h2>Dating : Slices of Rome
The entrance to our apartment is a glossy affair, dotted with furniture so bizarre that it must be expensive. I am glad I have worn my new boots. In the carefully considered low lighting, our hostess seems to emanate out of the darkness. Norie, as she introduces herself, greets us with a vague smile and a floppy handshake. She looks as though she hasn’t slept in days and doesn’t at all mind.
“How was the drive in?”
Something about Norie’s soft tone invites confidence. I want to say that our driver, David, was aggressively unhappy. That he bestowed his story on us like an unwanted gift: his monthly wage of only 1,000 euros for working night shifts; his mother dead of liver cancer and his father heading the same way; of his longing to escape Rome and live another life with better wages. I want to say that I feel sad and strange.
“Yes, great… thank you.” I reply, weakly, instead.
We hand over our passports and sign papers we don’t quite understand.
“Thanks.” Norie sways over to a scanner perched unsteadily on a spindly-legged glass desk.
“And what do you think of Rome so far?”
We nod and smile. Reassure her that we think it’s a beautiful place. I do not say that I am forever unsettled by the approach into a new city, when illusions of romance blur with reality: the hollow suburbs cut through by huge motorways, the glittering of a thousand city lights against the blackness. I do not say that everyone appeared to be driving too fast, whooshing past the columns and crumbling ruins at speed and giving Rome a hot, angry feel.
We tuck our passports back into their travel wallets.
Norie smiles, wearily.
“Will you go out now?” she enquires, gliding onto a sofa with a back at least two metres high.
My eyes meet yours, eyebrows raised. It is 3.30am.
The next morning, we set out to explore that most famous quarter of Rome, Trastevere. It is a maze of narrow alleyways with no horizon, so you must look up instead. High graffiti-strewn walls, trees polka-dotted with oranges and twisted iron balconies of delicate design look down on you, inquisitively. We get lost trying to find the ‘perfect’, ‘most local’ spot for lunch and are turned away several times, even from places that look half empty. I have heard that Rome can be racist, and can’t help wondering whether your lovely hazelnut skin is the cause. Finally, more-or-less back where we started, we are seated at a small eatery on the corner of a leafy square. We order cacio e pepe and two glasses of white. The pasta is salty and delicious; the wine goes straight to my head. On finishing, I have the giddy sensation of wanting to start all over again.
Still heavy with food, at the Galleria Borghese we surrender our bags to an aloof assistant at the coat check and weave through the sculpted marble thighs and breasts, trying to avoid the tour groups. They swarm only the most famous efforts, fighting to get to the front with faces reading equal measures of determination and boredom. Everywhere there is dizzyingly rich gilding, coloured marble, dark woods and intricate frescos. Everywhere there are smartphones held aloft. At ‘The Rape of Persephone’ you tell me how Pluto stole his wife, condemning her to live in the underworld with him forever. I imagine her running through the sun-ripened fields of corn one day, living in the moony darkness of the dead the next. You never can see what is coming.
We round a corner into a room of paintings, and suddenly Norie seems to be staring back at us: a weary Madonna with our hostess’s exact wan smile and river of pale hair — only she’s wearing long robes instead of high heels and jeans, and carrying a middle-aged baby with a six-pack.
Back in the winter chill, on a bench tucked into the gallery’s impressive shadow, I only want to sit holding hands forever and talking about mythology, but we are running out of time. On our way out, we pass a tiny cloistered garden of lemon trees and herb bushes, the scents of which mingle together and drift on the breeze. I want to get inside but can’t: the gates are padlocked. I’m starting to get the feeling that Rome doesn’t open up so easily.
Later, we scale a hill overlooking the city and pose for photos before trickling back down steep dusty steps to the heart of Papal Rome. We stand in the courtyard and stare at the ornate buildings, smooth columns and lofty stone statues. Birds perch irreverently atop the heads of important men. The now setting sun illuminates St Peter’s Basilica from behind, making it appear almost like a stage set — impressive but somehow unreal. In fact, the whole thing looks improbable: there’s just too much of it, like a smile with too many teeth.
Trying to escape the surrounding streets, we are targeted by pushy street-sellers touting curious little plastic icons and get jammed into a bottleneck on one side of a bridge. We decide to head back, and on the way we calm unsettled feelings with food: greasy fried artichokes eaten with our fingers, standing up; strange flavours of gelato licked huddled next to the Pantheon; heaped, steaming pasta at a sub-standard trattoria (where we wonder where the good ones are).
When we return to our apartment it’s late and my new boots are worn in. We climb the marble steps in silence. I am thinking about the distance between lovers: the physical distance but also the distance between the thoughts in our heads.
We pass the weary Madonna; she is just heading out into the night.