Eight Girls Taking Pictures

by Whitney Otto

  Miri shook her head.

  “I didn’t think so. You strike me more like someone who has three things on her List of Things to See but really likes to wander? You like to stumble upon some sort of adventure? Sort of see where the day takes you? Am I close?”

  “You mean, given that I’m sightseeing with a stranger?”

  “I’ve become unused to using names,” she said. “A consequence of traveling alone for an extended period.”

  “Miri,” said Miri, offering her hand.

  “Daisy,” said Daisy, smiling, shaking Miri’s hand.

  Miri said, “So who were you meeting this morning?”

  “A Colosseum cat.”

  Then the girls continued on their way.

  • • •

  Miri was a cute girl who looked younger than her twenty-nine years; her youth, and her being a woman alone in postwar Rome was enough to garner male attention, but it was nothing like being by the side of the tall, beautiful American girl, who brought out an aggressive appreciation in the loitering men. With few cars on the streets, most people walked or rode little Lambrettas, and there were a number of people, mainly men, evidently unemployed, whiling away the hours, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, playing chess, and talking. Always talking. Miri noticed that one often saw very young Italian girls, or women on the rather far side of middle age, usually dressed in black, but the women in Miri’s age-group, that is in their early twenties, were seldom in public. Rome was a decidedly male world in one respect and, in another, as sensitive and mysteriously female as one could imagine. All that art, all those worshiped, beautiful male statues; female statues in states of undress, the opera, the food, the gorgeous indolence of the place.

  Even paintings and sculptures of women saints, their heads thrown back, with their closed eyes to heaven in states of ecstasy, underscored the moment of physical female rapture.

  Rome was a church, a garden, a piazza, a palazzo, a ruin, an Egyptian obelisk, a café, a street, the Spanish Steps, an elaborate fountain where the coins you threw determined your fate, the Colosseum.

  She liked observing the mix of Romans and tourists, the permanent and the transitory, mimicked in the architecture as well, and the places where they intersected. She believed that one of the pleasures of travel was the opportunity to either act unlike yourself or, just as often, act more like yourself, uncensored by family or friends. She wondered how much of the tourist’s unguarded behavior rubbed off on the locals.

  “Don’t you just love this city,” said Daisy, leaning back with her long legs stretched out in front of her, the girls now just two more people idling on the Spanish Steps. “It’s positively postcoital half the time.”

  They had spent the better part of the afternoon at the Colosseum, with Miri experiencing the momentary disconnection that comes in the presence of such a famous landmark. There it is, right in front of you, and yet your brain can’t stop thinking about full-color posters or films. And then the collision of images gets compounded as you stand inside the arena, able to imagine—and finding it hard to imagine—what the Colosseum must have been like before it was quarried for building materials, with time picking up where the scavengers and thieves left off. Could anyone really regret the glory of a structure that was used for such violent entertainments?

  The interior was nothing like what Miri had pictured, since she’d expected the center to be flat and dusty, like a bullfighting ring. Men in twos and threes trailed the girls at a distance, trying to catch the attention the girls never gave. Miri had to resist petting the many feral cats that ran around or basked in the sun or seemed to be stalking some prey; Daisy hadn’t exaggerated about the cats.

  • • •

  The warm day turned into a warm night as the girls headed back toward the Hotel Locarno. When they were still several blocks away, Daisy leaned over to give Miri a European-style kiss on each cheek, saying, as she was already walking away, “I’ll see you tomorrow! In the lobby.” Miri realized that she expected they would return to the hotel together and was a little disappointed—she’d forgotten how fun a foreign city could be with the right company, as much as she liked traveling on her own. If asked, she could tell someone that they visited the Colosseum, but the rest of their day would sound uneventful—no more landmarks, or museums, or fabulous food. It would sound as if they did nothing, when in fact they laughed and walked and talked, moving about the parks and piazzas on impulse and nothing more. She couldn’t even tell you the name of a church they went into, or a statue they saw. It wasn’t that kind of a day.

