There were only five cars, and all were parked in different tiny side alleys not far from the bookstore. Because we could not depart en masse, we were to reconvene somewhere by Ponte Milvio. From there up via Cassia to the trattoria whose precise whereabouts someone, but no one else, knew.
We arrived more than forty-five minutes later—less than the time needed to reach distant Albano, where the lights on the lake at night…The place was a large al fresco trattoria with checkered tablecloths and mosquito candles spread out sparely among the diners. By now it must have been eleven o’clock. The air was still very damp. You could see it on our faces, and on our clothes, we looked limp and soggy. Even the tablecloths felt limp and soggy. But the restaurant was on a hill and occasionally a breathless draft would sough through the trees, signifying that tomorrow it would rain again but that the mugginess would remain unchanged.
The waitress, a woman nearing her sixties, made a quick count of how many we were and asked the help to set the tables in a double-sided horseshoe, which was instantly done. Then she told us what we were going to eat and drink. Thank God we don’t have to decide, because with him deciding what to eat—said the poet’s wife—we’d be here for another hour and by then they’d be out of food in the kitchen. She ran down a long list of antipasti, which materialized no sooner than invoked, followed by bread, wine, mineral water, frizzante and naturale. Simple fare, she explained. Simple is what we want, echoed the publisher. “This year, we’re in the red again.”
Once again a toast to the poet. To the publisher. To the store owner. To the wife, the daughters, who else?
Laughter and good fellowship. Ada made a small improvised speech—well, not so improvised, she conceded. Falstaff and Toucan admitted having had a hand in it.
The tortellini in cream sauce arrived more than half an hour later. By then I had decided not to drink wine because the two scotch whiskeys gulped down in a rush were only now starting to have their full effect. The three sisters were sitting between us and everyone on our bench was sitting pressed together. Heaven.
Second course much later: Pot roast, peas. Salad.
Then cheeses.
One thing led to another, and we began speaking of Bangkok. “Everyone is beautiful, but beautiful in an exceptionally hybrid, crossbred manner, which is why I wanted to go there,” said the poet. “They’re not Asiatic, not Caucasian, and Eurasian is too simple a term. They’re exotic in the purest sense of the word, and yet not alien. We instantly recognize them though we’ve never seen them before, and have no words either for what they stir in us or for what they seem to want from us.
“At first I thought that they thought differently. Then I realized they felt things differently. Then that they were unspeakably sweet, sweet as you can’t imagine anyone being sweet here. Oh, we can be kind and we can be caring and we can be very, very warm in our sunny, passionate Mediterranean way, but they were sweet, selflessly sweet, sweet in their hearts, sweet in their bodies, sweet without a touch of sorrow or malice, sweet like children, without irony or shame. I was ashamed of what I felt for them. This could be paradise, just as I’d fantasized. The twenty-four-year-old night clerk of my rinky-dink hotel, who’s wearing a visorless cap and has seen all types come and go, stares and I stare back. His features are a girl’s. But he looks like a girl who looks like a boy. The girl at the American Express desk stares and I stare back. She looks like a boy who looks like a girl and who’s therefore just a boy. The younger ones, men and women, always giggle when I give them the look. Even the girl at the consulate who speaks fluent Milanese, and the undergraduates who wait at the same hour of each and every morning for the same bus to pick us up, stare at me and I stare back—does all this staring add up to what I think it means, because, like it or not, when it comes to the senses all humans speak the same beastly tongue.”
A second round of grappa and sambuca.
“I wanted to sleep with all of Thailand. And all of Thailand, it turns out, was flirting with me. You couldn’t take a step without almost lurching into someone.”
“Here, take a sip of this grappa and tell me it’s not the work of a witch,” interrupted the bookstore owner. The poet allowed the waiter to pour another glass. This time he sipped it slowly. Falstaff downed it in one gulp. Straordinario-fantastico growled it down her gullet. Oliver smacked his lips. The poet said it made you young again. “I like grappa at night, it reinvigorates me. But you”—he was looking to me now—“wouldn’t understand. At your age, God knows, invigoration is the last thing you need.”
