The Apartment in Rome

by Penny Feeny

  ‘To Afghanistan?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘After everything he went through to get here?’

  ‘First we must locate the detention centre. Then, with the aid of a lawyer, we can get him brought back to Rome and, with God’s grace, he can fight for his right to remain.’

  God-talk always made Sasha feel uncomfortable.

  He added, ‘But we have this setback in the finances and Gina, she troubles me.’

  She’s been screaming at him, Sasha interpreted, as she screamed at us over the stupid glue business.

  ‘I only met her yesterday,’ said Ruby. ‘But she was, like, full-on. She said everything was going great.’

  ‘That was yesterday. Unfortunately today she has bad news. She too has been robbed.’

  Sasha and Ruby exchanged glances. Sasha felt her heart battering her ribs as if it wanted to break out. Her mind raced ahead, imagining the priest saying, ‘The one precious memento she kept of her little boy is lost.’ She should have confessed before this, sorted out the swap: the photos for the drawing. She’d been building up to it; she hadn’t quite got there.

  ‘A very valuable picture,’ said Leone.

  ‘Oh…?’ The pictures were hanging on the walls for all to see. Probably the intruder who had tampered with the lock had nicked it and Gina had taken a while to notice it was missing. She was relieved not to be responsible, but put off trying to negotiate an exchange. They’d have to work out how to get the drawing back discreetly. Or maybe it would be simpler to destroy it? If Gina had already flipped out so badly, how would she react when she discovered what they’d done? Sasha didn’t even want to think about it.

  25

  Old haunts. What in the end did they amount to? A room above a bar where he’d spent too many hours playing poker; a German style birreria where beer spouted from the brass taps of huge wooden barrels; a restaurant where they were always treated like royalty; a certain bench under a certain tree in the Giardini Borghese, which had once been a favourite rendezvous. You’d have to be excessively sentimental to want to revisit any of them – and he wasn’t, not really.

  Not sentimental, no, but at this particular moment, stomping down the Via del Tritone, Mitchell felt he could do with a boost of some kind. He hadn’t even been able to beat the hell out of some slimy Roman lettings agent who’d regarded him sorrowfully through his Armani-framed spectacles and apologised that there was nothing he could do.

  ‘There must be something!’ The open-plan office had been divided by screens flaunting wide-angled photos of modernised flats and studios. ‘Are you telling me every single apartment on your books is fully occupied?’

  ‘You are in a most desirable area,’ the agent had pointed out, twiddling his pencil. ‘Close to Campo de’ Fiori. The signorine were very happy.’

  ‘Suppose they hadn’t been? What would you have done? What else would you have offered them?’

  ‘Well…’ A resigned shake of the head. ‘That was already two days ago. It’s true we had a fine apartment available then, a better size for three people, but it was a little further distant from the centro storico. The signorine chose to stay where they are and, regrettably, the other has been taken. Easter is a busy time.’

  Mitchell asked to see a schedule of the agency’s listings, available or otherwise. He asked for further details of the original property he’d booked and why it had suddenly been withdrawn.

  ‘Unfortunately, we don’t have control over the owners’ decisions. Or over the problems which can beset old buildings. In this case, there was a leak, the redecoration is not yet finished. What can we do?’

  ‘More likely they got a better offer,’ said Mitchell sourly. ‘So if you can’t deal with my problem, perhaps you have a manager who can?’

  It was at this point that the young man started muttering about a possible sconto, taking out a pocket calculator and tapping its keys with the tip of his pencil. Mitchell sat back, folded his arms across his chest and gave what was intended to be an intimidating glower as the agent nudged his figures upwards, ten euros at a time.

  When he unlocked his petty cash box and counted out 200 euros in twenties, Mitchell pocketed the notes and considered himself the victor. But not for long. As soon as he was out on the street he felt cheapened. He might be able to buy a couple of nights in a hotel but it wouldn’t be at the standard he was used to and it would mean abandoning the girls, which he was most definitely not about to do. They could be left to their own devices during the day, but he was determined they would sleep safely at night. He’d been made a fool of and it rankled that he’d allowed himself to be disadvantaged so easily, that he’d been paid off with petty cash, for chrissakes!

