Story: The Red Dress of Rome

***

1

Smooth, unbroken curves and turnings, sweeping upward through a golden polyphony of spangled colors, sure balance, and freely flowing rhythm. At the center, a cool and deepening blue, strong calm eyes turning the flow, pouring it inward, rolling it downward, and slowly drawing it back up.

David was also munching a crisp, white and brown cracker. The munching sound echoed comfortably in his mind, lightly touching and turning in his brain like his eyes in the lines of the multicolored mosaic he was staring at.

He let his hand drop again to his side and creep into his pocket, over the half-torn wrappings of the cracker box. He felt as if his movements too were orchestrated and made rhythmical, flowing and balanced by the graceful golds and blues, by the still, showy Christ spreading his hands over the basilica from the mosaic.

David's own fingers swept another cracker to his mouth. The slow crunching, and the warm salty taste intermingled with it, brushed freely through his mind like a vast regal robe sweeping over a slick, dusty floor.

He smiled complacently at himself for thinking of that comparison.

It was not until he felt the stiff corrugated cardboard at the bottom of the box in his jacket pocket that he became himself again and carefully lifted his eyes from the agile grace frozen up there within the edges of the main cupola.

He couldn't tell how long he'd stood there, among the icons, leaning on a wooden rail that circled off the main altar. He'd seen wooden barriers like that all over Rome, directing the big 1963 Easter crowds. He glanced again at the mosaic, and vowed to always have just a little too much wine with lunch before visiting old churches.

It was only recently, he thought pleasantly, that he'd begun to do things like that. He imagined the sodden crackers pouring quietly into the wine he hadn't ordered but drank anyway. And his smile, he thought, spoke languidly for the simple warmth of all his being.

Moving away from the altar, David seemed to glide soundlessly, like an immaterial whisper (he thought), behind the first section of brown wooden-and-wicker chairs. Next to a column, he paused and eyed a fold in the stone, the regular scallops of the robe of a statued saint with his fingers stiffly blessing the wicker chairs. His eyes were hollow and the lines in his face were smooth. David touched the scalloped hem which stood rigid and quiet above the delicate toes. The stone felt cold to his warm fingers.

At the rear of the church was an intricate black-iron stand on which thin white candles had been placed. Some had burned down to tiny stumps, but most had bent forward like old, crooked fingers to lace together a tangled clasp of wax. The flames were little points of light, spangling the misty air.

David turned. The chairs sat humbly ranged on the stone floor. A colony of white statues blessed them stiffly from the columns. The mosaic at the front now seemed to David a tiny, intricate miniature. The scene down the center aisle froze before him like a quaint imitation, shimmering in his mind.

He stepped out the side door.

Rome rumbled to him. The long, wide steps vibrated in the white light before him, and the sun passed through him like a warm breeze in lean, wild grasses.

2

Walking along Via Nomentana. Tall sycamores and tweeting birds. Warm sun and gentle breeze. People scurrying by.

David’s supposed inner gracefulness had gradually dissolved in the rattle and shake of the bus he had found before the Stazione Termini. He had never quite felt that way before and was not sorry it was over now. But he did enjoy things like that sometimes.

Cars zipped by him, and crowds of people, as he idled down the wide sidewalk. All motion within him had stopped, and now his mind was peaceful and silent, he thought, like libraries or empty boxes. (He had never compared things that way before).

But he couldn’t allow himself to move along too slowly; the church might be closing soon since it was Easter Saturday after all, and late afternoon. Soon, he was standing before a small old church building, Santa Agnese, with what his guidebook (which looked like a missal) called the best-preserved catacombs in the city.

Inside the door, it was not a church but a tiny hallway with a table where there were neat stacks of pamphlets. They were in Italian, but David took one anyway. Propped against the wall behind one table leg was a piece of white cardboard on which someone had written in red, not too neatly, “Entrada,” with an arrow pointing to David’s left. He turned that way and crossed to the head of a murky stairway.

He hesitated, and then stepped down the stairs. His heels--now worn down to the nails--made scratching sounds on the old concrete.


