Death in Rome (12 page)

and Eva slept, slept stretched out, slept in her narrow cot in the small hotel room, slept tensely. Only the knot of her hair was loosened, yellowed corn left to stand, straw not harvested and put in a barn, whitened and grizzled. But she slept deeply, dreamlessly, with mouth foolishly agape, gurgling slightly, smelling faintly of the skin on boiled milk, the irate, sleeping Norn of nocturnal oblivion

given over to nocturnal oblivion, moved only by the commotion of his snoring, Dietrich Pfaffrath slept on one of the hotel's softer beds. The wine he had drunk in the hall with his parents and the other German guests of similar views had not made him sleepy, and his suitcase was open at the foot of his bed, for Dietrich was hard-working and ambitious, and even on a family visit to beautiful Italy he was preparing for his law exams, and he was confident of passing them, and so he had been reading in the law books he had packed in his suitcase. And Dietrich's fraternity cap had also accompanied him on his journey, because one might meet members of other fraternities in sufficient numbers to take over a bar. The cap with the coloured ribbons lay beside the law books, and Dietrich was sure that both his fraternity and the law would stand him in good stead. Then there were the road maps in the open suitcase, because Dietrich enjoyed taking the wheel for his old man, the Oberbürgermeister, and he had carefully marked the places to visit on the map, and written their names down on a separate sheet of paper, with the sites of battles in red ink, and the dates on which they had been fought. But beside the suitcase, tossed out of bed after the lights had been turned out, poorly aimed and missing the suitcase, there lay a magazine, an illustrated journal he had bought at a kiosk when he thought no one was watching, in Rome where he didn't know a soul and no one knew him, and on the cover of the magazine was a girl standing there with legs spread, standing there in full fleshy colour, with her blouse open to the waist, and in wide-meshed net-stockings over the full-colour fleshy thighs—on that evening she had taken the place of his beer for Dietrich, and he had exhausted himself between those thighs. He was powerless against the habit, but he was powerfully driven to the powerful whom he wanted to serve, he wanted to sit in the house of power, and share in power and become powerful himself

Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath slept contentedly with his wife Anna, united in one bed for the holiday, though not united in any embrace, at home they had separate beds. Why should he be dissatisfied? His life appeared without blemish, and life on the whole rewarded those who were without blemish. Nationalist thoughts and feelings were once again resurgent in Germany, albeit in a Germany of two separate halves, and personal popularity, reputation, continuity and the democratic process had made Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath the head of his city once more, absolutely legitimately, not by deception, electoral fraud or bribery, still less by the favour of the occupying forces; the people had freely elected him to be their Oberbürgermeister, and even though he had once been Oberpresident and the administrator of great Party sums, he was content, he was without blemish. And yet unfairly a nightmare came to haunt his blameless sleep: brother-in-law Judejahn rode up to his bedside on a snorting steed and in his black uniform, and a choir sang 'Lützow's Wild and Daring Chase', and brother-in-law Judejahn pulled Pfaffrath up on to his snorting steed, and into Lützow's wild and daring chase. And they galloped up to heaven, where Judejahn unfurled a large, luminous swastika flag, and then he dropped Pfaffrath, pushed him away, and Pfaffrath fell fell fell. And against that dream the mighty Oberbürgermeister Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath was powerless

I'm powerless. I wash. I wash in cold tap water from the sink, and I think of the water flowing through the old Roman pipes, flowing to me from the sad blue hills, across the ruined masonry of old aqueducts as Piranesi drew them, into this basin—I enjoy washing in this water. I walk barefooted across the old stone floor. I feel the firm cool stones underfoot. It's pleasant to feel the stones. I lie down naked on the broad bed. It's good to lie down naked on the broad bed. I don't cover myself. It's good to lie alone. My nakedness lies bare. Naked and bare, I stare up at the naked and bare light-bulb. The flies buzz. Naked. Bare. Music paper lies white on the marble. Or maybe it's not white any more; the flies have smirched the paper. I hear no music. There is no note in me. There is no refreshment. Nothing to refresh the thirsting soul. There is no source. Augustine went into the desert. But in those days the source was in the desert. Rome sleeps. I hear the noise of great battles. It's distant, but it's a terrible tumult. The battle is still far off. It's far off, but it's terrible. It's far off, but coming ever nearer. Soon the dawn will break. I will hear the steps of workers in the streets. The battle will be nearer, and the workers will move towards it. They won't know they're moving into battle. If asked, they will say: 'We don't want to go to battle.' But they will go to battle. The workers are always there, marching into battle. The little Communist girl will be there, too. All proud people will go to battle. I'm not proud, or rather I am proud, but not in that way. I am naked. I am bare. I am powerless. Naked bare powerless.

