Just before disembarking at Brindisi, Doug and I met a Swedish guy, Liam, who was also going to Rome. He was returning from playing a small part in a movie being filmed in Athens. His plan was to hitchhike to Rome and then eventually home to Sweden, and he insisted we hitchhike with him. He knew some people in Rome; it could be good for us.
We quickly created a sign, “Roma,” and tried to get lucky with the cars and trucks driving off the boat. It didn’t take long; an Italian guy took all three of us. He said he wanted some company on the six-to-seven-hour drive to Rome.
We reached Rome at 1 o’clock a.m., when our driver left us off at the Piazza di Trevi, by the legendary Trevi Fountain, because it was too late to check into a hotel. As uncomfortable as it would be, I loved it. I had seen the movie, Three Coins in the Fountain, I had heard the song! Now here I was, my first night in Rome, and I was sleeping at the most famous fountain in the world.
My elation was short-lived. After an hour or two trying to sleep and freezing our asses off, we were abruptly awakened by the local Polizia. The irritated officer scolded us: “This is not a hotel to sleep; it is only for Italian movie producers!” I was relieved; it was too cold out there anyway. We started walking, and after almost two hours, we found a barely-hole-in-the-wall hotel and finally got to sleep about 5:00 a.m.
Six hours later Doug, Liam and I were up and ready to take on Rome. We made our way to one of the city’s most popular meeting places, the Spanish Steps, where Liam told us to wait while he searched for the people he had mentioned to us. While we waited, we looked around and soon found out our first day of exploring Rome was doomed. It was the 1st of May, May Day, and everyone was on holiday. Everything, and I mean everything, was closed.
Our spirits were lifted when, a couple of hours later, Liam returned with good news. He had found his friends, three American girls who worked for one of the English-speaking newspapers in Rome, The Daily American. These girls, Maria, Penny and Karen, had just moved into a new apartment, and though it was sparsely furnished, there was room enough for all of us. And as a soon-to-be-part-time tourist, I got excited. The apartment was only about a block from St. Peter’s.
All six of us, the girls and the guys, started having meals together while we got to know each other. As pleasant as that was, it forced me to look once again at my financial predicament. Rome was even more expensive than I’d anticipated, and I had to decide what my next step was going to be. For about ten days now I’d felt like the proverbial “Man in the Middle” going back and forth between risking adventure or being sanely conservative, to make sure I had enough money to get home. I had to make a decision. I hadn’t totally bought into the conversations I’d had in Greece suggesting that the travel gods would protect me on my journey and ensure my passage home.
It was a godsend to me that the girls sharing their apartment weren’t charging us. This enabled me to live frugally while waiting for a miracle. Unfortunately, that ended suddenly when their landlord announced that he did not approve of so many people in the apartment and we had to get out by that night.
Doug began to search for a hotel. Liam packed his bag to begin hitching north. I went back to panicking while I counted and recounted my money. Maria, Penny and Karen had come to like me; of the three guys, I was the only one they spoke to more than briefly. Maria and I got along best. They all wanted me to stay in Rome and thought I could give private English lessons to rich Italians. The idea was intriguing; they had connections through their newspaper and thought I could make up to 5000 lire an hour. (At that time, 625 lire were worth $1.00.)
We spent hours discussing what it would be like to teach English. I could not picture myself trying to teach someone English when I couldn’t speak their language. Karen said not to worry; she had heard it was like teaching a baby how to talk.
“You don’t know baby language, do you? Well, we all get it done eventually, and the baby starts to speak in English,” she said.
Maria said that when the teacher doesn’t know the host language he or she forces all the students to speak English; it was called the direct method. During these conversations, I kept thinking that if my Father or my high school English teacher knew I was considering teaching English to unsuspecting innocent people they would have thrown up their hands in disbelief. They had both been witness to my English papers and grades. Karen said she could put a small free ad in her paper tomorrow, but we passed on the ad for the time being while she checked on a couple of things back at her office that might give me some leads.
I did think I could try the English teacher route. I didn’t know how to get clients, though, and I would have to get an apartment and make a deposit, which was a real commitment, a scary one. I’d be betting everything I had on this one idea.
After saying goodbye to Liam, and thanking him for his help, I went to find a quiet place to think and stretch my legs. While walking I stopped at the American Express office, hoping to find mail from home, but nothing was waiting for me. I kept on walking until I found my quiet place in the chaos of St. Peter’s Square, the plaza in front of the Basilica and Vatican grounds. I took a seat on a bench and began to draw.
On that day, at that hour, I was the only artist in the square attempting to draw, centuries later, what Michelangelo had created. A little group started to form, watching me. They looked over my shoulder to see what I was drawing and tried to talk, but we were all speaking different languages and conversation was difficult. No grandmothers pulled out chairs to sit beside me and chat like they did in Istanbul, but many shook their heads with approval at my approach as I drew—with an ink pen now instead of pencil, which I had left in Istanbul. I am sure most days there were many real and aspiring artists attempting to reproduce on paper the divine feeling of looking at St. Peter’s for the first time. The square was just breathtaking; seeing it on television did not do it justice. As I sketched, I anticipated the awe I would experience when I entered the Basilica tomorrow. I planned to spend all day at the Vatican church, museum and grounds and was looking forward to being overwhelmed by being in the presence of the history there.
I began to lose interest in drawing the structural aspect of St. Peters and needed to try my hand at something more freeform. As I looked at the art surrounding me, I was drawn to one of the numerous statues everywhere in Rome. This one was of a riderless horse and appeared to be part of a narrative connected to a sculpture across the street. Wondering what that story was, I stared, and began to remember another muscular horse in my life.
I was twelve years old in 1959 and a sixth-grader in Mrs. Andrew’s second-floor homeroom class. Although we changed classes during the day, Mrs. Andrews was also my history teacher. We had been studying ancient Rome, and one day, so she could grade papers, she instructed us to draw something about the Roman Empire that had made an impression. She handed out oversized sheets of paper for us to draw on and we all jumped in quickly. In short order, there were drawings of awkward-looking coliseums, rickety bridges flying flags over the Tiber River, and suspicious renderings of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
I watched my classmates for a while, not wanting to draw what everyone else was drawing. I caught Mrs. Andrews giving me the evil eye because I wasn’t doing anything, so I put my head down and pretended to sketch. Suddenly I envisioned a bold horse, a significant horse. I thought a moment and added a Roman soldier. I quickly sketched the boundaries of the drawing and decided I wouldn’t show the entire horse or the full figure of the soldier. The horse would be fierce and maybe a little mad, with flaring nostrils and mane flowing. The soldier would have a strong hold on the leather reins and look ready for battle. As I started to draw the horse, I exaggerated the entire scene, creating an unusual close-up with extreme angles portraying power and movement.
My drawing was progressing nicely when I noticed Mrs. Andrews walking around the room and looking over shoulders to see the different drawings. She made her way over to me and stopped. She didn’t say anything, which unnerved me. I kept on drawing until she sat down in an empty chair and moved it closer to me, looking over my right shoulder. She still had not said a word.