ECHO 23/4/06 + 24/4/06 - Italy

Questions of identity can be answered here - the ‘who’ of mixed blood; the ‘where’ of home - the ensuing restlessness when living another life elsewhere - questions of memory, ephemera - the shadows are alive -

It was Cerrubini who set us on this path. Cerrubini the dealer in religious icons in Cortona whom you rarely see as he usually leaves the running of his little shop-cum-gallery to his wife. However, in our case it was different. He chose to meet us in person and gave us the name and address of a contact in Rome. Don G. a priest who runs a large bookshop on the Via dei Corridori close to St. Peters. He is the man we need to speak to about the sale of the two religious paintings.

So we take the A1 route there passing the high, undulating hill like the head of a man reclining. Where the partisans used to hide out in WW2.

Rome - teeming with tourists and Italians taking the week off to celebrate Liberation Day. Trams sighing under the weight, creaking on the hot blistered rails. Refuse trucks out clearing away the last traces of garbage for the week, still working hard at 11p.m. Calls and hydraulic shunts in the night. Local restaurants full of families, queues of young ‘ragazzi’ and the older tourists watching and smiling and eating. A man of 6’7” walks into one and everyone looks up in unison.

Sleeping under the gaze of Kafka (a huge poster drawn in pen and ink) - until the morning when the swifts come wheeling in, whistling joyously and diving at speed into their tiny nest hole in the wall of an apartment opposite - aiming perfectly, rising slightly to slow wind-speed, then in. There amid the tight slatted shutters, the chrome pipes, the architectural plasterwork now faded to sandy yellow by the sun. They cry and whiz across that small slant of sky between balconies.

Taxi Napoli 22 takes us over the Tiber, past Castel Sant’ Angelo to approach St. Peters; then round to the right in the shadow of a medieval wall, where we stop, the entrance innocuous.

The Libreria is full of religious books and esoterica; Catholic reference works and histories; ‘The Lords of the Church’, ‘The Fathers of the Church’; theology; bibles in a thousand languages; books on transmigration and transmutation; psychology and associated aspects of faith; religious art; voodoo; Islam; Zoroastrianism - and there at the top of a short flight of stairs, we knock on the mottled glass door of Don G. who answers with a smile and a wave of his hand. He is dressed in a black roll-neck cardigan that has seen better days and a pale pink shirt somewhere beneath - he laughs, he talks, he considers, his hands equally alive with the conversation and his bright blue eyes moving gently back and forth - he sets out the plan, relating it to both of us in equal measure - the possibilities of interest from various religious schools here in the Vatican, the gentlemen who will come and look at the images in person before considering their decision and offers. Behind Don G there is a poster, a copy of an Orthodox image of Christ with a huge Byzantine tome under his arm - in the beginning was the word; then next to this, oddly, a dark shamanic image of a Leopard in a jungle scene with the word ‘Brazil’ beneath it in orange letters; the beast is reclining but stares out of the picture at the dash of white hair on Don G’s head. Familiar. Then Don G nods his assent to the task at hand and begins to write on two blank file cards notification of his undertaking to give to us, because as he says: “Paper sings in matters like these.” He hands them over. Small, crimson bordered receipts. He retrieves them when we have nodded our agreement and places them in a small vellum envelope which he seals and hands back.

He rises and brushes a hand over the two packaged paintings. “Maybe you have brought me Brigitte Bardot?” We laugh. He guides us down the stairs to the door holding our arms and tells us to go out and love Rome.