by Lee Kalcheim
“I wish to go to Rome.”
“Voglio …”
“Andare …”
“Andare …”
“A Roma.”
“A Roma. Voglio andare a Roma.”
“Good Sam.”
“I’m ready. Gabe?”
“Voglio andare a Roma.
And we went.
Trinity College is located in a section of Rome called “The Aventino”—a lovely, mostly residential, neighborhood that runs along both sides of the Via Aventino, a broad street that is anchored on one end by a large pyramid (Il Pyramide) and the other by the old chariot raceway—The Circus Maximus. The college resides in an old convent at the top of a hill over the Aventino, and still shares its facilities with the Convent nuns. It’s a very simple setting—a few classrooms, a small auditorium, and a dormitory, nestled around a quiet cloister that abuts the convent garden. The antithesis of Hollywood.
We lived in an apartment provided by the college, a short walk from the campus. The apartment was a roomy first floor flat, with two bedrooms, a living room, a small kitchen, and furniture that looked like it had been bought at an estate sale from a down-at-the-heels Italian count. It was clunky, but comfortable. The apartment was dark. The mattresses on the bed were punishing. But we were in Rome! We were in heaven!
The boys had completed first grade in Los Angeles and would start second in Rome. We had schooled them before the trip on some Roman history—illustrated—and pop-up books that told them the history of the thousand year empire. That summer, before we left, they were so excited they were dressing up as Roman soldiers. From old curtain material, Julia fashioned tunics and capes, and they wore sandals and carried swords (cardboard ones fashioned by Julia) and shields (pot lids). They already knew about Caesar, his reign and demise, and Augustus, who expanded the empire to its farthest reaches. The idea that we were actually going to live in the city where these men lived was unimaginably exciting. It’s one thing to see a pop-up of the Coliseum; it’s another to actually walk into it.
The delight of traveling with kids this young is that changing schools is no big deal. There is nothing crucial that they’re learning in the early grades, and things like basic math and reading skills begin at home. But twins have an enormous advantage in moving from school to school. They have each other. Some of our friends told us, “We can’t do what you did. Our daughter doesn’t want to leave her friends.” Sam and Gabe had each other—a constant best friend.
Thanks to the largess of their grandmother, we sent them to an International School, where English was the “lingua franca.” A bit of a mistake. Had we just tossed them into an Italian public school they would have struggled and probably survived, but we thought it’d be difficult enough adjusting to a new home. A new language seemed a bit much. We thought they’d learn Italian there in the schoolyard. They did. “Che schivo!” Which means basically, “How gross.” But they didn’t learn to speak much Italian. The school drew kids from all over the world, children of diplomats and U.N. workers. As it turns out, what Italian they did learn, they pronounced impeccably. I, on the other hand, took the beginner’s Italian class at the college, learning enough to shop and make my way around. But I mangled pronunciations. I had the hand gestures down, but that’s about it. My previous French experience caused me to speak Italian with a French accent. So I would say, “bonjour-no” instead of “buon giorno.” I didn’t realize it until the man at the newsstand, from whom I bought my daily International Herald Tribune, starting addressing me in French. He thought I was French! Well, what the hell, at least he thought I was European!
The apartment was situated at the top of a hill above the Baths of Caracalla and one half block off the square in front of the Church of St. Salbo. The Square was backed by a small leafy park and dotted by a half dozen little stores. In the morning an open air market burst to life there, and all of the locals rushed there to shop and gossip. A ritual soon developed. We’d rise in time to give the boys some breakfast, American cereal that tasted better than the same brand made in America. (They were right. Special K is better in Italy than in America). And the pre-made toast, smeared with Nutella. Mmmmmmmmmm. We took them to the corner to await the school bus. We’d visited the school several days before and the boys felt comfortable riding the bus there with their new schoolmates. The first day, a huge tourist-like bus pulled up. They got on. We were impressed. Fancy schmancy. It drove off to pick up the bulk of the kids in front of the FAO building (U.N. Food Assistance Organization). But, the next day the bus route had been reconfigured and so they sent a smaller bus, half the size, to pick up the boys. By the end of the week, the school had again reorganized its bus pickups and a bus that looked like a half-sized minivan appeared and whisked the boys away. By Monday, I told the boys to expect a guy on a motorcycle to drive up and say “hop on.” God forbid you should miss the bus. Which happened frequently enough because … after all … these were Italians, and Mussolini was long gone, and so the buses didn’t always run on schedule. And neither did we. Their school was in an un-findable neighborhood. The first time we missed the bus, we just hailed a taxi and took them there. Unlike the French taxi driver he was not dismissive of our struggles with his language. He was friendly and charming. But he couldn’t find the place! But with our help and a good map, he did. We decided we’d tough it out and go home by bus. Two and a half hours later we were home. Henceforth, we always erred on the safe side and got out to the corner extra early, so as not to miss the bus. Whatever size it came in.
