They left Italy with a heavy heart. An old world with the grandeur of once being the centre of an empire, Rome promised so much but delivered even more. Every step they took, every corner they stood, every path they chose, there were unmistakable signs of ancient history – of a she-wolf suckling the infant twins, Romulus and Remus, of Etruscans and Greeks who fought for colonies, of old relics and long buried buildings stopping the construction of a new railway line or a road, of gladiators who fought for honour or freedom, of slaves who were inconsequential to those who cheered from the seats of the colosseum, of emperors and senators who wielded power and influence and who could take a life by the mere turning of a thumb.
The voices spoke and the spirits of the dead who didn’t want to die screamed and shouted but in their group, only the old man heard them. As in the movie The Haunting in Venice, Rome was as haunting as romantic Venice if you let the dead get to you. The travellers left Venice for Rome after a romantic two days of gondola rides and private boat trips and glittering nights of Venetian food and wine. They left the ancient city of desperate ghosts and the unwilling dead trapped in perpetuity. The skeletons came alive but no one else noticed them. The old man was useless, merely walking away despite their pleas to be freed. He was just a black cloud that attracted unhappy spirits. We cannot hide from our ghosts but whether they are real or not does not matter, we need to make our peace with them. There were few stories that had a good ending there. Even Shakespeare’s old story about the merchant of Venice wasn’t enchanting. Venice didn’t need a fort to protect it. The palace actually faced out to the sea, absent of cannons and towers. The treacherous water channels were enough to deter would-be conquerors and sink merchant ships; ultimately, the water will even sink Venice itself.
Perhaps it was appropriate that they attended Tan Dun’s Buddha Passion on the first night in Rome. In Italy for over two weeks, they had heard about and felt the tragedies of wars and witnessed enough ruins from the last two millennia. The old man needed his soul to reset. Omitaba. But, Tan Dun wrote about the Deer of Nine Colours. Saving a man from drowning only brought the deer its own demise after the man dobbed on its whereabouts to collect a rich reward from the King. Karma can be unforgiving. The old man did not find peace and enlightenment from Tan Dun’s work. In the final act, Nirvana, Buddha revealed he wasn’t God and he wasn’t the son of God and neither was he sent by God.
“What are you then?” his weeping disciples asked as the Buddha laid dying.
“I am awake….” he replied.
Omitaba.
Perhaps that’s the best message from Tan Dun. Be awake to the present but do not forget the past.
After the concert, the old man introduced himself and shook Tan Dun’s hand as he was leaving the stage of the concert hall at the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. It was a nice feeling; the maestro was very warm and kind to the old man.
Great music, maestro!
“Alora, look after your bags please,” Maddalena, their tour guide said. Every sentence had to start with that. Every minute needed special attention to thwart would-be pickpockets and bag snatchers. Every distraction, every nudge, every bump a possible ploy to dispossess them of their wallet or passport.
“Alora,” let me say it again,” Maddalena said to the old man when he asked a question that she had volunteered the answer to a second earlier.
“Alora. Yes, after Monti, I’ll take you to the Colosseum,” she repeated, unnecessarily louder.
They had been warned about Rome many weeks before they left home. Apart from the worry of losing their wallets and passports to pickpockets, the old man was busy warning them about other potential pitfalls.
“Steps!” he shouted and pointed at them almost everywhere and every day in Rome.
“Watch out, cobbledstones!” Uneven and slippery, they had caused some people who were unaware of the danger to cut short their holidays from sprained ankles.
“That old woman is a gypsy. She just scammed your money by looking toothless and old!”
But, on day two, he was charmed by what he saw. The Romans may have gone but they had left a mountain of treasure for humanity. Maybe the Italians no longer considered themselves as Romans but Roma will forever be their benefactor, bringing millions of tourists to visit and witness their greatness all those years ago. Their empire lasted five hundred years till AD 476 but the eastern side continued as the Byzantine Empire, extending their greatness and influence well after the Renaissance and Mannerism periods. The Roman emperor was the people’s god until they found the Christian God. It intrigued the old man that the fall of the empire, largely due to overspending on the military and new laws that banned the use of cheap labour (slavery) was the impetus for the rise of a new religion – a new faith in a new God – which eventually heralded the Dark Ages.
