I Came, I Saw

by Norman Lewis

  We walked back together. Primo was still at the door of the bar and we drifted in. Two glasses of foggy white wine were placed in silence on the counter. ‘Nothing stronger than this?’ I asked, and Primo said, ‘We’ve run out.’ They’d picked up the silly habit in the Rome area at that time of saying ‘cheers’, which they did with an Italian rolling of the r. We lifted the glasses and the pair of them said cheers, and in the next second I felt the sting of the wine in the tiny cracks it had already opened in my lips. Someone had given Primo a cuckoo clock which only worked once in a while, and at that moment the bird popped out and started its insane squawking and Primo cuffed it back.

  ‘People are different,’ Ricardo said, ‘and they call for different treatment. Like cars, some are trouble-free and some aren’t.’ It was the only comment on life I ever heard him make.

  ‘Eh,’ Primo agreed. ‘What happened about the Count’s girl?’

  ‘Had one of her turns,’ Ricardo told him. ‘They’re taking her away, but she’ll be back the day after tomorrow.’

  And she was.

  Spring came early in Isola Farnese, and was in full flower by early March, although it was the silent spring of which Rachel Carson had warned, and which in leaving England we had hoped to escape. The migrant birds that had come under such concentrated fire on their way south in autumn customarily avoided the Rome area on their way back to the north. A few sportsmen hung about at points of vantage in the hope of intercepting a bird that had wandered off course, and the grocer and his friends managed to stage a successful ambush of a pair of crows that had been sighted in a local coppice, and shot the hen on the nest. Otherwise wild life in the Latium was at an end. Even a rabbit was an extreme rarity and the last to be snared in Isola Farnese some two years earlier, having been stuffed, now peered down wistfully from a shelf in the priest’s study at villagers who called upon him in search of godly advice.

  Nevertheless with the coming of the warm weekends Roman families sallied forth in droves to picnic by the roadsides of the Cassia and the rest of the highways leading in all directions from the capital. With the demise of winter the winds had swung round, and now blew strongly from the south, in our case with the slight inherent disadvantage that the surrounding fields soon became plastered with rubbish from the northern suburbs. Lay-bys and side turnings on these northern roads were soon deep in refuse, and the view was often spoilt by the sight of plastic bags by the hundred trapped in bushes, or caught up in the lower branches of trees.

  At about this time the faintest of unpleasant odours was detected in Isola Farnese itself. In the beginning this was so slight that when we sat down to the evening meal in the little grassy plateau overlooking the scene of past greatness, half the family members refused to admit to its existence, and thereafter days might pass before someone was seen to sniff the air doubtfully once again. On windy days it was certainly absent, neither was it ever noticeable in the early mornings, but on an airless evening when spring had gathered strength, the odour was back, and although it remained vagrant and slight it was generally admitted now that it was not imaginary.

  I spoke to Annunziata about it and she showed surprise. ‘I agree with you that there’s a stink, sir, but personally I don’t notice it. It comes from all that stuff they throw into the ravine. You may find it unpleasant at first, but I assure you you’ll get accustomed to it as the year goes on. Let me explain: it’s warm and it’s been raining. That’s the trouble. Quite frankly after the summer rains it stinks like a cesspit. But then again it doesn’t often rain in summer, so why lose heart? Believe me, sir, you’ll get used to it like anybody else.’

  ‘Doesn’t the Council ever do anything about this?’ I asked.

  ‘The Council?’ she laughed. ‘If you expect the Council to do anything you’re living with your head in the clouds. Last year they were going to work on it this year. Now they say it’s top priority for next. Better accept it as it is, sir. The Council isn’t going to do anything for you.’

  Dr Pecorella agreed to accompany me, reluctantly, I suspected, on an inspection of the ravine, where endless black sacks lay one upon the other, spilling their contents and spreading a sullen fetor among the splendours of the ancient woods.

  ‘The smell. Rather off-putting these days.’

