Arriving at Fiumicino, arriving in Rome, all the practical details of the journey had so far worked smoothly. The next stage was meeting whoever it was who was going to drive me into the city. They, the waiting collectors, scan the arriving bodies; we, the arriving bodies, scan the faces and the cards held up with the names of hotels or travel firms. A mutual examination.
My collector had set himself in the second row and he wore a grey baseball cap. I was there and he was there. We met. Did I laugh nervously? I can’t quite remember, though I feel I might have done. He said he had noticed me, picked me out as a possible candidate. He used the word vulnerable, a certain vulnerability. That’s probably right, I thought. Living in a small Devon town and rarely travelling, I haven’t developed the brittle defences of the seasoned traveller. At least that might be a part of the surface aspect of the vulnerability.
As we drove into the city from the airport he pointed out the edifice which Mussolini had planned as a mausoleum for himself. Such absurd grandiosity! I remembered that he had been hanged – was it a lynching? by partisans? Hanged from the proverbial lamp post? My collector informed me that it (the intended mausoleum) was now used by the Franciscans.
I was ready for something, but was I ready for what was going to happen? And what sort of language do I need to use to get at what was going to happen?
Take, for instance, the fact that the dominant pattern to the weather ( despite the sunny optimism of the arrival) was heavy rain and thunderstorms. Lightning split the sky. And storm is a word that insinuated itself in my mind to indicate what was building internally as the days passed. Although it was only when I got back to England that I pinpointed that particular word.
Face to face with a storm.