  His equilibrium had been further unsettled by Ruby’s gossip about Gina. He hadn’t wanted to press for information, but he’d been left with the disturbing impression that she’d had a baby a couple of years before Sasha was born. Which meant that it might be his. He could understand she’d have found it difficult to cope as a single parent, but surely she would have contacted him before contemplating adoption? Surely not even someone as capricious as Gina would deny a man knowledge of his own child? The very thought stifled the air in his lungs. He had to get a grip on himself, push such speculation aside.

  He wished he could feel positive about the money burning the lining of his pocket, but that, too, was lowering his mood. Perhaps a drink would help. It was almost midday and he was thirsty. He veered left towards Via San Marcello and before long found himself in front of one of his old haunts, the Antica Birreria, which was opening up. He was greeted with warmth as the first customer, ahead of a rush for wurstel and sauerkraut, and he was pleased to see no change. The art deco mirrors, the wooden panelling, the casks behind the bar were exactly as they had been on his last visit, God knows how long ago.

  He sat at one of the old scarred tables. Maybe he could confront Gina – no, confront was too strong a word – probe tactfully into the past. Meeting again like this, it would be churlish to ignore her, not to recover some lost ground. From his jacket he pulled out the flyer he’d taken the day before from the pile on her sideboard. When he unfolded it he expected to see a brochure for wedding clients, but the flyer turned out to be advertising an exhibition. He noted the address: it wasn’t far, so perhaps he would stroll there after he had eaten. He sent Sasha a text and she replied that they were still queuing, but they’d bought some panini from a stall. He was free to order himself a snack and another stein.

  While he waited he toyed with his phone, with the idea of calling Corinne again. He’d rung yesterday, on arrival, to let her know that everything was fine. She had cross-examined him on Sasha and Ruby and seemed satisfied with the answers. She’d been halfway up a Scottish mountain at the time and had described the view – damp but breath-taking – and the inn – yellow and smoky like kippers – where she and Nadia were staying. That was all. He hadn’t mentioned Gina. He put down the phone without dialling; there was nothing else to report.

  Afterwards he regretted the wurstel. The greasy sausage lay heavily on his stomach and slowed him up as he made his way to the gallery. From time to time he was diverted by the passage of gorgeous Italian women with spiky heels on their feet and phones and sunglasses clamped to their heads. Yet even their appeal would be trumped by the glimpse of a powerful Ducati. In his late teens and early twenties he’d owned a bike, an old Yamaha. It was nothing special but it was as near as you could get on the ground to flying. He’d had to sell it to finance further training and he didn’t replace it because flying in the air was the real deal, but the sight of a fine specimen could rouse a momentary thrill.

  He found the gallery with relative ease; its appearance more discouraging than inviting. He liked things plain and simple – the birreria hadn’t disappointed in that regard – but there was a difference between simple and acute trying-too-hard minimalism. Gina had always hung around with posers – she’d been part of the fashion industry, h
owever much she might have mocked it – so it wasn’t surprising she should feel at home in a pretentious place like this.

  As he gazed around the walls, the pictures that first caught his attention were not hers. They were shots of abandoned factories and warehouses in desolate settings, taken at night. They were almost bereft of colour, though there were token splashes: a gloomy green door, a rusty roof, a bluish chimney. Their surreal quality, the brooding atmosphere, chimed with his mood.

  He ignored the work of the next exhibitor, whose vivid hyperactive photographs of dancers, acrobats and jugglers conveyed the superficial glitz of performance but left him cold, and moved on to Gina’s black and white images. He was genuinely curious about what she might have produced, as if her work could illuminate her character and give him clues as to how she had spent her life. Some shots had surprising energy: half a dozen boys lining up to play leapfrog or scaling the wall around the Pyramid – but for the most part they were sombre portraits, stark and shocking in their intensity. The subjects were victims of one sort or another; battle-scarred.