In Rome, the old man met two dead heroes. Marco Aurelio, also known as Marcus Aurelius, was on a horse whereas Stephen Hawking was in a photo, celebrated as a cherished diner in a local restaurant in 2017, according to its proud owner.
“I thought he couldn’t swallow any kind of food,” the old man said but the owner of the restaurant with the best cuisine in the heart of Rome, La Taverna dei Fori Imperial, didn’t reply. He merely cupped both hands and gave a slight shrug as if to say his food wasn’t just any kind of food but the best and of course Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have dined there if he couldn’t enjoy his food!
The fashion in Rome was a worthy rival to that of Milan. The evergreen Eva Green, often shivering from the cold nights in Italy, finally succumbed to her sister’s incessant pestering from Milan to Florence and bought a fawn coloured Max Mara overcoat in Rome to prepare for the much colder nights in Scotland, their final holiday destination after Italy. When outside, she wore it like a high fashion item but in the hotel room, its dual purpose was soon apparent as a dressing gown.
Her husband, James, a double-o seven-agent kind of man, suave and confident with a swagger in his movements, had said his goodbyes and waved nonchalantly with a half salute as he stepped into a private boat in Venice two days earlier. James, although a retired merchant of some eight years, had a mission to accomplish somewhere else. Without him, Eva was even more reluctant to spend on herself. A remarkably kind woman, she never thought twice about buying any item if ever a family member needed it, but if she needed something, she would talk herself out of it.
At the Vatican, the splendour and richness of the architecture, sculptures and art were awesome and spell-bounding and while the God they follow was omnipresent, their treasures were ubiquitous. The viewing of Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel left the sexagenarians with stiff necks and a groggy Eva Green stumbled out of it quite unlike a Bond girl on the big screen due to her past episodes of vertigo. Michelangelo was just thirty three years of age when commissioned to paint the ceiling.
“It took him four years and a stiff neck to complete his masterpiece,” the old man said.
The Creation of Adam, in which God and Adam outstretched their hands to one another was the painting that moved the old man the most. He took no notice of the guard who yelled at him to move along. When in the presence of greatness, ignore pettiness.
“You were moved by God?” Eva asked.
“By Michelangelo!” the old man replied.
It surprised the old man that the Vatican chimney used to signal the white or black smoke for the election of the next Pope was not a permanent fixture of the building. It also surprised him that the devout followers of the faith were provided with a vast array of white plastic chairs at the foreground of the independent state to use when they congregate there to listen to the Pope. The plastic chairs were not only an eyesore but also offered a stark contrast between the haves and the have-nots, and contradicted the religion that taught their followers they were all born equal in the eyes of their Lord. For the faithful ordinary folk to endure the cold on flimsy furniture whilst the opulence and abundance was being enjoyed inside the building by the elites and the powerful felt wrong.
Heathrow treated the travellers badly. Their flight to London was delayed but not late for the connecting flight to Edinburgh. They weren’t told their seats had been bumped and their flight rescheduled to the next day. It wasn’t a pretty sight to see the old folks rudely delayed by the airport staff and it was a much uglier sight to see them scrambling and running to their departure gate only to be told their boarding passes had already been cancelled. The following day, the alarm buzzed at 3:30am. The loss of their expensive hotel room at The Scotsman in Edinburgh hurt the old man as he grunted and struggled to get up from the lousy bed at the airport hotel.
“Be stoic,” Eva said later at the airport when told of his grumblings. Her sister agreed. It was easy for them to be accepting of their circumstances, since they didn’t pay for the hotel room. The old man clearly wasn’t graced with wisdom and contentment that Tan Dun had tried to impart to him in Rome. He seemed to have aged a lot faster; the deeper and darker wrinkles may have given him more character but the aggressive growth of his hideous pot-belly was a huge price being paid for the indulgences of the past three weeks.
