Badaude

The love bus

I'm on my way home from Rome. The number 64 is the bus to Roma Terminale from which I can catch the train to Fiumincino airport.

It's the morning rush hour and the bus is crammed with commuters. As we travel along the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, the number of commuters declines and the number of tourists returning to the central station increases. Like Paris buses, there are few seats and lots of standing room. Travellers sit on their cases which go into occasional freefall around a sharp corner.

The bus remains crammed. Standing room only. I notice a woman who is very obviously a tourist. she's in her fifties. Unglamourous. She is wearing clothes which she clearly only wears on holiday. She has a bright red 'fun' vacationer's suitcase. She is alone.

An Italian man stands behind her. He's much younger. Around 30. He leans close behind her. She doesn't speak Italian. He speaks to her in English.

Is this your first time in Rome? he asks.

Did you go to see the Forum? The Pantheon? Did you think they were beautiful? Where are you from? Did you visit the Bernini fountain? Would you like to return to Rome?

As the bus rounds a corner, he leans closer, right against her. She must be able to feel his stubble against her cheek. He is almost whispering in her ear.

Why is he doing this? Is he trying to pick her pocket? Does he have a thing about older women? Or is he a genuine ambassador of the city, eager to leave the woman with a favourable impression?

At this very moment, I notice a light pressure against my thigh. I look behind me. There's an old, not un-handsome Italian guy in a checked shirt with a grey pointed moustache which he is obviously proud enough to care for. He is not looking at me. His eyes are focussed on a distant point as can only be the eyes of someone who is deliverately trying to avoid your gaze.

The pressure on my leg is light. A butterfly-like tapping. It moves up. It begins to move down again. The bus swings in the opposite direction. It doesn't go away. It must be deliberate.

I wonder what I should do. Should I shout? Should I move away? Should I turn to him and hiss, testa di cazzo!*, a phrase a friend taught me to deal with just such a situation. I examine my feelings. Am I annoyed? No, not really. Is he doing any harm? Would I harm him more by a public telling off? Or would I end up looking ridiculous? Would I diminish a pleasure which is costing me very little? Above all, would I sacrifice my storyteller's desire to know what happens next?

By the time I have thought about this for some time, we are approaching Terminale and such reactions come to seem a little ungenerous. I don't think the hand is going anywhere else and the butterfly tappings are so light as to seem politely tentative. If that's what gets him his kicks, why not?

We reach the stop for the station.

I look accross at the other tourist and her toy boy. They are still aimiably discussing the beauty of Romes sites. I am still worried that he is going to rob her.

Nothing has happened. Maybe nothing has happened to her either. Maybe she's the winner in this sitaution. Maybe everything is just as it seems.

Maybe there is no story.

I get off and drag my suitcase toward the station. I don't see either of the men leave the bus. A fresh group of tourists exist the station and pile onto the bus.

I wonder whether they will be making the return journey.

...

*dickhead. For more great Italian swear words, see here.

Rates of exchange

I have never been so short-changed as I have here in Rome. Shop assistants charge me double; waiters add and subtract dishes from my bill seemingly at random; at the market, the first delicious fragoline (tiny wood strawberries) of the season cost 5 euros at one stall, 2 euros at another.

In the supermarket on the Corso Vittorio Emmanuelle, wine is cheap; milk is expensive.

I am carrying back from the supermarket, a six-pack of litre bottles of water; a litre of milk, a bottle of red wine and a jar of Nutella, along with less substantial groceries. The supermarket bag handles are starting to cut into my palms. How does everyone else manage? I don't see Romans hauling the sacs a roulettes I see in Paris. Do they have it all delivered? Do they just not eat?

When I reach the Piazza Navona, I have to sit down. I don't want to sit in the Piazza at this time of day. I love the Piazza in the morning when the sun has hardly risen and the square is a deep shadow-gulley with only the whirr of the cleaning truck and the clank of waiters putting out the endless rows of cafe chairs. But later in the day, the portrait artists arrive;the tour groups, the school trips, the men selling battery-powered toys, sunglasses, cheap jewellery.

