Sometimes when a vulnerable person loses his way someone, or two, can help him find it.

This is not the story of the newly elected Pope who fled the Vatican and wandered through Rome hoping to resolve his existential conflict. If  “Habemus Papam” is playing at a theater near you, preferably in the original Italian with English subtitles, do not miss this film by Nanni Moretti, which is both endearing and caustic.

My story concerns a man about the same age as the runaway Pope, with little knowledge of English or Italian to assist him, who strayed or was left behind by his group.

Speaking, it seems, half the languages in the world, herds and hordes of tourists of all ages, often in groups of 50 or more, troop along Via Governo Vecchio from the Vatican toward Piazza Navona from morning till evening.

They rarely stop to admire the Renaissance buildings and architectural fabric of Old Rome, or glance down the narrow side streets and imagine how lucky they might one day be to live amidst all this history and beauty. Watching them take over the neighborhood supermarket in droves to buy loaves of white bread, processed cheese and ham, and maxi bottles of Coca Cola, and (the younger ones) stick sweet snacks under their shirts or in their backpacks to keep costs down, one wonders if these people, of whatever age, even know where they are as they graze with their purchases seated on the stoop of a late cardinal’s residence. To me they are sheep in the fold going from point A to point B.

Rome? History? Beauty? Just pass the bag of potato chips.

A few days ago, after a Roman lunch worthy of the name (vegetable frittata and veggies baked to perfection in the wood-burning oven, half an order of spaghetti all’arrabbiata) at the local trattoria on Via del Corallo, at the corner of Governo Vecchio, I saw this wisp of a man the wind could have blown away. Elderly, short and slight, neat in a brown suit which was a bit rumpled, like his wispy sandy white hair. The rim around his left eye was bright red, a sign of infection and cause of concern. He had no map and was clearly lost.

A Chinese woman, an accomplished musician elegant in a black mise, a neighbor I had never seen or met before that moment, was attempting to give him directions in excellent English, but he did not understand nor could he express himself well because of the language barrier.

Ms Buttinsky that I naturally am, and also quite knowledgeable about the streets of Old Rome by profession, I asked what the problem was. The man said he needed directions to get back to his hotel, or directions to get to the train station to get back to his hotel. When we asked him the name of his hotel, it was an establishment I was unfamiliar with.

The musician and I initially decided it might be best to turn him over to a policeman or carabiniere because it was evident he was too frail to get his bearings alone and, from what we understood, he was tired and disoriented after wandering the streets for 2 to 3 hours waiting to be found.

After several more questions, the man extracted a packet of travel vouchers from his compact but heavy, for him, shoulder bag. The vouchers told us his name and the name and number of his hotel, located on a beautiful stretch of coast outside Naples.

What was life like before we could just whip out our cell phones to solve a problem? With modern technology my neighbor and I didn’t need the police.

I made the call. The concierge said the man, who he identified by name, was part of a group visiting Rome that day and, in the concierge’s blunt, unsolicited opinion, a man of his age in his condition should never have been brought along to the big city. I gave the concierge my name and cell number and the location of our trio so he could contact the group escort.

We walked a short distance to the neighborhood bar, one of the last traditional cafés left on this street that has not succumbed to offering tourists frozen everything for lunch and dinner at the same price or higher than the authentic, family-run trattorie, which are also dwindling in number, rapidly.

At last, the old gentleman could rest his legs, drink a glass of cool water and wait for the tour escort to collect him.

My neighbor was a cultured woman but reserved, so the two of us didn’t exchange much personal information. She was concerned about the old man, however, and asked him a few questions, which he answered haltingly. We learned he was 84, German, and had worked in textiles. He was long separated from his wife, a psychologist, and vague about his ties to his children, which he dismissed with downcast eyes, a small shrug of the shoulders and a light wave of the hand.  His manner remained consistently mild, but his gestures seemed to touch a nerve. Did he realize he had acknowledged a failing? The man was alone on this group tour and alone in life. He also suffered from non-insulin type diabetes and, though he wouldn’t admit it, his protracted peregrinations on the streets of Old Rome had left him vulnerable.

After checking in a few times on the cell with the tour escort to reconfirm our respective locations, she showed up about 30 minutes later to take the old man in her charge. And she was definitely a take charge type, a stocky, vigorous redheaded Italian in her late thirties and an official tour escort who spoke rapid-fire German. As she took the man away with her she seemed to be berating him, but since I don’t understand German I couldn’t be sure. I don’t remember whether she ever thanked my neighbor and me for our concern.

