One Summer Day in Rome

by Mark Lamprell

  “And here in this humble tile, one of my forebears has recreated this marriage, most magnificently,” Horatio continued.

  Alec smiled. “You are a poet, signore,” he said.

  Horatio gestured to the piles of tiles around him. “And these are my poems.”

  Meg was less concerned with the poetry and more concerned with the practicalities. “But can you reproduce this tile, signore?”

  “Si.”

  Meg whooped and threw her arms around Horatio Zamparelli. He laughed and decided he liked this angry American girl and her quiet husband.

  After they had discussed quantities, prices, and delivery dates, Horatio called them a taxi and pressed a couple of hundred euros into Signore Schack’s reluctant hand. Alec assured him that he would be paid back promptly. Horatio had no doubt that this was the case, saying that it was the least he could do, given the rocky and precarious path that he and Signora Schack had taken to get here.

  As they were getting into the taxi, the American girl paused. “Oh, I forgot,” she said. Still holding the sample tile, she handed it back, but the tile maker pushed it away.

  “I do not need it,” he said.

  “But—”

  “Is all in here,” said Horatio Zamparelli, tapping his forehead. “Every detail, signora. I will not fail you, I promise.”

  “But just in case—”

  “No, you keep,” he insisted. “I have a feeling somehow you are not finished with it.”

  As the taxi drove away, the tile maker realized that this was not strictly true: It was not that the Americana was not finished with the tile; rather, the tile was not finished with the Americana.

  Horatio went back inside and started to close up the shop, looking forward to his journey home in the warm evening air, when something compelled him to take a final turn around the room. I could sense him staring at his tiles, our tiles, my tiles, vexed, trying to make connections. After a while, he sighed, switched off the lights, locked the door, and headed off across the arco.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Lungotevere degli Altoviti

  THERE IS NOTHING I WOULD NOT DO FOR THOSE WHO ARE REALLY MY FRIENDS. I HAVE NO NOTION OF LOVING PEOPLE BY HALVES; IT IS NOT MY NATURE.

  —Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

  Bernini’s ten giant angels hovered above the two old ladies standing on the bridge. Clouds had gathered in the sky above; there would be no dazzling sunsets and bloody transformations this evening. Constance and Lizzie lowered the Harrods bag to the ground, and Constance extracted the Henry box, reminded again how heavy it was when carried alone. She lifted it onto the stone balustrade. People were milling about, but no one took any notice as Lizzie bent and kissed the box containing the ashes of her dead brother.

  “So long, old man,” said Lizzie. “What luck to have known you.” She looked at the lined face of her sister-in-law and asked, “Do you think he’s with us?”

  “You mean now, right now?”

  Lizzie nodded.

  “I’d like to think he was,” said Constance.

  “Telling us what silly old ladies we are,” said Lizzie.

  A young woman, laughing and shrieking, clattered past them in high heels, chased by a curly-haired young man. He reminded them both of a young Henry.

  “Just before he went, I asked him if he still believed in an afterlife,” said Constance. She bowed her head and pulled the box toward her a little. “He said that people left but that love remained.”

  Constance peeled the seal from the lid of the box and opened it. She looked at the soft gray ashes, all that remained of the life force that had been Henry Alexander George Kingdom Lloyd-James. She tipped the box, pouring the ashes into the river. The two women watched them trail across the surface of the water, glittering for a moment like silver dust before the current swept everything away.

  Lizzie wanted to hug her sister-in-law, but she knew it would only make Constance feel vulnerable.

  “Well done,” she said.

  Constance turned to Lizzie. “I was expecting…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I was expecting.” Constance shrugged. “Not this.”

  They looked back at the water swirling beneath them.

  “Let’s go back to the hotel,” said Lizzie.

  “Yes, let’s press on. Time to press on,” said Constance, rallying. “I know a shortcut.”

  “Oh, goody,” said Lizzie dryly.

