The Italian Romance

Joanne Carroll was born in Sydney. She has an M. Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin, and divides her time between Australia and Ireland. In 1998 she spent six months living in Rome on a writer's grant from the Australia Council.

‘...for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.'

I would like to acknowledge the following:

Primo Levi,
The Drowned and the Saved;
Iris Origo,
War in Val d'Orcia: An Italian War Diary 1943–44;
Albert Camus,
Selected Essays and Notebooks,
ed. and trans. by Philip Thody; Eric Newby,
Love And War In the Apennines;
John Hall, ‘The Bite of Melancholy', in
Wartime
magazine (Australian War Memorial); the
Picture Australia
website – and from that gold-mine of a site, I state my ‘transfer' of the 7th P.O.W. Guard to my imaginary prison camp; the newspaper article concerning the invasion of Italy is from the
Barrier Miner
(Broken Hill, 1943), as is the advertisement quoted by ‘Arthur'.

Shirley and Bruce Sinclair, researchers extraordinaire and lifelong support system; my constant secretary, researcher and printer-upper, not to mention cheer-leader, Amanda Evans; Mary Morrissy; Margaret Riordan, for her crucial observations; Felicity Casserly; Dr Robert Nichols, Australian War Memorial; Janet Venn-Brown, artist, who opened Rome for me; the former Australian ambassador to Italy, Rory Steele, and Patti Steele, cultural attaché Clelia March Doeve, and the embassy staff in Rome, none of whom resemble ‘Margaret and Frank' even slightly but who were, to the contrary, hospitality itself; the staff at Cobh Library, Co. Cork, for the books they ordered for me, the daily research they afforded me on the Internet, and their personal support; the Irish Red Cross for their great kindness to me in an hour of need; The Arts Council of Ireland, who awarded me a generous travel grant; Dr Shirley Walker and my invaluable editor Rosanne Fitzgibbon; and for ‘Jane' I thank Erin, Laura and Emily, and Karen.

I would also like to thank the Australia Council for their development grant affording me six months in their Rome apartment, the Whiting Library. I would like to thank Lorri Whiting who very kindly donated the Trastevere apartment for the use of Australian poets and writers, in memory of her much loved husband, the poet and journalist B.R. Whiting.

I don't seem to like Rome anymore, especially in late April. It gives me hay fever. Another few weeks, and I'll really have a headache. A red haze will be in the air and slimed over car roofs. I know they say it's seeds or pollen or some damn thing, but I'm pretty sure it's sand, blowing in off the North African deserts. Grains of it get up your nose.

And would you believe it, after that awful walk up the hill, I'm met with locked gates? I knew I shouldn't have come. If they invite people around, why don't they just leave them open, for goodness' sake; I was stranded here for twenty minutes one night, peering in through the wrought-iron bars with my finger on the bell. I'll ring once, and if nothing happens I'll go, no hard feelings. Might treat myself to lunch along by the river, seeing I'm out anyway.

Blast, there's Simeon, peeping his head around the front door.

These gates peel back with a frightening slowness that stimulates some kind of tribal wariness in me, and I'm propelled inside. Their jaws are already wide enough for me to slip through, yet they continue to arc back towards the garden beds, silent. Sends chills up my spine.

Yellow pebbles crunch under my feet. He's disappeared, even
before I climb up the step, and left the door ajar. It's quiet as a church in here, not a sinner about. My heels ring in the entrance hall, and on into the high-ceilinged airiness of the sitting room. The whole place is huge, and usually packed. Strange how different it is when there's nobody here; light streams through windows and half-drawn silk curtains and falls across the stained wood floor, and when it strikes at the bare hearth, blue veins reveal themselves through the transparency of marble – where does it remind me of?

Would anyone notice if I just sink into the deep, white sofa for a few minutes, sip a glass of cold wine, and leave? They're all out in the garden – I can see them through the French windows. And here we are, my compatriots and I, joined together on this our war memorial day, each of us a windswept leaf blown far from our common branch.

Margaret has spotted me. She abandons her plastic chair and makes her way straight for me. If it is possible, let this cup pass right by me. ‘We'd almost given up on you, you naughty girl,' she shouts accusingly.

I step into the sunshine. The Residence garden is a surprisingly small affair and astonishingly green, gardenias and ferns, green creepers all over the walls. Even littered with trestle tables and white plastic chairs, flapping white napkins and chattering ex-pats, it retains its charm. Rome has seen it all, of course.

‘Now, you've got to sit with us,' Margaret orders. ‘And tell us all your gossip.'

I should be grateful that someone, even Margaret, takes the slightest bit of interest in me these days. Yet I look hastily about for Dora; she didn't know if she'd come, either. ‘Are Dora and Vince here?' I ask, too casually perhaps.

‘They haven't any room at their table,' she says. She has grabbed an elbow. It sends an uncomfortable shiver through my nervous system, bone on bone.

