Chapter 25. from The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

It was time to get back to Rome and take Berto's apartment. I checked out of my room at the Ferretti and walked Luigi to the Piazza della SS Annunziata, that is, to the Hospital of the Innocents. It was the meeting hour, early in siesta, when everyone stalked off to lunch or bed after a civil and brief public sit-down on the square.

Students and junkies were paired off on the steps that faced the former orphanage. We sat down with a book and pretended that someone was coming for us. Every few minutes I looked up from the blinding pages and scanned either end of the plaza. Luigi sat at my feet in the shade of the book. The story concerned a builder of cranes, an industrial rigger, whose life did not stack up so rigidly or so beautifully as his creations. Levi, that master of the quotidian, could make anything sound good. Cranes, steel, that soulless flesh of man pushing on and higher, solving problems - nothing warm and soft, nothing cute.

If I didn't know better I'd say Luigi knew the jig was up. Of course sometimes dogs just get low and who can blame them? They have paid the genetic price of survival and they are tied to us, heir to our skin conditions and neuroses.

I got up and walked over to the revolving door where they used to leave the children. Brunelleschi's portico sits heavily on one's shoulders, and on the frieze, the della Robbia ceramics of haloed babes are swaddled and kidnapped by his trademark blue sky. It is a somber place, even as a municipal museum these days. The whole plaza is trained on that tiny door and it looks back out on the world of skirts and suits pushing scooters by on their lunch to remind us of the insidious cold in our hearts.

I nudged Luigi toward the door and he sat down on his back legs, looking up at me. He wouldn't budge. Then he got up and ran over to the equestrian statue of Lorenzo di Medici, right where the carabinieri positioned themselves to handle the motorized traffic, and he took a dump.

The carabinieri kicked up their shiny heels and chased him around the dry moat but he moved on quickly through a pigeon flock, twice around a child on her bicycle, and on over to the other side of the sprawling piazza. The police, content that he was gone, sent one of the reprobate sweepers with the florescent vests over to clean up the mess.

I got up to clear out and then I noticed that Luigi had already made a new friend. I crossed over just enough to get a look at her. I had to give him credit. She was very sensible. Tan. Sun streaked hair. A charcoal pinstripe suit. She was sharing her panini with him while he gave her the treatment once reserved for me and his gelato cups.

I remembered waking up next to him on the steps to the Church of the Cross, next to the statue of Dante with that god forsaken stench on him and those brown eyes floating like turds in his face. I resisted the urge to approach them and introduce myself as his benefactor.

I turned and walked off in the direction of the Duomo for a beer and a sandwich before I had to catch my train, leaving my faithful reminder with his new friend.

I was well into my third beer before I gave up on them. That famous Tuscan sun, the color of Liptons tea, gathered another senseless crowd in front of the great Dome. Somehow I hoped that Luigi and his new friend would emerge from the lifeless rabble and find me but it was clear that no one was coming.
Before I leave I call YaYa to check the weather in Rome. I imagine her behind the counter at the bar, one hand on the phone, while she wipes the other one on her dirty apron and cups it to the side of her head, her eyes cast down to a spot on the floor that she is polishing with her toe that has slipped out of her chinese slipper. Strands of hair cover her face.

"Where are you? she asks, rolling her tongue like she does.

It is a little embarrassing for her to be so daft, to reveal the fluttering in her stomach. It is out of character - she is supposed to be streetwise and sure, not a little girl trembling with love.

When I tell her I am already in Rome she has no time to lean back and become herself.

In that instant she is mine and I must be standing around the corner to take full advantage when I walk into the bar and up to the counter to order a coffee like it was any day and when she turns to see me the usual weariness will lift from her and she cannot hide her eagerness. She is clear and bright, like a trumpet coming in over a moody swoon of cuban son, and the notes are lifted by the breath of the bouquet I am holding over my heart.

"Ciao Mac, she says with her delicate black eyes that float in her head like large caviar. She leans into the counter, passing me a cold hand that is stained with coffee and raw from scrubbing. She buries her smile in the flowers and takes a bite. The petals stick to her purple lips and smash between her enormous rows of teeth. She swallows and pretends to choke, grabbing her throat and grinning at me like a Halloween skull.

"You bastard, how are you? No, but it is good to see you. And she admits that she was just having a conversation of this sort with herself - intent on nothing, but wishing me gone and wishing to go with me, stowed away in my pocket, and maybe wishing that we could start over somewhere, along the sea, under a different moon, with different stories but there is so much between us, so much that she doesn't understand about her own heart as she remembers my hands and lips over her trembling body that first night along the Tevere, and how she knew then that our stories would become forever entwined.

