grumpily ordered him a Coke. The dog lay down under the small cafe table and promptly went to sleep.
Early summer on the Via Appia, or the ordeal in a rental car
Enzo had looked after the piece of paper with the hotel address on very well, and he kept his victims in his sights. He wanted to bump into them a couple more times in Rome, to make the transition to Venice seem easier and more natural. This fat and somewhat irksome matron obviously wouldn’t be wanting it, but he, Enzo, had made a decision and there were a thousand ways and means by which he could engineer a chance meeting.
Ultimately Rome was a pretty small place, when you considered that all the foreigners tended to set out repeatedly for the same focal points of interest: the churches and the ancient monuments.
Enzo sat on the steps of Santa Maria Maggiore, and kept watch over their hotel. The two old bats hadn’t been very ambitious these past few days. Perhaps they had fallen ill and were flying back to England prematurely? That would be the final straw. These foreigners just couldn’t take it. They had weak stomachs and intestines, which were affected by every little bit of dirt in their diet and every overdose of oil in their food. Enzo spat on the steps and, troubled, looked across at the hotel.
Then, just at that moment, they emerged out of the front door: the thin, lively and (heavens be praised) extremely trusting one, with the one with the thick glasses trudging alongside. She was carrying a large umbrella - Madonna Mia! - and next she slowly lifted her head and gave a shortsighted look up to the heavens. How else was the sky going to be other than blue, he thought with contempt, and he ambled slowly down the steps.
The two of them pattered up the street like two uncertain hens, and then they waved down a taxi. They were going to throw away all their lovely money - Enzo’s money - on these endless taxi journeys! He observed how Emily and Agatha chatted with the driver before they got in. Once they had driven away, Enzo ran quickly across to the old man who was loitering there on the pavement.
“Did you hear where the two old ladies wanted to go?”
“Let me have a think about it,” the old man said and he reached out a filthy palm. With reluctance Enzo placed a one hundred Lire note there.
“The Forum Romanum,” croaked the old man, as he closed his fingers on the note.
Enzo ran to the nearest bus stop. Ultimately he had to keep his expenses as low as possible and he certainly was in no position to fatten up Rome’s taxi drivers. He covered the last part of the journey in one long dash, and he arrived at the Forum breathless. He had to catch his breath behind one of the columns. There they stood in the Temple of Castor and Pollux, looking attentively up into the empty heavens, into whose blueness the roof of the Temple must once have soared a thousand years ago.
In that moment the Forum resembled a rural meadow in the Roman countryside in early summer: Everywhere the red blooms of poppies trembled in the breeze, and that same wave of flowers surged across the rocks and the stumps of columns and proliferated between the stones that formed the outline of the Temple of Vesta.
Agatha had let go of her bag in a dreamy absent-mindedness on the pedestal that supported the three tall columns of the Dioscuri Temple, which rose skyward alone, not yet brought low by time which makes all things vanish and which levels everything. Its richly decorated capital carried a trace of entablature, and a bird’s nest had been constructed in its Corinthian stone leaf-work. Agatha sank into raptures:
“Birds,” she murmured, “you lovely birds! I hope that that perch you have up there is big enough for a nest, because it would be terrible if your eggs fell out....” She looked up fixedly and her gentle heart contracted.
Enzo yawned. The Roman Forum bored him unspeakably every time he was there and he asked himself over and over again what people got from spending hours staring at truncated columns and, what was even more amazing, almost broke their necks admiring imaginary structures reaching high into the air that hadn’t even existed for well over a thousand years. And these fools even paid an entrance fee for all this stuff that wasn’t there, for a pile of dreary stone junk. You could barely comprehend the sheer weight of stupidity in the world. Enzo spat skilfully and in a wide arc past the column. He was still leaning on it so as not to tire himself unnecessarily or prematurely.
He sent a dull glance towards Emily, who was walking enterprisingly up to the Church of Santa Maria Antiqua at the foot of the Palatine Hill. The other one - the skinny one - was still gazing at the columns. Enzo gave a sigh. It had dawned on him by now that this enterprise would require nerves of steel. But it would be worth it, by blessed St Anthony! He just wanted to choose the appropriate time to do it.
She had left her bag standing alone yet again at the foot of the columns! This English woman was so dumb that, for a sporting pickpocket like him, there was almost no fun in stealing from her. A three year old bambino could have taken that thing off her! And now she too was walking away from the columns and was beginning to gather up some of the red, windswept poppy flowers. She was picking flowers - unbelievable! Enzo dug his hands deep in his pockets and tossed his head back with a suppressed groan.
Suddenly his posture tightened and he looked across eagerly towards the pillars of the Temple. If he was not mistaken, another guy had slipped in, in the apparently eager manner of an art lover. Yes yes, this scam was very familiar as it belonged in the professional repertoire of the Roman pickpocket. Enzo observed this other man with professional interest. Yes, quite good, the way he passed by, did no single movement in exactly the same way, went back past, stared at that boring column, yes not bad...But that now, no, that was a bit botched, not so quickly - that stood out. He, Enzo, would have taken longer to take the bag.
The bag! Enzo’s bag! Enzo tore like a panther out of his hiding-place, he sprang in just two steps over the poppy-adorned floor of the Temple of Vesta, ran as fast as he could, and then he had the guy, that damned idiot who dared interfere in Enzo’s business. He tore the bag out of his hand, launched a couple of curses towards the stunned thief, concluded by punching him firmly in the stomach, enough so that - caught unawares - he fell to the ground gasping for breath, and ran back to Agatha with the bag. She lifted up her head in astonishment and immediately returned from the guileless transparent world of the poppies to the unattractive land of reality.
He handed her the bag with a small bow: “This ladro, this mascalzone, this porco and umbriglione tried to rob you, Signora, but luckily I happened to be passing by.”
“Oh, thank you. How extraordinarily valiant and charming of you!” Agatha stammered, as it dawned on her that yet again she hadn’t kept an eye on her bag and had got herself distracted. She hoped that Emily hadn’t noticed. She looked across to the church. But there was Emily, already there, standing behind her. Nothing ever escaped her, despite her shortsightedness.
Emily looked at Enzo thoughtfully. When she was a teacher, she didn’t very often misjudge a student’s character. On the Capitoline this young man seemed to her somewhat dubious, despite his willingness to help. But she had obviously got this one wrong.
These Italians just possessed shifty faces, that’s all, and you probably couldn’t apply British standards to them. It was very nice of the young man to scrap with a thief over Agatha’s bag. Because he had hardly anything to gain from doing it. Should she give him some money? But perhaps that would offend him; after all, he was here in Rome on holiday too, and under these circumstances giving him money would be effectively treating him too much like service personnel. No, she knew better than to do that.
“What a wonderful city,” Emily began, once she had cast a withering look at Agatha - along the lines of “we’ll talk later about this”