  She watched the American girl take her thin scarf from her shoulders and tie it three times around her slim waist as she walked off into the hot, airless night.

  Where was she going? Miri wondered. But before turning back on her own way, she caught the distant sight of the American girl, standing still, placing a cigarette in her mouth as a man walked up to her, his hand holding out a lighter, the American girl’s hand reaching to bring his closer to the cigarette.

  The American Girl Was Already Waiting

  The American girl was already waiting when Miri entered the little hotel lobby. It was nine a.m., so while the time wasn’t particularly early, it was if you lived life late at night. When the girls had parted the night before, it had been midnight.

  “I need coffee,” said Daisy.

  They walked to a small café where they stood at the counter drinking espresso. They ordered chocolate croissants that they wrapped in napkins and took with them.

  “This is the best croissant I’ve ever eaten, and I’ve eaten them all over Europe,” said Daisy as they crossed the Tiber on their way to see the Basilica di Santa Maria, said to be the first church dedicated to Mary, a claim, of course, disputed as such claims tend to be. “Supposedly, the Santa Maria Maggiore boasts the same thing.” The melted chocolate filling, resembling chocolate pudding, dripped down her chin and fingers, which she promptly wiped and licked, respectively. “If you get to Paris, you must go to this place by the Tuileries, very worn-elegant, you know, silvered framed mirrors, marble tables, and ladies who lunch. They serve a hot chocolate in little pitchers with a bowl of whipped cream. L’Africain,” she said. “It’ll knock your socks off.”

  “Is that the name of the place?” asked Miri, feeling the combined energizing effects of the espresso and the rich chocolate pastry.

  “Uh-uh. The chocolate drink.”

  They were in Trastevere, a district of cobblestone streets and students from the many universities. As they came out into the piazza belonging to the old church, Miri asked, “How long have you been in Rome?”

  “Let’s see . . . I arrived on July twenty-fourth, no, twenty-fifth, and . . . I’ve been here one month.” Daisy seemed a little amazed herself.

  The inside of the Basilica di Santa Maria was resplendent. The apse, a perfect dome, held a gold-inflected, thirteenth-century mosaic so intricate and ornate that the thing Miri most remembered when she thought about it later was the row of sheep, lining up from the right and the left and meeting in the middle, beneath a figure resembling Mary, though Miri couldn’t make out if Mary was sitting with apostles or saints, popes, and Jesus.

  Outside the church was another grouping of figures, this time girls—maidens she assumed—twelve in all and holding lamps, though she couldn’t tell if all the lamps were lit. Not being Christian, Miri knew what twelve men meant in religious art, but twelve young girls? Who were they? Why did they carry lamps? Maybe they were dates for the twelve guys. You know, one met somebody, then was asked if she had eleven friends.

  “See those twenty-two columns?” whispered Daisy of the heavy pillars that marched like soldiers up the nave to the apse. “They’re from the ruined Baths of Caracalla. Before they were sacked, they housed public baths and two libraries—one in Greek and one in Latin—”

  “So is that where the habit of reading in the bath was born?”

  “That, and buggering little boys. Anyway, Penn Station is mode
led on those baths. Just some trivia for your diary.”

  “How do you know I keep a diary?” asked Miri.

  “We all do, because it’s the only way to know that being here, away from America, was real.”

  • • •

  “Are you going home soon?” asked Miri, as they sat in a Trastevere cafe, two tables of men, maybe students by their ages, openly staring with appreciation at Daisy and her very cute friend, the one with the Leica taking pictures.

  The American girl held the gaze of one particularly handsome boy a little too long for modesty before turning back to Miri and biting into an anisette biscuit. “I think I am home.”

  • • •

  Later Daisy asked Miri if she could find her own way across the river and back to the hotel since she thought she’d stay in Trastevere a little longer. They would meet in the morning in the bar.

