Читать книгу Don't Fall In Love With Marcus Aurelius - Eva Lubinger - Страница 6

Enzo had looked after the piece of paper with the hotel address on very well, and he kept his victims in his sights. He wanted to bump into them a couple more times in Rome, to make the transition to Venice seem easier and more natural. This fat and somewhat irksome matron obviously wouldn’t be wanting it, but he, Enzo, had made a decision and there were a thousand ways and means by which he could engineer a chance meeting.

Ultimately Rome was a pretty small place, when you considered that all the foreigners tended to set out repeatedly for the same focal points of interest: the churches and the ancient monuments.

Enzo sat on the steps of Santa Maria Maggiore, and kept watch over their hotel. The two old bats hadn’t been very ambitious these past few days. Perhaps they had fallen ill and were flying back to England prematurely? That would be the final straw. These foreigners just couldn’t take it. They had weak stomachs and intestines, which were affected by every little bit of dirt in their diet and every overdose of oil in their food. Enzo spat on the steps and, troubled, looked across at the hotel.

Then, just at that moment, they emerged out of the front door: the thin, lively and (heavens be praised) extremely trusting one, with the one with the thick glasses trudging alongside. She was carrying a large umbrella - Madonna Mia! - and next she slowly lifted her head and gave a shortsighted look up to the heavens. How else was the sky going to be other than blue, he thought with contempt, and he ambled slowly down the steps.

The two of them pattered up the street like two uncertain hens, and then they waved down a taxi. They were going to throw away all their lovely money - Enzo’s money - on these endless taxi journeys! He observed how Emily and Agatha chatted with the driver before they got in. Once they had driven away, Enzo ran quickly across to the old man who was loitering there on the pavement.

“Did you hear where the two old ladies wanted to go?”

“Let me have a think about it,” the old man said and he reached out a filthy palm. With reluctance Enzo placed a one hundred Lire note there.

“The Forum Romanum,” croaked the old man, as he closed his fingers on the note.

Enzo ran to the nearest bus stop. Ultimately he had to keep his expenses as low as possible and he certainly was in no position to fatten up Rome’s taxi drivers. He covered the last part of the journey in one long dash, and he arrived at the Forum breathless. He had to catch his breath behind one of the columns. There they stood in the Temple of Castor and Pollux, looking attentively up into the empty heavens, into whose blueness the roof of the Temple must once have soared a thousand years ago.

In that moment the Forum resembled a rural meadow in the Roman countryside in early summer: Everywhere the red blooms of poppies trembled in the breeze, and that same wave of flowers surged across the rocks and the stumps of columns and proliferated between the stones that formed the outline of the Temple of Vesta.

Agatha had let go of her bag in a dreamy absent-mindedness on the pedestal that supported the three tall columns of the Dioscuri Temple, which rose skyward alone, not yet brought low by time which makes all things vanish and which levels everything. Its richly decorated capital carried a trace of entablature, and a bird’s nest had been constructed in its Corinthian stone leaf-work. Agatha sank into raptures:

“Birds,” she murmured, “you lovely birds! I hope that that perch you have up there is big enough for a nest, because it would be terrible if your eggs fell out....” She looked up fixedly and her gentle heart contracted.

Enzo yawned. The Roman Forum bored him unspeakably every time he was there and he asked himself over and over again what people got from spending hours staring at truncated columns and, what was even more amazing, almost broke their necks admiring imaginary structures reaching high into the air that hadn’t even existed for well over a thousand years. And these fools even paid an entrance fee for all this stuff that wasn’t there, for a pile of dreary stone junk. You could barely comprehend the sheer weight of stupidity in the world. Enzo spat skilfully and in a wide arc past the column. He was still leaning on it so as not to tire himself unnecessarily or prematurely.

He sent a dull glance towards Emily, who was walking enterprisingly up to the Church of Santa Maria Antiqua at the foot of the Palatine Hill. The other one - the skinny one - was still gazing at the columns. Enzo gave a sigh. It had dawned on him by now that this enterprise would require nerves of steel. But it would be worth it, by blessed St Anthony! He just wanted to choose the appropriate time to do it.

