Josep Pla - Life Embitters

I don’t remember ever seeing such a concentration of salamanders and lizards like the one populating those venerable walls, arches, and the inscriptions that Logotete read to me. Those animals lived a wonderful life on the hot stones, among the dry dusty weeds growing in the cracks. There was also the occasional scorpion. Lizards poked their flattened, triangular heads out of holes in the stone. Salamanders ran up and down the columns, played in the corners of pedestals, slept on ashlars that retained the pomp of earlier days …

Now nearly everyone can visit these sites without leaving their means of transport. There are roads to the ruins. Earlier tourists were more longsuffering and generally visited the archaeological areas on foot and equipped with an umbrella. Those pink, orange, or mauve lady’s umbrellas were pretty in the suffocating light of Rome. The gentlemen wore panama hats — that eventually turned brown — and severe light-gray alpaca jackets.

On our strolls we would meet a lot of tourist groups, generally of the Nordic variety, and I say Nordic because with their fair hair and fresh red cheeks they had a family air about them. The ladies inevitably resembled the photograph in the medallions the men wore on their watch chains. Hanging from a waistcoat button, the chain fell in two pompous loops suspended from symmetrical pockets. The watch was on the left and the purse on the right. Not long ago I saw one of these purses made from silver chainmail that looked as if it would last for ever. It made the strangest impact: it looked like an antique object — more prehistoric than a Paleolithic axhead.

They didn’t react immediately, because they came very culturally informed and obsessed by ancient Rome. However, a lady would suddenly blanch, her umbrella would shake between her fingers, and she would shriek instinctively, spontaneously, slightly raising her skirts (they wore bootees in those days), panic spreading all over her face. The lizards and salamanders had been sighted. “Over there, over there!” shouted the frightened lady in Norwegian or Finnish, pointing her finger at the large dark green head of a huge lizard asleep, half in the sun, half in the shade of rocks. Then they got goose bumps and were astonished because they’d not expected anything of the sort. The Baedecker was a perfect book; the last edition of that famous guide described the state of the cobbles, the more or less dense dust on an avenue, and whether soup in a particular hotel was excellent, good, average, or merely drinkable. What the Baedecker didn’t mention was the presence of so many beasties among the illustrious ruins. If the group included very impressionable ladies, the presence of our slithering friends produced a real outbreak of screaming. The salamanders ran and hid, rustling over dry grass. The lizards opened an eye, retreated slightly, and then shut it again as if dying of bliss. The guides felt duty-bound to provide explanations that were rather pedestrian. “This demonstrates, ladies and gentlemen,” they’d say in rudimentary English, “how inscrutably ancient these ruins are …” Their husbands had to promise they would write to Herr Baedecker, in Leipzig, the moment they were back in the hotel. The fact was that the shock had been too great for them to continue the visit with any profit. “We’ll come back another day,” they said, much to the chagrin of their guides who obviously didn’t care a fig about those little critters. And, eventually, they did return, now better equipped to deal with the archaeological fauna.

Don Antoni, who was a skeptic, was more amused watching such scenes than deciphering mutilated inscriptions or formulating conjectures about quarried stone or heaps of cadaverous rubble.

On summer evenings we used to go to the Greco for coffee, and then we’d head to the ruins via Corso and the Piazza Venezia. It was hot. People were eating ice cream on the terraces in the gallery. Ladies wore light clothes. We sometimes passed a horse-drawn carriage with folk in open shirts, sleeves rolled up, singing songs and playing the mandolin. The glow from the streetlights lit up the golden, roast-chicken color of the stone of the old palaces on Corso. Everyone was sweating slightly and gesticulating languidly. Everyone, if they’d dared, would like to have launched into passionate song. Everyone was humming some vague tune. Logotete strode on, oblivious to the oppressive Roman night; short and rigid, he wore a stiff, well-ironed collar, a buttoned-up jacket, a bowler hat, and flourished a gleaming walking stick.

At that time of night, we didn’t roam too far into that convulsed scenario of ruins. If it was moonlit, we went over to the monuments surrounded by iron fencing and looked at them as one might observe a caged animal. As their pedestal was lower than the level of the surrounding earth, they were always surrounded by a broad pit. A large number of rats lived — generally safely — in these depressions. The Rome Town Hall maintained a legion of cats on the terrain to exterminate them, or at least to keep them under control. However, the archaeological department cats were extremely moody, and though the rats were often visible and climbed up to touch the fences, they refused to carry out the mission with which they had been charged. “They’re like bureaucrats …” said Don Antoni, with a grin, “they don’t feel like going to the office today.” Sometimes the cats spent the night miaowing mournfully, as if stricken by melancholy nostalgia, and that velvety, finicky sound resonated round moonlit ruins, cadaverous columns, and ghostly arches, with a thrilling timbre. Although he was Greek and knew Greek perfectly, Don Antoni was sensitive to these elemental Romantic explosions. The cats sometimes played games, chased, hissed, and rolled over each other. But there were nights when they did their duty. Then, by the light of a full moon, we witnessed widespread exterminations, fierce battles between cats and rats. On propitious nights, the cats worked into the early hours, with feverish ardor and real rage. On such nights, Don Antoni would unfold the whitest of handkerchiefs, place it delicately on an illustrious stone and sit upon it. I would do likewise. And, smoking our cigarettes, we watched the spectacle.

We walked slowly back late, when the early morning breeze wafted the fresh smell of the pine trees on Pincio towards us. People on Corso were clear-headed, but equally lethargic and drowsy. Groups were gathered around the entrances to the trattorie . Inside the Caffé Aragno, waiters, without their waistcoats, were putting chairs on tables like black and white robots. The odd carrozzella still passed by, transporting sweaty, red-cheeked people bawling next to young ladies and mandolins.

Time passed. Autumn came. The Pensione Fiorentina, that during the summer had been full to overflowing, was still quite empty in early October. In those first cold days, apart from occasional Italian visitors, only the Viennese lady and two bearded Bulgarian engineers who mixed with no one were left in the house. Ida the chambermaid spent her leisure time smoking cigarettes in my bedroom. Now and then she would intervene brilliantly in the noisy scenes in the courtyard. She loved her country, especially her town: Asti. She coughed a lot. Whenever I looked into her dark blue, deep-set eyes, I thought she looked frail.

On the 14th of October — I will remember the day forever more — I read until one A.M. I undressed and got into bed. I couldn’t sleep; I was nervous and chain-smoked nonstop. The clock ticking on the bedside table was driving me mad. I could never sleep on my heart’s side: the slight pressure from the sheet put me on edge: it was an intolerable burden. Whenever I hear my heart, an obsession with death takes over and my imagination considers the possibility I might be buried alive. It may seem pretentious or ridiculous, but that night the anguish and distress provoked by this obsession were exceptional. I got out of bed two or three times. I rubbed my face with eau de cologne. I tried to read the heaviest tome I could find. Finally, exhausted, lips parched, I fell into a deep sleep.