He watched me down part of the glass. “Do you feel it?”
“Feel what?” I asked.
“The invigoration.”
I swilled the drink again. “Not really.”
“Not really,” he repeated with a puzzled, disappointed look.
“That’s because, at his age, it’s already there, the invigoration,” added Lucia.
“True,” said someone, “your ‘invigoration’ works only on those who no longer have it.”
The poet: “Invigoration is not hard to come by in Bangkok. One warm night in my hotel room I thought I would go out of my mind. It was either loneliness, or the sounds of people outside, or the work of the devil. But this is when I began to think of San Clemente. It came to me like an undefined, nebulous feeling, part arousal, part homesickness, part metaphor. You travel to a place because you have this picture of it and you want to couple with the whole country. Then you find that you and its natives haven’t a thing in common. You don’t understand the basic signals which you’d always assumed all humanity shared. You decide it was all a mistake, that it was all in your head. Then you dig a bit deeper and you find that, despite your reasonable suspicions, you still desire them all, but you don’t know what it is exactly you want from them, or what they seem to want from you, because they too, it turns out, are all looking at you with what could only be one thing on their mind. But you tell yourself you’re imagining things. And you’re ready to pack up and go back to Rome because all of these touch-and-go signals are driving you mad. But then something suddenly clicks, like a secret underground passageway, and you realize that, just like you, they are desperate and aching for you as well. And the worst thing is that, with all your experience and your sense of irony and your ability to overcome shyness wherever it threatens to crop up, you feel totally stranded. I didn’t know their language, didn’t know the language of their hearts, didn’t even know my own. I saw veils everywhere: what I wanted, what I didn’t know I wanted, what I didn’t want to know I wanted, what I’d always known I wanted. This is either a miracle. Or it is hell.
“Like every experience that marks us for a lifetime, I found myself turned inside out, drawn and quartered. This was the sum of everything I’d been in my life—and more: who I am when I sing and stir-fry vegetables for my family and friends on Sunday afternoons; who I am when I wake up on freezing nights and want nothing more than to throw on a sweater, rush to my desk, and write about the person I know no one knows I am; who I am when I crave to be naked with another naked body, or when I crave to be alone in the world; who I am when every part of me seems miles and centuries apart and each swears it bears my name.
“I called it the San Clemente Syndrome. Today’s Basilica of San Clemente is built on the site of what once was a refuge for persecuted Christians. The home of the Roman consul Titus Flavius Clemens, it was burnt down during Emperor Nero’s reign. Next to its charred remains, in what must have been a large, cavernous vault, the Romans built an underground pagan temple dedicated to Mithras, God of the Morning, Light of the World, over whose temple the early Christians built another church, dedicated—coincidentally or not, this is a matter to be further excavated—to another Clement, Pope St. Clement, on top of which came yet another church that burnt down and on the site of which stands today’s basilica. And the digging could go on and on. Like the subconscious, like love, like memory, like time itself, like every single one of us, the church is built on the
ruins of subsequent restorations, there is no rock bottom, there is no first anything, no last anything, just layers and secret passageways and interlocking chambers, like the Christian Catacombs, and right along these, even a Jewish Catacomb.
“But, as Nietzsche says, my friends, I have given you the moral before the tale.”
“Alfredo, my love, please, make it brief.”
By then the management of the restaurant had figured that we weren’t about to leave yet, and so, once again, served grappa and sambuca for everyone.
“So on that warm night when I thought I was losing my mind, I’m sitting in the rinky-dink bar of my rinky-dink hotel, and who should be seated at the table right next to mine but our night clerk, wearing that strange visorless cap. Off duty? I ask. Off duty, he replies. Why don’t you head home, then? I live here. Just having a drink before turning in.
“I stare at him. And he stares at me.
“Without letting another moment go by, he picks up his drink with one hand, the decanter with the other—I thought I’d intruded and offended him and that he wanted to be alone and was moving to a table farther away from mine—when lo and behold, he comes right to my table and sits right in front of me. Want to try some of this? he asks. Sure, why not, I think, when in Rome, when in Thailand…Of course, I’ve heard all manner of stories, so I figure there’s something fishy and unsavory in all this, but let’s play along.
