We ate outside on a vine-covered terrace that jutted out over the cliff’s edge, above the blue basin of the sea; it was like being suspended in midair. Since Salvatore and members of his family cooked each dish from scratch, there was time between courses to enjoy a brief stroll through the nearby cypress trees, or change tables to catch up with the others, or, best of all, to simply sit breathing in the lemon-scented mountain air as it moved through the lemon groves and down the hillside to us.
I looked around at the faces that over the past weeks had become familiar to me. La famiglia, I thought. Family. I knew, of course, that most of the faces, and the names that went with them, would fade quickly once normal life took over again. But in a way we had briefly, very briefly, been a family. And who’s to say that just because something lasts only a short time, it has little value?
By the end of the afternoon, as we trudged back to the bus waiting to take us to Rome, it came to me, the reason I’d fallen for this village. Unlike the spun-sugar appeal of other Amalfi towns, Ravello personified simple elegance. It had the kind of austere beauty found in Shaker furniture. A classic example of this was the pristine white church in the town square, its only ornamentation a pair of bronze doors and four ancient columns. As the others walked ahead, I ducked into the church.
It was cool inside. The walls were a blinding white, embedded with delicate traces of frescoes. I stood for a while, then moved to the altar and bowed my head. There, alone in the silent church, I whispered the names of those gone from me: Father. Mother. Grandmother. Jean. Marion. Ducky. Max. David.
In my life, I loved them all.
14
SPANISH STEPS
Dear Alice,
I have remained a stranger in Rome. Which is why I send you this happy reminder of a city I love: Venice. Rome and I are not lovers. We are not even friends. I can only hope that Camus was right when he wrote that “what gives value to travel is fear.” I suppose it’s possible that a little dash of fear gives value to more than just travel. For one thing, it can teach us to be brave.
Love, Alice
Three days after arriving in Rome I had my first real brush with danger. Until then I’d encountered only the routine mini-scares faced by most tourists. Yes, there was the evening in Paris when I was window-shopping along a quiet street near St. Sulpice and a burly man approached me, demanding I give him money. He took off, however, when several people emerged from the door of a nearby café. And there was that Sunday in London when two menacing young men circled me while I waited to change trains in an out-of-the-way Underground station. But then the train came and I jumped on, leaving them behind.
The incident in Rome was different. For one thing, I already had negative feelings about the city. Although I knew it to be a premature and unfair judgment, Rome struck me as frenetic and indifferent, a place where everyone seemed unfriendly, hassled, and in a hurry. Where was that warm, laid-back attitude that prevailed in the other Italian cities I’d visited? Not here.
Here, I seldom walked along a street without someone bumping into me or rudely pushing their way ahead of me. Here, I walked in a tense, alert state, always on the lookout for the noisy, polluting motorbikes whose drivers seemed to extract pleasure from terrorizing pedestrians.
Noisy, polluted, indifferent, crowded: this was my impression of Rome.
I knew it was a superficial one; I knew that if I dived deeper into the real city beneath the tourist attractions, my view of Rome would change. But I had no desire to ingratiate myself with the city, as I had done in the past with Paris or Milan or Venice. I had made a feeble attempt the day before, crossing over the Tiber River to visit the old Trastevere district where, despite rampant gentrification, the authentic Rome was said to reside still. And it was true.
In Trastevere I wandered through a maze of narrow streets and alleys, walking occasionally beneath a canopy of wash hung out between buildings to dry. Although I’d been told to look out for purse-snatchers in Trastevere, I was quite at ease walking by myself through the area. This was a real neighborhood, one where mothers walked with children to and from the market and shopkeepers stood at their doors calling out to passers-by. At times I had an eerie feeling that somehow I’d wandered onto the set of a Sophia Loren movie.
