The alarm fills my dream before it wakes me. In the dream, I am on an aircraft suspended in mid-air. The flight has been overbooked and, consequently, I’ve not been allocated a seat. Instead, I walk, lean, and hover about the aircraft. At one point, the seatbelt light brightens and continues flashing, and an unusual alarm fills the space. It is the sensation of falling that finally jolts me awake. It takes a long moment to comprehend my surroundings: the different bed, the stiff sheets, that I am finally waking up here. I imagined it to feel different, as if by waking up in such a faraway place I too would be waking up altered. Though it is the exact same person who woke up 48 hours prior, only in this version a heavy fatigue is wrapped around me. Maybe enlightenment comes later, I reason. I slide the alarm off, followed by the sheets, and remember, vaguely, we got into a disagreement about the function of the snooze button last night. I argued against its use, wondering aloud why one would want to shorten good quality deep sleep to remain in bed drifting in and out of mediocre sleep and compiling dread about the idea of standing up. Especially when we are jet-lagged as we are. The Man lifts his body to shower, dress and close his bag. He tells me he will meet me at breakfast, which he reminds me is on the rooftop. I study him, wondering if he might be grumpy about entering the day so all-of-a-sudden. It’s hard to discern. His eyes though, I notice, are yet to fully open. I methodically repack all the things I unpacked the night before. As I roll each garment into itself, I consider if The Man resisted unpacking last night not out of laziness but rather, because he knew a room change was on the horizon.
I read online there is little you can do for jet-lag except resist sleep and eat and drink your way through the fatigue. We comply and locate a stationary store next door to an esteemed Pizza al Taglio establishment. A floury man stands behind the counter statue-like, holding the pizza slicer like a sword. In the weeks leading up to our departure, I spent long periods of time walking along the Port Phillip Bay foreshore committing phrases to memory. It is therefore disheartening when the floury man declares, Pronti? and nothing comes to mind. I opt to use my hands instead, pointing and holding them up parallel to indicate the size I desire. It must be the jet-lag, I say when I return to The Man’s side. Next door, he selects a range of blue and purple notebooks. I take my time, deliberating greatly, only to bring the orange and the yellow one I initially picked to the counter. We take a series of aimless lefts and rights down streets composed entirely of cobblestone. I fall behind as I contemplate the bright folders and blank pages under our arms. The way they signify a departure from the lives we have been leading up until now and declare our faith, colourfully, in the long holiday. A portion of the Colosseum appears between two buildings like wallpaper. We make our way slowly around the perimeter, stopping often to marvel at its grandeur. I get stuck on how many bodies are here doing the same thing. I study the bodies: none of them have folders or notebooks, instead, they propose a uniform composed of broad hats, maps, cameras, and small plastic water bottles. We rest in front of a particularly impressive portion of the amphitheatre lit up all golden in a sheet of afternoon light. I open my yellow book, using the cover to conceal the blank page from The Man and make a note about what occurred at the pizza restaurant just now. I circle and asterisk this note as if the memory of the shame of not being able to communicate will implore me to study.
Davide hopes we will be happy with our new room. I ponder his words, trying to decipher if there is any spite contained in them. The Man says it is fine, we are just getting what we paid for. In this, I am reminded of a scene from the television series White Lotus in which the privileged white male spends his entire honeymoon stay at a hotel arguing with the manager over a minor room discrepancy. Unlike this ugly fictional character, The Man possesses a complicated guilt complex and apologises to Davide for the inconvenience one too many times. Grazie, I say. Davide smiles and makes himself sparse. Inside, I find the room a little different but mostly the same. This city is home to 1600 hundred hotels, I read on the inflight catalogue, most of which are 3-star like this one. I imagine their offering is largely hemogenous with similar carpets and laminated folders containing tips on the city, as well as the same light fittings, complimentary toiletries, bed sheets, and keep-safe. Though it does not take me long to appraise the new room as unique and distinct from the others. A little unpacking, a shower, or a crease on the bed and I relate to it with an unfounded familiarity.
