Elizabeth Peters: Street of the Five Moons

It was too early to dine, so I found a sidewalk café, ordered a Campari and soda, and watched the passing throng.

At least that was what I planned to do. I hadn’t been seated for more than sixty seconds when a good-looking boy sat down next to me, smiled like a Fra Angelico angel, and made an extremely improper suggestion in Italian.

I smiled back at him and made an equally improper suggestion in Italian as fluent as his, but better accented. (The Roman dialect sounds atrocious; it is jeered at by other Italians, especially the Florentines, who speak lovely pure Tuscan.)

The boy’s expression was ludicrous. He had expected me to understand only his sweet smile. I went on to explain that I was expecting my boyfriend, who was six feet six inches tall, and a star soccer player.

The boy left. I opened my guidebook and pretended to read. Actually, I was checking the map, and plotting.

Shops in southern Italy close between noon and four o’clock and then reopen until seven or eight. The streets are crowded during these lovely evening hours, when the heat of the day is passing and the light lingers. There was still plenty of time for me to visit the Via delle Cinque Lune and number 37 in a subtle and inconspicuous manner.

As I walked along, I began to realize that one of the elements in that plan wasn’t going to be as easy as I had anticipated. I am not exactly inconspicuous. For one thing, I’m half a head taller than most Romans, male or female; I stood out like a perambulating obelisk in that throng of little dark people. It became increasingly evident to me that I was going to need some sort of disguise.

I felt even more conspicuous after I had crossed the Via del Corso and plunged into the twisting network of small streets around the Pantheon and the Piazza Navona. There are no sidewalks, except on the big main streets and corsos. The house facades front onto the pavement, which is so narrow in some places that pedestrians have to flatten themselves against a wall to let a Fiat go past. Every tiny piazza has a café or two, whose tables and chairs are insecurely protected from traffic by potted shrubs.

I walked slowly along the Via dei Coronan, peering into the windows of the shops. It wasn’t easy to see the merchandise; there were no plate-glass show windows, brilliantly lighted, as in American stores. But the dark, dusty interiors of these shops held treasure. A worm-eaten but oddly compelling wooden saint, greater than life size, from some looted church; pairs of huge silver gilt candelabra; Meissen china, bodiless gilded Baroque cherubs, a dim, cracked triptych with scenes from the life of some virgin saint . . .

I would have passed the entrance into the Via delle Cinque Lune if I hadn’t been looking for it. You couldn’t even get a Fiat into that passageway without squeezing, but it was lined with shops even darker and more expensive looking than the ones on the Via dei Coronari. One window had an embroidered Chinese robe that stopped me in my tracks. A concealed light brought out the shimmer of the gold threads, which outlined amber and citrine chrysanthemums and a peacock’s tail of glowing blue-green. It must have been a high official’s robe. I had seen one not nearly so lovely in the Victoria and Albert in London.

The number above the door of the shop was 37.

I went on slowly, looking in other windows and feeling absurdly pleased with myself. The odds were at least two to one that number 37 should be an antique shop; there were greengrocers and chemists on the street, plus private houses and apartment buildings. It was a small confirmation of my nebulous theory, but I was in a mood to appreciate any encouragement.

The street curved like the arc of a bow and ended in another equally narrow passageway called the Via della Stellata. At the far end of this latter street I could see a patch of sunlight and a piece of a fountain. It was Bernini’s ‘Fountain of the Rivers,’ in the Piazza Navona.

I don’t often read mystery stories. For light reading I prefer bad historical novels with voluptuous heroines and swashbuckling heroes, and lots of swordplay and seduction. But in some of the mysteries I had read, the heroes – and villains – used to break into places quite a lot. They usually burgled the back entrance through an alley that was conveniently located behind the place they wanted to search.

There was no alley behind the Via delle Cinque Lune.

The street didn’t even form one side of a square. As I have said, it was curved. Maybe there was only one entrance to the shop. From the rubbish piled by the door that seemed a likely hypothesis.

I turned and went back along the Street of the Five Moons. I didn’t stop to look at the mandarin’s robe this time, but I took careful note of number 37 itself. There was nothing distinctive about it except for a name painted in discreet black lettering above the door – A. Fergamo. It meant nothing to me. But I saw something else I had not noticed before – a slitlike opening on one side of the building, so narrow that the sun did not penetrate the gloom within.

On my way back to the hotel I stopped to make several purchases. I took them to my room and freshened up; then I went to the hotel dining room and ordered the specialty of the house, with a bottle of Frascati. It was all on Professor Schmidt, and I toasted him as I drank my wine.

I left the hotel at about ten. It was too early for breaking and entering, but I didn’t want to wait any later for fear of attracting attention. Even in Rome, nice girls don’t go out alone at 2 a.m. The streets were still crowded with people. They all seemed to be paired off like Siamese twins, even the middle-aged tourists. The elderly ladies arm in arm with their paunchy, balding escorts looked rather sweet. There is something about Rome on a spring evening . . . I had to remind myself that I had more important matters to deal with.

I ducked into the first dark doorway and put on my disguise. It wasn’t very complex, just a dark raincoat, a pair of glasses, and a navy-blue scarf tied closely over my hair. I was wearing sneakers and brown slacks. That was all I needed – that, and a stooped, shuffling walk and a sour look that curved the corners of my mouth down. Nobody bothered me after that.

I prowled the streets of Rome for almost three hours. Lights went out as I wandered. Shops closed, windows darkened. When midnight struck from the countless church towers, I was on the Lungotevere Sangello, one of the broad boulevards that follow the winding course of the Tiber. I stood for a long time with my elbows on the stone parapet, looking down at the river where the reflected shapes of St Peter’s and the Castel Sant’ Angelo shimmered in the dark waters. The lights of the Via delle Conciliazione led straight as a ruler toward the circular piazza of St Peter’s, and the great dome blocked out a circular section of the sky.

Rome is a swinging city; it doesn’t roll up the pavements at midnight. But some areas are more lively than others, and the antique area had gone to bed at ten o’clock. When I tore myself away from the magnificent view, I found most of the streets deserted.

It was a good thing I had visited that part of town by day: I had a hard time finding my way. Once I had left the busy boulevards by the Tiber, I might have been in another world, for this part of Rome hasn’t changed in externals for hundreds of years, and it doesn’t go in for streetlights. I had a flashlight – one of my purchases earlier that day – but I didn’t want to use it. So I shuffled along, head bowed, through the darkened streets. Occasionally I passed another form as dark and shadowy as my own. At the far end of a curving street I would sometimes catch a glimpse of bright lights and hear a ghostly echo of revelry from the Piazza Navona. It is one of the tourist centres, and some of the cafés and restaurants stay open far into the night. It was only a few blocks away, but it might as well have been a few miles. The lights didn’t penetrate into the gloomy passageways where I wandered. I hoped the constabulary of the city kept itself busy watching over exuberant tourists.