Don't Fall In Love With Marcus Aurelius. Eva Lubinger

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СКАЧАТЬ she would have done in the past on the last day of school, when the students were marching past her, on the way to their awards presentation. “Have you seen much of The Eternal City yet?”

      Enzo thought about it fast and frantically. What the devil was he supposed to say? He didn’t actually know all that much about Rome, or rather he knew all the wrong things. He had hardly ever seen the inside of a church, and he only vaguely remembered, that he had once, when he was at school, been given a guided tour of the Vatican Collections, with a bunch of his worthless and stupid classmates. He had taken a slap round the ear from his teacher in front of the famous Laocoon sculpture, because he had tried to liven up the boring school trip by taking a well-aimed and skilful spit at the priceless work.

      Enzo’s mind roamed across Rome and alighted on the dome of St Peter’s. He gave Emily that guileless look that he had inherited off his English mother, and said, “San Pietro, Signora - I always like to go to San Pietro.”

      “Yes, with good reason”, Emily concurred, “St Peter’s is inexhaustible and I suppose for you Catholics there’s the added weight of all its religious connotations.”

      Enzo lowered his eyes, to mask his confusion. For him the religious connotations of St Peter’s barely weighed anything. In fact, he had always thought of that enormous church as a waste of space which would be ideally suited to a massive garage.

      “We have already seen a lot in Rome, but we have an old longing that’s not yet been fulfilled to see the Via Appia Antica. I think we’ll need to hire a car so we can drive ourselves there. The area is a bit isolated and the footpaths are hard for us. One should always be able to get out and hang around a while to get a proper look. Would you be so kind as to come with us? We could stop on the way back at one of those pretty little restaurants near the Trevi Fountain and have dinner together?”

      Emily was pleased with herself. The young man seemed pleased about it, and this trip followed by an invitation to dine with them seemed in all likelihood to be a more tasteful reward for rescuing Agatha’s handbag than the painful handing over of cash.

      Agatha in her bumbling absentmindedness regularly got them into these tricky situations. Emily threw poor Agatha, who was fumbling self-consciously at her bunch of poppies, one last critical look.

      “Perhaps in the next few days you could ring us at our hotel?” she said with a benevolent smile. She then took Agatha by the arm and she stepped away with her towards the arch of Septimus Severus, treading determinedly and gracefully across the ancient pavement.

      Half an hour later, Enzo was sitting, in a small tavern in Trastevere with a cappuccino, alongside that same “ladro, porco, mascalzone, and umbriglione” who had so disgracefully laid a finger on Agatha’s bag.

      “Really Enzo, how was I supposed to know that she was a client of yours?” he protested, while rubbing his stomach, which was still hurting. “I thought the Capitoline was your patch.”

      “When business is going badly on the Capitoline, I am then entitled to come down to the Forum,” growled Enzo and looked at the other one with a malevolent gaze of his slanting eyes. Among Rome’s criminals he was somewhat feared and could afford sometimes to encroach on other criminals’ territories, because in his line of work he was able to combine Italian cunning with English thoroughness and directness.

      “Yes,” said the other thief thoughtfully, “there’s no place that’s always good all of the time. For example, earlier I made the most money in San Pietro in Vincoli. Michelangelo’s Moses there has done a lot for me! Too bad he’s not a saint. I would have offered a big thick candle to him, because he’s done me many a good service!”

      The specialist thief of San Pietro in Vincoli leaned closer to Enzo: “Do you know, when those Stranieri look so closely at Moses’s beard...yes they are mad for that beard of his! It’s a classy beard, a beard like a waterfall...and then they forget everything, those Stranieri! What beautiful wallets I have already managed to take there, crocodile leather, pigskin, all well stocked ...on two occasions even a wristwatch…you undo it gently, cautiously, and avanti! A good little patch, by the blood of St Gennaro!” The ladro chuckled and finished his cappuccino: “God bless the beard of Moses. What a magnificent beard!”

      But Enzo wasn’t listening anymore: the other thief’s exploits only made him annoyed. He was weighing something up in his head and thinking about the Via Appia: a small down payment on his great Venice coup – yes that would be just right and proper. Eventually he would get his expenses back on it, saddled as he was with Luigi and the dog Dante, who always wants to eat. Yes, a down payment but he had to get the ball rolling pretty smartly. The fat one with the glasses mustn’t smell a rat. Enzo's brain worked, made plans and then rejected them again, while the other one just talked and talked. If he wanted the benefits of Moses’s beard, he could have them!

      Enzo could hear the ladro complaining from afar, that the foreigners lately had forfeited their fine breeding and their way of life, that they weren’t able to immerse themselves unreservedly like they did before in contemplating great works of art, like Michelangelo’s Moses. Yes, humanity was getting steadily worse, more superficial and more motivated by profit alone. At this rate Enzo did not even bother answering. He threw the coins for the cappuccino on the table, and walked away without another word, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

      Agatha sat gloomily in her bed in her room at the hotel by Santa Maria Maggiore and stared at the brown wooden blinds that she hadn’t opened for two days. She threw the covers back, placed her feet carefully on the floor, tried to stand up and groaned. This damn rheumatism! It had to be the sirocco..

      The day before yesterday she had wanted to get out of bed, full of the joys of spring and ready for action with the Via Appia in her sights, when she noticed with horror that her spine, which tended to be a little bit stiff, had now changed into a hypersensitive broomstick, emitting major sharp pains. Agatha had to stay in bed, and Emily rubbed the small of her back with ointment. She did it puffing and continually pausing, because Emily herself was by no means fit and well and could feel her heart thumping, this too doubtless because of the sirocco.

      Enzo had called once before and had been put off. He had swallowed down his rage with some difficulty, or rather he displaced it on to the unfortunate Luigi. And Dante the dog in turn collected a hefty kick, which persuaded him once more to frequent the dustbins of Rome, and for the time being he stopped begging for food from his masters. Dante was lean and cheerful - a dog of a measured and philosophical disposition - who took each day as it came. He found that he had a happy life, compared to the many abandoned dogs of Rome who didn’t have masters. A bad master was better than none at all.

      And sometimes - Dante didn’t know why but accepted the inexplicable phenomenon like manna from heaven - sometimes quite unexpectedly his master would come and would play with him and laugh and bring him meat: proper good meat - not just leftovers - or half a bread roll or chocolate. Dante would then devour these hastily in a frenzy of enjoyment and he would stockpile them for times of emergency, when there was nothing going but the dustbin and Dante’s ribs would increasingly start emerging day by day from his seedy, colourless coat.

      Agatha groaned again, but then she placed her feet down decisively on the floor and limped around the room with great lamentations. She’d got started and she had to keep going, because in the end she hadn’t come to Rome to stare for days on end at the patterns on the ceiling of a Roman hotel room that was last painted a long time ago. It was also not fair on Emily.

      She looked across at her friend, who was breathing heavily and quietly measuring out drops of heart medicine into a glass. Poor Emily! Her heart would surely profit from her losing just a few pounds. The committee chair of СКАЧАТЬ