Roma musicale

Rome at night is filled with music.

I sit and watch a couple playing music in Piazza Navona. He is improvising, lanky legs crouched on a closed guitar case. She is sitting crossed-legged beside him tapping away at a bongo. Sometimes they are out of sync, but she just looks up and smiles. Someone takes their picture. They don’t notice.

On the other side of the square reverberate the notes of an electric bass: competing music from an outdoor café. I walk to the center fountain and sit at the feet of a river god. Notice for the first time a lion creeping from beneath the statue, ferocious and frightening even in his stillness and stone.

It is cool now, cool as Siena, but I like it after the incredible heat of Rome in the first two weeks. The heat in Rome, from the buildings that breathe easy, perched on top of other, older things that wait, gasping and impatient, beneath the ground. Heat from the cobblestone that blankets these things and trembles above them. Heat that surrounds and sometimes suffocates: this is my explanation for the way my throat constricts as I stand before fountains and statues, or inside churches – because I am not the type of girl who cries because of art, or who is moved by supposedly holy places. Heat. All I have to do to relieve it is sit still in a piazza, by a fountain, and breathe. Touch the water, thread droplets through my hair and on the back of my neck, in the right angles of my elbows, behind my knees, and wait patiently for a breeze to come.

I move on, out of the piazza along Via del Rinascimiento, make a right at the fountain in search of Via del Corso. Stop at the mysterious Mighuitti, who is actually Marco Minghetti. A politician maybe. Sit down and pull out a map. It is dark now, but as crowded as it would be on St. Mark’s Place.

The map means nothing to me. I don’t know what direction I am facing, and I’m fairly certain conclusion I have come to is wrong.

I double back to Piazza Navona. I have this theory that if I follow all the signs from landmark to landmark, I will somehow make it back to the dorms. I will walk the city into my head, like Elizabeth Bowen. I decide to test this theory. Back along Via de Rinascimiento. Another arrow informs me that I should make a right and head to the Pantheon. Va bene.

A map inch through a wide alley and a flood of tourists later – young Americans, high school age - and I am there, the Pantheon looming gray against a now-violet sky, inhaling the orange of the street lights and returning nothing. It is massive and dark. There is scaffolding propped up against the right half of the building, at once ruining the effect with its suggestion of fallibility while simultaneously making the building more imposing somehow. The scaffolding is skeletal, flimsy, and the Pantheon looks still more solid behind it. There is still magic here no matter what time of day – walk into the Pantheon in the morning and you are bathed in light that streams through the dome. It turns all the Virgin Marys into ancient goddesses, virgins, mothers, queens and sorceress-whores, all powerful. At night the building is stoic in the middle of the square and stragglers wander slowly out.

At the bottom of the steps a French jazz band plays. Another woman drummer. A trumpet, an alto and bass saxophone, a banjo and a strange instrument that looks like a combination of high-hat and xylophone, I can’t tell in the dim light and through the crowd. The leader, bass sax with dreadlocks, Birkenstocks, counts off in Spanish, then in Italian, and entreats the audience to join in. Uno, due, tre…PO! We are supposed to shout on po. The reply is half-hearted but the band doesn’t care, and Dreadlocks takes a solo, using lips and fingers to make the bass sax squeal and squaw in registers higher even than the alto and trumpet.

Up the Via della Pantheon, in search now of Giolitti, as long as I’m here. I know where I’m going, again, although the city looks different at night, and I have never been here alone. Champagne e pompelmo rosa. I say, “Buona notte” to the cashier on my way out, a different woman each time but somehow also the same. Always in her fifties, tired, sometimes brought a drink by one of her camrades at the bar, also working late, sometimes not. Rarely makes eye contact. This time, though, she looks up and smiles at me and wishes me a good night as well. It is a good night. I am in Rome, alone at night and not lost or afraid. I make it without a problem to Via del Corso, an endeavor which two weeks ago left me wandering around in circles for forty-five minutes.

I plan on walking past the Spanish Steps to fill my water bottle and stop to write, but I am distracted by my gelato and notes of tango springing up with each step I take. The streets are less crowded now, but still peals of laughter echo and the rolling R cymbal percussion of Italian speech obscure the distant song.

I am expecting music to accompany each landmark on my way home now, sinking into this city with each step I take, paying almost no mind to the drivers, waving at them, grateful but composed, for once, when they decide not to run me over, and receiving nods in return instead of impatient shouts. I’m strolling and relaxed, picking my way across cobblestones, nimble even with a swollen ankle. I’m eating my gelato neatly, tart grapefruit exploding on the center of my tongue, burning the way real citrus would. The champagne tastes like bubbles and New Year’s Eve.

I pass a poster of a blond and bronzed goddess, a model, coy smile, breasts bare, right out on the Via del Corso. A small English boy covers his eyes and grabs his mother’s hand. “Did you see that unsavory pict-cha?” he asks. “Did you see it?”

This is perhaps my favorite moment of the night, but the tango picks up again and I follow. Maybe two blocks more and I feel my steps in sync with the music. I’ve taken tango before, briefly maybe three years ago. Something about five beats. Shift your weight. Look your partner in the eyes and follow. Don’t anticipate, just respond.

The woman ahead is dressed all in black and holding a black and white polka-dot parasol. Pencil skirt, modest dancer’s heels. Thick black straps off the shoulder. Shorn bleached blond hair, pixie. Red lips. She tangos alone, the sidewalk wide enough at the moment to allow her to do so. Weight shifting, eyes half closed and head tilted up to the waning moon, feet dragging slowly between beats. I want to ask to tango with her, but as I approach she straightens up and turns her head to me, slowing down to let me go by. I walk up the steps of a church to leave her room to continue dancing.

The Obelisko Flaminio is ahead of me now, the Palazzo Venezia behind in the distance, inexplicably lit up turqouise and acqua. Music rides in waves south down Via del Corso, hitting buildings like a pinball machine; some kind of pop. The street opens up like the mouth of a river into the Piazza del Popolo and I am intercepted by a Bengali man holding 2 long stem roses. It is the end of the night for him, he says, he’s closing up and tries to pawn the roses off on me like he’s going to give them away for free. I’ve seen this before during the day, watched them stride up to unsuspecting tourists and shove flowers into camera laden hands, and then pursue, palms up, a euro. My rose seller assures me that he has change, and I’m distracted because to my left Michael Jackson is dancing to Billy Jean. The flowers are in my hand. I almost reach for my coin purse, wanting to climb the fountain and refill my water bottle again and watch Michael Jackson dancing, sequins and all. I hand the flowers back and the ingratiating smiles disappear with the man, who stalks a less frugal victim.

I climb the fountain. Only the balls of my feet fit on these steps, and the water splashes up my arm again. I step down carefully and sit with my back to the obelisk, still warm from the day, watching Michael Jackson dance. In ten minutes the concert ends and people rush to take pictures with him. A member of the Carabinieri , shorter than Michael, breaks up the din. Flashing lights ebb and people disperse.

On the east side of the piazza at the foot of the Pincio, Dea Roma stands with her torch held high, lit by light reflected in a shallow pool, the same pale yellow as sunlight, I notice, even though the sky has deepened now from violet to navy.

I walk across the piazza, up the stairs and out into the street. Music floats up endlessly from under the bridge across the Tevere. I feel water on my arms and face, tiny droplets, almost imperceptible as it begins to rain.