Dora waves, gazes helplessly around her own table, raises her
hands in defeat. I wave back. I mouth, ‘See you later.' She watches me being led off.

Simeon, who's the Congolese cook, is slapping cold slabs of meat down hard on the sizzling griddle with none of the timidity he bears towards his own species. He is wearing his chef's hat, a tower of Pisa. If previous occasions are anything to go by, the hat will fall off numerous times until, as he wipes sweat from his brow yet again, he'll fling it on a chair and abandon it. I have not established if it is he who insists on wearing it in the first place or if it is some vagary on the part of the ambassador's wife. I am dragged past him as he begins to work himself up into a lather.

Margaret leans close and whispers, ‘Someone's been asking about you. She said she knows your family at home.'

I suddenly feel light-headed. White and black specks float by each other in the haze across my eyes.

‘Where's she gone?' Margaret asks herself. Her face is so close that I see plainly the hidden ocean of childhood freckles submerged under a thin layer of adult skin. She could be seven years old. ‘She must be in the toilet,' she answers.

‘Who is she?' I ask. I find I am a little dry.

‘She's over here on a fact-finding mission.' Margaret is surveying the garden, the side path, the doorway.

‘Which fact is she finding?' I say.

Margaret is thunderstruck by this madcap flash of humour. She stares at me, her mouth agape, and the skin of her whole face rolls upwards. She bends from the waist and a huge belly laugh explodes inside her. I am eminently flattered, as I always am when my countrymen, who are not sharp by nature, reveal to me my rapier wit.

‘You're a card,' she says. I have distracted her. She has forgotten my question. ‘Now you sit down there, and we'll get you something to eat. What would you like? Everything?'

I sit so quickly under her direction that I very nearly put my hand into her own discarded side plate, or I presume it is hers,
unhappily littered with tooth-torn rounds of bread roll. She's spread a rather indelicate amount of butter on them. So much for the perceived weight problem which she has recently added to her repertoire. Latterly the very thought of Margaret brings with it the illumination that one of us is a very nasty person.

My fellow captives at the trestle table are in the main a nervous lot, relative newcomers to the diplomatic life. Margaret, whose husband has notoriously failed to elevate himself, picks them all up. There is a well-disguised nun opposite me, however, who isn't nervous. She says, ‘Nice day,' and I reply, ‘Not bad.'

She enquires, ‘Did you have far to come?'

‘Trastevere,' I tell her. ‘And you?'

‘Just up the road from you. Same side of the river. Near the Janiculum.'

‘Nice up there.' I am looking over the nun's shoulder rather than at her. I suspect she's noticed, but I am beyond civilities right at this moment.

‘Trastevere's a wonderful place. You've got the English picture theatre.' She takes a quick look behind her.

‘Indeed we have. I'm down the other end, though.'

‘Have you lost someone?' she says.

I've seen her type before. I make the presumption that she's been roughing it in a South American slum and has lost all sense of propriety. I meet her eyes, which have more questions in them than the ones she's already asked and none of them about me. I truly hope she doesn't take a liking to me. I already know I'm going to die, whereas she's on the verge of finding out. To each her own establishment of facts.

Lost someone? I smile as if I have no idea what she's talking about. I answer, ‘How long have you been in Rome?'

She is slightly shaken. Good. Perhaps I should pretend I'm going deaf. She says, ‘I arrived just before Christmas. I have to spend three years here. Or perhaps two.'

‘Parole,' I say.

And now I have made a forty-year-old woman blush. ‘Well, I don't mean that,' she says. ‘Rome is a fascinating city.'

‘It certainly is,' I say. I find the urge to stare into the open doorway irresistible. It is empty.

When I look at the nun again, I note she is now nervous like the rest of them. Well done, Lilian. Why didn't you stay at home with your awful mood? I can't bear myself another moment. I say, ‘A lot of sisters find certain elements here difficult.'

‘Yes,' she says. ‘They do.' Her fingers go up to her collar where they play for a few seconds with the tiny silver cross pinned there. She is telling herself that I have deciphered her code.

‘Nevertheless,' I venture, foolhardy, ‘you'll look back fondly on your couple of years.'

‘Will I?' She's a nice woman, this nun.

‘Oh, yes,' I lie.

She leans across the table, gestures and says, ‘Here's your lunch coming.' I thought she was going to tell me something else was coming. My chair scrapes the paving stones in misguided anticipation. Margaret is heading my way, armed with an exuberant plate. She is not, however, paying attention to us. Frank has put in an appearance. He has come from the side terrace, ridiculous in his khaki shorts. The red hairs on his bony legs do him no favours. And he is terribly drunk. They will send him home one of these days; I spot the ambassador and his wife, hiding away in the furthest corner of the garden, gazing at him over their spoons of ice-cream. As for Margaret, her face withdraws into a violent disdain. I don't know whom to pity. She will not enjoy their disgraced repatriation. She, of course, begins her cocktails at twelve every other day.