The language school is located on the first floor of an old building in Monteverde. There is a poster suspended in the foyer, salient among the rest for its large bold text. I recognise some but not all its words: mangia bene, ridi spesso, ama molto. We are a class of six. Marta, our grammar teacher for the next four weeks, asks each of us what we are doing here and which area we are staying in. The room quickly becomes stuffy and hot despite the end-of-winter chill. There is a French-Nigerian woman married to a superior Swedish Diplomat stationed here for the next five years. An Irish woman, long, thin, and pale like a pencil, taking a career break after having engineered her redundancy. There is a petite, bird-like American girl whose skin is so paper thin I fear she is going to break open with the slightest movement. Finally, a Belgian stage lighting technician of a popular European heavy metal band who is learning the language for his fiancé. As we each take our turn to speak, the promise of this country is spelled out to me. That is, the refuge it offers for all states from heartbreak to boredom to disillusion to idealism. I wonder if Marta thinks us all delusional sitting here hoping to be inspired, touched, maybe even saved by her nation’s sensuality. The Man is too large for the small chairs and shifts in his seat frequently. He offers a different piece of information to my own, explaining to the class our decision to stay in three different suburbs over our four weeks here. The way Marta expresses approval of this pleases me, and I can see it pleases The Man too. It is as if we have briefly distinguished ourselves from our peers and assimilated ourselves to the natives who stand at the front of the classroom and frequent the staff room.
Too much of life is a mood, I read in Renata Adler’s Speedboat this afternoon. I photograph the sentiment and send it off to The Man who I left meditating in our hotel room downstairs. He replies he is going to nap and promises to wake a grown-up. There is a Spanish family on the rooftop terrace licking tall cones of colourful gelato. They are speaking in hushed voices because of the baby asleep in a pram beside them. Behind us, the hotel dining room is dimmed and set in anticipation of tomorrow’s buffet breakfast. The novelty of the hotel wore off quickly, I noticed it was the morning of the third day when I woke and did not look forward to the buffet offering. There are new faces at each breakfast, suggesting people usually only spend the night, two maximum, unlike us, who booked seven. I put down the book and look out over the many small and large domes of apartment buildings around the hotel. I wonder if the novelty of this foreign country will also, like the hotel, wear off. But the baby wakes up unhappy before I can turn this over. I watch the mother hand her partner her ice cream, which he starts licking despite having just finished his. I check the time, wondering if enough has passed to allow The Man to nap. Downstairs, the cleaning service is underway, making the narrow hallways difficult to navigate. Grazie, I say several times as I step around the stocked carts and piles of linen. I peer into the rooms, which look so much the same as ours. I pause to watch the five cleaners, who are invariably all female, vacuum and replenish for the next lives to move through. The job is physical and repetitive, but the women are meticulous. I try and imagine a male in this uniform performing this task but cannot, it seems I am not in possession of this visual memory. When I finally return to our own unremembering room, The Man is all smiles. He kisses me loudly and tells me he napped successfully.
I still haven’t seen a spider, The Man says on the bus to school this morning. We are late, again. We have developed a habit because of the snooze button. Though also, he stops frequently to take photos of detritus and discarded traces of humanity left on the sidewalks. His fascination manifests in piles of carefully stacked rubbish bags, partially painted walls, glitching digital billboards. I find I am forever waiting for him. Halted at an intersection, we watch window washers approach stationary cars. This is a service the automobile driver back home will often entertain. In fact, I recall The Man once giving away our market baguette because he didn’t have any coins. We quickly see it is different here, that nobody wants their windows washed and are aggressive in communicating so. Many go as far as to turn their wipers on at full speed to deter anyone who dares show them interest. It is surprising to observe given this is a country that deals in small change for many of its daily rituals: the numerous espressos at the bar, the slice of pizza on the commute, the single Peroni, and the autobus ticket. In this way, I am sure almost every vehicle at these lights has easy access to a coin, though not one of them reaches for it. How demoralising, The Man says. I study him: he appears genuinely injured by the scene. A passage by Rachel Cusk occurs to me in which she writes about the pseudo-privacy of the automobile driver. I paraphrase this to The Man, albeit clunkily, in the hope of soothing him with an explanation. Once inside the car and supported by the seat, the driver is sealed off from the outside world. They are restricted entirely to their own head and body, making intersubjectivity inaccessible to the driver, I say. By the end of our four-week language intensive, we will come to expect this treatment the window washers receive. Only once do we see a driver oblige.
