Roman Fountains
Two blocks later sweat is trickling down my thighs. I would like to find a fountain and toss myself in, muffle the city sounds in water. I see one tucked into a corner and take mental notes. Leda and an amorous swan. At least fountains are everywhere. That keeps me from consulting the map I bought from the street vendor. Technically, I still haven’t cheated.
The area around the Spanish Steps has multiple fountains, so I retrace my route from yesterday. The Fontana della Barcaccia. No spurting jets or mythical figures, just a large stone boat with water trickling over its edges. A bench lines one side, and I rest there, concentrating on the sound of water and not the milling people, voices, traffic. Sweat wells in the small of my back. Wasting a day, forgoing my plans, all to prove I’m not what Graham thinks I am. When I am what Graham thinks I am.
Oh well, I wanted to see the Trevi Fountain anyway.
Across the street, two Gypsy women stand talking. Italians push by as if they aren’t even there. Tourists in shorts shuffle an awkward circumference around them.
♦◊♦
Asking Directions
They are young, probably not yet thirty. The shorter one holds a small girl in her arms, the child dwarfed by a T-shirt. The taller woman is beautiful—long hair, green eyes, a prominent nose, dark complexion. I bet Graham would think this girl is so wrapped up in life she would never watch her partner in bed. I forget the map and walk over.
“Ciao,” I say. The women eye me. “Trevi Fountain?”
The one with the baby looks at me with distrust, then back at her friend. The friend smiles, gives a nod of her head. See, I think. She is just a person telling her friend to help me.
The woman points down the street. She steps beside me so I can see the line of her arm. Taps her finger down twice, then off to the left. I give her a nod of comprehension which she returns.
“Thanks,” I tell her. I follow the directions that turn out to be flawless. I’m there in minutes.
There’s a high tide of Swedes around the edge of the pool, but I manage to make a space. At night, when the lights shine over the fountain, people throng. Maybe Graham will want to come back this evening. The fountain merges hunks of natural rock with finely chiseled figures and horses. Restoration has left the statues as white as plaster replicas.
I shift my bag in front of me to scoop some coins out—throwing coins in the Trevi Fountain guarantees a return trip to Rome. It’s unzipped. Sure enough, the pouch with my money is gone. I find a loose coin and toss it in. It settles along the bottom in a sea of small metal pieces.
♦◊♦
Accepting Labels
Graham lectures me as he shaves before dinner. “I told you to keep your important stuff in the money belt.”
“I do. My passport. The traveler’s checks. I only keep my spending money in my bag. Always over my shoulder and always with my hand on it.”
“Seems to have done a lot of good.”
I sigh and flop back on the bed. Graham’s face is centered in the round mirror.
“Traveler’s checks are replaceable. Cash isn’t.” He flicks his razor and a gob of shaving cream hits the sink.
“Less than a hundred bucks.”
“That’s round-trip train fare to Venice.”
“I’ve got my card for emergencies. It doesn’t affect anything.” I avoid his gaze in the mirror and stare at the back of his head.
“Why not just be more careful?” he says. I do not answer. I am the careful one. “It’s like you purposely set out to do the stupidest thing possible.”
“Because stereotypes are based in truth.” My voice is ugly. I realize I am mimicking my grandfather, a man Graham never met.
“Stop acting like you think I’m racist.”
He has read my mind and yet I can’t tell what’s in his, why he’s so upset. Why he’s picking a fight. “I’m not acting like it.”
Graham freezes, making me realize what I’ve said.
“I don’t think you’re racist.” He goes back to shaving, silence sliced by the scrape of his stubble.
“Why were you asking Gypsies for directions anyway?” He eases his voice back into friendly.
“I was interacting. You would have liked one of them. Beautiful. Spontaneous.”
“Spontaneously lifting your cash.”
I don’t answer. I’ve placed the emotion behind the girl’s smile. Smug.
♦◊♦
Old Rome
Here beneath my feet. Tangible history as I walk along an ancient bridge spanning the Tiber River. Statues of angels flank me. I head toward the Castel Sant’Angelo, a cylindrical stone drum breaking the sky, built as a mausoleum for Hadrian in 130ish A.D. Monument slash fortress slash plague resistor slash papal refuge. Now slash entertainment zone.
I’m loaded down and looking very much the tourist: a heavy camera and rolls of film. My lightweight digital has been malfunctioning, turning Roman skies a hurricane green or marble statues a fleshy pink. I want perfect pictures to turn into slides for my medieval unit. Graham loaned me his baby, an old Nikon that was, in its time, top of the line. Though there was a moment of hesitation before passing it off. Almost begrudging.
I pause at the end of the bridge before entering. The city isn’t baking yet and the river flows beneath me—as close as Rome gets to calm. The castle itself is circular and all about repetition—around the top are indentions, as if a toddler had repeatedly pressed a popsicle stick into clay. But with total precision. I enter through the metal door, the original Roman door of Hadrian’s tomb.
The place fills up quickly. I mix and mingle with other visitors. A Japanese couple who hand me a camera so I can take a picture of them in front of a mounded pyramid of ancient cannonballs. An Australian couple with their twins, who insist on being called Romulus and Remus. We all gawk at the dingy cells that once held prisoners.
Close to the top of the structure is an inlet with a four-by-five window looking out across the city. Really, it’s just an absence of wall with a metal bar running half a foot from the bottom. I step back to take a picture, getting the contrast between the darkness of the cubby-like enclosure and the light outside. Then I return to see the view of the city below. Far away, hills rise out of the civilization. Although it is quieter here, the noise still floats up. Below me a parking lot sprawls out like an aerial photograph, the tops of cars forming boxes of color. Romulus and Remus shriek from the adjacent corridor.