Edinburgh was grey and wet and very young. Compared to Rome, many places on earth will feel very young. Even Edinburgh Castle looked young and uninteresting to the old man despite it being built in the 11th century. The old man’s Mrs needed a whole day to recover from their ordeal in Heathrow so it was left to Eva to decide the itinerary for their first day in Scotland. Eva wanted to walk the steps of queens and kings of Scotland, so they stopped by the castle after a breakfast of haggis and eggs.
By late afternoon, the Mrs had fully recharged and shaken off the flu (or was it Covid?) that the taxi driver in Rome had shared with them on their way to the airport. She wasn’t going to miss the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO) concert that night at Usher Hall. It was a stupendous performance by the soloist, cellist Pei Jee Ng. He gave a tremendous interpretation of Shostakovich’s cello concerto No.1. The poignant 2nd mvt was a real treat followed by a cadenza that was wonderfully executed, filled with anguish and despair that painted a dark picture of Stalin’s iron grip on Soviet Russia. Pei Jee Ng made them cry. The old man was rubbing his chest in obvious physical discomfort during the cadenza. Music indeed is the most powerful art form; musical notes on pages of paper, performed well, could affect a listener physically, spiritually and emotionally.
The RSNO concert was followed by a post-concert drink for VIPs and orchestra donors. Somehow, Eva lost her way and walked into the Intermezzo Room. She was welcomed by the CEO of the orchestra who asked her travelling companions to join them for champagne. The old man was feted like a celebrity; people had assumed he was related to the soloist.
“Never mind, just smile and enjoy being in the limelight,” he told his Mrs.
When the pleasant chit-chats and champagne had dried up, the group was invited to the following night’s concert in Glasgow.
“Sure! We will see you there!”
Glasgow was a beautiful city. Bigger and more metropolitan than Adelaide and as vibrant if not more charming than Melbourne, it was the perfect city to end their holiday. A sumptuous Thai lunch at the Chao Phraya and a light pho dinner that turned into a big meal at Little Vietnam due to their generosity was a satisfying first taste of a fine day in Glasgow. Yes, there was the highlight to come! Another tremendous performance by the soloist and the orchestra followed by more free-flowing wine and champagne at the Intermezzo Room.
https://bachtrack.com/review-pei-jee-ng-sondergard-royal-scottish-national-edinburgh-december-2023
https://www.edinburghmusicreview.com/reviews/scheherazade-rsno-23
With a day to kill, Eva led the group into an antique shop the next morning. The store was packed like a bric-a-brac store, with hardly any space to walk straight and no room to walk tall and upright. A stack of old books fell off their shelves right in front of the old man as his eyes were scanning for their titles.
“It wasn’t me!” he shouted defensively.
“Aye, tae right, it wasn’t yoo, naw worries,” said the old antique-looking store owner, in heavy Lowlands accent.
“She just walked through the wall agine, she’s just showin’ awff,” he said casually, and clicked his tongue.
By ‘she’, he meant the old postmaster’s wife who died a long time ago.
“Strewth, there used to be a doorway where the wall is noe,” he explained, as if that was an adequate explanation.
Glasgow was losing its youth by the day. Ghosts have a tendency to make a place feel old and ancient. So, they had a sudden impulse to leave the street with the old shops.
“I ain’t goin’ tae the shoaps o’er aire,” the old man said, practising his Scottish accent.
On the penultimate day of their four-week European holiday, the group chanced upon some fantastic local oysters and smoked salmon in Loch Fyne.
“Oh, they are so fine,” the old man said.
“The finest!” Eva chimed in.
It had to be said. Barra Island scallops and Loch Fyne salmon were discoveries that were as pleasing as all the history they learned in Italy. They had visited the beautiful places they wanted to see, such as Lake Como, Bologna and the Tuscan towns of Siena and Montepulciano. They had tasted real Italian food and real gelato from Milan to Napoli and from Bologna to Roma. They had viewed from up close famous artworks such as The Last Supper and marvel at marble sculptures such as Michelangelo’s David and Canova’s Pauline Bonaparte but perhaps the finest discovery of all was the awesome landscapes that only nature can create, in Loch Fyne and its surroundings.
“It’s more beautiful than Lake Como and New Zealand’s Queenstown,” the Mrs decided verbally.
Loch Fyne, so fine indeed.
Urghhlings 