The last I saw of him as they disappeared down the street toward Banchi Nuovi, the tour escort was gripping his upper arm and talking in his face, marching at a pace too brisk for him.

He was lucky to have found two foreign women, residents of Rome, to come to his aid, because if he had asked a real Roman for directions he might still be lost.

Perhaps this man wasn’t in the throes of an existential crisis, but from the little I observed of him he seemed a sad person embedded in a sad life who deserved better.

That afternoon he had been rescued temporarily and would be sleeping in the comfort of his luxury hotel that night.

With the passing of Tonino Guerra on March 21 at the ripe young age of 92 (optimism was his greatest quality), we mourn another piece of Italian cinema history. Tonino was a writer, poet, story teller, artist, but is best known for his collaboration as a screenwriter assisting some of the greatest filmmakers, Italian and international, over the past half century. To name just a few: Fellini, De Sica, Bellocchio, Bertolucci, Monicelli, the Taviani Brothers, Tarkovski, and my favorites: Angelopoulos and Antonioni. With the exception of Bellocchio, Bertolucci and the Tavianis on this very partial list, the others have all gone.

Those who knew Tonino praised his humanity and lightness of spirit. I translate an excerpt from the remembrance of Giovanna Cau recalling Tonino’s last words to her:  “‘I am not afraid.’ …in his long and intense life’s journey, from imprisonment in Germany to Soviet Russia to the Dalai Lama’s Tibet he [was unafraid], overcoming through his poetry the many difficulties and sorrows life presents.”

In my younger years I showed no fear and approached Tonino at the Venice Film Festival to ask him if he would like to help me with my writing. He was charming, affable and sincere (a rare quality in the film world), and he told me he never worked on spec. Even in rejection, how could one not love him?

In auteur cinema the director is the star, but Tonino’s contribution was invaluable. His long career is a testament to the many visionaries he inspired when their muses went astray, leaving them fuzzy-headed. They needed the writer’s touch to get them back on track.

When I sit at the front table in my favorite trattoria on Via del Corallo, I read the inscription commemorating another departed poet, Amelia Rosselli, who lived in the building across the street until her suicide in 1996. The inscription is a poetic fragment about rhyme, rhythm and the dunque, the conclusion, not of a meal,  a conversation, or a day, but of our mortal lives, the dunque we know is lurking, the dunque that finds us all.

One day Antonioni and Tonino paid a call on Amelia Rosselli. She described her state of mind, her soul state, to them and spoke the phrase that became legend in Antonioni’s “Red Desert” and an object of derision for those who cannot appreciate film as art or who may not know the source and context of a tortured woman’s torment: “My hair hurts.”

The next time I sit at this table I would like to imagine Antonioni and Tonino, their future before them, walking along Via del Corallo, ringing the poet’s bell and going upstairs to visit.

In an interview Antonioni once declared: “Cinema is truth.” Truth be told, the inscription on the facade of Via del Corallo 25 tells us that Amelia Rosselli lived there for the last 20 years of her life (from 1976 ca.), 12 years after “Deserto Rosso” was released. So the visit took place,  and the words were uttered, but not at this address.

But I still have my imagination.

Today little imagination is needed to watch films on cell displays and computer tablets.

With the exception of the Hungarian Jansco, Tonino worked with the other three masters of the sequence shot (piano sequenza), each of whom used it in an original way for his own artistic ends.

Of all the arts, cinema is the only one that can capture time. The movement of the camera transporting us back and forth through the generations of a dying poet’s life in “Eternity and a Day,” a young woman walking down the stairs alone after her night of love with a callous stockbroker in “The Eclipse,” the climactic sequence of “Profession Reporter,” the dying writer walking across the empty thermal pool keeping the candle aflame in “Nostalghia.”

The passage of time and time standing still on the big screen. It takes your breathe away and leaves you spellbound. Transcendent emotions not for the small screen or the distracted viewer.

The generation of Europe’s golden age of filmmaking is coming to a close.

Long live the art of film, its history, and the memory of those who made it.

(Photos: top Tonino Guerra; below Theo Angelopoulos and Tonino); Michelangelo Antonioni on his 90th birthday with Tonino; Tonino at Antonioni’s wake. All photos from la Repubblica.

