Birds of America

by Mary McCarthy

  In Rome there were fresh air and exercise, as well as churches, fountains, hills, domes, sword-brandishing angels, palazzi, clocks, bells, and friendly inhabitants. Investigating Rome, Peter was happy. It was a nice town to walk in, despite hazardous traffic, and, on his father’s recommendation, he had bought himself the T.C.I, guidebook, in Italian, from a pushcart near the Porta Pia that specialized in secondhand guides. He was philosophical about overcast skies and the few drops of rain; they made him appreciate the brilliant days in between, when the sky looked like a tent of pale-blue silk stretched over a circus of gravity-defying shafts, towers, lanterns, flying statuary.

  Imperial Rome did not interest him greatly, but he liked the early Christian churches, especially Santa Maria in Cosmedin. In the Piazza Navona, he loved the stalls set up for the Befana with candies and toys and crib figures of the animals and the shepherds and the Magi; there were dolls of knights in armor and beautiful ladies like the Queen of Night and Harlequins and Franciscan friars and, naturally, tanks and spacemen and bombers in plastic, which would eventually no doubt take over, but it had not happened yet.

  He made a pious pilgrimage to San Giovanni dei Fiorentini and he looked in on San Luigi dei Francesi, where the priests were French. He visited the ghetto, entering by a street with a name like the Wailing Wall—Via del Pianto. It was not the Jews, though, that were meant to be weeping but the Virgin Mary, in a little hidden church around the corner. The guidebook said she was crying on account of the stubborn Ebrei, who would not recognize her son as their saviour—he was glad to see from the kosher signs that they were still holding out, because when they were converted, it would be the millennium, and the world would come to an end. Nearly everywhere he went, he met the bagpipers from the Abruzzi, and everywhere, like an aura, there was the inviting smell of roasting coffee.

  In Rome, he never got lonely, he found; there was always somebody eager to start a conversation and to compliment him on his Italian: “Come parla bene!” And waiters and countermen and sacristans, like the old woman who sold him his breakfast orange, all wanted to hear him say that their country was beautiful. “E bella L’Italia, signorino?” “Si, si!” At night in his room, he studied the guidebook, preparing the next day’s expedition. This gave him a purpose in life; he could hardly wait for the morning to get up, run the gauntlet to the toilet, shave, and foray out. His hotel, it turned out, was in Borromini territory, which he took as a sign; he was resolved to see all the master’s works and he was succeeding, though some were hard to get in to, with peculiar visiting hours or keys to be hunted down. “E chiuso! E chiuso!” a voice would bawl from a neighboring top-story window. But in Rome, unlike Paris, they eventually relented, just as in Rome they would let you stay in a museum till closing-time.

  The only drawback about dear cracked Borromini was that so often you had to see Bernini, his cruel worldly rival, beside him or combined with him or sneering at him, as in the fountain in Piazza Navona, where the Nile was supposed to be covering its face so as not to have to look up at the “top-heavy” façade of Sant’Agnese and the Plate shuddering and raising its hand to keep it from falling down, like those joke photos of tourists holding up the Tower of Pisa. Peter hated Bernini and made the sign of the figs at him whenever he could, unobserved. He personally could not find anything to object to in the proportions of Sant’Agnese, except that the saint’s statue with her fingers pointing to her breast was perched on one end of the front balustrade rather than in the middle: where were the other “errors” that Bernini found so laughable? He bought a jumbo postcard of the piazza and sent it to Bob, with an arrow pointing to the church and the message “What’s wrong with this picture? Please inform. Peter.”

  He was starting to acquire catalogues, postcards, large glossy reproductions; he invested in a pocket history of architecture, a pocket-mirror to look at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a pocket engagement book, a notebook in which to scribble his reflections. He even wished he had a camera with him. Or that he had been taught how to draw. Though he used to chide his mother for extravagant purchases of postcards, telling her she should rely on her memory, he now felt heartsick when at Anderson’s they could produce only one measly reproduction of the marvelous bird angels nesting in the vaults of San Giovanni in Laterano. He had hoped to find a whole flock of porticolari to choose from, to remind him, back in Paris, of the morning he discovered that fantastic aviary of cherubs and nearly fainted with pleasure.