  ‘Eh,’ he said. My secret hope had been that he might have offered in his position to alert some appropriate body to a danger to public health. The Italian language provides many phrases employed in support of passivity. One is è così, a vague comment translatable as ‘that’s the way it is’. ‘È così,’ Pecorella said, thus accepting what he saw as an inevitability, and hoping I would do so too.

  ‘And the Council don’t want to know about it,’ I said.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Can you suggest any other body that might be induced to interest themselves?’

  ‘My dear friend, Rome is rich in bodies that have been set up to deal with every conceivable abuse. Those in charge accept exceedingly low salaries in the knowledge they will be called upon to do roughly nothing whatever. You will be inundated with sympathy and assurances, and there the matter will rest. To obtain a positive result you would be required to put forward a petition signed by every member of the community, and passed to a minister through various intermediaries, all of them suitably rewarded. There is one drawback.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘Nobody would sign the petition.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A contractor dumps the rubbish here. He is rich. They are poor. We have a proverb. “No one says of the lion his breath smells”.’

  ‘So it’s a waste of time?’

  ‘Well naturally. A complete waste of time.’

  The doctor was looking down into the ravine, his nose held lightly between thumb and forefinger. Although his English ranked with that of the Count he was liable in emotional moments to break into Italian. ‘Che bellezza,’ he said. ‘I always feel an extraordinary freedom in these surroundings. Let us walk as far as the old Etruscan bridge.’

  ‘I’m told they throw unwanted furniture over it into the river these days,’ I told him.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Fortunately there’s a tremendous spate of water in November and that breaks up whatever’s there and carries it away. That excellent book of yours describes the view as the finest in this part of the country.’

  We reached the bridge finding that an old Fiat van had been parked on it within a foot of the edge which was protected by a spindly wooden balustrade. It bore no number plates, the seats and lamps had been removed, and an open door drooped on its hinges. We stood to one side to enjoy the distant scene. There was no pollution from the hill villages and the meadows above this point. The water spouting and cascading from the face of the low falls we looked over was of crystal clarity, with polished pebbles shining in the bed of the deep pool beneath in which the ruin of a chest of drawers rotated slowly. Ahead the river tunnelled into the evergreen oaks’ foliage, perpetuating their rich autumnal glow here among the colours of spring. Anemones by the thousand were clustered round their roots, and from where we stood the black sacks were no longer in sight.

  ‘So this lot will go over the top,’ I said.

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ the doctor said. ‘They’ve not quite done with stripping it down. They’ll have ducked into the bushes to wait till we’ve gone. The wheels must be worth something to them. It’ll go in tonight.’

  ‘No amount of autumn spates is going to get rid of this.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re right. A problem,’ he said. ‘I wonder if it could be blown up if necessary? We shall have to see.’

  It was at this point that certain doubts surfaced as to the permanence of the Roman venture. From some viewpoints it had been a huge success. To live in an Italian village in close and happy contact with the children of another race was an experience which we believed ours would never forget. Life here was freer than in England. Some sort of a class division existed but i
t was a mild affair compared with the English version, as was exemplified by the Count’s philosophical attitude to his daughter’s love life. After further observation I was to conclude that this was no more than an exceptional example of a liberalism that was widespread.

  From this aspect the venture had been an undoubted success. Life in Isola Farnese offered the prospect of weekend exploration of so many beautiful cities that were easy of access. There was the endless fascination of the great cemeteries of Tarquinia and Cerveteri where the tombs reproduced the domestic environment of a mysterious nation, married couples in effigy exchanged conjugal smalltalk on the lids of their sarcophagi, a young man raised himself on his elbow to confront infinity with startled eyes. Viterbo, an hour away by car, where the Popes held out for three centuries against Rome and a rapist had recently been hanged from a hook, was of endless interest. The Gran Sasso D’Italia, greatest natural rock-garden in Europe, was within easy reach, as was L’Aquila with its celebrated fountain of ninety-nine jets at the entrance to the wilderness of the Abruzzi, which we had yet to explore. Finally, the inexhaustible splendours of Rome, hardly investigated by us, waited at the end of the Cassia, only a half hour away.