At the foot of the staircase was a narrow courtyard, green and quiet in the twilight. There was an organ playing somewhere. At David’s right, there was another, shorter flight of stairs. As he moved toward it, the pale court-light seemed to catch at David’s jacket cuff, and the frayed edge tickled his wrist.

He stood before an apparently ancient wooden door, which was carved and inlaid with mossy silver. One corner of the rich, dark oak had rotted or worn away, and that special church-light David had noticed before - the silver mist, he said, of departed souls and candle flames” - shone through the hole.

Beyond the door, there were several more steps descending into the church itself. The breathy organ seemed reverent in the silence. The room was empty.

David crossed the rear floor, the sound of his footsteps mingling diffidently with the phantom organ tones. There were two small doors on the either side of the entranceway. On one was a card on which the red pen had written in Italian, French, and English: “Catacombs: please wait one minute until the guide returns and a new party is formed.”

Presently, the other door opened, and a man came out: a very clean man, David thought, in a neat gray suit. His face had points all about it, a pointed nose, a pointed chin, and jawbones that pointed out sideways. He had almost no eyebrows at all, and the hair on his head was thin and black and lay smooth on his skull and about his ears. His eyes jumped pleasantly when he saw David standing there, and he came over, walking not at all as if it were a church.

Just in front of David, he hesitated before saying, “Buon giorno.”

David replied, “Buon giorno,” but not without communicating in that way he had learned in France that he had already exhausted his fund of Italian phrases.

The man’s eyes positively danced. “Francesca?” he said, and soon David and he were talking away in French. --Yes, David speaks French, they said, though he is really an American, just studying this year in Paris. --My, didn’t David speak French well for an American, and such a nice-looking young man too! But then the man told David they would have to wait until some other people came to see the catacombs, and went back into his room and shut the door.

The church grew silent again, the organ playing quietly still.

In a moment, the old oak door peeped open, and a sturdy, middle-aged woman, whose skin was light and whose hair was gray, came down the steps inside. She looked shyly at David (who suspected she too was an American) and then went over to read the card pasted on the door across the room. Then an Italian woman about 30 (strikingly handsome, David thought, dark and tall with long black hair) came in with a wiry little boy about eight on one side and an even smaller and darker girl about six on the other.

The man had opened his door again and was standing there watching David before he spoke to the gray-haired lady, who told him in English that she was from Canada and wanted to see the catacombs. David thought that the man looked even neater than he had before. He spoke to the Canadian woman in English and the Italian woman in Italian.

In a moment he had produced a long, thin white candle for each of them. He told David and the others how to hold the candles and lit them, and arranged the visitors all in a line. Somehow he managed to get David at the front. Then he opened the little door with the card pasted on it and led David by the lapel of his jacket (for which David was beginning to feel self-conscious next to the man’s neat suit and the Canadian woman’s simple tourist dress) down a narrow, unlighted staircase made of rotting stones, telling all of them to watch their steps, to be careful, and not to let their candles blow out. He repeated each of his sentences first in French to David, then in English to the Canadian woman, and finally in Italian to the handsome woman and her two children.

At the bottom of the stairs, they found themselves in the catacombs, and the guide began to describe the people who had built them, who had worshipped there, and who were buried there now, his voice echoing softly into the damp clay-stone walls and the shadows waving on them as the candle flames fluttered in the humidity. The air was very cool.

The man led them along, pointing out how tiny the tomb-niches were because people were smaller in those days (especially ones who lived underground, David thought), always repeating each one of his sentences in all three languages and always keeping his hand on David’s lapel because, as he said to David, he knew the way well and was afraid someone might get lost if he were not there to guide them.

Often they would just stroll along gazing down the tall, narrow corridors of crumbling clay, the man telling David how well he spoke French, what a fine-looking young man he was, and asking if he didn’t think the women in Paris were beautiful. Sometimes, the passageway was so narrow that they had to turn sideways and squeeze between the shadowed walls. The guide would then somehow twinkle through quickly, wait patiently for the others, and then take up David’s lapel again, because as he would say again, he knew the route so well.

