Roman Holiday – DAY 9 – Fleeting Wor(l)ds

Neighborhood.

Roman neighborhoods are lazy after mid-August. Out of the centro città. Standing for the true Roman soul. Rising with a Bella ciao. Streets are empty, shops show their iron curtain. Annual closure, open in three days, in a week. Meanwhile, hot walls are sleeping. Romans has left to the sea, to the mountain. To Tuscany or to Spain. They are trying to get rid of summer heat through a salty wind or a sandstone town. Streets are empty, lights sparkle above abandoned outdoor bar.

Yet, I grasp some vita romana‘s realities. I draw a picture of the place in September, where tourists get oblivious and lost.

As my slipper echoes through Via Pigneto’s pedestrian pavement, as a few bars blush with Spritz, I can hear the sound of Italy. I listen to those neighborhoods’ stories escaped from usual Roman pictures. It is mostly a masked gibberish but remaining people were bold enough to chose July for their holiday, or they would lose an eye rather than leaving their precious city, or more often, they simply can’t leave. Lack of time. Lack of money. And let’s not forget, we are going through weird eras… This summer in Rome is like no other before.

Thus, a few Romans are still showing me Rome, this other face of the place, alive and dirty. Thus, a few Romans are letting me paint them through my clumsy poetry. All siting along bars above our bowl of chips. Lonely. Maybe in other times we would talk. But the summer is masked. And I know too well my Italian is weak – alcohol has not yet freed my tongue – to try some cosmopolitan encounters. I listen to this loud silent. I surrender to quiet neighborhoods, far from the madding crowd.

And curious and wanderer, I try some other chosen and authentic pieces. I discover Certossa by night, its low houses carnival, like I was not in Rome anymore but in a little Sardinian village. I am blinded without emotion by Centrocello’s neon where a few original cafés stand out among high buildings. But mostly, I fall in love with Garbatella…

Why this one more than another? Clothes on windows? Small houses’ colorful walls? An entrance like an Italien Free Derry Corner? I don’t know. I feel god. Utterly.
Nani Moreti, they said? Streets are quiet and belong to people, simple and true. A few mansions start to get old, a bit, but keep their je ne sais quoi… Thanks to colors? To gardens of flowers?
Then, in between old containers tasting like my beer, I storm in the first terrace, people who live here follow my lead, and I am moved by the big wave filling up the tables. I eventually leave behind that other life than mine to grab a piece of pizza al taglio.

And when I don’t act like a Sunday Roman, hanging on Via Pigneto’s orange ice cubes, falling for Garbatella’s white beer, I become the original from Rome under a magnolia in “my” tiny patio, cradled by Lupa’s purr, the real hostess of my Italian journey, the actual one who called me here with her wolf’s growl. Lupa, that is no small thing, pictures Remus and Romulus, she teaches me her legend in between two petting.

Lupa, like any seven lives cat, carries universal memories. In other times, in other flesh, Lupa rescued the abandoned twins, the founders of the place. Denied by their holy parents, in the shadow of the wild fig-tree, at the entrance of Lupercal cave, their father’s woodpecker looking after them as Lupa the tiger was feeding the two kids until they were ready to accomplish their fratricide destiny. All this for a name and a few hawks! Remus or Romulus, how stupid Men are… Remus or Romulus, how cruels Men are…

Thankfully, Lupa looks at me with eyes full of love, with whiskers full of wisdom, grateful for our ephemeral companionship. Lupa gazes at me as I draw my stories and I feel like a Roman to my toes. I have been part of her cat’s life for ten days, I have been part of the neighborhood for two weeks, and I fell for this other life, different from what Romulus build in his brother’s blood, different from what is reflected on postcard’s fountains.

My Roman summer is coming to an end and I have this magnificent felling I belong to the place. Not because I wandered in every corner, but because, as a matter of fact, I haven’t seen everything, because I let myself do nothing, absolutely nothing, crushed like any Roman by this end of summer’s heat.

I have this splendid feeling to have been drawn by the place and its humble neighborhood’s lazy life.

And Lupa, its wolf’s cat eyes.