The Good News

On Friday, September 9, the good news is the return of the Nuovo Olimpia after its summer hiatus.

Every summer, for the entire summer, I live in a state of trepidation. Will the Nuovo Olimpia re-open or be shunted to the expanding graveyard of Rome’s film history? Will I lose another piece of the Rome that means the most to me?

Fortunately, the cinema dearest to my heart is back in business and will resist another season and, with luck and the good will of its patrons, many more to come.

In the US, the summer months are high times for the film industry: new releases of multimillion dollar flicks featuring multimillion dollar movie stars competing for multimillion dollar gross receipts.

European cinema and cinema in most of the rest of the world craft and create on a more modest, more human scale.

If you scan your Rome daily for the listings, “chiusura estiva” (”closed for summer”) is playing on the majority of movie screens from mid-July until early September, and it doesn’t earn a dime.

From 9 PM on a summer night in Rome you can make your way to a few open air venues for a double feature under the stars and enjoy re-runs of the previous season’s biggest hits.

If you are an attractive young woman alone in the audience, you may be lucky enough to get a thigh massage (not a Thai massage) from some lonely man to your right or left.

That hasn’t been my luck in a long, long time, although in my youthful years as a Rome resident passing males dubbed me “bella cosciona” in celebration of my “beautiful big thighs.” Some would follow me down the street as I explored this city of cities and, in cinemas, place a hand on my Rubensian coscia for some exploration of their own.

Reluctantly, I never let a stranger’s hand linger long, and I regret the possibilities I denied myself.

In my first years in Rome the Nuovo Olimpia was the place I refined my Italian language skills.

My only formal training in my adopted country’s language was a two semester course at Harvard adult education. After three summers as a student tourist in Europe and Italy, most of it spent  in Rome (my kismet),  I was able to make good conversation shopping at the local market, downing a cappuccino at the neighborhood bar, and even socially.

But in the dark at the Nuovo Olimpia, an easy walk from my Trevi Fountain flat, I listened to the language and immersed myself in images and stories wrought by some of the world’s greatest directors, from Bunuel to Kurosawa, from John Ford and Sydney Pollack to Satyajit Ray to Tarkovski. Thanks to the miracle of dubbing, Fernando Rey, Robert Redford and Soumitra Chatterjee all spoke the same excellent Italian. I soaked up the language and furthered my self-education in film.

In those days the Nuovo Olimpia was a one-screen house, dingy and rundown. The restroom was unspeakable. Better to hold it in. At night the cinema became a mecca for gay men, so most of the time I was an afternoon visitor.

When I returned to Rome in 1995 after formal education in filmmaking in NYC the Nuovo Olimpia was a spiffy two-screen establishment showing first-run original language films.

In the old days in Rome one had to wait at least a year after their original release to see the best films from the US, and only one cinema in the entire city, the glorious Pasquino in Trastevere, showed them in English.

In the Seventies and Eighties art house clubs sprang up in various neighborhoods all over the city. Shrines to film in its noblest form, the clubs were often created out of tiny, improvised spaces with an air of poverty that unequivocally foretold their doom. They were not in business for business, they existed to exalt the art.

Except for the resurrected Film Studio in Trastevere, the others rarely drew crowds but had a devoted following screening rare films exactly as they were shot, with Italian subtitles. Czech films, Hungarian, Polish, Indian and Yiddish films, the French New Wave, the English Free Cinema, the New German Cinema, the Greek Angelopoulos (my daughter’s favorite), the Italian masters from Rossellini, Visconti and De Sica to Bellocchio and Bertolucci, and the long generation of greats in between. Most of those art houses are now stardust memories, but there, in those dank, uncomfortable holes, consoled only by the beauty on the screen, I tried to instill in my young daughter a love of the art of film.

By the time I returned to Rome from NYC, some of the most illustrious commercial cinemas in the heart of Rome had begun to shut down, one by one, not for the summer but forever: the Augustus on Corso Vittorio, the Capranica and Capranichetta between the Corso and Pantheon, the Etoile in the posh Piazza in Lucina, the Quirinetta near Trevi Fountain, the Quirino and Rialto on Via Nazionale, the Rivoli just off Via Veneto.

It hurts to recite the names and remember the places, so I won’t burden my memory except to mourn the most recent demise, the Metropolitan, near Piazza del Popolo, just after the Christmas peak of 2010, two months earlier than announced.