  Constance looked at the empty Henry box. She did not want to throw it away, but she did not want to keep it either. She decided to deal with the dilemma later and bent down, returning it to the Harrods bag. As she straightened, she could see a man of Henry’s vintage walking toward her, looking directly at her. As he drew toward her, the man slowed. It was not Henry, of course, but it was an apparition from the past.

  “Con-stance?” he said with a heavy Italian accent.

  “Horatio?” said Constance.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked in Italian.

  Constance did not wish to disclose that she had just been disposing of Henry. She gestured airily toward Lizzie and said that she and her sister-in-law were visiting from London. Horatio said that she looked very well and that it was lovely to see her. Constance returned the compliment, then, remembering her manners, introduced Lizzie. Horatio bowed and kissed Lizzie’s hand. He greeted her in Italian, and she returned the greeting elegantly, establishing that she, too, was fluent in Italian.

  Lizzie asked how Horatio and Constance knew each other. Horatio explained that he had met Constance many years before when they had worked together on the restoration of an altar in a little church just off the Campo de’ Fiori.

  “Yes,” confirmed Constance, “it was just the three of us. Me, Horatio, and his sister,” said Constance, rather too pointedly, thought Lizzie.

  At the mention of his sister, Horatio dimly remembered some kind of falling-out over a boy. He was aware that he should be holding some kind of grudge against Constance on Gina’s behalf, but it was all so long ago. He couldn’t even remember the boy’s name. Constance asked if Horatio was still doing restoration work. He said that he was not, that he had inherited a tile-making business from his uncle and that it was keeping him extremely busy.

  Constance recalled Horatio’s skills as a restorer and thought it was a funny sort of move to be making tiles. She asked, disingenuously because she already knew the answer, whether he was still living in the family palazzo overlooking Santa Maria in Trastevere. Horatio answered that he had moved years ago. His sister had been living abroad, and when she moved back, they decided to sell the palazzo and buy some apartments overlooking the river.

  “In fact,” he said, “we are there.” He pointed to a brown building overlooking the bridge. “The one with the balcony, this is Gina. And I am the one below.”

  Constance felt the bridge sway beneath her. She tugged absently at Lizzie’s sleeve. “I was right,” she said.

  “You don’t know that,” said Lizzie.

  “Horatio, I need to see Gina,” said Constance.

  “No, you don’t,” said Lizzie.

  Horatio was confused. He did not like being put on the spot like this. He was not sure that his sister would thank him for suddenly turning up on her doorstep with her old rival and her old rival’s sister-in-law.

  “I think she is home,” he said. “I can call her…”

  “I need to see her now,” said Constance firmly.

  Moments later they had crossed the Lungotevere and were standing at the mighty oak doors of Gina and Horatio’s apartment building. Rather than use his keys, Horatio had buzzed Gina from the street to give her the opportunity to decline an audience with the English ladies. To his mild surprise she had accepted. The door buzzed open. Constance pushed it and paused, turning to Horatio and Lizzie.

  “I’d like to go up alone,” she said.

  “Oh, I’ll wait down here, then,” said Lizzie.

  “Pl
ease don’t,” said Constance. “I have no idea how long I’ll be.”

  Horatio wondered whether to ask Lizzie up to his apartment, but he could not remember what state it was in, so he invited her to dinner instead. Constance immediately accepted on Lizzie’s behalf and thanked Horatio. Lizzie felt slightly put out at the thought of having to make dinner conversation with a complete stranger, especially given the tumultuous day she had just endured. Nevertheless, for the sake of keeping the peace, she agreed to go, arranging to meet Constance back at the hotel later. Lizzie offered to take the Harrods bag and Constance surprised her by accepting. It was, reflected Lizzie, a day of surprises.

  Constance took the tiny elevator to the top floor, where Gina was waiting at the open door of her grand apartment. Constance noted, with a touch of disappointment, that Gina had aged very well. She was slightly stooped, her hair was expertly dyed dark brown, and perhaps her eyes were not quite as luminous as they had once been, but she was still, it had to be admitted, a beauty. Gina looked at her old rival and noted with some pleasure that Constance was considerably more lined than she. The two old ladies greeted each other in very formal Italian, expressing no pleasure in their reunion. Gina told Constance that she had read of Henry’s passing in The Times and offered her condolences. Constance accepted them icily. It was immediately obvious to Gina that Constance wanted something, and the sooner she came out with it, the better. She ushered Constance into her salon and offered her a glass of wine.

