Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World by Doerr Anthony

Author:Doerr, Anthony [Doerr, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Biography, History, Writing
ISBN: 9780007390533
Amazon: B00HWRE9TM
Goodreads: 72397064
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 2007-06-12T07:00:00+00:00

Lent: We drink latte macchiati; we eat ravioli stuffed with spinach. We soak hunks of a baguette in olive oil we brought back from Umbria, bottled without a label, green and cloudy and sharp.

In restaurants the backs of our chairs scrape the backs of the chairs behind us. On buses we battle for territory with hips and elbows, wedging the stroller through doorways, crushing our calves against wheel wells. A woman weeps in the seat next to me. Shauna overhears someone say, in English, “Well, so what if he’s impotent?” A violinist, reeking of wine, drives his instrument case into my back.

Proximity, propinquity—we are not only Americans in Italy, but country people in a big city. I buy a newspaper and turn around and three little girls are stroking the hair of my children. A pair of monks, small as gnomes, push past, talking animatedly, onions on their breath. The piazzas are living rooms and concert halls and festival grounds, the alleys youth lounges, the park benches open-air nurseries. Again and again you are reminded of the architectural necessity for the garden, the cloister, the hidden courtyard.

We run into the man on crutches whose wife is expecting twins. Marco. He is with his daughter. Their doctor, he says, has placed his wife on bed rest. For the past three weeks she has not been allowed to get out of bed except to go to the bathroom.

“And we bought a stroller,” he says. “A different one than yours.”

His daughter is dark-eyed and curly-haired: beautiful. “Let us know if you need anything,” Shauna says, in English.

It’s hard to tell if he understands. “Oh, we are doing okay,” Marco says. “Aren’t we?” and he pats his daughter’s shoulder. But his eyes are far away.

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