After a quick supermercato shop on Friday morning (a lovely Italian man tells me to please, per favore, go in front – he has a trolley full; I have face wipes and a questionable chicken sandwich), I head to Flamino, in the north of Rome. I went to Piazza del Popolo, by the Flamino metro station, in July (the day it rained, Diane!), but I haven’t ventured north in the three weeks I’ve been here this time. Today my trip has a special purpose. I’m going to the Maxxi Museum (National Museum of 21st Century Art – XXI – clever!) to see an exhibition entitled ‘Indian Highways’.
I’m very excited about it.
A minor bit of research has informed me that the ‘highways’ of the title symbolises India’s movement from rural to urban, in economy, landscape, etc, and how the development of cities has created a mass migration of people towards them. This is of huge interest to me, considering the impression I got of India being a lot like rapidly industrialising Victorian England, and the fact that I did Modernism last year at Lancaster. The exhibition is said to focus on politics, society and religion.
I get off the metro at Flamino, and am surprised to see a huge crowd of banner waving people in Piazza del Popolo. It is another protest, I assume, although luckily it looks as though it might be a peaceful one. I cross the road and enter the mass, for no other reason than that I am nosy and in a permanent journalistic mindset. I am handed a few leaflets, and from the speech that is going on over loudspeaker I ascertain that there is anger over universities and the environment.
Back on the tram heading for the Maxxi. I reach my stop, and before I move an inch an old Italian man tells me that this is where I should shendi.
What?
How he knows where I am going and where I should shendi I have no idea. It is fairly disconcerting. I give him a quick muttered grazie anyway, and remove myself from the tram and his psychic vicinity as quickly as I can.
***
The first thing I see at the Maxxi is hundreds of Indian faces painted on the floor outside the building. It is ‘Strands’ by NS Harsha, symbolising the varied contemporary social scene in India –some of the women are wearing headscarves, I notice, whilst some aren’t. It turns out that there are over five hundred faces, all joined up, all engaged in different actions. They wind around the concrete outside the doors to the museum in a figure of eight; from the gallery above they can be seen collectively.
‘Strands’ sets the tone for the exhibition, which is made up of sculptures, sight specific installations, paintings and films. Some of the pieces strike me more than others: a life sized truck, made of shiny metallic balls and full of metallic people on their way to work, is the first thing I see as I enter the gallery. It is so striking, I think, because these trucks were everywhere in Delhi. On the right hand side of the truck, a film is playing in the wing mirror – it shows a road identical to the ones that we spent so long driving down; I have similar videos that I took myself.
I’m extremely glad I’m seeing this exhibition after actually going to India – I don’t think it would’ve made half as much of an impact otherwise.
There is a lot to say about ‘Indian Highways’, so I won’t go into detail here. A Flaneur article will follow shortly.
I am there for two hours before I realise I should probably head back; I could have stayed for longer. If done properly the exhibition could take all afternoon – and it is just one of the collections that is currently on display at the Maxxi . It’s a really interesting museum, and I definitely will be going back soon.
***
A film is being shot outside the gates of B&Bs’ school. There are camera crews and children dressed in what looks like nineteenth century choirboys’ uniforms everywhere. I woman walks passed me in a nineteen forties dress, her hair up elegantly, lips bright red. Alberto dismisses this unexpected turn of events. ‘They make films here every week,’ he says, before, with even more unbelievable blasé, ‘Next Tuesday, they use the hotel.’
Oh, right. Feigned nonchalance.
While B&B are in gymnastics I carry on reading A Passage to India –today, apparently, is all about India. And then Alberto comes back, just as B&B and the rest of their gymnastics friends tumble out of the hall. He looks distressed. As I grab B&B to take them to the changing room, he says, ‘We must be quick. There is a problem at the hotel.’
***
Benedetta senses urgency. ‘Why, Lucy?’ she asks, as I kneel on the floor, simultaneously stuffing her feet back into sweaty socks and craning my head around to make sure Bea hasn’t disappeared out of the door. ‘Why fast?’
I don’t know, Bene.
***
Fire, is my first thought.
***
I will just say, for future reference, if you are a tourist in Rome, or if you just happen to be crossing the road in Rome and you’re an exceptionally slow walker, the sight of an irate Italian man beeping his horn and cursing at you from behind the wheel of his tiny car generally means that you should move faster, or, in plainer terms, bloody well get out of the way, because the likelihood is that he really is in a rush and he will be close to running you down. Just sayin’.
***
It isn’t a fire, but a break-in. At some point in the afternoon, someone came into the hotel, not through reception but through the other door, smashed their way into six bedrooms, and made off with whatever they could get their hands on –the TVs from the walls, two unfortunate German women’s passports, a pair of trainers. Inexplicably, a profile of the thief can now be built – he left his original, strangely small sized shoes behind.
