Chapters 11/12 from The Rotten Bridge, A Gypsy Love Story

11.
Three months later I am coming to her on this all night train from the south. It is a dream ride, on a fuzzy loop at the edge of this dense night. The picture hums. I remember the television set we had when I was a child. The tube glowed a gray narcotic density down to a single dot, a point of light that flickered and then vanished and left you there, drawn up inside, and alone.
The train has just pulled in somewhere outside of Naples. The rocking of the car has given way to an incandescent stillness, the moment before a light bulb burns out. I have the cabin to myself although it has not been long since I helped those two sleeping thieves down to the platform with their thrown together luggage.
After a second of dead night, when the train is stopped, there is that strange creeping to, the stutter of limping shadows outside the door; the breaking light through the curtains; luggage wheels in the corridor; the coughing and shifting heard through the wall; the buzz of the waiting platform; a few weary travelers in motion - an instant and general commotion, like when the curtain raises at the theater. The impulse is to settle but that takes a moment and sometimes precipitates a reaction the other way, something to grasp and take down into the quiet with you.
My cabin door slides open and a man who is shaped like a walrus, disregarding his drooping mustache even, snubs out his cigarette and without pause lies down next to me on the reclined seats. Without so much as 'hello' or 'goodnight' he is stacked against me and breathing somewhere near death.
I check my wallet in the darkness. Hours ago I had put it down the front of my pants. Now this man has me hemmed in, between the window and his rising belly profile, which looms large and heavy, like a distant mountain in silhouette. He is asleep before the train pulls out. His arm rolls over against my hip. It presses there with the heaviness of something dead and then it seems to remember itself and becomes light and rolls back a little. Naturally, I am suspicious. I nudge him and this heap of a man is against me once more. I am met with the stench of sour cabbage.
I want to get up and turn on the light - interrupt this man who has interrupted me- but I lay still, demure, pressed against him and the window and wishing for the body of a woman, to be heaped against her soft, freckled nakedness with my pelt and my crooked pipe, roundly kissing her shoulders, scent of her hair, neck, lips, sweat, dimple under me; the curve of her ass, the pouting belly that yearns to be full, the yawning, gazing, squeezing, sucking, fleshy hole filling with blood and a hot wet sweetness.
I realize I am thinking of Cassi. Perhaps Crews said it in The Gypsy's Curse. May you never find a cunt that fits you. Well, it's been a while since we've gone at it with any kind of sincerity, but Cassi fit like no other. Her pussy is pure depot - a candy depot - a place of sweet syrups and gummy pink, a place that trots out happy little men even at red tide. And when she flips it over, it works like a metal press, a tube bender and a pencil sharpener all in one. The end result is grated cheese, a good strong pecorino.
The fat man turns and lets go of some gas. I'm guessing now that he is German judging by his heft. The few that I have known specialize in this type of physical arrogance. I dwell on his presence in my reverie of Cassi and I decide to introduce them and get on with it.

We are on the other side of night now and there is that pre-matinal glow to the countryside. The cigarette fires in the ditches along the track bed are twirling spindles of smoke straight up, a nod to Vesuvius on high. The stiff earth, the barren carts, the plowed rows, the harvested fields, the rustling cane, the overburdened vines, the scorched and parched and waiting remains, bending to that curve of light, anticipate another sun-drenched day.
The world flickers like a projector, fleeting with the sadness of someone else's home movie. The shaky images are of ancient walls topped with bits of wire and broken glass; of the via Appia Antica under historic armies; the shadowy arches of the Coliseum sprouting wildflowers; the catacombs raked clean; the cyclopean gates to the city; the narrow streets - the even smaller viccolos or the shoulder-wide carruggi - that are hemmed in by the lean of buildings and rusted scaffolds which at night become urinals; of Via Maddelena whores leaning in doorways and smiling garters at you; of cripples praying with hide-away arms; of the carabinieri, their backs turned, eating gelato in their shining uniforms; of the stinking riverside where vendors and lovers converge on the moonlit balustrades; the floating book fairs; a seated bronze pugilist - his eyes plucked; an arm in arm stroll through the high weeds beyond the Circus Maximus.
