Rome V

May 15, 2015

Gray in the sky this morning, though it never quite rained, and in late afternoon it has not rained yet. A couple of milestones: the haughty Romans are beginning to look at me, beginning to speak to me or share a gestural joke in the street. They can’t have changed, so it must be I, sinking in a little, Romanizing a little, a little less foreign. Nor do people automatically speak to me in English. In woman in front of St. John Lateran asked me in Italian to explain an obelisk, and I did so, in Italian. The second milestone is that the pain in my foot is ebbing, and I came back to the room after my wanderings today far less sick than on any other day.

Will’s belief is that the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square oversaw both the flight of Israel out of Egypt and the crucifixion of St. Peter.

Up Quattro Fontane, blundering into the Palazzo Barberini, which I didn’t know was there. The best of museums it is, each piece fantastically beautiful, though oddly lit, with occasional glare so that one must swivel one’s head like an owl to see certain passages. Dwelt a while in the quiet garden, listening to the blackbirds from one wall and the gulls from the surrounding roofs, watching a red cat rule the center. He would leap, and you would see momentary red, then all would be green again. Last night at supper I watched a gray cat move across the edge of a very high roof. Bought a tiny silver owl in a store. Il Bufo. Which is “toad” in Latin, but let it be. Across the heights above Piazza di Spana to the Piazza di Populo, where I ate and fed sparrows from my hand. Home, I thought, before the rain, but it never did rain.