After the bus picked up the boys, I went for my Herald Tribune and Julia went back to the apartment to check her e-mail. (e-mail was new then, and you were not likely to get much … much less any spam.) She’d do the laundry, which was interesting, since there was no dryer and very little room to hang it outside to dry. During the rainy season we hung everything inside, and the moisture evaporating from our sheets hung all over the place, causing a fog to rise inside the apartment. I’d do the shopping. And on the weekends, when the boys were home, we could all go together. Samuel and Gabriel were seeing a world outside the supermarket. We had come from L.A., where they had seen airplane hangar-sized markets that had everything from linguine to lawn mowers. And now they were introduced to the little town square where the butcher and the baker and the fruit lady all had their own little stalls. Our refrigerator was so small, you couldn’t really shop for more than a day’s worth of food, so I had to go every day. And I loved it.
The grocers in the stalls soon got to know me and know the boys. Sam and Gabe began to understand the difference between shopping and buying. The difference between wheeling a huge cart down the aisles of a fluorescent-lighted supermarket and just pulling items off the shelves and walking from stall to stall, checking out whether Fabrizo’s peppers looked better than Isabella’s. Debating the issue. Taking Isabella’s advice that today was good day for peaches and not for grapes. Even making mistakes when asking Georgio the butcher for chicken breasts; we requested “filleta de pollo” which turned out to be thin slices. And then realizing at home that we could bread them and fry them quickly in olive oil and lemon and have something more delicious than we had planned. Shopping was surprises. What looked good that day. You didn’t carry a list. You saw what looked good or what Georgio said was good, and you went for it. Shopping wasn’t something you had to do in your busy day. It was an event. It was a social event. You looked forward to it. And if you were feeling particularly good after you shopped, you stopped at the corner bar and had cornetti (an Italian croissant) and a cup of espresso. The boys began to understand the delicious pursuit of every day life. There was no such thing as fast food in Italy. Eating was an event. Buying the food, cooking the food, or going to a ristorante for food was not to be hurried. I remember, after moving back to New York, we were sitting in restaurant, and I stole a look at my watch, and Gabriel said, “Dadoo, where do we have to go? We’re here.”
One day we ventured to the big market in Tes
taccio, the rambling, blue-collar neighborhood nearby on the Via Marmoratta. (The marble street, the street where, in Roman times, the marble was unloaded on the docks after it had come by sea and down the Tiber all the way from the marble quarries in Carrara) This market was twenty times the size of the one in St. Salbo. They had everything from fresh squid to plastic sandals. I wanted to roast a chicken and stuff it with Italian herbs. But I didn’t know the butcher there. I just found a chicken I liked.
“Isn’t it kind of… yellow, Dadoo?”
“Yes. Well … it’s … I think …. Italian chickens are yellow.”
“Shouldn’t you ask?”
I wasn’t sure how to ask why his chicken was yellow. I told the boys it was fine. Bought it. Took it home. Roasted it. It was so tough we almost broke our teeth on it. A rubber chicken. I later found out from a friend.
“Oh the yellow ones are for boiling! You have to boil them all day before you can eat them.”
I was out of my league in the big market on the Via Marmoratta.
But there was an excitement of being out of your league. Of having to work hard just to communicate the most basic things. We’d stop once a week at the little mom and pop store at the corner of the square to buy milk and cheese and Special K. Samuel asked me as we walked in the first time, “Dadoo, if you don’t speak Italian, how are you going to buy Special K for us?”
“Watch!”
I strutted in like a confident New Yorker abroad.
“Per favore. Voglio Special K.”
The old man behind the counter, the “Pop” of “Mom and Pop” blinked. Knitted his brows.
“Special K?”