Sometimes I surprise myself in language class with the knowledge I have retained from the day before. Today is not one of those days. It is for The Man though who appears full of the right questions and answers. I watch his dopamine receptors light up until he is sitting on the edge of the small chair glowing in comprehension and understanding. I excuse myself and make tea in the hallway. While the kettle comes to a boil, I run my eyes over the walls cluttered with brochures, notices, and advice on navigating one’s stay. Once again, I return to the large writing: mangia bene, ridi spesso, ama molto. I attempt to translate the words in my head and pull up a search engine to check. It is a well-known saying meaning ‘eat well, laugh often, love a lot’. When I return to my seat, Marta makes a point of swiveling to me and asking about my plans for after class. This is a daily exercise whereby, at the end of class, we are each required to describe our plans for how we intend to spend the subsequent afternoon and evening. Then, at the beginning of the next class, we take turns in explaining how these plans unfolded. Marta does not allow any English in her classroom, making our staccato explanations painful to sit through. During this exercise, I cannot help but analyse my classmates’ extra curricula choices, as if there is a right way to go about this whole business of travel. I improvise a plan on the spot, something about the Pantheon, which I fear I have used before, though Marta seems satisfied and moves on. The exercise drags on, and I stare at the whiteboard where Marta has drawn a complex diagram explaining the difference between the perfect and imperfect past tense. Above this is today’s date, Martedì 14 Marzo. The writing is strained as Marta is short even with heels on. The longer I stare at the whiteboard, the more I observe the layers of grammar beyond the surface. It is like an unsettling pentimento of all the people who have sat here before me. Now I have seen them I cannot unsee them in the same way you eventually locate the second object in a figure-ground optical illusion.
We have walked past the Pantheon every day, though it is not until standing in the line I comprehend the impressive granite Corinthian column portico. There is an English tour underway behind us. The tour guide is a curly-haired, petite, woman in possession of a small microphone, which she holds up to her mouth to explain the building was constructed in 125 AD. The spaciousness of the coffered concrete dome, she goes on to say, and the bright central skylight inside the Pantheon contradicts the disposition of the building from where we are now standing. She appears genuinely excited about giving the tour, and I wonder if this experience might be new for her or if this role pays her by also feeding her inner patriotism. Just like the other six million tourists passing through this city this year, we arrive at the front of the line and step inside. The Man is transfixed by the roof and walks around the large room with his chin pointed up. This is the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome, a different guide declares proudly. I become distracted by an enormous Chanel shopping bag in the hands of a young woman. My eyes continue to land on the large black font like the mangia bene, ridi spesso, ama molto suspended in the school hallway. The bag is foreign and familiar at once, and I realise that when I stepped into the building, I also let the time we belong to, the time of 2023, slip away from me. I stand at the perimeter and watch my contemporaries navigate the monument. I imagine the Pantheon as the original, and the bodies here today are merely a sheet of trace paper pressed over it. Each year brings a new sheet displaying people with characteristics and accessories increasingly progressive and alien to the humans responsible for the original. So why is it we all continue to show up here and wait in line? We’ve been advised, sure. But these monuments also seem to contain an implicit promise, as if by observing the genius, grandeur, and graciousness of humans once upon a time, I will be made to feel better about myself and my kind. The Man waves me over and into a pew where, in front of us, three barely teenagers are absorbed in mobile devices. Next to me a couple are taking up-close selfies. I feel a heavy weight on my chest and fixate on the bright blue oculus skylight above. When I return my gaze to eye-level, the woman with the Chanel bag is standing in the middle of the Pantheon. She is having her photograph taken. I refrain from looking away and contemplate this woman. This woman who has purchased her ticket, sat on the aeroplane, and waited in line. Though I fear when she walks away and returns home, she will have failed to be even slightly changed. Why bother, I think.