  He remembered there’d always been mutilated beggars on Rome’s street corners or blind men flogging lottery tickets. A tradition of charity from penitent pilgrims hoping to ease their way into heaven. But now the pilgrims were outnumbered by avid shopaholics and the scale of the needy swamping the streets was beyond the redistribution of a bit of small change. He was surprised, frankly, that Gina had chosen to work with the socially excluded. It was a long way from designer frocks and handbags, though that may have been the point for a woman of such extremes.

  He wondered how much she was charging and gave an involuntary pat to the cash in his trouser pocket, which he ought to stow safely in his wallet. He reached her final portraits: two lovers on a bed, labelled Aftermath. They’d been in a fight, that much was clear, presumably with each other. He was surprised, first of all, that any woman would so readily sleep with a man who’d beaten her, and secondly, that Gina had been allowed to take the photograph.

  Then he realised the whole thing was an elaborate set-up, the participants actors and the fierce bruising created with theatrical make-up. Did that mean the rest of her images were faked too? They did, on second inspection, look almost too controlled. Powerful, yes; beautiful, even, if you liked that kind of thing. But genuine? He doubted it.

  The girl on the bed reminded him in a way of Corinne. She used to sprawl in similar fashion when sleeping, with her knee bent and her buttock curved like a peach. Now she always wore pyjamas. He saw her naked sometimes in the bath or in the shower, but at night she turned away from him, presenting her back. He would not think of Corinne, it would only set his doubts rumbling.

  He sauntered over to the desk where a blond man, dressed from head to toe in white, was seated. He raised his eyes to Mitchell and must have decided at once that he was English. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m interested in the work of Gina Stanhope.’

  ‘Fascinating, isn’t she? A true artist’s perspective. You think you know what you’re looking at and then she subverts it and you find yourself having to look again. Strong stuff, no?’ The man’s accent was camp American; he exuded a self-confident languor. He was older than he’d seemed from a distance, probably much the same age as Mitchell himself.

  ‘Where does she come from?’

  ‘Well, she lives here in Rome, but she’s British originally, like yourself. I have an international clientele, so we present international artists.’

  ‘There’s a pair at the end,’ said Mitchell, ‘entitled Aftermath.’ His hand strayed again to his pocket. ‘How much would she want for one of them?’

  The man opened a drawer of his desk and appeared to consult a list. ‘I’m so sorry, those are not for sale. I already had someone else ask me the same question.’

  He was puzzled. ‘Surely you can have any number printed off?’

  ‘Well yes, though there’s a deal of work goes into producing the perfect print. So for it to have value to the buyer you want the edition to be limited, you can’t have the market flooded. A photographer might agree to sell an image under licence which could make him mega-bucks for sure, but that’s not what a collector would be after and I have you figured for a collector. Would that be correct?’

  ‘Well… you know…’ Mitchell lifted his shoulders and let a bland expression spread over his face. He’d bought posters of bands and bikes as a teenager but that was about the sum of it. Never an original, never a work of art. There were pictures on the walls at home, he’d even paid for some of them, but they’d all been chosen by Corinne. ‘It’s a shame,’ he said, grateful for a let-out clause. ‘It struck me particularly, Aftermath, but if as you say it’s not for sale…’

  ‘If you want to leave me your name and number, I could contact Ms Stanhope to see whether she would change her mind.’

  ‘No worries, I’ll take another look at some of the rest.’

  ‘She’s going to go far. Did you see the review in Il Messaggero?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘I have an English translation.’

  Mitchell’s phone vibrated in his pocket. ‘So sorry, I really must take this call. But thanks, anyway, for the information.’ He backed away across the spotless floor; the tiniest crumb or speck of grit would show up instantly, loom out of proportion. He pressed the phone to his ear. ‘Sash? Hello, sweetheart, are you done?’

  Reception in the gallery was poor, as if it had been soundproofed to aid visual concentration. He was glad to get out of it, escape from its hushed environment back into noisy street life. ‘I can’t hear you… Yes, I’ve already eaten. Shall we meet in half an hour, under the obelisk in Piazza del Popolo? You know where I mean? I’m on foot, but it will be quicker for you to catch a bus. Anything that goes from the Vatican down Via Cola di Rienzo and crosses the river. Should be easy enough.’