Of course, it had its beauty spots, too. I was particularly drawn to the lovely Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere, which I wandered into quite by chance. With its elegant raised fountain and charming sidewalk cafés, the square was an oasis of pleasant neighborhood bustle—minus the motor scooters. I had an iced coffee, and then headed across the piazza to the twelfth-century church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. I was unprepared for the majesty of the church’s interior: its enormous, glowing nave and gigantic columns were as beautiful as any I’d seen.
Still, as pleasant as my visit to Trastevere was, it was not enough to change my mind about Rome. I remained a stranger, wandering through a city as indifferent to me as I was to it.
It didn’t matter that deep down I recognized my disenchantment with Rome for what it was: an attempt to deny that I was homesick. It was much easier to blame Rome than to deal with my longing for the comfort of routine. I yearned to have lunch with my friends at the paper; to dig in my garden and feel the damp earth between my fingers; to hear the sound of neighbors calling in their dogs late at night; to shop at the neighborhood market, where everybody knows my name; and to lie in bed, waiting for the soft thud that signals the arrival of my cat.
To counteract such feelings, I devised a plan. During my short stay in Rome—a week’s stopover, really, before working my way north to Tuscany and the Veneto—I would seek out all things familiar. Meaning: I ate at English tearooms, visited John Keats’s house at the bottom of the Spanish Steps, went to lectures given in English at a nearby school, and saw the original English-speaking version of Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. One day I even had a Big Mac and french fries at McDonald’s, something I never did at home.
As silly as it was, le plan d’Angleterre—as I came to call it—actually worked. My homesickness or anxiety or whatever it was began to dissipate and my curiosity returned. At last Rome beckoned. And I responded. So I set out to do what I always do in a strange city: walk and walk and walk. I even responded to the Romans, chatting with the clerks in bookshops and with espresso-drinkers in the stand-up coffee bars.
My flirtation with Rome, however, proved to be a brief one. It ended abruptly two days later on a busy, fashionable street near my hotel on the Via Sistina.
After spending the morning and early afternoon visiting art galleries on the Via Margutta, I decided to walk over to a coffee bar I liked: the Antico Caffè Greco. Something of an institution in Rome, the 200-year-old café was a hangout for writers and artists, as well as a rest stop for wealthy shoppers on the Via Condotti. I’d discovered the café on my first day in Rome and liked it instantly. It was a great place to sit and observe the Italian scene. Soon I was going there almost every day; sometimes for a quick espresso at the stand-up bar, sometimes to linger over a cappuccino.
Standing next to me at the bar on this particular day was a man I recognized as a café regular. He had the look of an artist about him, I thought, studying his scruffy corduroy jacket, uncombed hair, and gaunt face. But then again, for all I knew, he could be an eccentric billionaire, the Howard Hughes of Italy.
I drank my espresso and left, planning to walk directly back to my hotel. To my surprise the streets outside were pleasantly un-crowded. I looked at my watch. It was a little before three. The shops, closed down for the traditional long lunch break, would not reopen for another hour. The perfect time, I decided, to explore this fashionable district; to window-shop and read the menus posted outside restaurants and duck into the occasional bookstore or gallery still open.
It was on the Via Borgognona, near the bottom of the Spanish Steps, that I first sensed someone was following me. I began paying attention to a tall man dressed in a corduroy jacket and pants
who, I noticed, stopped whenever I stopped and started walking again when I did.
Was he following me? I wondered. Or was it just my imagination? But after two blocks of being trailed in this way I was sure his presence was no accident. When he began closing the distance between us I saw it was the man I’d noticed in the café. Suddenly I was afraid. Then another man, a stocky fellow in dark pants and a checkered shirt, approached me from the opposite direction.
I knew then I had not imagined myself to be in danger; I was in danger. I’m going to be mugged, I thought, my heart pounding; or worse. I tightened my grip on my handbag, braced myself, and looked around for help—a person or an open door or even a motor scooter that I could stop. I saw nothing and no one. I cursed myself for not being more vigilant. At that moment the tall man brushed up against me, grabbing my arm. Without hesitating I broke into a run and started screaming for help.
