. I first heard of Carla when Violet told me she was coming to Venice this weekend. It was sudden, less than a week ago, because the day before Carla and Grace were supposed to fly out of San Francisco, Grace had suffered a broken femur. From her hospital bed, Grace had urged the horrified Carla to go without her. Having never traveled alone, Carla felt ambivalent and afraid, but decided she must honor her family’s support and get on the plane. But when she arrived in Rome, she was not in the mood to be a tourist. She stayed on Violet’s couch and buried her worry in the daily chaos of an international housewife. They made food and drove to piano lessons and shopped at malls and outdoor markets. Carla bought her own Roman mom parka and, with Violet’s encouragement, some sexy black Italian leather boots.

Violet tried to cheer Carla up by helping to plan a day trip somewhere. Carla had been talking about teaching about volcanoes to her seventh graders. (Oh, the magnificent messes you can make with paper mâché and baking soda!) Violet suggested she go visit Mount Vesuvius, which surprised Carla. Although she knew and taught about its history, the thought that it was real, in the present, made her feel strangely excited—and a little scared. Even more than the rest of Italy.

One of the women on the Venetian ferry notices Carla’s glances and speaks too quickly in Italian for Carla to understand. Carla smiles and shrugs, her mind elsewhere. The woman tries again with a single word, “sigarette,” reaching out with a kind gesture. Carla doesn’t smoke, but on the lagoon, she accepts. It seems good to have a prop for her reflective mood, something to help focus her breath.

Five days ago in Rome, Violet had put Carla on the Frecciarossa to Naples, loaning her gloves and a hat against the bitter cold weather. Carla’s first distant glimpse of the legendary volcano from the high-speed train had stirred something inside. Vesuvius loomed serenely in the distance as towns and tree branches raced by the windows like passing thoughts. I see her touching her warm hands to the icy window glass, tracing the mountain’s outline. Why is it, she said she wondered, that both the Latin name Vesuvius and the Italian name Monte Vesuvio implied a male gender? In her mind, the mountain had always seemed feminine. She had learned about Pele when she had visited Hawaii as a child. Her father had called his own outspoken, explosive mother Vesuvius. Maybe it was that drunken college party Violet told me about, when she and Grace had dubbed Carla “Vesuvius Lips” and taunted the boys to kiss her. I see her touching her mouth and smiling at the memory. How silly—she knows Geology has no gender! Tectonic plates diverge and converge without biological attraction or feeling.

Houses and apartments flew by outside the cold windows of the train. Sixty thousand people go about their business and their lives every day in the so-called Zona Rossa, the Red Zone surrounding the volcano.

The next morning, Carla had caught the Circumvesuviana train from Naples to the base of the mountain, planning to see the crater in the morning and Pompeii in the afternoon. The shuttle operator, however, refused to drive to the top. “It asnowed lasta night,” the driver said, opening the door. “First time forty yearsa. Road closed, you walkka from here.” He made little walking legs with scissored fingers. Everyone exchanged frowns and asked questions in British, Australian, and American English, grumbling about getting their money back. “Only half-hour to the crater,” was the
driver’s response. “I wait two hours for you.”

But half an hour later, the snow-dusted shoulders of Vesuvius were still far away. The small groups grew distant from each other and Carla was now alone on the icy mountain road, her boots crunching loud on the icy slush. Last night she had asked her hosts, Violet’s friends, how they felt about living on the volcano’s flanks. They had looked at each other. The mother said the thought of living in Kansas with tornadoes seemed far more frightening to them, but the nonna had a statue of a saint on the windowsill, facing the mountain, and the child told some stories about a witch and a lava monster. Perhaps, the father shrugged, draining the wine bottle, that the danger is why they want to savor every moment.

Carla trudged another hour up the road, where spectacular views of forests unfolded beyond the guardrails. Evergreens swept up the hillside, growing up through an old lava flow, reclaiming the mountainside. By the time Carla got to the deserted shuttle stop the sun was high, and the empty picnic area was churned with snow and frozen mud. I need to turn back to catch the shuttle, she said to herself. My overnight bag is in it.

