Louisa Young - Devotion

‘Centaur,’ he said.

Whenever they went across into Sant’Angelo, to the ghetto, or Piazza, as Susanna called it, as if it were the only piazza in Rome, which it most certainly was not, they had to touch and greet the four worn and weathered faces on the bridgestone as they passed. It was called the Bridge of the Four Heads, but there was only one head, with four faces. Nenna knew her city so well she could just swagger through it, which filled Tom with a fierce jealousy, because he wanted Rome, he wanted to belong to it, and he – so fair, so pale-eyed – so very clearly didn’t. She had names for the skinny wild cats at the Portico d’Ottavia, and for the fat, ferocious lion and the slender greyhound carved into the front wall of the buildings down the road. The madman on the corner who sang opera greeted her: ‘ Nenna La Bella, bella Nenna! ’, and sometimes they sang scraps of Puccini and Verdi to each other, joining together in duets and choruses.

One day early on, sitting on the river wall, Nenna sang: folk songs, Roman songs, Venetian songs, Neapolitan songs, boatmen’s songs, songs in dialects, songs in Italian. Songs she knew from her father.

Tom hummed along quietly, picking up words, asking for translations. Michelemmà = Michele mio = My Michael.

Roma divina! The warm air, the wind on his neck, the magnificent smells … Kitty in turn sang ‘London’s Burning’. They sang it as a round, and giggled, and tried to think of a more sophisticated song about London, so Tom sang ‘Ratcliffe Highway’, which Riley’s father John Purefoy had taught him, with its haunting tune and tale of the man who kept running away from the recruiting party, and ended up hanged. Nenna stared at him in sorrow all the way through, and sang a Neapolitan song about four moccatoras , which they could tell was equally sad, whatever a moccatora might be. Nenna taught them a melancholy lullaby: Lucciola, lucciola, vien’ da me, io ti darò il pan del re, il pan del re e della regina, lucciola, lucciola, vien’ vicina . So Tom and Kitty, who did not know that a lucciola was a firefly, and did not know what a firefly was anyway, but understood the insect connection from Nenna’s buzzing flying gestures, and the pan del re from a quick run to the bakery across the way and some gestures into the window, sang ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’, with the animal noises – but then feared that they were trying too hard, and felt foolish, until Nenna smiled and started singing ‘ Nella vecchia fattoria … ’ to the same tune.

They were quiet for a while after that, till Nenna said carefully: ‘How is it London?’ and Tom said: ‘ È bella. Tu vien vicina. Io ti darò il pan del re .’ It’s beautiful. You come near. I will give you the bread of the king.

They sat for hours on the various stone and mud beaches of the island comparing things, playing games, as the river ebbed and flowed. They laid out their opinions and thoughts and preferences for comparison, proceeding with increasing alacrity as each test was passed and each admission approved. Kitty tried to express her regret that they hadn’t met earlier. Nenna was able to make it clear that she had always wanted a sister. Tom relaxed in the company of females. It was very satisfactory.

Later, family legends developed about these first meetings: that this was the first time Tom ever embraced a girl and he never got over it; that Kitty, who thought herself plump and dull, saw a Mediterranean nymph with skin like honey and hair the colour of olive oil, and that Nenna, who thought herself plain, saw a princess, a rosebud, a pink and golden creature out of a fairy tale, and a silver-haired prince like King Arthur. Everyone recognised it as some kind of love at first sight, and when it was time to go home, sadness prevailed.

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