  Piazza del Popolo wasn’t as teeming as Piazza Navona and Piazza di Spagna. It was free from traffic these days, unsullied by exhaust fumes, and its spacious oval allowed for a stately flow of pedestrians. Mitchell knew as he settled beneath the obelisk that he would be in for a wait, but there was plenty to look at. It was like sitting in the world’s most rococo theme park: marble arches and statues, copper domes and cupolas, and filigree-fine streets spinning from the central hub like threads from a spider’s web.

  A living statue was poised below the Pincio, dwarfed by the monumental effigies adorning the fountain beside him. Passers-by didn’t take much notice and Mitchell thought it an odd place to stand. As a breed they’d become irritatingly ubiquitous and he usually avoided them, but because he had nothing else to do he kept his sights fixed on the man: a Roman Emperor, he guessed from his robes. He hoped to catch him out and regretted he wouldn’t be able to spot any tic or twitch without moving closer. However, he did see a rapid change when two carabinieri, all braids, buttons and boots, materialised through the archway leading to the Via Flaminia. In an instant the statue had divested himself of toga and wreath and was sitting on the lip of the fountain, packing them into a box. Afterwards, casually, as if to deflect attention, he began to walk in the opposite direction, towards Via Babuino.

  Thereafter Mitchell was taken aback by the speed with which things happened. The carabinieri were no longer to be seen, but the statue managed to collide with a woman who wasn’t looking where she was going (spiky heels, dark glasses, total absorption in her phone call). There was a slight hiatus, then the woman was screeching and scrabbling for the components of the mobile she had dropped and shattered. Had she also been robbed? Two young girls were running in pursuit of the statue as if they were trying to rescue her purse. When he recognised them as Sasha and Ruby he was confused because they’d emerged from an unexpected direction, but he did what seemed perfectly natural at the time and joined in the chase. He gained on the fellow and brought him down in a rugby tackle.

  ‘Dad!’ exclaimed Sasha in horror. ‘What are you doing?’ She knelt to help the
man gather his spilled possessions and return them to his box. ‘Stai bene?’ she asked. ‘Sicuro?’ Then the two of them rose to their feet and moved a few paces away, deep in conversation.

  Mitchell hadn’t played rugby for thirty years and was feeling the impact of the cobbles on his elbows. ‘What the…?’

  Ruby attached herself to him and started to prattle. ‘The sightlines from here are amazing, aren’t they? So straight. Like the way you can see the Victor Emmanuel monument at the far end of the Corso. I read it used to be a racetrack right up until the nineteenth century. The Romans had so many race courses, didn’t they? Or do you call them arenas? There’s Piazza Navona and the Colosseum…’

  Still winded, Mitchell gasped, ‘Does Sash know that bloody bloke?’

  ‘…And the Circus Maximus.’ Ruby was ticking the list off her fingers. Eventually she added, ‘Guess she must.’

  ‘You’ve not met him before?’

  ‘No. But I think she did last summer. I think he might be a friend of Gina’s.’

  ‘Ah.’ As if that explained everything. He narrowed his eyes and thought he saw something pass between them, hand to hand, though he couldn’t make out what the object was or which direction it had travelled in. Sasha had the strap of her messenger bag across her front, the bag itself bounced on her hip, zipped shut. Probably he was imagining things. ‘Sash!’ he called and she turned her head guiltily.

  ‘Just coming.’ The statue moved off, cradling his box of possessions. Her gaze lingered a moment on his retreating back and then she joined them.

  ‘What was all that about? Who was he?’

  ‘Sami. I met him a few times last year. I was only saying hi. But hey, Dad, you didn’t have to be so rough.’

  ‘I thought he’d stolen something. There are pickpockets everywhere. I didn’t want to let him get away with it.’

  ‘Well, you picked the wrong guy. He hadn’t nicked anything.’