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 side...