How to Disappear (16 page)

The computers at this exhibition were the offspring of the Neapolis Project, a large computer installation by IBM at the archaeological site itself which aims to record every possible piece of information about Pompeii and its treasures, recycling the accumulation into educational games. According to the publicity, ‘One insight identifies restaurants in different districts according to price…' Restaurants in 79 AD or restaurants to-day? Couldn't be sure. Another line of research has been to devise precautions against site-vulnerability in case of another volcanic eruption; Pompeii escaped once from the world and they're determined it won't happen again. Each of the exhibition rooms had a number of video screens incorporating the latest touchscreen techniques. This allowed you to enter and explore the programmes by touching different parts of the screen. Some of them didn't work, or perhaps my fingers aren't hot enough. One became lost in a labyrinth of bits. To add insult to injury, the brilliance of the onscreen images drained the real objects of colour and the vivacity of moving images made the static exhibits akin to wallflowers, party poopers refusing to dance. Thus the images became more real, that is, more vital to the senses, than the exhibits themselves. The computers were intended to serve Pompeii but the reverse was happening. Pompeii became the raw material which enabled the computers to dazzle us with their ingenuity.

But the objects had the final say. Their very silence, their merciless motionlessness, was pregnant with tension, a challenge of hauteur thrown back at the process of digitalisation. These objects, wonderful in themselves, were made numinous by their successors in European art. We can trace the lines of stylistic procreation backwards to these potent originals. All these objects endure beyond the electronic moment and so prevail. It is the video image which rapidly fades out of the memory, whereas the object squats stubbornly in the imagination by virtue of occupying time and space, refusing to be pulverised.

Pompeii and Herculaneum are of course beyond the capacity of any computer and the archaeological site continues its story in the living world. For example the restorers long inserted reinforced concrete into the fabric, but this turned out to be a disaster, expanding in the heat and causing structures to split, and there has been a return to the original materials from which the Roman towns were built. The attempt to find the perfect weed-killer continues in the battle with resurgent verdure – volcanic soil is so maddeningly fertile. Vesuvius was covered in rich vineyards and was known as the Hill of Bacchus. As a reminder of that, as well as of the inhabitants' physical freedom, there were two marble statues in the London show, naked males leaning backwards and flaunting their slack genitals, one a satyr pouring wine, the other a drunken Heracles peeing. Sex? Nah, just a piss-up…

A third of the archaeological site remains to be dug out and every year fresh controversies burst around new discoveries. Endless numbers of penises keep popping up. The region is geologically unstable. An earthquake in 1980 damaged in some way two-thirds of the excavations. And of course Vesuvius, according to the historical record, is long overdue for another eruption. Most exciting of all is the ancient library unearthed at the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum. The first Getty Museum at Malibu in

California is a reproduction of this villa but the original is only now being systematically investigated. New techniques in unravelling scrolls sealed by fire may give us lost or hitherto unknown masterpieces from the dawn of civilised humanity. How great a benefit this would be, were it to trigger another Classical renaissance in Europe, allowing us drink anew from the wisdom of the Greeks and the statecraft of the Romans.

But what I loved quite as much as the exhibits from
that
site was their location at this site: a large, gentle, creamy London house. The Accademia Italiana's premises at 24 Rutland Gate were built in 1841 for a man called John Sheepshanks, a bachelor and cloth manufacturer from Leeds who became an art collector. Henry Cole took Turner to the house in 1851 – The
Survey of London
is telling me these things. In 1899 the house was purchased by Baron Frederic d'Erlanger who enlarged it and refined the interiors in Parisian taste. He was a member of a European banking family, international plutocrats along the lines of the Camondos, Rothschilds, Bischoffsheims and Sassoons. Frederic's father was German, his mother American, and he was born in Paris, a Proustian figure who became a naturalised British citizen, combining his career as banker with that of composer – several of his operas were performed at Covent Garden, and there was a ballet, Le cent
baisers,
which made it onto record in the early days of HMV. Heedless of the bombs, the Baron died in London in 1943. As for the Accademia Italiana, it has vanished from these premises. Maybe the organisation is defunct or conducts its activities more reclusively elsewhere.

