Calcio
Translated by Suzan Bozkurt
She wakes up to the din of the Lambrettas, her head throbbing from the heat and the valium. There is no getting away from the constant roar as they bowl along the Lungotevere, jostling with each other in the lanes, weaving between the cars. It’s Ferragosto, a rigorously observed public holiday and the only entertainment on offer is buying city maps and culture programmes from the two kiosks still open in the city centre, in order to follow the tourist trail from the Piazza Navona to the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain. Where four hundred people from all over the world sit, thirsty, staring at the scant water that remains. The sea is miles away, and to get there you have to take buses and trains. Here it’s thirty-five degrees and heavily polluted, like in a steaming swamp where it’s hard to pull your feet out of the green ooze; people are dragged along in the wake of the Vespas, the broth, the soul, the form, a melee of city noises, the roar of traffic in the distance, and next to the doors, or in the alleyways, Roman wives calling out to their husbands and children in loud voices, their open vowels reverberating as clear as bells, climbing up the walls to the stuffy attic where she sleeps on the floor with her window open. It is her third day in Rome, and she cannot no longer tell whether the noise is inside her or comes from the city. She finds herself leafing through the festival brochures, looking not for the traditional cultural events which enliven the European summer, but the section with hotels, hotels with a swimming pool. She phones the two or three that are reviewed, enquires about the size of the pool and its depth, where it is situated, how big the grounds are and she makes a point of asking whether the management can guarantee her peace and quiet. The receptionist, in her silvery voice, laughs and assures her that they actually can.
The hotel is on the other side of town and she has to take several buses, going the wrong way most of the time, but making the most of her weekly bus pass and finding herself at the Vatican, which she has been avoiding, at least twice. This takes about an hour and a half and at last, in the blazing midday sun, she reaches her destination. She pays the entry fee, sits down with a sigh in a pool chair, in the shade, in the middle of vast grounds, with gently sloping hills and grassy lawns dotted with age-old trees. She opens 101 Zen Stories, leans back and sighs again — far away she can still hear the buzzing of engines in the city but she chooses to ignore it, already deeply engrossed in her book— and while she sighs she hears the piercing sound of a pneumatic drill, which has at this very moment been unleashed behind her head. She looks round, startled and appalled. The other people around the pool keep their eyes closed or are reading magazines of the international jet set, utterly impervious. She seems to have landed on a planet where only she can see, only she can hear. Rhetorically, she asks the waiter who is going past with a tray of cocktails, what the noise is and whether it will go on for long. She understands they are carrying out some building work on the indoor swimming pool. The waiter laughs as he tells her this. He is quite proud of the indoor pool. He asks her if she would care for a drink and gestures towards the cocktails as if this was the end of the matter. She refuses, outraged by the idea of accepting a drink meant for somebody else, again looking around for support, which she does not find. She tries to read, but gives up. She gets up in order to go for a walk in the grounds; she sees the indoor pool, still without a roof, with perfect neoclassical columns, which is being built by determinedly obtuse Eastern Europeans. She finally sits down beneath a weeping willow and continues reading.
Soyen Shaku had died at the age of sixty-one, leaving behind a large group of followers and many teachings. During the summer months, his disciples were allowed to have an afternoon nap, though he himself would never tire from meditation and never sleep during the day. It was said that when he was twelve and a model pupil, one afternoon he succumbed, exhausted. He slept profoundly for three hours and awoke with a start as his master entered, hesitating on the doorstep, confused and embarrassed. “Excuse-me”, murmured the master, retreating, “excuse me”. And he went out on tiptoe, as if the disciple was an illustrious guest. The moral of the story was that Soyen Shaku never again slept during the day. The pneumatic drill stops for lunch, the workman takes out his lunchbox and sits down with the three men working with mallets and pickaxes. The overseer, just as he had watched over the work scowling, was now supervising the break, standing, in the sun, eating a sandwich, a can of beer in his left hand. She makes the most of the silence and jumps into the water. Not enough has been said about the echo of voices in pools, how they are refracted by the water, how they multiply many times over, seeming to come out of walls, invisible surfaces or nooks and crannies, just like mirages. But the water is tepid, an athletic old American woman is doing twenty-five lengths unerringly, in a straight line, in the Prussian manner, swimming over anyone who gets in her way. She gets out and lies on one of the loungers, in the sun, a little anxious, stealing the occasional glance at the workmen who are now smoking in silence. One is taking a quick break, sleeping during the day. Suddenly, stepping out from among the fat men, two prodigiously pot-bellied individuals step up to the edge of the swimming pool and start to play football. Their first attempt hits a lady who nods to them diplomatically from afar, rearranging her straw hat. Their joy knows no bounds, and regardless of the indifference of those sitting in the reclining chairs, reaches its high point with the arrival of a third red haired, pink giant, covered in rings and gold chains. They play on the hot stone, in front of a sign which expressly prohibits various activities, amongst them, first and foremost, playing football. Exasperated, she opens her eyes, sits up, squeezes her hair to get rid of the water and is about to get up and ask the hotel employees to intervene, when they themselves intervene by joining the others in their football hullabaloo, with moves that show off their Latin skills. The two young men, well turned out in the prescribed white uniforms and boaters — this is a five star hotel— show