  While Gina disappeared into her kitchen, Constance assessed the large room into which she had been deposited. The opulent furniture was upholstered in brilliant red and scarlet. The walls were red, too, although mostly covered by gilt-framed paintings. Constance would never have chosen such a vivid scheme but decided that she would report to Lizzie later that it was arresting. A large canvas of Mary Magdalene at the feet of Jesus glowered down at her from the wall opposite. It looked very much like a Caravaggio. Constance realized it probably was a Caravaggio. Still, she had not come here to be cowed by Gina’s paintings.

  Gina appeared bearing two globes of red wine and handed one to Constance.

  “What do you want, Constance?” said Gina, surprising her guest, not with her bluntness but her use of English.

  “I’ll come straight to the point,” said Constance, glad that they were in her native tongue, where she would have the upper hand.

  “Please do,” said Gina.

  Constance leaped straight in. “I don’t like you, and you don’t like me, but we both loved the same man, and that gives us a common bond, whether we like it or not.”

  Gina laughed, startled. My. How direct. How un-English.

  “I want to ask you about your affair with Henry,” said Constance.

  “It wasn’t an affair,” said Gina. “We were seeing each other for months before you came along with your sparkling repartee and working-class charm.”

  Constance was taken aback by just how proficient Gina’s English had become. “Not then,” she said, determining not to be put off course. “After. When we were in our forties. When did it end?”

  “What?”

  “When did the affair with Henry end?”

  “Why are you asking me this?”

  “I feel I have a right to know,” said Constance, not really feeling she had a right to anything.

  “You know perfectly well when it all ended,” said Gina. “You were there. Wearing a large hat and weeping behind your sunglasses.”

  “And you swear that’s when it ended?”

  Gina bristled. “What’s all this about?”

  “Henry asked to have his ashes scattered from the Ponte Sant’Angelo.”

  The room fell silent. Gina put her wine on the twelfth-century porphyry elephant that served as a side table. She stood up and walked to the end of the room where the doors to her balcony framed the bridge beyond.

  “And have you done that?” asked Gina, staring through the distortion of the handblown glass panels at the swirling torrent of the Tiber. She turned and looked for an answer.

  Constance nodded, her stomach churning. She didn’t say that she had just done it. She did not say anything at all until the ticking of a clock in another room began to sound like a bomb threatening to explode. Eventually, she said, “Please don’t be coy with me. We’re both too old to be playing games.”

  “You want me to tell you that I have had no contact with Henry in the last thirty-five years?” said Gina.

  “I want the truth,” said Constance. “Whatever it is.”

  “You want the truth, Constance?”

  “Yes.”

  Gina had been practicing for this moment for many, many years. During her mostly happy marriage to Robbie, a Canadian diplomat, she had lived all over the world, in Africa, in Southeast Asia, and finally in Spain before returning to Rome. She was a skilled linguist fluent in many languages. But she had always rehearsed this particular speech, on all those foreign soils, in English. Over the years she had reshaped her monologue, adding and subtracting adjectives and accusations. She could not count how many times, in the shower or on her long walks, that she had conjured Constance and confronted her.

  Eventually, successive floods of emotion had layered sediment over Gina’s outrage and buried the driving need to deliver her censure. Nevertheless, she had never forgotten what she had planned to say.

  Gina walked back across the room and sat down opposite Constance. “The truth is,” she began, “that over fifty years ago you betrayed me and broke my heart, and I am amazed to find myself sitting here bothering to give you the time of day.” She was about to add, as she had long rehearsed, that Henry had been the love of her life but that Constance had been the love of his. She did not, however, wish to furnish Constance with the satisfaction of this admission, so she leaped forward. “The truth is,” she continued, “that Henry chose the wrong woman, and the proof is that you are sitting here asking me these ridiculous questions.”