Once the guide stopped them, had everyone pass his candle forward to him and then had everyone sit down on the cool ground. When he took the candles away from them down the corridor, the walls grew even taller and darker above them. The guide set the candles all around a little chapel far at the end of the narrow passageway, and asked David and the others to try to imagine the early Christians sitting or kneeling there, in single file since it was so narrow, watching a little priest moving about in the tiny chapel down the way. They all watched as the guide moved around putting the candles in the wall holders. A tiny golden cross shimmered in the soft flame-light next to his shadow.

“Monsieur,” the guide had come back and was speaking into David’s ear, “I am here every evening after five, you know. And I like young students like yourself, who are more interested than these tourists.” He put his hand on David’s shoulder, “Come back some afternoon next week (I am here every afternoon after five) and I will give you a personal tour of the family tombs."

3

The morning air was fresh, the sunlight clear and comfortable. David was walking among the pensione and small, below-street cafes along Via Palestro. Rome early on Easter morning was very quiet.

He had returned to his bed early the evening before, just as the city was beginning to glow and smile, gyrating in welcome to the holy day ahead. The French boy and the two law students from Sicily, with whom he was sharing a room, had not returned until two hours before David got up in the morning and began his easy stroll across the city.

He wandered among small, rising streets north of Via 20 Settembre. The streets had been washed, and the morning smelled like mowed grass after a rain. He hadn’t yet seen even one car.

At Via di Tritone, he watched the fountain running over the strong man’s muscular thighs. The water was clear and blue-green at the same time, chirping like mountain streams over cool stones. Beyond, there were several policemen standing guard at the corners and entrances of a large stone mansion. They straightened and clicked their heels as David passed. He smiled slightly and acknowledged the salutation with a courtly nod. He didn’t feel as reckless as he had the afternoon before, not quite as “pleasantly silly” as he would have said. But he still felt free somehow and confident in a way.

He turned north again among steep streets and some steps with iron railings, hearing occasionally the passing of a car on one of the broad avenues nearby. The sun seemed to scrub the little stone buildings leaving them rosy and clean.

Soon he was listening to his heels strike the cobblestones of the alley with the Etruscan restaurant where he might as well have lunch after the service. It didn’t matter. As he crossed the wide Via del Corso he remembered that he had planned to call Alison sometime to say “Happy Easter,” and watched a single little Fiat amble by. The woman inside smiled at him.


He rested a moment at the Mausoleum of Augustus, then crossed the Tiber, and wandered beyond the green park at Piazza Cavour, where people were beginning to move about, and walked on toward the Vatican. He passed a little bakery and stopped in to buy another small package of crackers. He slipped them into his jacket pocket, tearing away the wrapping at the top as he again walked toward the main piazza. The crackers were old and limp, but he was hungry and liked them anyway.

In a small piazza north of St. Peter’s, little groups were gaily strolling and chatting, policemen were directing traffic, and all the tables of the sidewalk cafes were filled with bright people, most of them European.

David stopped in at one of them to call the convent where Alison was staying with other members of the Paris students’ pilgrimage. She was not there, another student had explained. She had left earlier with her boyfriend, who was studying in London that year. David hadn’t known they were planning to be together. She had talked about going to the Forum to read lines from Julius Caesar with friends from the pilgrimage group.

He was on about his third cracker when he wandered between the columns and into Piazza San Pietro itself. Already hundreds of people were there, swinging their legs over the sides of the waterless fountains or sitting around the center obelisk, strolling about in the sunlight, or chewing gum. But the vast circular opening looked almost empty.

At the main entrance at David’s left, vendors had already begun selling their Pope pennants and pictures, their gelati, and their orange, red, and white balloons. Most of them had signs in four or five languages and shouted at everyone in Italian, pointing at the signs and at what they had to sell.

David stepped from under the columns to the gray paving stones. Already, the huge empty-seeming piazza was beginning to jump and move. David started out across the open space, his legs feeling loose and his knees agile under him. It was his “crowd feeling.” He felt them watching him enviously, in his picturesque old jacket and easy stroll, and felt sorry he had shaved off his beard as Alison had wanted him to. He would never have worn it home anyway.

