Before Vesuvius
Fiction by Jacqueline Rosenbaum
Sailors. They pull in and pull out, upon request. They pull in and point, tell us what they want, as if we don’t already know. Point to pictures based on need, based on desire, based on time. Always about time — that’s the problem. Come in with the tides, out with the sun, they sail through the night. Our sailors. We all call them ours. They pick with their eyes, a pointed gaze, and we pull, one finger extended, palm up, finger curls in, curls curls curls, Come here, my sailor.
Tonight, my sailor is shy. He’s young. Younger than I am, though not as young as the youngest girls here. We are a family, the girls and ladies of the house, and right now, at this time of night, we like to bring the younger girls downstairs. It is this time of night when they make the most money, when our sailors can choose freely without worry of being seen, in the shadows of our flames, behind our curtains. But I was not surprised that my young sailor did not choose a young girl tonight. It is always the older men, the drunker men, the bigger men, who want our young girls. We call these sailors dirty names in a language they don’t speak, and teach our girls how to act like girls, the way these sailors like them, though they know the secrets of women.
I pull my sailor by the hand to my room, mine for the night, identical to the others in our house — small with stone beds, not unlike the bed I had back when I lived with my family. That time feels foreign now, the years having coalesced into a series of bedtime tales rather than memories, losing their edge with each repetition.
Long ago, a mama and papa ran a little shop where they sold soup and pieces of bread. Fish soup, on lucky days. Days when Rufus, the eldest, went to the river and found the fish plentiful. And though that family was blessed with many sons, big and strong, there was one more special than the others for she was the only daughter.
In my room with my sailor, I know I will have to be the captain. I drag him slowly towards our bed, our arms linked but held at a great distance from the pillars of our bodies, and when I turn over my shoulder to cast a knowing glance, I see he is not looking at me. His gaze lingers on the walls, on the etchings that have grown with every night I’ve spent here, the paintings that show all I’m willing to do.
My sailor has golden skin that radiates in this fiery light. His hair is sun-kissed and cascades in waves around his ears. His shoulders are a man’s shoulders, and his hand is rough in mine, though mine are not so soft themselves. When I reach the bed, and turn to face him, he looks away.
Gingerly, softly, with a gentleness that took years to master, I take his chin into my hands and lift his face towards mine. A golden-brown set of eyes, wide almonds, and for a moment, he looks as if cast in bronze and I feel that I have been given some sort of treasure.
Long ago, that mama and papa took their most precious treasure, their only daughter, to the Domine’s house. The entrance was bigger than that family’s entire house, their entire shop. The walls were painted with rich golds etched into faces and the little girl stood in awe, trying to meet the painted figures’ gazes, though she could not. What could they see? She wanted to know. Turning around, she followed their eyes to a hole in the ceiling, which gave way to the sky. Beneath, there was a bath, small, but filled with water, translucent and shimmering in the sunlight. A house with water in it! The little girl had never seen this before. She lost herself, ran straight to the edge of the bath, knelt down on the cold floor, and dipped her fingers right into it, sipping from cupped hands, getting barely a taste, barely a sip, before her mama grabbed her by the hair, roughly tugging her back to her feet. “Do not touch a single thing,” she said. “Stand up straight.” And the little girl obeyed, her scalp stinging, her tongue more parched than it had ever been.
“Beautiful,” I say aloud to my sailor, though this is a mistake. Never speak, they tell us, unless spoken to. Not out of servitude, but out of caution. They cannot understand us, they would not take kindly to the ensuing confusion, the fleeing ignorance. Not here, not for this. Do not speak unless they speak. Do not speak unless they demand it of you. Make them feel like kings, we were advised, just for the night, just for a moment.
My sailor looks directly into my eyes, and quickly looks away, unsure of what I have said. Against all better judgment, I whisper it again, “Beautiful.” I run my fingers through the dark crests of his hair, my other hand quickly expanding from his chin to the entirety of his cheek, and his skin is warm. There is something different — an energy in the air that surrounds him, a radiance. There is gravity in his gaze, and it is arresting. He is a treasure, and I am not afraid to touch.