  • • •

  The next morning Daisy didn’t show. Miri waited in the hotel bar and thought about questioning the clerk at the front desk about the girl, only to remember that she didn’t know her last name. In the end it didn’t stop her from asking the woman behind the reception counter if she knew the camera where the bella signorina slept? “You know, my friend?” Miri attempted an elaborate miming of what their friendship might look like to others: laughing together, pretending to be drinking coffee in the morning at two separate tables, raising her hand to indicate the height of the American girl, taller than Miri by several inches.

  The woman tried to understand; she tried in her own pleasant way to explain something to Miri, until she gave up, shaking her head, No. No woman, she said, with Miri insisting, There is a woman, a bella signorina, and so it went, in the sort of language circle that Miri was used to from not speaking any language but English in foreign countries.

  Miri decided to return to the Pantheon, to take more pictures and dream of the oculus allowing a light snow into the temple. She crossed the river to visit the Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere again; it also had an oculus, though smaller than the one in the Pantheon. The church oculus was more ornate, with its four putti hovering at the edge of the opening and holding aloft what looked like a ring with columns and windows above, letting in the light. This opening, with its layers of light and four decorative sculpted figures, lacked the purity of the window in the Pantheon, making it less intriguing to her. The oculus in the Pantheon, with her series of photographs, was a story; the one in the church in Trastevere was not.

  As she stood in the church she realized that she was half searching the laughing, hushed groups of tourists and Romans for the American girl.

  The next morning, Miri entered the lobby to see her new American friend, sitting in a chair, reading the newspaper.

  “Here you are,” said Miri. “You had me a little worried yesterday. I mean, I wasn’t sure if we had plans or not and I don’t know your room number, or your last name—”

  The girl stood up, dropping the folded paper onto the seat of the chair she’d just vacated, and stretched almost imperceptibly, saying, “I guess I’m not used to having anyone miss me.”

  “I thought maybe you were sick or something,” Miri said, which caused her friend to laugh.

  “Yes. I had a case of Roman fever.”

  Miri laughed with her.

  • • •

  As they walked toward the Trevi Fountain, Miri moving faster than the American girl, who was hesitating to adjust the scarf thrown over her shoulders, Miri turned to see her friend walking alone through a gauntlet of men: old, young, and middle-aged, leaning against the heavy, historical facades of buildings, or sitting in twos on parked Lambrettas, or at the tables of a little corner café. They smoked cigarettes, and wore jackets, some with the jackets thrown across their shoulders like capes. Miri saw the look of appreciation and appraisal at the beautiful American girl, tall and leggy with that healthy American stride, as if nothing could touch her unless she allowed it.

  And then Miri saw the story: An American girl in Italy in 1951, her travels and discoveries no different from those of every other American girl who has traveled to Europe since there was an America. Privileged, young, eager for experience, sophistication, art, and freedom; alive to the moment, the desire for adventure outweighing fear or trepidation. Miri responded to the timelessness of the tale, in some ways amplified by the stifling of women in postwar America; marriage, kids, the concerns of the house, all those quasi-exotic recipes without the pleasure of food, the Puritanism of America that permeated every ordinary activity, the difficulty of a career, or of keeping a career once you almost had one. Miri never really had to ask what Daisy was doing, traveling alone, in Europe; she already knew because it was her story too.

  When Miri was a teen, she knew that she wanted still photography to tell stories much in the way of movies. She knew, too, that she would one day want to tell her story, though she wasn’t quite sure how to do so when she was the one holding the camera.

  “Stop,” said Miri when Daisy passed the men. “Go back and walk it again, only can you ask the men not to look at me when I take the picture?”

