To see the previous installments, click on the following links: #1, #2 , #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20, #21, #22, #23, #24, #25, #26, #27, #28, #29

It is the end of May 2012, and a group of high school students set off on a study trip from Spain to Italy with the intention of visiting the archaeological remains of Pompeii. Their guide is José, their teacher. They fly from Madrid and, on landing in Naples, spend the night in the city, which, with its mixture of modern bustle and echoes of antiquity, envelops them in a climate of nervousness and excitement. For many of them it is their first trip abroad. At the crack of dawn, they board a bus that will take them to the archaeological site. The atmosphere, charged with emotion, seems to accompany them as they approach the place where, amidst the dust and stone, lie the remains of a world frozen in time.

Once in Pompeii, on the historic Via della Abundanza, José stops in front of the house of Marcus Varius. Pausing, he asks his students to pay attention and explains the essential parts of a Roman villa. As he talks about the atrium, the peristyle and the triclinium, his words bring back an ancient memory and, for a moment, he himself seems to be transported to a past that only he knows. One of the students, intrigued, asks him if they can do a group work to raise their marks. José nods, somewhat smiling, with a slight nod of approval. In his mind, memories of the interrogations of Marcus's family flash with a sharp, timeless vividness.

The next stop is the bakery, the place that bears the traces of another life, that of Hispanus and Aemilia, when Pompeii was still breathing. There, between the walls and the smell that he can only imagine now, José points to two plaster casts of intertwined bodies. He explains to his students that in the 19th century, the archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli devised the technique of injecting plaster into the cavities left by the bodies, managing to preserve their last postures and expressions in an immortal instant.

But as he explains, his voice breaks as he contemplates those casts that are his and Aemilia's, captured in an embrace, immortalised forever in that last moment. He feels such intense emotion that he cannot hold back the tears, which roll down his cheeks. In silence, without enough words to explain what invades him, he looks at those bodies that seem to return his gaze from a lost time.

One of his students, Marta, noticing his emotion, asks him softly, ‘What's wrong, teacher?’

The End

Header Image:

Couple embracing in the Cryptoporticus House at Pompeii