Rome
Rome
Passing the Polizia di Frontiera, a neat array of grey flannel suits and gleaming brass stars, we drove past rustic barns, past split-level houses with sunburnt façades, the drives cluttered with numberless cars. Roofscapes gave way to post-warlike huts and firred Firenze hills, bristling and laced up in green. Thin furrows of naked trees peered from soil-stained trenches; huge vines, like gnarled hands, grasped at a whitepaste fingerless sky. When we arrived, Rome was all vast empty squares and flat plaster walls; rich raw silks and fringed skirts heavy with gold. At night, the sky settled in strata over the hills – ice-white, egg-yellow, a dusky overcooked red. We sang Italian ballads as we drove over the Tiber; ate bone-brittle pizzas, light as air, off fine china and blue satin napkins. Glass crashed to the floor, rouge wine flowered on a white shirt.
All the women were swaddled in furs, the folded arms of a bottle-tanned blonde pointing scarlet nails, scythe-like, at the sky. Turning to her husband, there’s the brief sputter, like a dying engine, of a dry kiss. Another, a riot of brassy red hair and tangerine lips, carried a kindly smile that, with proximity, became the benign vacancy of the senile or the blind. Beautiful Italian girls, everywhere, with jet black hair and linered eyes. In the pizzeria, a woman in pale grey wool that clung to the swell of her breasts, the delicate turn of her ankle thickened by the creases in thigh-high leather boots.
Next, the Colosseum, an infinite ring of great cracked slabs. Mosaic boxers in the tiniest tiles, all bulbous noses and surprisingly kindly eyes; pantomime gladiators bunched around the gate, talking on mobiles and having a fag. Ink-tipped birds circled silently overhead as the red rose on my coat fell to the ground like a bloodied tear. And among it all, under a sunlit arch, stood the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen. A Roman nose, meticulously styled hair, a broad forehead with the slightest sheen of sweat. All in black, a serious, narrow-lipped smile, scarf casually knotted in suave Oxford style. I couldn’t look away, through tales of blood and sand I could almost taste, gritty between my teeth. It was a warm winter’s day, his eyes invisible beneath shades, and I stared, unashamed, until he turned my way. After that, all Italy smelt of him, under umbrellas in Bologna, Siena, Florence, Rome. American aftershave’s acid clean, a faint scent of warm Italian food, the taste of fruit-filled cigarettes on his lips. “Era bella allavista”, Pindar, Olympian XVIII.
Wandering back, cold and alone, I find the Piazza Venezia, the Basilica di San Maria in Aracoeli. It’s a mile up the Gothic aisle, frescos daubing the walls, a forbidding ceiling thickly paved with gold. Angels trail ivy wreaths around a red velvet nook, secreting a statue, a limbless torso, within. Camellia and poinsettia, scarlet and cream, explode above five red lights; the chandeliers number 52, one for each Sabbath of the year.
To the left, the organ’s dull silver pipes taper off to spikes, stalactites, forever held from plummeting to the ground. “Regina coeli laetare allei”, they echo, in a Latin I understand and an Italian I don’t. The priest, emitting a broken, warbling Gloria, can’t sing, and a child, indignant, screams. Another answers a phone. Thick candles burn gas under glass; incense, liberally sprinkled, cloys the air. To the right, the supplicatory pose of the nativity scene – a father purposefully gripping a switch, a perplexed boy in men’s clothes wringing uncertain hands, a serene black child balancing a wooden chest on his wrists, fingers pointing frantically at the sky. Behind them, a miniature king in a cushioned crown, carrying jewels bigger than his eyes.
The chapels are dimly-lit, only lattices letting in the light. We see Gano di Fazio’s icily perfect boys, folded in grass-green robes; a marble carving with Kyra’s mouth and horrified eyes. Peter crucified upside down, the damaged painting carrying scratches across the skin; another torso torn by thorns. Like the street traders’ canvas-stretched butterflies, Duccio’s Christ mounts a Y-shaped cross – humanity on the rack. Ribs creeping through grey skin; “alla piago della Mano sinistra”. A perforated scalp, wounds opening like dying mouths. It’s senseless death – statues with sightless eyes, holes stamped in ears, bottles stopping up a mouth. They talk of Cimabué’s Madonna, her tender smile, but the baby looks vicious, and his right hand claws the Virgin’s face.
“Glorificazione” rings out for the seventh time, and the preacher’s hysterics fall on deaf ears. Oily black sleeves peep from his cream and gold robes, and I’m reminded of an altogether plainer abode: a flat façade in dull brown, its boxy balcony – Mussolini’s – thrusting outwards in hope of manna, or rain. The tirade continues, and, wearily, I leave. “Let nothing impede your Olympian retreat”, Rimbaud, ‘Chanson de la plus haute tour’. Our trains all ran on time.
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