Tom Foran Clark

They rose early in the morning. Eagerly, in a rainshower, they dropped down out of those gorgeous mountains to congested, wet, reprehensible Rome, singing,

Volare, oh oh
Cantare, oh oh oh oh
No wonder my happy heart sings
Your love has given me wings
Nel blu, dipinto di blu
Felice di stare lassu.

Pike and Emery took shelter from the rain in the arched colonnade of the Piazza della Repubblica. Talk about a hustling, bristling city! Even in that downpour, they saw enough commotion for several cities.

When the sun came out, the whole unholy mess was only better illuminated -- denser and more frenzied: statuary, beggars, people strolling, people running (some people clearly running from other people; some people running toward each other as if willfully to collide), and mopeds, motorcycles, cars, and trucks going ten or twelve different directions. Three separate collisions occurred just while they stood there watching. In not one instance did any driver -- or anybody else -- pause to inspect any damage done.

The more desperate the cityscape became, the more attractive it was to Pike, who took photographs of everything. He was especially happy to get a shot of a woman draped entirely in black riding a motorcycle with a sidecar carrying a Golden Retriever barking at the runners, strollers, and souvenirs and antiques vendors. Antiques and other wares were displayed on tables, orange crates, and rugs set out everywhere amid the city’s top-heavy palm trees and bottom-heavy statuary. Pike and Emery could have spent their entire time in Rome right there, at the Piazza della Repubblica -- it would have been eventful enough.

The two put their lives on the line, venturing to cross the street so Pike could buy a souvenir. He got a small statue, apparently bronze, of St. James of Compostela in medieval pilgrim garb, carrying a staff. Then they again took their lives in their hands, zigzagging back over the street toward the piazza -- at which point Pike dropped his souvenir. It was not bronze, but rather painted terra cotta -- it shattered instantly.

"Let it go!" Emery called to Pike, who looked intent on stopping to pick up the broken shards. But he kept moving. The two made it through the herd and stampede. Now Pike had his camera fixed on a different corner of the square, taking pictures of a colorful, crowded flea market, a street bazaar -- unmitigated bedlam.

Pike dove in, going in search of a replacement St. James statue. There were, within the radius of about twenty feet, six or seven different variations on this single motif in assorted woods, clays, and metals to choose from. Also shoes, boots, jackets, shirts, shawls, mittens, sweaters, lace doilies, handkerchiefs, carpets, purses, belts, bags, baskets, lamps, jewelry, watches, assorted parts for every imaginable vehicle, tools for every imaginable trade -- including shovels, spades, and trowels to pave cobblestone streets and screws, nuts, and bolts for ancient chariots -- puppets, dolls, ribbons, buttons, dishes, antique coins, tobacco tins, comic books, paperbacks, hardcover books, typewriters, cameras, snow shoes, ski poles, fireplace pokers, switchblade knives, scissors, swords, scythes, hatchets, tweezers, nailfiles, fingernail clippers, and on and on.

Just on the perimeter was a potpourri at least seven or eight times larger than they’d seen at the marketplace in Florence. And, as they went further in, the stuff was piled higher, the array got denser, and the congestion thicker. Small children were being clubbed silly by the knees of their elders. One boy was knocked down so hard, Emery thought sure he must have had a concussion. He helped him up. The boy quickly found the hand of his mother -- one in a thousand strangers’ hands -- and he started singing. Pike emerged with a duplicate statue of St. James of Compostela in medieval pilgrim garb, this one for sure bronze -- heavy and having a corroded green patina. Emery emerged with a harmonica.

What came next should surprise no one: Pike and Emery rode past ruins -- forum columns, Trajan’s Column, the Coliseum, Circus Maximus. They went as pilgrims to the Spanish Steps. They sent out postcards from the post office. And they got themselves a good room for the night at Marini’s Inn, between the National Library and the train station. Marini’s was a fine hotel, a clean glass castle circled in bookstores, bars, and outdoor artworks. Their room was four flights up, offering an unforgettable view out over the charred and cluttered city.

In the next few days, mostly under leaden, rainy skies, the two walked often and, by and large, aimlessly. Two words: cats and ruins. They saw Saint Peters’ in Vincoli -- seeing Michelangelo’s burly, sulking Moses -- and Santa Maria Maggiore, and the Capitoline Museum, but what they'd best recall later, beyond the harrowing view from their room at Marini’s Inn, would be all the elegant and lonely cats wandering amid the tumbled pillars of the ruins.

