The Romans

Matthew and Aurelie arrived at Roma Termini station on the two o’clock train from Florence. As it slowed and shuddered to a stop in the wide station, having passed the endless apartments with their endless satellite dishes and billowing laundry, the couple disembarked with their luggage greeted by a chilled winter wind. There was no sun in the sky only rolls of thick, impenetrable cloud.

Aurelie shook theatrically and stopped to pull out her coat and scarf. A rush of people with luggage dodged them giving off annoyed glances. Whilst Aurelie fussed with her bags, Matthew was set upon by two Africans selling worthless trinkets. Then a poor-looking girl begged for money. He signalled with his swollen right hand he was not interested in the slightest.

In the foyer, their voices drowned out by the noise of tanoy announcements and general clatter of hundreds of people arriving and departing, Aurelie believed Matthew had been the target of pickpockets.

“The men…those girls! Un con.”

Many thieves operated on the platforms and in the station posing as beggars, usually working in pairs. She cursed and berated him in her native French, as she was prone to do when he displeased her. A barrage of insults followed. He enjoyed her inventive use of franglais, but not when it was aimed at him.

Matthew pulled out the card. Wedged between two train tickets in the inner pocket of his suit jacket. Panic over. Crisis averted. She had little patience. Matthew often told her so. Her reply, always: “Well, what do you expect? You’ve no common sense!”

Aurelie gave him the silent treatment and rolled her dark hazel eyes before storming off in a random direction. Outside the drone of busy traffic heightened the tension between them. She could hardly think. A Parisian complaining about the noise. He often liked to drown out the world in daydreams and contemplation. He sat on his luggage outside the station reading a map and was struck by the memory of a visit to the Notre Dame when they both arched their necks backwards looking up to the dizzying heights.

“It gives me the vertigo,” she said, often adding ‘the’ as a prefix to everything when speaking in English. A language she loathed, mostly.

A children’s choir sang a dirge in Latin.

“Pious little pricks,” she whispered.
He loved her blasphemy.

The fight in the Roma Termini was her introduction to Rome. A place she disliked upon arrival. Rome was a special place for Matthew. He knew its old bones well. On these ancient streets he felt the echoes and tremors of history. Stories, legends and myth all battling from prominence. It seeped out of the bricks and mortar. It etched itself in the faces of its citizens. In the blood-enriched earth.

Aurelie turned her nose at everything. She believed French culture to be the zenith of civilisation. Nothing compared to home: to Paris. Not the food, the wine, the cinema, the artists, the writers, the scenery, the museums, the art galleries, the countryside, the mountains, the trees, the streets, the architecture, the motorways, the trains: everything.

On the train from Florence they barely spoken to one another. Matthew read, made notes in his journal and watched the dreary bucolic hills and fields go by. Upon his last visit to Italy, during the summer, a golden hue bathed everything. Now it was dreary and sick-looking. Aurelie slept.

The weather had not been kind. It played on their tempers. Hers, fiery. His, calm. Matthew’s blankness and lack of reaction teased her. He liked to think things through. She would hold an opinion, no matter how obtuse, and that would be the end of it.

During their five days in Florence they contended and fought against blasts of icy wind, constant drizzle and boisterous English football fans in the city for an away game. She loathed such weather and made Matthew feel as if he were to blame for the presence of his drunken compatriots. Her ridiculous thoughts and severe reprimands upset him.

He watched her translucent reflection on the window of the train not wishing to look direct. The countryside blurred and reflected off her face in streaks of grey, blue and green. All dulled by the light. No illumination. Troubled sleep. She shook and mumbled. He adored her face. So French. She could be no other. Ever so pretty when she slept. Her head rested against her coat as a makeshift pillow.

Always the dominant force in the relationship from the very start, she thrived on havoc: at the least provocation. Even when they fucked she took control and desired total submission. Matthew resented it, yet, hadn’t built up the nerve to challenge such power. She reigned over him.

As the train slowed into Orvieto Aurelie began to snore. At first ever so quietly as to be amusing. Her mouth wide-open made soft guttural sounds. It grew louder and several passengers noticed. Matthew tapped her ankle. Nothing. He shook her right knee and still she did not respond. The book, she tucked down the side of the chair, fell onto the floor. A few passengers chuckled. Matthew grabbed her arm and shook it hard. Those big doleful eyes opened and fluttered several times. She held up her hands and yawned.

“Where are we?”
“Orvieto,” he replied.
“Near Rome?”
“No.”

Along the crowded pavements of the via Cavour the pair lugged their suitcases towards the hotel. Matthew loathed Roman taxi drivers.

“All thieves!” he warned Aurelie, who shook her head at the dishonesty.

She sometimes believed what he said, and other times did not. The hotel would be a stone’s throw from the via Imperiali and the Roman forum. The heart of Rome. They had been in Italy six days. Intended as a holiday for them, it soon turned into a farce occasioned with arguments and long silences.