Frank, who appears to be magnetised by her as she walks across the grass, is treated to a full frontal glare which he takes like a punch in the stomach. He responds with a little-boy pout he seems to think is hilarious. Margaret directs her gaze away from him. The struggle to pull her muscles into a giddy smile is almost
too painful to watch, so I pretend my chair is causing me problems and give it a yank further in under the table. This allows me, mercifully, to shield my hands under the white folds of the tablecloth. Even this degree of privacy is of value. I grasp my hidden hands together and squeeze my fingers very tight.

‘Hasn't she turned up yet?' Margaret pipes over my shoulder. ‘Here you are, darling. Is that all right?', and she lays my exaggeration of a meal down in front of me. Half a dozen sausages poke out from under splashes of multicoloured salads. I see the crisped fat of a lamb chop in there, too.

‘No,' I reply, to the only question that interests me. ‘She hasn't come back. Who did you say she was?'

‘Some kind of a university person. Is that mine?' she asks as she pincers a crust of her buttered roll. She pops the bread into her mouth. Her hand opens and helicopters over the tablecloth, hesitating between two glasses. I nudge sideways the glass I take to be hers.

‘Mine?' she tries to say through a mouthful of bread and she scoops the glass up to her lips. She is a thirsty woman. And over her glass she now takes a quick, practised glance at her husband, who is in danger of falling into the gardenias. He has lit upon a young woman who I think is a recent arrival on the staff. She is making a good job of not showing discomfort at her senior's slovenly flirtation, which makes me consider that either she doesn't know how slovenly it is or, more frighteningly, doesn't care. Margaret has drained the glass. ‘I'll go and find her,' she says, turning her back on the gardenias. ‘Would you like another drink?'

Since I haven't had one in the first place and since she has no interest in my reply, I say, ‘Love one.' She saunters off with her own glass held tight to her chest. There are two half-f bottles of wine on our dishevelled table. She will at least save me the trouble of examining, for squeaky-cleanness, all the glasses lying about among the bloodied plates and crusts of bread. The nun displays
the uncontrollability of temperament as she says, watching me like a hawk, ‘Will I get you a fresh glass?'

‘Oh, no, she'll come back well armed,' I say and hope that has stopped the nun in her do-gooding tracks. Perversely, I am now wretched with my dry mouth, my thickened tongue. There is a bottle of water among the debris and I could almost drink from its neck. The mess in front of me, my lunch oozing greenish olive oil and smothered with mayonnaise, a veritable hymn to crosscultural relations, makes me sick. I realise with immediate pleasure that on this basis I could make my getaway. I could fan myself with a white napkin and wobble up to the new ambassador to make my excuses. He'd see to it that I get a taxi ride home and once there I could open the door to my roof garden, let the air in, and lie peacefully on the couch all afternoon. Yet now I cannot leave. My heart is knocking at my breastbone.

The shadow sitting beside me, whose hunched shoulder cut him off from confrontation until now, begins to speak to me. ‘Have you lived here long?' he says. I presume he has said that to everyone at our table. He is utterly out of place, and miserable. His big, clay-coloured face is handsome, in a bush kind of way.

‘Too long,' I reply.

‘Is it that bad?' he says, and he is quite innocent about it. He turns further to me. His left arm cradles the back of his chair and makes it look quite small. His suit jacket is draped over it, worn just in case this annual barbecue turned out to be a swish affair.

‘No,' I say. ‘Of course not. Are you here on business?'

‘Yes, that's right. We're starting up here in Europe. I'm in the rag trade. Bringing coals to Newcastle,' he says and his big, Irish mouth turns up at the corners as his eyes do the rounds of the table. He has said that to everyone else, too. He has the unexpected effect of uniting us. The other nine or ten look towards us and laugh along with him.

Quite honestly, I have no interest in the life of anyone at this table, not the haunted nun, nor the affable rag-trader whom I have
no doubt misjudged, nor any of them. I'm sure I used to be a nicer person. I say, to defuse this potential for communal conversation, ‘Where's Margaret with that drink, I wonder?'

‘Look here,' a fat woman says, ‘there's plenty.' She makes to push a wine bottle down the table; the little man sitting opposite her obliges by handing it to the gallant by my side. It arrives in front of my nose with the lightning speed that seems to overtake strangers when forced into a courteous intimacy.

‘No glass,' I say, and the whole table sighs in disappointment. I note that three of them rise to their feet. I must remember to avoid those three in future; they are of the worst kind. Two of them, of course, sit down almost immediately having made their point. The third, a rather mad looking woman of forty-five or so, wanders off in the great glass hunt. With a bit of luck she'll lose her bearings and fail to return.

My gallant deposits the bottle on the cloth between us. He says quietly enough to make me reappraise him further, ‘You could swig from the bottle. I'll divert them with a funny story.'