Rome Relaxed
By KATE O'BRIEN rrillE word 'Rome' will never imaginably dis- appear from travel dreams or tourists' schedules. There will always be first-timers to stand on the Capitol and gasp; there are in- fatuates who would give their lives to the place; and cooler old hands who can return there again and again in constant anticipation. The city is perhaps a special taste, but for those who have cultivated it it is not possible to enter it without a particular sense of excitement. First, second, third, tenth time—the excitements may differ, but in my experience only to grow sharper.
I last arrived there on All Saints' Day, 1962, into brilliant summer noon—not Roman, but what we up here would call perfect summer— and, excited as 1' was, was not altogether sur- prised, therefore, upon arrival at my hotel to find that my overcoat had been stolen in the Termini Station. What had surprised me, having gone through the usual pleasure of wondering at the aged little Minerva temple in the middle of the railway tracks, was to find the marble platform so remarkably quiet in the sunshine. My train had indeed been far less than full, but still, bemused by the very novel peace of arrival, the almost silence, I had strolled in con- tented wonder the long stretch to the taxis. I had a charming porter--but somehow, between train and taxi, he or another got away with my perfectly good topcoat. And when I noticed the loss, I hardly ttoubled—so irrelevant had all coats suddenly become in this November radi- ance and sweet warmth.
It was a great feast day and the citizens were pouring out of church as I crossed town; children running and shouting, as always for Sunday magnificently dressed; balloon-sellers and their •high-blown wares obstructing one's view of Rome's ubiquitous and glorious flower- stalls; ladies well gloved and veiled, stepping out to call on each other with bouquets of car- nations or little golden boxes of confectionery. No sign anywhere of the everyday rough roar of the city, or at all of Dolce Vita characters. Hardly a fluttering cleric to be seen, moreover —Ecumenical Council or not. It was a Rome come as near as ever I shall see it to provincial Sunday peace.
I was there to attend, for Ireland, a Council meeting of the Comunitti Euro pea Degli Scrit- tori—and that for the next few days I happily did. But I had my hours of flight back into ordinary Rome. (Silly adjective, perhaps, to use for an always extraordinary city. Yet I know what I mean, and Rome has its ways of being ordinary.) I was this time,, I admit, under, the impression of being in the city at a time that would have to be a part of Church History, and upon which the world had fixed an alerted eye. Three thciusand bishops may seem just three thousand bishops, three thousand anybodies; but massed together under one impressive roof in one anciently impressive place, massed to- gether to speak for, say, five hundred million fellow-creatures of one faith and some two hun- dred million more uncertain sympathisers—such a three thousand, of all tongues and colours, is surely isolated in history, and must raise some- thing like three thousand questions in any imagination, sympathetic or averse?
I desired to overhear some of the outer murmurs from this curious event, to get into the margins at least of its overflow, in a Rome which I knew to be resonantly responsive to the dramatic and the exceptional. And so Rome was to this vast occasion, I have no doubt. But cer- tainly in my few days, among my friends, and in the general talk of the streets and of the newspapers, what I found was a peaceful, bene- volent hush. So uncharacteristic as to be in itself dramatic, or at least mysterious. But the citizens were quite simple and open in their calm.
'We understand that they are discussing the language of the liturgy. That will take a very long time.' But' this report was contradicted. 'They have begun with the source of revelation— they need never come to agreement about that. This will be a long Council.'
Press reports were sketchy and filled in with surmise. It seems that the directors of the Coun- cil, permitting, of course, no journalists into hearing of the debates, were exasperated in the first week by the too-near-the-knuckle reportings of 11 Messaggero, so Rome said that now, when after the celebration of Mass which opened every session the ushers cleared St. Peter's of all save members of Council with loud cries of `Exeunt Onznes . . .,' they added: 'Exeat especi- ally the correspondent of 11 Messaggero!'
The mood in Rome towards the Council was almost totally affectionate, interested and of good will. Intellectuals and anti-Vaticans were perhaps surprised by their own concern and attention.
Nina Ruflini, of 11 Mondo, told me that she and other editors talking together in the rooms of that distinguished anti-clerical and liberal organ one day were amused when one of their most impressive elder-directors, a proud witness to everything 11 Mondo stands for, having strolled in, said suddenly: 'That I should live to hear all this! Tolerant words for the Vatican! All-but-admiration for a Pope! Under the roof of 11 Mondo!' Then he got up to leave and, turning at the door, said: 'The devil of it is that I agree with every word!'
But in the streets, the lovely, cobbled, sunlit streets, the mode of Rome was quieter than I have ever known it. The traffic, indeed, as fierce as ever, and they said that between clerics, jour- nalists and tourists there was not a spare bed ever—but my impression was of a curious peace- fulness. Uncharacteristic and magical.
1 went by myself one evening on a pilgrimage of revisitation. And I began this in the Piazza of St. Peter. The great church was closed, as I had known it would be—and anyhow I had no especial wish to go inside. Simply I wanted to see the Piazza as they light it, and when it was all but empty. And there it was—its expression of power and glory rendered touching and appre- hensible under the gentle night sky and through the exquisite tact of the lighting—the two foun- tains playing lazily against the quietest possible illumination, the steps and portico pale and shadowed--not diminished, but made to seem indeed the work of man, as were the dream- touched colonnades. There were some boys twirling about on bicycles, a lonely American with his burden of cameras, a pair of chattering nuns, and I. The lights were on in two windows of the Pope's apartment; the quiet was profound. Indeed, for Rome it puzzled me—yet it seemed natural, too, almost homely, I walked back through the Borgo di San Spirito to the bridge beside Sant'Angelo. There I crossed back into Vecchia Roma, through the winding, crumbling streets I used to know when I lived in Piazza del Orologio behind Chiesa Nuova. I made my slow way to the Piazza Navona, and on a November night, unusually indeed for Rome, I ate supper at ten o'clock on the outside terrace of Maestro Stefano's. They did not remember me there, to my chagrin; but I remembered them. And I ate such grapes from the Castelli as I have never eaten, wild and almost too large and of burning colours, black and gold.
But colours—colour in Rome! That is what memory takes safest away, I think—not just 'colours of fruit and wine and flowers, but the majestic, streaked rose and gold and honey and saffron and grey of all the ancient and the newer walls, and the encircling white of outflung suburbs. Colours—I bore them off with me in a vast, clear confusion, to remember until the next time. Yet never a Cardinal's red did I glimpse or a bishop's purple, or even the proud flash of a Monsignor's biretta. The Council was very quiet, and seemed even to have quieted Rome.
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