She had left her bag standing alone yet again at the foot of the columns! This English woman was so dumb that, for a sporting pickpocket like him, there was almost no fun in stealing from her. A three year old bambino could have taken that thing off her! And now she too was walking away from the columns and was beginning to gather up some of the red, windswept poppy flowers. She was picking flowers - unbelievable! Enzo dug his hands deep in his pockets and tossed his head back with a suppressed groan.

Suddenly his posture tightened and he looked across eagerly towards the pillars of the Temple. If he was not mistaken, another guy had slipped in, in the apparently eager manner of an art lover. Yes yes, this scam was very familiar as it belonged in the professional repertoire of the Roman pickpocket. Enzo observed this other man with professional interest. Yes, quite good, the way he passed by, did no single movement in exactly the same way, went back past, stared at that boring column, yes not bad...But that now, no, that was a bit botched, not so quickly - that stood out. He, Enzo, would have taken longer to take the bag.

The bag! Enzo’s bag! Enzo tore like a panther out of his hiding-place, he sprang in just two steps over the poppy-adorned floor of the Temple of Vesta, ran as fast as he could, and then he had the guy, that damned idiot who dared interfere in Enzo’s business. He tore the bag out of his hand, launched a couple of curses towards the stunned thief, concluded by punching him firmly in the stomach, enough so that - caught unawares - he fell to the ground gasping for breath, and ran back to Agatha with the bag. She lifted up her head in astonishment and immediately returned from the guileless transparent world of the poppies to the unattractive land of reality.

He handed her the bag with a small bow: “This ladro, this mascalzone, this porco and umbriglione tried to rob you, Signora, but luckily I happened to be passing by.”

“Oh, thank you. How extraordinarily valiant and charming of you!” Agatha stammered, as it dawned on her that yet again she hadn’t kept an eye on her bag and had got herself distracted. She hoped that Emily hadn’t noticed. She looked across to the church. But there was Emily, already there, standing behind her. Nothing ever escaped her, despite her shortsightedness.

Emily looked at Enzo thoughtfully. When she was a teacher, she didn’t very often misjudge a student’s character. On the Capitoline this young man seemed to her somewhat dubious, despite his willingness to help. But she had obviously got this one wrong.

These Italians just possessed shifty faces, that’s all, and you probably couldn’t apply British standards to them. It was very nice of the young man to scrap with a thief over Agatha’s bag. Because he had hardly anything to gain from doing it. Should she give him some money? But perhaps that would offend him; after all, he was here in Rome on holiday too, and under these circumstances giving him money would be effectively treating him too much like service personnel. No, she knew better than to do that.

“What a wonderful city,” Emily began, once she had cast a withering look at Agatha - along the lines of “we’ll talk later about this” - “it’s truly magnificent this juxtaposition of antique greatness and pulsating modern urban life!” She smiled at Enzo as she would have done in the past on the last day of school, when the students were marching past her, on the way to their awards presentation. “Have you seen much of The Eternal City yet?”

Enzo thought about it fast and frantically. What the devil was he supposed to say? He didn’t actually know all that much about Rome, or rather he knew all the wrong things. He had hardly ever seen the inside of a church, and he only vaguely remembered, that he had once, when he was at school, been given a guided tour of the Vatican Collections, with a bunch of his worthless and stupid classmates. He had taken a slap round the ear from his teacher in front of the famous Laocoon sculpture, because he had tried to liven up the boring school trip by taking a well-aimed and skilful spit at the priceless work.

Enzo’s mind roamed across Rome and alighted on the dome of St Peter’s. He gave Emily that guileless look that he had inherited off his English mother, and said, “San Pietro, Signora - I always like to go to San Pietro.”

“Yes, with good reason”, Emily concurred, “St Peter’s is inexhaustible and I suppose for you Catholics there’s the added weight of all its religious connotations.”