That first morning, Pike got up early, his curiosity piqued by Arlen Townsend's recent repeated mentions of Dominic, in order to go visit the National Library to learn more about Domingo, the founder of the Dominicans. Born in Spain in 1170, he'd followed the Rule of St Augustine and, on being offered a good job in Compostela, Spain, he'd declined. In 1199, captured by a band of Mohammedan pirates, he'd converted them to Christianity. In France, going among the Manichean Albigensians of Languedoc, France (who believed God's good son was Christ and God's bad son was Satan) Dominic had discovered a disproportionately high number of women advocating Albigensianism (with a disproportionatley high number of girls from the best families being sent to Albigensian convents). On being appointed Inquisitor of Languedoc by Pope Innocent III, who'd initiated the slaughter of the Albigensians, Dominic had walked away --barefoot -- vowing poverty, simplicity, and austerity. In 1215, Dominic had gone to Rome to seek permission to formalize his Order of Preachers. At the Fourth Latern Council, Dominic had met St. Francis -- born in 1182 in Assisi, dead at age forty-four in 1226. At the time of Dominic's death at the age of fifty-one in 1221, there were over five hundred Dominican friars and sixty friaries in western Europe.

At the National Library Pike got more information about St. James and the pilgrim trail in Galicia, Spain, after which he dragged Emery off to see the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, St. John at the Lateran, the Mother of all Churches -- "The Most Holy Lateran Church, Mother and Mistress of All Churches of the City and the World." When originally built in 312 by the first Christian emperor of Rome, Constantine, the basilica had not yet been dedicated to John the Baptist. As for the Laterans, they were a Roman family owning property on the hill that was later confiscated by Nero. Sacked by the Vandals, the basilica was restored around 460 by Pope Gregory. After an earthquake, Pope Sergius III (904-911) had the basilica completely rebuilt atop its former foundations, at which time it was dedicated to St. John.

Among the artworks on the fascade was a bronze sculpture of St. Francis and his disciples, illustrating the story of their visit to Rome to get the Holy Father's approval for their Order. Pope Innocent III had seen, in a dream, a man shouldering the burden of the collapsing basilica. The next day, he'd met St. Francis and recognized him as the man through whom God intended to restore the church -- not only San Giovanni in Laterano, but all Catholicism.

Inside, Pike and Emery made their way to the nave, with its five aisles divided by pillars, which Pope Clement XI had installed in order to display assorted Apostles and Evangelists. On one pillar, near John the Evangelist, Andrew, Peter, Simon, Bartholomew, was the sculpture of Saint James with book and walking stick, sculpted by Angelo de Rossi in 1715, after which Pike's miniature souvenir bronze statue was modeled.

Pike and Emery then went on to St. Peter’s Cathedral, where the two went their separate ways. Wandering through the cathedral, Emery filled up seven pages of his diary with his impressions, then went out and walked around the city, pausing often to just sit on park benches or the front steps of churches to make sketches and write notes on postcards.

Emery again met up with Pike back at Marini’s in the evening. Pike entered the room looking like a swami, his head wrapped in heavy bandages. He would only tell Emery somebody had pushed him out of the Duomo -- the Bascilica -- Saint Peter’s. But how could anybody get pushed out of Saint Peter’s and live to tell about it? Emery didn’t have an answer, and Pike wouldn’t talk about it. He also refused to go to the police. Emery couldn’t figure it out. Perhaps Pike had extended his camera lense too far out a window -- and followed it out. Pike said no – he’d been pushed..

Over the next few days Emery would, from time to time, try to ease or pry it out of him -- what had actually happened -- iIn what particular way he’d fallen or been pushed out. But Pike would not expand on it. He would only say he’d been followed, and that he’d been pushed. And that was that.

Pike and Emery went together to the Vatican Museums to see Michelangelo’s Pieta. There was no question but that this was one of the top masterpieces in all of world art. Pike parked himself in front of it while Emery ventured forth, going high into the Duomo cupola, for the view, of course, and to see if he could figure out how Pike could have fallen out of it. But the tourists were all caged in. It was impossible to squeeze through. You could not leap from it, or fall out.

The view from the top of Saint Peter’s was breathtaking. Climbing to the top was so arduous, you were out of breath when you arrived at the top. Many visitors must have feinted dead away. But, so far as Emery could see, a person could not be pushed out. It simply could not be done.