All the people in the piazza seemed to be dressed in red or white cottons, sports-shirts and tourist dresses, with new Kodak cameras hung from their necks and “Festival” written in their eyes. David surveyed them as he strolled by the first fountain; they were quieter than he would have supposed, some of them with their eyes closed and faces turned up, baking in the sun like peasant breads on hot stones. His own camera was old and worn, and folded up small enough to slip into his sports jacket pocket.

He imagined meeting some friend from the Paris school, as he expected he might, and slipped another cracker between his lips. “My breakfast,” he would say to them, and they would admire him and laugh that he could do such unusual things now. Many of the people had bought ice cream from the gelati man since it was so warm.

On the other side of the piazza, David noticed that the people were very crowded, some in a line coming toward him and others in a stream moving the other way. He wandered over and followed the stream moving toward the basilica, trying to behave as if he knew where they were headed.

A row of wooden barriers stretched all the way across the front part of the piazza, still several hundred feet from the basilica. The people moving David along were just able to squeeze around the end of the barriers. Ten yards beyond was a second row of barriers, and twenty yards beyond it a third. David moved with the others up behind this foremost row of barriers, which was only about fifty feet from the basilica. There were hundreds of cameramen with long lenses and television and film cameras, and reporters with recording machines, all hurrying back and forth beyond the barrier testing various angles on the main balcony in the center of the cathedral facade, where a large white cloth had been draped. David found a place just in front of the balcony, where only one row of spectators separated him from the barrier.

He began to stand there quietly, occasionally eating another old cracker. The sun was very warm on the back and top of his head, and especially on his neck, and soon he felt content to stand there watching the reporters and photographers testing various angles, even though he was no longer moving his feet at all and had been walking for quite a long time. After a while he was warm enough to take off his heavy old jacket, revealing to the crowd his comfortable corduroy sports coat with wrinkles in the sleeves and the tear in the cuff he had received from a barbed wire fence he had climbed near Vicenza so that he could hitch-hike on the parkway (which was illegal!). Surely someone should notice that, he thought. He always felt very public these last days, especially in a crowd.

Presently, he began to take note of the people standing nearby. To his right was a bald German man in a gray suit talking to a dark, athletic Italian. They were speaking in English, the stout German quite volubly; and the Italian was laughing and making brief, pleasant replies. The German had his wife there who was short and stout, as he was, and as neatly dressed; she had a small camera dangling from her neck. The Italian man was there with a small son, about five years old, who was always clinging, about his father’s knees.

Directly in front of David were two unmistakable American girls, clean, beauty-treated, sweet smelling and fluffy-haired; and next to them was a tall, thin and fair lady with white hair, who seemed to be quite by herself and who looked about by turning her head in little jerks this way and that. Her eyes had something lively or wild about them, but her features were as precise and delicate as Alison’s.

From under the columns where David had entered the piazza, four or five military bands now marched, each accompanied by forty or fifty soldiers dressed in the same uniform as the band they marched with. All of them marched between the two wooden barriers, behind David and the others with him, separating them from the vast other section of the crowd, which now numbered in thousands, moving and waving in the sunlight like a multicolored wheat crop far, far beyond the last part of the broad entrance avenue. Each band played a brief tune, and then all stood at ease.

The German and the Italian were getting on so well by this time that all around were quite actively, though tacitly, enjoying the conversation. --Yes, it was a grand day, they said. --Yes, the boy was the Italian’s son and they came out to hear the Pope every Easter. --The Germans were here on a pilgrimage with a good many others who had all chartered a bus.

Soon the German man spread his enthusiastic good will to all those standing nearby, by offering to everyone (though not to David who was still some way behind him) a bit of an enormous chocolate bar. That brought the white-haired lady, who turned out to be English, and the two American girls, who turned out to be southern, into the conversation. Later the girls and the English woman moved a little away from the German couple, and the Italian man and his boy and began to talk among themselves.

David tried to think of a nonchalant way to include himself into their cheerful conversation. He briefly considered offering everyone a cracker, but there were only a few left by then.

At that moment, someone made a short announcement over the loudspeaker at the front to the basilica. The English lady wondered what the man had said since she herself did not understand Italian. The Italian man and the German were joking and talking about something else.