  If it had not been for Borromini, Peter was not sure that he would have liked the Baroque and he wondered whether he did not like him for what somebody like Bob might consider the wrong reasons—because of the downy pennate creatures he put everywhere, standing in belfries and nesting in vaulted ceilings, hiding in egg-and-dart moldings, pretending to be columns, peeking down from pediments. Borromini must have loved wings, since he usually gave his angels two pairs, like little garments, one folded and one open. And he loved stars, vegetables, leaves, acorns, flowers. Peter got attached to the dainty rhymes of concave and convex that seemed to be the master’s “language” and to the ribbony movement of plaster around windows that reminded him of his mother’s boiled frosting as it swirled from her knife onto a birthday cake. He sensed coded messages coming from Mother Nature in the giant heads of the stern-eyed falcons (they had breasts like women) surmounting pillars on Palazzo Falconieri and in the acorns that hung like earrings on the Sapienza and on the Propaganda Fide, piercing small holes in its stone flesh. The guy had a strange sense of humor. Yet Bob said he had committed suicide.

  When he looked at Borromini, instead of thinking about space and “volumes,” Peter had the feeling he used to get from fairy tales: that the world was in constant metamorphosis. Capitals and columns were turning into vegetable and bird forms; doors and windows were faces with ears. Invariably, he was the only visitor to those hidden chapels and oratories—as if he was the sole member of the human species who, led by some croaking frog or talking raven in the shape of an ancient custodian, had ever been introduced into those zoomorphic interiors, which were buried, like the kernel of a walnut or the secret of life, inside a neutral brown, hard-to-crack shell. Nobody would guess, for instance, that the vast Propaganda Fide, bustling with missionaries, across from where Peter had his morning cappuccino, concealed the little cenacle of the Re Magi, though the name of Peter’s hotel was a sort of password, if anybody stopped to think. Even the light that streamed in there seemed to be a visitor guided by a special angel.

  When Bob’s friend Sergio was taking him to lunch, at a place called Il Buco, Peter broached the subject: where could he find a good book on Borromini? He had been reconnoitering the bookshops to no avail. Naturally there wasn’t one, at least that Sergio knew of, unless Peter read German. He seemed surprised by Peter’s interest. Like most older people (he was thin, elegant, and fortyish, with wrinkled laughing eyes), he began digging for a motive. Was Peter planning to study architecture? Was he taking a course in the Baroque? That a layman could “just like” Borromini sounded pretty evasive; it was the same as with watching birds or keeping a plant in your room. A full explanation was called for, though if a kid was interested in cars, nobody asked him if he was planning to be a garage mechanic. When Peter ticked off the churches and chapels he had been visiting, Sergio threw up his hands. “Come mai? Un ragazzo di dicianove anni!” He could hardly believe that a nineteen-year-old with no training in art would simply look under “Borromini” in the guidebook and follow up the page references—seventeen, to be exact “In Francia ti piaceva il barocco?” Peter had been unaware that there was such a thing in Paris as the “Jesuit style”—the French name, it appeared, for the Baroque—and did not think he had seen any examples of it. “Ma certo. Les Invalides!” And the church of the Sorbonne, for that matter, which was practically in Peter’s backyard. “E un capriccio,” summed up Sergio, who in reality liked Borromini himself. A restless genius who came from the north and had not fitted into the Roman Counter-Reformat
ion picture. His filiation was Gothic, and if Peter wanted to trace his influence, he should go to Turin. …

  Hearing the word Gothic, Peter experienced a funny thrill. The short hair, newly clipped by a barber, rose lightly on the back of his neck, and he shivered. It was a moment of confirmation. The principium individuationis had affirmed itself in the seemingly chaotic perceptions of that flatus voci, Peter Levi. There was a reason underlying his old predilection for Borromini which, independently of any instruction, had brought about an act of recognition, just as had happened to him with St.-Denis and the Abbé Suger. His choices were stemming from an inner unity, a Tree of Knowledge branching in him. Contrary to what he always feared, the objective world and Peter Levi were in touch with each other. He existed, he was real. If asked to write a paper on “Gothic Elements in the Borriminian Structure,” he could not point to any. But they were there, art historians knew about them, and his soul had felt their presence. The hair on the back of his neck subsided; he supposed this was the closest he would come to having a mystical experience. Seeing him shiver, Sergio was afraid that he might be catching a cold. The Roman winter was treacherous; you had to be careful about sitting on the Spanish Steps in the sun.