In the hotel room on the fourth night in Florence, he almost struck her. The cause of it all: a lost Japanese tourist. They came across him on a corner of via Guelph after strolling through the labyrinthine warren of streets and courtyards. He appeared like an apparition out of the darkness, stood in the frozen night with his giant metallic suitcase, soaked to the bone in the rain speaking broken English and repeating the words: “Hotel Derby”.

Matthew insisted on taking the young man to the hotel.

“Un con”, she muttered.

He did not understand at whom the insult was aimed. Aurelie scowled. The Japanese tourist thanked them both. Aurelie did not know her way back to the hotel so endured the subsequent detour through the streets, avoiding piles of trash, other pedestrians and lines of scooters. Only ten minutes earlier they had stood on the steps of the Medici Chapel holding hands. Her feet hurt.

Back at the hotel the fight raged afterwards building to ever ridiculous heights. Matthew clenched his fist and rushed to strike her. He punched the wall and felt his knuckles crack. Aurelie remained impassive. Matthew collapsed onto the bed, a wreck. He heard the bathroom door close.

When he awoke Aurelie lay next to him and stroked the back of his neck. They soon went back to sleep. The incident was still unresolved as they reach Rome. Neither dared to mention it, but the scene floated between their thoughts. Nothing happened, they told themselves. Nothing at all.

Matthew flew to Rome from Paris. Aurelie took the overnight train from Paris-Bercy the next day. A disagreement turned into argument turned into petty recriminations turned into threats of cancellations. He took the five-thirty a.m. metro from Pere Lachaise to the airport and almost missed the flight. She accompanied him as far as the Gare du Nord. They did not kiss goodbye. Now she followed him close in a foreign city to which she took an instance dislike. Florence, she considered mysterious: a gothic fantasy: a dream. Rome disagreed with her to almost violent levels of passion.

“Ruins and trinkets,” she sneered: at everything, at everyone.

The Romans had no manners. They were all fascists. She considered the women bitches and the men, slimy brutes. Matthew knew Rome. Aurelie did not wish to know it.

They ran up the Spanish Steps. A race! Always competing. At the top, Aurelie took out her Secret Rome book and consulted it at the requisite page. Matthew rested against a wall and caught his breath. He remembered a similar time in Paris opposite the Tulieres. They escaped from the deluge of an April shower and waited inside a book shop and kissed even though their lungs gasped for air. Such moments were long gone. What they had come to see lay off a road close by. Aurelie pointed. The photograph in the book depicted a demon’s mouth opened wide with a doorway lodged between its teeth. It thrilled her. She had never seen anything quite like it and always held a taste for odd designs.

At Christmas, a black plastic tree tied with red ribbons and a silver star took pride of place in the living room. In Paris, she had taken Matthew to a hidden sculpture devoted to the Communards. The thick moss-covered wall, eerily encased human figures and faces, as if trapped for all eternity. At the site of the doorway, much to their chagrin, heavy pieces of scaffold cloaked the attraction: art transformed into a work site. They could see it. Just not very well. He thought it ugly, whereas she seemed amused by it.

Both agreed on the Roman metro: a disgusting underworld of dirt and garish graffiti. Aurelie and Matthew made their way to the Campo Cestio: the cemetery for foreign non-Catholic nationals. The remains of Shelley, Keats and Gramsci were interred there. Aurelie, although familiar with the names was not familiar with their works and ideas. She was thrilled to learn the cemetery was home to a cat colony - this being the sole reason she wished to visit. Matthew adored her eccentricity and sometimes lack of regard for culture. The baker’s daughter liked cinema, certain types of books (crime fiction), pop culture magazines, complaining about her job, music and cats. Matthew often accused her of liking arguments too.

On their walk around St. Peter’s Square and the Vatican, she insisted on finding the wooden-cart stall selling lollipops of the Pope. She then made a joke about giving the Pope a blow job before slapping her wrist, admonishing herself. Matthew enjoyed this moment. An image of utter crassness. Both shared a Catholic heritage, yet refused to believe in such nonsense. Their impiety shared and agreed upon.

Outside Pyramides metro station, Aurelie consulted the Secret Rome book and found no hint of which direction to take toward the cemetery. The area felt a little dreary and run down. An ancient old Roman wall and a peculiarly-angled pyramid stood before them - gaunt and sunken in the land. A couple of tramps loitered on a bench.

The high wall, in certain places, had broken glass embedded along the top. All sorts of plastic bottles and other trash was scattered everywhere. They followed the wall for some way and came upon the entrance opposite an industrial estate. The silence of the cemetery was offset by a gardener with a creaky wheelbarrow and another with a water hose. Close by, a bed of bright flowers sparkled in the light. The play of colour and illumination startled Matthew. A moment of natural beauty in the gloom.

At the entrance, the attractions were signposted. Straight ahead for Shelley, to the left for Keats and Gramsci to the right, and along towards the chapel. Without a word, Aurelie walked away.

