The Church of Lost Souls 4

Looking forward to tomorrow I started to relax. Fabrizio and his friends joked around as I happily observed my surroundings.

Just before the food arrived I spotted a tobacconist and told Fabrizio that I needed to buy some roll ups. Passing by a parked car I could see two guys listening to some heavy metal and smoking a joint inside. The pong was delicious, then a beautiful girl came up to me and asked for the time. I said maybe eight and she smiled. I couldn’t help thinking I’d come to the right town as I bought my roll ups. Rome had been so obtusely impenetrable in comparison.

When I got back I noticed a change of demeanour in Maria and assumed that Fabrizio had given everyone an idea of events. I felt embarrassed that he may have told them about my galloping paranoia and sensed a genuine sadness in their eyes as they looked towards me.

Clearly, and most importantly, Maria had forgiven my faux pas earlier on so we exchanged some easily digestible English together as the evening went on. She was a hairdresser and lived with her cats, Max and Mena.

When it came to the bill I was worn out. Fabrizio tried to wave away my 10,000 lira note so I dropped it onto the pile in the middle of the table to save face. I’d kept my end of the bill down, ordering a margherita pizza and a bottle of beer.

After saying farewell we got on the bike and rode back to his. It was a strange and sad little journey, my hands wrapped around the waist of the person who had just saved me from the road, yet knowing I still feared him. It could have been a disastrous night had he driven on.

‘You’re welcome to stay at my place for the week if you want, James. No money, just friends, OK? And by the way, Maria likes you,’ he said, nudging my leg with his as we ran a red light.

I didn’t know what to say, having already made up my mind to go to the YMCA to meet Euro girls and smoke hash. With a week to wait for Maria’s answer, I could just about afford to buy a quarter and eat well.

When we got back I brushed my teeth and went to bed. Fabrizio brought a glass of water, placed it by me and smiled, then he turned off the lights and headed to his bedroom. I guess he must have taken on the role of father figure to me, maybe he’d lost his dad, I don’t know, but I couldn’t empathize with him enough to embrace his kindness.

During the ten minutes it took for me to go to sleep, my brain was a whirl with the two Marias and I knew I had a quandary on my hands. If I hung out with Fabrizio I’d get into some action with Maria and maybe find a job in Naples, but when I thought of the other Maria in Rome I knew it was her that I wanted.

Giovanni would be a handful and the occult thing was a bit weird and I knew nothing about kids but if it meant I could have sex with his mum, a veritable Roman goddess, well, I’d just have to find a way to make things work.

The moment I woke up in the morning I instantly knew I’d done something wrong.

At some time in the night I must have had a nightmare and screamed the place down because I could remember Fabrizio coming in to calm me down. I couldn’t remember what the nightmare was about or how I’d reacted but it didn’t bode well.

I could hear him shuffling around in the kitchen so I got up, threw some shorts and a top on and tried to keep calm folding the bed sheets up.

Walking into the room with a cup of coffee in his hand he placed it down and stood still. There on his face was a bulging bruise so awfully swollen it had closed up his right eye. He looked like something out of a Freud.

‘James, what’s wrong with you?’ he said.

‘Fabrizio, I’m sorry, I had a nightmare’ was all I could say.

‘We need to get going,’ he said solemnly, ‘I’m taking you to the YMCA.’

So that was that.

We went in his car and didn’t speak until we arrived at the bottom of a hill.

I thanked him and said sorry again but Fabrizio was inconsolable. We said goodbye and that was the last I ever saw of him.

As I started walking with my bag over my shoulder I noticed there were used needles all over the place, little hankies too, bloodied and crumpled, and plastic bags with empty beer cans in. A mangy old cat hissed at me and as I looked away from it I saw the carcass of a kitten in the gutter. It must have been rotting there for days. The road was steep and took a few turns to weave to the top, from where I could see the hostel and its driveway to the right. To the left, on some scraggy old parkland, I spotted a bunch of hippies who’d pitched a couple of tents around a beaten up van.

