Roman à grief

[OK sports fans, breaking radio silence. It has been 11 months since my last confession—er—post. This summer it was Jane’s turn to plan the vacations, we walked the Cornwall coast and e-biked England’s Lake District in May, and just got back from Italy. We’ll start with the latter, actually the story starts 43 years ago]

August 2, 1979. He looked just like Giancarlo Giannini with those soulful eyes gazing searchingly into mine as he stooped down slowly behind John’s chair. It was our first day in Rome, my med school classmate and I, and we were having dinner on an outdoor patio, slightly raised. I remember thinking, what a sad looking fellow, from what hardship must he have come? Was he hoping for a handout? Suddenly with a whoosh he was gone and John cried, Oh my God, that was our backpack!

Our guidebook had warned us about Rome. Theft was rampant, pickpockets everywhere. We decided to keep everything–money, passports, ID, camera, airline tickets home, the receipts for the bikes we had checked ahead to Munich–in a securely zippered backpack that one of us would wear in front of us, a frontpack of sorts. John had stashed it carefully under his chair as we were eating. He’d looped a foot through one of the straps, but I guess he had shifted his footing.

We dashed after him down the alley, but heard a motorbike roaring away. We couldn’t believe it. We were penniless in a strange country where we didn’t speak the language. Even our hotel key was in the pack; we were homeless as well. No cell phones or Google Translate back then, the one time we’d called home on this 2 month Europe trip we had to wait in a long line for a booth at the post office, and pay for an expensive long-distance call.

Crestfallen, we found our way to the nearest police station. The guy there didn’t speak English, but we gathered he said something like, “American theft victims in Rome? Oh yeah, we’ll get right on it.”

We didn’t know what to do but head back to our hotel. 3 miles, we didn’t even have money for the bus. Thankfully the proprietress recognized us, and let us in for a fretful sleep, balefully contemplating throwing ourselves on the mercy of the American consulate in the morning.

The proprietress woke us up at 5 in the morning–our pack had been found! A cleaning woman had found it torn open in a trash filled parking lot a mile from the crime scene, and called the number on the hotel key. Hope against hope we ran the whole way, knowing how much US passports were worth on the black market. Boy were we lucky. We rooted through the piles of trash and found everything, crumpled and strewn, everything but the money and the camera. The camera was a cheap Instamatic, and the money was in travelers’ checks. Through the flood of relief I almost felt sorry for “Giancarlo,” he looked desperately poor and didn’t even know what he had. The lumbering polizia might even nab him if he tried to cash those checks.

The line at American Express went around the block for US citizens trying to recover their money, but I had enough of my high school French to get into the French line, which was much shorter. I had even, thank heavens, kept a log of the travelers’ check numbers, which sped things considerably. All told, we only lost half a day and a cheap camera.

The rest of our time in Rome was wonderful, but the episode colored the experience, and I hadn’t been back until now. Jane and I had planned a two week tour of Tuscany, and flew into Rome with our friends Barbara and Rit. Without too much hassle we got a shuttle train from the airport to the Termini station to catch the bullet train to Florence. Termini was crowded and chaotic, and I helped Barbara and Jane get their bags off the shuttle. We had a couple of hours to kill, and decided to escape the hubbub by taking a brief stroll with our bags to the Victor Emmanuel II monument. The weather was perfect, and it was delightful to be out walking with hardly any weight.

At least for me. Everyone else was burdened, and I suddenly realized, where’s my bag? In my effort to be helpful I left my own bag on the shuttle! I dashed back through the mobbed station, I thought I found the track we had arrived on, but the train was gone, headed back to the airport. Oh no! It’s déjà vu all over again! Not in Rome for two hours and again I was bereft.

I still have no Italian, but managed in my panic to find a stationmaster with a little English, who was able to radio the conductor on the train, and confirm my bag was there. I only had to wait an hour for the train to come back. So saved again from dumb disaster by dumb luck, and the kindness of strangers*.

But Rome wasn’t through with me yet. After two terrific weeks in Tuscany (post is pending), we had to go back through Rome to get home. We had a hotel under 2 miles from the station, and opted for a cab, rather than walk or untangle the byzantine Roman public transit system. We knew to watch out for taxi scams, and got in the official line for cabs. A kindly older driver helped us cram all our bags into the back, and entertained us with his verbal and gesticulating flourishes as he navigated the labyrinthine streets and crazy traffic. €48 seemed a bit steep, but I shrugged and gave him a 50 that Jane had handed me. I glanced away for a second, and he was protesting: I’d only given him a ten. He showed me the bill. We were double-parked on a busy street, the horns were honking and rather than make a fuss I just handed him another 40.

As we checked in, the hotel clerk informed us that the usual taxi fare from Termini was €20 . And we’d paid 90. Sheesh. Hearing our story later, daughter Hope remarked it was probably karma for our earlier rescue at the train station. But, but he seemed such a kindly and charismatic gentleman…

We only had half a day to spend in the Eternal City, and the thing we most wanted to see, the Galleria Borghesi, was closed on Mondays. We opted for St. Peter’s and Tasso’s Oak, as I will post later.

In the immigration and security rush at the airport the next day, I had to go back through the line again because I had failed to empty my water bottle. Chagrined at keeping the others waiting, in the tumult I neglected to recover my Apple Watch from the X-ray tray. Going back, of course I found the trays had been whisked away. Oh geez, not again. But there it was, improbably, at the lost and found. Snatched from the jaws of defeat once more.

Looking back, I’m reminded of a line from a favorite movie, Body Heat—I’ve learned how to use my incompetence as a weapon. Peck and Hepburn it wasn’t, but my Roman Holiday proved to be a metaphor for Rome itself, a mash-up of ancient and new, timeless elegance and mundane urban blight, shameless rogues and selfless rescuers. It was not that I loved chaos less, but that I loved Rome more.

*if you scroll back to my 4/24/21 post from Rome, NY, you’ll see I appreciated the kindness of strangers there, too. Blanche Dubois all over again.

Another coincidence: in 9th grade I was moved, unaccountably, to memorize the entire Friends Romans and Countrymen soliloquy, that followed hard upon Brutus’ lines above. And so began my lifelong infatuation with Shakespeare.

Thanks also to Lina Wertmüller, Yogi Berra, Lawrence Kasdan, Dalton Trumbo, and Tennessee Williams for help with this post.