I can still taste her. All of her. She is there in the pesto I ate a month ago, the wild boar, the foccacia along a dirty alley, the syrupy rind of the limoncello, the boiled intestines with pepper, polenta and sardines, fish sperm, buffalo mozzerella dripping down my chin, grilled squid on the lido, wine from a dirty pump, tripe on a bed of lettuce and lemon juice, the gnocchetti near Hadrian's Villa, the fish soup at di Livia's, panini everyday or pan rustica or pizza by the ettogram in San Lorenzo, mirto after dinner and the coffee, every black shot, three or four or five a day, everywhere I go and never a problem finding a good one and a little sugar, maybe a peach or some grapes straight from the market, rinsed under a faucet on the street where you also bottle your own sweet water to take with you for the day.
And she is there. She has entered me now as I have entered her.
I smile sadly as we push on, the glass pressed against my face, rocking back and forth in the darkness of time gone, waking up in a new world, lost in a strange tongue, carried forth port to port and swimming in the wonder of it all, the loose centuries held together under one sky, the face of a crowd my past, my place, my time.

12.
YaYa stood up from the concrete ledge. It was time to leave the river. She tried to apologize but I covered her mouth with mine. As she put herself together, I moved off to take a piss. Standing there, with a light head and the water rushing past, I had an idea.
I took our wine bottle and lunged it into the Tiber, spinning in a circle like a discus thrower and stumbling out of it, nearly falling, and then playing it up a little so she would laugh. She liked our bottle going out to sea. We stood there a moment spitting and yelling after it.
"I want to show you one more thing. She turned and led us to the moon-white stair. "And then I will go home.
I followed her quietly as we ascended to the level of the street. With each step I felt the serenity of the river drain out of me and when we reached the top it was replaced with the chaos of the roman night.
YaYa hurried us along a section of uprooted sidewalk, under some low hanging elms. The traffic along the river was heavy, going in the other direction, back to the neighborhoods of Rome. We walked a tightrope between the cars and the parapit. It was difficult to speak but the noise did not quite suffocate the jeers made by the young men who waited in their cars and were going home alone and angry at all women until the next weekend.
Each time I looked up to confront the perpetrator, to deny his anonymity, I met with more faces than I had bargained for, as if everyone must've known for whom the stones were cast.
YaYa sneered and answered back but her voice was swallowed by the swell of cars. If she was bothered she didn't let on. In fact she seemed to enjoy the menace she caused those mamma's boys.
We walked to the Ponte Palatino, which is just south of the Tiber island. Here we had a good view of the Ponte Rotto, standing there with two feet in, arms chopped off, connecting nothing to nothing.
According to YaYa, during the middle ages they tried to fix it, but whatever they added fell off into the current. Finally they gave up and built this modern span that we were standing on, intersecting the lost path of the other a stones throw away.
"Perhaps some things are so rotten they cannot be fixed. Still, I think it is quite beautiful that way because there is nothing but its own strength.
"Maybe it's not so broken after all," I offered.
"Yes, maybe, but that is a lesson for philosophers. Tonight, I'm afraid, you have been tricked. You see, we have just crossed the Tiber together and the Romans are serious about their old sayings. It can't be undone so don't even think about it.
"Who said anything?
"I see your little mind turning.
"Then I am in trouble.
"Trouble with you sounds sweet. I wish we could stay - I know some good places over here. Wait.... maybe he has gone out, in which case, I don't mind staying a few minutes more. Let me stop to call him.
She moved off and sat down on a bench on the right bank and called her man. It was late, much later than she had originally told him. He would be suspicious, she expected as much. She also told me that she was determined to lie to him. But, determination aside, she had been dreading this call most of the evening. And now that we have crossed the river together, that was something, she said, that could not be undone.
I watched her from a distance, with her knees drawn up, shutting out the world with her bony shoulders. She ran a trembling hand through her hair and made a few tight gestures in the air. She pleaded with two small fists. I found myself moving toward her. She hung up the phone and covered her eyes with her knuckles. After a moment, she got up. She was crying.