The two men ran after me. I continued making as much noise as I could, overturning some trash cans along the way, hoping the noise of the rolling metal, plus my screaming, would alert someone. It did. By the time I reached the corner of the main street, doors had opened and several people appeared on the street, yelling at the two men to stop. It worked. The men chasing me immediately took off in the opposite direction.
After watching them disappear I sank to the curb. I sat shaking, the adrenaline still pumping through me, my head and ears pounding. I hadn’t yet allowed myself to fully acknowledge the fear I felt. That would come later. Mainly I was embarrassed. What must the small crowd gathered round me think of this crazy woman who’d run screaming up the street?
But that seemed not to be what they were thinking about at all. What was on their minds was my well-being. I was touched by their concern and kindness as they helped me compose myself, asking over and over again if I was all right.
Si, si, grazie, I am all right, I said. I kept repeating it—Si, si, grazie. I am all right—until the crowd dispersed.
But I wasn’t all right. Something had happened to me, something that left me feeling vulnerable in a way I’d not experienced for a long time. It was as though a tiny hairline crack had suddenly appeared in the self-sufficient image I had constructed over the years. Not since my mother’s death ten years earlier had I felt so painfully aware of how little control I had when it came to the grand scheme of my life.
Things happen, I thought, and we respond. That’s what it all comes down to. To believe anything else, as far as I could tell, was simply an illusion.
Over the next few days I found myself unable to stop thinking about the incident on the Via Borgognona. First came the self-recriminations, and the attempt to deal with feelings of guilt that somehow I was responsible for what happened. My thoughts raced: I should have taken another street. I shouldn’t have been wandering around alone. I should have been more alert. I should have carried pepper spray or Mace. I shouldn’t have looked at the man in the café. Intellectually, I knew none of these things applied, knew that I hadn’t done anything wrong or anything I hadn’t done safely a hundred times in the past. Still, a voice kept saying: My fault. My fault. My fault.
Worse, however, was the loss of confidence that settled over me. I was overcome with a heavy inert feeling, one that prevented me from entering into life with any sense of trust. I tried putting into action the theorem I’d attributed to Albert back in Oxford—M=EA (Mishap equals Excellent Adventure)—but to no avail. I simply hadn’t the energy or desire necessary to make such a plan work.
Now when I was out on the streets, I was so busy looking for danger that I barely saw the city. At night I slept with the bathroom light on, comforted by its dull glow through the half-closed door. Sleep, however, did not refresh me. I awoke fatigued. It was trauma fatigue, I decided one morning after waking to a memory of the chronic tiredness I’d felt years earlier after serious back surgery.
It was time, I decided, to get out of Rome.
Intellectually I knew Rome wasn’t the problem; that I was the problem. Still, when I changed my train tickets to Florence for an earlier departure, I breathed a sigh of relief. From Florence I planned to take the bus to Siena, a town I remembered as quiet and serene, one bereft of motor scooters and dangerous situations.
In the two days left before my departure, I spent my time taking bus tours organized for tourist groups. That way I was never alone. In the evening I followed the routine of eating dinner at a fancy hotel near mine and then returning to my room to sit outside on an adjoining veranda.
The veranda had come as a pleasant surprise in an otherwise disappointing choice of hotel. I’d discovered the outdoor balcony only a few days earlier, after opening a door hidden behind a curtain in my room. Like my room, it was in need of sprucing up—dead leaves lay scattered on the stone floor and the metal chairs were rusted—but I liked it anyway. It had a nice view of the Via Sistina and I found if I leaned over the stone balustrade and looked to the right, I could catch a glimpse of the Spanish Steps. Given my mood, the veranda was exactly what I needed: a retreat where I could sit and think. Or, more often, sit and not think.
In the evenings I’d sit there drinking wine and smoking an occasional cigarette, a habit I’d retrieved after the attempted mugging. I’d wait until the light faded and the lamps came on over the Spanish Steps before walking up the hill to have dinner at the usual place. Afterward I would return and, wrapped in a blanket, sit outside looking at the stars.