“Cereal-e” I pronounced cereal as if it were an Italian word. I was actually pretty close, but not close enough for pop. He shrugged. I walked over and pointed to the cereal display behind the counter and pointed to the top. “Special K.”
Pop got his grabber pole and moved to the cereals. And when he stopped at the Special K, I shouted. “Si! Si! Grazie” And he pulled down a box. Gabe turned to me.
“But Dadoo, if you’re going to point, you don’t have to speak any Italian.”
“But, Gabey I’m establishing a relationship with the shop owner. If I come in once a week and ask for “Special K,” then I won’t have to point.”
“If you come in once a week, they’re gonna know what you want when you walk in the door.”
SCENE: A TRATTORIA IN FLORENCE, ITALY. LEE, JULIA, SAM, AND GABE ARE HAVING LUNCH AFTER A MORNING OF VISITING CHURCHES AND SEEING FRESCOES.
SAM
Dadoo, do people paint frescoes anymore?
LEE
Sure, but they call them murals.
SAM
Where are they? The new ones?
JULIA
There’s a big one at Lincoln Center. Painted by Marc Chagall.
SAM
How come all the ones in Italy are of saints and stuff?
LEE
That’s because they were painted inside the churches and they were paid for, commissioned, by very rich, very religious families.
SAM
If I become rich, I’m going to commission a fresco!
JULIA
Of what?
SAM
Of … Bugs Bunny!
CHAPTER TEN
THE BLUE GROTTO
One of the perks of the Trinity program was that, as a faculty member, I got to go on the class trips. All of us went. Julia and the boys and I traveled with the students on their trips to Florence and Venice and Naples. I can say without reservation that Samuel and Gabriel learned more, while they were having more fun, on those trips than any other adventure in their lives. The trips were led by the director of the program, Livio Pestilli—the definition of a gentleman and a scholar—a sweet, smart, soft-spoken man who had moved with his parents, to Rochester N.Y., as a teenager, married his high school sweetheart and after graduate work in the states, moved back to Italy to teach. It was his sagacity and flexibility that allowed me to teach playwriting in a program principally geared for Italian art and history. But he understood that if I urged the students to write about their experiences in Rome it would make them that much richer. And I loved teaching students with little writing experience. They were sponges. Ready to learn. Full of enthusiasm for learning something new. And there was a fabulous contagion being on the trips with them. I’ll never forget a couple of the students, carrying our boys on their shoulders through the narrow medieval streets of Florence, as the boys waved to everyone, as if they were Renaissance dukes greeting their patrons.
On that trip to Florence, after the train ride up from Rome, we were all led to the Uffizi palace to see, outside, the Michelangelo statue of David and, inside, the vast collection of Italian art: from Giotto and Bellini, to Veronese and Botticelli. We were there over four hours, and not once did the boys say, “Can we go now?” They followed Livio’s careful, insightful comments with infinite patience as we toured the museum. Julia and I were impressed. Of course, the next day, when Livio led us in and out of Florentine churches to see frescoes, Sam, exhausted at seeing so many frescoes, suddenly piped up, doing an imitation of Livio as we passed another church, “Oh, we must go in here. The frescoes in here are the best. Better than the best. Magnifico!”
The last night in Florence, we went to a concert of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” and the boys, the budding violinists, sat next to each other to better comment on the players. In the midst of the concert, Gabe leaned to Sam and whispered something about the recital. From behind us we heard a loud “clap.” What was that? Someone swatting a mosquito? The concert continued. Sam leaned to Sam and whispered again. “Clap!” I turned and saw a stocky, tight-faced woman glaring at us. When the piece was finished, the woman rose and confronted Julia and me and in a brusque German accent, announced, “Kinder should not be allowed to attend zese concerts!”
I smiled, and nodded and said to her, “If the kinder are not allowed to attend these concerts, pretty soon interest in music will die off, and there will be nobody at these concerts!”
The fraulein had pigeon-holed our “kinder” as being too restless and disinterested to appreciate the music. They must be whispering to each other about how bored they were. Julia and I were the ones struggling to stay awake. The boys were juiced by the music.
