by Clelia Farris

Translated by Rachel Cordasco

Like every summer, I’m at my father’s. And like every summer, he’s busy excavating an ancient Roman city, built on the ruins of a Phoenician port. I particularly like these ports because they have two landing sites separated by a promontory, and depending on the way the wind blows, you can approach from the east or the west.

I also have two landing sites: for six months, I drop anchor at my mother’s house; for the other six, at my father’s. With him, the wind always blows cold and angry, so I’m very careful not to get in his way.

At dawn, I swim in the prohibited area. The water is warm, the sea as clear as the sky. The ancient city is partly submerged and I swim along the tops of the walls, which are covered in algae. Beyond the narrow passage between two houses is an open, flat area that I call the “dance floor.” Here, I can move in any direction, do somersaults, hit the bottom and go back up at full speed. There are no fish, no jellyfish, not even a tiny anchovy or shrimp. The grand finale features a high-speed slalom between the columns. There are five of these, crumbled by the sea to different heights. They belonged to the temple of Asclepius, according to my father, but the sea level has risen over the millennia, and now Neptune has taken the temple.

After a swim, I take a shower, dry myself carefully, and apply the cream prescribed by the dermatologist. I show up for breakfast. My father wants us to sit down to eat together, as long as I don’t distract him from reading the electronic newspaper. I must be invisible, silent, useful.

“How far along are you with the mosaic?” he asks me, without looking up.

“Eighteen tiles.”

“Let’s speed up the work.”

I finish eating quickly and then go to the villa’s atrium. I walk on the wooden footbridge that has been laid over part of the floor. Along the floor’s edges is a frame of colored tiles that reveal a contour of grape leaves around a central image. Unfortunately, the floor has cracked, perhaps due to the collapse of the roof, and now a small pile of fragments occupies the center of the room.

My assignment this summer is to scan each colored piece and reconstruct the mosaic. At first, I thought it would be easy: I would insert a fragment into the analysis chamber, run the scanner, and the image would appear on the computer screen. I had underestimated the three-dimensionality, however. The mosaic is not a flat puzzle. Even when it looks like two pieces match, their bases don’t fit together. So, I must rotate the fragments, scanning each face as if it were a die, and integrate the results to obtain a three-dimensional figure.

Among the mosaic’s remains are pieces of the ceiling (probably frescoed) and pieces of tiles, so I must “separate the wheat from the chaff,” as my father says. He also says that archaeology is the exercise of patience. Sigh. Oh, but sighs increase humidity, which leaves a corrosive patina on the artifacts. The good archaeologist never sighs—he works and stays silent.

I’m putting the second fragment of the day into the analysis chamber when I hear the chief archaeologist shout. I look out over the threshold of the tablinum, which is the next room over.

“Look, Aline, I was right! Down here is the villa’s warehouse!”

My father euphorically points to his computer screen, where a grainy image appears. A few days ago, he was chiseling away at a hole in the corner between a wall and the floor; today, he managed to get the cable camera in, which is lighting and filming the room below.

“Doliae¹,” he continues. “It’s full of half-buried doliae, to store grain or legumes. Look, they’re still sealed!”

He moves the camera using the manual controls and focuses on the neck of a large amphora, corked by a terracotta disc covered in melted wax.

“We should find a way to open them so we can study the contents.” He moves the camera forward and other smaller containers appear in the frame. “Jars for garum²!” He’s getting more excited. “I must write a report right away. Now we’ll see if they refuse my funding again!”

He turns off the camera and opens a spreadsheet. He pounds on the keys like a fury, muttering to himself. His greatest enemy is not weather or time but bureaucracy.

I return to the atrium scratching the backs of my hands, which are red and hot. Every discovery excites me. After a while, my father makes a phone call and his voice rises like a tense mistral, ready to explode in impetuous gusts that could knock a fence down. I start scratching again, leaving red streaks on my forearms. I tug at the sleeves of my shirt but it’s no use—they’re short.

“Aline!”

I jump to my feet just as he strides across the atrium, shaking the boards of the footbridge.

“I’m going into town. I’ll be back for dinner. You keep working.”

