Chapter 2 from The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

from The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story
2.
When the train pulls in at Termini I am relieved. I have finished something. It is like the end of a good chapter, or a book even. I have gone and come back and in a sense I am home. That is what Rome feels like and I am no sooner off the train than I am absorbed into the derelict familiarity around the station.
I cross over the pebbled walkways, behind the used bookstalls at the Piazza del Cinquecento, avoiding puddles of urine, to walk along the sculpture garden at the baths of Diocletian. I turn up the via Volturno and salute the familiar shops and cafes along the way. I cross the street to get a better look at Green Eyes, the girl at the parfumerie who sold me the potion that did nothing for YaYa. I pull into a familiar bar for a coffee - a bitter freddo that is so cold it hurts my teeth.
This is my neighborhood and I greet it like an old friend.

A short month ago I stumbled onto this land of my ancestors, having arrived on a second class train with a forty-pound pack that smelled like a Parisian phone booth. The next morning I woke to the scent of fresh laundry dripping on a line and mixing with potted basil on the balcony of my pensione. I got out of bed and put my feet down on the cool terrazzo floor and that's when I knew. I laid down and got up again, and again, and several more times. Up and down like that, the soles of my feet conforming to the uneven tile floor as if from a lifetime of such mornings.
Before I left the U.S. my father pressed me into contacting his last known relative, his great aunt, whom his mother was named after. She lived in Naples and no one in my family had ever met her. In three generations only my grandfather, who was shot on the Adriatic coast during WWII, and my father, a scullion in the Navy during Vietnam, had ever been to Italy.
In fact my father's ship pulled in to port near Rome the day I was born. A passing U.S. warship flashed the news to him as they did then by semaphore. There I was bounced across these flat blue waters of no return for the very first time, a curious cipher of safety orange signaling ship to ship, two entire machines of war tied up in a silent communication about a boy.
I once carried a black and white deckle-cut picture of my father taken later that evening. In it he has run aground, drunk on the news of his first child, and is swimming in a Roman fountain after having sampled a bit of the sweet life. There he was- the picture taken by one of his mates who no doubt saw him back to the ship safely- in his navy whites, all one hundred and thirty of him soaked down and draped over the jaws of some mythological beast like a wounded Popeye.
That is the story of my birth in my father's head and heart, as solid a man as there is, a man who had already found the joys of family to be his calling and wasn't searching for anything but a ticket home.

Next I draw up along the market on Via Vicenza and now I am really home. These are the many faces among the carts of hosiery and earth-ripe produce that I have spent mornings with fresh from my bed at Luna. Day in and day out they are here, except Sunday, and it is always the same procession only I am coming upon them in reverse now, because Luna, or Pensione Katy, is to the other side.
I walk past the hanging bolts of fabric brought here across trade routes from the East, over the great Salt Road perhaps. There are the sun-burnt leather wallets and belts from Tuscany; the baby clothing and lingerie from sex and population centers like Romania or China; the thin socks and t-shirts that are a friend to the besmirched traveler; there is the latest in colorful house-wear from Africa; robes and pant suits and slippers that vomit rainbow hues into the grimy basalt cobbles. And then of course, anything else you want in this open-air emporium, from apples to zippers, it is all here - and if not, just ask and they will bring it tomorrow.
I stop to buy some peaches and cherries for the Signora, by way of dropping in on her and her family at the height of summer without warning. I also pick up a newspaper, at the corner stand where the old man is straining against the back of his little plywood kiosk, against the porno magazines and lottery tickets, trying to avoid even the slightest contact with the July sun. As usual he overcharges me for the USA Today, which I read because I can - it is in English. In any case, I don't mind this one's game. I think of him as the gatekeeper. Even at double the cost it is a small price to enter the city on these mornings with America tucked up safe under my arm or in my back pocket where it can do no harm.
On my way up the street toward Luna, I pass the Cafe Montenegro, where usually I can find the Signora's in-law whom I call the Jockey. Then I actually run into my dear sweet pensioner as I'm going in to the Alimentari for some salami and bread. She is with her daughter and they have just finished the morning shopping.
Signora is as excitable as ever. She slaps me like one of her own, cracking a sharp "Eh?, a two-letter accusation that places the guilt of some past wrong against her on my shoulders - for not calling, for not coming straight to them, rather than dallying at the market, for paying too much for fruit maybe, or not sending a postcard as directed from every town along the way.
Who knows, it could even be something from before my time, from Vittorio's time even, her dead husband up there on that shelf over the kitchen table, may he rest forever in peace.
Now our attention is turned to Gabriella - she is starting to show. Luna gives me the side-glance, bulges her eyes and turns her mouth down, at the same time rounding out her own stomach with a sweep of her hand.
"Eh? she says, nodding the seriousness of the matter, and this time it means something else obviously. She is counseling me as though I were an uncle to the family.
I nod in return. I approve I am saying to them and then I smile. Now there is laughter and commotion and the Signora is talking a mile a minute and Gabriella, recovering from her slight embarrassment at being held up for inspection, picks out a few words, here and there for me, in English.
Luna is back to chastising me for not calling. She is a sly businesswoman and she knows that I am a soft touch.
The room is taken, but how long, she wonders, do I want to stay? And what can I pay? Whatever is fair, I say, but only if it can be worked out. I am happy to be a regular part of their operation. There is even a room they refer to as my own. After all I was their first paid lodger, coming to them on the heels of another Signora from down the street who could not keep me another day. She walked me to Luna's in her gray apron and housedress one summer morning when things were slow and life around the apartment floor was quiet and dull. Suddenly there was a 'guest' and another mouth to feed and she rushed around cleaning and we sat up and talked about ways to increase her newly realized business which would one day support her burgeoning family.
"Come back later and it will all be fixed, the daughter tells me.
They offer to take my pack the rest of the way but it is too heavy and they are already burdened. They tell me to come later - dopo - to eat something and then take my room. It's as good as worked out.
What a comfort after the last 24 hours! Yesterday I stood in the rain on the gushing sidewalks of Sardegna and flipped a coin. Today I am meeting old friends on the street and everything is taking care of itself. I retrace my steps through the market. There is only one thing to do now. I postpone it only temporarily, while I drop my pack and freshen up at the train station. Now I am free to go to the bar and surprise her.

