Conversation (1/3) By Scott Rorrison

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3),

Rome! Have you ever seen the Colosseum? Beautiful isn't it; how strange it is that things of immense beauty contain contrasting qualities. From the outside tourists marvel at the grand scale and arresting architecture, it is ideal for a photograph or postcard. Step inside, though, and a whole complexity of emotions will haunt the senses. Stand on the arena floor and wonder how many men and women have followed your steps into oblivion. Tell me you are not depressed by the sense of death and sacrifice.

When criminals broke the law of Rome they were sent to the Colosseum, the inside of the theatre was seen to represent the wild lawlessness of nature, signifying that the games participants were no longer under the protection of the civilised world, or Rome, hence lions and other wild beasts being set upon unfortunate victims. In one building both civilisation and extreme lawless barbarism are represented.

Let us travel through Rome's modern streets, past the majestic buildings towering over thick-stale communities humming with the shock of humanity, down the Via Nazionale, past the Pantheon, designed by that most famous Hellenist whose love of the arts was rivalled only by his famed temper and ruthlessness, just ask the Jews. Indeed a grandiose building regularly defecated on by homeless column dwellers.

On our fly-by visit through the eternal city we stop at a typical Roman café of Greek design, filled with ladies who lunch, Japanese and American tourists, typically Roman as I have already mentioned. At the front of house is an antique stained dark wooden bar, past this is a labyrinthine series of small salons decorated with circular marble topped tables of Napoleonic design. This is where we meet our heroine, sat against a backdrop of paintings from the Romantic period and antique mirrors hung on a wall of red and gold damask.

The café has the typically Italian smell of coffee beans and stale cigarette smoke, the girl is absorbed in the reverie of people watching. She loves looking at the clothes with which the young Italians fashionably adorn themselves; also she was surprised at the radical Asians who seem to be springing up all of a sudden, whether they are Chinese or Japanese she could never really tell. She liked watching them from behind her magazine rampart; she felt a disturbing sense of inferiority when she looked down at her baggy jeans.

The girl was in Rome finishing off her education, her face was slightly chubby but because of her full lips it all seemed in proportion and symmetrically pleasing to the eye.

Any Englishman could see that she was middle-class; she had the shyness of a schoolteacher's daughter, one of those girls that carried a clarinet to school. She was beautiful, but by the way she carried herself, it was evident that she spent most of her youth flying under the radar. Most of the boys in her village regretted not noticing her while they had the chance, now they only see her when she pays half term visits to her parents, all metropolitan and out of their reach, village boys are so simple, they bored her with conversation of industry and sports.

Continued ...(2/3)

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