Enzo lowered his eyes, to mask his confusion. For him the religious connotations of St Peter’s barely weighed anything. In fact, he had always thought of that enormous church as a waste of space which would be ideally suited to a massive garage.

“We have already seen a lot in Rome, but we have an old longing that’s not yet been fulfilled to see the Via Appia Antica. I think we’ll need to hire a car so we can drive ourselves there. The area is a bit isolated and the footpaths are hard for us. One should always be able to get out and hang around a while to get a proper look. Would you be so kind as to come with us? We could stop on the way back at one of those pretty little restaurants near the Trevi Fountain and have dinner together?”

Emily was pleased with herself. The young man seemed pleased about it, and this trip followed by an invitation to dine with them seemed in all likelihood to be a more tasteful reward for rescuing Agatha’s handbag than the painful handing over of cash.

Agatha in her bumbling absentmindedness regularly got them into these tricky situations. Emily threw poor Agatha, who was fumbling self-consciously at her bunch of poppies, one last critical look.

“Perhaps in the next few days you could ring us at our hotel?” she said with a benevolent smile. She then took Agatha by the arm and she stepped away with her towards the arch of Septimus Severus, treading determinedly and gracefully across the ancient pavement.

Half an hour later, Enzo was sitting, in a small tavern in Trastevere with a cappuccino, alongside that same “ladro, porco, mascalzone, and umbriglione” who had so disgracefully laid a finger on Agatha’s bag.

“Really Enzo, how was I supposed to know that she was a client of yours?” he protested, while rubbing his stomach, which was still hurting. “I thought the Capitoline was your patch.”

“When business is going badly on the Capitoline, I am then entitled to come down to the Forum,” growled Enzo and looked at the other one with a malevolent gaze of his slanting eyes. Among Rome’s criminals he was somewhat feared and could afford sometimes to encroach on other criminals’ territories, because in his line of work he was able to combine Italian cunning with English thoroughness and directness.

“Yes,” said the other thief thoughtfully, “there’s no place that’s always good all of the time. For example, earlier I made the most money in San Pietro in Vincoli. Michelangelo’s Moses there has done a lot for me! Too bad he’s not a saint. I would have offered a big thick candle to him, because he’s done me many a good service!”

The specialist thief of San Pietro in Vincoli leaned closer to Enzo: “Do you know, when those Stranieri look so closely at Moses’s beard...yes they are mad for that beard of his! It’s a classy beard, a beard like a waterfall...and then they forget everything, those Stranieri! What beautiful wallets I have already managed to take there, crocodile leather, pigskin, all well stocked ...on two occasions even a wristwatch…you undo it gently, cautiously, and avanti! A good little patch, by the blood of St Gennaro!” The ladro chuckled and finished his cappuccino: “God bless the beard of Moses. What a magnificent beard!”

But Enzo wasn’t listening anymore: the other thief’s exploits only made him annoyed. He was weighing something up in his head and thinking about the Via Appia: a small down payment on his great Venice coup – yes that would be just right and proper. Eventually he would get his expenses back on it, saddled as he was with Luigi and the dog Dante, who always wants to eat. Yes, a down payment but he had to get the ball rolling pretty smartly. The fat one with the glasses mustn’t smell a rat. Enzo's brain worked, made plans and then rejected them again, while the other one just talked and talked. If he wanted the benefits of Moses’s beard, he could have them!

Enzo could hear the ladro complaining from afar, that the foreigners lately had forfeited their fine breeding and their way of life, that they weren’t able to immerse themselves unreservedly like they did before in contemplating great works of art, like Michelangelo’s Moses. Yes, humanity was getting steadily worse, more superficial and more motivated by profit alone. At this rate Enzo did not even bother answering. He threw the coins for the cappuccino on the table, and walked away without another word, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

Agatha sat gloomily in her bed in her room at the hotel by Santa Maria Maggiore and stared at the brown wooden blinds that she hadn’t opened for two days. She threw the covers back, placed her feet carefully on the floor, tried to stand up and groaned. This damn rheumatism! It had to be the sirocco..