  • • •

  They spent the rest of the day with Miri setting up and taking pictures of the American girl drinking coffee in a café, standing in the center of a piazza, studying statues and paintings, struggling with the money, the language, asking for directions. She sat on a Lambretta, in a sports car (that an all-too-accommodating man allowed), on the Spanish Steps, at the edge of a small fountain. The citizens, nearly all men, that the girls asked to assist in the shots were natural actors, good-natured and amused, but serious when the picture was made. What man wouldn’t be flattered when asked to pose with such a beautiful young woman, dressed in a loose black summer shirt and skirt, cinched with a brown leather belt, her flat sandals reducing her height to that of most, but not all the men? Her wavy, dark hair held back in a tortoiseshell clip, tiny gold earrings, her scarf always over her shoulders or tied to her funny little leather bag.

  “I was born in Los Angeles, an only child. My father makes mechanical toys that no one ever buys for their children because they are extraordinary, so much so that adults collect them like art. And they’re not wrong, by the way. They move and make noise and are as delicate as Swiss watches.”

  Daisy was tossing her orange peel toward the pigeons in the Borghese Gardens, where the girls sat in the shade, eating a late lunch. They were too hot to do much of anything, and spent by all the pictures and posing. “What type of toys?”

  “Birds. Every sort of bird you can imagine.”

  “With feathers?”

  “Painted metal and enamel work. Also, transportation conveyances—boats, ships, airplanes, trains, cars.” Miri ate a slice of orange. “And my mother’s career—”

  “Your mother?”

  “My parents have some different ideas about a girl’s life. Independence being one of them.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “As you know, the rest of the country hasn’t caught up.”

  The girl placed her head in Miri’s lap as she finished off her orange. “My mother’s life would be ruined if anything changed for women. She’s the mistress of the house, the lady of fund-raisers, a deb who went to Vassar, coming out to the world only to go back in. She may as well live in a tower with servants.”

  “Where is her tower?”

  “Greenwich, Connecticut. And she’s fine with her gilded cage, except when she’s sober, which is nearly never.”

  Miri’s family had enough money but were never rich, she said.

  “Oh, so your people decided to be happy instead.”

  “As romantic a view as that is, no, but they are happy.”

  “And your mother’s not a Los Angeles housewife?”

  Miri said, “She started out sewing the occasional costume for the silent movies. Then she began dress and costume design, and everyone loved her work. Esme Esme of Hollywood. She’s won two Oscars and has been nominated f
or four.”

  “I can’t tell you how impossibly glamorous it all sounds.”

  “Having a socialite for a mother isn’t exactly being invisible.”

  “Did I mention that my mother modeled during college?”

  “My parents gave me my first camera when I was a kid, and I would go with my mother and take pictures of the actors and actresses. I even went to a few movie star funerals.”

  “Taking pictures?”

  Miri shrugged. “I know. What a ghoul.”

  “I went to art school. Where I had an ill-advised thing with my professor.”

  “An ill-advised thing?”

  “A misunderstanding. It was never what it appeared to be, though that didn’t seem to matter when I got thrown out. He, on the other hand, kept his job. Of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Did I care?” said Daisy. “No. I did not. I was happy to be out of that mausoleum. Then my aunt died and left me enough to travel on and, voilà, as they say.”

  “What kind of art?”

  “I was mostly a muse. A confession. It wasn’t only my professor who got me into trouble. I wanted to be an Abstract Expressionist, but I think I’m more of an architectural watercolorist. I like patterns. Crazy, huh?”

  “And you like traveling alone.”

  Daisy smiled.

  “You know, I went from Los Angeles to San Francisco on my bicycle the summer I turned seventeen. I took pictures every day.”

  “Geez, now I’m impressed. I’ve been knocking around Europe since April, but it’s a little different to be a twenty-four-year-old woman with a trust fund than to be a kid on a bike.”

  “Yeah, but don’t you think the impulse and the pleasure are the same?” said Miri.

  “What are you doing in Rome?”

  “I was returning from Jerusalem, where I was doing a magazine assignment, and was thinking of stopping in Paris, only I came to Rome first and haven’t wanted to leave. So here I am.”