He leaves in a whirlwind of anger, without noticing my redness. I keep scanning the fragments, but it’s so boring. It occurs to me that I could call Mom. I let the phone ring for a long time but get no answer. She might already be inside the pyramid she’s excavating. I wander around the tablinum³. The opening in the floor is a small, dark well. I turn the camera back on and make it advance among the amphorae. A beep warns me that the cable has reached its maximum extension. I try to retract it. “Bip, bop” the retraction system complains. The hose got caught under a handle.

“Oh no! What have you done?” says a voice in my head.

A sudden heat makes my hands sweat. I rub them on my pants and work in small increments with the forward/backward buttons. The cable vibrates, and I hear a distant ticking, but it’s still trapped.

“What have you done?” repeats the voice, but no longer in my head.

The chief archaeologist has returned—he must have forgotten something.

“You have no idea how difficult it is to get this equipment! And you can’t even imagine the cost! If I damage it, I’ll have to pay out of pocket.”

He starts fiddling with the buttons on the remote control.

“Even a monkey could handle these tools! In any case, you weren’t authorized to do so!”

I watch him, full of hope, while I feel the heat explode between my fingers and I scratch myself furiously. With each press of the button, the camera controller beeps, the cable tightens and releases, and my father’s anger rises.

“Stop scratching.” He says it as if I were the one who was in the way of the cable. I stop. The burning sensation tickles me like a hot feather. I move behind him and resume scraping my nails on my skin, trying not to make any noise. My father apparently has eyes in the back of his head.

“Stop scratching!” he explodes, turning around. I flinch, crossing my arms over my chest and tucking my hands under my armpits, without looking at him. I only look up when I hear the creak of the chair and realize that he has returned to the screen.

Eventually, he gives up and lets himself fall back against the chair. “Vae Victis⁴,” he mutters. I don’t know what that means, but it can’t be good.

• • •

He doesn’t speak to me for several days and forbids me to continue scanning the mosaic fragments. I, who hated that monotonous task, look back on it now as one of the most beautiful moments of my summer. When I go for a swim every morning, I add my tears to the salt water.

I spend my days pulling out the weeds that have invaded the edges of the ancient roads; with the wheelbarrow, I transfer the earth dug by the students to the sieving area.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” the site’s custodian, Mr. Manera, consoles me. “Every task is important. Every action contributes to preserving and passing on the history of this place.”

One morning, while my father and I are at the table, a sharp knock on the door makes us jump. Before my father even says, “come in,” Mr. Manera enters.

“Package for the professor,” he announces too loudly.

My father picks his coffee cup back up.

“Leave it on a chair,” he says, without looking at Mr. Manera.

“Today we were attacked from the sea,” the caretaker continues. “Four clever guys in a rowboat tried to enter the prohibited area. I immediately sent the drone to photograph them and threatened them with criminal charges.”

“I didn’t see anyone while I was swimming.”

“They pretended to be fishing on the other side of the bay. They were equipped for diving and thought it would be easy to snatch a few amphorae or even drag away an entire column with a net. But I’m always watching!”

My father deigns to nod and orders me with his gaze to be silent. Manera, perhaps put off because he hadn’t been praised, raises two fingers to his cap as a greeting and leaves, slamming the door.

“Bad Maneras⁵,” my father mutters.

The package is a cube-shaped fiberglass container with lid. I wander around it, curious as a cat.

“Can I open it?”

“You’ve exhausted your monthly quota of trouble.”

The chief archaeologist takes the package and marches out, toward the villa; I follow. Arriving at the tablinum, he opens the box and takes out a metal sphere, flat on the bottom and with a porthole on the top. The glass appears wet.

He places the sphere on the floor, near the cavity in the wall; then he sits down at the computer and starts downloading a program. I bend down to observe the mysterious object, and on the other side of the round window appears a large eye with a dark pupil. Oh! I sit down hard from the shock. The eye blinks, annoyed. What do you want? Why are you looking at me?

“We’re all set here,” my father says. “Open the door.”

“You want me to release the monster?”

With an impatient gesture he himself lifts the lever that closes the porthole; the interior is full of water. I stand at a safe distance, behind the PC. An interface window is open on the screen.

Hello! This is your biosynthetic helper.

It receives information through Wi-Fi but it is not a robot. It is a highly trained live animal.

Click on a symbol and he/she will give you a hand—or eight.

The icons show a smiling orange octopus performing various actions: unraveling a tangle of threads, cleaning a statue, adhering to an amphora with all eight of its tentacles.

