There was nothing wrong with the set-up, though.
Maurizio’s apartment was situated in the well-to-do area below the Villa Borghese. The streets were airy, the apartments high-ceilinged and expansive. It was a penthouse on the Viale Parioli, two storeys in a mix of styles, with a wealth of peculiar arrangements and interesting art. There was a roof terrace with an automatic watering system, and a little note written with a fountain pen: ‘Sleep in, sleep out. Eat at Molto. Have a drink at Gotha. Make yourself at home. Avoid Saint Peter and enjoy love. Yours, Maurizio.’
The weather was warm from the early morning and Diana took her book out with her on to the terrace while I popped down to the street. There was a shop that only sold work clothes for domestic staff, and outside Il Cigno an elderly lady in a pink Chanel suit and big sunglasses sat engrossed in the day’s share prices.
The deli was huge and well assorted and I bought proscuitto crudo, bread, freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and mozzarella di buffala from Campania.
I found a grassy-green Umbrian olive oil in Maurizio’s arsenal and arranged the food on two plates. Small birds hopped about and twittered in the lemon tree and there was a distant hum of traffic from the centre of town. Diana put down her book and smiled.
‘I think I could lie here all day.’
‘I thought we might go and see Saint Teresa in Ecstasy,’ I said.
We went through the Villa Borghese and I relished the way she took in the Piazza del Popolo: the large and prominent cafés with their waiters dressed in white, stately Roman men with the day’s newspaper under their arm, the overly made-up women in hats, accompanied by little dogs. We turned down the Via Margutta and passed by the painters with their colourful figurative canvases.
‘They work on the street like prostitutes,’ I said.
‘They’re just trying to scrape a living, that’s all,’ she said.
‘That’s what I mean,’ I said.
We negotiated the hordes of school classes on the Piazza di Spagna and continued along the Via Condotti, and then Diana wanted a look inside the Brioni store and came out with a tightly knitted light blue polo that set her back four hundred euros.
I wanted us to celebrate our arrival with a traditional lunch and had picked out Da Gino. We went in circles for half an hour before finding the place, and when we did, it turned out to be prenotazione only.
‘Can’t we just grab a sandwich?’ she said.
‘There’s a good place on the other side of the Corso,’ I said.
We scoured the side streets along Via Babuino, weaving a slalom through the tourists, and my shirt was plastered to my skin.
But the Romans were queuing outside the Hostaria al 31.
‘We’ll go to La Pollarola instead,’ I said.
And so we crossed the Via del Corso again, and I could sense her patience ebbing away. I took pains to avoid the maze-like lattice of backstreets, sticking instead to the Via Ripetta, which was so long and straight she couldn’t help but realise how far we had to walk.
‘Caravaggio used to do his carousing around here when he’d been painting,’ I said. ‘He came here the same night he killed a man.’
She wasn’t listening.
‘Look at that scene over there,’ I said, pausing on the Via della Scrofa. The chicken man and the ham man had come out on to the pavement in their white aprons and stood with their arms around each other’s shoulders, engaged in banter.
‘It’s like that here every day at lunchtime.’
‘How sad,’ she said.
La Pollarola was exactly the same as always, nothing had changed.
Mario draped a camelskin coat over the shoulders of a regular customer who was about to leave and I went through the menu and recommended the spaghetti alle vongole and the turbot, ordered a white Sergio Mottura and lost my head completely:
‘Coming here always makes me so happy.’
She looked me in the eye.
‘How did you find the place?’
‘Helene and I had been at the Campo dei Fiori…’
‘And then you were hungry?’
‘Yes, we were hungry.’
It was a joy to watch the man fillet the turbot and I cajoled her into trying the whipped sabayon with wild strawberries.
We had coffee and a beer at the Bar del Fico and a flock of nuns went by.
In the taxi to Santa Maria della Vittoria I told her about the Spanish nun Teresa and her radical practice of her faith: long, meditative sessions in which dream, reality and prayer merged into one with orgiastic force.
We went to gaze at the Bernini sculptures and were dizzied by the way he made marble levitate and bronze burn.
‘He must have been a pretty amazing guy,’ Diana said.
I told her the story on our way to Monti. Bernini was handsome and highly intelligent. He landed all the most prestigious commissions, was a friend of the Pope and presided over an army of minions. Mario was one such minion, married to Constanza, a beautiful young woman of good family.
In those days, only the nobility were immortalised in marble busts, but Constanza inspired Bernini to break with convention. For months she sat for him, and he kept the finished work for himself: the sensual smile, the slightly parted lips, the unbuttoned blouse that allowed the beholder to sense the fullness of her bosom.
Bernini became obsessed with Constanza, and Mario allowed it to pass. To be fucked by Maestro Bernini bestowed honour indeed.
