Read Online Three Moments of an Explosion by China Miéville - Free Book Online
Authors: China Miéville
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farmers.” Volcanologists said the mountain had been silent for many lifetimes before the eruption, and for the almost two millennia since. There were no eyewitness accounts, no survivors’ testimonies—what escape had there been, from this tiny remote place? It was from the Younger Pliny’s descriptions of Vesuvius that writers borrowed images of burning darkness, a tree of smoke, of locals in their agoras choking in gases from under ground, of the pyroclastic flow.
A slurry of burning ash and rock had gushed through the townships and temples and boiled the sea. It had left buildings standing, random artifacts carbonized and whole.
When they dug, the archaeologists found holes. Burrows without entrances. For years they simply cracked them open and picked out bones and bits within until, in 1863, they got word that Giuseppe Fiorelli had poured gesso into a similar air pocket of Pompeii, and let it set.
There was a first time that the earth was scooped away from plaster, when the ground gave birth to someone dead.
Bodies had rotted leaving charnel foundations, spaces in the shapes of anguish. Hunkering deaths, the pugilist poses where cooking sinews had clenched. Anti-corpses made by plaster into figures like bones. Even the shapes of their cries were preserved.
After Pompeii, the island.
The hollows left by the preserved dead underfoot were filled, their plaster forms uncovered. Women, men, children, dogs and cats, domesticated bears in the ruins of dwellings. Now they lay in the island’s museums, in the visitors’ center at the largest dig.
Sometimes casts were lifted gently onto planes for overseas exhibitions with titles like “The Other Pompeii.” The most famous figures were named for their dead poses: the Lovers; Defiant Boy; the Runner.
In 1985 McCulloch had seen them in the British Museum. That had nothing to do, he always insisted, with the choice he made later, to live in Elam.
“We’re still using pretty much the same techniques as always,” Sophia said. Even guarded at his presence, McCulloch could see she was excited. “Sort of. But the prof—Well.”
She unzipped the door to the larger tent, and McCulloch went in and blinked in the red brightness of the sun through the canvas. It smelled of sweat. In each of the four sides was a clear plastic window covered by curtains.
Something shone and glinted on the canvas floor.
McCulloch was looking at a half-man. A cast, like those he had seen many times, a person with his arms outstretched, his mouth open below the holes of his eyes. His body ended at his waist, abruptly, but that was not what made McCulloch gasp.
The shape was not dirty pitted plaster. It was transparent as crystal or glass.
The surface of the cast looked polished, but it was studded with pebbles. There were smears of dirt within its substance. Matter swept up and embedded, muck in suspension.
McCulloch got to his knees. To look closer. Light refracted through the body.
“We’re trying a new process,” Sophia said. “It’s a kind of resin instead of plaster. When we find a hole we pour in two chemicals and when they mix they react and get harder and harder. Then two, three days later, you’ve got this. Don’t touch it.”
“Wasn’t going to,” McCulloch said.
“Eventually you should be able to, that’s part of the point. It’s tougher than plaster, and it isn’t porous. But we’re still getting it right. Different mixes, different set times.”
He wanted to run his hands over the shiny clear face. He wanted to put his eyes right up to the clear hole eyes and look through them.
“We don’t know what happened to his legs,” Sophia said.
The figure glowed. Perhaps he had died incomplete like this. Or perhaps long after he was gone, crumbling earth had filled the leg holes and eradicated half of him. Matter absenting him.
“Hello.”
McCulloch stood and turned at the new voice.
There was a woman in tall and straight-backed silhouette in the tent
A slurry of burning ash and rock had gushed through the townships and temples and boiled the sea. It had left buildings standing, random artifacts carbonized and whole.
When they dug, the archaeologists found holes. Burrows without entrances. For years they simply cracked them open and picked out bones and bits within until, in 1863, they got word that Giuseppe Fiorelli had poured gesso into a similar air pocket of Pompeii, and let it set.
There was a first time that the earth was scooped away from plaster, when the ground gave birth to someone dead.
Bodies had rotted leaving charnel foundations, spaces in the shapes of anguish. Hunkering deaths, the pugilist poses where cooking sinews had clenched. Anti-corpses made by plaster into figures like bones. Even the shapes of their cries were preserved.
After Pompeii, the island.
The hollows left by the preserved dead underfoot were filled, their plaster forms uncovered. Women, men, children, dogs and cats, domesticated bears in the ruins of dwellings. Now they lay in the island’s museums, in the visitors’ center at the largest dig.
Sometimes casts were lifted gently onto planes for overseas exhibitions with titles like “The Other Pompeii.” The most famous figures were named for their dead poses: the Lovers; Defiant Boy; the Runner.
In 1985 McCulloch had seen them in the British Museum. That had nothing to do, he always insisted, with the choice he made later, to live in Elam.
“We’re still using pretty much the same techniques as always,” Sophia said. Even guarded at his presence, McCulloch could see she was excited. “Sort of. But the prof—Well.”
She unzipped the door to the larger tent, and McCulloch went in and blinked in the red brightness of the sun through the canvas. It smelled of sweat. In each of the four sides was a clear plastic window covered by curtains.
Something shone and glinted on the canvas floor.
McCulloch was looking at a half-man. A cast, like those he had seen many times, a person with his arms outstretched, his mouth open below the holes of his eyes. His body ended at his waist, abruptly, but that was not what made McCulloch gasp.
The shape was not dirty pitted plaster. It was transparent as crystal or glass.
The surface of the cast looked polished, but it was studded with pebbles. There were smears of dirt within its substance. Matter swept up and embedded, muck in suspension.
McCulloch got to his knees. To look closer. Light refracted through the body.
“We’re trying a new process,” Sophia said. “It’s a kind of resin instead of plaster. When we find a hole we pour in two chemicals and when they mix they react and get harder and harder. Then two, three days later, you’ve got this. Don’t touch it.”
“Wasn’t going to,” McCulloch said.
“Eventually you should be able to, that’s part of the point. It’s tougher than plaster, and it isn’t porous. But we’re still getting it right. Different mixes, different set times.”
He wanted to run his hands over the shiny clear face. He wanted to put his eyes right up to the clear hole eyes and look through them.
“We don’t know what happened to his legs,” Sophia said.
The figure glowed. Perhaps he had died incomplete like this. Or perhaps long after he was gone, crumbling earth had filled the leg holes and eradicated half of him. Matter absenting him.
“Hello.”
McCulloch stood and turned at the new voice.
There was a woman in tall and straight-backed silhouette in the tent
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