At the Villa Borghese by Peter Leyland

  

 

At the Villa Borghese

I had encountered Ingrid, Maurizio’s cousin, at the hotel where I was staying. We were at the Villa Borghese viewing the exhibits and simultaneously talking about novels, music, poetry and so on. We talked talk about writers – Bellow, Salinger, Malamud and it emerged that her family was Jewish. Her uncle, who was Maurizio’s father, had fled Czechoslovakia to escape Nazi persecution: she was interviewing him about his experiences, and she had also recently helped to translate a book, Trap with a Green Fence about one of the death camps. She told me that she was married with two boys and that she and her husband had once visited my home town of Liverpool to find out about the Beatles, sleeping in a tent at campsites around the city.

I found her totally fascinating and spent the next few hours in a sort of semi-mesmeric trance while she led me through the urns and sarcophagi of the Etruscans and we talked about the figures on the sides, about what they were doing. I mentioned Keats’s Ode and how the poet must have sat in the British Museum viewing the vase and writing his poem about truth and beauty. Ingrid showed me cooking utensils, rings, incense burners, wall paintings, all relics of this ancient culture which she had seen exhibited in Berlin where she now lived. A key moment was when she took me to the sarcophagus of the married couple which is a very striking piece of work and which recommended itself to me completely. One of those great works which I have been waiting all my life to see, I thought.          

 

But the best part of the day was we were about to leave the villa when it started to rain - real rain, not just cats and dogs but also donkeys, buffaloes and even a few elephants thrown in for good measure. After a time with a lot of joking on my part, I persuaded her to wear my waterproof as we tried to get back to the centre of Rome: “Just call me Walter,” I said and told her the apocryphal story of Raleigh and Elizabeth while we dashed through puddles, across roads, boarded a passing tram, got a little help from a fellow passenger, pored endlessly over the map, and finally got out into the still pouring rain.

 

We found a bar and ate a lunch in comparative rain-soaked comfort. I had a noodles and seafood pasta while she had a pizza and salad. We set out again and stopped to shelter and again we looked at the map and then into each other’s eyes and laughed. We reached the hotel and Ingrid said that she was tired and that she would go to her room to rest. 

 

 

The next day we left the hotel together, but I had realised that I was becoming attracted to Ingrid and I knew that I could not spend another day with her. I said that I wanted to visit the Vatican and so we parted company at Termini and I went to change some travellers’ cheques. I queued for them feeling strange and alone. This took half an hour and I reflected on Saul Bellow’s novel, More Die of Heartbreak, and within it the story of Admiral Byrd who spent months alone in the frozen Antarctic. This stayed with me on the subsequent journey on the underground and the long walk to St Peter’s Square.

 

I visited the Basilica and took a look at the Pieta, but it filled me with sadness, and I started to search for the Sistine Chapel. After various false starts I found a bus that would take me there and my mood began to lift. I must be able to find it now, I thought.

 

I entered the Vatican Museum and bought a ticket. The long, seemingly endless walk to the chapel began and I started to make comments, Is this the way to the Sistine Chapel then? I seemed to be part of a moving mirror of humanity all heading in the same direction. Around me on either side, above and even below, were wonderful paintings, sculptures and tapestries. 

 

It was too much to take in, so I put my head down and headed for the chapel. When after endless twists and turns I reached it there was at first an anti-climax. I looked at one of the attendants and said, “This is it then, this is the place.” - and he laughed out loud and said something in Italian and I knew that he understood what I meant. 

 

It was only when I sat down and began to look at the ceiling that the meaning of it all began to fall into place. The creation of Adam is the centre piece of the whole thing, and it is this which absorbed and fascinated me as I sat, surrounded by chattering and flashbulb-popping people. I was reminded of a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet

‘What a piece of work is a man.’ I would find myself eventually.

 

 

I left The Sistine Chapel. I had lunch and a glass of wine and headed for Ottavian Metro station to begin my journey back to the hotel. When I saw the No 19 tram in the distance, I remembered what Ingrid had told me yesterday about it passing near the hotel. I waited for it to arrive. I boarded it. I headed back.

 

                                                                                                         Peter Leyland 

 

 

 

References

 

Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats (1820)

 

Alone by Richard E. Byrd (1938)

 

More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow (1987)

 

Trap with a Green Fence by Richard Glazar (1992)

 

 

The story is based on a week I spent in Rome some time ago. I was inspired to revisit and rewrite it by two recent AE blogs, one about rain and the other about using writing as therapy. I have also been looking at Deborah Levy's ideas about 'living autobiography'.