  Constance sat with her heart pounding and words spinning in her head.

  “My God, Constance,” said Gina, springing to her feet, “that man thought you were the moon and the stars and everything between, but you appear to be too witless, too absorbed in your own melodrama, to grasp it.”

  Constance looked up at Gina, horrified by the sudden realization that they both might cry.

  “Go home, you stupid woman,” said Gina. “Go home.”

  Outside on the streets, a warm drizzle fell, and dark-skinned men selling cheap umbrellas sprang up like mushrooms. Constance purchased an umbrella and pounded across the shining pavement, berating herself for being such an idiot. Her arm was sore from carrying Henry all day. She could feel a blister on her big toe. Every bone in her body ached. The sole of her left shoe slid on the slippery pavement, and she almost fell. What a perfect end to the day that would be—a broken hip. She wanted to scream and weep and howl. But she did not cry because, where she came from, only babies cried.

  In her apartment, Gina returned to the doors and watched the water whispering past, carrying the atoms of the only man she had ever truly loved. She did not feel sad, or angry, or triumphant. She did not feel anything at all, except old. She felt very old. She lay on her bed with her shoes on and flicked through the television stations, but there was nothing on.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Il Piramide and the Dead Protestants

  I HAVE BEEN ASTONISHED THAT MEN COULD DIE MARTYRS FOR RELIGION—I HAVE SHUDDER’D AT IT.—I SHUDDER NO MORE—I COULD BE MARTYR’D FOR MY RELIGION—LOVE IS MY RELIGION—I COULD DIE FOR THAT.—I COULD DIE FOR YOU.

  —John Keats, letter to Fanny Brawne

  For many years, legend held that Romulus and Remus were buried in two large pyramids on opposite sides of the Tiber. Romans believed that Romulus, who had killed his twin, Remus, fighting about whether to found their city on the Aventine or Palatine Hill, was entombed in a pyramid close to the Vatican, until, in the sixteenth century, someone discovered that the body
of their fratricidal founding father was not actually there. The pyramid was subsequently dismantled and the marble recycled for the steps of Saint Peter’s. Eventually, restoration work on the remaining pyramid uncovered inscriptions that revealed this was not the tomb of poor murdered Remus either. A Roman magistrate named Gaius Cestius had been buried there, a decade or so before the birth of Jesus. Cestius was a bit of a nobody, historically speaking, but, reaching for immortality like so many Romans before and after him, he had built the monumental white pyramid as his mausoleum. As you stroll down the Via Ostiense it’s impossible to miss unless you can’t take your eyes off a beautiful girl with a dob of chocolate gelato on her nose.

  Realizing that they had not eaten since breakfast, Alice and August had stopped for pizza but settled on gelato, which August assured Alice contained all the necessary food groups for complete and everlasting happiness. They were discussing their tastes in music. August reeled off a list of (mostly UK) bands that he liked. Alice had never heard of many of them and confessed to a taste for pop although she quite liked rap as long as the lyrics did not stray into the territory where people’s mothers were ordered to bend over and take it like bitches.

  August offered to carry Alice’s backpack. She declined. Alice offered August the last bite of her gelato cone.

  August smiled. “Why do girls always do that?” he said. “Like that last tiny bit is going to make you fat.”

  Alice immediately shoved the remains of her cone into her mouth and chomped. For good measure, she snatched the remains of August’s cone and ate that as well, in a most unladylike manner. August laughed.

  Alice pointed at what appeared to be a pyramid, completely out of place, beyond the ruins of the Aurelian Wall. “Do you think they dragged that here from Egypt?” she said, still munching.

  August turned and clocked the massive geometrical structure for the first time. He mentally scanned the archives of ARC 235 History of Architecture but drew a blank.

  As they came closer they could see that part of the Aurelian Wall had been built into the side of the pyramid. August studied a brass plaque that offered a brief history of the structure in Italian and English. The English, however, was so elaborate, with so many strange turns of expression, that it was difficult to understand.