The famous Bernini fountain is under wraps for restoration. It's plasticized outline fills the whole of the square. Nevertheless, Navona is crammed with people who stand and turn on the spot and try and try to see. They peer through the windows in the plastic that shrouds the sculptures, sometimes catching the angle of an elbow, a knee.

The groups in the middle of the square - teenagers and coach tours who cannot afford the cafes' prices, stand disconsolately or sit on the edges of the two smaller unwrapped fountains. They look at the people in the cafes. The people in the cafes, sitting in compariative and expensive comfort, look back.

As I pass the corner of Viccolo della Pace, the waiter from Tre Scalini says,

A table for lunch, Signora?

It's 10.30am

No, grazie.

A table, Signora? How many?

No. Grazie!

I hold out my hand in a basta gesture and walk away.

I have to sit down. There are no public benches in Rome. People sit on the walls of fountains, on steps. At the monument to King - built, with staggering arrogance, to dwarf the Imperial Forum on the Piazza Venezia, there is a notice requiring visitors not to sit on the steps as such lack of respect for this national monument would offend the Italian people. On chuches of far greater architectural and historical importance; on ancient Roman sites, there are no such notices. Romans, disrespectfully, have nicknamed. the interfereing monument the Big White Typewriter.

Like the teenaged and old-aged tour groups without the money the cafes, I sit on the edge one of the fountains where a group of ragazzi (boys) are noting with pleasure that one of the stone tritons is blowing water out through his nostrils.

As soon as I sit down, the street sellers arrive: a man selling Italia football shirts and lycra shorts decorated with a picture of the stone genitals of Michaelangelo's David; another with small magnets which buzz when tossed in the air. They offer me the magnets, the shorts.

No, grazie.

Signora?

No, grazie.

A man selling cheap metal and enamel jewellery takes my hand and folds it around a necklace.

I try to give it back but he backs away, hovvering at a safe distance.

Five Euro, Signora. Only five Euro!

He won't take it back.

You want to give it to me?

For you, two Euro, only two Euro.

If you want to give it to me, I'll take it. But I don't want to buy anything.

One Euro? Signora?

But I don't want it.

I lay the necklace on the fountain. He picks it up and leaves but as soon as he moves on, another moves in.

Rosa, Signora, Roses?

Please

One rosa; only two Euro!

don't try to sell me anything.

I am irrationally and suddenly angry.

I stand up.

I stand unecessarily close to him.

He's wearing a long, brown djebellah which smells strongly of sweat. I don't know whether it's brown from dirt and age, or whether this is it's natural colour.

I look directly into his eyes, which are very close to mine. There isn't any Piazza Navona any more. Just this man and me.

I say, quietly and as firmly as possible,

Go Away.

Signora?

Louder

Go. Away.

I'm not quite sure what I'm prepared to do at this point. Luckily, nor is he.

After a long moment:

Ok, Signora,

he says. I go away.

...

Round the corner, at Caffe della Pace, I drink prosecco. The waitress brings me unasked-for olives, peanuts and elaborately lumpy spicy-flavoured lumps.

I begin to feel bad about the man in Navona; about the bartenders, the shopkeepers; the market stallholders. After all, it works the other way too: grocers put extra oranges in my bag after I've paid; waiters forget to charge me for dessert; this morning, a flowerseller ran up to gave me a perfect canna lily, the stalk broken too short to use in his display.

I think all transactions in Italy are just less fixed; more open to negotiation which offends my firmly entrenched, Anglo-Saxon sense of fixed value. Italians are also more willing to enter casually into negotiation, and expect you to haggle even if you don't want what they're offering.

I finish my prosecco. Although this is one of the most fashionable cafes in the area, the bill is much small. Wine is cheap: milk is expensive. But I can't get the waitress's attention. I leave the money on the table, along with a generous tip to make up for what? For not asking for the bill? For the peanuts? For the flower-seller? I wonder whether the staff will think I've skipped without paying. I do not want another encounter of any kind.

I'm half-way down the street when the waitress catches up with me.

She touches my arm.

4 euros, please.

I look at her. She looks anxious. She is younger than me. She doesn't want to be asking this question.

It's ok - I left it on the table.

She believes me. It's funny. I laugh; she laughs. I have paid correctly the correct sum which has been correctly demanded of me. We are both relieved.