eating of raw meat. I am thinking of the raw pig that makes prosciutto, the raw beef in bresaola and Florentine steaks, raw milk used for cheeses, salami and lamb, but also contact with the soil.’
‘This is science fact?’
‘Unfortunately, Italy does not regularly screen its pregnant women for the virus, but all the contributing factors and symptoms are plain to see, so it is a reasonable scientific hypothesis.’
‘So maybe we should be concentrating on rounding up the cats, and after a few generations our women will stop giving birth to baby Mafiosi.’
‘You know I can tell when you are mocking me,’ said Konrad.
Ten minutes later they arrived at the lake.
‘I forget,’ said Blume. ‘Why are we here?’
‘You said you studied Latin in school,’ said Konrad. ‘You must have read Virgil?’
‘We had to.’
‘Ah.’ Konrad fell silent and consulted the SatNav and then surveyed the landscape, a frown on his face.
Blume cut the engine and climbed out of the camper van. It was good to stretch his legs. The two of them were the only people in sight. They walked down to the low wall bordering the lake. Blume jumped up onto the ledge and walked along it, looking down at Konrad’s bald patch. ‘This is Lake Avernus. I can see you’re disappointed. Is it the smell? That’s sulphur. It’s supposed to be good for you.’
Konrad followed Blume along the wall, then called out after him. ‘It’s not the smell. It’s the cement buildings all around. Also I thought Lake Avernus would be bigger.’
‘It’s just a large pool on the top of an exploded volcanic crater,’ said Blume.
Reluctantly, Konrad caught up with Blume. ‘But for such an important place…’
‘What’s important about it?’ asked Blume, leaping off the wall. The walk was doing him good.
‘In mythology, this is the Gate to Hades, the entrance to the Underworld. I thought you said you had to read Virgil in school.’
‘Doesn’t mean I have to believe him. Mythology again. You’re really into this stuff,’ said Blume. ‘Konrad, it’s just a lake. Virgil made all that shit up to please the new emperor. He probably didn’t even bother coming here to look at it.’
‘But there are real ruins of the Cumae sibyl over there. Those are real.’
‘Real in that there are Roman ruins there, yes. We don’t have time for a visit.’
‘Shh! I need to control something,’ said Konrad.
‘Check something, you mean, unless you’re talking about a Teutonic urge to take over a country, in which case…’
‘Please. You must be silent.’
Konrad appeared to be scanning the sky and listening hard, like a gunner waiting for an air attack. Eventually, he began to smile. ‘There. What do you hear?’
By way of reply, Blume popped another aspirin.
‘Can’t you hear the silence?’ said Konrad, his eyes still skyward.
‘I can hear a television,’ said Blume. ‘A motorbike, a girl having an argument, someone hammering metal on the other side of the lake, a dog barking, now I hear a car… and a passenger jet coming into Capodichino airport. Tell me when to stop.’
‘No, no, I meant the silence. Listen to the silence!’
‘Behind all the noise, there’s always silence,’ said Blume.
‘I meant the absence of birds. Virgil wrote that no birds fly over this lake, because it is the entrance to the Underworld. And look, just as Virgil said, there are no birds! Avernus, you see, comes from the Greek a-ornithos, which means without birds.’
‘Do ducks count?’ said Blume, pointing to a bunch of reeds from which a loud quacking sound like laughter was emerging.
Konrad folded his arms and stared disapprovingly at the reeds, before striding off like a damaged wind-up toy back to the camper van, and remained there making his own contribution to the silence.
Blume, fed up with driving, decided Konrad was sober enough to get back in the driver’s seat. This seemed to cheer the BKA man up somewhat. He disappeared into the back of the camper and emerged with a packet of wholemeal biscuits and black Vollkornbrot, a piece of which he offered to Blume. Blume declined the bread and pointed instead to Konrad’s SatNav. ‘Use your navigator to get us out of here and plot a route to the hotel. Put in Campi Flegrei to Positano, see if it forces us to pass through the middle of Naples, which it probably will.’
Konrad was pleased to do this, and they were soon on their way again, bouncing down a crumbling lane, branches scraping the sides of the van. By Blume’s reckoning the pointless expedition to Lake Avernus, a place far below Konrad’s classicist expectations, had cost them no more than an hour and a half.
After ten minutes of driving, Blume stopped believing the SatNav and told Konrad to take a left, then another. The SatNav announced that it was recalculating, and then instructed them to go right where no right was to be seen. Blume realized they must have missed a turn, and were now heading inland, away from the Naples Tangenziale.
Konrad, who had maintained a beautiful silence all this time, now stopped dead in the middle of a crossroads and read out the road signs: ‘Quarto, Manano. We are in Campi Flegrei now, I think… where is Pozzuoli? It must be behind us.’ He pulled the camper to the side of the road.
‘That’s your stupid navigator for you.’
‘I have very good orienteering skills, but I need to be outside the vehicle,’ said Konrad.
‘No, you stay there. I’ll do this,’ said Blume. He got out of the camper van and stood on the bonnet to see over the hedges. He caught a glimpse of the sea, which was enough. If they headed that way, they couldn’t go wrong.
Konrad got out too.
‘No, you get back in. I don’t want advice from you or your navigator.’
Konrad stayed where he was. ‘I got out because I think your reckless driving damaged the engine,’ he said. ‘I think it is beginning to overheat.’
Blume had noticed the burning smell, too, but had put it out of his mind. He sniffed at the bonnet. Nothing.
‘I think it’s coming from somewhere over there,’ he said. ‘Someone is burning stubble in a field.’
Konrad tilted his head back and sniffed. ‘It is melting plastic,’ he announced. ‘Naples is famous for this sort of behaviour. But perhaps it is a house?’
‘It’s not.’
‘You will run that risk?’
‘More of a risk for whoever’s in the house than for me.’
‘That’s your attitude?’
‘Jesus. Look, I’ll show you it’s not a house. Come on.’
The pair of them walked in the direction of the smoke, now getting thicker and yellower and sweeter. It reawakened Blume’s headache.
‘There,’ said Blume, pointing. ‘Someone is burning plastic in a field.’
‘Like that, in broad daylight. In front of neighbours,’ marvelled Konrad. ‘In Germany…’
‘This isn’t Germany,’ said Blume.
‘No. In Germany we have a society and the law is the same for everyone. Gesellschaft is the word. Here it is all Gemeinschaft. The law is not equal and justice is achieved through private channels.’
They had reached the edge of the field, on the far side of which a pile of plastic sacks was smouldering. There were houses about, but no one in sight. Blume waved his hand at the dreary dump and said, ‘Satisfied?’
‘If we were in Germany and I was showing you my country, and we discovered something like this, I would intervene as a policeman.’
Blume clambered over some woody briars and stood at the edge of the field, watching the white and yellow plumes of poison floating straight up, until a breeze from the sea caused them to swirl and drift towards him. He covered his mouth and nose with his arm and walked forwards. There was no one about, and there was no way of knowing to whom the field belonged. The wind changed direction again and blew the air clean, allowing him to breathe and see better. He could probably stamp on the smouldering heap and put it out.