the others, maybe Russians, the superiority of refined manners over brute force, even though the ball escapes from them two or three times to the neutral ground of the deck chairs. The workers resume. The pneumatic drill is persistently hammering on an especially resistant piece and she summons up the courage to return to the Trastevere district. But when she opens her eyes, clouds are gathering on the horizon. The light changes suddenly, it is a glistening light that falls on the trees and blesses them, ineffable, like a special effect; far away, bolts of lightning crisscross the dry sky. The different nationalities interpret this turn in the weather according to their respective national folklore. But the lowering skies permit only one interpretation. Mothers ask fathers to instruct the children to go indoors. The last of the optimists drape bath towels over the shoulders of loved ones. And the pool employees, forced to abandon their game, start to take in the chair cushions which, for some inexplicable reason, can be soaked in chlorinated water but never rain water. The thunderstorm breaks. Heavy raindrops fall on to the steaming ground. The players finally leave the field, the employees fold up the sunshades. She stays by the pool on her own, pulls her towel up to her chin, smiles. She falls asleep. She does not see a bolt of lightning hitting a cypress tree and splitting it in half, no more than three feet away. She wakes up a few minutes later — and it seems her dream has lasted a hundred years— with the rain cascading down her face. She gets into the taxi dripping wet. The driver listens attentively to all of the radio messages, those that concern him and also the ones for the other taxi drivers. The nasal voice of the telephone operator pronounces place names. Cooped up in the stuffy car, she watches the Labrettas go past, now almost noiseless, from inside the closed window. In an unexpectedly smooth run through the Lungotevere, she glimpses a boy slightly ahead of the taxi riding one of the Lambrettas, naked to the waist, wearing shorts, barefoot. He has used his T-shirt to make a turban, from which his long hair is coming loose, flowing heavily, all wet. He has tattooed the Lazio logo on his shoulder blade. He goes slowly, in the middle of the road, with resolve, enjoying the rain. The cars slow down, the drivers hurl insults at him, they overtake him and carry on. When she goes past, she tries to see his face. But he escapes her view, turning his head just at that moment, manoeuvering and escaping by a road on the right. On the following day she spends a lot of time looking at hire shops. Vespe cinquanta mille lire al giorno. But she always finds a good excuse not to enter.
She wakes up to the din of the Lambrettas, her head throbbing from the heat and the valium. There is no getting away from the constant roar as they bowl along the Lungotevere, jostling with each other in the lanes, weaving between the cars. It’s Ferragosto, a rigorously observed public holiday and the only entertainment on offer is buying city maps and culture programmes from the two kiosks still open in the city centre, in order to follow the tourist trail from the Piazza Navona to the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain. Where four hundred people from all over the world sit, thirsty, staring at the scant water that remains. The sea is miles away, and to get there you have to take buses and trains. Here it’s thirty-five degrees and heavily polluted, like in a steaming swamp where it’s hard to pull your feet out of the green ooze; people are dragged along in the wake of the Vespas, the broth, the soul, the form, a melee of city noises, the roar of traffic in the distance, and next to the doors, or in the alleyways, Roman wives calling out to their husbands and children in loud voices, their open vowels reverberating as clear as bells, climbing up the walls to the stuffy attic where she sleeps on the floor with her window open. It is her third day in Rome, and she cannot no longer tell whether the noise is inside her or comes from the city. She finds herself leafing through the festival brochures, looking not for the traditional cultural events which enliven the European summer, but the section with hotels, hotels with a swimming pool. She phones the two or three that are reviewed, enquires about the size of the pool and its depth, where it is situated, how big the grounds are and she makes a point of asking whether the management can guarantee her peace and quiet. The receptionist, in her silvery voice, laughs and assures her that they actually can.
The hotel is on the other side of town and she has to take several buses, going the wrong way most of the time, but making the most of her weekly bus pass and finding herself at the Vatican, which she has been avoiding, at least twice. This takes about an hour and a half and at last, in the blazing midday sun, she reaches her destination. She pays the entry fee, sits down with a sigh in a pool chair, in the shade, in the middle of vast grounds, with gently sloping hills and grassy lawns dotted with age-old trees. She opens 101 Zen Stories, leans back and sighs again — far away she can still hear the buzzing of engines in the city but she chooses to ignore it, already deeply engrossed in her book— and while she sighs she hears the piercing sound of a pneumatic drill, which has at this very moment been unleashed behind her head. She looks round, startled and appalled. The other people around the pool keep their eyes closed or are reading magazines of the international jet set, utterly impervious. She seems to have landed on a planet where only she can see, only she can hear. Rhetorically, she asks the waiter who is going past with a tray of cocktails, what the noise is and whether it will go on for long. She understands they are carrying out some building work on the indoor swimming pool. The waiter laughs as he tells her this. He is quite proud of the indoor pool. He asks her if she would care for a drink and gestures towards the cocktails as if this was the end of the matter. She refuses, outraged by the idea of accepting a drink meant for somebody else, again looking around for support, which she does not find. She tries to read, but gives up. She gets up in order to go for a walk in the grounds; she sees the indoor pool, still without a roof, with perfect neoclassical columns, which is being built by determinedly obtuse Eastern Europeans. She finally sits down beneath a weeping willow and continues reading.