“He snaps his fingers and peremptorily orders a tiny cup for me. No sooner said than done.
“Have a sip.
“I may not like it, I say.
“Have one anyway. He pours some for me and some for him.
“The brew is quite delicious. The glass is scarcely bigger than my grandmother’s thimble, with which she used to darn socks.
“Have another sip—just to make sure.
“I down this one as well. No question about it. It’s a little like grappa, only stronger but less tart.
“Meanwhile, the night clerk keeps staring at me. I don’t like being stared at so intensely. His glance is almost unbearable. I can almost detect the beginnings of a giggle.
“You’re staring at me, I finally say.
“I know.
“Why are you staring?
“He leans over to my side of the table: Because I like you.
“Look—, I begin.
“Have another. Pours himself one, one for me.
“Let me put it this way: I’m not—
“But he won’t let me finish.
“All the more reason why you should have another.
“My mind is flashing red signals all over the place. They get you drunk, they take you somewhere, they rob you clean, and when you complain to the police, who are no less corrupt than the thieves themselves, they make all manner of allegations about you, and have pictures to prove it. Another worry sweeps over me: the bill from the bar could turn out to be astronomical while the one doing the ordering downs dyed tea and pretends to get drunk. Oldest trick in the book—what am I, born yesterday?
“I don’t think I’m really interested. Please, let’s just—
“Have another.
“Smiles.
“I’m about to repeat my tired protestation, but I can already hear him say, Have another. I’m almost on the point of laughing.
“He sees my laugh, doesn’t care where it’s coming from, all he cares is I’m smiling.
“Now he’s pouring himself one.
“Look, amigo, I hope you don’t think I’m paying for these drinks.
“Little bourgeois me has finally spoken out. I know all about these mincing niceties that always, always end up taking advantage of foreigners.
“I didn’t ask you to pay for the drinks. Or, for that matter, to pay me.
“Ironically, he is not offended. He must have known this was coming. Must have done it a million times—comes with the job, probably.
“Here, have another—in the name of friendship.
“Friendship?
“You have nothing to fear from me.
“I’m not sleeping with you.
“Maybe you won’t. Maybe you will. The night is young. And I haven’t given up.
“At which point he removes his cap and lets down so much hair that I couldn’t understand how such a huge tumble could have been wrapped and tucked under so small a bonnet. He was a woman.
“Disappointed?
“No, on the contrary.
“The tiny wrists, the bashful air, the softest skin under the sun, tenderness that seemed to spill out of her eyes, not with the smirking boldness of those who’ve been around but with the most heartrending promises of utter sweetness and chastity in bed. Was I disappointed? Perhaps—because the sting of the situation had been dispelled.
“Out came a hand that touched my cheek and stayed there, as if to soothe away the shock and surprise. Better now?
“I nodded.
“You need another.
“And you do too, I said, pouring her a drink this time.
“I asked her why she purposely misled people into thinking she was a man. I was expecting, It’s safer for business—or something a bit more rakish, like: For moments such as these.
“Then came the giggle, this time for real, as if she had committed a naughty prank but was not in the least bit displeased or surprised by the result. But I am a man, she said.
“She was nodding away at my disbelief, as if the nod itself were part of the same prank.
“You’re a man? I asked, no less disappointed than when I discovered she was a woman.
“I’m afraid so.
“With both elbows on the table he leaned forward and almost touched my nose with the tip of his and said: I like you very, very much, Signor Alfredo. And you like me too, very, very much—and the beautiful thing is we both know it.
“I stared at him, at her, who knows. Let’s have another, I said.
“I was going to suggest it, said my impish friend.
“Do you want me man or woman? she/he asked, as if one could scale one’s way back up our phylogenetic tree.
“I didn’t know what answer to give. I wanted to say, I want you as intermezzo. So I said, I want you as both, or as in between.
“He seemed taken aback.
“Naughty, naughty, he said, as though for the first time that night I’d actually managed to shock him with something thoroughly debauched.
