The hotel is still standing on Sunday morning, which is a relief. I go down to breakfast, where the receptionist tells me that last night he was caught in a stone fight just outside and that bins were on fire in Plaza Vittorio Emanuel II. Later I read online that they were the worst riots Italy has seen in years and that damages have already run into over a million euros.
The Bellomos head off to an amusement park, and I spend the day sifting through emails and article planning. Go back to Alphabet House early to read (100 Most Influential Women of All Time, from the Katha’s Storyshop; Forster is on the backburner for now). Get all the way from Elizabeth I to Coco Chanel, and when I fall asleep I can still hear helicopters and sirens circling outside.
***
On Monday morning as I get my coffee, Pina the housekeeper looks at me strangely and asks, am I not freddo?
I’m not freddo at all, but I tell her that I’m on my way to buy a more substantial cardigan because I didn’t expect the temperature to drop this early. She clearly doesn’t understand my blathering and just smiles. It is a smile that suggests, put on more clothes, you British freak.
(FYI, freddo –nothing to do with small frog shaped confectionary– it actually means cold).
I go to Oviesse, but find no appropriate knitwear. It is all sleeveless, which makes absolutely no sense to me, and the few bits I do find all cost fifty-odd euros. I can’t justify it, and decide that I will just have to put up with strange looks and occasionally being freddo until wench or Diane visits, which hopefully won’t be too long.
Afterwards I go for a walk to see if my surrounding area really is as smashed up as seems to have been reported.
This is what I find at Via Merulana:
And at San Giovanni:
This is after a full day of cleaning, too. I stop at Santi Marcellino e Pietro, the church I visited on my first Monday here, because I feel like it might be here that had an eighteenth century bust of the Virgin Mary destroyed. I can’t see much evidence of this, aside from a cameraman outside. I sit for a while; as I am leaving I notice that the front window is cracked. When I get back, I find out that the church was ransacked and that the Virgin statue was thrown into the street, where it was trampled by protestors.
***
My mind is happily distracted from the riots later –thank god for B&B. In the car, they demand that I tell them a story. Cue moment of panic –tell a story? Do I have to make one up?! Talk about being put on the spot. Lidia tells me it is ok, I can just tell them Snow White. This is not ok! I can hardly remember the story of Snow White, and if they expect me to come up with the names of all seven dwarves they’re going to be disappointed.
In the end I remember five dwarves, which I think is fairly impressive, and the twins are actually quiet and sit still and listen and don’t hit each other for the whole drive home. This is a fairly huge achievement, and I feel that my storytelling skills must therefore actually be pretty amazing.
We spend a while painting – Bene wants me to draw her princesses and pretty girls in dresses so she can practice staying in the lines; Bea wants a night sky, then a beach, then a picture of herself. The Horrible Science kit comes out afterwards, and we make a volcano and then an endless supply of fizzy ‘potions’ from vinegar and bicarbonate of soda. Messy is not a word that describes the Bellomos’ dining table when we are finished. Destroyed may be a better one.
Afterwards is a dinner of chicken, spinach, and inexplicably huge slabs of mozzarella. Whilst putting on pjs, Bene teaches me how to count to twenty in Italian –which is kind of her. Twinnies are exhausted from all the crafting/ science experimentation and kitchen destroying, and I am free after a couple of standard weird stories. Tonight, Babar the elephant takes his incongruous monkey-child, bizarrely named Zephir, on a trip to the forest, where they make bows from tree branches. I have stopped trying to get my head around the trippy aspect of the stories by now.
Finish my day with lovely Skype catch-ups (catch-ups? Catches-up?) with Katy and Matt, then go back to the influential women book. Fall asleep feeling scandalized that Coco Chanel only received 2% of the profits from Chanel No.5 – damn that patriarchy!
***
I was reminded last night that I still need to visit the Jewish Synagogue, so this is where I head on Tuesday morning.
I will take this opportunity (whilst I’m on the bus) to highlight the number of inappropriately letcherous men that there are in this city. On Saturday evening, as I was walking back from Termini on the outer fringes of a riot, I was letched on four times. It is a ten minute walk. On Monday, assessing damage at Merulana and San Giovanni, it happened six times. I was out for maybe an hour. Consequently today, when I get off the bus at Largo Argentina on my way to the Synagogue, I am less than surprised when an Italian teenager steps into my path and says, deadpan, ‘You have the fire.’ (This is the kind of thing they say).
I am about to brush past in haughty silence, as I have taken to doing in these situations. The letching is getting tiresome after two and a half weeks. And then I realise that he is holding an unlit cigarette, and is actually asking if I have a lighter.
Oops. Lost in translation.
I tell him I don’t, I’m sorry, and then beat a hasty retreat whilst making a mental note to reassess the level of arrogance that I am clearly gaining whilst in Rome.
***
Walking down Via Arenula, I am suddenly faced with a swathe of colour that is cascading out of one of the shop fronts. Oh look, I think, it’s like India. Wistful. And then I notice that the window is full of Ganeshes. It’s an Indian shop! Yes!
I go in and discover that it is so packed with clothes, scarves, wall hangings, etc that I can hardly fit between the shelves. It is a vintage shop –Indian and vintage! A fusion of two of my current obsessions.
I am in the shop for a long time. The scarves are nicer than the ones I found actually in India. I have a lovely conversation with the till girl about Delhi, then select a black and white dress with beading in the front and force myself to leave before I spend all the money that’s in my purse. Vintage dress from an Indian shop in a Jewish ghetto in Italy – wow.
I find out a lot about the history of Rome/ the Jewish in Europe whilst at the museum. It’s all very interesting – and I want to do it justice rather than firing off a quick blog post, so I’ll save it for tomorrow. Instead, I’m going to Skype Louise <3
Night all!
xxx
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