Okay?
I’m going to Gianicolo too, she said. Let me show you the way. Should we walk?
Yes, we could walk.
And so my question that wasn’t a question had found an answer.
She walked a fraction faster than me, so I had to keep up with longer steps till I could feel the unnamed back of my leg.
Where are you from?
India. But I don’t go back often.
Why not?
Because there is no one I want to meet.
One billion people and no one to meet?
Not really. My mother’s there, but we Skype often. Have you ever been to India?
No, she said. Only saw lots of Indians in London. I was there for five years.
How was that?
The most crowded place in the world. And the loneliest.
I know about that. I was there too.
We had reached the Lungotevere by the river. People spilled out from the bars with their wine glasses, their feet hoisted against the bar walls, blowing long plumes of smoke into the early evening. When we were crossing the bridge, she stopped in the middle to light a cigarette and lean against the railing. I stopped too. I had to say something smart. But I couldn’t think of anything, so I kept quiet. Tried to keep a cigarette dangling from the edge of my lips. I’m an image of an image. But then I stopped trying. I was walking with this girl. I couldn’t believe it. I mean this was not unbelievable in the alien-abduction anal-probe league. But maybe alien-waving-from-the-TV league. Which is not as unbelievable as it seems. Okay, stay in the moment.
An older woman walked past us, leading a little dog on a leash. The girl sneered. The old woman used to be a talk show host on one of the Berlusconi TV channels, the girl said.
Berlusconi owns TV channels?
He owns everything. He wants to own the whole fucking world.
I had a plan for owning the world, I said. She wanted to know more, so I told her. I’d start a website, and ask people to pay me one euro each. Whatever for? Just pay me a euro, nothing in return. I get enough money and soon I’ll be a millionaire. But I’d be a millionaire thanks to all the people who paid me. So I’d live the millionaire lifestyle like they wanted. I would have the money, but I’d spend it however my donors wanted me to. Why would they want you to be a millionaire? Because they’ll never make it. The whole world wants them to believe they will. That they’ll drive a sleek car, the car will come with a blonde attached to it, the blonde comes with invitations to the coolest parties, the coolest parties have rock stars and people who lounge in Mediterranean villas with pools that stretch to the sea, and someday they’ll all be part of it. All this will come true, only if they used this razor. What are you talking about? I’ll live the life for them, the one they have been promised. They can even tell me what to do, tell me how to spend the money. I’ll let them decide. If they wanted a Bottega Veneto bag—Veneta not Veneto—yes, that one, if they want one, then I’ll own one. If they want a yacht, I’ll buy a yacht. On a lake of Prosecco. And I’ll upload pictures and tweets only for the people who paid me. They’ll finally live the good life. Not the whole thing, but in little doses. They’ll live it through me. But we are all living different lives, aren’t we? All they have to do is donate one euro on my website. Just once.
I don’t think it’ll ever work. It’ll only make people more miserable.
I offer them the millionaire lifestyle for just a euro and they’ll say no?
But they’re not living it. You are.
They’re living enough of it. I’m spending the money like they want me to. They’ll have all the updates, all the digital information. That’s as good as the real thing. Maybe everyone will invest in my “I want to be a millionaire” fund, and then they can all take it easy while I live out their dreams.
No more pressure. I’ll offer green points too. I may become a millionaire, or billionaire, but if you ask me, I’ll only fly economy for a month. Okay, a week.
What if they ask you to give it away to charity?
They won’t do that.
How can you be so sure?
If we helped all the poor, screwed-up people below us, where would that leave us? That would leave us at the bottom.
What if they ask you to organize a spectacular suicide?
You think they might do that?
I think that might be the first thing they would ask when you become famous. Celebrities die to keep the rest of us alive.
But if I did it, would it make me a fool or a martyr?
Is there a difference?
Below us, the trees along the Tevere River shook in the wind, their branches bristling with plastic bags. When the river floods, all the plastic from upstream gets stuck in the branches. A tree even had a child’s tricycle once, twenty feet in the sky.
What about you? You don’t have a plan? I asked her.
I do. I think I’d like to start a revolution.
Not again.
This will change everything.
What will you fight for?
Palaconto.
What’s that? My Italian’s not too good.
Palaconto.
What does that mean?
Nothing. It’s a nothing-word. Which means it could be an everything-word.
Why would people support you?
Because palaconto could mean whatever they want it to mean. It means we don’t want the global capitalist aristocracy we have inherited. We don’t want democracy. We don’t want the media and advertising manipulation of our thoughts and desires. We don’t want Elvis. And we don’t want Che. All we want is palaconto. Palaconto for me. Palacontiamo for all of us. Palaconti for you.
It’s a revolution you can conjugate, I said.
Yes, the first ever.
And if you don’t know what it means? Can you still join?
You can only join the revolution if you know what it means.
But it doesn’t mean anything.
Or whatever you want it to. You can graffiti the walls with it. Giant letters on each metro cabin. The crowd screaming palaconto in a Roma-Lazio match. A projector in the middle of the Colosseo painting palaconto on the skies. Computers and banks and government departments crashing because of the palaconto virus.
How many people do you think would join you?
