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In Italy
Perhaps this book was one of several found in Catherine Dawes' house in Suffolk after they had just bought it. There were a few left behind in a box by the previous owner.
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The book is lovely, belonging to the days just before mass travel, before tourist crowds appeared, to exhaust places, sucking the mystery from them. There’s sweetness in the hand tinted images: mellow olive groves and still sunlit hillsides, silent squares, then fading stucco churches.
The Italy I know isn’t like this at all. It's more complex and, I'd say, much unhappier. Elegance cannot compensate for political mistrust.
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The last time I was in Italy I went to Rome: recently divorced: alone.
September: I strolled along the river and through the parks. The smell of the leaves sweetened a damp breeze. Rome is sad in September, but it is sad in a kind way.
I met an American woman like a stick insect who was staying in the same hotel. She knew everything about everything. The proprietor, a very short, pudgy young Coloradan was eager to chat. Funnily, she knew someone from the same tiny, extremely Jewish, Colorado town as he’d grown up, miserably, in. Drinks were surely in order, he declared.
He took us to a nearby pizzeria. Though married and at least a foot shorter than the American woman he began flirting rather forcefully with her. He tried to exclude me by only responding conversationally to the thin woman and dismissing my contributions. He knew everything about everything and told her that the Sistene was not worth visiting. We became a little drunk.
Oh the appalling sexual desperation of the male!
The diminutive hotel proprietor wanted to make further advances with the woman.
To do this he invited us to his den in the basement of the hotel, where he’d sometimes sleep. Photos of his beaming wife and children in their ideal Orvieto home lined the wall in the corridor outside. The den had a big sofa. We sat on it. Then the proprietor offered us both foot massages. Obviously, this was an attempt to seduce the Californian. Probably, I was expected to refuse. But we both accepted: he knelt before us and massaged first my feet then hers.
Then we left.
That was weird, said the Californian woman in the street above. I’ve never had a foot massage since, nor met anyone from Colorado.
The woman wanted to eat a fine Italian meal and the proprietor had recommended somewhere enthusiastically.
We went the next night. It was a small place: a little group, in the weighty elegance of Romans, was waiting outside waiting for it to open. We felt under-dressed though my companion had managed to find a simple frock and looked quite nice in an understated way.
When the restaurant opened, the group was welcomed warmly by an Important Manager who wore a shiny jacket and silk tie and costly loafers.
We, however, were given a tiny table in the back where we were to crouch as an unsmiling waiter quickly served us an enormous single ravioli each: these resembled soft sea shells. The ravioli had egg yolk inside: we could not figure out why. Our conversation waned uneasily. We were given wine. It didn’t help.
Soon after, they brought us the bill. It was not low. The Important Manager asked us how the meal was in an efficient way. We paid, painfully. Then we were encouraged to leave.
We stood for some moments, puzzled, in the wet night. We didn't really know each other.
We walked back up through the city and the wind blew more forcefully across Rome's monstrous baroque buildings. I asked the American woman if she liked Ezra Pound but she hadn't heard of him. She said that this was the difference between having a British or American education.
The next day we met the hotel proprietor. He asked us how the meal was and we both said it was fine.
The American woman then went to Venice to join some Italian man she had never met before but who maintained he was in love with her. She didn’t find this unlikely.
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