‘Tell you who came to see me the other day — Alec Reece. You remember Alec Reece, Maxwell? He was with us. …” Sansevino was talking to ease the tension — talking too fast, and he shouldn’t have called Maxwell by his full name. He’d been Max to everybody on the station at Foggia.
I got the drinks and then Hacket was talking — talking about the mountain again. ‘It’s incredible to think what: hat mountain can do. Why in the eruption of 1631 heavy stones were thrown a distance of 15 miles and one weighing 25 tons fell on the village of Somma. And only a hundred years before the volcano was dormant with woods and bushes growing on the slopes and cattle actually grazing in the crater. There was one eruption in the early eighteenth century which lasted from May to August and covered Naples.
He went on and on about Vesuvius. He was chock-full of guide-book statistics. It got on my nerves. But it was Zina who suddenly screamed at him — ‘For God’s sake, can you not speak of nothing but your damn mountain?’
Hacket stared at her open-mouthed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Guess I didn’t realise.’
‘You do not realise because for the moment you are safe inside this villa and cannot see what is happening outside.’ Zina’s eyes blazed with anger — anger at her own fear. ‘Now, please shut up, will you. Everything that you have described may happen to us at any moment.’ She turned to Roberto. ‘Go and see what it is like outside, please. As soon as the ash ceases to fall we must get away from here quick.’
Roberto left the room. He was back a moment later, coughing and wiping his face with a dirty rag. ‘Well?’ Zina asked him.
He shook his head. ‘It is still falling.’
Sansevino had been watching her all the time. Now he said, ‘Zina. Suppose you play to us. Play something gay — something from Il Barbiere.’
She hesitated. Then she went over to the piano. She began to play the scandal song. Shirer looked at Maxwell. ‘You like Rossini?’
Maxwell shrugged his shoulders indifferently. Hacket moved over towards Sansevino. ‘I suppose you were pretty fond of opera, even as a kid?’