I don’t know. Millions. Anyone who knows what it means.
Would they have a euro to spare for my website?
She laughed. Not in a smirking, sophisticated way. She laughed with her mouth split in comic-book glee. I could even see a cavity in her lower row. Her name was Chiara. Clear. Clear as the morning sky, I suppose her parents had thought. Also means light beer. She had finished her master’s in London, worked there for a few years—this and that, mostly that—and then finished a PhD. And now she had a research job. Nine to five, the usual grind. Slave to the bureaucracy, pretending to be an intellectual, she said.
Should we continue? she asked.
Where?
Aren’t you going to Gianicolo?
Yes, I am.
We started walking uphill. I felt the back of my legs, crying out to be named. How could she walk up so easily? Maybe she was also a trained assassin—she was wearing black. And her clothes were snug (I was looking). Aerodynamic. Helps to leap across buildings or onto train roofs. I didn’t even know the girl. I didn’t really know Pooja either. Forget Pooja. Fuck Pooja. I mean, pull-out-last-minute Pooja.
Are you here alone? she asked.
Yes, in Rome. I mean, now I have a few friends. What about you?
I stay alone. I have a banker boyfriend. Sort of.
Is he a sort of banker? Or a sort of boyfriend?
He’s definitely a banker.
We reached a bend on the road. We were halfway up the hill. Rome was spread in front of us. Domes and towers across the city punctured the sky. I could see the two sculpted chariots on top of the Vittoriano. The winged ladies riding the chariots looked like they were hovering in midair. We sat
down on the edge of the road. Chiara scanned the horizon, as if she was looking for something. The ruins in front of us were washed in the dying light. Her arm grazed against mine. When she looked away, her arm pressed into mine through her jacket.
You weren’t really coming to Gianicolo, were you?
What?
You weren’t looking for Gianicolo. I saw you ask the guy at the bus stop for Colosseo.
I couldn’t reply. So I tried looking harder at the chariot. The winged lady had a sword in her hand.
And you know, she said, I wasn’t coming to Gianicolo either.
But now we’re both here, I said.
She pointed to the Vatican dome. Behind us cars swept the edge of the road and snatches of stereo music floated to us. We sat looking at the city, at the undeniable beauty of things falling apart.
She took off her jacket. That’s when I saw the cuts on her arm. Below her wrists, lines all in a row, a few deeper and redder. And then a whole rash of cuts, running helter-skelter across her forearms.
I wanted to take those little lines. Rearrange them into something else. Make sense of them. Make a word. Maybe Palaconto.
HERE COMES THE SUN
Pain will make you feel alive. They say you should stay still when it comes.
But I can’t. I’m in the loo, and my old friend is back. My ass splits open and the world is being turned inside out. I hold on to the wall, I’m shaking so much. This is like Genesis, the universe cracking open from nothing.
When I’m done, I look down. The toilet bowl is a gentle red with my blood. Like a Monet painting. I’m still trembling. After I wash up, the blood is gone. Only the triumphant turd remains sunk in the water. Now it’s a Damien Hirst installation.
I was back home. I mean India. My sister had called a few times. Then she mailed and said it was a “Family Crisis” and I had to return for a few days. Yes, she capitalized the words. If she had used CAPS LOCK, I would have asked about her husband. Ex-husband. Who’s now bonking a TV actress. A B-grade one. We don’t talk about it.
I couldn’t avoid meeting my mother for lunch. She made vegetable curry, some tubes with seeds. I never know what she uses, mostly because I don’t care. I cook, but I don’t bother other people for their recipes. I don’t particularly care for Indian food either. Don’t ask me about that stuff, find someone else. They’ll tell you about Indian mother’s spices and mangoes and elephant dung and shit.
You should have handled it better, Ma said.
I didn’t jump. She did, I said.
You’ve ruined that poor girl’s life. What will I tell Pooja’s parents?
I kept my eyes fixed on the TV. The TV used to be the eye of God. Now it’s Facebook. I obey.
Are you listening?
Yes, Ma.
I love you.
I know.
If he were still alive, he would have been heartbroken by all this.
When my mom uses the unspecified He, she’s talking about my father. He’s dead. Extinguished. He was great, sang Dylan to me. I miss him sometimes. My dad, not Dylan (who’s still around in some form). Dylan was cool till he did the advertisement for Victoria’s Secret. He was ultra-fucking cool. Have you seen the Dylan documentary, No Direction Home? I think that’s a great name. If I ever wrote a book about my time in Rome, I think I’d call it No Direction Rome.
Anyway, my ass is still sore. But I’m not grumpy. I’m the Dalai Lama around my mom. That’s the least I can do.
Yes, Ma. But I’m working hard. And the job is going well, I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
Have you called her?
I tried.
And then she was crying. So I told her the vegetables were really nice.
I went for a walk when she was asleep. People passed me on the streets. I didn’t ask anyone for directions. A mother dragged her child, back from school. His shirt was stained with ink and he was really upset about it. On a corner, a man juggled between his briefcase, a cigarette in the process of being lit, and his mobile phone. Buy the Tata stocks, sell Yahoo, hold on to Reliance till it reaches 500. Fill me with numbers because I have run out of words.