But what of him she wonders, and his story? Who is the girl that has kept him so long? How many stars have they counted together? How many times has he touched her in that same way, absorbing every inch of her? How many times has he ridden her on his back while she pressed herself onto him? How many times has he fucked her just to keep her there, while he runs out and does this, whatever he wants?

She feels weak when she lets him invade her like this, weak when he worms his way into her thoughts and she is disturbed when she realizes it will take a knife to cut him out. Already it is not a matter of walking away, of saying so. She thinks about him much of the day, and then at night - why did he have to tell her about the parties that he makes with himself?

Her 'pipa' begins to swell and ache and he is in there and even a spliff of rotten hash doesn't take him away. The other day she thought of him as she was in the toilet. She still longs to fuck him and she wonders if she will get another chance. Of course, she will not give him so much to think about next time and no more hash, because she can see he gets too mental with the stuff. Besides that was a Friday and every Italian knows that is not a good day to start anything.

But now he is here and what does she say to him?

She blushes in her way, but she is quick to pick something up - a glass in the sink - and she examines it and puts it in a row with the others on the wall. She is standing there, still staring at the glass, when her phone rings.

"Si pronto?

"Ciao fragolina

"Ah, it's you. I was just thinking nice thoughts about you. Are you coming?

It's a loaded question. If I tell her the truth she'll start to squirm.

"I'm at the station in Florence. I might go to Pisa and Genova - have a look around.

"You might as well go to Russia then.

"But you asked for some time didn't you?

"Yes, but nothing is happening. His things are still here. He comes over and we talk but nothing gets finished. We just smoke spliffs and cry. I'm beginning to think I will have to kill him for some peace.

"I know it's hard on you. I'm sorry.

"You should be you bastard it's all your fault. I hear the curl in her voice.

"You're smiling aren't you?

"I am. I never smile anymore. Everyone at the bar asks what's wrong YaYa but I'm tired and I can't be strong for them all the time too.

"I wish there was something.

"Yes, you.... you deserve to be miserable too.

"That's sweet of you.

"You still haven't told her, have you?, she asks.

"Do you want the phone number?

"Don't tempt me.

"You know, you're doing a fine job anyway.

"What do you mean?

"I mean, I am suffering. One minute you want me to come back to Rome and the next, you are completely against it, cold and sending me away.

"I'm sorry, I don't want you to be a part of my shithead but that's how it has to be right now. I still need to be strong for myself and you understand that?

"Of course, but I don't have to like it.

"I can't do anything about it. Listen, I have to go - Maria is watching - I have customers. Call me soon. I will be thinking of you.

"Tonight?

"Tonight. Yes - tonight. And tomorrow morning in the bath. And on my break in the toilet. Ciao clandestino mio.

"Ciao fragolina.

"Ciao, ciao amore.

I hung up the phone and found the correct outgoing track. When she was ready for me, I would be there. I knew it was a mad pursuit. Town by town, station by station, I was stalking her only she never moved and in every step I found a little more of her and a little less of myself.

I was being absorbed into the country of her, quietly, the way the sun is absorbed into a stone. Already I had thoughts that I would never be able to leave, that I would rather live out my days at a distance. Never did I feel so at home, despite the fact that I was alone most of the time. But that is nothing to me. Why should it be? Someone, somewhere has called this the fatal charm of Italy and it has been going on, this absorption, this undeniable, seeping, violent attraction since the time of Saturn. Hawthorne meddled in it. Geothe. Milton. Hannibal. Napoleon. Catherine. Louis eight, fourteen and Frederick. Byron, etc.

But these gods, poets and conquerors aside, it is the multitudes down the centuries that speak with the greatest conviction for they have come and stayed forever, despite the poverty and upheaval and the extremes of life's verities and harshnesses. Why? They don't seem eager to ask. They are here as time is here, and that is all they need.

I found an empty cabin and pulled the curtains closed. Before the train left the station I was lost in a reverie of her. I used the lingering scent of the wooden bracelet as my guide. I held it under my nose and she followed in an avalanche, her black hair tumbling over my shoulders. Her loose limbs covered my lap. Her tattooed breasts battled my chin and nose. She washed me under her dirty armpits like an old aunt, drowning me with those sad eyes of longing.

I woke up crumpled on the floor of the cabin in a thick blanket of sweat. I stayed glued to the floor while I got my bearings, curled up in that aching position like a bum on the sidewalk. I scanned the overstuffed room, the bulging luggage, the indifferent faces. I slowly became aware that I was on the train to Rome. Still, my thoughts were reluctant, like I had been drugged.

"A Roma? I ask the faces, breaking the silent focus.

"Si came the chorus and then someone began to talk and then they all talked endlessly among themselves.

I sat up and straightened out my clothes, wiping their silent laughter from my eyes.