Tourists
Tourists
By Rosalind Wyllie
Vatican Palace, we’ve queued hours to get in and now we’re here. Hurrying through more than twenty chambers filled with frescos, unlabelled relics and too many tourists, to get to the Sistine Chapel. Approaching this moment with anticipation needing this break more than we like to admit. In the last few weeks, or maybe it is months, there have been knots in my back, tension in my voice, uninvited tears in public places. What I want more than anything is a moment where pure emotion will overwhelm me; a moment’s respite. I don’t expect to find God in this chapel, but am hungry for comfort. We’re finally here. Wait, any minute now the sensation will fill me.
The crowds are dark and seemingly reverential, they’re just shadows, unsettling somehow. The sign at the door asks that silence be observed in the chapel, so instead of talking everyone is mumbling, whispering, an eerie breeze of conversation flows through the room.
I look up at the paintings expecting that they will hurl beauty at me leaving me breathless, but they look exactly like every picture of the Sistine chapel that I have seen duplicated and abundant in poster stores. All their secrets have been displayed; I was hoping to find something new, something untold but find that I know it all already.
You take my hand and kiss my fingers, ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ I squeeze your hand and smile, but if I feel anything at all in this chapel it is a sense of claustrophobia, of wanting to leave, wanting to breathe in some fresh air, leave all these dark chambers and ghosts and return to the pavement, the traffic and the sunshine.
I am disappointed.
Later that evening on a sidewalk café we drink wine and engage in a gentle halfhearted conversation. Reviewing the sights of the day, the views of St Peter’s, the alarmingly expensive beers. Wondering together about whether the photographs will capture the beauty of crumbling ruins, the vastness of Roman achievements, and their sadness in decline. Conversation slips into occasional comments on the passers by, then the wine is finished so you pay, and we leave, returning to our rented apartment.
Already the apartment is home, for the first few nights we stayed up late drinking, making love on the sofa, in the shower, everywhere that could provide and angle or opportunity. On the third night I started a huge literary novel I’ve been meaning to read forever, expecting to only make it page ten or so; a tender silence falling between us, occasionally interrupted by a mutual smile or a comment on my reading matter. You flicked through news channels on the television and read the English newspaper from the sidewalk stand. After three hundred pages I reluctantly closed the book, my imaginary world ended, I showered and kissed your forehead before going to bed. For a few moments I lay in the dark, hoping to hear you turn off the television and follow me. Sometime later you turned back the covers and climbed in beside me, turning your back, then snoring within seconds.
I shake back the creeping rejection and kiss your sleeping back.
On the fourth night we both make an effort, this is a holiday; to not make love for two nights in a row seems somehow to be missing the point. You are tender and gentle, it is irritating; I want something more. I’m hungry for the frantic fucking of the first night and the urgency of your lust. I toy with the hairs on your chest as you move above me and wonder what you’re thinking behind your closed eyes.
I ask you to tell me a fantasy, you oblige willingly. You bring an imaginary woman, dark haired, small breasted and willing into our bedroom. The three of us make love; you direct the action, knowing the limits of my desires. The story distracts us temporarily from the repetition, and brings a new level of passion. Later, we make love again, alone this time, and then you kiss me and turn over to sleep.
I think back to other holidays with lesser men who gave more in ways that I can’t quantify, remembering the beginnings and endings of most of my relationships, not recalling the detail. Are the epitaphs I’ve given previous partners true? If I revisited these men would the stories pan out the same, or am I changed, different. I’ve seen so much of everything and have a vault full of experiences; I should have learned something, moved forward somehow, but being in a foreign apartment bedroom, a sleeping lover beside me, dragging out the past seems too familiar.
Is this intimacy or complacency? Is there a difference? I’m reminded of movies where lovers declare themselves and open their hearts. I think about waking you and asking what happened to your interest in me, but already know the answer; it lives in the same place as my original delight in your every word. Sometimes I wonder whether we know each other so well that we are superfluous to each other. We start and finish each other’s sentences, know already which newspapers, film, drink each other wants, orgasms are efficient and precise, but these days late night heart to hearts and disclosures are redundant. We are haunted by their absence.
There is so much that I will never be able to discuss with you.
The loneliness has worn a cold groove in me.
The sun shines, our hands are linked and there are no obstacles, so it’s the Colosseum and more queues and offers of group tours. Guides talk in textbook English about the Romans who once sat here, enjoying the spectacle, loving the murderous Gladiators and terrified Christians.
There’s a story about a voracious crowd who found the sight of a few deaths, a few slaughters to lean for their tastes. They kept yelling for more, more and more. Chanting relentlessly ‘We want blood, we want blood.’ So an emperor with an appetite for sacrifices and irony gave them what they wanted. He had his men empty one of the less prestigious tiers from the gallery into the sandy ring, into the mouths of angry, hungry lions. The audience became the show, falling, screaming, clambering over each other to save themselves, a stadium filled with fear and excitement. I shiver at the thought, but something in the response appeals, maybe we get what we deserve. I hold onto your hand a little tighter.
Walking down the steps away from the upper gallery I notice the couple ahead, the man slips his arm over his girlfriend’s shoulder and kisses the top of her head. She looks so safe, so protected, so loved. ‘You never do that to me.’ I say.
You slip your arm around me and kiss my hair, ‘I do it all the time.’
I watch the other couple, their hands linked, their steps moving in time. She takes a disposable camera from her bag and they pose in an exaggerated fashion, she giggles, then they kiss.
‘Do you ever think that the feelings of strangers seem more real?’ I say aloud, too loudly, hearing the damage and desperation in my need. ‘Don’t be daft,’ you say.
And the moment passes.
On our last day we stop at smaller churches, ones that we walked past on the first few days, hungry to see St Peter’s, the Vatican and the Pantheon, leaving the busy streets and walking into quiet chambers. People seated on pews, heads bowed, the sacred heart illuminated ahead of them. I wonder what pain or promise brought them here; it is too silent, too intimate, we are intruders.
I leave you photographing a shrine in the chapel and walk down the steps back onto the street, pausing outside a small delicatessen, captivated by the range of cheeses, breads, olives and salamis. Each item has been displayed with a loving creativity that makes me yearn for a different world. The wrinkled old woman dressed in black behind the wooden till seems completely in context, yet still an apparition, if she left the shop and came out onto the street then she might just vanish. I want to share the moment with you, knowing you will find beauty in the simplicity and reach for your camera, but you haven’t followed.
I wait outside the shop, tourists and locals stream by. I know not to panic, know that if I stay in the same spot long enough then you will return. I walk back to the church and sit at the top of the steps and wait.
Within minutes I spot you, you’re standing at the corner of the street looking suntanned and concerned. Searching faces for my features. I stay still; I don’t wave, not wanting to draw attention to myself, watching you and seeing more anxiety than I would have predicted. From this distance, it occurs to me that I never see you when I’m not there, that somewhere outside of our relationship you are complete without me.
You see me, and I see the relief in your smile, you wink and start making your way through the crowds and across the street.