The Walk by Deborah DiBari

Bougainvillea cascades to the ground like origami folded love letters. A turn taken from my usual path, pass the gates of the Jewish Ghetto, through Campo Dei Fiori, down the street of shop windows displaying, shoes, clothing, and chickens dangling from metal hooks. Not lost, never lost, just not advancing. No longer a tourist, my visa expired, wandering, not noticing street names. My Italian teacher, the guy subletting my apartment, and some of my friends, had given me telephone numbers. The names are written on a page torn from a yellow legal pad. I call just to hear someone say my name. Millet. I have almost stopped calling the man whose letters had arrived at my New York address, stamped posta di aria. Pronto? I am not ready. His mother answers the phone, when he is home, she shouts, e´ La Americana. I crossed an ocean to keep our date, when he finally showed up three weeks later, we went to a restaurant. I asked for cheese on my seafood pasta. My vowels were too round. I guess I sounded better on paper. The last few times I called the mother snapped fuori, and hung up before I could ask when he would be back. Hope is more tangible went absent.
The ache spreads across my shoulders. A splash drops on my forehead, two more follow, and, a few splatter on the ground. A narrow swatch of blue squeezed between rooftops. A worn housedress, and two dishtowels, hangs from plastic clothespins, immutable female narrative drifts out of open windows. E´ora di pranzo, spoons, knives, and forks jangle, places set like fate. I move out of the line of water dripping off the edges of daily life.
November sun on a sea of cars parked counter-clockwise around the compass. Home, six hours behind under down quilts. A fresh turkey, and vegetables with native soil clinging to their roots, the ingredients for the cold antipasto wrapped in white deli paper, two pans of eggplant parmigiano covered with aluminum foil, wait in the refrigerator. A car door slams. Shut. The exchange rate for one year of yearning is months of displacement.
Rumps of prosciutto crudo, and cylinders of provolone. The alimentario passes a sample on a sheet of glassine paper over the counter to his last costumer. She rolls it between her fingers, chews and nods approval. Twists and turns the streets backtrack on each other, and the Bougainvillea more orange than at first sight. The clash of a gate falling to the ground scares off stray cats and the epic dead. The alimentario stoops to insert the padlock into kissing eye rings. Signor. Shoulders bent in professional servility, he says mi dica, as if it is my turn to order an eto of salami, and a rosetta roll. Dove´ Il Pantheon? He slices the air, his hand waving to a spot down the block. Diritto. With his other hand bending side to side. Destra e´sinestra. Diritto? Straight. E´ destra? Then right. He gestures for me to follow. His indigo cardigan stretched at the hem, elbows on the verge of threadbare.
The alimentario enters an alley. A woman rushes past, a blue plastic shopping bag in her hand, the unmistakable aroma of restless lovers. Her face carrying feral passion. Ore di pranzo, divides morning longing from aching commitment. In her kitchen she rubs pink plump wrists like chicken cutlets with garlic, dips Judas fingertips into fresh ground coffee, and gargles with lemon juice. She points to the steaming pot when her husband asks why her cheeks are flushed? Constantine—Frederick—Victor—Benito, tucked away until she hears sleep’s rhythmic breath beside her in the dark.
The alimentario calls to me from the shadows. Prego. Footfalls ricochet off moss-stained arches hording daylight in overgrown ivy. My rubber sole shoes pass iron bars exhaling martyrs’ prayers. The breath rising from buried cities wraps around my bare ankles. Never hearing of something does not mean it has not happened. Many things menace a woman alone. Flesh decaying like a leper’s, bones sealed in contradiction. Who could know? Happiness has restrictions; loneliness is limitless.
The alimentario stands aside to let me pass. Prego. He enters a courtyard some feet from the exit. Sunlight inches closer to the oculus, brushes the Pantheon’s bruised hide scarred by time and plunder. Shop windows, unfazed by tourist activity, doze in communal nap. The street performed tuning his guitar eyes the lire coins scattered in the opened case on red velvet. A few yards away, a girl sits on the pavement, a toddler to her flaccid breast. Her free hand held palm up. Prego. Prego.
Monuments adapt.
I check my wristwatch like a mime imitating someone in dark glasses late to an appointment. Millet. Millet. I look around to see who called out my name. I see no one I know except the fountain’s stone eye leviathans spewing recycled sighs. Chatter between mouthfuls, metal tapping ceramic, and the silence of lips on glasses, hum a familiar tune. I find an open table under the canopy of umbrellas, and take the chair best situated to view people, columns, pediment, the obelisk out of focus. Lei sta sola? The waiter grumbles about three empty seats. He recommends gnocchi. I order vino bianco. It is Thursday. The alimentari close for the afternoon; fresh gnocchi is on the menu. Mythical roots, the fifth day of the week, potato and semolina dumplings. I will move beyond repetition when the simultaneous translator no longer intrudes.