Bernini had a brother, Luigi, equally good looking and one of Italy’s most promising mathematicians. Like so many others in Roman society, Luigi, too, found himself taken in by Constanza’s beauty. Bernini noted how the two often came together at parties, and their intimacy ultimately betrayed them. One day Bernini announced that he would be out of town to oversee a commission. But he stayed home instead. The next morning he lurked outside Constanza’s house, and as daylight came she and Luigi emerged in the doorway and kissed each other goodbye. Bernini chased his brother through the streets of Rome and beat him senseless with an iron bar. He hired a servant to go after Constanza. The face he had studied for hundreds of hours to eternalise in marble was slashed beyond recognition with a sharp blade. Constanza was jailed for her infidelity, and Luigi, who miraculously had survived the attempt on his life, was forced to flee. By papal order, Bernini married a becoming young woman from one of Rome’s wealthiest families, and the bust of Constanza was removed to Florence.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Bernini’s career, until then an unbroken line of success, began to falter. Even the Pope vetoed his ideas, and Bernini had all but slid into oblivion when a benefactor commissioned him to produce a sculpture of the newly canonised Teresa.
I led Diana through the narrow lanes of Monti, once the haunt of ruffians and prostitutes, now of artists and intellectuals. It was half past six and we strolled across the Piazza della Madonna dei Monti.
People were sitting on the steps around the fountain with wine and panini, kids played football up against the walls, and clusters of locals stood passing the time of day. A nice-looking couple left us their table on the terrace of the Bottega del Caffé, one of the better ones in the corner, and I ordered a bottle of Pinot Grigio from a broad-shouldered waiter, who flirted with Diana.
‘I’ve been so wanting to come here with you,’ I said.
All the time, new faces to look at.
‘I can see why you’re so mad about Rome,’ she said.
‘Everything looks and tastes good,’ I said.
‘How many times have you been here?’
‘This is the seventh.’
‘And all the other times have been with Helene, right?’
I smiled and nodded.
‘Am I sitting on her chair?’
I saw myself wake up in the house on Ceresvej, the feel of the soft blue stair carpet under my bare feet. I put the kettle on, got the cornflakes out for Charlie, fetched the paper from the hall and put the bread in the toaster.
‘Would
you order me a grappa?’ said Diana.
She took out a sketchpad and drew an elderly couple.
‘Are you an artist?’ said the broad-shouldered waiter in Roman English.
She gave the drawing to the couple and they insisted on getting us some spumante. Then the people next to us became curious, and an hour later our table was groaning with wine, beer and grappa.
‘You make a drawing of me too?’ said the waiter. ‘If your boyfriend will allow, of course.’
‘I haven’t got a boyfriend,’ said Diana.
‘He won’t understand that,’ I said when he popped back inside.
‘Of course he will,’ said Diana.
He reappeared with his hair combed and slicked back.
‘I finish work now,’ he said.
‘Have a seat,’ said Diana.
Marco was a maker of documentary films, albeit by name only.
He had no end of pretentious ideas. He wanted to re-establish Italy’s conscience and clean up after Berlusconi. His opening scene was all lined up and none of it made sense. He said it was going to be hand-held.
‘Where do you go after work?’ said Diana.
They frequented a gay club behind the Colosseum, he said. Not that he was gay himself, but a lot of girls went there too. Diana shaded his right cheekbone.
‘You look like a model,’ she said.
‘Actually, I was a model,’ he said. Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Bottega Veneta. He had lived the life for two years and earned a packet, but it was a superficial world, he said. No substance.
Marco looked sideways at my cravat:
‘But I learned to get along with gay people.’
In the round-the-world yacht race, the Frenchman, Moitessier, looked set to win, but sailing had become for him a philosophical, existential project, and on his way towards the prize he altered his course and sailed on without destination.
Marco treated us to the best grappa in the house and marvelled at how much of it Diana was able to consume. We went on by taxi to Coming Out, a lively, bustling place with pretty boys in white tank tops dancing to plastic house. Marco introduced me to a guy who was familiar with most of the classics of world literature and displayed a keen sense of humour, and in any other situation he would have made rewarding company.
I finished my beer and went over to Diana.
‘I’m going back to the flat.’
She kissed me on the cheek.
‘I think you should come with me,’ I said.
She said nothing.
‘Do you hear me, Diana?’
‘I’m staying here to dance,’ she said.
I found a bottle of white in Maurizio’s fridge, dropped my glass on the floor and got another. All of a sudden I wanted to get on with writing about Søren T-shirt again. I carried on drinking and filled half a notebook before passing out in the deckchair.
I woke up in a blaze of sunlight and was so dizzy the plants were all over the place, but although everything swirled together, one thing was crystal clear to me: I wouldn’t be moving into Helene’s house on Ceresvej.
Diana rang at half past two and the only place I could think of to suggest we meet was Bar della Pace. The Borghese park was teeming with birds. The sky they populated was a static expanse of sunshine and I found it depressing that the grass was in such a poor state. There were scooters and cars. The smell of coffee and ice-cream cones with scoops of many colours.
I took a break at the Bar della Scrofa, whose beer provided the perfect tonic until a fatigued pair of Danes plonked themselves down at the next table and began to squabble over converting euros into kroner. Diana arrived at Bar della Pace on the back of Marco’s scooter and they kissed before he sped off round the corner.
‘Do you know where I can find a toy shop?’ she said.
It was not what I’d been expecting her to say.