  Peter laughed. He knew he was not going to get sick in Rome; he had too much to see and in such a short time. Feelings of power and mastery coursed through him. He accepted a grappa on the house. Leaving the restaurant, he realized that the thing tourists always talked about had happened. He had fallen in love with Rome. When and if he loved a girl really, it would be something joyful like this. And Rome was reciprocating. As his mother said, it took two.

  That afternoon, when the stores opened, he went shopping. He picked out an umbrella for Elena Bonfante and a bold striped tie for Arturo, pink gloves for his mother’s birthday, and a handkerchief for his landlady. He stopped in at the babbo’s tailor and had his measurements taken. In the Piazza Navona he had a stand-up coffee and a chocolate tartufo and chose some crib figures of shepherds and the Three Kings to be distributed to his half-brother and -sister and the Bonfante children.

  Everything seemed cheap here, in comparison with Paris. In restaurants you could eat just one course if you wanted or take half an order of pasta. Moreover, they were nice about cashing checks at American Express. In the post office at San Silvestro, they had typewriters, free, for sending cables on which, with two fingers, Peter tapped out short letters home. At San Silvestro, they wrapped up his packages, at practically no cost, for mailing to America, and the public scribe sewed a dangling button on his raincoat. He left his watch to be cleaned because in Rome he did not need it; every quarter of an hour, wherever you were, a half-dozen church bells sang out the time. In the market, he bought tuberose for the kind plump signoras who invited him to meals, and when he climbed on a trolley bus with them, during the noon rush, the other passengers would smile and make room for him, so the flowers would not get crushed; everybody commented on the fragrant smell (“Che profumo!”), as though he were making a donation to the general happiness.

  In the narrow streets of Vecchia Roma and in Trastevere, he saw scabby palaces and tenements and plenty of poor people, but this did not upset him the way it would have in Paris. On sunny days, caged birds swung from windows, women sat mending in their doorways, workmen making deliveries sang. Watching a handsome woman drawing water from a fountain, he did not stop to think that this meant she had no acqua corrente where she lived. He guessed it was true that poverty seemed more acceptable in warm countries.

  The world’s problems did not clamor at him for solutions here. When he passed the Senate in Palazzo Madama (notevole facciata barocca) or the Chamber of Deputies in Palazzo Montecitorio (iniziato nel 1650 dal Bernini), it was hard to remember that there were legislators inside fighting. Ars longa vita brevis was a truth that could not be argued with in the Eternal City, where the monuments were big and the inhabitants rather small and grasshopper-like. He endorsed the apertura alla sinistra without feeling too hopeful about what it could accomplish. The very fact that the Roman poor seemed so exceedingly numerous compared to the Roman rich made you doubt that land reform or redistribution of wealth could do much to change what looked like a natural state of affairs.

  The Messaggero, which he read in preference to the Corriere and La Stampa, was short on what were known as current events and long on the cronaca of local stabbings, shootings, poisonings, suicides, frauds, burglaries, arson, as well as national scandals involving adulterate wine, milk, olive oil, building cement; it also featured avalanches, train wrecks, floods, explosions, and ordinary traffic deaths. Each day on finishing the paper, Peter marveled that there was anybody left around to read it, except the police and the fire brigade. He was amused by the thrifty Roman house-painters, who at work wore hats made of folded newspapers, shaped like children’s paper boats, from which stared gruesome headlines: BRUCIATO VIVO, STRANGOLATA, IL MOSTRO DELL’AVENTTNO. He would be sorry to get back to a town where nothing much seemed to happen but world news and addresses by General De Gaulle.

