Rome is heavy with spirits. For thousands of years, men and women have lived and died here in vain, and often suffered the sins of others. Wasted lives, and those killed in conflicts; blood spilled to both satisfy and fuel men’s desires. They lie thick and deep under the Sampietrini, and if you think you can’t feel them, guess what – these spirits are what drew you to Rome in the first place. Sitting in the Campo dei’ Fiori, where a friar named Bruno was burned at the stake; sitting at the feet of the statue that smiles down benignly, the reverie is fueled by the dance of the spirits around his fire.
There is a pub right off the Campo on Via dei Cappellari. Strange place. Strange things happen there. The name is something like Orusdir, but we always called it the Crusader. The interior is all geeky, dungeons and dragons kitch: trolls peeking out from behind faux bridge pillars; a movie poster of Christopher Lambert in ‘The Highlander’. A bit sardonic, but cheerful in a way with young Italian nerds playing chess alongside drunken John Cabot students. At the bar, I remember people speaking Russian. But to tell the truth, though we were there many times, there is not much else I remember because the drinks came fast and cheap. Again, more stories... But tonight I am going to tell you about the time we met the demon.
Absinthe is legal in Rome, or at least readily available. Any alcoholic drink made from something called wormwood that has reputed psychoactive properties and that baked the brains of famous authors into agonized catharsis appealed to me at once. The proper way (that is ‘the Bohemian method’) of drinking absinthe is on fire: shots are served with sugar cubes atop on a special spoon, which once ignited, is dropped into the flaming herbal cauldron before the concoction is tossed down into your swirling stomach. The brain effect comes soon after, but can’t be discerned from ordinary liquor shots until at least three to five shots are downed. Then things start to happen…
The demon, by the way, wasn’t peering down from the Crusader’s frescoed ceiling – that was clearly a painting of banshees up there and not the real thing. Instead we came upon it quite unexpectedly, after crossing the Tiber and threading our way down Via dei Penitenzieri behind Santo Spirito in Sassia, heading towards the Vatican. Here, we would make a right and continue north towards the all-night cornetto shop in viale Angelico and finally stumble home. But once we had turned the corner, we saw her in shadow blocking the narrow Borgo, cloaked in darkness and haloed by the faint glow of Saint Peter’s, with its unforgettable dome in silhouette. I shouldn’t say ‘we’ because I saw her and John saw her, but neither could confirm that the other experienced this mutual apparition until we reached home (forgetting the cornetto) and finally had the courage to un-clasp our steel-gripped hands.
She was the most terrible presence, all dark with glowing eyes that opened you like a tin sardine can. Wearing filthy rags that nevertheless flowed like an angry goddess, she stood guard with strong legs, and battered suitcases piled up around her. As we drew nearer, and realized we would have to pass her in order to reach the open Piazza San Pietro, we instinctively clasped hands, and each hair rose up on the back of my neck like a cat. She was terribly real, and she was standing in front of the largest, most important Christian church in the world. Who was she waiting for?
She let us pass, but not without sending the blood, cold and prickling, up our arched backs and pulling our leaden feet to the stones so that we could not run. She seemed eternal there with her hellish smile; had been to hell and back, and had come in wait for someone's apparent doom – luckily not ours, at least not that night.
It is easy to say, ‘It was the absinthe, guys’. And in fact, other equally bizarre things would happen after indulging the green muse. But it was also Rome, where so much has happened over the millennia, and where the past has never really drawn away from the present, leaving us with strange hints of other worlds in mists where only spirits dare
Posts