The day before yesterday she had wanted to get out of bed, full of the joys of spring and ready for action with the Via Appia in her sights, when she noticed with horror that her spine, which tended to be a little bit stiff, had now changed into a hypersensitive broomstick, emitting major sharp pains. Agatha had to stay in bed, and Emily rubbed the small of her back with ointment. She did it puffing and continually pausing, because Emily herself was by no means fit and well and could feel her heart thumping, this too doubtless because of the sirocco.

Enzo had called once before and had been put off. He had swallowed down his rage with some difficulty, or rather he displaced it on to the unfortunate Luigi. And Dante the dog in turn collected a hefty kick, which persuaded him once more to frequent the dustbins of Rome, and for the time being he stopped begging for food from his masters. Dante was lean and cheerful - a dog of a measured and philosophical disposition - who took each day as it came. He found that he had a happy life, compared to the many abandoned dogs of Rome who didn’t have masters. A bad master was better than none at all.

And sometimes - Dante didn’t know why but accepted the inexplicable phenomenon like manna from heaven - sometimes quite unexpectedly his master would come and would play with him and laugh and bring him meat: proper good meat - not just leftovers - or half a bread roll or chocolate. Dante would then devour these hastily in a frenzy of enjoyment and he would stockpile them for times of emergency, when there was nothing going but the dustbin and Dante’s ribs would increasingly start emerging day by day from his seedy, colourless coat.

Agatha groaned again, but then she placed her feet down decisively on the floor and limped around the room with great lamentations. She’d got started and she had to keep going, because in the end she hadn’t come to Rome to stare for days on end at the patterns on the ceiling of a Roman hotel room that was last painted a long time ago. It was also not fair on Emily.

She looked across at her friend, who was breathing heavily and quietly measuring out drops of heart medicine into a glass. Poor Emily! Her heart would surely profit from her losing just a few pounds. The committee chair of her weight watchers’ club had seriously reproached her about it. But in Emily’s case a Scottish oatcake could transmute itself into a cushion of fat, that would craftily take up residence on her hips, and that’s not something that would ever change; it was as if it imposed itself on Emily, despite her heroic days of fasting.

In that very moment the telephone rang and it was Enzo enquiring whether perhaps, on this giornata bellisima, they might consider making their trip to the Via Appia. Agatha, who was just then massaging her aching back, heard Emily make a resolute pledge. Yes they would like to go out today and it should be in an hour. Agatha looked at her friend with admiration: Emily was so heroic, because she took no notice of her infirmities. She had not done so in all her long decades of teaching service, where she had been a model of self-discipline and of fulfillment of duty to her students and to the faculty. And Emily wouldn’t let life squirm out of her hands so easily: she dragged it back under her own control and with a strength and vitality that belied her ageing body.

Agatha wasn’t going to lag behind her. Suppressing all sounds of suffering, she got dressed quickly, and as a finale she put on the long golden amethyst necklace, which she had got for her twenty-first birthday. The Via Appia trip would be like a party and she wanted to celebrate it appropriately.

Emily got in touch with Hertz, and a handsome, clean, sparkling hire care was soon standing outside the hotel entrance. A man from the firm explained a few technicalities to Emily, while Agatha listened in dutifully, even though she hadn’t been allowed behind the wheel of a car for a long time because of her absent-mindedness.

Emily said her thanks and squeezed behind the steering wheel with a groan. She in turn didn’t drive in England very often and was somewhat out of practice. On top of that she was of course used to driving on the left. But neither of them were going to be put off by such small details. Beaming with joy they drove off and met Enzo on the corner, where he regarded the vehicle with some scepticism. Emily and Agatha let him in; then the car, which already had a tough day ahead, made a sudden lurch forward because Emily had let the clutch up too quickly. That was something she did often.