“This seems the most appropriate to me.”

My father touches the first icon—the one with the intertwining threads—with a finger.

I look back at the metal sphere: the door is still open but nothing is happening.

“It’s not coming out!”

I tiptoe closer; the surface of the water shimmers like liquid silver. Then, something emerges from the bottom, a gray mass with many green arms dotted with golden spots.

I leap backward, looking for my father. The monster emerges from the sphere, spilling water everywhere. It crawls along the green plastic of the floor, turns green in a flash, and lowers itself into the dark hole, almost holding on to the camera cable.

I sit on the boards and wait. After a few minutes, the octopus resurfaces. He crosses the floor, standing almost erect on the tips of his tentacles, like a hand that wants to measure in palms the distance between the opening and its home; the top of his head leans to one side, like a slouched hat.

He slides inside the sphere with a liquid fluidity but leaves two extremities hanging out, like two bored arms on a windowsill.

My father presses the cable retraction button on the control panel; with a slight rustle, the black snake rolls up into a coil. Clack. The camera is back in its place.

• • •

Over the next few days, I find out that I’ve been demoted to octopus helper.

My father has moved the sphere into the atrium, next to the pile of mosaic fragments. He touches the icon with the image of the octopus wrapped around an amphora: the animal wakes up, emerging from the spherical house shiny and dripping; my father puts an irregular piece of brick in front of him; the octopus rushes toward it, as if he had found the treasure he has been looking for from time immemorial. He throws himself on the shard, squeezing it, turning it over, gripping it, touching it with all of his tentacles, and in the meantime, lines form on the screen. Curves and straight lines intersect, combine, until suddenly the contours flash and the entire fragment appears reconstructed in 3D, perfect in every detail. It can then be rotated and examined from any angle, enlarged or reduced. The colors of the mosaic tiles are visible on the surface.

“Your job is to give it one fragment at a time,” the chief archaeologist explains to me. “After it has analyzed the fragment, you must record it, assign a number and a letter to the virtual image, then apply the same number and letter to the actual object, and put it here, in the enclosure for the already-classified pieces.”

Even a monkey could do it.

He returns to the tablinum, to explore the pantry. I’m left alone with the octopus, who watches me expectantly. I toss him mosaic pieces like I would toss a bone to a dog, and a couple of times I hit him on his flabby head. He rubs his head with the tip of a tentacle and I laugh. Then he stands still and waits with an alert expression, as if trying to understand what game I’m playing, and then, seeing that I make no other moves, he picks up the fragment to examine it.

If the fragments are small, I throw two or three at once, but the little monster isn’t disoriented. He analyzes them in the order in which they fell before him; certainly, the algorithm of the program helps him to extricate himself from these situations. Every now and then, he stops working, goes back into his sphere, and comes back out, dripping, to start touching the fragments again.

“You’re not right for this job,” I tell him. “The archaeologist must endure heat, dry air, wind, and sorrow.”

When I speak to him, he straightens up, stretching his coat and changing color, going from gray speckled with dark green to a pale pink. Perhaps he perceives the movement of air produced by my voice.

I yawn often, especially when the sun is high and the heat increases. At one point, I hand him a fragment and, before he can take it, I take the fragment back. He stares at me with wide eyes, then half-closes them. Oh yes, take your time, you dumb beast. I make a move to hand him the fragment again and move it in a zigzag motion to see if he follows it with his gaze, but before I can complete the movement, he has grabbed my fingers with two tentacles.

I try to free my hand. The tentacles are slimy, cold, and have a rubbery consistency. They’re strong, too. I hadn’t realized that such a small animal could be so powerful. He wraps around my fingers and the suckers stick to my skin like so many little sucking mouths.

“Let me go! Let me go!” I feel myself turning red, first in my face, then along my arm; the palm of my imprisoned hand itches and suddenly even the octopus turns red. Bright red with dark spots. For a moment we look at each other with bated breath, then the tentacles slip away.

“Lunch time!”

The caretaker appears at the entrance to the atrium.

He hands me a ceramic bowl and I step forward, surprised to have to eat here. The plate is full of raw clams.

“They’re for the octopus,” says Mr. Manera. “We’ll eat ours with pasta, well-seasoned with garlic and bottarga.”