David, on the other hand, felt that he had understood. “I believe,” he addressed the English lady, whose eyes fired at him in return, “that the announcement said that the mass will begin at 11:15. I don’t really understand Italian, but I think I understood the words for ‘mass’ and ‘11:15.’” He had learned words like that from reading train schedules and signs on churches and museums.

It was enough to make the others take note of him. The English lady thought he spoke much more like an Englishman than an American, but the American girls seemed rather uninterested. He noticed that one of them had a box camera in her hand with her purse.

The announcement was repeated, and the Italian man confirmed that the mass was to begin at 11:15. David informed them that that was only five minutes away. In a moment, a stream of young man and boys in ankle-length black robes with delicate white lace vestments on top of them appeared from the center door of the basilica (seminary students, the Italian explained). Then a cardinal, similarly dressed except with a little more white lace, came out and began to celebrate the mass at the small altar which had been set up just under the balcony; the seminary students were standing on both sides of the altar and by turns answered the cardinal in Latin and gazed, thunderstruck, at the huge crowd now assembled before them.

Now and again as the cameramen tested various angles on the crowd (a reporter was squatting just to one side of the center aisle between the big-eyed seminary students, setting up a portable tape recorder), members of the crowd would kneel down. The white-haired English lady was at the front and felt conspicuous since she couldn’t see anybody else to know whether or not to kneel down too; she would start to kneel down and then hesitate. David put his heavy jacket on the ground for the German woman to kneel on. When the mass was over and the seminary boys were milling around and looking at the crowd, she gave David back his jacket and thanked him for it. Her husband was wiping his forehead and bald scalp with his handkerchief; he thanked David too.

Even the American girls seemed friendlier after the mass. They were from Alabama. The bands played a little more.

Just then the entire crowd burst into frenzied shouts and applause. A fierce joy, warm as the sun, sprang into sound, as the reporters began running back and forth in front of the seminary students who were beginning to stretch and twist their necks to see the balcony above them.

The heavy maroon curtains there had been pulled open from inside. A minute later, the Pope stepped out in his white robe and his conical, bold-spangled hat. Wild jubilation rang from the crowd. David clapped his hands too. Everybody was shouting and applauding madly. The white-haired lady was jerking her head this way and that. The faces of the American girls were red, and they were bouncing up and down on the balls of their feet. Everybody was smiling and laughing and talking to himself. The women looked like they wanted to hug each other, and David too.

The Pope was waving to everybody with the back of his hands. David felt a drop at the side of his cheek and didn’t know whether it was perspiration or a tear. It was so warm, it could have been either. David could see the Pope’s old smile, and remembered how tired the calm old man seemed in all his pictures.

After a few minutes, everyone got very quiet. The Pope spoke briefly, and no one moved. David didn’t feel like moving. He thought of how strange it all was, how feudal, and how old. In a minute the Pope started saying “Happy Easter” in every language he could think of. Each time he would say it, a different little group would cheer and wave from somewhere, and everyone would applaud. When he said it in English, David, the American girls, and the English lady cheered, and the Germans smiled at them. Then he said it in German and the man his wife cheered, so the others smiled at them. When he said it in Italian, everyone cheered, and the German man thumped the Italian on the back. It was like a football game or a political convention, David thought, where there was a lot of cheering and everybody had a good time.

Suddenly, the Pope said something else, and from under the eaves at the right of the Vatican colonnade, hundreds of white doves flew out above the crowd and into the sky. Then as the Pope spoke again and some people knelt down, the birds flew around and around overhead getting smaller and smaller in the deepening blue, swirling down and around and away...

It was over then, and the Pope went back between the red curtains.

Before David knew it, the bands and the soldiers with them had marched away under the columns again and the crowd was scattering about. The Italian man and his son were gone, and the German and his wife were hurrying away after the bands. The white-haired English lady was walking off to the left, looking this way and that. The American girls had disappeared.

The reporters were all running away, and a few cameramen still tried various angles on the crowd. The seminary students had gone back into the basilica.

