and slippers. It was a private, female world we had on the top floor of our apartment block, where we knew no-one would ever appear unless we knew about it first.
I first met Francesca and Rita a few months after my husband and I had moved in, during a violent rainstorm. Water had come streaming down the stairs from the roof and was forming a small lake in the entrance hall of our apartment. Both my husband and I stood helplessly in the corridor outside our apartment, watching the flow and not knowing what to do. Next thing I knew, two women had run out of their apartment and were in mine, mopping the floor and laying towels on the stairs while shouting for the man downstairs to come and unblock the drains on the roof. They mopped and sopped and then went back into their apartment, leaving my husband and I staring at each other and wondering what we would have done without them. We had met them once before.
* * *
Yesterday, we helped Francesca and Rita pack and said goodbye to them as they drove their car out of the compound one last time. We were all crying, and smoking. Many of the residents had come out to say goodbye, and for each hug there would be fresh tears and a fresh cigarette. Francesca did not want to go. The landlord wanted to sell the property and had offered her a substantial amount of money to move, two years before her lease was up. It was more than she could hope to earn in a year. She was entitled to stay in the apartment, even if it sold, for another two years but then she could be given notice without any compensation. So Francesca had chosen a new rental place in a seaside town about an hour south of Rome. She would be close to her brother, who also lived there. She could not afford to rent in Rome any longer. With the compensation she could afford to furnish the new rental place, and the furniture would be hers and not the landlord’s.
Although I often declined Francesca’s daily invitations over the years, it was comforting to know she was there. If I ever wanted company, a cigarette, an egg or to know that someone would hear me scream, she was there. I had lived some hard and sad times in this apartment and spent a lot of time alone as a result.
I rarely spoke that much when I visited, as I usually found it a stretch speaking Italian, let alone the Roman dialect that she spoke. I rarely offered much of myself, and gained a lot from being with her. Hanging out the washing together on the roof, talking about whether it would rain or not that day, whether the supermarket was open, what kind of tomatoes were in season, what I was going to eat for dinner, gave me a well-needed sense of normality. Having a two-minute connection with someone living in the same space and time as me was grounding, and somehow kept me connected to life at a simple and basic level. I felt not alone.
I wasn’t really on my own; I had my husband, I had friends. But in day-today living, Francesca made me feel not on my own. I understood then how all the women in the palazzo got on with things. Antonella, who worked two jobs and never had money for luxuries, such as annual holidays. Marianna, whose husband left her after childbirth nine months after they were married, twenty-five years ago. Rita, Francesca’s daughter, who could not find work. And Francesca, whose husband died after a few short years of marriage, who eked out a living and who was never going to be able to afford her own home. They were always together, the women of this palazzo. Those daily visits of minutes at a time made sure none of them felt on their own.
In the weeks leading up to their departure we spent most evenings with them, eating with them, going over for a chat or just sitting together. One evening, Rita read out a letter which was addressed to my husband and I. In the letter, she told us that the thought of leaving her home where she was born and where she had nursed her father until his death, had been continually traumatic and at times paralysing over the past few months, but that throughout it all she had not felt alone because of us. She told us, through her poetic writing, that just our presence across the hallway, our hellos and other greetings, and our smiles, had helped ease the burden for her and that she was grateful.
* * *
We didn’t see Marianna the day that Francesca and Rita left. We saw her the next day as we were driving our car into the compound. Her face was haggard with grief and when she saw us she lurched towards us, almost slamming herself onto the windscreen, like a leaf in a tornado. Luckily, my husband had seen her and wound down the window in anticipation, so she did not have to bang on the glass with her fist.
‘They’ve gone, they’ve gone!’ she bellowed. ‘It is the end of an era! It is not just them, it’s the end of an era. Our mothers were friends; they knew each other. Who is left to remember my mother now? We left these apartments as brides, both of us, and returned as wives. It’s a piece of our history that has gone. That bastard that kicked them out, he’s a criminal without a heart! It’s a piece of our shared history that has gone!’ I didn’t get the rest as she subsided into tears, leaning on our car door.
They call Rome ‘The Eternal City’. It refers to the fact that it is timeless, changeless, always there. It has indeed, in many ways, resisted much of the change that has occurred in other post-industrial, European capital cities. Maybe that’s why, when it comes, it is such a shock and so hard to adjust to. It seems that when things change in The Eternal City, they do so in a big way.
Chapter 4
Il Cambiamento, The Changeover
I never tire of that delicious feeling I have every Saturday morning upon waking. The feeling that I could go to Piazza Navona for coffee if I wanted to, that I could sit there all day if I wished, experiencing la dolce vita (the good life) without having to pay for an airfare or having flown for twenty-four hours. Piazza Navona is not the latest in a chain of new coffee shops, but one of Rome’s lovelier squares. It is full of flowing fountains, sculptures by Bernini, a magnificent church designed by Borromini, modern-day painters selling their wares, gorgeous Romans taking walks and, of course, fabulous coffee.
It is a lifestyle choice that I never tire of or regret. It is an option that I insist always be present. It is a deal-breaker when it comes to deciding where to live. ‘Will I be able to go and have coffee in Piazza Navona whenever I want to?’ is the deciding question. So Rome, as a choice of dwelling place, always wins.
The principle that ‘if it is for free it is not appreciated’, slavishly adhered to in my consulting business, or the truism ‘if you live near it you never visit it’, reigns supreme no matter where you live. Maybe that is why, despite spending just under half of my life in Melbourne, I have never been to the Melbourne Cup (an international annual horseracing derby) or to Bali (one of the most popular overseas destinations for Australians). Although I can say, probably because of my shame of never having been to the Melbourne Cup or to Bali, that I have sat in Piazza Navona and had coffee on numerous occasions, despite being a resident and not a tourist.
Unfortunately, as I actually am dwelling in Rome rather than visiting it, I rarely have time to go and sit and while away the hours in Piazza Navona on a Saturday morning. It remains a rather nice idea upon first waking but never seems to quite fit with the reality of my life because I always have things to do.
Today, like most Saturdays, I may not get the chance. We residents have things to do, things like Il Cambiamento (The Changeover). When I first came to Rome and heard people saying they spent their weekend doing ‘The Changeover’, everybody else nodding sagely and expressing understanding-type noises, I was a little daunted. It seemed to be a ritual that took all weekend and got such approval when you were the first in your group of friends to do it, and was always followed by a discussion about when the other listeners were going to do it. It did not seem like something people looked forward to.
Although I am a pretty good guesser, and in fact learnt a lot of the language that way, the words themselves gave me no clue. It was always followed by discussions about the weather, so I knew it was connected somehow. Did people change their partners or lovers with the seasons? Did they have one type of partner