Enzo struck himself on the forehead and stifled a curse. Perhaps he would be better off taking up an honest trade. But proper work really went against the grain with Enzo, and most honest trades were connected with proper work - this was the sort of realization which always put a stop to every attempt of Enzo to start a better life. Instead he now started to contemplate Agatha’s long gold necklace pensively, with so many beautiful amethysts hanging from it. There was the down payment! Yes, he would manage that easily. And while Emily lurched through the Roman traffic and the poor car leapt over every crossroads like a grasshopper in the countryside, Enzo watched the necklace reflectively from the back seat. It did have a safety lock fitted on it; however Agatha had forgotten to close the small gold bar, and so you could pull open the chain without any resistance.

Enzo smiled with pursed lips and the corners of his mouth turned downwards slightly, expressing his contempt. He let his slanting blue eyes, which coexisted in delightful contrast to his dark curly hair, stray idly out the window. Outside the Temple of Vesta slipped quickly by, its round fluted columns shimmering in the golden light of the morning sun. Soon they would drive past the Circus Maximus and then reach the Baths of Caracalla and not long after that the Porta Appia.

But Emily missed the junction, because she didn’t realise that they had to turn off, as all her rapture and her attention were focused on the grey-green Tiber, which was following its course, quietly and mysteriously, between its Travertine walls.

“I love the Tiber,” Emily said. “Do you, Signor Marrone?”

“Yes, of course, of course, the Tiber is bellissimo” (why not?) he replied weakly: “But the Signora has driven the wrong way - sbagliato! We should have driven to the Baths of Caracalla, because the road to the Porta Appia goes from there.”

“Oh,” said Emily, “but we haven’t gone too far in the wrong direction. Maybe we could just reverse a little bit back to the junction....”

And to Enzo’s horror she heaved straight away at the gear lever. After the car died on her twice with a protesting screech, she managed to find reverse, and now the poor car for a change made its familar lurch, but this time backwards.

“We’ll just drive there along the curb, so as not to interfere with the traffic,” Emily announced and drove off with a fearless trust in the Lord. “Agatha could you please watch out the window for me a bit...you know what my neck’s like.”

Agatha smiled gently and watched helpfully out the window: “I don’t see anything ominous just yet, there’s just a couple of cars at the far end of the intersection, although they are approaching pretty quickly,” she added thoughtfully, and turning to the petrified Enzo she went on: “My friend has a very short neck and she can never see behind her when she is reversing. I always take care of that for her.”

Suddenly they were surrounded, with cars racing round them and buzzing like a swarm of wasps around a pot of honey, and the noise of horns of every tone and pitch you could think of was assailing their ears.

“Signora - prego -please, per favore, per cortesia! You can’t reverse here, go a bit further on, I beg you! We can turn round later.” Enzo mopped the sweat from his brow.

Emily took her foot off the accelerator, cast a chastising look towards the annoying vehicles around her, who apparently didn’t feel constrained by any ban on use of the horn (such an ill-disciplined, emotional people!) and rammed the car into first gear with a screech. Once again they started along the Tiber.

Then at the Ponte Subicio Emily turned abruptly and sharply to the south, without having properly got into the correct lane, and only the outstanding reaction and braking abilities of the line of traffic to her left prevented their trip to the Via Appia Antica from ending there on that bridge in a massively smashed-up bumper.

The other road-users would all have to drink a restorative pick-me-up when they got home - Camomile or Campari, depending on their age and constitution - but Emily knew nothing of this. Unburdened by cares she cheerfully drove up the wide road that led to the ancient Porta San Paolo.

Enzo sat still and worn out in the back. The sudden swerve had left him a bit overwhelmed. He prayed quietly and fervently to the blessed Anthony, which was something he hadn’t done for many years. Yes indeed, he pledged a large candle to Il Santo, and he even went so far as to assure St Anthony of a percentage share in the net profit of the entire enterprise, if he would just emerge alive from this car.

