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Rome 2004

Rome 2004: Day Six

Barry Price
2006-02-22 12:26:18

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We awake, and I remember that we’re having another solo day today. I head to the gardens opposite Quirinale (the horse statues from Friday (Day Four), and write.

A pale woman in a red dress has come and sat on the bench beside me as I write. She looks English somehow, although I never hear her voice. We smile at each other, and the look lingers, but I leave my earphones in and continue to write. Eventually she lies down to sleep. I wonder how many opportunities we throw away each day…

So, tomorrow we return to the Vatican to see the museums and Sistine Chapel. Tuesday, I think we might take a train and find the sacred steps from the guidebook. There is also the Capitolini museum to see. We could probably do them both in one day, but even still, that only leaves us Wednesday. I fly at 11am on Thursday. How soon it all passes away…

I return to the hotel just before 4pm. The bread and cheese are gone. She must have taken them for lunch. I can’t listen to music, nor can I sleep, because I’ve got the room key and need to hear her knock on the door when she gets back. The sign opposite the station said it was 38°C today. It felt like it. I douse myself in after-sun, re-read this journal, and daydream. Then I continue with Pilgrim. I may yet finish it tonight!

She arrives around 8pm, I ham it up with the “What time do you call this?”, and she laughs and calls me her mother. Nearly finished the book.

We talk for a while, and she tells me she’s decided that she wants alternate days alone from now on. Nothing personal. I’m disappointed, and a little offended if I’m honest, but supportive nonetheless. If it’s hard for me to have flown a few hundred miles, to find myself unwanted by the woman I came to see, then it must be so much harder, and perhaps more confusing for her, to have flown thousands of miles, only to find that she doesn’t actually want the man she came for.

So tomorrow is the Vatican museums, then Tuesday we will take off alone once more. Then Wednesday. Our last day in Rome. The Capitolini museum, and whatever odds and ends. My flight’s a few hours before hers on Thursday, from a different airport, so I’ll probably have to leave the hotel, and her, at around 8am. I shall miss her - she is so invigorating to be around, that I sometimes feel ten times more alive just to be in the same room. And I’ll miss Rome. For all its religious connections (forgivable I suppose - it is the home of the Catholic church, after all), it is a beautiful city, the scenery and weather have been almost as unbelievable as the company.

My feet ache. Tomorrow is going to be a bind. We are due up at 7am, and I am already on my third glass of wine, while she sings in the shower. We watch an old Charlie Chaplin movie when she re-emerges, then lie awake while she tells me about her family, her mother, old boyfriends, and we finally drift away to sleep.