We have all seen the same things: pools filling with litter, cars looking for their next prey on the roads, lions yawning into the sun (only on TV), skies clouding up and being sliced by planes that take us farther away from wherever we are. If you’re a plane technician and you’re checking the engines, don’t ever stand in front of the propeller that’s still running. Then before you can say “Wheels okay,” you would get sucked in ass first at supersonic speed into the waiting blades that will blend you. Later, the gleaming metal ring around the fan will be lined with your intestines. Will they have a speech at your funeral? The bravest among us, some will say. The best go first. Peace be upon him.
Peace only comes from knowing. Not from dying. Though I’m not sure. If I meet the Buddha on the road, I’ll send him a friend request.
As long as office lights switch on and off and Excel files vomit numbers into unending sheets and I wait for footsteps in my office corner, I will have to go on. Nothing ever really ends. Or it takes too damn long.
So I called Chiara again. It was the twelfth call in the last three days. If I didn’t include the four times I hung up before the phone rang. She didn’t pick up. Again. So I went home and started packing.
If you were on a boat on a still lake and leaned over to embrace the moon, would you risk death for it? If you had two hours to live, what could your message to the world (your last Facebook update) be? Gangnam style? A LOLcat on Gangnam? Or one of those pathetic animal torture videos: cat on a string, half-skinned, between two smiling teenagers?
Are you leaving? It’s just been two days. It was my mother.
I have a meeting day after tomorrow. I just remembered.
But your underwear’s still drying.
I’ll be wearing a suit. No one will notice.
I worry for you.
I don’t, I said. And then I said I was sorry. She didn’t ask why. She was leaning against the doorframe. Maybe I should have held her. But then I would have to step over the suitcase and all my clothes scattered over its open jaws. I tapped her shoulder instead.
On the plane, I dreamt of Chiara. Or maybe I thought of her because I was aware of what was happening. In my Technicolor thought sphere, she didn’t accept me. In fact she was so annoyed with my unending stalker calls that she came to my flat and called me a creepy worm. I couldn’t see her next move because my head was bowed down. She whipped out an uppercut on my jaw and before I could collapse she knee-slammed me against the wall. Then she left the door open for her boyfriend. Who I discovered wasn’t a geeky banker type slouched over his financial calculations. He was the cutthroat silver-tongued sort who owned a yacht on the Mediterranean. Also did one-armed push-ups on the deck for fun. Just before his glistening six-pack body knifed into the crystal water to wrestle with sharks. In my apartment, he beat me into a whimpering pulp. Show me your arms. Get up and fight, motherfucker. But I refused. I was curled on the floor.
It was cold inside the plane. And it was getting awkward: unadulterated misery sometimes gives me a hard-on. I tried to ball my knees into my stomach. One of the stewardesses brought a blanket and because I pretended to be asleep, she laid it over me. That was sweet. I could have married her. Not for the sex. I could have also paid off all her debts, or her children’s college education even if I had to slave myself out. If she had asked me right then.
How are you? Had a good flight?
Okay.
On holiday here?
No, I work here.
Dove lavori? The taxi driver turned the mirror to see me, but I could barely see his eyes, hidden behind his grey frizzled hair.
Non parlo Italiano bene.
No problem, no problem. We all speak English now.
We have to, I said. We were driving past the Roman aqueducts that delivered water to the city. Now they were mostly gone, but some long stretches
of the giant elevated canals rose into the sky beside us, like ramps for alien ships.
Why do I have to?
Because I speak only English.
So if you pay me, I have to do whatever you want? I still couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew he was looking at me.
No. That’s not what I meant. I mean it’s so common. And I don’t speak any other European language. I was stating a fact, not a demand.
Your command is my wish, he said. You are the guest here.
In Italy?
No, in my car.
Thank you.
Niente. Niente, signor. He raised the volume on his stereo. You like jazz?
I don’t really listen to jazz.
John Coltrane. ‘My Favorite Things.’ You know what one of my favorite things is?
Pizza? And I hoped at once it didn’t sound sarcastic. A few headlights from cars on the other lane scooped out bits of the night. The roads had no streetlights.
One of my favourite things is meeting people like you.
Same here. I like meeting Italians.
I’m not full Italian. Twenty years in California. My English sounds Italian to you?
No, it sounds great.
Good, we need to understand each other perfectly.
Yes, different communities should talk to each other.
Not communities. You and me. One hand raised and tilting the mirror, the other tapping the steering wheel, slightly offbeat.
Yes, of course.
Are you a community?
No, I said. I put on my seat belt. Maybe I’m a part of one. Or of many.
Are you a highway?
What?
Are you a road? Do you know where you’re going?
I held on to the handrest. His feet were on the accelerator now. But his gaze was on the mirror. We swung around a curve.
Raindrops on roses. Whiskers on kittens. He was singing. Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes. You like them?
Could you slow down a little? Please.
LONG FLIGHTS AND TAXIS. RECEIPTS FOR PAYMENTS, he shouted. These are some of your favorite things. Aren’t they, Signor?
I don’t need a receipt.
No Direction Rome Page 3