Some men came hurrying out and moved some of the saw-horses around. There was a loud squawk as someone let a corner drag on the paving stones. A few people wandered through the hole in the barrier, but most of them went over to the right, where a long line had formed moving into the side door of the cathedral next to the colonnade. It was rather quiet for such a large crowd.

David felt his “crowd feeling” again. He reached under the folds of his jacket which he held draped over his arm, but there were no crackers left. He moved over to one side, his knees feeling weak from walking and then standing for so long. He leaned against the part of the barrier that had been pulled away to one side, facing the obelisk and the dry fountains, the wide piazza and the broad approach avenue, and, far away in the crowd and the sunlight, the bridge.

It was very warm, and David stood there leaning with one foot up behind him on the wooden barrier. He was relaxed and placid, watching the many colors of the people scurrying around. Once he closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sunlight and felt like a fat peach lying forgotten in the light on a bed of damp leaves. When he opened his eyes again some of the color had gone and the people shimmied for a moment.

Pretty soon, he saw Alison walking toward him down the center of the piazza, with a young man talking to her. She was wearing a red dress that David had not seen before. He watched her coming, but she pretended not to see him until they were close enough to speak to him. David enjoyed watching her coming. “Hi, David,” she called.

“Hello there,” David took his foot down but still had his elbow on the barrier’s top bar. He thought his eyes must be glowing.

“Isn’t Rome wonderful!” she was very enthusiastic.

“Rome is wonderful,” David nodded sagely, and made the wrinkles laugh about his eyes.

“David Grosmann, this is Tom McKay.”

They shook hands. David was surprised that Tom, the Great Tom whom Alison had told him about in Paris and on their trip to Spain, was so regular. He was just a nice, clean-cut American boy with blond hair, cut very short. He had a light, tan, triangular face with rugged cheekbones, and seemed very “West Coast.” A nice-looking young man, David thought, with a firm handshake.

They chatted there a moment saying how much they’d heard about each other, and how nice the weather was.

All the time, David was looking at Alison. She had been with Tom now for several weeks, he supposed, and David had already forgotten her gay vitality. She was small and slender with delicate hands and features, dark hair and eyes with long lashes. Her skin was fair, and her mouth thin but tender and sweet...

“We’re going to the forum this afternoon,” she said.

"Yes,” David smiled. “You’re going to read Shakespeare.”

Tom laughed. “You knew about that? She gave it to me this morning.”

She had tiny thin fingers, and her hands were always cool. David remembered that he had given her a birthday gift when they’d had tea together in Florence, a reproduction mounted on wood of her favorite Lippi madonna with her favorite St. Francis quotation on the other side. But she didn’t mention it. She was wearing the black lace mantilla they had bought in Madrid.

“Are there many with you this afternoon?” David asked.

“Some kids from the Vienna school,” Tom said.

Alison’s dress had a small cord which ran around her hips two inches below her waist. The skirt didn’t begin to fill out until just above her thighs. Her little body softly rounded out the abdomen of the dress.

“I’ll be going back to Paris tonight,” David said. “I don’t know exactly what I will be doing this afternoon, wandering around in the sun somewhere, I suppose.” He imagined their asking him to come along with them to the Forum. But they didn’t, and soon they were playfully punching each other at how long the line was for Communion, and telling David goodbye…Tom shaking hands and Alison smiling oddly when David said he’d call her next week in Paris. Then they were walking off, laughing and joking.

The warmth was moving around inside him like smoky winds over an autumn fire. His eyes were full and glowing, but rather tired.

He replaced his foot on the bottom rail of the wooden barrier behind him, taking up again his nonchalant pose with his elbow on the top bar. How cool he must look, he found himself thinking, in his comfortable corduroy coat and his neat black slacks, in his nonchalant attitude in the sunlight watching the crowd in front of him. He was thinking that Tom and Alison would be talking about him now and looking back at him, seeing him from behind leaning that way on the barrier.

He happened to glance around. Their backs were to him, already far away, and Alison’s red dress was mixing quickly into the Joseph-coated crowd.

He watched after them a moment with the sun warming his shoulders and his forehead feeling a little heavy.

“People look much better in the sunlight,” he said.

***