Narrowing my eyes, I nevertheless looked around myself. I was no doubt on the banks of the Tiber. It was dawn and a few fishing boats sailed placidly on the waters of the river. On the far bank stood the ruins of the ancient Ponte Rotto-the Broken Bridge. To my right, lay the indolent profile of the Isola Tiberina, anointed by the two branches of the river which have for aeons caressed its banks. To my left, the quiet hill of Santa Sabina stood out against the quiet dawn sky. Now I knew where I was: a little further to the right was the outfall of the Cloaca Maxima, which had vomited Atto and me into the river. Fortunately, the current had not taken us downstream. I had a confused memory of having dragged myself from the water and cast myself down dejectedly upon the bare ground. It was a miracle to be alive; if all this had happened in winter, 1 thought, I should certainly have rendered my soul to the Lord.
Instead, I was comforted by the September sun, once more rising into a limpid sky; but hardly had my mind grown clearer than I realised that I was all filthy and numbed with cold, and an uncontrollable fit of shivering began to shake me from head to foot.
'Leave me, villain, leave me! Help!'
The voice came from behind me. I turned and found my way obstructed by a clump of tall bushes. I crossed it rapidly and found Abbot Melani lying on the ground, he too all covered in mud, and by now no longer in a state to cry out; he was vomiting violently. Two men, or rather, two dubious-looking individuals were leaning over him, but hardly did 1 approach than they took to their legs, disappearing behind a slight rise which dominated the beach. From the barks which were sailing in the vicinity, no fisherman seemed to have witnessed the scene.
Shaken by tremendous convulsions, Atto was throwing up the water which he had swallowed during our disastrous shipwreck. I held his head, hoping that the liquid expelled would not suffocate him. After a while, he was again able to speak and breathe normally.
'The two bastards…'
'Do not overstrain yourself, Signor Atto.'
'… thieves. I shall catch them.'
I had not then, indeed, I never had the courage to confess to Atto that in those two thieves I had recognised the two blessed angels of my awakening. Instead of caring for us, they had carefully inspected us with a view to robbery. The silvery fish which I had found by my side was no sacred epiphany, only some fishmonger's refuse.'Anyway, they found nothing,' Atto continued between one expectoration and another. 'The little I had on me, I lost in the Cloaca Maxima.'
'How do you feel?'
'How do you expect me to feel, in this condition and at my age?' said he, opening his filthy doublet and shirt. 'If it were up to me, I would remain here in the sun until I feel a little warmer; but that, we cannot do.'
I gave a start. Soon Cristofano would be beginning his matutinal rounds.
Followed by the curious glances of a group of fishermen who were preparing to disembark nearby, we moved away.
We took a little road parallel to the river bank, leaving Monte Savello to our right. Filthy and desperate as we were, the few passers- by looked upon us in dismay. I had lost my shoes and walked with a limp, coughing uncontrollably; Atto looked thirty years older and the clothing which he wore seemed to have been robbed from a tomb. He kept quietly cursing all the rheumatic and muscular pains provoked by those tremendous nocturnal labours and the soaking he had received. We were about to walk towards the Portico d'Ottavia, when he turned brusquely.
'I have too many acquaintances here. Let us change our route.'
We then passed through the Piazza Montanara and crossed the Piazza Campitelli. More and more people were appearing on the streets.
In the labyrinth of narrow, tortuous, damp and gloomy alleyways, almost all of them unpaved, I savoured again the habitual alternation of dust and mire, the evil smells, the clangour and the cries. Swine large and small rooted in heaps of rubbish near steaming cauldrons of pasta and broad pans of fish already frying at that early hour, in flagrant disregard of all the notices and edicts of public health.
I heard Atto murmur something with disgust and vexation, while the sudden thunder of a cart's wheels covered his words.
Once it was quiet again, Abbot Melani continued: 'How is it possible that, like pigs, we should have to seek peace in manure, serenity in rubbish, repose in this shambles of neglected streets? What is the point of living in a city like Rome if we must move like beasts and not like men? I beg you, Holy Father, deliver us from excrement!'
I looked at him questioningly.
'I am quoting Lorenzo Pizzati da Pontremoli,' said he. 'He may have been a parasite at the court of Pope Rospigliosi; but how right he was! It was he who penned this candid supplication to Clement IX some twenty years ago.'
'But then, Rome has always been like this!' I exclaimed in surprise, always having imagined a very different and most fabulous environment for the city of the past.
'As I have already told you, I was in Rome at the time; well, in those days, the streets were repaired, albeit badly, almost every day. And if you consider all the sewers and pipes, too, the roads were always blocked by public works. To protect oneself from the mire of rainwater and refuse, one had to wear high boots, even in August. Pizzati was right: Rome has become a Babel in which people live in a continual clamour. It has ceased to be a city. It is a pigsty,' exclaimed the abbot, stressing the last word.
'And did Pope Rospigliosi do nothing to improve matters?'
'On the contrary, my boy! But, if only you knew how pig-headed these Romans are. He tried, for example, to plan a public system for the collection of ordure; he commanded the citizens to clean the street before their doorways. All in vain!'
All of a sudden, the abbot pulled me violently to one side and we flattened ourselves against a wall. Only by a hair's-breadth did I thus escape the precipitous onrush of an enormous and luxurious carriage. The abbot's mood grew even darker.
'Carlo Borromeo was wont to say that in Rome, to have success, two things are necessary: to love God and to possess a carriage,' Melani commented bitterly. 'Do you know that in this city, there are more than a thousand of them?'
'Then it is perhaps they who account for the distant rumble which I hear even when no one is passing through the streets,' said I, disconcerted. 'But where do all those carriages go?'
'Oh, nowhere. It's simply the case that noblemen, ambassadors, physicians, famous advocates and Roman cardinals move about exclusively in carriages; even for the briefest of journeys. And that is not all: they are alone in their carriages, and sometimes, alone yet accompanied by several other carriages.'
'Are their families so numerous?'
'No, of course not,' said Atto, laughing. However, cardinals and ambassadors on official visits may proceed accompanied by up to three hundred carriages; with all the choked traffic and daily clouds of dust which that entails.'
'Now, I can understand the brawl over a carriage station,' said I, echoing him, 'which I recently witnessed on the piazza in Posterula; the footmen of two carriages belonging to noblemen were going at each other hammer and tongs.'
At that point, Atto turned off again.
'Even here, I could be recognised. There is a young canon… Let us cut across towards the Piazza San Pantaleo.'
Exhausted as I was, I protested against all these complicated itineraries.
'Be quiet and do not attract attention to yourself,' said Atto, unexpectedly tending to his faded white hair.
'It is a good thing that, in all this bestial confusion, no one is paying the slightest attention to us,' he whispered, adding in an almost inaudible voice, 'I hate being in this state.'
It was wise, and Atto knew it, to traverse the great crowd at the market on the Piazza Navona, rather than be seen as isolated vagabonds in the middle of the Piazza Madama or the Strada di Parione.
'We must reach Tiracorda's house as early as possible,' said Atto, 'but without being seen by the Bargello's watchmen who are mounting guard in front of the inn.'