The same persistence and patience prevailed when we traveled to Naples to see Pompeii on a stifling hot day. It’s a long ride from Rome to Naples, and Livio took the microphone in the front of the bus to point out sites along the way, “Look to your left, up on that hilltop is the castle of Monte Casino, where one of the deadliest battles of World War II took place, as the American troops fought the encamped Nazis there to clear the road to Rome.” The students were getting restless. The trip was long, and they were tired. Suddenly, I saw Sam and Gabe whispering to Livio, and the next thing we knew they were holding the microphone as Sam announced, “We’d like to do a few songs. These are songs you probably don’t know. We learned them from our folks’ old records.” And, Sam sang out, “Ya gotta accentuate the positive / Eeeliminate the negative / Latch on the affirmative /Don’t mess with Mister In Between!” The students woke up and laughed and cheered. Gabe took the mike, and both of them sang, “Another bride/ Another Groom/ Another Sunny/ Honeymoon/ Another season/ Another reason/ For makin’ whoopee.”
Livio laughed. There’s Italian renaissance history. And American pop song history. And the two were fusing nicely on the road to Naples.
As we toured the ghost city of Pompeii, the heat so oppressive we put up umbrellas to shade ourselves, Livio pressed on through the ruins, and again the boys were wide-eyed at the sight of a culture frozen in time—at the sight of a young boy, their age, petrified in stone, curled in fetal position on his bed, as the ash from Vesuvias engulfed him two thousand years ago.
Then down to the wharf and onto the hydrofoil and off to Capri.
Capri, as you probably know, is a huge tourist stop. A small island
rising out of the Mediterranean just off the picturesque Amalfi coast, it teems with visitors—day visitors from Southern Italy and overnighters from Germany, Japan, and the U.S., crowding the narrow streets and curio shops. We encamped, fortunately at the top of the island in Anacapri—away from the crowds and high enough to see three hundred and sixty degrees to the ocean on all sides. On our first full day, Livio led us all on a walk across the top of the island, winding along roads that edged along steep cliffs down to the sea on our way to Emperor Tiberius’s villa. Arriving at the well preserved remains of the emperor’s home-away-from-Rome, Livio pointed out that Tiberius lived here in luxury during most of his reign, away from the unrest in Rome, the intrigues against his rule, and the rebellion in the Roman colony in Jerusalem, where an iconoclastic young Jew, named Joshua was arrested, tried, convicted, and crucified. While Tiberius partied on.
On the way back on the path from the villa, we stopped at a restaurant perched on the side of the cliff overlooking the natural arches that stood below in the sea. Fig trees shaded us as we ate and luxuriated in plates of prosciutto and fresh picked figs while we gazed out at the view. Gabe looked at me with his intense brown eyes, his auburn hair blowing in the sea breeze.
“Dadoo, this really is incredible.”
“What sweetie? The food? The view? The trip?
“Everything.”
The first time I traveled out of the country was not until the summer after I had graduated college. I was twenty-two. My father had taken his first trip abroad with my mom when he was fifty-one years old. My sons were seven. There are those who say such adventures are wasted on children this age. I felt lucky at twenty two, and my father, the same at fifty one to see the world outside of home. The boys had been traveling abroad since they were four. And knew very well how lucky they were. And how every moment, from seeing an Emperor’s villa to eating a fresh fig overlooking the sea was precious. And not to be forgotten.
The day before we left Capri we bussed down to the shore adjacent the famous blue grotto. It is a cave whose mouth opens to the sea. Tourists row boats inside to see the cave. Livio’s assistant, Francesco, told us to go late in the day, when there were no tourists or boats, and to swim in. But when we arrived, it was high tide. When the small waves would break on the shore, the mouth of the grotto would be completely covered in water. We’d have to swim out to the mouth, and when there was as opening between the waves, we’d have to swim into the cave. This scared Sam, and he decided to wait on shore with some of the students who’d accompanied us. Surprisingly, Gabe wanted to go. He’d heard what a wondrous site it was inside. So he willed himself to do it. He also knew that his mother, though fearless, was careful. Julia, Gabe, and I swam out from shore and toward the cave’s mouth. Gabe climbed on Julia’s back, and together we swam to the cave’s mouth, waited for the water to recede, the mouth to open, and then we all shouted, “Go!” and quickly swam through the mouth and into the cave! And wondrous it was. The light bouncing on the water from outside reflected up and into the dark cave and glowed! We treaded water in this dark, dark cave while around us the water glowed an incandescent blue-green. Gabe, clinging to his mother’s back, had pushed himself to do something that had scared him, and now seeing the reward for his daring, the phenomena of the glowing water, he hugged his mother from behind.