I put the plate in front of the sphere. The animal has taken refuge inside, but he curiously watches my movements from the porthole. His skin has turned gray again, blending in with the water. Even my redness has disappeared. The tentacles reach out and each grabs a clam.

“Maybe we need to open them.” I hate him but I would never deny him food.

With the skill of a magician, the octopus opens its shells and makes the mollusk disappear beneath him, where his mouth is.

The caretaker laughs. “Did you see that? They can open anything. But clams are not their favorite food.”

“What does he like?”

“When I explored the seabed around here, there was only one way to get an octopus out of its den. You had to tie a crab to a fishing line and dangle it in front of the entrance.”

He winks, as if he’s just revealed a secret. “I caught dozens of them under the promontory that divides the prohibited area from the beach.”

“Crabs or octopuses?”

“Both. And sea breams, small mullets, sole. I once chased a three-kilo grouper! I still remember the smell from when I roasted it.”

“Were you a fisherman, Mr. Manera?”

“I used to go out at night in my little boat and cast my nets in certain spots that only I knew. At dawn, I would dive with a wetsuit and a speargun. At that time, the larger prey came out of their dens to eat. I caught moray eels a meter long! I would return to the marina after ten in the morning and sell everything right there, on the dock.”

He pauses for a moment, moved. “Things change. Now there are no more fish and, therefore, no more fishermen.”

I think to myself that if he had rested the nets every now and then, and respected the reproduction cycle, the fish would still be there and he could continue to catch them, but I’m silent, since I know that adults get furious when certain things are pointed out to them.

“I was lucky to be hired by the Superintendent for this site; at least I’m close to the sea.”

I also like working near the sea. The octopus has finished eating, leaving a massacre of empty shells around him.

• • •

“So, how are you getting along with your famulus⁶?”

At lunch, my father addresses me kindly and I understand that my punishment is over. He chews slowly, enjoying the dishes that Mrs. Manera, the caretaker’s wife, has prepared.

“I thought the famulus was a witch thing.”

“In ancient Rome, it was the servant of the lord and part of the family.”

So our family has grown.

“His skin color changes often.”

“It camouflages itself to escape from predators.”

I understand the camouflage but I don’t know why he turned red when I was flushed.

“How many pieces did you analyze today?”

“Forty-two.” I can’t deny that he’s faster than me and the scanner.

“How does he manage to analyze the fragments so quickly?”

“Its brains are in its tentacles. The neurons we have in our heads, it has in its prehensile areas, so the tactile information is processed locally and immediately transmitted to the computer.”

Unbeatable.

• • •

After lunch, I return to the atrium. The octopus has gathered the empty clam shells and arranged them around the sphere, some flattened, the bivalves resembling butterfly wings; others have the concave part facing upward, like many small fountains waiting to be filled; still others are lined up in a row with the curved part facing right.

“And what is this supposed to be? Your mosaic?”

I tap my index finger on a shell, moving it forward. A tentacle extends from the sphere, but instead of putting the shell back in place, he makes the one next to it turn in the direction in which I moved mine.

“Sea chess?” I make a second move. He reacts by moving all of the clams simultaneously.

“Don’t use more than one tentacle at a time!”

He freezes and stares at me with wide eyes. I sweep up all of the shells and put them in the glass jar I used for the mosaic pieces. I wave it in front of him, making the shells inside jangle loudly.

“What’re you going to do now?”

He wraps two tentacles around the jar and I immediately let go, afraid that he will touch me again. He shakes it, then wraps a third tentacle around the lid. The scene gives me an idea. I should get some crabs.

• • •

“Mrs. Manera, are you going to town to do the shopping tomorrow?”

After dinner, I went to the kitchen and found our cook busy filling the dishwasher.

“Yes, Aline. Do you need something?”

“Could you buy some crabs?”

“Do you have to give your assistant a gift? Are you friends yet?”

“You know what octopuses like!”

“I studied marine biology at the experimental center in Genoa. We did a lot of experiments on octopuses.”

“Why don’t you still work there?”

“Cuts to research, unfortunately.”

“Why does the octopus suddenly change color?”

“They think with colors. Or rather, when they are processing some data, external or internal, they also do it with the neurons found in their tentacles; this causes the color changes.”

I remain silent, analyzing new data myself.

