Sorrento...

... for Knots in the String.

Sorrento:

Imagine if you will, a nineteen year old in the late 1960’s on her first overseas sortie away from her family and friends, and traveling alone. She had ventured first to Thailand, staying in the rather beautiful new hotels her parents had stayed in previously – feeling safe, organised, and so the young woman gained a little confidence.

She flew to Rome from Bangkok, arriving in the early hours of a working day, gathering up her luggage at Fiumcino Aiport, finding a bus and travelling into Rome amidst the frantic early morning traffic. A plethora of Mercedes of all ages, of Fiats, of Vespas, even pushbikes. Maybe she could see Audrey Hepburn behind Gregory Peck on that Vespa there because she was tired after a mammoth flight, the heat, even the effort of finding her way through customs to the airport bus, not speaking Italian, and hoping to God that the bus terminal wasn’t too far from her pensione. At least she had her luggage. She supposed she should be grateful. And her passport, her traveller’s cheques and Eurail pass, and hotel bookings had been made and paid for from Australia.

As she gazed out the window, she noticed the traffic all proceeding one way in a mammoth circle and realised that the decrepit building the vehicle skirted was in fact the Colosseum. There was so much she had seen in Asia that showed what ancient histories existed outside of her own parochial life and now, Rome’s ancient history had begun to unfold. But even more to her liking was the possibility of experiencing medieval and Renaissance Europe because that was what she had been studying at university and it was such experiences that would pave her way back into the examination rooms on her return home.

But back to the pensione… a very average place where the desk clerk had the gall to tell her that she had been due the day before (A lie. She showed him the booking confirmation and her itinerary) and so they had cancelled her booking. A booking that had been confirmed and paid for from Australia. It seemed someone in Rome had pocketed her money and they weren’t giving it back! Ah, such an introduction to Roma for an ingenue! But somehow – ingenuity perhaps – or maybe even guts and damned luck helped her find a pensione close by and she paid for a garret on the very top of the building, left her luggage in the hot space, locked the door and took her first steps as a tourist into the city.

It was a long day, she saw much and met people – Americans whom she teamed up with, a young male student from San Francisco, a middle-aged couple from New York and the foursome visited the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum, Trajan’s Arch, the Forum. They ate gelati, feasted for lunch at a small restaurant in the Via Veneto and found their way to the Villa Borghese as Rome settled to siesta. They sat in the shade of stone pines, revelling in the quiet and calm.

Two carabinieri walked past leading horses and the young woman, a rider, jumped up and walked to the larger of the two horses, holding her sweaty hand out flat and the animal began to lick her palm.

The police laughed and in broken English and tourist Italian, they chatted, finally letting her mount the 16.2 hand high chestnut where she sat with stirrups far too long for her short legs.

The hot day sank into a dusky, busy evening as the Romans began their passeggiata, something she had never experienced and which, being a people-watcher, fascinated her as she examined men, women and children, filing details in her mind, wishing that she was alone with a little notebook. But she began to fade with tiredness as did her companions and so they called a taxi, dropped the student off near his digs, and then dropped her at her own, making plans to meet again on the morrow.

Our young woman dragged herself up the creaking stair to the stuffy garret, desperate for a wash, for bed. Only to find there was no water for her paltry basin and so she walked down the interminable stair to the desk – ‘Maybe tomorrow signorina’. She climbed back to her room and found the door locked, back down the stair to the desk clerk, he unlocked it with a master key, she locked it from her own side, so she could at least sleep safely, but the door handle fell off and at her wits end, she grabbed her case and her cabin bag, stormed down the stair, threw the key at the clerk, emerged into the busy street and pushed through the busy crowd until she reached the Via Nazionale where she saw a hotel that seemed more like those in which she had stayed in Thailand, and dragged herself and her luggage through the door.