The Metropolitan had been smartly renovated as a four-screen theatre and featured first-run original language films, American and European.

The house drew good audiences and became a meeting place for Rome’s film-loving foreign community, just as the Pasquino (RIP, also dear to my heart) had been years earlier.

The Metropolitan was not in dire straits when the property’s new owners, titans of real estate, closed it. These titans are not types to dream about a simple tale simply told with exceptional actors unknown to the masses who can move you to tears or laughter without manipulation, or the beauty of the moving image on a big screen, whether in black and white or full color. They are practical people with monochrome vision. Everything they see, they see in green. Inspired only by the color of money, they envision a multi-story mini-mall in the once hallowed cinema space to draw in crowds of non-cultural consumers.

A slogan for our times: “Coming to a theatre that was once near you… I love shopping.”

That’s the bad news.

To enjoy movies in Rome nowadays it takes only a satellite dish and a DVD player for small screen viewing in the comfort of one’s home; press pause for a break, resume whenever. It requires far less concentration and is a different experience, to be sure.

Alone, in the silence of your home, with no one to rest a hand on your thigh. But, if you’re lucky, you might have the cat come sit on your lap.

At a certain point early on, the cats were making noise in the bedroom, but it seemed like their usual romp, only a little more frantic, before they settled down for a nap.

I got up once and saw Scampolo fully stretched out on his side on the floor next to the armchair, top paw daintily crossed over the other, behind me, but I didn’t think twice as I again sat down at the computer, back turned to the rest of my little world.

When I concluded my umpteenth check of inboxes and solitaire (to keep my mind sharp, but I play too much to avoid productive work), I turned and saw Scampolo in the exact same position the last time I looked, and it hit me. Oh, no.

I studied him on the floor and then with trepidation reached down to touch him ever so lightly, to wake him. He was cold and rigid. Gone, without a peep, two feet behind my back.

I let out a string of “Oh, God, nos,” but I didn’t want to wail in front of the other cats who were lolling about, oblivious.

I dressed in a hurry, put his stiff body into a carrier and got him to the vet just before midnight.

The vet confirmed what was evident and I asked her for time alone to say good-bye. I cried a little as I carressed and kissed his head, his fur still soft to my touch, and took a few photos on my cell phone of my beautiful little boy in death, his beautiful black eyes now closed forever.

Scampolo grew up but remained petite, pretty enough to be a girl with those dark eyes and soft black and white coat, and always most affectionate, just like his brother Pisellino, who is still with me but thinning with the years. They were kittens and too sweet for life on the street. One afternoon I picked them up without a struggle, placed them in a carrier and brought them home with me. They were/are all one could ask for in a cat. I could take Scampolo in my arms any time of the day or night and give him a million little kisses. Sometimes he would perch on my shoulder and fall asleep, and I would fall asleep with him, feeling the light vibrations of his purring on my skin. He purred day and night, even while he slept. Moments of pure bliss, waiting for the abyss. Now he slept alone.

Except for Henry (the ambassador), who may have died of a heart attack while I was running to the vet to save him, and frail old Arlene, who died of kidney failure on the couch, sleeping among the other cats, before I knew what kidney failure was, the other cats I have lost all had long illnesses. I had time to prepare, time to give medication to delay the inevitable, time to say good-bye, time to be good to them, before the last taxi ride to the vet. 

Chocolate (the greatest love of all), Mimi (her sister, who I didn’t love enough), Cubby Duccio (the youngest and tiniest, the last cat I took in), Nuvola (my dainty princess), Marshmallow (who I didn’t love as much as he loved me and didn’t really want but felt compassion for), I let them linger in pain until the very end. I didn’t really want Arlene, either, but she couldn’t survive on the street much longer in her condition and I never gave her the love she gave me so I must remember her here. I watched them suffer but I couldn’t bring myself to take them on that last taxi ride until they were practically unconscious. I prayed to God for a miracle for each and every cat I have lost. I wanted to keep them forever.

Before I left Scampolo I told the vet she could call me at any hour if he returned like Lazarus. She said there would be no miracle. I hoped she would call, but I didn’t really believe.

Still, I ask God daily to bless them, love them and protect them, in death as in life.

(April 28/29, 2010)

“ ’Accusation’ and ‘confession’ are the precise (judicial) terms the press, including, regrettably, the Italian press, has used to report the latest news regarding John Edwards, former Democratic presidential candidate, who is ‘accused’ of having betrayed his wife and has been forced to render a public ‘confession.’ The nature of the crime is unclear, also because the charges were brought [not by the judicial authority but] by the tabloids, imagine their authority and ethical correctness… In any case, the story has been clamorously inflated into a full blown political issue.