“Years ago, an article came out about a very in-depth study,” Mrs. Manera continued. “In short, it said that octopuses can see with their skin and respond to changes in light by modifying their chromatophores—the cells that make up the skin.”

“And what happens when … they touch something?”

“They recognize it. It’s the feature that allows them to analyze objects.”

The program exploits the natural virtues of the octopus.

“A few years ago, we had two octopuses at the site. The archaeologist who was here before your father had them map all of the pottery that was found, so she could digitize it quickly.”

“What happened to them?”

“The professor told her to take them away. You were here, and you needed something to do that would last all summer.”

• • •

I fall asleep with my head buzzing, and the next morning, while swimming, I still have a lot of confused thoughts. Not even the silence of the dawn makes them clear.

I dive, then swim toward the columns and, for the first time, I touch them. They are velvety because of the algae that covers them, but under my fingertips, I can feel the vertical grooves that run from the base to the top. Later, in the atrium, I try to touch a fragment with my eyes closed, holding it in my hands. Here, too, I have the feeling that I’m acquiring information the eyes don’t transmit. The roughness of the edges, the sharp points, the heft. All things that don’t appear in their three-dimensional versions on the screen.

The octopus comes out of the sphere and timidly approaches; his skin changes from a light gray spotted with green to a pale pink with yellow spots. He touches my knee with the tip of a tentacle as if to say, “Let me play, too.”

Mid-morning, Mrs. Manera brings me a basket of live crabs. Crackling, impatient rock crabs. She bends down to observe the octopus and he interrupts his analysis of the fragment, looks at her for a moment, and then sprays a jet of water at her, hitting her arms. I’m surprised; she laughs.

“Octopuses are grumpy. They don’t form a social group but live alone in their burrows: they eat, sleep, change color, and little else.”

“He’s never shot water at me.”

“He likes you. They are selective in choosing the humans they come in contact with. At the experimental center, we had an octopus that would spray any stranger who came near the tank.”

“Maybe he misses the sea.”

“If you’re thinking of taking him swimming with you, forget it. Octopuses don’t like to swim.”

“How is that possible?”

“The octopus has three hearts. It only needs two to pump blood into its tentacles, while the third irrigates the rest of its body, but it works very hard and the friction of the water tires it out. That’s why the octopus prefers to crawl on the seabed.”

How disappointing. For a moment, I imagined an underwater dance between the two of us.

“I could call him Threehearts.” The moment I say that, Threehearts looks at me and his skin becomes a spotted purple.

Mrs. Manera waves goodbye and I immediately get to work to realize my idea. First, I seal the lid of the jar of clams with melted wax. Then, I hand it over to Threehearts, who holds it in an eightfold embrace. The joy doesn’t last long, though. He strikes the glass with his tentacles. He shakes the container. Then he looks at me.

“Oh no, you can’t appeal to a higher power. You have to use your head. Or rather, your arms.”

The sequence of useless actions repeats itself until, almost by chance, he wraps a tentacle around the lid. I take a live crab out of the basket and dangle it in front of his eyes. Threehearts extends a tentacle, but I snatch the prey from him.

We go on like this for a long time, him fiddling with the jar and me teasing him, tapping the lid with another crab. At one point, in a lightning-fast move, he grabs the index finger of my right hand, the crab scuttles away, and Threehearts, instead of chasing it, continues to cling to my finger, as if he were under a spell. I feel myself getting hot but I’m no longer afraid or disgusted. I think he wants to play.

I’ve never had a playmate.

Threehearts drags me to the sphere, almost as if he wants to invite me into his home. I go along with him.

“I’d have to shrink a lot to get in there.” In the corner of my eye, I can see the crab moving sideways, seeking shelter under the wheels of the chair. Threehearts lets go of my finger and swoops down on the crustacean, spreading his mantle, his skin turning blue like an alien superhero. I hear the crack of the shell and the fugitive meets his end.

• • •

During the day, it’s difficult for me to continue with his training, since the analysis takes up so much time, so I decide to do it after dinner.

At sunset, the caretaker releases two robot dogs programmed for surveillance. The dogs sound an alarm if they “sniff” a stranger on the site. Everyone who works there has been “sniffed” and memorized, so my presence leaves the four-legged caretakers indifferent, and I can reach the atrium without any problem.