‘Just look over there, my dear, that’s the Pyramid of Cestius,” said the enraptured Emily to Agatha, and cut across a heavily laden vegetable cart. The unfortunate greengrocer had to brake so sharply, that a carefully stacked pile of Sicilian fennel as well as several dozen bundles of early summer onions from the Bay of Naples fell on the road and mingled with all the abundant dust down there.

The greengrocer, a swarthy, bloated and thick-set man, scrambled smartly out of his car, waved his arms in the air, and started on a long tirade about his hard life and the large number of family members that he had to feed. Then he sent a flood of ripe Roman curses in the direction of the Englishwomen’s rattling clumsy car, whose occupants noticed nothing because they were keeping their eyes resolutely fixed in silent joy upon the noble outline of the Pyramid of Cestius.

Enzo had no doubt heard everything but had shrunk so small on his seat and was so withdrawn in on himself, that no one would have seen anything of him.

“Go left, Signora, and keep going along the wall,” he said with a weak voice, in an attempt to prevent a renewed suicide attempt by driving backwards, while Emily - undaunted and brisk - drove through the old Porta Ostiense. He then shut his eyes so that he could enjoy a couple of minutes peace and quiet. There was probably nothing that could go wrong if this monster behind the steering wheel just continued to creep along the Aurelian Wall.

“Oh Agatha, look, we are just leaving the city,” Emily called. “The breath of the Roman Campagna is wafting me along, the fragrant air of the southern meadows.” She leaned her head back and breathed in deeply and reverently, while she kept her shortsighted eyes fixed on the cypresses, which were much more numerous here, and in fact almost seemed to be the guardians of the gate to the Campagna.

“I am so happy that we managed to overcome our ailments,” Agatha suggested, “what a beautiful day! Happiness is still the best cure for the body’s infirmities. My spine has got much better and hardly hurts at all anymore, and you have lasted exceptionally well, Emily!” Both were so happy and grateful and so wrapped up in the unfolding magic of that ancient rural landscape, that Emily unawares had shifted across to the left-hand lane and was comfortably driving along it, as if she was in Merrie England. And Agatha of course hadn’t noticed either. All the time there were vehicles coming towards them on the same side of the road, and only when Emily shot in between two onrushing cars and the drivers were throwing their arms in the air and pointing with their fingers at the side of their heads with anger in their eyes, did Agatha furrow her brow and draw Emily’s attention to the unsettling traffic conditions:

“Look, Emily, why are we suddenly driving towards all these oncoming cars?”

“It’s their undisciplined driving style,” said Emily calmly and unshaken continued to drive: “Think of the zebra crossing at the Colosseum, where all those crazy people were charging across, even though there were pedestrians there.”

Agatha was getting anxious: “That was a bit close, Emily! I don’t know why you are driving in between the cars, but in the long run this is going to get pretty exhausting. And why are all these people pointing at their heads? Let me see if you have got your hat on the wrong way round.” She leaned forward and inspected Emily gravely, who was driving on with the obstinacy of a breakwater against the flow of traffic:

“No, my dear, your hat is just right. I really don’t understand these uncouth people.” She leaned back and was quiet again.

As a consequence of Emily’s shortsightedness, it had become an increasing occurence at home, especially when she was in a hurry, that she would put her hat, which was decorated with flowers and bows, on the wrong way round. This tended to lend her a somewhat bizarre and eccentric appearance, and it would provoke laughter among those disrespectful people, who knew nothing of her glorious past as the head of a large girls’ boarding school.

The next car that came towards Emily and Agatha whizzed so close and so quickly past their open car-window, that the pink ribbons on Agatha’s light green spring hat began to flutter in the passing wind. The driver thundered right by them, which he wasn’t expecting, and with one hand he wrenched the steering wheel around, so that he just managed to get through the narrow gap, while with the other he tore at his hair in a melodramatic style.

At the same time another car hissed past on Emily's left side, and the driver shouted something loud and menacing. The sound of his voice woke Enzo….He glanced out the window and could see what was wrong. He immediately upped Il Santo Antonio’s cut of his profit share, and, so as to give the meritorious saint a clear chance to continue his blessed work, he called out to the two ladies; first of all to stop and then to move across as quickly as possible into the right-hand lane when there was a gap in the traffic.