“When he stood up to go to the bathroom, I noticed she was indeed a woman wearing a dress and high-heeled shoes. I couldn’t help staring at the most lovely skin on her most lovely ankles.
“She knew she had caught me yet once more and started to giggle in earnest.
“Will you watch my purse? she asked. She must have sensed that if she hadn’t asked me to watch something of hers, I would probably have paid the bill and left the bar.
“This, in a nutshell, is what I call the San Clemente Syndrome.”
There was applause, and it was affectionate applause. We not only liked the story but the man telling the story.
“Evviva il sindromo di San Clemente,” said Straordinario-fantastico.
“Sindromo is not masculine, it’s feminine, la sindrome,” corrected someone sitting next to her.
“Evviva la sindrome di San Clemente,” hailed someone who was clearly aching to shout something. He, along with a few others, had arrived very late for dinner, crying in good Roman dialect Lassatece passà, let us through, to the restaurant owners as a way of announcing his arrival to the company. Everyone had long since started eating. His car had taken a wrong turn around Ponte Milvio. Then he couldn’t find the restaurant, etc. As a result he missed the first two courses. He was now sitting at the very end of the table and he as well as those he had brought with him from the bookstore had been given the last of the cheeses remaining in the house. This plus two flans for each, because this was all that was left. He made up for the missing food with too much wine. He had heard most of the poet’s speech on San Clemente.
“I think that all this clementizing,” he said, “is quite charming, though I’ve no idea how your metaphor will help us see who we are, what we want, where we’re headed, any more than the wine we’ve been drinking. But if the job of poetry, like that of wine, is to help us see double, then I propose another toast until we’ve drunk enough to see the world with four eyes—and, if we’re not careful, with eight.”
“Evviva!” interrupted Amanda, toasting to the latecomer, in a desperate effort to shut him up.
“Evviva!” everyone else toasted.
“Better write another book of poems—and soon,” said Straordinario-fantastico.
Someone suggested an ice cream place not far from the restaurant. No, skip the ice cream, let’s go for coffee. We all massed into cars and headed along the Lungotevere, toward the Pantheon.
In the car, I was happy. But I kept thinking of the basilica and how similar to our evening, one thing leading to the next, to the next, to something totally unforeseen, and just when you thought the cycle had ended, something new cropped up and after it something else as well, until you realized you could easily be back where you started, in the center of old Rome. A day ago we had gone swimming by the light of the moon. Now we were here. In a few days he’d be gone. If only he’d be back exactly a year from now. I slipped my arm around Oliver’s and leaned against Ada. I fell asleep.
It was well past one in the morning when the party arrived at Caffè Sant’Eustachio. We ordered coffees for everyone. I thought I understood why everyone swears by Sant’Eustachio’s coffee; or perhaps I wanted to think I understood, but I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t even sure I liked it. Perhaps no one else did but felt obliged to fall in with the general opinion and claimed that they too couldn’t live without it. There was a large crowd of coffee drinkers standing and sitting around the famed Roman coffeehouse. I loved watching all these lightly dressed people standing so close to me, all of them sharing the same basic thing: love for the night, love for the city, love for its people, and an ardent desire to couple—with anyone. Love for anything that would prevent the tiny groups of people who had come together here from disbanding. After coffee, when the group considered separating, someone said, “No, we can’t say goodbye yet.” Someone suggested a pub nearby. Best beer in Rome. Why not? So we headed down a long and narrow side alley leading in the direction of Campo de’ Fiori. Lucia walked between me and the poet. Oliver, talking with two of the sisters, was behind us. The old man had made friends with Straordinario-fantastico and they were both confabulating about San Clemente. “What a metaphor for life!” said Straordinario-fantastico. “Please! No need to overdo things either with clementification this and clementization that. It was just a figure of speech, you know,” said Falstaff, who probably had had his fill of his godson’s glory for the night. Noticing that Ada was walking by herself, I walked back and held her by the hand. She was dressed in white and her tanned skin had a sheen that made me want to touch every pore in her body. We did not speak. I could hear her high heels tapping the slate pavement. In the dark she seemed an apparition.