Chapter 9 from The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

9.
I walked the long way back to the bar, past the Forum, stopping to take in the shadows of cats in the footlights, their stretched bodies stalking the moonfaced columns.
Some Italian sailors lean in against the rail to watch also. My father's face appoints this scene along with the image of a woodpile we've been chopping and stacking all summer. It's crawling with country-sized rats and we can't shoot them fast enough, trading my pellet rifle back and forth in the outlining darkness. I remember wondering what the secret was, and being proud to stand next to him. But would I know where to stand when the time came, I wondered? How to take aim? How to put on shave cream? How to plant trees and mow the grass and take on a second or third job?
I think I knew then, somehow, that I would never posses what I needed.
And now tonight, I wonder how it hits him. Not his solution to life's ills, but these ancient streets, these excavations of eternity. What does he see as he walks along, a gleaming, sure spectacle in his American uniform, tangled in the loose shoulders of his comrades and whistling at the ladies? Does he have a few meals and drinks, swim in a fountain and fall asleep in the grass? I doubt that he visits the Tiber, certainly not in the way I did - in that respect I can be sure that we are different, if not altogether exclusive - that is, can I in fact, after all my apostate wandering, still be considered my father's son?

I went to the bar and waited while YaYa cleaned the Cimbali coffee machine for the last time on the day.
"It looks like a car we used to have, I said, remembering the space-age console of our 65 Dodge when I was a kid.
"It's very modern and fascist if you ask me.
"It's only a machine.
"That's what you see but you don't have to wash it and put it to bed every day like I do. Here, look at this cover - it is more valuable than the one I pull over myself at night. And what about this?
She pointed to a rope of orange neon that framed the machine in the shop window before she switched it off with a defiant snap. It looked like an altar.
"Maybe you're spending too much time with this machine.
"To some Italians coffee is more important than communion and the barristas like me who guard it are like the Vestal virgins of old Rome. You know about them, I hope?
"Of course, they kept the flame or else.
She turned to me and lifted her shoulders as she pulled the lead strings of that filthy apron over her head. She gasped, pretending to choke.
"Then you see what I mean.
She pushed out her dark chin and forced a wide travertine grin. Her large lips were cracked from biting them all day, in an effort, I guessed, at holding her tongue.
"Do you mind waiting a few minutes more while I change?
"Take your time - you have ten hours before your next shift.
"You bastard, don't remind me. Let me enjoy a few short hours of freedom.
"Ok. Starting now, I said, clicking the plunger on an imaginary stopwatch.
Playing along, she sped off for the toilet in the back of the place and I turned back to my beer facing a mirrored wall of fruit juices and overturned glasses.
If I sat up straight I could see myself over the line of short colorful cans and bottles, but the sight of my own face made me want to disconnect all the dots that brought me there, to that barstool, to erase myself, and there was already no way to do that. It would be like putting a tourniquet on the aqueduct, or re-marbling a mountain.
After a few minutes, YaYa came striding out of the back taking goofy kid steps and swinging her backpack off her shoulders. A wide smile lifted under the black moons of her eyes.
"Hahaha, she said, hissing through her crazy teeth.
I took her arm and we walked out into the street and turned left, away from the metro stop, without hesitation.
"What would you like to do?
"I don't know. I don't care really. It's nice to be out from work. I don't walk in my town anymore. I go to work and then I go back to my life in Centocelle. It is my prison and you will have to see it sometime, when you are tired of being a tourist.
"When do we go?
"Tonight is not good, I'm afraid. Besides, I want to show you my Rome.
She guided us through the neighborhood of Mount Viminale over to the Via Nazionale where we strolled along arm in arm, window shopping the boutiques, before she spoke again.
"I used to come at night and pretend that I have just missed them for the day.
She continued, sweeping up the broad street with her free arm, "When they are closed, it is all mine.
She stopped to point out a purple bikini in one window, a pair of leopard platform shoes in another, here a piece of feathery lingerie, there a blouse that is open in the back, a weaved handbag, some Japanese furniture.
She carried on all the way up the boulevard and then back down and she made no mention of the fact that she can't afford a single stick of it because there was nothing to spare. I went along with her and made promises that we would come back when they were open even though I sensed that she would never allow it.
We came to the blooming red center of the Piazza Venezia, crossing the tilt-o-whirl of a summer night without breaking stride. I loved the anarchy of these streets, the symphony of racing two stroke engines and the avalanche of cars perched between the signal lights ready to honk and change lanes and soar and sing out about how wonderful it is to drive and get somewhere.
It is a point of pride with the Romans, you can tell. They are road savvy and like everything the Italians do, it is done with a certain nonchalant enthusiasm. Civilized, I like to think. Garbo - now there's a word I read about in Barzini's Italians that refers to this notion. Of course, driving in America is ambiguous; tutorial at best. For most people it never becomes second nature. It is always a battle with the wheel and a roll of the dice; rarely does it approach the level of art.
"We call that building the 'Typewriter', YaYa said, interrupting my reverie.
"I see what you mean, I guess.
"We hate it. It is awful. It is the ugliest building in Rome. It is not even old. They tore down a temple to put it right there.
"Look, you see", she went on, pointing, "They always have two guards up there. It is their punishment. If you are caught at something they make you guard the fire. So we used to go up there, because they can't do anything, not even move, and we would make faces at them and sit down on the steps and smoke a spliff and we were like 'hey, this is cool'
"You're such a rebel.
"What can I say? I'm an old punk and that is a compliment.
"And this building", she said, swinging her hand in mine, up to point it out.
"This is where Benito used to live and he would come out and make his trouble from up there on the balcony and everybody in Rome came to hear him and they loved it.
"I tried to go in the other day. There was an exhibit, but all I saw were soldiers and I didn't feel like asking one of them.
"Perhaps I can take you around when I have a day free. I am a good tour guide, but expensive.
"I hope I can cover it.
"Don't worry, tonight is free. It is my pleasure to properly welcome you to Rome.
We stopped at a building that had a marble marker set into a stone cornice just above our heads.
"See there. That is where I'm from. Well, heh, not me but my mother....Calabria she said proudly.
I read the inscription.
"Brutium. I Calabresi nel Mondo. What does it mean?
"It means....that this is their building and mine too. I want to go south someday and so should you. You will see what I mean. They are different. Not Roman. She crossed her hands over her bony shoulders.
"They are old, like me, she said. "Their faces are different and they are dark.
"I forgot," I said, "you're a relic. You should be in the National Museum."
She skipped ahead and I wondered about this way she had of speaking; of haunting time and being haunted by it.
Old, she insisted, like the dust of excavations in these streets. Or old water handed down through aqueducts of eternity. Maybe she was tired - I'll give her that. But ancient? Of course I couldn't fault her for having ideas like this, not here, where no one was allowed to forget. And so when she said she was old in that way, in the way of her people, I believed her and I was jealous. I wanted to know where I came from in that old way that she did.