The heavy glass doors settled back behind her with an expensive swish, a sound she should perhaps have listened to, along with the wealthy silence of the vestibule, but she didn’t care. She just wanted to soak her swollen feet in cold water, to have a long bath, and collapse into bed.

‘No problem, signorina. I take your luggage to your room?’

She sighed, relieved, ingenue that she was and followed the nice young man to the lift and up to a long, heavily carpeted corridor. He unlocked her door, placed the luggage inside, handed her the key and left her with a smile, not even waiting for a tip. Thank God, she thought, because she was done!

The next morning she bathed, dressed in the jeans and blue voile shirt she had bought in the Via Veneto the day before, on sale in a clothes basket outside a boutique. She found a small café where she breakfasted on petite bread rolls and fresh apricots, on iced water – much iced water! She paid for her small refreshment and went back to her room to collect things she might need for a day of touring.

She unlocked the door, walked down the little passage off which the bathroom and bedroom opened and into the small lounge. Seated in a chair near the window was last night’s desk clerk, grinning. ‘Buon giorno, signorina. A good breakfast, si?’

‘Excuse me,’ she said, her heart pounding, ‘but how did you get in?’

He held up a master key, his handsome face broken by dazzling white teeth.

‘I beg your pardon!’ She could not disguise her horror.

‘You know why I am here?’ He made no pretence of anything other than what he thought it would be. A quick shag…

‘I don’t actually. Get out!’ Terror clung to every inch of her, the hairs standing on her arms, her heart lurching, her throat closing.

He laughed as he stood. He was tall, taller than her and his arm muscles showed beneath the clinging white of his shirt. ‘Australian girls, they love Italian men…’

‘Go!’

‘Everyone knows Australian girls – they love it!’ He was nonplussed, and she grabbed at his momentary confusion. Perhaps some Australian girls did love it. But not this ingenue.

‘Get out!’ She said it quietly, backing down the hall until the door handle was digging into her spine. She reached around, opened the door. ‘Get out now or I will scream in the middle of that corridor. Scream and scream…’

He looked at her. Perhaps could see the chill in her eyes, maybe he even felt her fury, the possibility that she might do what she said, and that he would be caught breaking rules, he would lose his job and when one lost a job at the Quirinale, one didn’t get one anywhere else.

‘Okay, I go. Be quiet!’ She stood out in the corridor as he pushed angrily past her, another couple further up the corridor glancing toward them both.

She slammed the door shut, locked it and raced to her case, threw her clothes in, grabbed the luggage whilst her heart thumped and panic coursed through her body, unlocked the door, and fled down to the front desk, finding another clerk there, paying her (huge – God, that big?) bill and running into the Via Nazionale, almost broken, desperate to catch a plane home.

But she took a breath, walked a few yards and saw a little sign across the Via Nazionale for a pensione called Sorrento – a clean, pretty place with a dovetailed parquet floor that spoke to her as she stepped across it. With a wide bed on a plinth and sparkling white linen, and a bathroom with not just a bath, toilet and basin, but a bidet which glistened clean and pristine. With running water and doors that locked and handles that didn’t fall off and most importantly, with a wonderful Roman nonna on the desk, who welcomed her like a grandmother. Perhaps the old woman could see the hectic red spots on the ingenue’s cheeks, hear the wobble in her voice.

She paid, the nonna gave her the key and that white and parquet room was now hers, its windows wide to the Via Nazionale, the sounds of Roma funnelling in. Not home, not her naïve little city on the bottom of the world, but Roma – once the cradle of civilisation.

Civilisation? Ha!

She threw down her luggage, closed the toilet lid and sank onto it, plunging her feet into the bidet, flushing the cold water onto her swollen toes, allowing tears to stream unchecked as the bidet continued to run, cooling her soul as much as her feet, and giving her time to regain an almost broken spirit.

Thus does an ingenue grow up very quickly and gain spine…

This is a true story.

Music for this week? This:

(Apologies for the grainy, aged pics, most of which were taken from slides and stored badly.)