Blue Madonna (cont'd)

I considered walking into a museum, but after a week in Rome, I've grown a little tired of dead things--for now, art is losing to a different need. So I walk some more. Chewing on the inside of my lip. Eyes high enough to avoid running into things, low enough to avoid the gazes of others. Cursing every happy couple I see on the streets, couples pointing to all those Renaissance details I can't get next to. Couples smiling and kissing. Christ.

I'm learning that fate, when harsh, is like a good lover--it knows when to ease up, when to tease. It's now halfway through the day, and I've come upon a point along the Arno where I can hop over a chain link fence and go down to the river itself, well below street level. I spend the rest of the afternoon on a narrow cement bank. It's a place for locals. There's graffiti--still lifes, nudes, landscapes--in oil. Italian pop on a transistor radio--an antique sound to box-trained ears (at times, the urge to pinch the cheeks of the Italians is almost irresistible). A heavy Italian woman sunning herself as a wannabee lover persistently raps until she barks a husky "fa schifo" punctuated by hands as she balances on her stomach and breasts, toes in the air. Finally he moves on, crab-like, repeatedly stroking his thick mustache as if he'd failed it, offering it consolation.... A proud Italian father and young daughter walking along the river's edge taking pictures. And me. Sitting and writing about things I'm trying not to think about, writing letters to Carmen--a woman I'm trying to kick, letters I'll never mail. Sitting and staring at the river, the bridges, the hills. Sitting. And finally, relaxing.

•
Tonight my room is unbearable. There's no Madonna here. So, I take to the still-crowded streets to escape the return of angst, and wander over to the river Arno who'd been so good to me earlier in the day. With some effort I find a lookout uninhabited by lovers. The city side of the river is lined with lights. On the other side is the palace settled among the trees. The moon is huge and full, yellow-orange and rests on the Florentine hills. Its light skims the water.

It's much too late when I discover that the magic of the night river is black. Without warning the landscape begins to quiver. Trees bend, the moon bleeds into the hills, the Ponte Vecchio dips its shops into the river in a Renaissance-cum-Dali moment. They've come. Suddenly and furiously. I don't bravely choke them back. They just pour. Each time they seem about to ebb, I look up and they start anew. It seems the most desperate moment of my adult life. Yet, I indulge it. I indulge it until I become sick.

It's morning and I stand alone in the Medici chapel, pleased by a resurgence of peace when people pour in--tour packaged, polyester clad, and rushing to do fifteen cities in nine days. And they're German. There are cameras, flashes, an Italian guard shouting "No Flesh! No Flesh!" Discrete flashes. More shouting. More people. I bolt.

It's 11:43 A.M. There's a noon train to Rome. I run through the streets to my pensioni, up to my room--desperate, desperate--I throw everything into my bag, run back downstairs to the desk--masking desperation--around the corner to exchange money--I've run out of lire--shit!--back to the front desk--unmasked--and finally to the train station just as the last call "Da Roma" is made.

•
In Rome. "Hello, Gia? It's me. Hey listen, I, I..." I'm going to tell her that I'm on my way to Milano, that I want her to meet me. I'm going to tell her that it is silly for us not to see each other. I'm going to speak of parallel lives, I... "I just got back from Florence. If I didn't hate it, I'd have loved it." I hang up. Over the next few days I would call her five times, though only once did I allow the phone to ring long enough for someone to pick up.

•
It's my last full day in Italy. I've been to Sienna and to the seaside. I've spent time with my friend and his girlfriend, eating, and bike riding through the Roman streets. Things are good considering that I haven't really accomplished what I'd set out to do, that is, I haven't forgotten, I haven't played out my blues. Back home certain familiar places will continue to have certain unpleasant associations. Of course, that I would actually forget was just a bit of fantasy...a useful pretext. Yet, I do feel a little better. The beauty and uniquity of Italy has tilted the universe slightly in my favor. Brooklyn realities will be a little easier to deal with in spite of the persistence of memory. For that I am grateful.

•
I woke up on this last morning in Italy preoccupied with the thought of seeing the Sistine Chapel. After three weeks I still haven't worked up the courage to visit it, but this is my last day here and I haven't much choice. Yet I need courage, for I have developed a strong aversion to anything I feel attracted to. I'm not up for any more disappointments, and the likelihood of disappointment is great. I've never had much use for Michelangelo's paintings--they've always struck me as being little more than an exercise in stripping his studies of their vitality. Yet I am more attracted to this work than to any other, perhaps because it was my first exposure, my oldest memory. And here I must test my last romantic notion--that art can triumph over pain.

I enter the chapel, walk across the room--eyes down--and sit on a wooden bench. My friend, Nathaniel, is with me. For a while we just talk. We talk about everything, about nothing, about our fathers, about our loves. We talk about the Roman homeboys, B&W figures swaggering through the crowds of Technicolor tourists on the Spanish Steps. Homeboys with hands in pockets, cigarettes dangling from the corners of pouty Elvis mouths. Swarms of pretty boys, immaculately dressed, bent in film noir gangster leans, shamelessly moving from one foreign girl to the next.

We talk until I crane my neck toward the ceiling. Then for the next two hours we sit in virtual silence as the crowds stream by, as the little Italian boy and girl sitting next to me laugh and ask my friend if all Black people have small ears, as Nathaniel sits patiently at my side.

I sit in that chapel and stare at the ceiling. For the first time since the break with Carmen, I'm truly alone but not lonely. As I stare at those images there's no room for anyone else, no room for friends, lovers, no room for Carmen. It's like I'm seeing what I hear when I listen to Coltrane, and there's no way to truly share that feeling. An attempt by another to be a part of that moment would be an intrusion. Nathaniel understands this and he lets me be.

I've been here for a while. The people keep coming and going. Me, I'm humming. Humming in body--resonant--humming in time to some rhythm that seems to come from this place. In time I attempt to leave. But each time I try, I come back for just one more look. Each time I look the hum gets a little louder, drowning out other sounds, other resonances. Then a young Italian girl, no more than five or six, pulls my hand and motions for me to come closer. I do, and she touches my hair, giggles something I don't understand, kisses me on my cheek and runs off into the crowd. I smile, still humming.

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