“Contemporaneously, in Greece, a small country considered less modern and less democratic than the United States, a government official attempted suicide following a sordid scandal involving sex tapes and blackmail. In full agreement, the [Greek] government and opposition declared that an entirely private drama should remain absolutely outside the realm of political speculation, and advised discretion and respect [on the part of anyone who might consider exploiting it]. In the narrow sense, we can assume that an adulterer would be much better off living in Greece than in the United States. In the wider sense, that public opinion in the most powerful Nation on earth tends to concern itself more with the so-called ’sexual morality’ of its politicians than with the war in Iraq or other grave issues. [This is a] case of perversion of the public eye far more serious than the private vices of any public figure.”

I fully concur with Mr Serra. The American public certainly has far more important matters to contemplate than a politician’s private life. Whatever John Edwards did with the woman in question is not a “scandal” but a private matter. Mr Edwards is accountable solely to his wife and family and owes the public no explanation whatsoever.

Grow up, Americans, and open your eyes. Worry about the wars overseas and the needless loss of American lives and the financial and human resources wasted to fight these wars. Worry about the economy and the honest, hardworking Americans who are losing their jobs and their homes, and be glad you haven’t lost yours (yet). Worry about the environment and the rape of our planet’s dwindling natural resources, the decline in public education, and the current administration’s utter contempt for the Constitution. Worry that your children and grandchildren will have a worse world to live in rather than a better one.

The true scandal here is that the tabloid media have yet again hoodwinked a sizeable part of the American public into diverting its attention away from the pressing problems the nation faces and getting it into a lather about a matter that is none of the public’s business.

I don’t know whether to write this story in the present tense or past.

Someone I always remember in my prayers and when I light a candle is Joe, known to the Romans as “Giuseppe.”

A fixture of our neighborhood, Joe is now gone, perhaps forever.

A cultured Englishman, he has lived in the most picturesque neighborhoods of Old Rome since the sixties.  For many of these years his home has been the street. This was by choice and not a question of circumstance. He could no longer live confined by four walls, he told someone. Something changed in his life to provoke his decision, but I will never know what.

Originally, Joe lived on the streets around the Campo de’ Fiori. Then there was some sort of incident with a few of the locals and he moved to our neighborhood, where he felt safer.

Unlike so many of our street creatures, Joe never became a drunk. He used to make a living gathering cardboard boxes and paper from the streets, which he would sell to a local recycler. The shop went out of business several years ago, but as long as it lasted you could see Joe slowly dragging bundles of material bound by twine around the neighborhood, depositing them at some quiet corner, then retracing his steps to drag more bundles to that spot, then watching over them until he had accumulated enough to sell. That was his livelihood. The last bundle, the small one, was not for sale. It contained his personal belongings, blankets, extra sweaters and jackets for the chilly season, that was about it. Did he preserve old photographs or keepsakes from his settled years, when life must have been easier for him?

Someone told me Joe had been a professional nurse in England. Someone else told me Joe was part English, part Scot, that his father had been an eminent professor and that Joe had also been a professor.

For as long as I have known him Joe has always been disheveled and dirty and smelled foul. His shoes were often torn. If they weren’t, he wore them unlaced or unbuckled. Even his feet defied confinement. He had been having trouble with them for years.

By the time I met him Joe had lost most of his teeth, but he was always cordial and courteous, quick to say hello, ask how you were, and had you seen the new exhibit at such and such gallery, and if you hadn’t you should see it at once because it was true art.

And had you seen Joe’s buddy Romeo, the stray macho tiger with the huge eyes, the cat who could mesmerize you with his gaze, around? Romeo had been savagely attacked, so savagely that his leg bone stuck out through his lacerated flesh. The local vet cured Romeo’s leg, then it was ciao to the balls, and a kind woman took him in and gave him a home with a rooftop to roam so he would not be totally confined.

The “you” in these conversations was “me” and though I always felt for Joe, deeply enough to remember him in my prayers by name, I never wanted to over engage in conversation. I never wanted to get too close and, I am sure, neither did he.

Despite his appearance and odor, Joe was generally liked and accepted in the neighborhood. He often had his cappuccino and brioche at the counter of the cafe in the piazza, chatting amiably with the manager and the baristas.

