Читать книгу Roman Daze - Brontè Dee Jackson - Страница 11

I feel like getting out of Rome for the day. It is a common feeling, associated with the need to see nature and have physical space around me. This is one of the hardest things for an Aussie to get used to, living in the beautiful city of Rome – the lack of space and greenery. These are things that we see and experience every day in Australia, which Romans do not. Every part of Rome is paved, there are no nature strips, there is no housing that provides private individual gardens and there are millions of people who live within in a small area. There are more people living in my apartment block, about the diameter of two double-fronted houses in Australia, than live on the whole residential block of my former suburb in Melbourne. At least weekly I get an overwhelming urge to go somewhere where I can see the horizon, where there are few people, not much noise and a lot of trees.

Often we spend the day in a large Roman park. Most parks in Rome were once the grounds of substantial royal or aristocratic palaces and now consist of wild woods for hunting, man-made lakes or streams, manicured gardens, tree-lined avenues, pleasure parks for kids, playing fields for football, running tracks, shady grottos and grassy, statue-filled picnic areas. They are a haven for Romans, as they are right in the middle of the city and provide them with a welcome green space to walk, run, play and relax in. Although this makes them eminently qualified in the ‘lots of trees’ category, they sometimes fall short of the ‘few people’ category, particularly on weekends.

Romans also like to get out of the city on a weekly basis. Wherever you go – beach, mountains, ski slopes, parks, forests – it takes hours of sitting in traffic and is always crowded. We have worked out a crafty plan, however, after years of experience. The other thing that Romans do every Sunday is have a big lunch at 1pm. On Sundays, lunch is from 1pm until 4pm, including siesta. So we generally leave our house at 1pm, then leave the park, beach or forest at 4pm. It means we have a relatively, but not completely, people, dog and football free time.

One of our favourite parks is called the Villa Pamphili. It is the grounds of a former aristocrat’s home and includes a stately mansion and art gallery, which is open to visitors. The grounds are miles wide and deep, and there is the possibility of getting lost in them. It consists of walking paths ringed with magnificent laurel trees, an entrance park that is cool and windy even on the hottest days, a formal garden filled with rockeries, fountains, marble-carved benches, a lawn, running tracks with outdoor equipment for exercising, long wild grass and pine trees.

The deeper you go into the park the less people there are, but by Australian standards it is still packed to the gills. Every ten or so metres sits a small clump of people, complete with blankets, food, footballs, bikes, books and music. Some loners are set up with beach towels, bikinis and suntan oil, and some couples are in the long grass and do not want any attention.

I am still mesmerised when I come across this – naked or semi-naked couples on a blanket hidden only by long grass or behind trees so that you don’t notice they are there until you are nearly on top of them and have to quickly look away. When this happens, my husband calmly steers me in the other direction while I am left gaping and pointing and switching quickly to English so no-one understands me.

‘Did ... did you see that?’ I always stammer, pointing.

‘Yes, yes, leave them alone,’ my husband always responds.

‘But ... but how can they do that out in the open like that when anyone can come across them?’ I say.

Then he patiently explains to me that because most people who aren’t married, and some who are, still live at home and share bedrooms with siblings, couples don’t have anywhere else to go.

This use of a public space for very private couplings is a timeless Italian tradition; it is respected and understood. Couples rely on people turning their heads rather than gawking, thereby ensuring their relative privacy. I am constantly amazed by it, however, and amazed at my husband, who notices these things usually before I do and whose reaction is to not look any further. My reaction is to clarify, by repeated attempts at sighting, what I think I have just seen.

Cars are the most popular alternative venue for couples, and old-fashioned ‘parking’ occurs most Saturday nights and all day Sunday. It is common to see cars with newspaper covering up the windows on the inside, thereby assuring a modicum of privacy, while at the same time announcing to all what is happening on the inside. One Sunday, as we were driving past a small field in the countryside, we saw a mini cooper parked in the middle of it. It was completely covered by a floral bedspread, flung over it from the outside.