But you have come so far, a new voice seemed to whisper in Carla’s ear. You may never come this way again. Perplexed, Carla considered this fact. What’s in my bag? Jeans, a toothbrush, some jewelry. Just things. This is an opportunity you won’t have again. Slipping through a hole in the carelessly locked gate, Carla examined the trailhead displays. A map showed lava flows from over the years; the one she’d viewed from the road happened in 1944. Major eruptions happen about every two millennia. Anytime now.

Studying the maps, Carla traced the ridge of Monte Somma that surrounds Vesuvius, created in the 79AD eruption that buried Pompeii. “Mrs. White, ‘soma’ means body in both Latin and Greek” her most precocious student had observed last year. This kid had broken the mold on the playground volcano project, demonstrating a spectacular but sticky Plinian eruption by putting Mentos into Diet Pepsi.

Carla’s fingers were cold, but her feet were warm as she made her way up the frozen, snow-dusted trail. Again, she found herself ruminating on the mountain’s gendered name. Native Americans worship Mother Earth and Father Sky, but the word “volcano” came from the name Vulcan, Roman god of the underworld. There’s something ejaculatory about volcanoes, funny Matt would joke if he were here listening to her musings. But any secure wife, any woman with a satisfying sex life, knows the earthy power of orgasm. Lava may be destructive, but it creates new and fertile earth: new soil, new islands.

Back in Venice, Carla smoked the cigarette with one hand while her other fingers played with a small handful of lava pebbles in her pocket. She had collapsed at the summit. Her walk had taken three full hours, pain shooting through her hips at each step for the last mile. Her draining strength had been fueled by adrenaline, which in turn was fueled by an uncharacteristic anger. I’m such a fucking idiot, she had thought. Out here alone, what am I doing? Past the closed trailhead, there were no guides or other hikers, and the irrelevant Italian signs and unclear maps confused her. Somehow choosing every wrong turn, traversing every possible trail, Carla swore never to take California park systems for granted…if she returned. Her left foot slipped on a loose patch of scree hidden under the snow and she felt her weight shift. The pebbles shifted and skittered down the steep slope, bouncing forever above the tree line. She crouched on her feet and crawled to safety. I am that stupid American, she thought, the one they send rescue teams after. But no one, said the voice, knows you’re here. They would look for you in Pompeii and your lost body would melt into the mountainside.

Near the top, a rope railing along the stair-stepped path allowed Carla to pull her aching body along with her arms from one post to the next. I wish I had someone to share this with, she thought. Her legs screamed like hell, but a heavenly landscape spread out below her.

When she finally reached the dizzying summit, she should have felt elated by the view. Cold sunlight sparkled on the Bay of Naples and in the distance, the Islands of Capri and Ischia floated on the sea. But where was that feeling? Instead, she felt angry and spent. Her mountaintop experience was about the steaming pit instead. The smoking pit of her life right now, lost and alone without her family or friends, aging without having achieved her potential. Mentally, Carla ran through every mountain she had climbed, physically or metaphorically, including an early emancipation from a collapsing family, the grueling struggle for a professional degree, two natural births and the slog of finding a job with health insurance during the Great Recession when Matt lost his, surviving the loss of loved ones, fighting against political tides for her basic needs. She needed respite, she needed perspective, but her dream vacation had been hijacked first by Grace’s horrible car accident, and now by this unwise obsession, this impulse to conquer something. And this bitter mountaintop. She didn’t know, now, why she had come.

“You called me here,” she snarled at the rocks. She shouted “WHY?” into the steaming hole, but the wind choked the echo in her throat. Exhausted, she ridiculed her prior erotic thoughts of Earth’s sacred birth canal. “What? Do you want me to throw myself in? Fuck that drama!” Carla scraped up handfuls of lava scree from the crater’s edge, flung them into the ugly cavity. The wind blew sulfur from a vent, disgusting boiled eggs in her nose. “Oh right, like you’d erupt in my face?”

Vesuvio/Vesuvia was teasing her. You’re cute when you’re mad.

When I met Carla, just a few days later, I knew nothing of this moment, but when I learned of them, a month later, I understood. She didn’t know what was happening to her. How could she? But it became clear in Venice: she was being called to sacred service. I have some knowledge of ritual possession from my religious studies and practices. But I had never met a Vesuviette until I met Carla White.

About the Author

Kristen Caven (she/her) writes in multiple genres, usually from a feminine perspective mindful of procreative accountability. She is also Writer in Residence at Joaquin Miller Park. Learn more about Caven here.