The beam from the flashlight coaxes Threehearts out of his sphere. I put the jar of clam shells in front of him and we start again. Every time he approaches the lid and manipulates it, I reward him with a crab, but when he wastes time on useless actions, I leave him high and dry.

One night, I stay longer than usual. The moon has set, the wind has died down, the air is stagnant, thick with humidity. Threehearts is particularly lazy; at times, he seems to be making fun of me. He drums on the lid with the tip of a tentacle and waits to see if I fall for it. My head sways from fatigue, a couple of times I close my eyes, maybe I even fall asleep, because when I open them again, I hear a strange noise outside the villa.

I’m about to stand up when Threehearts lunges at the jar of shells, breaks the seal, and unscrews the cap. The shells are his. I would let out a cheer if I wasn’t afraid of being discovered. I turn off the flashlight and wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The noise seems to have disappeared. Then I notice a figure emerging from the sea. I’m out in the open and can only crouch down where I am, hoping to be mistaken for a gravestone. The intruder advances, waddling with his legs wide open, and only when he sits on a wall do I realize that he’s taking off his fins. He was walking backward, so he couldn’t see me. Keeping low, I crouch behind a bush.

A shuffling sound behind me makes me stiffen. I turn slowly, my heart pounding. One of the robot dogs is approaching, its eyes like two blue marbles shining in the night. He’s headed toward the sub. Soon, the alarm will sound and the stranger will be illuminated by a beam of light emitted by the robot, filmed, and recorded.

The diver is bent over a certain spot in the road, next to the remains of the bakery; I can’t see what he’s doing. The dog passes him by and continues on his way.

• • •

The serenity of the next morning almost makes me think I dreamed it all.

As I return to the caretakers’ house with the towel over my shoulders, I take a little detour down the little street that the bakery is on and stop in front of a rusty iron gate that blocks access to a cistern. The sun is too low to illuminate the bottom, but I can see the glint of a plastic thread, tied to a lath. I lift it, and from the darkness appears a stone statuette tied to the thread. It’s covered in algae and sea residue. It probably depicts a Roman deity.

At several points during breakfast, I open my mouth, ready to reveal everything to the chief archaeologist, but then I close it. I consider retrieving the statuette from the tank and making him believe that I saw it during my usual trip to the sea. Threehearts could digitize it and maybe in the caption they would write: found by Aline Laguiniere Rais.

• • •

Threehearts is inside the sphere, dozing happily, surrounded by his shell mosaic, to which he has added some floor chips. I test him once more: I pick up the clams, put them in the jar, and give it to him. Without any problem, and without needing a reward, he unscrews the cap and takes back the contents.

Now I just have to wait for the right moment.

And then it arrives. The chief archaeologist moves to the excavation of the baths, and the tablinum is free. I move the sphere and its inhabitant to the other room, next to the opening that leads under the floor. I show Threehearts the empty jar. He lazily emerges from his den and looks at the container in perplexity, without moving a tentacle.

“Go down and open one of the small jars. Bring me its contents.”

Threehearts crawls on the floor, then stops. Maybe he needs an incentive.

I run to the kitchen. The crabs are boiling in a pot. Mrs. Manera says she’ll get me more, but I need bait right now. With a fork, I fish some out and put them in a jar. I then return to the tablinum and find my father there, sitting in front of the computer and looking annoyed.

“Another one of your schemes, Aline? What are you doing with the crabs? Where is the octopus?”

Threehearts is gone. There’s a commotion underground that instantly makes my skin itch. Even the chief archaeologist has heard it, and my desire to scratch becomes intolerable. I stoke my arms and elbows as my father strides toward the opening in the floor. I’m terrified of what could have happened: the octopus smashed all the amphorae in an attempt to open them? Or it got trapped down there and we’ll have to dig it out? But all of these considerations fade into the background when the chief has his back to me and I can scratch myself like a madwoman.

“Did you let him into the pantry?”

I push my nails hard into my forearms and tear the skin, blood streaking it.

“Aline?”

He is about to turn around when a shadowy figure emerges from the cavity. A blurry mass of mud and tentacles emerges completely from the hole.

“It’s dirty.” With one finger, my father removes the dark paste stuck to the octopus’s body and rubs it between his fingertips, assessing it. “It looks like organic matter.”

“Garum,” I declare in a low voice.