  These were some of the powerful pluses, the richness of experience that so easily outweighed the environmental drawbacks of which we sometimes complained. But more serious objections were beginning to emerge. It was becoming clear that the children would never be bilingual following this move to Rome. After seven months in Isola Farnese they had picked up a smattering of Italian, but it was of a rustic form — almost a dialect, although on testing senior pupils who had been studying the language at school they seemed to have learned even less. It had possibly been the worst moment to arrive in the school’s short history. The horrific accounts of Paul Getty’s kidnapping and mutilation had started a panic among parents who had supposed their children to be out of harm’s way in Rome, and had gone about their business elsewhere with a quiet mind until this storm blew up. Flower Power was seized upon by the press as the scapegoat for these happenings, and Forza Dei Fiore featured for week after week in the Rome headlines. Eventually the Italian translation was dropped and Flower Power, as in English, was accepted into the Italian language as the inspiration for the drugs and sex orgies supposedly conducted by depraved seventeen-year-olds of British or American origin.

  With the exception of the Count, Dr Pecorella and Don Ubaldo, the priest, no one in Isola Farnese read the newspapers, but all the details of the scurrilous facts they reported, nevertheless, were discussed there within an hour or so of the appearance of the evening editions. It was normal for these to be presented in exaggerated and even mendacious form. Paul Getty was photographed in a T-shirt bearing the lettering Cocaine, It’s The Real Thing, in imitation of the famous Coca-Cola logo. Although it was false to allege that such garments could be worn while at school, the villagers were emphatic in their belief that this was so. Moreover the sad example of Zo-Zo was always before their eyes. As Annunziata put it, ‘We got rid of the pagans here a couple of thousand years ago. These people are shits. With respect, sir, why send your precious offspring to a place like that for their education when Don Ubaldo would be willing to train them in the fear of God for a couple of hours a day and ask next to nothing for it?’

  It was inevitable that the impact of these calamities should have affected the fortunes of the school. The liberalism of the current dispensation came under attack by the board of governors, and in an attempt to establish a more conventional framework of discipline a new headmaster arrived to take over at St George’s. His firmness of purpose evoked bitter resentment among the staff, and passive resistance led finally to a full-scale rebellion. When this failed a number of teachers broke away and announced plans to open a school in competition some few miles away. This prolonged tussle for control could only have an unsettling effect upon the pupils. For us it was all the worse in that a member of the staff had introduced us to the school, and we were on extremely friendly terms both with him and several other dissidents. The situation was that should we decide to soldier on in Rome, life at St George’s was likely to be less pleasant than before. The disadvantage in the case of the new school was that it was too far away for comfortable day attendance. In either case nothing could convince me that the Forza dei Fiore, or whatever came to replace it, would not continue to await pupils who reached the upper forms, whichever school they attended.

  Thus after interminable heart-searchings, discussions, hesitations, changes of mind — after many postponements, and finally looking backward with huge regret, a decision was reached to return to England. With this, all the pleasures great and small of the past months came into sharp focus as Isola Farnese, from which we were about to banish ourselves, refurbished memories and clothed itself in last-minute attractions.

  Annunziata, without prompting, carried out a lightning campaign to restore spick and spanness to the dusty surfaces of our rooms. On inspecting the result, as requested, we remembered that scorpions in the baths were a thing of the past, and that the expression of the Count’s samurai, once seen as threatening, had now, through daily familiarity, become conciliatory. Some of the obscurities in the fourteenth-century fresco had been sponged away and freed of the grime of ages, sprightly figures were now visible where before there had been murk. Not only was the house suddenly more inviting on the eve of our departure but mysteriously the smell from the valley was no longer there. Visiting the garden for the last time I discovered unexpected developments there, for the unique brand of parsley sown by the Count on our patch of vegetable garden had not only germinated but burst through a panoply of weeds.