I cannot tell you how many times I have walked down these same stairs into the Viminale - perhaps in reality only a comparative few, but what are these times pitted against the fevers I have embraced? In my delirium I have become the eyes of longing, the eyes of waiting, the eyes of want, the eyes of the stairs and the walls and the fountains themselves and in my fleshless mind I have traveled time to be here over and over again while she makes her way past.
The Viminale, after all, is nothing special. In fact, while the rest of the city seems to circle around it in its hapless dash toward the future, the Viminale is a drop in the bucket, a paradise for throwbacks. Even the mouth of the Metro sits as a portal to another realm, facing off with crooked little streets named for gypsies and snakes and young female lions.
YaYa does not believe that yesterday I spoke with her from Sardegna and today I am in front of her. She is another one, reduced to a bit of nervous backdrop in the modern world. I can't see her working anywhere else either. This bar is clandestine, an anonymous drop in the neighborhood which is tucked away like I say, and it suits her almost as much as it contains her.
Though she's busy, she can't help herself from looking up and grinning. Her surprise betrays the fact that she feels outwitted also. She calls me a bastard under her breath and briefly slips her damp hands over the counter and into mine. One of the customers, Abib - the young Algerian with his colorful robe over his western street clothes who treats her like a sister - is standing at the bar. He teases her for blushing and she shoots him a look, squinting at him and cursing. She uses Spanish when she conjures like this, a relic of her vagabond past, and I am reminded along these lines that she has yet to fulfill her promise to dance flamenco for me. Of course, she will insist that she is rusty.
"Maybe tonight, she says coyly, surprising me this time.
"What are you doing later? she adds, and her formality is odd to me - I mean, she has to know that I have come all this way for no other reason and yet? She is toying with me, it is plain.
"Half past eight at the needle? I say, reminding her of our usual time and place - the 20 foot rocket ship situated outside of Termini that looks like a hypodermic.
"I reckon so.
For some reason, that hijacked hillbilly phrase on those punishing lips of hers, in the lower reaches of M. Viminale, central Rome, makes me laugh and want her more, if that is possible.
"But be ready, I say.
"I hope we can help you with your obvious frustration sir. If you like, you may talk to my boss, maybe there is something....I don't know. She is smiling like the Vestal Virgin herself.
I look her up and down and imagine what she is like under that filthy apron right now, standing there in those sink-washed panties that she has trouble getting clean. They were probably still a little wet when she put them on this morning and they are nothing fancy, I can tell you that - thin, white, cotton briefs that are stretched bare. The elastic is gone in the band and they just hang on her tattooed hips, revealing a large mole in the socket and a few wild grapes approaching her navel.
I remember her body as though it was yesterday that I laid on it with my limp dick, trailing my tongue over her in the meantime, turning her on the bed and burying myself in her armpit, gliding past her nipples like a mist and then coming back to bite each one, sucking on her big muff for hours it seemed, until my tongue cramped, and then finding the strength to flick at it some more as a blind man might, concentrating every bit of energy and detail on the very tip of her clitoris which was hard as an olive pit, and eventually, with a few lucky strokes she began to moan "si, si, oh dio mio, si., in small letters like that, rhyming in that little voice, and that should be enough to rouse any man you would think, and even standing here in the bar, with her boss bearing down the counter toward us, I have to strategically turn and walk out, a little bent perhaps for the memory.