Via Veneto, Rome for breakfast
La Baita on Via Veneto, just off the Piazza Barberini. We await a vegetarian breakfast. I’m hankering for a cappuccino. There’s a lot to do this day. The highlight will be the Galleria Borghese named for Cardinal Sciperone Borghese, patron of a greater sculptor than Michelangelo called Bernini. It’s very hot this morning. We’re beneath an awning but I’ve half a leg in the sun and that shin bone is heating up like an element and there’s nowhere else i can put it, nowhere comfortable anyway. Our waiter stands in the glare, hands behind his back, looking into the piazza; he’s wearing a waistcoat and a buttoned-down collar.
Via Veneto is a posh street and has a concentration of high-end hotels full of business types, well-to-do tourists, whole American families on holiday, people who’ll do as much shopping as they will sight-seeing. They come down the hill past us and turn right toward the morning attractions. This is Friday and Rome is different on a Friday; it’s crowded with weekenders and city-breakers. Termini was packed tight this morning with suitcases and rucksacks. I saw a woman with no nose; she was rallying a brigade of beggars who looked a bit too healthy and fit for my euro. I was looking at a portrait of Lord Byron at the same time; he bore a strong resemblance to Usain Bolt which surprised me.
The most useful word we’ve learned so far is “preggo” which can mean several things depending on the context. I love these muscular words. “Preggo” can mean, “Can I help you?” if you’ve just walked in to a store and met the eyes of the assistance; it can mean “Please sit down and I’ll be with you in a moment,” if you are hungry; it can also mean “You’re welcome.” It’s a tight tricep,”preggo.”
I sit and think of the movie “The Talented Mr Ripley” not just because we’re not far from the Spanish Steps but because amongst the downhill stream of Americans there are “Dickie-types” who have a lot of money and time. Then a thought: are there “Tom”s? According to Jon Ronson’s research, psychopaths are far more numerous than we think. Scary.
I watch two tiny birds in the tree that overhangs the entrance to the metro at the bottom of Via Veneto. They’re no bigger than chicken eggs but are making a disproportionately loud racket. It’s intermittently drowned by a motorcycle or a gaggle of tourists flip-flopping by with shopping bags and excited inventories of experiences. Two young women pass and one is beginning a treatise with, “So it was less about…” That phrase is evidence of a kind of intellectual joyfulness and readiness to engage; the implict nuance was invigorating to the speaker; her friend was leaning in close to better absorb the approaching thesis. Then, the two older women who were patronising La Baita could be hear utter those most-American-of-all phrases which of course are “lidderally” and “I was like, ‘Oh my Goawd!'” Everything is like something else. It occurs to me that we are losing our ability to characterise, to describe. “Like” is not the same as “is.”
R.H.