Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Bear in mind that this is the very first time I have ever been driven
on what I think of as the wrong side of the road. I can’t drive. But
I have frequently been in cars that other people are driving. But
always on the right side of the road. On the left.
  
   It’s my third night in Rome. Actually, it’s about 4am so it’s my
fourth day in Rome. It’s my first time in Europe. I am in the back
seat of a car with a Romanaccio who can speak no English. In fact he can speak no Italian. Only the Roman dialect. It doesn’t sound at all like Italian. He is called Renato.
  
   Driving the car is Adriano, who can speak French. I speak a little
French and that is how we have been communicating for hours,
over many drinks in the Buddha Bar in San Lorenzo. Next to him
is a woman called Marcella. She is pug faced and stocky, and she is
really hacked off at being dropped at her place so the two men can
take me to wherever they are planning to take me.
  
   I don’t know where this is.
  
   The car swoops down a curving road lined with trees at a break
neck pace. On the wrong side of the road. that is, the right side of
the road. To my certain knowledge Adriano has drunk a very great
deal of alcohol and, very probably, just had a hit of heroin. He is
driving very swiftly indeed, but all things considered, not as badly as
he might be driving. It does help that the road is deserted. But then
again, the fact the road is deserted is not quite as comforting as it
might have been.
  
   Adriano has stopped talking to me. If I say something to him
in French, he doesn’t reply. He and Renato are talking. It sounds
as if they are discussing something and coming to an agreement.
Marcella occasionally makes a sarcastic and grumpy comment.
  
   Now Renato is nuzzling my ear and making moaning sounds.
  
   I consider opening the back door and hurling myself out.
  
   But we are travelling at such a speed!
  
   So I remove myself from my body. I just get out. Out of my body.
  
   That’s better.
  
   I am calm. Everything is crystal clear, and moving at a manageable
pace. It’s a complete waste of all the vino bianco I have purchased
and drunk, because now I am stone cold sober. My mind clicks
slowly from option A to option B to option C. I don’t need to talk
to my new friends because I am completely aware of them. I am
silent, relaxed, safe inside the fortress of my mind, and aware of the
distance between me and the three other people in the car.
  
   The car pulls up outside a shabby block of flats. Marcella gets
out of the car, and stands with the front door open, making one last
shrill complaint. I try to open the back door. It won’t open. Probably because the car is such a bomb the doors don’t work properly.  Probably.
  
   I lean forward over the front seat and call out – ‘Marcella.
Marcella. Open the door!’
  
   Somehow I know she thinks I want to get into the front seat
with Adriano. Perhaps because this is what she would want to do.
Perhaps she thinks it is only polite for someone to sit up front with
the driver. I don’t know why she thinks I want to sit next to Adriano
in the front seat.
  
   But she opens the back door.
  
   And I am off! I am out of there! I am skimming across a dusty little
park. I am not running. I am skimming. I can hear the birds making
the first disgruntled sounds of dawn.
  
   Dawn! – I think.
  
   I can hear the car start up. I can hear Marcella call out as the car
takes off. I can hear the car circle the park.
  
   I see a young man, heading up the street like a guy on an early
shift heading for the bus stop. I am out of the park and across the
road and winging my way towards him.
  
   ‘Police! taxi! train station! I have been abducted by two men!’ I
earnestly shout at him.
  
   He stops and stares at me. He doesn’t understand anything I am
saying.
  
   The car pulls up across the road. If this had been Australia,
they would have pulled up next to the kerb, next to me and the
bewildered young man.
  
   Adriano and Renato have wound their windows down. they
are leaning out of their windows with those reddened, lugubrious
faces little boys wear when they know they have been really really
naughty.
  
   ‘Jennifer,’ calls out Adriano. ‘Get in the car.’
  
   It sounds like an apology.
  
   Funny. I didn’t think he spoke any English.
  
   I shake my fist at him. I do. I get my fist in the air and I shake it at him.
  
   Gosh. I am picking up Italian ways – I think.
  
   ‘I am never getting back in the car with you,’ I cry out, with all my
heart. ‘You frightened me.’
  
   Adriano and Renato look guilty, and nervous, and shamefaced.
Adriano guns the car away down the road. i know, somehow, they
won’t be coming back.
  
   The young man understands exactly what has been going on,
gives me a shrewd look, nods, and moves on.
  