Matthew, stung by the abandonment, stood and read the nearest headstones. Most of the graves were occupied by aristocrats and diplomats. The sound of running water and high cicada trees blocked the sunlight and gave the cemetery a chilled yet relaxed, park-like atmosphere. Amongst the bushes and flowerbeds, scruffy cats lounged and cleaned themselves. He turned back to look for Aurelie. She vanished out of view.

The cemetery staggered out from a hilltop and down. Matthew sat down on an old rickety bench and admired the view. The lushness of the space and near-silence soothed him. The green leaves, white concrete and marble statues were licked with colour from all varieties of flowers. There was a tension between the ground and the sky. Expensive: the word Matthew felt best summed up the place. No paupers graveyard here.

Aurelie emerged at an intersected pathway above and looked down at Matthew although he didn‘t know if her eyes were on him. She took a photograph then disappeared once again. In weaker moments he would accuse her of not caring about him. She protested. Sometimes, he thought the language barrier affected them. She spoke English well, spending some time of her 20s as an au pair in Windsor. Their language became franglais: a little bit of both. Aurelie was a great mystery to him, perhaps to herself. She taught him phrases for her own amusement. The favourite being: un bon flic est un flic mort. Matthew would repeat it to make her laugh then she would get him to repeat it for her friends.

A strange affection existed between them. Matthew no longer thought it could be described as love. He did know in some utterly horrendous way, he needed her. Matthew recalled the first time they’d made love. Just after dawn, he woke and looked out at the deserted neighbourhood. The city hadn’t yet come to life. The birds sang, but nothing more. The deep orange sunlight rose and smeared itself against the skyscraping Les Merculies buildings. A blur, a smudge of illumination that matched his desire and love for the woman sleeping curled up and naked. She’d kicked the duvet off onto the floor. Her cat meowed at the door.

Matthew got to his feet and started a slow ascent to the ancient Roman wall, passed resplendent tombs and read the names and dates. The sun appeared from behind thick grey clouds. A sudden wash of thick rays spread across the tombs and trees. All the cemetery bathed in light for the briefest of moments before the clouds once more dulled the scene and shadows returned.

Underneath a frail section of the wall scattered with violet flowers lay the large slab-like grave of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Matthew read the inscription: Cors Cordium. Heart of Hearts: “Nothing of him that doth fade/But doth suffer a sea-change/Into something rich and strange”. Next to Shelley laid Edward Trelawny, a friend of the poet.

Shelley’s grave deceived. There being no body interred to the Roman soil, only ashes. Ashes are nothing. Shelley was burned on a pyre on the beach at La Spezia where his bloated, disfigured crab-eaten body washed up. Covered in quick lime then set on fire. They saved his heart. Matthew once more read the inscription taken from The Tempest. He understood the sentiment well enough.

He turned around and saw Aurelie photograph a ginger cat, not too far away. He watched as she held out the palm of her right hand then lowered it down so as not to frighten the thing. He marvelled at the gentleness of her movements and gentleness of her spirit. He so very rarely saw this side of her. The cat stretched out and let Aurelie stroke its belly.

Matthew took out the camera from his satchel and crouched down to take a photo. He continued to watch through the lens, his finger hovered over the button. Aurelie and the ginger Roman cat became friends. The moment broke his heart. Affection and tenderness delivered to a capricious cat. He could not take the photograph and put the camera back into the satchel. A further break in the clouds let soft-light illuminate and destroy the prevalent gloom. It felt like somebody switching an electric light bulb on and off at timed intervals.

Aurelie stood up and turned around to see Matthew under the shadow of the decayed wall. She held up the camera to her right eye. He felt sick. Aurelie walked towards him along the path. Each footstep grew louder as her sneakers scrapped against the gravel and scattered tiny stones in random directions. He in turn approached the path where it intersected by a large marble tomb of an angel brandishing a sword. He smiled, nervous. Aurelie smiled too. Suddenly, she cut off the path and over to a tomb scattered with bright red rose petals.

Had she seen him at all? Matthew wondered. The lack of recognition and indifference stung him. He saw her crouched by a grave. An extravagant monument: a beautiful marker. Somebody must have loved them deeply to commission such a thing. And the fresh scattered rose petals, too.

Matthew saw the end. This was it. Aurelie would never make the journey to pay her respects to him if he died. She would exist as some imperfect moment in his life. The physicality of their being together had to be lost, discarded. She was incomprehensible: a great puzzle. Memories would exist for him in fragments. Like the ruins.

“It is very peaceful here,” said Aurelie.
She leaned forward and kissed him. Her tongue brushed his lips. Then she spoke:
“Cemeteries make the prettiest of places.”

They kissed and held each other. Aurelie smiled and he fell so in love with her again. The illusion of the lie all powerful once more. They walked back into the cacophony of Rome. Matthew held hands with a ghost.