Shame-faced, Emily complied. However in her head she placed most of the blame for the debacle upon this nonsensical continental traffic order, when in the end it was far more sensible to drive on the left-hand side, not the right.

In the mean time they had reached the Porta Appia. Enzo’s heart did stop one more time, when Emily just about managed to slip in front of a lorry that was thundering past. My God, how could he have been so insane as to throw his lot in with these lunatics! They surely didn’t have enough money to make all this worthwhile. Not even a diamond ring was worth the loss of his young life.

When Emily was bang in the middle of a junction and so close to the restorative peace of the Via Appia’s street of tombs, the engine then cut out and wouldn’t start again, despite futile attempts, and Enzo was just about ready to raise St Anthony’s percentage again. But then the battered engine leapt back to life and Enzo let things be. Even with saints one shouldn’t set a disadvantageous precedent.

They were at the Via Appia. The Hertz hire car limped slow and exhausted across the ancient cobble stones. Enzo felt slightly more light-hearted and sat back in his seat with a sense of excitement. It would be unlikely that even Emily could bring about an accident out here in the open spaces and with no other road users in the vicinity. And as for the return trip to the City and the Trevi Fountain – well in that case Il Santo would just have to put in some work again…after all he’d have to do something for all the money he’d be getting!

The peace and the sheer extent of the green-gold poppy sprinkled Campagna Romana, in which bird-song mingled with the bleating of grazing sheep, infolded Emily and Agatha like a bell-jar formed only of light. They both fell silent and felt indistinctly yet with a deep knowing in their hearts that here was something of their reward for their journey, of the hidden joy for the sake of which they had set out and which had been lying in wait for them; and they now knew that in spite of everything it had not been foolish and absurd of them to go in search of the beauty of this world, with their vulnerable, frail bodies, humiliated by their many weaknesses. Emily broke the silence at last, and she cleared her throat to master her emotion: “Over there, Agatha, do you see-the tomb of Cecilia Metella.”

Agatha turned her gaze obediently towards the impressive round building, whose double-tailed battlements shone before the deep blue sky.

“Cecilia Metella was the consort of Crassus, who reigned as part of the First Triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey. She was the daughter of the general Metellus, who conquered Crete, and who himself was part of the pre-eminent Roman lineage.” Emily had taught history before she became school head, and she knew her subject.

Feeling bored, Enzo shut his eyes. Having barely escaped death, what was this fool babbling on about now? Fortunately he only understood half of what she was saying. It was unbelievable what some people crammed into their brains! Enzo suppressed a yawn. Then his glance fell upon the necklace again. He could only do the job while they were out of the car. He had to persuade the two of them to stop somewhere. He had to make one of the countless monuments appetizing to them - but which one? Enzo looked disdainfully out the car, finding the quiet tombs, gleaming in the sunlight, all dreary and boring. What a mad idea to come here at all! The two crazy English women may as well have suggested a picnic in the catacombs or in the Central Cemetery.

Yet Agatha came to Enzo’s aid. “Look, Emily”, she said in an attentive voice, “isn’t that magical! Please, please stop, we have got to see that close-up!”

Emily pulled decisively on the handbrake and turned her shortsighted view towards the side of the ancient road: There, between the green-black trunks of the cypress trees, which hemmed the street of graves like watchmen in the midday silence, arose a simple memorial, carrying four stone busts in relief on each side. Their faces bore an impressive vitality, as if the stone itself was breathing from a thousand years away. They gazed in the accumulated silence into the distance, and they listened to the song of the Campagna, which was around them in the birdsong, in the cries of the cicadas and in the soundless growth of the grasses and flowers.

Agatha and Emily went silently over to the four faces. With great effort Emily climbed up the high stone dais, which separated them from the busts, went on to stand so close to them, peering through her thick lenses, looking like she could have given them mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.