Walking Backwards. Mark Frutkin

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СКАЧАТЬ living for more than an hour without company and conversation. In fifteen minutes, the crowd has cleared and we too are sitting in the cab of a truck on our way back to Rome, the driver babbling on and on about almost nothing, his hands flying off the wheel at regular intervals to gesticulate and give his words life.

      Back at the school, I strip off the clothes I’ve been wearing night and day against the cold for a week as I prepare for the delights of my first shower in far too long. (We had no access to a shower or bath while in Istanbul.) I peel off my socks and throw them directly into the garbage. Something in the air smells like that reeking Turkish Limburger we gobbled on the train.

      2

      Rome, etc.,

      1967–1968

      High in the air over the Atlantic, we are four hours into our flight. I sit next to Lebanese Michael on a chartered KLM jetliner that is winging us from Chicago to Rome, where we will begin our third year of university in the first week of September. The plane is packed with over two hundred students from thirty different universities around the United States and Canada who have decided, like us, to attend the Loyola University campus in Rome.

      Bulging eyes bleary behind thick eyeglasses, Michael raises a bottle of Heineken to toast.

      “To an outrageously fascinating year in Rome, one of the few major cities in the world with a specific date to mark its founding: April 21, 753 B.C.” Michael always had fascinating facts handy to spice up his conversation.

      “No doubt. It’s already fascinating,” I shout as I glance around the plane. Approximately 220 students and four male KLM stewards are drunk. Not just tipsy, but head-smashed-in, buffalo-jump drunk — and raving. The noise level is shaking the windows in their plastic seals and the aisles are filled with running, jumping students, shooting booze at each other, suitcases tumbling out of overhead bins, girls screaming and guys hallooing. In the rear galley, two of the blond Dutch stewards are smashed, pink faces pinker now that they are flushed with drink. They sit with nineteen-year-old girls on their laps, all probing each other’s tonsils with their tongues. Next to them, another steward stands, downing shots of schnapps and taking slugs of beer, all while handing out free booze to anyone who asks.

      No sign of the pilots who, hopefully, are not taking part in this madness, but safely steering the jet through its transcontinental arc as it returns to 41°54' North latitude, the precise location of both Chicago and Rome on Earth. Several hours later, the crowd settles into sleep just around the time we land in Rome’s Fiumicino Airport.

      As we exit the plane, we notice that the air is sultry and there are palm trees planted in the parking lot. We stumble onto a bus and head off to the Seven Hills of Rome.

      The school is located in an area of Rome called Monte Mario, the highest of the those seven hills, and consists of only two buildings. The larger one houses the residences and classrooms of the school, as well as the cafeteria in the basement, and administrative offices on the first floor. This turn-of-the-century, four-storey building on Via della Cammillucia was once home to the Pope’s Swiss Guards. I suspect the Jesuits, who run Loyola University, won it from them in a late-night card game. The other building, smaller, just one storey and almost new, is the student union. There is a bar here, with several dozen tables and a jukebox.

      The long driveway that leads to the main building is impressive in a country-estate kind of way, entirely shaded with overarching trees that have been clipped into one continuous rectangular mass. One passes through a dark tunnel of forest to reach the school, leaving the bustling suburban neighbourhood of Monte Mario behind as you enter the quiet of the school grounds. From a window-lined room on the roof of the school, called the belvedere, it is possible to look out over a series of hills dotted with dwellings to the city of Rome below in the distance.

      Over the next few months, I will begin to realize that there are as many eccentrics housed in this building as there are jocks, intellectuals, and beauty queens. One day, I’m standing in the wide hallway in the residence, on the second floor of the building, talking to Martin. Martin, with his tightly curled bush of brown hair, reminds me of a cross between the young Bob Dylan and Harpo Marx. He also somewhat resembles the playful and devilish Greek god, Pan.

      “Where you headed, Martin?” I ask as I see him walking resolutely down the hall. In the background, we can hear our friend Jim bellowing in the shower. We have learned that Jim, who sports an impressive handlebar moustache, likes to sing opera at the top of his lungs while scrubbing. The strange thing is that he can actually sing.

      The cherubic Martin smiles mischievously. “I’m going to visit the Vatican.”

      I eye him up and down. “Think they’ll let you in dressed like that?”

      “Sure. Why not?”

      Martin is wearing a bowler hat on top of his curls, a long black cape, a white T-shirt, black shorts over fishnet stockings, and yellow running shoes. I know he’s no transvestite, or even a young cross-dresser experimenting with new styles, he’s simply cracked, like most of my other friends around here.

      “Hi, Jim,” we say, as Jim, dressed only in a white towel, his hair wet and combed straight back, comes sailing down the hallway on roller skates, the noisy old type, before rollerblades made their appearance. Jim waves, the handles of his moustache flapping, as he zips past us. He roller-skates everywhere. I haven’t seen him out of his skates since we arrived in Rome.

      “That guy’s crazy,” Martin observes.

      We both turn as a door opens next to us, revealing Beanpole Bill, the long-suffering roommate of Martin’s best friend, Patrick. Bill is coming out into the hallway, shaking his head as he complains about Patrick. “He’s really losing it this time,” he says, swinging the door wide to reveal Patrick, all six-foot-three of him, dressed only in his white briefs, standing in the tall window of his second-floor room, facing out over what we know is the main entrance to the school. Students, male and female, are filing in and out of the entrance one storey below. Patrick stands in the window, his arms and legs akimbo like Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous figure of a man. At the top of his voice, he yells in frustration: “ALL I WANNA DO IS MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD!”

      Beanpole Bill runs his hands through his hair. “Patrick’s really driving me nuts,” he complains to Martin and me. “Know what he did last week? Remember that flu that was going round?”

      Martin and I nod.

      “He had it bad. Pukin’. Diarrhea. The whole deal. Monday afternoon, he’s just coming back from a shower, dressed in nothing but a towel, naked underneath. He sees me standing in the room, whips back the towel, says he’s gonna fart on me. He comes over, sticks his butt out and shits on my foot!”

      “That’s Patrick,” says Martin.

      Irish Michael comes along. He’s only twenty-one, but looks like he could be in his forties. It’s scary how much he resembles everyone’s dad. He stops, looks Martin up and down and whistles. “Where you going, Martin, dressed like that?”

      “Going to St. Peter’s. Think they’ll let me in?”

      “Nope. Not a chance.”

      Martin shrugs and steps into Patrick’s room. “Gotta try.” He turns to the window where Patrick still stands on full display to the uncomprehending world. “Come on, Patrick. Time to get dressed. Bring your camera. I want a photo of me in my costume in front of the Pieta.”

      Irish СКАЧАТЬ