Marta says the San Luigi Dei Francesi is her favourite chiese. It is known for its Caravaggios, I read on the autobus after class. There are little boxes dotted around the chiese where one can insert euros in exchange for light. Each box corresponds to a painting set back in a small room like a cove. When I read this passage aloud to The Man several weeks later over Campari sodas and a bowl of salty olives, he will tell me this cove is called a ’tabernacle’. He will look confused as he says this as if he isn’t sure how this piece of information got into him. This is not to say you cannot observe the artworks without paying, just not at their full potential, which is to say Caravaggio’s signature use of light and shadow. We arrive at a significant tabernacle in the far corner of the chiese though, within seconds of our viewing, the display falls dark indicating the meter has run out. There is a substantial group of people gathered in front of us who look around for a moment and, just like the drivers of the automobiles, not one of them reaches into their pocket. This becomes a spectacle in and of itself and I take out my phone to photograph the group who are now taking photos of the barely visible artwork. I object when The Man pulls out his wallet. Instead, we remain at the rear of this crowd, waiting to see how long it will take for someone to cough up a euro. I look up and around the large space, wondering if someone might be conducting an experiment on Social Loafing or, perhaps, the Bystander Effect: two eloquent theories of social psychology which account for the complacency humans exhibit in social situations. On the cobblestones outside, The Man laughs and shakes his head while looking up at the San Luigi Dei Francesi facade. He says he cannot believe the Catholic Church charges for light.
Irene, the American expatriate, invites us all to her apartment for antipasto this Thursday. I am careful not to commit my attendance to her face. I tell her we will try but her apartment is a long way from our current apartment, which is in a suburb none of them seem to have heard of. Irene says we ought to try because her place is directly opposite the Colosseum and has panoramic views of the structure. Bram wishes us farewell, explaining he is moving up the corridor for the remainder of the course. It takes me until midday to understand Bram has graduated a level. Jealousy becomes me. Over negroni spagliati, I try and engage The Man in flash card prompts I borrowed from the school. But he won’t have a bar of it. I become angry, then resentful, and, finally, silent. Instead, I practice by way of studying the menu as I sip my negroni spagliato too quickly. My fury is short-lived because, truthfully, I don’t desire the exercise at all, my brain is throbbing. I can feel the physical strain of neurons firing and firing but never reaching their destination. The synapses are not strong enough to form a pathway, and I am beginning to fear they won’t ever be. I didn’t think it would be this difficult, I say. The Man brings up Irene’s. He says he feels obliged to go. I don’t, I say. He shakes his head. At this moment, I see our differences suspended in the air between us. In fact, I go on, I am intent on missing it. I would rather remain at home and master the imperfect past tense.
A woman sitting behind a sheet of perspex informs us we will not be seeing inside the Borghese Museum and villa as these facilities are booked out until the end of June. This situation is unusual for March, apparently. Mi dispiace, she says solemnly. I stare at all the wise people standing in line who made bookings ahead of time. I allow myself to resent them for a moment before I dwell on my own wrongdoing as it was I who insisted booking wouldn’t be necessary. Some of the people are inspecting the audio-guide device they have been issued, while others are already involved in a guided tour. If we were allowed in, I imagine we would read the pamphlet about the villa on the autobus home in the same way we read the preface of a book after we have read the last page, or otherwise not at all. There is a sense of pride in our desire for naivety as if our ego does not like to be told how, exactly, we should be affected by what we are observing. But over the past few weeks, I have come to almost respect the tour guide-goers and their unabashed way. They are not preoccupied with the how, just the what, and I find I am increasingly envious of their unapologetic tourism.
The Villa’s public gardens are a welcome green break from the concrete and cobblestones. There is a grey, eccentric-looking man in the centre of a clearing playing some sort of electronic synthesised keyboard. It produces a marvelous sound that colours everything with a degree of gravity. I collapse onto a park bench so that my body is supported by the wooden slats and my head by The Man’s lap. I’m not sure if it is the music, the afternoon sun, the purr of the pigeons, the faint smell of marijuana, or the effort of learning a new language, but I fall asleep on the park bench. When I return, I am pleased the music has not ceased. Even the swarms of tourists pouring into the gardens are agreeable at this moment. I watch them from knee level as they move languidly through the garden’s grounds, taking photos and contemplating the rowable boat offering we quickly deemed a tourist trap. There are so many people in the world, I say while I contemplate all the different types of shoes. I know, he says letting his head fall back, it’s a little overwhelming sometimes. I motion to rise but The Man’s arm stiffens around me like a jammed seatbelt. Two more minutes, he says. I fall back while he musters the energy to rise from the bench which will soon belong to someone else.
Yellow Days 