The Church of Lost Souls 2

Back in the courtyard, the old man had left his chair. I went straight through the joke shop, from where I thanked the American girl and scurried to the nearest phone box to call Maria.

She answered after a few rings and I was relieved to hear that she spoke perfect English. After a few minutes I was asked to attend her residence at ten o’clock the next morning.

A surge of energy raced through me as I replaced the receiver and skipped off towards the Spanish Steps, where I’d always go to sit in the early evening to see if I could strike up conversation with a girl. I’d had no luck whatsoever on previous evenings.

Again I had no luck. Being on a strict budget of ten pounds a day may have had something to do with my timidity. After an hour of watching the world go by, I trundled off to get my usual two pizza slices, ate them on a lump of concrete at the bus depot and went back to the pensione to write my diary and listen to music on my Walkman.

The next morning I got up and went to the café by the bus depot. It was the cheapest place around but served good pastries and coffee. I then walked over to the address given and found it on the edge of the Vatican’s esplanade, behind the ancient wall to the right of its entrance. Behind this wall was a maze of tiny rundown streets, cobbled and with more than their fair share of cats. On finding the address I pressed the buzzer to Maria’s flat and the communal door clicked open.

Striding up the stairs to the third floor it was so hard to contain my excitement that I had to collect my thoughts before knocking on the door.

When Maria appeared in a bright red dress, my heart was pounding in my chest but that didn’t stop me ogling at her body’s unbelievable beauty, at which time an erection shot up in my trousers. She asked me inside so I waddled in with my bum slightly out to disguise the bulge and I was grateful to be guided to a table where I could sit with the bulge hidden.

She was about thirty years old and without doubt the most beautiful woman I’d seen in all Rome. The living room was a gigantic cube, with huge surrealist and abstract paintings covering the massive walls. A huge latticed window arrangement gave a sublime view onto the city and I envisioned myself writing my diary there every evening.

A young boy appeared on a mezzanine and Maria asked him to come down and introduce himself. I got up and we shook hands and then I asked him which football team he supported. He said Lazio, but didn’t seem too interested in conversation. Maria, however, was more than keen to talk and hardly noticed when the boy, Giovanni, left and went back up the stairs.

Maria asked me questions about myself, which I thought I answered pretty well. I was keen to appear inquisitive towards Giovanni and asked Maria what his interests were.

‘Look around,’ she said, urging me to look at the paintings on the walls.

‘Giovanni did these?’ I asked, half joking.

Maria laughed. ‘No, but he did do that one there,’ she said, pointing to a naive depiction of what looked like a weird death scene, in black and red felt tip. ‘All the others are by friends. Who is your favourite occultist?’ she asked. Her face she cast downwards as her eyes peered at me with what I perceived to be sexual intensity.

‘I read The Prince by Macchiavelli last year and it’s hardly surprising so many occultists revered him for his views on the human condition. Then there’s Alaistair Crowley but I think he was deluded. I’m drawn to occultism in different ways, its influences on art and music and film, and I’ve always liked horror films, especially Hammer. They use the occult in a funny way.’

Maria sat up in her chair with a quizzical look on her face. ‘A funny way?’

I winced, in preparation of an admission. ‘To be honest I’m not that well versed on the occult really.’

Maria seemed to be unfazed. ‘Giovanni is a very special child, very gifted, but he’s not that talkative. He likes his own company and doesn’t have many friends so he needs someone who can engage him with the world around him in a sympathetic way. His father and I are not together any more but they see each other twice a week and every other weekend. They are very close.’

With each word spoken, I fell further in love with her. I imagined the pert breasts that rested unaided beneath the soft satin of her shirt. I imagined kissing her and having sex. The erection bolted to attention.

Stuck for things to say I smiled apologetically and Maria understood, saying she needed to take Giovanni to his occult class in a few minutes.

‘Do you think I might be right for the job?’ I asked at the door.

‘I need to speak with my husband. He will have a say in who gets the job. Can you give me one week for a reply? I like you but I need to speak with him, OK?’

‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘I’ll wait to hear from you.’

We said goodbye and I returned to the street. For some reason, and probably because my mind was whirling with hope and love and confusion and exhaustion, I couldn’t work out where I was and how I’d got there. I traipsed around the tiny cobbled streets and at every corner I thought I’d see the hole in the ramparts that led back to the Vatican. No matter how much I tried, it seemed I was getting more and more lost in this, the historical centre of Rome.

Something surprising about this area is that there are no cafes or restaurants. On noticing that the cats had disappeared I recalled how cold Giovanni’s hand was. I passed only one person in all the time spent traipsing aimlessly around the place and she just blanked me. When finally I found the hole, it was lit from the Vatican side and appeared like an apparition.

I walked through to find the place bustling with tourists. I looked back at the hole in the rampart and wondered why no one went through. I supposed they’d all come to see the Vatican but in the few minutes that I watched that hole, for no particular reason, not one person went through.

Back at the pensione I mulled over what to do.  I couldn’t afford to stay at the pensione. If I went somewhere new, I could stay at a hostel and see the week out there. Who knew? Maybe I’d find a job. Apart from the vague prospect of working for Maria there was nothing in Rome so I decided that if I couldn’t find anything I’d hitch back up to Blighty.

Naples wasn’t far away and, according to the Lonely Planet I flicked through at a bookshop, there was a dirt cheap youth hostel close to the beach.

I’d paid up till the next day at the pensione so I went downstairs and told the lady I’d be leaving. Every day, she’d seen me go out in the mornings bright as a button, only to return in the evening with nothing.

‘Niente,’ I’d say before going up.

The hitch to Naples was awful. It rained and I got soaked, then a truck driver picked me up. While we were waiting in the queue at the Naples toll booths he offered me a million lira for sex in his cabin so I jumped out and walked to the truckers’ café, which was full of fat, dirty old men.

I used the pay phone in the corner, watched by the mess of ugly faces sat eating slop. My father had given me a number to call in Naples, friends of some sort, but when the person answered and said that I couldn’t stay with them, I wasn’t surprised. The number he’d given me in Milan had also been a dud.

When I got on the road I discovered that everyone was accelerating hard away so I went back to the toll booths and stuck my thumb out from there. An operative tried to get rid of me but I wasn’t going anywhere unless he physically removed me and after about ten minutes a guy in an Alfa Romeo gave me a lift.