Battelli Romana (Roman diary 4)

feeling light, left basilica around one; compulsively stopped in tiny Piazza Rondanini for al fresco lunch with perhaps too much wine; headed home to change; at the corner deli packed a sizable slice of pizza rustica, two cans of lager and some grapes into my rucksack for later; off to the river;

I stop at the boarding point for boat trips on the Trastevere embankment, the western side of Tiber Island. The city disappears in an instant as I carry my bike down the stairs to the water level, the lowest I’ve descended in Rome so far and I’m beginning to take life at its slowest pace here. Boats leave just about hourly and I have half an hour before the next trip starts. The pier feels empty, or rather quiet and real, without camera-armed tourists – the sleepy girl in the ticket office stares at the computer screen, indifferent to the man chattering beside her; a couple with a boy and his pram sit on the ground nibbling at snacks; three uniformed security men entertain themselves by taking in turns clumsy bike rides along the embankment. I no sooner sit on a dusty chair than a wiry, suspiciously neat, local wino comes up and offers me a fantastic sample of slurred Italian excuses and apologies, pointing out the can in my hands. There is an empty plastic glass on the table, a remnant of last night’s boat disco here, so I pour him a good measure of my lager, which of course makes him even more amicable. The man goes on with his insane staccato until one of the security boys wakes up to his duty and chases him off.

When the boat comes, the atmosphere fills with an air of slight agitation and anticipation. The smiling, courteous captain helps few passengers leave and looks genuinely happy to have a new handful of them on board. There are some noble-looking Italians on the open upper deck already, occupying sideways-arranged seats. A mother with two teenage children hesitates before deciding which side has more sun. A young German couple with their mothers choose the seats they think are less exposed. The wife is conspicuously pregnant. I fix my bike and decide to lean against the barrier, facing the journey upstream, able to see the views and all my neighbours. As soon as I feel the combination of blasting afternoon sun and breeze on my back I involuntarily take my shirt off. Not without a bit of apprehension since I’m well aware of Italians’ reserved attitude to naked flesh in public. I wouldn’t get away with parading shirtless in, say, del Corso or Piazza Navona for long. Here though I feel provocative and decide against whatever external or inner restrictions. The fact of being on water gives me automatically a license to sport my torso and enjoy the sun. My sunglasses are a mask, a fine tool of perverse denial – I darken the sight in order not to be seen, feel safe and keep dignity. But of course standing here exposed, visible/invisible to others, watching them, I might provoke a question: What’s the matter with you? Like a child and adult in one, I gamble. No one seems to care.
The boat chugs slowly upstream, playing pre-recorded commentaries in Italian and English on the bridges and buildings it goes past. The Tiber is a surprise. It is a quiet, almost empty river. Its green waters match the leaves of the plane trees lined densely on its banks. Its provincial mood clashes with the images of the crowded city to the either side. It gives quite a different perspective on Rome on a hot day – a perfect cooling and sunbathing experience, with a sense of detachment into the bargain. As the walls of the embankment hide all but the tops of the highest buildings and trees, the eyes naturally focus on the life down below, on water and the footpath along the bank. On the shore of Tiber Island people lie on the stone and gulls dive for food. Runners, mothers with children, dogs, anglers, Buddhist monks, ducks, water rats, lovers and leaping fish all enjoy the river breezes.
Half-remembered Old Masters as well as literary and cinematic images of the Tiber come to mind – emperors, popes and dignitaries using the river to come to Rome, enter their palazzos, to display triumph, wealth and power in ceremonies watched by the masses. The riverside palaces, villas, gardens, boatyards and quays are long gone, largely due to efforts to curb the destructive power of Tiber’s disastrous regular flooding, by building high embankments. Today only few ruins and the bridges remain.
The boat goes under eleven of them before it reaches the destination, Ponte Duca d’Aosta. By then the riverscapes will have changed, the Tiber turned into a wide, wild, rural river running between green banks surrounded with purple-coloured hills in the distance. No one leaves the boat here when the captain sound his horn. Soon the boat drifts slowly across the river before it heads back to the city centre. The views on the return trip are far more impressive than those on the outward journey. It’s late afternoon and watching suburbs turn into city is a light-enhanced spectacle. With every bridge Rome’s grandeur increases, distant churches come to the fore against the backdrop of trees on the Janiculum Hill, the silhouettes of stone figures on bridges become more dramatic, the water darkens, heat gets more intense.
Just as we are approaching Ponte S. Angelo the young German couple perform something that outdoes my own act at the beginning of the trip. I can’t tell whether they give in to the soft sensual heat of early evening or have some calculated idea in their minds when they both take their tops off. They seem self-conscious with their new presence on the deck, touching and hugging each other, turning back to other passengers. There is hardly anything he can show off, a regular, neglected body with a prospective beer belly. And there is everything to her slim pale figure deformed by pregnancy, overtaken by the massive protruding belly in full glory, dominant and fragile at the same time. Then their mothers take the cameras out and beckon them to turn round.
At that point the sun setting behind the great dome of S. Peter’s makes it look like a belly of the eternal woman lying across Rome. For their photos the couple adopt poses resembling those by pregnant pop stars on the covers of glossy magazines. The man flexes his chest, sucks his stomach in and embraces his wife’s super-natural waist while all she needs to do in her half-naked simplicity is just smile. Will the dome of S. Peter’s show in any of the shots?