PART TWO

The Pope was praying. He was praying in his chapel, the small private chapel in his apartment in the Vatican, he was kneeling on the purple-carpeted altar steps, the crucified Christ gazing down on him from one painting, the Mother of God looking at him from another, St Peter peering down at him from the clouds. The Pope was praying for Christians and for the enemies of Christendom, he was praying
orbi et
urbi
, he was praying for all the world's priests and all the world's atheists, he prayed to God to enlighten the governments of the world according to His Holy Will, and he prayed to God to vouchsafe His Presence also to the rulers of rebelliously inclined empires, he sought the intercession of the Mother of God for bankers, prisoners, executioners, policemen and soldiers, for atomic physicists and for the sick and maimed of Hiroshima, for workers and for businessmen, for cyclists and for footballers. By virtue of his Holy Office he blessed the nations and the peoples, and the crucified Christ looked down on him in pain, and the Mother of God smiled at him sadly, and St Peter had probably lifted himself off the earth into the clouds, but there was still some doubt as to whether he had reached heaven, because the clouds are only at the very beginning of the way to heaven, floating in the clouds doesn't mean anything, the journey has hardly even begun. And the Holy Father prayed for the dead, he prayed for the martyrs, for those buried in the catacombs, for all those fallen in battle, all those who had died in prisons, and he prayed also for his advisers, for his subtle jurists, for his astute financiers and his worldly-wise diplomats, and he remembered also the dead gladiators of his city, the dead Caesars, the dead tyrants, the dead popes, the dead
condottieri
, the dead artists, the dead courtesans, he thought of the gods of Ostia Antica, of the spirits of the old gods wandering about the ruins, the pagan sites, the crumbling walls, the Christianized temples, the places of worship stolen from the old heathens. And in his soul he saw the airports, in his soul he saw the magnificent railway station of Rome, he saw hordes of new heathens arriving there every hour, and the newly arrived new heathens mingled with the new heathens who were already resident in the city, and they were more godless and more remote from God than the old heathens, whose gods had turned to shadows. Was the Pope himself a shadow? Was he on the way to becoming one? On the purple floor of his chapel the Pope cast a slim, infinitely fleeting, infinitely moving shadow. The shadow of the Pope darkened the purple carpet to blood-red. The sun had risen. It shone over Rome. Who, should the Holy Father die, would inherit the
sacrum imperium
? Who will be the inheritors of the Holy Empire? In what catacombs are they praying, in which prisons are they languishing, on what execution blocks are they dying? No one knows. The sun shone. Its rays were warming, but its light was cold. The sun was a god which had seen many gods come and go; warming, beaming and cold, it had seen them come and go. The sun didn't care on whom it shone. And the heathens in the city and the heathens in the world said sunshine was an astrophysical phenomenon, and they calculated the sun's energy, analysed the solar spectrum and measured the temperature on the sun's surface to the nearest degree centigrade. That too the sun didn't mind. It didn't mind what the heathens thought about it, any more than it minded the prayers and thoughts of priests. The sun shone over Rome. It shone brightly.