Walking into the hostel I presented myself to an old man behind a counter, who passed me a form to fill in. The price for a night in a dormitory was 5,000 lira including a small breakfast so I circled five days on the form, took some notes out of my pocket, paid in full and then dropped my bag off in the dorm. No keys were needed. The dorm didn’t have a lock and the front door was always open, till midnight anyway.

I went into the communal room which doubled up as a breakfast room and asked the server for a cappuccino but she only had instant so I decided not to delay in going to see if I could score some hash with the hippies outside.

As I approached the camp I said hello and asked my question and one of the guys pulled out a large lump of black hash, which he then started cutting into with a knife. He threw a chunk over, I caught it and he asked for 10,000 lira, about a fiver, which I passed across to him.

I hadn’t smoked a joint since the night before leaving Hastings, a rotten pellet of shit smoked in the drizzle with Graham outside the public toilets in the old town. That stuff tasted like Bakelite. This, however, was the stickiest ball of hash I’d ever come across, enough to send me cuckoo for the whole week. It was so full of oil that it stuck to my fingers as I tidied it into a ball.

All being correct I asked if I could roll a joint and the girl next to me passed some papers so I got going. They were a funny lot, the exact opposite of Fabrizio’s friends but about the same age, late twenties/early thirties.

‘We’re from Germany,’ said the girl, ‘and you?’

‘England,’ I said, ‘I’m James. Good to meet you.’

‘I’m Natasha, this is Ulrich and Franz. We’re from Hamburg.’

I think they’d just got up. Ulrich was washing out some mugs and Franz was busy breathing life into a fledgling fire.

I lit the joint, smoked my share and passed it on. The hit registered and a familiar wave of disorientation raced through me. Someone said something and then someone put some music on and there went the next hour or so, as did every single one of my problems.

It turned out they were travelling anarchists. For the past four years they’d been all over Europe, generally causing havoc and making a nuisance, filching meat from supermarkets and buying local hash at a kilo a time to smoke and sell on. According to Natasha, there was a big anarchist presence in most major cities. They were free to pitch up wherever they went.

Man being a wild creature, Ulrich reckoned our freedom to do as we please without restraint was a subsequent right and should therefore be celebrated. This they did by spitting in the face of authority wherever they roamed.

Their modus operandi was simple; pitch up somewhere suitable in a city, get together with the local anarchists, buy hash, organize demonstrations and cause some damage to the state. Success rates depended on their own version of anarchistic purposefulness, disrupting the authorities, getting the young stoned and informing them of their right to drop out. When things got really hairy, they scarpered off to the next city.

I wanted to start walking to town so I got up from the log we were sitting on and said I’d better be going. Natasha asked if she could join me so we made our way down the hill together.

‘Big drug problem,’ I said, looking at the needles.

‘The junkies fix here,’ she told me, ‘it’s not safe after dark unless you’re with a few people.’

I’d stashed a plastic bag from the hostel for the kitten and when I went to pick it up, there was a little mountain of insects underneath. They were all over the kitten too, even coming out of its mouth and everywhere. Holding the kitten up from its tail and with insects fast approaching my hand Natasha told me to throw it in the bushes so I did. There was nothing else for it.

At the main road I saw a sign declaring the centro two kilometers away so we decided to take a leisurely stroll along the promenade instead.

There were no cafes around. The promenade was vast, an almost featureless expanse and a fair way from the main road. It must have been about midday, the heat of the sun cooled by a sultry African wind, my mind agog in wonderment. I had nothing to do for a week. I could relax.

I told Natasha about the truck driver and Fabrizio’s black eye and she laughed.

‘It’s not just truck drivers you have to watch out for. You see those two guys over there,’ she said, gesturing towards two men walking in the opposite direction, ‘they’re police. Assholes.’

‘What? I’ve got a quarter of hash in my pocket,’ I said.

‘They don’t worry about that. They’re only interested in heroin and cocaine and we only sell hash so they can’t touch us.’

This was an awkward situation. All I wanted to do was get stoned, read, listen to music, eat pizza, walk around, write my diary and maybe find a nice lass about my age to hang out with.