The chief glances at me, then goes back to examining the mush covering Threehearts. He then searches for a glass container for artifacts and cleans the animal’s coat with his fingers, obtaining a dark, soft ball similar to sheep dung. He takes his phone out of his pocket and calls the lab. An assistant will be sent to him with a jar, since the contents must be analyzed immediately. He hangs up and looks thoughtfully at Threehearts.

“Clean this tool, Aline. Use salt water.”

He leaves, with his quick and light walk. As if by magic, the itching disappears. I bend down and extend my right hand to Threehearts. “You did it! You’re a hero!” I squeeze some of his tentacles in my hand and he squeezes back.

I take a cauldron and head toward the sea. The sun is at its peak, the sky is white, and the heat from the pavement could cook your legs. I advance with rubber sandals on the half-submerged wall of the temple of Asclepius; it juts out into the water like a jetty. I often use it to dive, and it’s perfect for filling the cauldron with clean water. I turn to go back, awkward from carrying all that weight, and I see Mr. Manera bent over the spot where the cistern I examined this morning is located. He lifts the grate with a hoe, pulls out the statuette, wraps it in a cloth, and makes it disappear into his backpack.

I stay where I am, my feet in the water, the cauldron full. I wait for him to turn around; I wish he could see the disappointment in my face. But he puts his backpack on his shoulder, closes the gate, and leaves. I think I can even hear him whistling.

• • •

I dine alone because the chief is busy writing a report on the recent discovery of a garum cache.

“The hypothesis about the city will change,” Mrs. Manera explains as she sits down at the table to eat ice cream with me. “Garum was very valuable, and the fact that there is so much of it in the villa means that this port was more important than previously thought.”

I answer in monosyllables, not even tasting the strawberry and chocolate. I look at her sideways. I was ready to spill the beans: the night diver, the statuette, the hideout. Then I thought about it and now wonder if she is not actually her husband’s accomplice. Adults are often unreliable, even those who appear most honest and friendly.

My father arrives very late, restless with hunger and discovery.

“Why are you still standing there, Aline?”

I blush. I would like to tell him about what’s happening on the site, right under his nose. I wait for Mrs. Manera to finish going back and forth from the kitchen, and when it’s finally just the two of us, he starts talking. He summarizes for me what he wrote in the report, with that tone of strained euphoria that I’ve felt every time an excavation opens up new knowledge and perspectives.

“I also requested a team of octopuses to recover the intact amphorae. We’ll widen the passage and it will be possible …”

“Other octopuses? Will they work with Threehearts?”

“Threewhat?” He dumps the entire trap of fried calamari onto his plate. “We need new models, with updated programs capable of moving objects without damaging them.”

“It was Threehearts who went down and opened the amphora. He is a hero. We’re a team.”

“Aline, the octopus is a research tool, and not even the highest quality. The sophisticated specimens are used to clean the spires of the Basilica of San Marco, in Venice, or to explore the pyramids. I asked for a synthetic collaborator and they sent me a reject. It’s probably at the end of its cycle.”

A cold shiver runs through me.

“What does ‘end of his cycle’ mean?”

“Octopuses live for just two years. These modified versions, too. They say it isn’t worth it to change the DNA to prolong its survival. It’s all bullshit. Planned obsolescence. It’s convenient for the manufacturing industries to sell us more octopuses, increasing the price with the excuse that they’re updating the programs.”

He waits for a reply, but I can’t put order to the whirlwind of thoughts that are spinning in my head.

“Don’t worry, you’ll have a dozen octopuses all to yourself, a small platoon at your command!”

The cook returns to clear away the dishes. I appeal to her, full of hope.

“Mrs. Manera, is it true that octopuses only live two years? How is that possible? They’re as big as parrots and there are some centenarian parrots!”

“That story about parrots is a legend, but you’re right, some small land animals live longer than marine ones. It’s the law of the sea. Octopuses reproduce very easily—from two individuals, as many as four hundred thousand can be born.”

“Ah! Just as I was saying! Industries are getting rich at our expense.”

I stand up, exasperated.

“How old is Threehearts?”

The chief shrugs. Mrs. Manera shakes her head.

“It’s hard to determine. Typically, when they get older, they start to lose their skin and the white flesh comes out.”

“They turn white, like old people,” my father concludes, finishing his wine.