Yesterday I drove to Rutland Gate to look again at number 24. It was a dispiriting experience. Who owns the house now? Everything delicate or mellow about the place has been eliminated and its soul eviscerated – there's nothing like an excess of barbarian wealth to destroy a building. Where the garden should be, there was a car park with three glossy new motors. The house itself was lit up inside but empty, decorated in a shrill hotel style, sealed by metal grilles. It is both occupied and unoccupied.

At Kildonan Farm the rumour-machine is in full swing. While I've been absorbed in the book on Pompeii, Luca has been downstairs gossiping and he comes up to the bedroom, excitedly pulling on a cigarette. ‘He's coming to-morrow, we heard Maruma's coming to-morrow!' he informs me.

‘When?'

‘On the boat.'

‘Which boat?'

‘There's only one boat. The mid-day boat.'

‘I thought there were other boats.'

‘No, no, no, there's only one boat…or are there other boats?' Luca looks concerned and dashes off in search of Colin Carr.

That evening we have a dinner of homemade vegetable soup, roast pork, and a blackberry & apple tart with cream. The Carr's son, Donny, waits on us and clears away the table and I ask him if the house is haunted.

He stops, a plate in each hand, and his reddish complexion colours more deeply. ‘Yes.'

‘Go on.'

‘Well…The stair-carpet rolled upstairs.'

‘All by itself?'

‘Yes. All by itself. And with all the nails taken out and left on the side.'

‘What do you mean, left on the side?'

‘The carpet nails were left on the stairs but very neatly and the carpet was in a roll at the top. It happened twice.'

Donny is at Gordonstoun. After the age of eleven there is no schooling on the island and all the children have to go to boarding school but the local authority helps with the cost. I wonder if they teach carpet-laying at Gordonstoun.

By the next day the warm weather has returned and the views are exhilarating. Clouds and islands, hills and mountains and water mix up silver and green, blue and purple and gold in combinations which are unpaintable because they are always in slow motion. Seabirds go up and down, up and down on promontories of rock. Everyone troops along in their wellington boots to the jetty to await Maruma and the midday boat, and I am disconcerted to discover that a number of them are walking unsteadily and slurring their words. I am far from being a prude but I don't think our livers were invented for morning booze. I point to a burnt-out vehicle by the jetty. ‘That was Shellenberg's,' says one of the drunks.

Keith Schellenberg was an ageing playboy, a vegetarian and a wildlife enthusiast who declared in a benevolent and defiant proclamation that the whole island would from now on be a nature reserve. Benevolent to the wildlife, defiant of local tradition. He forbad shooting and permitted only limited fishing. At the same time he drove a titanic Rolls Royce backwards and forwards along the island's only road and played ‘war games' across the moors and woods, crags and beaches, with other ageing playboys. During one of them the Nazi flag was seen to fly from the Lodge flagpole. Schellenberg behaved coarsely with the tenants and it all came to a head when he attempted to prise the Carr family out of Kildonan. During the subsequent protests his beloved Rolls Royce was captured and set on fire. Schellenberg abandoned Eigg in a fluster, referring to the islanders as ‘rotten, dangerous, and totally barmy revolutionaries.'

Maruma resembles Schellenberg to the extent that his association with Eigg is his chief, perhaps his only distinction. Otherwise Maruma is very different. Schellenberg was unavoidable whereas Maruma is undiscoverable. Maruma is a wraith and, judging from the intermittent vibrations he sends out, he is a New Age wraith. He is also very indecisive. He seems to hang around waiting for the energy to be right – which is a mug's game; to sit in a chair waiting for ‘energy' sounds like stalling or depression or inner conflict. Therefore he generates waves of doubt in others. Where are his paintings, said to have sold for enormous sums? They have been searched for but not located. What is this art of fire energy he goes on about? One doesn't expect it to compete with Vesuvius but surely it has heat of
some
kind? I'm told he's a chain-smoker – would that be it? And is there any money? His ex-wife, a woman called Renate, told a reporter that Maruma is not rich in his own right and does not come from a rich family. The Eigg purchase appears to have been funded by a loan of £1.6 million from what one British newspaper has identified as the Volksbank Workers Banking Co-op. Now, they say, problems have arisen over this loan. Where will the additional millions required for investment be coming from? The locals are gasping for cash like landed haddock.