"He called me a liar and a whore and said he would be gone when I get home.
I put her head on my shoulder. "If you feel uncomfortable going home, you can stay at my place.
"No, now I think I must go home and take care of this. I don't believe him. He is not going anywhere tonight, not now.
"Should you get a cab?
"No, I am not in that much of a hurry to be humiliated. I will walk with you to the Station and I will go from there but I will have to ask you to borrow the money for the fare.
"Sure. Look, I understand if you can't see me again.
"I was just thinking, if I am such a liar and a whore, then I want you to come to the bar tomorrow. I don't want to go through my life not knowing about these things. I wanted this tonight. I'm tired of being afraid. I'm tired of not taking chances. Thank you for helping me see that, even though it is not so easy.
Coming from her, with all her streetwise and runaway life, I was flattered. She made me a part of her story and she was grateful.
We walked along like an old couple now that the air was cleared. We brooded to ourselves as we passed an English pub where they were singing karoake. I am always off key but I paused outside the doors to sing along with a few bars of "My Way, the punk version, and YaYa gagged, but it worked, she smiled too.
"Do you see that? I asked her, pointing up across the street.
"What am I looking at?
"There, at the balcony with the flags. That is where Benito Mussolini used to stand to make his speeches to all his fascist lovers.
"Bravo! Tell me more!
"This way then, I said taking her hand.
"Do you see that building?" I asked, referring to the Vittorio Emanuelle II.
"Which one?
"In front of you.
"Oh that, yes, what about it?
"Well, the people of this great city - they hate it. They call it the typewriter.
"Why?
"Because it is ugly like your father's Olivetti.
"Bravo! Molto bravo! Tonight you are a true Roman.

I led us back to Termini as though I'd been going there half my life. At the cab stand she worked something out with the driver. I wondered what could be so complicated. Maybe she was working out a contingency in case things got ugly at home. Anyway, I put the money into her hand and satisfied with her arrangement, she got in the back seat.
"Good night old man, ciao, she said, as she leaned forward to meet me in the window. "With any luck I will see you tomorrow, she added, drawing her worry into a thin frown.
I lingered. I invited her once more to my place but her look pleaded with me not to end our evening on such a selfish note.
"Remember, you do not have to stay", I said. "You can call a friend. You can come back here even and find me. Here, let me give you the card of the pensione.
As I searched my pockets the cab began to pull away; her small dark figure lowered in shame, swallowed up by the back seat, folded like an old widow in all her dusty life.
I caught up to the cab at the curb, as it waited to get into traffic, but then I stopped.
When the light changed the car jerked out onto Via Cavour and dissolved into the sea that encompassed the station. It was an infinite swirl that coughed and sputtered and fumed. You could get in it and just go. It was a countdown that never reached zero. I watched in the direction of Centocelle and I knew that she was already burning that emergency spliff with the driver, the one she patted in her purse, the present from her friend Babs, just a little street grade that would help her with her strength.
I watched the car pull away and disappear, staring at the heave and furl of traffic that left me standing there alone. Next thing I knew, I was trying to remember my street, walking evenly as I could, answering in a straight line to watchful eyes and not looking around me for street signs or directions. When I broke free of the busy intersection, down a long deserted avenue whose name was familiar, I didn't turn or quicken, I just walked like a man in broad daylight on his way to coffee and a little brioche even though I was paranoid of being followed by a train station type.
The shuttered streets closed in like a tomb. Without the market that guided me each morning, I couldn't get my bearings, that is, until I hit the via Vicenza and tucked up along it, gaining on the 'Cine' sign for the adult movie theater that hung next to my third story window at the Pensione Katy.
Inside, in my t-shirt, I leaned on the stone window ledge at eye level with the fuzzy gloom that hovered over the streets. Down below I watched a man pull up and hurry around to the trunk of his car, handing film reels and fresh towels to an old Signora, who cobbled out to greet him respectfully, conducting this clandestine tradeoff in her knee length hose and her flowered house dress. I drank my wine, and made a note of this night to remember it always.