I run away. Halfway, I turn around, enter the kitchen through the outside French window and steal two raw calamari from the fridge, while in the other room, my father chats with Mrs. Manera. The caretaker has joined them. They make a nice trio of thieves. One steals the submerged statues, the other the merits that aren’t his, and the lady pretends nothing has happened. They can all go to hell!

When I arrive at the atrium, the sphere is empty. A curious sound, like a soft cracking, makes me move the beam of light toward the wooden panel that contains the reconstructed mosaic. Threehearts is skating on the temporarily-glued fragments. He raises and lowers his scattered tentacles in a rhythmic motion. The suction cups make a slight pop, like bubbles bursting, and their action has cleaned the design of the patina of time. The colors are bright once more; what previously looked like a hand are actually the feathers of a bright red bird that is spreading its wings.

I approach and immediately Threehearts delicately touches my fingers, as if he’s been waiting for my return all evening and, in the meantime and to avoid getting bored, has dedicated himself to cleaning the mosaic. I respond by squeezing his tentacles and offering him the calamari, feeling like a traitor.

Ultimately, I think that archaeology transmits and preserves a superficial version of what has been. Threehearts, with his tactile knowledge, receives a deeper understanding than any meticulous observation could afford.

Thoughts start swirling around in my head again. The cauldron full of water, the firebird, the wet and cold sensation of the dead squid in my hand, their smell remaining on my skin, the smell of the sea.

• • •

Summer is almost over; just a few more days and I’ll be back with my mom.

The chief is very satisfied with the season. The excavation was refinanced, some young technicians arrived (experts in underground investigations), each area was X-rayed with infrared rays, and other hidden cellars, full of archaeological treasures, came to light. This confirmed his hypothesis: The city, though provincial, was an intermediary port for trade between Italy, Spain, and the African coasts.

A few nights ago, after dinner, he called me and had me read a few lines of the report that he will publish soon. In the main text, he tells of how he came to suspect the presence of the chamber below the tablinum. In a footnote, he thanks “my capable assistant Aline Laguiniere Rais, who encouraged me to investigate further.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

He bids me farewell with a solemn nod. He never had a great sense of collaboration; he forgot about Threehearts, while I think about him every day, especially in the morning, when I activate the programs for the octopuses that they sent to help us. They are five thugs (male? female?) with muscular tentacles and small heads. We had to widen the passage to let them in from below.

• • •

The octopus team confirms what Mrs. Manera told me: they are solitary and unpleasant. They spend their time enclosed in their own spheres; they sleep, they eat, and sometimes they argue among themselves.

Threehearts escaped.

The day after the garum was recovered, he disappeared. The sphere was uninhabited, the cauldron empty. I looked everywhere for him; I cried, I despaired, but the tears did not convince my father.

“You’re not allowed to swim in the prohibited area for a month,” he decreed.

He wasn’t really angry; after all, the octopus was a model with elementary functions, a water monkey.

Today the punishment ends and I dive from the wall of the temple of Asclepius. I would like to see Threehearts again, to hold his tentacles and be held by him, but I imagine that he has a lot to explore around here. In the sea, it happens as in life: you swim far away and lose sight of each other.

I’m sure he found a nice den between a sea anemone and a group of mussels. During the month, I threw raw squid, clams, and sardines into the water, depending on what the table offered; I tied them to a weight to make them sink, and I felt like an ancient man sacrificing to a deity.

I swim past the submerged alley and let the seaweed brush past me. I come out on the other side and then let go of the snorkel in wonder. The dance floor has changed! It was cleaned by the suckers of the only inhabitant of this stretch of sea. It’s no longer a plain of brown moss, bell-curled algae, and sand. Beneath so many centuries of water and debris, there was a mosaic. Seen from above, thanks to the lens of the water, it looks like the page of an atlas of sea creatures spread out below me. Jagged umbrella jellyfish alternate with darting, pointy-nosed dolphins; yellow-striped moray eels coexist with a wide variety of fish of all shapes; pale pink shrimp flap their tail fins while dancing around the squid; the dark and lumpy commas must be seahorses; and the bright red stars are starfish, extinct now for a hundred years.

And octopuses. Octopuses of all sizes unfurl very long tentacles, as if they wanted to embrace all the creatures of the sea. Threehearts is no longer alone.

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