An ashtray filled with your grandmother on trial.
The placenta, the flesh, the product you buy.
“May my entire family and everyone I've ever loved be killed and tortured with sheets and sheets of pain and blood. Make it take a long time and make them die with the most frightened faces. Make me watch this please. Do not let me turn away, not for one second.”
He read out loud to me while standing in front of the cathedral, the smoke from his cigarette still levitating in the air in front of him.
The shit he read was always appallingly dark and twisted. I coughed and sneered. He looked at me suggesting we should start walking to the right, past the piazza. He closed the book and started moving his feet. I followed. Once we arrived at the café he had mentioned about twenty times since I arrived here in Rome, we sat down. He ordered two espressos and then two more. Like Tequila ordered by a twenty year old girl on a friday night he poured them down his throat, with no respect for their temperature. My cups were still in front of me, full. I didn’t dare to touch them yet. I’ve burned my mouth and throat so many times from drinking and eating things too quickly that I now was too slow and careful for my own good, nonetheless the coffee needed more time to cool down. I drank it eventually and while I waited Giancarlo, the man in front of me, kept reading from the book he had brought.
“Make all of my good friends kill themselves for immature reasons in their huge bathrooms, crying into their mirrors with lots of blood and pain and holding some bad apple in their arms. Make it grueling and last a long, long time. Make it very embarrassing, oh lord make me watch that too. Let my only child be hurt at birth, killing my wife in delivery so that I hate my child, and make his life even more miserable than the life of a normal child.”
I did not understand this. I could not tolerate things written simply for the sake of being provocative or disgusting. I was not even close to comprehending the art Giancarlo liked to consume, it disgusted me. What also disgusted me was his tendency to romanticize life, always acting as if he was the main character in his own movie. With his patterned shirts, long-burning cigarettes and dramatic readings of flashy, deep books simply for the sake of trying to make people perceive him as a certain type of person. Existence was never truly innocent to him and he refused the notion that everybody else had misunderstood the world just like he had, everyone was alive to the same degree as him. He refused to accept his humanity and mortality. I don’t even think he liked the books he read himself, truly. After the café we headed towards another cathedral. He bought cigarettes in a little store on the way there. He handed me one of the cigarettes, and lit it for me. I smoked it, I never buy my own. We arrived at the Basilica Di Santa Maria Maggiore, I hid the knife I kept in my pocket behind one of the trash cans around the church. I didn’t want it confiscated by the security guards surrounding the entrance. We waited in line. Airports and churches, the most guarded places on earth. Once inside, we saw the big empty, beautiful, shiny floor, the pillars and the exaggeratingly decorated walls and roof. Every ten meters or so there were small chapels and areas designated for prayer scattered next to the big main area of the building. At the very end of this behemoth of a church the virgin Mary hung. A small painting surrounded by insane amounts of gold, shaped into different candle-holders, thick picture frames and various useless decorations. This and the crowded gift shop made it seem as if Mammon had crept its way into the catholic temples again. Me and Giancarlo sat down on one of the many benches in there, almost out of breath.
- It’s beautiful here, way bigger than any of the churches we have at home.
-No, it isn’t, it makes me sick. Giancarlo looked towards me with boredom in his eyes. I sighed.
-Well I know you hate the intention Gian, but if we put that aside for a while you have to admit that it looks nice, it’s very well executed. I looked aways for a second, letting my words echo all over the walls.
-I like it because it’s quiet, not because it’s pretty.
Giancarlo spat on the ground, trying his best not to make a sound. I didn’t respond. I let the cool air hit my sweaty skin. It truly felt as if Jesus had brought us into heaven sheltering us from the hell that is Rome. Warm, sticky, loud Rome.
-I do feel it though, Giancarlo whispered.
-Feel what?
-You know the thing, the spirit. Or at least the spirit of every funeral and wedding in here. Everyone pleading for help through God in desperation. I don’t know what, but I feel something that’s for sure.
Back at the hotel, located in a monastery, Gian poured himself a glass of wine next to the statue of virgin Mary who with her stone eyes closely monitored us. He sipped, I smoked by the window. I showered, brushed my teeth, drank some wine, tried to read my book, failed to read my book, brushed my teeth again in regret and fell quickly asleep after 20mg of well trusted pharmaceutical melatonin.
The morning after I woke up 30 minutes before Gian, who seemed to enjoy his beauty sleep. After breakfast, all hygienic routines required to survive in an urban environment and a morning prayer in the small chapel next to the hotel reception we once again walked out into the streets of Rome. The sun was still merciful to our pale skin, but in only an hour or so, hell would creep back over us. At 10:30 in the morning life in Rome was still nothing but beautiful. We did not have any apparent plans for the day. With me I carried two water bottles, sunglasses and fluid replacement for the both of us. Gian had cigarettes and his book. We walked to Roma Termini, a big railway station packed with stores, cafes and smaller restaurants. Coffee and cold beer could fill the heart of any 20-year old tourist, and it did. For three hours we did nothing but sit in the sun surrounded by steam and gas from all the cars and buses coming in and out of Rome. The noise coming from this pulsing and ever so alive industrial behemoth didn’t bother us.