He shared my point of view with Pike that evening, but Pike wouldn’t listen. He put his hands over his ears. “You just don’t get it,” he said. Emery had a quick look under Pike's bandages. There was a deep gash, but the doctors had done a good job stitching him up. In only a couple of weeks, the scar and dent would be scarcely visible.

Pike and Emery went to a Barbiere for haircuts and shaves. The barber, Roberto, had smooth and gentle hands. Two walls were completely covered in high, wide mirror-panels. The two sat in swivel chairs. Roberto first cut Pike’s hair, then Emery's; then again Roberto went to Pike, to give him a shave; then Emery was shaved. They were sprayed with a bracing, sweet-smelling mist, then toweled clean -- lightly pummeled -- then sprayed again. Roberto blessed them when they paid him for his services -- for his restoration.

Refreshed, the two nexst went to the Borghese Gallery to see another of the greatest of paintings in all of Italy: Titian’s "Sacred and Profane Love." Giorgione’s influence on Titian shone through. In a poetic and idyllic landscape, two voluptuous girls -- one dressed, one not -- sat on the edge of a water-filled tub that looked like a sarcophagus. Both were obviously comfortable, enjoying their day. The eyes of the observer were richly rewarded and satisfied. Here was the sacredness of women -- human and divine. The urgent yearning of a young man’s heart seeks either -- both -- so that the world is ever born anew. That was Giorgionesque.

Emery had to reflect again on what Frida had said in Venice about men, all desiring only to be nearer women’s breasts. His thoughts now also wandered to contemplation of Michelangelo’s powerfully affecting Pieta, still fresh in his mind. The crucified young man lay dead across his mother’s lap but she was herself so young, she could not have been five days older than him. The power in the sculpture came from its detailed elegance -- also from the two forms and visages: here was timeless youth. A very young Mary cradled her thirty-year-old dead son the same as she would have cradled the nursing baby -- again the eternal feminine, human and divine. Frida would insist the message here was clear enough.

Pike and Emery stood there a good long while -- until the Borghese closed in the middle of the afternoon. Then the two rode out along the Appian way to the catacombs of Callisto, where Emery stayed close to Pike, feeling strongly that if ever a visitor to the catacombs could get lost, Pike would be an ideal candidate. Emery stayed close to Pike at the Coliseum, too. Pike would slip away suddenly, going off to snap a photograph, and Emery would tag right along.

They were at the Coliseum at nightfall. They rode their bikes around the circle of the ruins three or four times, then ventured back into the frenzy of street traffic. Riding over cobblestones, the bike wheels made a blattering, flibbid, turbetting sound, jostling over the stones and recesses. They were alert, on the lookout for potholes that could fling them headlong or swallow them whole.

In the morning the two caught up on their laundry. The Romans had a special affection for their lavanderias. In the course of a few rainy days in ruined Rome, they were just about saturated in mud and grime. The two sat in their skivvies on multicolored plastic chairs, reading Italian newspapers and magazines until the final tumble-cycle was complete. They got dressed and took all their fresh wash back to their room at Marini’s. Then they headed for the Sistine Chapel.

It was noisy and crowded. Feeling bloated and top-heavy, burdened by overkill, Pike and Emery didn’t stay in there long. They stumbled back out of there like convicts from a coal mine, falling gratefully to the ground on just a tiny patch of green grass outside. Not that the Sistine Chapel wasn't amazing. The two just hyperventilated or something. In Rome they’d filled their brain cells to the brim -- to the brink.

Emery had written thirty-two pages in his diary about Titian’s "Sacred and Profane Love" alone. In the Sistine Chapel he was already heading toward six pages when he stopped. He’d been jotting down his observations on what Michelangelo had accomplished, straining his neck, trying to take it all in. He'd been bumped and jostled by the crowd. A lady had turned and glared at him, then past him, crying out "Herbert!" -- presumably in search of her husband. She'd looked angry, lost, and desperate. Just then another tourist had whacked Emery in the jaw with a strong left hook. "Pardon me," a tall man in a blue serge suit had apologized. Then Pike was standing in front of him, looking terrified. His coat had been half pulled from him. One of his hands was pressed against his bandaged, bloody head; the other was stuffed into the pocket where, Emery knew, he kept the map and diary Townsend had given to him. Pike's eyes were rolling and his mouth was open -- but no words came out. Emery took one look at him and said, "We’re out of here."

Out under the pleasure dome of open sky, Pike breathlessly insisted the two depart -- at once -- for Spain.