  That was not how the Romans felt. They envied him for living in Paris. To them, it was the main stream. It startled him to find that an American kid domiciled on the Rive Gauche was welcomed here as an authority on what was taking place in the headquarters of fashion, art, music, theatre, NATO, avant-garde politics, and le nouveau roman. He was expected to bring the word on hair styles, the Salon de l’Automobile, Althusser, who Sartre was dating, Britain and the Common Market, poor old Khrushchev’s fall. Examined by the contessa on structuralism and Malraux’s cultural offensive, he began to wonder whether he had actually been living in Paris, so much seemed to have been going on there that he knew nothing about. At the same time, being an American, he was supposed to be up on the Berkeley Free Speech movement, President Johnson’s cardiograms, the Alliance for Progress, did-the-CIA-kill-Kennedy?

  Above all, Vietnam. What was the public sentiment on peace negotiations? Troop commitment? Bombing Hanoi?

  “But I haven’t been home since early October,” he repeated. “All I know about America is what I read in the paper.” They read the papers too and more attentively than Peter did—that was obvious. “Questo Mario Savio, com’è?” To the disappointment of the Roman academics, Peter had no firm position, one way or the other, on the free-speech controversy. “Berkeley is horrible,” he explained. “One of my stepfathers used to teach there. You have to swear a loyalty oath. It’s like a great big factory. I guess it’s natural that the students would finally rebel.” But Bonfante’s brother-in-law, who had met a professor from Berkeley last year at the American Academy, was receiving weekly bulletins that he wanted confirmation for: would Peter agree that the student organizers were using neo-fascist methods? Peter could not help him. He was almost ashamed to say that his father, in his letters, had never mentioned the topic. “Wellesley’s a long way from Berkeley, you have to realize.”

  When pressed about civil rights, he was more in touch. But not enough. His questioners were sure that, living in Paris, he must have met James Baldwin. “No. Our paths never crossed.” “Strano. A Lei non interessa il problema dei neri?” “Si!” What was strange to Peter was the assumption they made that, in his place, they would know James Baldwin and Samuel Beckett and Graham Greene and the widow of Richard Wright, not to mention Professor Lévi-Strauss and Professor André Chastel and a cross-section of French students. For them, Paris was a city of opportunities, of lost opportunities as far as Peter was concerned. His only score, in their eyes, was meeting an American general, which was the part of his Parisian experience he would soonest have done without. “E cosa diceva del Vietnam, questo generale?” “Stupidaggini.” He refused to enlarge. Among these curious, albeit “concerned” Italians, he felt a certain protective loyalty to his country, and to quote some of the general’s utterances might help make them come true, like a bad dream told before breakfast.

  That insane news-hunger was the only side of the Romans with which he could find
fault. It continually amazed him that people privileged to live in this wonderful ocher- and tangerine-colored city of cypresses, fairly frequent blue skies, art, and parasol pines should be so concerned with information feed-in, storage, and retrieval re the darkling plain he had been inhabiting and was fated soon to return to. He supposed it was in their tradition—“nihil humanum mihi alienum puto”—but to him they were most human when, like the Messaggero, they concentrated on the cronaca. As his time grew shorter, he sought asylum in the Vatican, having finished his Borromini itinerary. In the Sistine Chapel, he could be safe from nine until closing-time.

  A Sibylline Interlude

  ON THE DAY AFTER New Year’s, Peter sat down on his accustomed bench, just outside the marble screen, facing the Delphic Sibyl. This would be his last crack at the Michelangelos, since he planned to leave on Tuesday. Sunday the museum would be closed, and Monday Sergio was taking him in a car to Frascati, to see a villa with the ultimate Borromini. The place was already packing up with guided tours. He recognized the busload of Germans who had invaded his hotel the night before and monopolized the toilet since shortly after dawn. But he had learned not to be bothered by the crush of humanity and the horrible Babel of tongues; his most recent acquisition was a pair of ear-stoppers. In the summertime, he understood, the crowds were a lot worse; the room actually stank. The thing to do then, he guessed, was to carry your private Airwick. Modern society provided its own antidotes, if you were resourceful enough to apply them in emergencies not dreamed of by the manufacturer.