My husband’s favourite pastime as an adolescent was to go to the local parking lot by the sea on a Saturday night, when cars were parked bumper-to-bumper in the dark. He and his cousin would creep alongside one, then jump up and shine a torch through the window and run away, usually to the sounds of threats and screaming. It was not long, however, before he was joining the rows of cars ‘parking’. He told me that sometimes he would have to circle for ages to find a space.

* * *

This Sunday, instead of going to our local park, we feel the need for more than just the usual respite from the city. We feel the need to actually leave the city. We do not want to drive very far, firstly because that would necessitate getting up earlier, and secondly because we do not want to sit in traffic jams for hours, thereby negating the benefits of the relaxation gained from leaving the city. So we head for a place called Veio, which does not exist any longer. I am intrigued by the fact that I can choose to go and visit a place that is not there anymore.

Although indicated on our map of Rome, the actual city and the culture it once represented has long since gone. Veio was an Etruscan city, founded by an ancient civilisation that inhabited much of the local area for centuries before Romulus and Remus arrived. Veio was once a thriving town and farming community, complete with complex irrigation systems and a cemetery, the only things which are now left standing for the twenty-first century eye.

The expansion of Rome from the seven hills surrounding the River Tiber in the middle of the third century BC, to all of the then-known and ‘civilised’ world by 1400, began with the Romans first annihilating Veio. It was the first town in their path to world domination. Countries such as China and Australia were not considered part of the ‘civilised’ world back then. This is in spite of the fact that at the height of Rome’s world domination, China had been making paper and printing on it for decades while the Romans were not even up to using it to wipe their behinds.

Nowadays, Veio is just outside a bustling modern suburb of outer Rome. It is indicated on the map as being a little way past the Grande Raccordo, the ring-road that circles modern-day Rome. It is also quite close to a surviving medieval hilltop town. I find it quite symbolic that modern-day Rome has just extended out and engulfed the area the city once lay in, as it did in 396 BC.

We drive through this outer Roman suburb, about an hour from the centre of Rome, and just at the end of it we see the sign to the extinct Etruscan city. We follow the small road down into a ravine and arrive at the National Park that now protects a great tract of land, cleared fields, ravines and an ancient waterway that is the remains of Veio. We make our way by foot to a huge open space full of calf-high green grass, a few trees sticking out against a sky swirling with puffy silver-grey clouds. It has recently been raining and the ground is soaking. The space is endless, the green is striking and I can finally see the horizon. There are no people within sight, no noise except the wind, and there is nothing left of Veio except this huge expanse of preserved hills and green pastures.

We take the path to the Necropolis, the ancient cemetery, to see the tombs of Veio. Our walk takes us past high trees and through bramble-coated paths. There is blossom everywhere, its delicate white petals holding the last drops of the shower. All is silent, quiet and green. The paths are muddy and the air is still and heavy with nature. There are no other humans near me except my husband and the remains of Veio’s dead.

It fills me with peace. It restores in me faith that nature is always here – growing, renewing, alive – in spite of what we do to stop it. The petty thoughts and fears of the work week fade away and in their place there is awe at the strength of the energy of nature that keeps everything growing.

We walk in silence and admire the tombs of a civilisation that existed over two-and-a-half thousand years ago. We come again to the wide expanse of nothing where the city once stood, and see in the distance the medieval town and the modern buildings that surround it. I think of the people, the children, the lives that were once lived in this spot and wonder if they could have imagined me. I wonder if, in two-and-a-half thousand years, another woman will walk on the spots that I once lived and think about me.

We walk back to the car, past the ruins of the Etruscan temple to Apollo and the ruins of a medieval grain processing plant, a mill. The waterways crafted to support the grinding of the wheat thousands of years ago still flow unabated over huge stone mills and into the ravine below. All is green, even the tree trunks, an eerie, glowing, mouldy green.

I have seen the horizon from an extinct civilisation’s dwelling spot. I have felt space around me. I have been immersed in the deep, energising green of nature and I am ready to live for another week within the complex, competitive, concrete monolith that is Rome.