I reached the doorway where Sansevino had disappeared and stumbled through. There was a ladder like the one I’d come up. And then I was descending through stone arched balconies, hearing Sansevino’s footsteps clattering ahead of me. I nearly slipped on a patch of oil — olive oil spilled from a big pottery jar that someone had dropped on the steps.
At the bottom we came out into a garden full of stunted orange trees, the fruit glowing like little Chinese lanterns. I followed his footsteps to another row of houses, taller this time and in bad repair with the plaster hanging in great mouldering slabs. Here were big rooms littered with beds on bare wooden boards. Many people had slept and lived and kept their livestock in those overcrowded, dirty rooms. An old stone archway led in from the shadow of a narrow street that smelt of rotting garbage and in the far corner of one of the rooms I found a narrow ramp running up to the floor above. It was cobbled and ridged with stone. I could hear Sansevino climbing above me and I followed.
The ramp was slippery with manure and smelt of horses. With the beam of my torch lighting the way I struggled up to the floor above and then to the next. Here a gaunt, big-boned mule stared at me with rolling, frightened eyes and wisps of straw hanging from its sulky mouth. It twitched its long ears in the light of the torch, laid them back and looked as wicked as hell.
The ramp finished there, but stone steps led on upwards. I was beginning to feel very tired — a combination of nervous exhaustion, lack of sleep and the ache in the stump of my leg. I stumbled and the tin of my leg clanked against the stone where the treads had been worn into two deep little hollows. I thought of all the people who had climbed up and down those stairs every day of their lives. Generation after generation of them. Parts of these old houses had probably been in constant occupation for well over a thousand years, and in a few hours they would be wiped off the face of the earth.
The room above was less dirty. There were family pictures on the walls and a little shrine stood in one corner. I went on up. Another floor with a broken bicycle and a small blacksmith’s forge and a smell of charcoal. Would I never get to the top? I felt pretty well at the end of my tether. I seemed to be stumbling on and on, up never-ending flights of worn stone.
Then suddenly I was out again in the eruption glare. There was a breath of suphurous heat on my face and I had a glimpse of a building, black against the red glow of lava, toppling slowly, toppling and crumbling as it crashed downwards. Then something smashed against the side of my head and I was falling, like the building had done, falling in a shower of sparks to a red, eyeball-searing glow.
I felt something wrenched out of my hand and then I was struggling back to consciousness with a voice I knew saying, ‘I hope I do not hurt you.’ The voice was the voice I’d heard on the operating table and I screamed.
‘Ah! So now you are frightened, eh?’
I opened my eyes to find the face of il dottore wavering over me. The cruel lips were drawn back in a thin smile. I could see the tongue flicking over them and the pointed, tobacco-stained teeth. His eyes gleamed like red coals.
‘Don’t operate again,’ I heard myself say. ‘Please don’t operate any more.’