Joe never spoke about himself and his past, what he had done in his life, why he lived on the street, how he had come to this point. Joe always exhibited a great, positive spirit and ably hid his darker thoughts, his difficulties, from public scrutiny.

He asked me for change only once; otherwise he never asked me for anything. And he never begged. 

A few months ago I offered Joe one of my canes. The pharmacy sold them as a pair and I only use one. He was surprised by my offer and insisted he didn’t need it. Someone told me a well-to-do Englishwoman in our neighborhood gave him pocket money regularly, but only a little at a time. Living and sleeping on the street made Joe vulnerable to robbery.

For safety’s sake, Joe preferred to sleep during the day in some quiet corner and stay awake in the afternoon and through the night. Recently, in the late afternoons between lunch and dinner, he would sit at one of the empty tables at the famous restaurant in the piazza to pass the time, sometimes watching the world go by, sometimes with a vacant stare. The waiters went about their business setting up and sometimes chatted with him. Joe always knew when it was time to leave. No one had to ask him.

A few years ago during a very cold winter the priests arranged for him to sleep in a warm, clean room on their property and he wisely accepted. He also slept in during the winters that followed.

Joe loved the annual Christmas Day lunch that is held in the nave of the historic church in the piazza. The pew benches where the faithful cry through weddings and funerals are turned into seats around long tables, and volunteers serve a great feast to the poor and the lonely, to the neglected and the rejected, under the richly gilded ceiling with a painting of the Madonna rising to heaven. Much of the neighborhood turns out. Some years the current president or an ex-president of Italy puts in an appearance. The press covers the event every year and many times you could see Joe being interviewed on the evening news praising the feast. He is a handsome man with a face full of character, a face a camera could love.

The day manager of the cafe in the piazza has now informed me that Joe was having serious skin problems in addition to his foot problems and has been taken to England for care.He may never return to Rome, where he has lived most of his life. I can only hope his great, positive and cordial spirit will prevail, that he will adapt to his new environment, even if it is within four walls, and will let his caregivers give to him.

Many expatriates I have known finally leave Rome toward the end, when they want to be cared for on their native soil. Most of these people have been economically privileged.

I can’t say what the future holds for me, but I hope I will never have to leave Rome. I am always an American, but Rome is my native soil.

I offer up a prayer now for Joe and Evaristo, for La Signora and her cats, and for the neglected and the rejected, urbi et orbi, in Rome and in the world.                

Then there is Evaristo, an outstanding eccentric in a neighborhood known for its eccentrics and the often excessive tolerance, which may just be a form of resignation, of those who live within the lines. 

An elderly artist, wiry, with long, wispy white hair and most of his teeth gone, Evaristo dresses in a style all his own, with hats or scarves, bracelets or necklaces he may have found in the garbage or fashioned himself. He is an “attaccabottoni” with a passion for engaging anyone and everyone in rambling, if not eternal, conversation. If you let him, he would chew your ear off.

I never cared to converse with Evaristo. Not because he is eccentric (frankly, so am I), but because I never wanted to take the time.

Also, I regarded him as a nuisance. I know no person’s life and character can be summed up in a word, and, I admit, some people over the years regarded me as a nuisance, too. These were people who didn’t know me well and wouldn’t help me realize my aspirations. 

When I lived in my previous flat, across the piazza from his, Evaristo started ringing my bell on Sunday mornings to inquire about his cousins, who lived across the hall from me. I rarely saw and didn’t know these people and, after much insistence on my part, he stopped. Morning, noon or night, Evaristo was always striking up conversations with the young tourists who roam our neighborhood. He spoke Italian and broken English, and they their own language and broken Italian. He had a fondness for pretty girls.

Evaristo was gregarious, but he must have also been lonely with a craving for attention. A few years ago he hung huge permanent displays of colorful puppets, dolls and sundry objects loosely strung together from two of his windows overlooking the piazza. People who passed along the main street toward the hub of our neighborhood seemed to delight in these displays and wondered about the person who lived there. I always thought these creations were an eyesore but, aside from my personal opinion, if they ever fell from the windows they could seriously injure a passerby.