On my last night in Rome the rains came, turning my veranda into a shallow swimming pool. Reluctantly, I abandoned my usual routine. Instead I propped myself up in bed and turned to my old friend Freya, hoping to find comfort and, perhaps, advice in her books, her observations. As usual, she did not disappoint.
“The unexpectedness of life, waiting round every corner, catches even wise women unawares,” she wrote. “To avoid corners altogether is, after all, to refuse to live.”
Reading this, I let out a small shriek of recognition. It was as though someone in charge had said to me: not guilty. Permission granted to continue on with your life as usual.
It would take some time, I knew, to regain my confidence about approaching life’s corners. But, as Freya pointed out, avoiding them would be the same as saying “no” to life. And I wasn’t about to do that.
I had been asleep for only an hour or two when a loud, booming sound awakened me. For one wild moment I thought a bomb had exploded. I sat upright, still groggy. Then I heard it again. Boom! It was even louder than the first one. Suddenly a great burst of light lit up my room. I ran to the veranda door and looked outside. Rain was pelting the empty streets below and forks of lightning illuminated the dark sky like arteries exposed on an X-ray. Thunder rolled across the city in great waves.
I looked at the clock. It was 3:00 A.M. I was already packed and ready to leave for Florence later that morning. If I went back to bed right away, I thought, I could catch maybe another three hours of sleep.
But I already knew I wasn’t going to do that. Instead I put on my Reeboks, threw a raincoat over my pajamas, and left the hotel. It was as impulsive an act as anything I’d ever done. But something in me said: never again will you have the opportunity to stand at the top of the Spanish Steps with Rome lit up and spread out beneath you.
Put that way, I had no choice.
Outside, the streets were empty. The lightning and thunder were now off in the distance, but the rain had not let up. Leisurely, almost playfully, I walked the short distance—a hundred feet or so—from my hotel to the top of the Spanish Steps. There, like a sentinel I stood watch over the sleeping city of Rome.
With the city stretched out beneath me I looked off into the distance, across the Tiber. I watched as silent flashes of lightning, like strobes going on and off, revealed briefly domes and towers and church spires set against the sky. For the first time I felt the ancient majesty of Rome. Caught up in the strange beauty of the storm, I imagined all the Romes buried beneath this one. It was like being back in Pompeii. Wat
ching, my thoughts excavated the city back through the centuries, back to a time when all roads led to Rome.
As I stood at the top of the Spanish Steps—a temporary traveler passing through Rome, and through life, in anno Domini 1993—an intense feeling of awe and respect came over me. Rome had endured. And when I was gone from Rome, and from life, she would still endure. It was then that I bowed with respect, like a younger member of the tribe, to the wisdom and tradition possessed by this honorable elder.
When I returned to the hotel I was no longer sleepy. The rain had stopped so I stepped out onto the veranda. Again, I wondered why I’d acted so impulsively. Was it because I needed to feel in control again? Perhaps. Perhaps not. For some reason the question no longer interested me.
I stood looking down over the streets near the hotel. Directly below on the Via Sistina a few people were venturing out: early risers, dog-walkers, people coming home from jobs that ended as day began. The street lamps were still on, but dawn was moving up quickly into the sky, turning it into a pale pink dome.
I ran back into the room and got my camera. Then, leaning out as far as I could over the veranda wall, I faced the Spanish Steps and gently squeezed the shutter release. It was my first photograph of Rome. And my last.
Whatever I wanted to remember of the city, I decided, would be there, in that single picture of Rome after the storm.
15
JANE EYRE IN SIENA
Dear Alice,
The city of Siena is famous for the Palio, a horse race dating back to 1656. It is a brutal race, the horses often crashing into stone walls as they race around the main square of the city. Mattresses are placed on the walls, but they offer very little protection. I was told that it is the only race in the world in which the horse can win without a jockey! Last year only two of the ten riders finished. How sad that the spectators think so little of the cruelty involved.
Without Reservations Page 21