   I stand for a minute. A long minute. The light in the sky grows.
The birds’ voices increase in certainty.
   I have no idea where I am.
   Now is the moment to ask me why I got in the car. Go on, ask me.
   ‘Why did you get in the car, Jennifer?’
   ‘Because I am stupid. That’s why.’
   The evening had started well. I had decided to go back to the
bar in the student quarter I had gone to the night before with my
young Roman friend, Sergio. I decided to have a session, a Roman
dreaming. I got to talking to people. as one does. I learnt to order
white wine – vino bianco – and slammed them down. They served
the vino bianco lukewarm. But I thought – When in Rome … drink
lukewarm white wine. It seemed quite witty at the time.
   But when the bar started stacking the tables inside, and I decided
to drift back to my pensione, I found the San Lorenzo quarter had
turned into a maze. I could not find the medieval gate out onto Via
Marsala. I spotted Renato and called out to him, hoping if I shouted
Via Marsala loudly enough, he might be able to point the gate out to
me. Just as he turned back, Adriano and Marcella pulled up next to
us in their old bomb.
   In the worst French ever, Adriano and I understood that I
was going near Stazione Termini and he was going near Stazione
Termini, so if I jumped in, he would drop me off. Fair enough.
Renato jumped in too.
   We pulled into a service station.
   They need to fill up – I thought.
   I need a ladies – I thought. I nipped inside and found the
facilities, but when I pushed the door open, two young men inside
were doing something very peculiar to each other. Of a drug culture
nature.
   Marcella was right behind me. She shouted apologies and
slammed the door shut.
   I tootled on out to the forecourt to find Adriano and his car to
say – I don’t think this service station is kosher and could we move on?
   I found adriano and his car. I went up to the driver’s window.
and golly gosh, he was injecting something into his penis while
a guy I had never seen before in my life watched with intense
curiosity.
   I may have stepped back. I may just have stood there like a great
big gobsmacked ninny.
   ‘This is Rome, Jennifer,’ Adriano said. as he tucked all his
equipment away.
   Funny. I didn’t think he spoke English.
   We had one for the road – I had fruit juice – in the café. I
couldn’t make my mind work properly about how to get back to
my pensione. I felt ensnared. Marcella did find a moment when
the facilities were free so I could empty my bladder. But I still
couldn’t think straight. I had my snaps of rome I had picked up that
afternoon, so I showed my three new friends my holiday snaps.
like, it felt really normal.
   Marcella finally whinged and moaned enough to make the guys
finish up their beer, and we all piled back into the car.
   Yes. I got back into the car. I can only say that the service station
was a really scary place. lots of traffic. Comings and goings. I hadn’t
learned how to use Roman public telephones. I didn’t know the
phone number for a taxi, or the Italian word for taxi.
   As far as I could tell, Stazione Termini was just up the road. Five
more minutes of this gothic nightmare within a nightmare and I
would be back in the women’s only dorm of the Pensione Cressy.
   But instead, of course, I am standing on the street in an outer
district of Rome as dawn comes up, as lost as I have ever been in
my life.
   So I start walking.
   I find a bus stop. A grandfather type on early shift is waiting for a bus.
   ‘I am upset. I have been abducted by two men. Police?’ I say to
him, my face crinkling up, on the verge of howling.
   He almost understands. He sees I am upset. He pats the seat
beside him. I sit down. He offers me a smoke and lights it for me.
   ‘Where are we,’ I ask. I make many gestures indicating I don’t
know where I am.
   ‘San Paolo,’ he replies.
   I don’t know where that is but at least now I know what it is
called.
   He pats me in a grandfatherly way on my knee. His hand moves
up my thigh and he no longer seems quite such a grandfatherly type.
   I jump up, enraged and spitting chips.
   A taxi pulls into a side street. I run at it, knowing for sure
someone must have booked it, but perhaps, if the driver speaks a
little English, he might be able to call me a taxi. I no longer care how
many euros it will take to get me back to my all women’s dorm.
   But the driver is perfectly willing to take me to Via Volturno. as
I slam the back door shut in the grandfather type’s face, he waves
good bye insouciantly.
   The streets are almost deserted in the blue‑grey, early morning
Roman light. The first bus grinds up the road. A few sleepy people
moving about unwillingly. A garbage van in front of an amazing,
ancient building. Men with gloves emptying rubbish bins into it. a
police car, with a couple of cops leaning on the bonnet, sipping
coffee. We swoop like homing pigeons towards Via Volturno, and
Rome looks wonderful to me. This is a really beautiful city – I think
to myself – as beautiful a city as there ever was.
   The trip home only costs twelve euro.
   I thank the driver. I get out. I sink onto a doorstep and fumble to
light a cigarette before I go upstairs to the no smoking zone.
Across the road is a sleepy passle of tourists waiting for their
early morning bus. they stand like storm‑beaten cattle with their
heads down. One woman looks up and sees me. She sees I am
distressed. she asks – in an international form of body language – if I
am all right.
   I am all right – I signal – I am all right. now.
   She turns away. I see her think – oh well. Probably her own
fault. Probably did something stupid. on her own in Rome. Sitting
on a doorstep. Smoking.
   She huddles into her tour group. Safe. Waiting for their bus.
I begin to shake and I want to cry, but there is not much point in
that, so I don’t.