For a time on weekday or Saturday mornings Evaristo got into the habit of turning his powerful stereo up full blast so the whole piazza between his flat and mine could hear the nuns reciting the Holy Rosary on Vatican Radio. Not that he ever struck me as particularly religious, but, then again, I didn’t know much about him. For a time he used to roam the neighborhood streets in the quiet afternoon hours, siesta time, or sometimes late at night with a blaring transistor radio hanging from his wrist. Just in case you wanted to get some sleep, he was the angel who kept you from it.

A few months ago I asked a neighborhood friend, our local “gazette,” about him because I hadn’t seen him in a while. Gazzetta is not a gossip by nature, but she is exceptionally well informed about what’s happening in our little corner of the earth. She told me Evaristo, who lives in the building adjacent to hers and in his more vivacious moments just a few years ago used to throw his smelly garbage straight out the back window into the inner courtyard shared by their two buildings, had grown depressed and wouldn’t come out anymore. He has removed most of the objects from the windows now and his shutters are always closed, but those that remain testify to his presence.

Another friend told me Evaristo often went to the local hospital late at night to scrounge food from the kitchen. If there was anything left, the staff always obliged him.

For years his signed drawings adorned the walls of one of our local chicken and pizza dens. They were filled with color and whimsy and rendered with a deft hand. When the shop remodeled the drawings disappeared. Evaristo would tape small photocopied announcements with his name and phone number on light posts or on building walls, inviting people to see his art. He wasn’t having an exhibit. If you called him, he would arrange to meet you and talk.

Evaristo always wanted to count for something, and as he aged and grew lonelier it must have been difficult for him.

Evaristo was, and is, an artist. Although he has now withdrawn, he was, and is, a piece of our neighborhood that is slowly changing even as it remains the same.

I imagine someone from the parish checks up on him every day and makes sure he eats and is well.

Perhaps Evaristo will end up like my beloved neighbor at Trevi Fountain, Nonna Giulia. When she decided her time had come she took to her bed and died a month later, tired but in apparent good health, tended to by her daughter. At the venerable age of 93 she hadn’t done it all or seen it all, but she had had enough.

I should try to remember Evaristo more often in my prayers and when I light a candle.

“The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Jaded Romans love to toss off this nugget of wisdom.

Another, that I have been hearing ever since I settled in Rome, is that 15 or 20 years ago Rome was a much better place to live. ”World weary” Romans who subscribe to this idea may be under the illusion they have “done it all and seen it all.” 

My first landlady, at Trevi Fountain, the Red Countess, who left her spacious flat next to my tiny studio for long stretches of the year to indulge her passion for painting and the country life in Tuscany, always grumbled that Rome had once been better, as did several illustrious filmmakers I met over the years and never had the opportunity to work with.

To my eyes Rome remains eternally beautiful and things change even as they remain the same. When I settled in Rome decades ago I was younger and slimmer and had my whole life before me, along with the dreams I hoped to realize, so, from that perspective, things certainly were better then.

I have not “done it all or seen it all,” nor do I expect to. I have never framed my dreams and aspirations in those terms. Now, in my lovely neighborhood of Old Rome, the glorious scent of jasmine is fading as the first heat of June strikes, and my life’s adventure continues, moment to moment.

People go, life goes on, and one may barely notice their passing.

For years I used to bump into the Signora De Aristocratis around the neighborhood. She was a thin Roman of a certain age with salt and pepper hair pulled back off her lightly wrinkled face, wire-rimmed glasses perched on her nose, casually elegant in loose fitting slacks and shirt, usually with a cigarette in her hand. Signora De Aristocratis was one of those upper class woman used to commanding others with nothing less than the utmost courtesy, but she was not a woman to be commanded.

She always did her shopping alone but would banter about the state of the neighborhood and other light topics with the shopkeepers. If she was like me, she engaged in long and silly conversations with her feline babies.

Most of the time we crossed paths at the butcher’s, where she bought choice cuts for her circa 30 Norwegians.

La Signora was a chain smoker, and I often wondered what would happen to her precious cats if something happened to her. We never struck up more than a passing acquaintanceship, just a “buongiorno” and a superficial exchange of cat news as the butcher ground her beef to Norwegian cat-palate perfection.

I have precious cats, too, never as many as she had, but mine are all from the street, spayed and neutered.

La Signora was a snob about her cats, a snob about the veterinarians she used, a snob about who she would allow to take care of her cats. A “gattara” like precious Bambi, who works in cat colonies and on the streets saving strays, no matter how expert in handling felines and administering therapy, never crossed the threshold of La Signora’s lovely apartment with enchanting views over the Roman  rooftops. La Signora was afraid a “gattara” might bring in germs on her clothes or shoes that could infect them.

