All Of Monday’s Reasons - 6
6. Robert And The Spanish Steps
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“I’ve got an Italian girlfriend,” said a Moroccan who started talking to me in the corridor, “all she think about is money. Money, money, nothing else. Italy is a nice country; beautiful weather and nature, but the people: they think that money is everything.”
I told him he spoke good English. We had turned inland away from the coast and were heading inland. I had been lucky with the weather so far.
“Money! Dollars, pounds, francs, deutschemarks, lire-”
“Where did you learn your English?”
“In school. I was a waiter in Livorno. Lots of American customs. And you? English?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you from?”
“England.”
He laughed. “Oh you English! Very Funny! Benny Hill!”
“Thanks, I’m from Manchester.”
“I come from Morocco, but it’s not very nice. The people. They are horrible.”
“Maybe they only want to make a living,” I said.
He shook his head out the window as if to say that I’d never know in a million years how horrible they really were.
“You see!” he said, “Money again!”
The train stopped in Milan and Pino and I leaned out the window and bought a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches each from a man wheeling a trolley along the platform. We wolfed one down then and put the other away for later.
In the half hour before we got to Rome, Jason and I began brushing up on some Italian from a phrase book he had. My Italian was a little better than my Spanish, but that wasn’t saying much.
Pino and I headed for the train door as we slowed down in the approach to Rome Termini station to change trains for Brindisi, since that’s where I was now headed. Jason was stopping of in Rome for a few days, so we said goodbye and left him in the compartment while he got his things together.
We were standing by the train doors in the standing space they have at the end of carriages between the coupling and that car’s compartments when we stopped at a small station in the Roman suburbs. The bathroom door behind us opened.
“Is this it?” said a twenty year old with disorderly blond hair. He had what that prime-time accent; a television Californian inflection.
“No, you probably want Termini,” I said.
“Rome, right?”
“Yes.”
He looked at us from behind dilated pupils as he slowly talked to us. He was happy calling us both “dude” until we made our introductions, at which juncture we learned his name was Robert, but we remained “dude”.
Robert was studying to be an actor in Santa Cruz.
“So where guys headed?”
I said Greece and Pino said Corfu.
“Pink Palace?” asked Robert.
“Yeah.”
“Du-uuude. The Pink Palace is nowhere. I mean, it’s full of Americans and it’s good, but you don’t meet any nice girls. Ios. Dude, I’m telling you: Ios. They party. Local girls, foreign girls, fine women. You want to go to Ios. You like to party, right?”
“Right.”
“Go to Ios. Then, when you need a break, go to Corfu. I’m going there now. Come with me, and I’ll show you the coolest parts.”
Pino was sold.
The train stopped and we went to change some money from the cambio booth. The office was closed, but when we walked up to the window a shifty character with a briefcase purse sold us some lire for a decent rate. We were all carrying dollar traveller’s cheques. Them because they were American, me because in 1990 when you were in a tight spot in a remote location and wanted money to do the talking, nothing put its point across quite as well as the Yankee dollar.
Robert and I had both been to Rome a couple of times before, so with four hours before the night train to Brindisi, we told Pino he had to see the Spanish Steps. We took the metro to the Piazza Di Spagna.
We arrived to find the RAI, Italy’s main television station, filming a fashion show on the steps. Bright lights, cameras, models and film crew were all trained on what has a favourite hang out of students, travellers and vagabonds for centuries.
“Well,” said Robert as we stood there in the glow to TV land, “I guess no Spanish Steps.”
“Let’s just get some food and a few beers and sit down anywhere,” I said.
Robert led us to a nearby market and we bought bread and beer. We walked back to the square and sat on the grass.
“So what are you doing next, after this?” Robert said, producing a Swiss Army knife. He opened our bottles.
“My friends can’t believe I’m going to law school,” Pino said.
“I can’t believe it,” I said, “look at you.”
“Well, that’s for later. I’ll have to see. Right now I’m drinking a beer in Rome.”
We held up our bottles and toasted the city.
“You dudes smoke?”
Coming from Robert, we gathered what this meant. Pino shrugged his shoulders and nodded. Robert looked at me.
“When I can. I mean, I don’t go out looking for it.”
I was a little worried about buying weed in Rome, but Robert seemed pretty switched on.
“You don’t have to.”
Robert pulled out a joint made with the grass he had carried over from Morocco and we passed the joint around, drank our beers and watched the fashion show on the steps across the square.
I quickly learned that Robert was stoned most of the time and did his utmost to persuade us be likewise.
We left Rome on the night train to Bari, in a compartment with an Australian in his early twenties. Once we started talking, it turned out he had been on all the same trains as me since Barcelona. He was nice enough, but unlike any other Australian I’d ever met, he was remarkably quiet. He said he ran with the bulls at Pamplona, so maybe he was still a little shaken up. After he had travelled for six weeks around Europe, he said he was off for two months to drive around the States.
The train was full and the Italian railway company was stingey on space. For a compartment of the same size compartment of a French SNCF train, the FS packs in a couple more places, seating eight to a compartment instead of six. In a full train, this makes sleeping impossible. Pino spent most of the night talking to two Neapolitans in his competent Italian.
At around two in the morning, during one of several twenty minutes stints when I actually did sleep, Robert woke me up, telling me he had found an empty compartment. With the seats pulled out to form a massive bed, we slept solidly for the next five hours.
Robert seemed like a good guy to know.