19th December 1980 – Sedimentation

“And now...some wine” he said, flung open his arms. I thought he looked like a giant. Above the car-choked piazza, beyond the tops of the pine trees, I saw the sky streaked with grey and blue  in the winter twilight. The lights were on in via di Ripetta  and my father said, "Not here. Serena always comes here for breakfast, from via del Babuino. We're going to wine cellar now, though." I followed him along the icy pavement. I was wearing a windcheater with white, red and blue stripes on the shoulders, my sister a brown coat. He had on his Loden. Pointing at the old sign, he stepped over the threshold, went up to the counter and asked for two red wines and an empty glass, into which he poured half of the second glass of wine. Passing it over, he asked if we wanted olives or appetizers. “You can treat yourselves to a glass at Christmas”, he said, and we raised our glasses. 

Dad has instituted a tradition - we go to buy small Christmas gifts for mum. We hunt round the narrow streets of the centre. He points out the houses where artists, politicians and writers lived. He takes us into incense-scented churches. He shows us how Rome has changed since Roman times. There is a piazza where all this was clear - the ancient columns support a building. It's  called Piazza di Pietra. But that isn't his favourite place.

 

1st August 1987 –  In the Travertino

At the station, the city smelled of hot tar and burnt grass on the edges of the asphalt and the lonely, deserted streets. We bent down to get into the car. Costanza sat in the back, I got into the front seat and opened the sun roof. The hot air rushed in and he shook his head, laughing.  We passed beneath the Aurelian walls, wound through the narrow streets and stopped at the pizzeria. Costanza and I had deep suntans, but he didn't - he never sunbathed, he just read his paper in the shade, never taking off his tie, even on the beach. He said, "I'll be fifty soon then I'll start over again". We made fun of him. 

I can't describe the feeling I experience when I return home in summer. I'd like to see my room, I feel there's something waiting for me there, and when I enter I look in vain on the table. There should be some sign that will lead me to what I'm expecting to find but can't put into words, but there is none. The table top is empty, a few spots of colour, the papers just as I had left them when I left. What's nice is that every time, dad picks us up in the Cinquecento and takes us out to eat. In the evening, before returning home, everything seems perfect. 

 

 

3 February 1994 –  Imprint

We came out of the church and without saying a word we crossed the recently pedestrianised piazza. The day before, the tramontana wind had swept through the city, and it was freezing.  Beyond the bar and restaurant, we turned into the street towards the embankment and the parked car. As he drove towards Muro Torto, my father said that among his work papers he had found the final verses she had translated. “A nymph of the Avernus gave birth to Ascalafo”. I burst into tears. The sun, streaked with low clouds, cast a pale light on the Verano. I was  in time to see Lucia, with her white hands, throwing a white flower into the open grave, where the white wood coffin already lay. 

The first time I saw my father cry was there, in the church of the artists. It was for Filippo's mum. I was twelve, exactly twelve years ago. He cried without shame, his eyes cast down. The church was full of flowers, an impressive quantity of flowers. Filippo said with pride, “My mum loves flowers". He spoke in the present tense. I still use the present, always, you can't use the past. I did it today as I entered Verano and I felt ridiculous. As if I were forcing it. But I don't think he noticed. 

 

 

16th September 2003 –  Stratifications

“Elsa Morante lived just near here, at 27 dell’Oca,”, says Sergio, grabbing another glass and murmuring in my ear, “These bastards want to hear this crap, so I give it to them”. He's getting drunk. Agnese, his girlfriend, would like to stop him, but she starts laughing every time she hears him speak. “When all's said and done, she's the best writer of the twentieth century", he says to one lady who often comes here to buy clothes, and is now looking at the blank canvases for the art exhibition opening. The owner prowls around nervously. Her daughter asks me if we'd like to go out later. I tell her I don't know, and go outside for a cigarette. 

My grandmother spent years listing the shops opening and closing along the Corso and round about. I tried to tell this to Sergio. I explained that they had always lived in via dei Prefetti. They had been evicted from the building, but then it had remained empty for decades. They couldn't accept the city's decline. Now that the Buccone wine cellar has placed stone tables among the endless rows of bottles, and the counter where we drank our first glasses of wine has gone, I'd like to tell my grandmother about it. I texted my father about it while we were having a drink there. Everyone was chatting and I examined the wooden shelves, an old, battered, moribund, electric wood. 

 

 

5th April 2014 –  Splinter

I bump into Attilio as I leave the hotel, but I recognise his son first. Lastly I see Maria, his daughter. He asks me what I'm doing here, and I explain that Anna is in town and I've come to meet her. I point out the art deco scrolls drawn ddrawn in wood on the windows. He, impeccably elegant as always, chuckles. Then he asks me to go with him to the best florist's in Rome, an improvised kiosk on via Maria Cristina, where an old gay dandy gay displays a few expertly-chosen examples handled by his assistant, a kid from the east. Attilio says that journalism as a profession is finished, almost finished, at least while newspapers and magazines insist on regarding the internet as an enemy. He will not encourage his son to follow in his father's footsteps. He smokes his pipe and I show him the doorway through which L’isola di Arturo took shape. 

That was the day I began to discover the places where my father was born. He decided to take us to Aventino, then via dei Prefetti, and then he had us walk down via del Corso, then he turned round the corner and said that one day we would drink and toast with him. He went in and bought a bottle. Now I'm buying a bottle, I wait for them to wrap it and carry it by its neck, cold, icy cold in the first warm sun, the thin paper is already soaked, sticking to its body, I may have to chill it again before opening it with him and toasting the spring, which with a sudden break in the constant storm, has arrived, gentle, impetuous, like stone.

(Written in 2013)