Friday, October 14, 2005

Another Rome Diary

My first month in Rome is done. In this time I've written
half of a novel, which hopefully will give birth to its currently
missing other half. Soon, however, I'm traveling back to the
States for a two-week book tour, an odd pause in this yearlong
Roman dream.

October and November are known as the rainy season, and so
far the weather is doing its best to live up to its reputation. As I
write, water has been falling constantly from the white sky
for the past seventy-two hours. The temperatures have dropped
twenty degrees and because the ceilings are so high here, it can
be difficult to stay warm.

Italian food is relentlessly rich, and sometimes delicious. We have a
new cook at the Academy. When Alice (while in Wonderland) says,
"People come and go so quickly here," she could have
been describing the cook situation at the American Academy in Rome.
On the other hand, the bald man in the blue vest and bowtie who
presides over dinner with a clipboard and turns you away if you
haven't reserved your place in advance is a permanent fixture.

Food here has a bewildering variety of names that corresponds
inversely to its lack of variety. No matter what you eat, you will
probably encounter four basic elements. First is some sort of
cured meat, which will always be salty, filled with fat, and bloody in
appearance. Then there's a juicy sliced vegetable, either braised
with olive oil or served raw and coated in olive oil. Next is cheese,
so tangy and thick it could be a slice of meat. Finally, these
elements are combined with some kind of bland recepticle, bread
that's hard and chewy outside and dry inside, spongy pizza dough, or
pasta, which comes in tubes, strings, bowties, shells, corkscrews,
and more (any minor variation in its shape gives it a new name).
Take all this, douse it in olive oil, and serve. Genereally it's impossible
to go through a day without eating pasta. If you're lucky, you may avoid
pizza, but only if you're lucky.

I've been taking my time seeing the sights because I have all year to
look around, but there are a few you can't help bumping into, simply
by walking around. There's the Colosseum, a brown giant that's
visible from all over town, as well as the more modern Victor Emmanuel
Monument, a wonderfully tacky white wedding cake of a memorial built
at the turn of the last century in honor of Italy's first king. Ruins
abound. So much so, that when building their houses, people will grab
a few scraps of columns or old sculptures and stick them into their
walls when they run out of bricks or stones.

Recently I spent a couple of hours in the Capotline Museums, where I
wandered past rows and rows of busts of dead Roman emperors. You get
to know their faces after a while. Octavian has a receding hairline.
Nero is chubby. Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius have beards. Tiberius
looks like a man you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley (and if the
history books are true, you wouldn't).

I've also met a few living Romans, like Federico, an architect who
sometimes picks me up on his motorino. Imagine if a motorcycle could
have a puppy and you'd get a motorino. I cling for dear life as
Federico zips through the traffic at sixty miles and hour, darting
between lanes and yelling at the slower cars: "Go home! Get off the
road! Why are you sleeping?"

Another friend, Mario, is an assistant to a costume designer who's
working on the film version of The Da Vinci Code. Mario is sick of
the city and his dream is to move to New York. We meet to trade
languages.

I've also made friends with an American expatriate, a vegetarian yoga
instructor named Joan who refers to her ex-husband as her "was-band."
Joan points out all the good places to eat and buy bread, and recently
took me to Rosh Hashanah servcies at Rome's main synagogue, which has
a beautiful interior decorated with vines and leaves and the city's
only square dome, which is painted in rainbow colors (from inside).
Unlike American Jews, who if bored during services will yawn quietly
or whisper to each other, Roman Jews see no reason at all to pretend
to pay any attention to the rabbi praying on the stage. They happily
chat with each other in the crowded sanctuary so that the chorus of
their voices sounds like the New York Stock Exchange during high
volume trading.

My Italian is getting better steadily, as I learn to guess correctly
at the words I don't understand. Occasionally I do get thrown off
because the Romans, like the Japanese, substitute "r" for "l," so that
the word for money, "soldi" becomes "sordi." Also, I'm still learning
slang expressions. For example, a person who cuts in line here is
called "Portuguese." "American" has its own connotations here too.
As one Roman expressed it to me, "You are not like your countrymen
because you have culture."