Later, when he comes up to the apartment, Alberto pours a large glass of wine and tells me that it will cost the hotel between ten and twelve thousand euros to replace everything.
He looks so crestfallen that I don’t know what to say, so I make some insubstantial comment about him needing a drink and drowning his sorrows.
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘we say this. But some sorrows, they can swim.’
This is profound. There is no reply. In the other room, Lidia tells B&B that their friends will not be able to come around for dinner as planned (it is already after nine) and a chorus of uninterrupted screaming begins. I drink my wine.
***
Saturday’s episode of the daily drama that is this week comes in the shape of a letcherous, snake faced man in an ill-fitting beige suit.
My first encounter with him starts just before lunch, when I am sat innocently in reception, as per, creating what you have just read. I’m so busy being dramatic about small scroat induced break-ins that I don’t notice him for a long time. I feel his grubby suited presence sat opposite me, but I don’t really notice. And then I get up to go for lunch, and that’s when I realise that he is blatantly staring at me, and that his eyes haven’t moved for –no exaggeration– close to an hour.
Now, you would think that if you were a tourist in Rome you wouldn’t be spending midday on a Saturday sat in a hotel reception doing literally nothing at all, unless something was severely wrong.
This man, I quickly decide, is the thing that is severely wrong.
I’m not being overly judgmental here.
I get my things together, feeling mildly perved on but not overly threatened, then walk down the corridor, cross the landing, go up one flight of stairs and step into the lift, and this is when I look out through the glass and see him stood on the stairs smiling at me.
I can’t describe the smile he is giving me. In this moment of terror (he really does resemble a snake, and I hate snakes, and also, how on earth did he follow me so silently?) he lights a cigarette.
My finger immediately goes into overdrive on the level five button. Fivefivefivefivefive... up. Aargh.
In the apartment, I debate for a couple of minutes over whether I should tell Lidia what has just happened, considering yesterday’s break-in and the ensuing amount of crap that she and Alberto will now have to deal with. I resolutely decide on yes.
‘There’s a man outside,’ I begin, tentatively. ‘He isn’t doing anything. But he followed me into the stairwell-,’
‘He is dark skinned?’ Lidia says, ‘In a beige suit?’
It turns out that she noticed his silent, leering presence yesterday. Five minutes later Anna lets herself into the apartment. She looks mildly worried, and immediately starts talking to Lidia (over the top of Bene, so I know it is important) about beige pantaloons.
Well. It turns out that she was walking up the stairs, talking on the phone, and he followed her and then tried to have a conversation.
Lidia goes to find Alberto. Anna walks to the front door, looks out of the spyhole, and quickly jumps back in surprise. I don’t understand any of the Italian words she says, but I understand that he is outside the apartment.
With Saturday rapidly descending into a horror film Alberto appears, and phones reception to ask them to be aware of the situation. Lidia tells me that she believes he is the husband of a guest, that he has stayed here before, and that Alberto has given instruction that after he checks out on Monday he should be not be accepted at the hotel again.
The afternoon is a regular one, consisting of smoothie making, drawing, and a failed attempt to make crafty dogs out of cardboard, pipe cleaner and weird tinsel. After dinner I head down to reception again.
He is there, of course.
I don’t know what to do when I walk round the corner and see his beige suited sliminess, and I am so shocked I walk to reception and give Miguel a wide eyed, wtffff should I do? look. He asks if I am ok; clearly I must’ve looked mental. I say yes, I am, and get a mint just so it looks like I walked up to the desk for a reason.
Beigey letch sits opposite me the whole time I am in reception. I sit him out. He isn’t going to scare me into running back to my room. This is my Facebook time! At one point he gets up, goes for a walk around the table, trips over my laptop wire, regains beige composure, and says, ‘English?’
Aargh! It talks!
I don’t say a word, or even let my eyes flicker from the screen. It is a good performance of being deaf. I decide that if he speaks to me again I will wave my hands around and pretend that it is sign language.
He leaves, briefly, and I decide that it is my opportunity to safety get back to Alphabet House without him potentially seeing where I’m going. Speedily pack up, but then he appears and just watches me. Luckily there are other people in reception, and I get the feeling he may be with them, the hopeless tag-along ‘friend’ that no one wants there.
So, split second decision. Walk back along the corridor, down the stairs and across the courtyard? No one would question if he ‘had’ to walk the same way –it’s the direction of all the rooms. Or down the main stairs, outside, and back through the bottom door?
I decide on the latter, because surely his companions would question why he was heading outside?
And then I make a run for it. Downstairs, round the corner, laptop as a weapon if he appears (thank god, for once, that it’s so heavy!), key in the door, inside. Slight relief. But maybe he knows his way around the hotel if he’s stayed here before? He could easily have come around the other way!
The lift takes what feels like minutes to reach the ground floor.
I have never been so happy to see the inside of my room in the whole time I’ve been here
***
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