A month or two ago I asked the butcher about her. He informed me she had passed away two years earlier. And her cats? Taken care of by the heir. How? Where? The butcher couldn’t say.

The butcher lost a good customer, and the cats lost their mommy.

I, too, worry about what will happen to my cats if I precede them leaving this life and Rome. 

Now, when I walk to my favorite café in the piazza I look up at the top floor flat La Signora used to inhabit. The roof terrace is still entirely enclosed, sides and top, by the heavy wiring that protected her cats, but no one is there to enjoy the view.

I pray someone is caring for her cats the way she would have wanted.

I didn’t order as much as I might have because I didn’t want to take advantage. Half a portion of rigatoni all’amatriciana (with bacon and tomato sauce sprinkled with Parmesan because I have never taken a liking to pecorino), a plate of pollo alla romana, coarse and crusty Roman bread to sop up the sauce, all the sauce, and flat water. Wine would have definitely aided digestion, but I sleep late. If I drink a glass of wine with lunch I will go right back to sleep again in my own version of the Roman “dolce far niente” (”sweet to do nothing”), which is more or less the story of my life.

A word about this particular version of pollo alla romana. It is a variation of chicken “cacciatore” with tomato and without olive oil. Many traditional trattorie stew their version of pollo alla romana in a thick tomato sauce with sliced bell pepper, but not at this particular trattoria so close to my heart, my soul, and my gut.

A few weeks ago I told the lady in charge of the tables I might one day fling myself into the pot of chicken bubbling on the stove and lap up the thin but intense sauce, which is positively inebriating despite the absence of alcohol. She seemed quite amused as she envisioned the possibility. I could pay the ladies in their tiny, overcrowded kitchen no higher compliment.

The dark meat of the chicken is cut into eighths and braised slowly, skin and all, in a sauce of canned tomatoes reduced to a liquid in the mini pimer, white wine vinegar, rosemary, a bit of garlic, and hot pepper to tingle the palate. As the meat cooks, the chicken fat under the skin is rendered and binds with the other ingredients to make this sauce memorable.

For a Jewish girl whose memories of the rendered chicken fat in her mother’s chopped liver now reside in heaven, this is almost as good as it gets. I am now a (somewhat lapsed) Catholic with a catholic vision and believe, or hope, my Jewish mother has earned a place in paradise even though she didn’t believe in it.

But, who am I to judge?

And what did I do to earn my free lunch?

Yesterday, forgetting for a moment I no longer live in Manhattan, I rushed off in my usual fashion to the trattoria because my cleaning girl was due at my door in less than an hour. On the way, three distinguished Italian out-of-towners, a man and two women in their sixties, asked me for directions to a well-known restaurant nearby. I had to inform them their first choice was open for dinner only. They inquired about another known establishment, then another, and I said it might be better not to chance places whose better days were long behind them.

They followed me to the neighborhood trattoria, which, I warned, offered no-frills home cooking in a modest but typically Roman atmosphere: paper covering the tables instead of cloth, cutlery (one knife, one fork per customer) which remains on the table for the whole meal rather than replaced after every course, convenience store glasses for wine and water, paper napkins. It is not unusual to see habitués enter, claim their seat by throwing a jacket over a chair, and set their own place instead of waiting for one of the daily rotating servers composed of the owner’s very extended family to do the job.

As we walked down the little streets, I pointed out a wonderful restaurant that was always closed on Monday and told them to try it on their next visit if they wanted a more varied menu, and we exchanged predictions on the national elections taking place in mid-April.

When we entered the mom-and-pop place, I introduced them to the lady in charge of the tables as the “pavesi,” wished them a “buon appetito” in this surviving nook of authentic Rome and settled into a small table by myself in the corner of the first room. They were seated in the inner room so that was the last I saw of them.

When I returned today for a more leisurely meal, the lady in charge of the tables told me my lunch had already been paid for by the “pavesi.” Evidently, they had enjoyed their Roman experience. She gave me their card, which they had left with her, and relayed the news that I would be their guest if I ever visited their home town.

I have never travelled to their town but it has always been on my list. Maybe one day I will actually make the trip and see its architectural wonders and perhaps bump into my chance acquaintances once again.

In the meantime I will send them an email to thank them for lunch.