  In every way Isola Farnese freshened its image. By some mistake the bar had come by some wine that was not of local production, and in consequence so drinkable that I called for a second glass. While I was there Dr Pecorella came in in a state of excitement because one of the numerous chips of broken pottery passed to him for inspection had not faded instantly, but retained a few square inches of indelible pattern including what might have been a fold of a woman’s robe. This he proclaimed without doubt to have been part of a vessel imported from Greece. Where had we found it? We did not know, and it was too late now to go back and search over the area where it might have been found.

  This was a Sunday afternoon and the Mafia from Rome had arrived as usual for their Sunday lunch, but, said the Doctor, there were fewer than usual. The village had found a way of making it known to them that they were not welcome.

  ‘They give us a bad name,’ as the grocer had complained. Pecorella thought he knew the men of respect well enough to assure us they’d go quietly. ‘They never bother themselves over petty matters like this.’ We strolled together down to the restaurant where a little group of village men stood watching two black Alfa Romeos parked outside with tyres let down. Ten minutes or so passed and the owner of one of the cars came out. A fair-haired girl tripped on high heels at his side as cautiously as if crossing stepping stones over a brook. The man looked down at his tyres. He cupped his fingers of a right hand oscillating gently from his wrist. Neither spoke. They went back into the restaurant and Pecorella said, ‘He was angry, but he smiled. Now we may hope for a change for the better. You should have stayed longer.’

  We walked back together. ‘So now you’re leaving us,’ Pecorella said. ‘Have you profited from your experience in our village in any way?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s corrected my view of Italy based wholly on eighteen months among the Neapolitans. The Romans are different.’

  ‘They are,’ Pecorella said. ‘But tell me, in what way?’

  ‘The Neapolitans are lovable,’ I said. ‘They promise more than they give. The Romans are colder, but they give more than they promise. I’ve studied and admired your imperturbability. For reasons of temperament it remains beyond my reach.’

  ‘Be assured it is largely a pretence. A matter of appearances. It is better to remain as you are.’

 
; ‘Then again I’ve learned to speak without words. An accomplishment I’m proud of. Pity I shan’t have the chance to put it to use.’

  We had reached the bar. ‘When are you taking off?’ Pecorella asked.

  ‘In about an hour,’ I told him.

  ‘Time for a last drink together, then.’

  We went in and the glasses awaited us. ‘Is this the new stuff?’ I asked, and the owner jerked his head back and clicked his tongue. ‘Nobody wanted it. They said it had no bite. I sent it back.’

  I sipped the local vintage, controlling the grimace I would have made in the first weeks. ‘How is it?’ Primo asked.

  ‘Eh,’ I said, in a way that absolved me from commitment of any kind.

  Pecorella nodded his approval. ‘Spoken like a Roman,’ he said.

  In the same week we found ourselves back in East Anglia, a homespun Arcadia of dun coloration and flat horizons, providing at best an interlude of monotony in which to plan the tapestries of the future. The children were put to an earnest local school sponsored by an organization of a religious kind, and here, although there was some drug-taking and pupils were notorious for their shoplifting forays into the town, kidnapping could at least be ruled out. Nevertheless we thought it imprudent to allow Kiki the freedom of the streets after dark which she had enjoyed in Isola Farnese. Fresh from the Italian experience we saw England with new eyes. We had returned to an environment where the separation of the social layers appeared absolute. The filth and disorder of our inner cities was depressing indeed by comparison with Italy, yet the rural scene was a tidier one. The English shot birds in large numbers, too, but execution in this case was conducted out of earshot in private woods.

  In the physical sense we were back where we started, among sober, honest and reliable country folk almost as silent as the Romans, although, unlike the Romans, dragooned by memories of a past that had taught them to keep their opinions on all subjects strictly to themselves. Whatever slight contempt they may have felt for the recklessness and incompetences of ex-urban settlers nothing of this ever showed through an exterior of tolerance and courtesy.