It’s great. It’s lovely. But I realize I’d rather be on top of that hill looking down on the castle and seeing Rome spread around me, up where sound can’t carry. The city would iron itself out, give up its layers up so I could see it as a whole. I could say, “That is Rome. That is La Città Eterna.” But as soon as I think it, I see the ridiculousness. That I could somehow know Rome better if I was simply farther away.
♦◊♦
Foreign Customs
Only one o’clock when I emerge from Sant’Angelo. The Australians are at the edge of the bridge. The wife waves me over.
“Join us for lunch?” It’s hard to hear her over the boys.
“The plague, the plague! Have some Black Death!” Romulus pops Remus in the neck and sprints off with his brother in pursuit.
I am curious how they corral the mayhem into a family vacation, but I decline. I can grab something to eat on the way back to the hotel—a rest, leave the camera in the room, and maybe some shopping before dinner.
The parents trail off after the twins, and I see Graham standing at the edge of the bridge. The reflection of the arches makes squished half-circles in the Tiber.
“What brings you here?” I ask.
“Wanted to make sure you didn’t give my camera away.” He’s smiling.
“Ha ha.”
“Let’s get lunch.”
I take his hand and we walk to a restaurant, sit at a sidewalk table, and ignore the cars. Waves and troughs of Italian slide past us. I try to eavesdrop out of habit, keep forgetting I can’t understand them.
“Two days left,” he says. “Want to see something outside the city tomorrow?”
“I don’t feel like I know Rome yet.”
Graham laughs at me. “I don’t think that’s the point of a vacation.” I flip him off but he only looks away.
The waiter brings our entrees, spaghetti a vivid red, flecked green with basil. Graham places his fork on the big spoon and twirls, a perfect mouthful.
“Teach me how to do that,” I say. He does.
♦◊♦
The Smallest City State
After lunch Graham suggests spending the afternoon together. “Vatican City is just up the way.”
“I’ve already been. Second day. I told you about the lines?” I know he remembers.
“Saint Peter’s Basilica too pathetic to merit a repeat viewing?”
“I’ve just already seen it.” He looks slightly exasperated, so I keep talking. We’re standing in the middle of the sidewalk, outside the restaurant, and Graham’s holding my hand—every time his arm is bumped by a passerby, my hand pulls forward. “I’ll meet you at the hotel before dinner.” Even more exasperated. “We’ll spend tomorrow together. Whatever you want to see.”
Graham opens and shuts his mouth. He lets go of my hand and heads towards Saint Peter’s.
♦◊♦
Further Afield
Graham has chosen the Borghese Gallery for our time together. Neither of us acknowledge that Graham already spent an entire day here. Despite the provocation of his choice, he seems happy. Why I love Graham, in part: he’s incapable of real escalation. We wait in a long line. Every two hours, the museum clears out all patrons and lets in three hundred more.
“How did you manage to spend six hours inside Tuesday?”
He smiles. “I cannot tell.”
Inside: the opposite of modern galleries, where everything—white walls, ceilings, plain floors—recedes, leaving only the art. Here, everything competes. The patterned marble beneath us, murals above, small putti perched above doors. After three rooms I feel glutted. We’re looking at Bernini’s The Rape of Proserpina. I always think of them as Hades and Persephone. Staring at Hades’s backside, its muscular heft, I’m disconcertingly aroused. Despite it being marble. And having rape in the title. I walk around the front, then start towards the next work. Graham stops me.
“Look for longer.”
Graham watches me watching them, making that disconcerted feeling double.
“They’re like us,” he says.
“How?”
“Different interests, different desires. So they separate six months of the year.” Graham’s voice doesn’t contain his jokey tone. He’s not even mimicking my inflection.
Hades has his fingers deep in Persephone’s soft outer thigh, has heaved her up onto his chest. Her upper body twists, the bottom of her palm planted and pushing against his temple, perpetually flinging herself away.
Later the Villa Borghese park, like the anti-Rome. So much green and air and quiet. Graham and I take a long walk and arrive at the overlook on Pincian Hill. The city is crammed upon itself below. The Piazza del Popolo the only open space, like an enormous skating rink around its obelisk. Cathedral cupolas rise up out of the buildings, which themselves blur together, an enormous knot of a city I wish I knew more of.
Graham sits on the wall at the hill’s edge. “What are you doing tomorrow? Have all the photos you need for school?” Our last day.
It feels like we’re having an extended, empty, argument. I sit down and turn to press my face into his shoulder. My arms wrap around him, pinning his arms to his sides; my fingers sink into his bicep. The walk has made him sweaty, and I can almost taste the salt through his T-shirt. I lift my chin up, eyes closed, and feel him looking at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. It doesn’t matter that I am ignorant of the exact damage, that I don’t yet know what I’m sorry for.
—photo dick nivers/Flickr
What a hot-ticket narrator, and a hot-ticket story. The humor is dead-on. The descriptions are off the wall, but so freaking vivid. “There’s a high tide of Swedes around the edge of the pool.” Perfezionare! The travel-guide approach for telling the wife’s story was clever and creative…real creative (…had to get some ellipsis marks in.) Thank you for a wonderful read. You ought to think about writing as a career.
“Italian coffe shops never have chairs. Why would you not want a chair?’
Why would you? Italy wouldn’t be the same if bars did have chairs. I’m going to Rome on Saturday with my eight-year-old daughter and she’s going to love standing with her spremute d’arancia, I’m sure.