Suddenly the mid-day ferry is glimpsed as a dot on the horizon. Everyone stirs and stands to attention in an orderly row and all eyes strain, even the sozzled ones. The ferry swells into view but halts and anchors offshore, riding on the waves while passengers transfer to the little red boat which will bring them to land at the jetty steps. We are scrutinising the commotion of bags, suitcases and bums for some outline of a plump man in his forties, with long dark hair and a pale face, wearing a beret. Could that be he? Or that one? No likely candidate presents himself. The red transit boat arrives at the jetty and ties up. As its passengers disembark – two priests and a telephone repairman – the remainder are sailors – Luca says ‘Fuck…' and the camera, ready to immortalise Maruma's apprehensive face and transmit it to the world, slumps unused to his side on its straps. The islanders look at each other, shrug, and sit down more or less where they are and open more beer. Colin Carr gives a strangled asymmetrical laugh. Maruma has stood them up again. Yet again. No message of apology or explanation. Nothing. He simply didn't come, and if they still hope to see him the only thing they can do is – carry on waiting.

This resurgence of inertia is intolerable. Do we sit down and drink beer and utter vapidities until it's time to eat and get fatter? Not me. I escape up the hill to have a look inside the Protestant church. A shower breaks as I enter the neat Arts and Crafts building and when I come out again a perfect rainbow has arched from a field on the left into the sea on the right. The sun is warm on my head. Further up the lane the Huddersfield boy comes by on his motor scooter – he hadn't been waiting at the jetty, he had more sense. He points to the rainbow and looks at me and smiles. He knows the island well and tells me about an isolated tarn he likes to fish in. I ask him if we can go there and he says ‘Sure'. We head for the centre of the island, leave the bike beside a stile, he unstraps his fishing rod, and we trek through heather, with the great tower of rock hanging over us like the sword of Damocles. It's too strenuous for conversation but at last we arrive at the dark pool of water, his special pond. The views are always immense on Eigg. But up here they are empyrean. As he joints together his rod, I try to take it in, the wheeling vistas, his expression concentrated on his fishing rod, the air passing clean through one's nostrils and lungs and blood, and instead of letting it go, letting it fly, letting it all disappear, I decide to ground it with an ordinary question. If I don't I might be blown away, never to return.

‘Do you work on the island?'

‘Oh no.'

I never, on principle, ask people what they do for a living, but I'm longing to know in his case, longing to decode his elfin grace, to find out exactly who he is. But I don't know what to say. He helps me by adding, with one eye screwed up, ‘Don't work at anything much. Bit of this, bit of that.'

‘Nothing you'd call a career.'

He smiles again. ‘I'm too relaxed for a career.'

We sit quietly, making occasional small talk. Birds shriek high above us, gliding about the shaft of rock which is thick and black against the sky but cuts sharply into it because the sky, by contrast, is pure blue. He stands up, moves off a little into the heather for a pee and returns, buttoning the fascinating thing away. He's gifted with effortless, animal charm, but it doesn't work on the fish -nothing bites.

‘Did you ever meet this German artist?' I ask.

‘No. I heard about him. Don't you think he sounds like an idiot?'

Not an idiot, no. Maruma is a nightmare. People like Maruma, you have to avoid them. People who don't know whether they're coming or going. People who stand you up or cut you dead, and then express surprise if you're put out or hurt. Usually they're men unable to face it. Men more than women are guilty of offensive cowardice. Men are more easily discouraged than women. Maruma is frightened to come. If he's into fire energy it's probably because he has none himself. I'm willing to bet he's a water person who found himself the owner of Eigg not because of the volcanic plug driven through its heart but because it is an island, because it is surrounded and contained by water. If I were into astrology I'd wager he is a water sign – Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces – but I was never into astrology, not even when I was taking LSD, though that drug did give rise to an interest in numerology which is, I think, more credible since ‘number' is what lies behind music and science. The only time I find my eyes wandering over the horoscopes in women's magazines is when I fall in love frustratedly, because then one is scanning the mythic realm for any signs, any clues, any way across the divide, any way out of the self and into the other, and so the irrational character of astrology becomes its recommendation, the loved one viewed with abstract objectivity from elsewhere.