As we walked along, the young face of Rome whistled by; freshly pomaded hicks and provincials in revved up cars, cheering, honking, hanging out of windows to the waist; funneling from all across outer-lying neighborhoods into the Trastevere.
"Here, I want to show you something she said, pulling me across the street against the eager traffic.
"It belongs to them she added, as she pulled up to a railing that overlooked an excavation dug out of a square city block.
Slowly they came into my focus. At first it was a deception of night and of scale, against the toppled columns and banded lintels far below, that I didn't see them, but soon the shadows and crevices were crawling with feral cats.
"They are the last of the Romans," she said proudly. "You will not see them gathered like this at the Christian sites. They prefer the weedy lots of their pagan heritage. The old women come here and feed them pasta. They are given sanctuary. No one is allowed to kick them out. They have been here for generations and the ruins are off limits to people.
Her voice cracked as she spoke. Leaning there, she seemed fragile somehow, like she could be carried down into that hole by her own words. I was afraid to take my eyes off her.
"I must always stop and say hello. Ciao, ciao gattita, mia sorrella. That one, you see her? My sister sosia. See how she looks back at us!
I leaned in against the railing between her and the cats.
"Obviously he does not realize who you are, she said to them.
"Oh, I get it. They're ghosts, I said, turning over my shoulder.
"If it helps you to make fun, go ahead, but we know.
We stood there quietly, pressed against the railing, facing each other, until a loud group of tourists pushed us on our way.