The waiter pours wine, di consumo, I will be charged for the amount I drink, more than a glass, less than a bottle. Does it take centuries to figure out elegant solutions? Prego. I take a gulp, wine the color of harvest spreads from my mouth to my shoulders. I check the time on my wristwatch. I count back six hours to home. My sublet will not deposit the last two months rent into my account for at least three more hours. My yearning spans the Atlantic Ocean.
The fountains steps rimmed with crowds, tourist, workers, and pigeons pecking the ground for panini crumbs. A couple in matching blue bandanas, printed with white paisleys, backpacks at their feet, lean into each other. She takes a bit from his sandwich. He tries to snatch it back. Thick braids tangle with his long hair tangle with crusts and lips.
Scented steam rises from the dish put in front of me. The waiter sprinkles parmigiano; it falls like snow on wind-bent branches. He lingers. Wine gone to my tongue, ho fame—lo so. Tutti hanno fame. I take the book from my bag, open to the marked page. I prefer the company of characters, loose ends of messy lives bound between two covers. Miniature bits of gnocchi, between paragraphs, melt like the Eucharist on my tongue, wine between each sentences; enjoying morsels of community. A pregnant cat rubs against my leg. I have an idea to rescue one of the dozens of stray kittens, maybe two, nothing enjoys constant solitude, and sneak it into my room rented by the week.
Lethargic, and cleansed, my body longing, the sheets on my twin bed washed in disinfectant detergent. The blanks walls demand answers. The afternoon sun outlines the shutters with promises that keep me here. I have met the couple next door in the hall. The women’s cautious smile parts her the blue henna tattoo. Emigrants wait in Rome for U.S. visas. I have an American passport, so what am I waiting for?
Stained-rim glasses, crumb-scattered tablecloths, and crumpled napkins, the chairs askew, metal shutters wake making a racket. Ore di pranzo e´ finito. Crosshatch movement flows in entrances and out of exits to the piazza. Snatches of Lay Lady Lay and mother’s lament on, coins dropping into soft pile and extended palm. Romans arms linked, holding hands, stroll somewhere at the pace of the stories they exchange.
I gesture for a check. The waiter out of uniform, his pleated cummerbund removed, points to a man alone at a table in the next restaurant. E´ja paguto. Musk scented armpits, and lust locked seams. The bottle empty, my glass nearly. I nod and walk out to the piazza. My head burns from wine turned to vinegar. His gaze follows me. I fill my hand with water from an open spout, resting it at the back of my neck. A few drops trickle down my spine. Pigeons peck at a blemish on a gargoyles stone cheek. An Asian girl peers into the camera viewer coaxing her lover to smile. He mugs. She laughs. They ask me to take their picture using the Italian word they think means everything. Prego. Through the viewer all couples in love are alike, intimate and awkward. I hand her the camera. In the end who will keep the photo, and who value it?
The empty tables are set with white over burgundy, green, rose, blue. Fountain utterances. I touch my damp collar, looking directly into the lens I say. Cerco mi stesso. The English subtitle translates, I am looking for myself, intp I want anonymity. He walks away. I move in the opposite direction, wanting shelter from the glare coming on the tepid water.
Nylon warm-up suits, and camera shutters whisper like sighs through the portico. A bent zitella, better acquainted with the recent dead, seated in a chair beside a column, sells lotto tickets. Cataracts veil her vision. Fortuna. Vente milla. Fortuna. Her voice vibrates like wind through a hollow reed. I move closer for a better look at luck. Close enough to smell the woman’s ripe age. Zitella. The old woman lifts her head out of its curved spine. Fortuna. Vente milla. One, please. Che dici? Uno. Grazia. Bona fortuna.
Arm in arm with luck accompanying me through late day shadows, along random streets that lead away from tourist clamor. I stop into a bar for an espresso and a gitone to make a call. I drop the half-dollar size coin into the phone box at the back of the bar. My finger dials his number, an involuntarily reaction learned from a lifetime of bad habits. Embarrassed, and gangly emotions, deluded by illegible handwriting.
The bleating of sheep, death in their nostrils, murmurs of entreaty rising in the cavernous marble womb, lost in hollow coffers. Silent repetition seeking someone divine to listen. My words fall back into my mouth. The silence should have hurt. The pause instead, like a brief respite in cicada orgy on summer night, wakes me. Chi e´? Nessuno. Done. Tutti hanno fame—everyone has hunger.
Signorina, voi qualche cosa?
Prego.
For me?
E´ bona fortuna.
Bougainvillea cascades to the ground like origami folded love letters. A tabby kitten, one eye sealed closed. Pronto?