Soyen Shaku had died at the age of sixty-one, leaving behind a large group of followers and many teachings. During the summer months, his disciples were allowed to have an afternoon nap, though he himself would never tire from meditation and never sleep during the day. It was said that when he was twelve and a model pupil, one afternoon he succumbed, exhausted. He slept profoundly for three hours and awoke with a start as his master entered, hesitating on the doorstep, confused and embarrassed. “Excuse-me”, murmured the master, retreating, “excuse me”. And he went out on tiptoe, as if the disciple was an illustrious guest. The moral of the story was that Soyen Shaku never again slept during the day. The pneumatic drill stops for lunch, the workman takes out his lunchbox and sits down with the three men working with mallets and pickaxes. The overseer, just as he had watched over the work scowling, was now supervising the break, standing, in the sun, eating a sandwich, a can of beer in his left hand. She makes the most of the silence and jumps into the water. Not enough has been said about the echo of voices in pools, how they are refracted by the water, how they multiply many times over, seeming to come out of walls, invisible surfaces or nooks and crannies, just like mirages. But the water is tepid, an athletic old American woman is doing twenty-five lengths unerringly, in a straight line, in the Prussian manner, swimming over anyone who gets in her way. She gets out and lies on one of the loungers, in the sun, a little anxious, stealing the occasional glance at the workmen who are now smoking in silence. One is taking a quick break, sleeping during the day. Suddenly, stepping out from among the fat men, two prodigiously pot-bellied individuals step up to the edge of the swimming pool and start to play football. Their first attempt hits a lady who nods to them diplomatically from afar, rearranging her straw hat. Their joy knows no bounds, and regardless of the indifference of those sitting in the reclining chairs, reaches its high point with the arrival of a third red haired, pink giant, covered in rings and gold chains. They play on the hot stone, in front of a sign which expressly prohibits various activities, amongst them, first and foremost, playing football. Exasperated, she opens her eyes, sits up, squeezes her hair to get rid of the water and is about to get up and ask the hotel employees to intervene, when they themselves intervene by joining the others in their football hullabaloo, with moves that show off their Latin skills. The two young men, well turned out in the prescribed white uniforms and boaters — this is a five star hotel— show the others, maybe Russians, the superiority of refined manners over brute force, even though the ball escapes from them two or three times to the neutral ground of the deck chairs. The workers resume. The pneumatic drill is persistently hammering on an especially resistant piece and she summons up the courage to return to the Trastevere district. But when she opens her eyes, clouds are gathering on the horizon. The light changes suddenly, it is a glistening light that falls on the trees and blesses them, ineffable, like a special effect; far away, bolts of lightning crisscross the dry sky. The different nationalities interpret this turn in the weather according to their respective national folklore. But the lowering skies permit only one interpretation. Mothers ask fathers to instruct the children to go indoors. The last of the optimists drape bath towels over the shoulders of loved ones. And the pool employees, forced to abandon their game, start to take in the chair cushions which, for some inexplicable reason, can be soaked in chlorinated water but never rain water. The thunderstorm breaks. Heavy raindrops fall on to the steaming ground. The players finally leave the field, the employees fold up the sunshades. She stays by the pool on her own, pulls her towel up to her chin, smiles. She falls asleep. She does not see a bolt of lightning hitting a cypress tree and splitting it in half, no more than three feet away. She wakes up a few minutes later — and it seems her dream has lasted a hundred years— with the rain cascading down her face. She gets into the taxi dripping wet. The driver listens attentively to all of the radio messages, those that concern him and also the ones for the other taxi drivers. The nasal voice of the telephone operator pronounces place names. Cooped up in the stuffy car, she watches the Labrettas go past, now almost noiseless, from inside the closed window. In an unexpectedly smooth run through the Lungotevere, she glimpses a boy slightly ahead of the taxi riding one of the Lambrettas, naked to the waist, wearing shorts, barefoot. He has used his T-shirt to make a turban, from which his long hair is coming loose, flowing heavily, all wet. He has tattooed the Lazio logo on his shoulder blade. He goes slowly, in the middle of the road, with resolve, enjoying the rain. The cars slow down, the drivers hurl insults at him, they overtake him and carry on. When she goes past, she tries to see his face. But he escapes her view, turning his head just at that moment, manoeuvering and escaping by a road on the right. On the following day she spends a lot of time looking at hire shops. Vespe cinquanta mille lire al giorno. But she always finds a good excuse not to enter.