My sailor isn’t sure if he wants to be here, and I see this sentiment sitting between his eyes. Maybe he was told to come here. Maybe he thought it would change something for him. I long to reassure this sailor, to comfort him in a way, let him know that it’s okay to be here, let him know that I’ll take good care of him, quite good care of him, that he’s come to the right place, whatever he might be looking for. That I’m very skilled in this kind of love, in the oldest profession there is and will ever be.
I want to tell him that I’ve been training for this sort of night for quite a long time now, since that day at the Domine’s house, though I hadn’t known what I was doing then. But I hate to dwell on the past. Here, in this house where I eventually came to be, I have my sailor and my stone bed and money to make this evening. Our village, so small when I arrived, has grown, and though we are old enough to leave, we choose to stay, happy in our little house, doing our work.
Long ago, that little girl spent days, weeks, months yearning for that endless sky, thinking of those golden-etched faces staring off into an unknowable distance. That little girl ached for home, which she would never see again, but as the weeks, months, and years rolled by, the water was free-flowing. Free-flowing in a way that expanded time, made her forget how long it had been since that first morning in the Domine’s entranceway, how long it had been since she felt small. She woke up morning after morning realizing again and again how her body was changing, while also forgetting another body had ever existed. She inhabited her space with a fluidity and folded herself into it, quickly allowing whatever came before to become a story, feeling she had always been the adult woman she finally found herself to be, one day, crouching by the well, her golden reflection bright against the marble walls. She embraced this luster, a product of time, and allowed the coming years to flow, tiny rivulets tracing from her lips, down her chin, as she drank from cupped hands at the well.
I push my sailor onto the bed with ease, and sit on his lap, my knees on either side of him. My hips easily split from years of practice, from years of being stretched and stretched. Unclothed in this sacred place, I begin to lift his shirt, and he doesn’t stop me. I toss it to the floor, and bury my lips into his neck, salty and warm as the sea. He is stiff in my embrace, his arms hard by his sides, anchors. I bring my mouth towards his. His eyes meet mine, and he is so scared, and this breaks my heart. I don’t want him to be afraid, not of me, not of anything to come. I am speechless in his gaze, the sorrow he seems to carry in the lines beneath his eyes. I don’t want him to worry that he is going to be hurt, not tonight, not for the rest of his life. When I reach my hands down and find him already fumbling with his breeches, I take his hands in mine and guide them with a soft kind of knowing, and when I take his body into mine, I pull him as close as he can be, closer than I’ve wanted to be with a man in a long time. I pull him towards me the way we pull the girls towards us, late at night, in our collected stone beds upstairs. I press myself into him, and I feel his arms reaching around me, accepting. When I kiss him, it is with a tenderness that comes so deeply from within, that I know instantly it will never be replicated.
Outside, the world is not still. The streets of Pompeii shake with the weight of its people, who come and go, in search of this or in need of that, some finding their way down my alley, and others turning their gaze to the sea. The fountains drip without fail and children rush to gather what they can, bring it back to their mama and papa’s shops, where the fish soup is still bubbling over an open flame.
When he is finished, I don’t run off, scampering with a silliness I might have offered a different sailor. Nor do I beg, the way we teach our little girls to beg from men who love to see their girls groveling. I linger and let the titillating sparks, those tiny flames overtake us. I place my hand in his, look into his eyes and tell him, as best I can, yes, you are going to be okay. Beyond the shouting and giggling and harsh steps of the sailors coming in and out, in and out, I stop, pause, and hold onto this instant.
Jacqueline Rosenbaum’s work has been featured in Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Merrimack Review, Haunted Waters Press, and elsewhere. She received her MFA with a concentration in Fiction from UMass-Boston in 2020 and graduated from Vassar in 2016. She is currently working in publishing and lives in Manhattan.