I love mornings in Rome. I get up early; I sleep little. I love the freshness of morning in the narrow lanes in the shadow of the tall buildings. I love the wind as it jumps off the crooked roofs into ancient crannies; it carries greetings from the Seven Hills, it bears the scorn of the gods into the city. The sun teases the towers and domes, it teases the mighty dome of St Peter's, it strokes the old walls, it comforts the moss in the guttering, the mice in the Palatine, the she-wolf imprisoned in the Capitol, the birds nesting in the Colosseum, the cats in the Pantheon. Mass is being celebrated in the churches. I don't need to go far to hear Mass. There's a church beside the Trevi Fountain, and another on the corner of the Via del Lavatore, and half a dozen other houses of God near by, whose names I don't know. I like going into churches. I smell the devout smell of incense, wax, dust, varnish, old robes, old women and old fear, so magnanimous and so petty. I hear the litanies,
ab
omnipeccato libera
, the murmuring monotone,
a subitanea
et improvisa morte
, the rigid and set dialogue between the priest and the old women, who cover their heads, who prostrate themselves to be raised up, who kneel on the floor of the church,
te
rogamus
,
audi
nos
, I hear the tinkling bell of the server. I stand by the door, a stranger, a beggar almost; I stand outside the communion, and deliberately so. I see the candles burning in front of the paintings of the saints, once I bought a candle myself, lit it and put it in an empty niche where no saint yet resided; I offered up my candle to the unknown saint, the way the Romans built a temple to the unknown god, because the probability that we have failed to recognize a saint is far greater than that a god has remained unknown. Maybe the unrecognized saint is even living in our midst, maybe he's someone we pass in the street, maybe he's the newspaper vendor in the passage shouting out the headlines about the latest bank robbery or the chances of war breaking out, perhaps the policeman who stops the traffic in the Via del Tritone is a saint or perhaps the man sentenced to life-imprisonment, who will never walk through Rome again, and it could even be that the director of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, which has its grand offices on the Corso, is a saint, and an unknown one at that—the faithful say nothing is impossible for God—so perhaps the banker has also heard the call; but the Holy Father won't come to any of them and wash their feet, because the Holy Father would never guess there were saints living near him, and the Church will never hear of them, never know that they were alive, and were saints. But it's also possible that there are no more saints, the way there are no more gods. I don't know. Maybe the Pope knows. He wouldn't tell me if he knew, and so I won't ask him. There are nice things to do in the mornings. I got my shoes polished; they gleamed up at me like the sun. I had myself shaved; my face was pampered. I walked through the passage; my footsteps on the flagstones made a funny echo. I bought the paper; it smelled of printer's ink, and had the latest data on the condition of the world, material and spiritual. I went into the espresso bar in the passage, went up to the counter and stood among the men, polished, shaven, combed, brushed, clean-shirted, crisply ironed, after-shaved men, and like them I drank hot, strong steam-machine-made coffee, I drank it
à
la cappuccino
with sugar and a froth of milk. I liked standing there, I was happy there and on page 6 of the newspaper I found my picture and my name, and I was happy to see in the Italian paper the picture of the composer of the symphony which was to be played that evening, though I knew no one would take any notice of it, only one or two composers would take a closer look at it to check my gormless expression, the lineaments of scant success, lack of talent or madness in my face, and then the picture would become waste paper, food-wrapping, or fulfil some other function, and that was fine by me, it had my full consent, because I don't want to remain for ever as I am today, I want to live in continual change, and I'm afraid of not existing. And so, for the last rehearsal, I go to St Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Will she be kind to me? I haven't bought a candle for her, and she may not care for my particular music. I'm on my way to Kürenberg, the sage magician, to the hundred players who perform my score and who intimidate me, I'll probably run into Ilse Kürenberg, who seems not to be affected by anything, who accepts life and death, the way the sun smiles or the rain falls. She is no patron saint, I feel that, but maybe that makes her the goddess of music, or at least Polyhymnia's number two, the muse of the day wearing the mask of flight, callousness or indifference. In the Via delle Muratte, I stop reverently in front of the Società delle Pompe Funebri. Death attracts me; but how laughable are its trappings which man buys to lay himself in the grave with dignity. The funeral director, a fine fat gentleman with curled, dyed-black hair as though his career involved the denial of everything transient, unlocks the door of his shop, and his cat, who had been dreaming on the coffins, on the bronze wreaths, on the cast-iron immortelles that spite decay, corruption, the dirty process of turning-to-earth, his little cat steps alertly up to him, and he greets her pleasantly: 'Good morning, my dear cat'—is it that the man is afraid of mice, is he afraid that mice might gnaw at his funeral pomp in the night, hold a funeral banquet on the paper funeral dress, unpetal the artificial flowers?