Without a history.
We are all without a history, because we are overwhelmed by it. By the lack of reason, in a civil society that is breaking up, forgetting everything.
The Romans were builders of roads. I, who am a foreigner, travel them. I seek a familiarity that I will not find, I already know that, but it is enough for me to seek it: It is an uncodified move, a journey with eyes wide open. Rome is a body whose strong legs and dirty feet are known to me, hands quick to steal money from your pockets, hired sex, soft, dark hair, muscles that slither, breath that stinks of cigarette smoke and cheap liquor.
Roads. The houses like people: They have a worn, dusty nobility, in this Rome, that yields to time unsparingly. And time, silently, crumbles bricks, molds pavement, brushes bodies with the same gentle, profound caress that I would like to have or experience.
Roads. A troublesome object that I do not see on the asphalt, and the car jerks. A tire absorbs the jolt, smashing what lies beneath it and continuing on its way: maybe a small life has ended, perhaps only a shattered object. At the end of life, the two are equivalent.
Roads. Where I ran as a child there was dirt and grass. I splashed about up to my knees, happy. That time is gone.
Roads. The Romans were builders of roads, but that time is gone as well.
Piazza dei Cinquecento, legs spread, lies there waiting. The fools, those who can’t see, think they can rape her, possess her. But in this dark, nocturnal cavity they are lost, devoured, chewed up and spit out as small white bones. I, on the other hand, know. I know the secret, and will not get lost.
The station is a door: From there you go or return.
The station is a lady covered in rags, with garbage for jewels. She laughs, deceptively indulgent and defenseless, hiding the gnashing of her teeth behind the trains’ clatter. She whispers promises she will not keep, but she is always a mystery because men believe in lies and let themselves be lulled by them. Rome knows all secrets, protects all sins. It is a museum of sorrow and shame, where the executioner laughs at the victim whose head he is preparing to lop off, with no remorse whatsoever and with unbounded craving.
The little garden is a place of bones. It is a city of secrets, catacombs, buried memories replaced by artfully constructed recollections. But here, in the little bone garden, it is impossible to lie. There are places where the city reveals itself. It can do so because nobody really looks, no one sees anything except what he wants to see.
But I know.
I am aware of the fraud. I revealed the secret. Still, I am not a danger, since no one will believe me. Rome can do this: display the truth, make it her whore, and sell it to the highest bidder.
Ghosts crouch in the little bone garden.
We all drift along, silent, alone.
It’s like a breath I’m lacking, that I continue to look for, driving around aimlessly, with eyes that see in the dark, matching profiles and desires. Desire fulfilled is a simulated death. And like every death, it examines the meaning of life retrospectively, transforming it into myth. Desire is the articulation of a solitude from which I will not emerge, except at the instant of an embrace. A moment, a caress, a body that responds like an object, in the unreasoning workings of sensation.
I have a powerful, expensive car. I pull up, knowing I’ve been spotted.
In Piazza dei Cinquecento, I drive around the heart, mine, that of the city.
At the drink stand, there’s a fat, sweaty man. He is an actor made for the part, as if in the entire city, in all the stands of Rome, there were only variations of that same role, in male or female versions. Performing specters, full of life that I cannot think of as sentient, with open shirts, oil stains on their undershirts, hands gripping the glass, squeezing the life out of it before handing it to the customer. And the customer, a young man with heavy cigarette breath, his curls straightened to look more gorgeous and his beard pointlessly shaved to make him appear older, takes the glass without bothering to be polite. Rome is not polite. Rather, she is a slut, astute and well aware of her urges, who when caught with her hands in the till absolves herself by displaying her illustrious medals: Nero’s crown, the Colosseum’s stones, grass, cats, the Pope, political figures. They have all lied. All of them. Including the cats.
I have an expensive car, that is known here, which does not necessarily make me one of the family. I am the rich uncle: My eccentric manias are tolerated as long as I bring money. My gaze is not heavy. It skims, in order to procure what I need: targets with curly hair. Shoes with a wedge, to appear taller. Sweaters tight across the chest, in colors like small suns in the night. I wonder what life drifts through those heads. But it doesn’t matter to me. It really doesn’t matter to me. The thoughts are mine. The body I look for elsewhere.
The boys arrive, three of them, walking down the sidewalk from Via Volturno to Via Einaudi. They materialize out of partial darkness. Nights are never very dark in the city. There is always too much light to hide by, but not enough to see. I adjust my glasses, I turn the wheel, I am not thinking, I release a desire and a fantasy that proceed side by side, searching for someone.
The three boys arrive, but only one approaches, talks to me. A slight uncertainty, hesitation resulting from his young age. I am never afraid, I am not in a hurry, I do not have a primary need. This is a slow, philosophical city. It is not wise as some think, no. It wears a cloak of wisdom that has frayed over time but that still holds up, thanks to patching, and continues covering a king who will never be nude. We, or those who do not know better, will always see a jewel-covered brocade instead of a flabby, swollen, though still immortal body. The night envelops this body in a warm wakefulness, that inherits from the day an ancient lethargy: the mellow rhythm of one who has experienced magnificent times and conserves the memories, eyes closed. Thus the hesitation, the rejection, the slight wavering of the expression, the exaggeratedly seductive walk as he moves away — all fit in. The boys I love, I reflect, are the breath of this city.
It’s like a breath that I am lacking. As I said, I am a foreigner.
And yet I know that it is a common situation, one that is shared. This piazza is thronged with ghosts who do not belong. It is a city of the world, Rome is, lost in the idea of an empire that once was. We all continue to look for it. It is a treasure hunt, tonight’s hunt, and I can’t find the ticket that will get me to the next station. The last stop... I can’t even find a mate, a crew that will play with me.
The three boys are standing motionless in front of the drink stand. They’re speaking in low tones.
The fat guy inside doesn’t even look at them: You can only survive in these places by never really and truly being present.
One boy shoves another.
The third one laughs.
The curly headed one glances my way, turns serious, murmurs some more.
If I try to scan the syllables, I still can’t manage to understand what they’re saying. We adore conspiracies when we are young. Then we get old and we need proof, certainties, unclouded waters.
With the air of keeping a secret that he will not reveal, curly top advances boldly. He walks around the car and, without smiling, gets in.
I drive off swiftly. Via Cavour.
It unwinds like an artery through a body that is being drawn right now, before my eyes. The blood of the city throbs there, secretly. I try to grasp its rhythm as I listen to the words and breathing of the boy beside me. I breathe the scent of an aftershave that is cloying. I try to concentrate on what my momentary, hesitant companion is saying. I am unable to separate the sound from the dark throbbing of Rome’s blood, which becomes deafening, arrogant, and obstructive when Via Cavour flows liquidly into Via dei Fori Imperiali. The wound has eviscerated the city. A knife slash, deep, precise, that severed memory at the beginning of the twentieth century, suturing the past to the present. There were gradual steps before this operation. The Medieval period was lost. The Renaissance was lost. What remains to us are only the past and the present, with a void in between.