She bought a little cuddly horse by Rudi in the fine old shop on the Piazza Navona, and afterwards I insisted on living out my dream of a drink on the rooftop terrace of the Hotel Minerva.
We sat for half an hour without saying a word.
‘What do you want the horse for?’ I said.
‘It’s Nona’s birthday the day after tomorrow and I’m going to Budapest.’
On our last day together I hired a bike and bombed down the Via Veneto, across the Piazza Barberini, through the tunnel to Monti and along the Tiber to the right-angled streets of Testaccio. I have always been drawn by church bells, but never so beguiled as by the bells of the Basilica San Paolo. I listened with all my being to their deep and sonorous clang.
When the final tone faded away, I understood there was nothing to fear.
COPENHAGEN, OCTOBER 2008
I was on my way to dinner at Helene’s and I knew I would have to be honest with her. In moments of weakness I was tempted by the prospect of giving Charlie a home with a mum and dad, and lazy summer evenings in the garden, but I never got far into that world before I felt what a deception it would be.
For the past two days I had lived like a tramp, writing about Søren and Signe without any idea of what the time might be, eating oats and rice milk, fried eggs and baked beans.
Diana floated above it all like a dream, and now and again it all became tangible: a sudden sinking feeling in the abdomen when I woke up alone; a shirt that kept her smell. And yet I felt nothing.
Perhaps Helene was afraid of coming on too strong. Tonight there was no fish or seafood, just spaghetti bolognese and elderflower cordial.
I read Charlie his bedtime story and carried on even when he began to snore.
She had opened a bottle of Irma’s Chardonnay from the south of France and I knew there was champagne waiting in the fridge.
‘Cheers,’ she said.
‘I’ve given it some thought, Helene,’ I said.
I took a deep breath, but before I could speak she pre-empted me.
‘Do you mind telling me what this is all about, Mikkel?’ she said, and produced what I could see were a child’s drawings. ‘I emptied Charlie’s drawer at the kindergarten.’
A drawing of a man with a pint in his hand, an ashtray.
‘Did you take Charlie to a bar with you, Mikkel?’
She put her hands flat on the table and got to her feet. ‘Have you been out drinking and taken Charlie with you?’
‘He had a very nice time at the Borgerkroen,’ I said.
It wasn’t an utterance I felt that good about.
‘This stops here, Mikkel! It stops here!’
For me it didn’t stop until Andy’s Bar closed.
My fellow traveller at the sausage stand on Gothersgade was a Greenlander.
‘What do you miss most about Nuuk?’
‘Minced seal meat,’ he said.
‘Can you get that in the supermarket there?’
I woke up with the sound of Diana’s new answering-machine message in my head:
‘You’ve called Diana. Leave a message.’
The first time I rang was from outside Chicos Cantina, I remembered that much. Had I sung? How many messages had I left? I saw myself sprawled on the steps in front of the music institute, but what had I been singing?
I called Jan, but he knew nothing and had no idea what Diana’s mother was called, or where she lived.
‘She’s not coming back,’ I said.
‘How do you know?’
‘I can feel it.’
‘You’re pissed,’ he said.
‘I’m going to find her,’ I said.
‘If she’d wanted you to go to Budapest she’d most likely have asked.’
BUDAPEST, OCTOBER 2008
I asked the taxi driver to take me into the centre of town and after a quarter of an hour the motorway and the exhaust-blackened concrete buildings that lined it gave way to a boulevard of grainy apartment houses and shops that bought gold and sold sex.
I arrived in a city whose architectural splendour and cultural wealth had flourished in the late nineteenth century, only
to be ravaged by two world wars and Soviet invasion. It was now notorious for its rightwing radicalism and large-scale porn industry, but all I was interested in was my own story.
I had come to Budapest to find my ending.
The driver stopped on Erzsébet tér, a park-like expanse hemmed in by finance and international hotel chains. I was convinced that somewhere among all those bank logos I would find Diana.
The closest hotel was Le Méridien. The lobby was full of the usual American pensioners in floppy sunhats and trainers who all seemed to be suffering from spinal collapse. There was an atrium garden, Hungarian Night every Saturday, and a blown-up photo of smiling Gypsies, the very same Romani the skinheads were so fond of chasing through the city’s streets.
The glossy reception was all fake wood, the furniture conveyor-belt rococo, the plants an unnatural green, and the tame mediocrity of it held me together.
I paid for a room, and after I’d dumped my bag on the bed and taken a shower I sat down at the little desk with a notepad. My information was sparse and Budapest was almost twice as big as Copenhagen.
I had a good likeness of Diana saved on my phone and was intending to show it to all the right people. I made a list of possible lines of enquiry and went down to see the concierge, who drew a circle round the smart part of town on a map and marked the Academy of Fine Arts with an X.
The Jewish ghetto was unusually photogenic.
The buildings along Király Ut were low and poetic, and behind the gateways lay the quaintest courtyards with little dwellings, uneven cobblestones and wild flowers, the kind of places that in Copenhagen would have been cultivated to death by well-meaning architects and awarded little brass plaques from the council.
Am I Cold Page 33