“Very special,” the guide said. “For men only. Only for strong men. Such pictures. Very old.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred lire.”
“All right.” Uncle George took two hundred lire out of his change pocket.
“Come,” the guide said. “This way.” He walked on briskly?so briskly that Uncle George nearly had to run to keep up with him. He saw the guide go through a narrow opening in the wall, a place where the brick had crumbled, but when Uncle George followed him the guide seemed to have disappeared. It was a trap. He felt an arm around his throat, and his head was thrown back so violently that he couldn’t call for help. He felt a hand lift the wallet out of his pocket?a touch as light as the nibble of a fish on a line?and then he was thrown brutally to the ground. He lay there dazed for a minute or two. When he sat up, he saw that he had been left his empty wallet and his passport.
Then he roared with anger at the thieves, and hated Italy, with its thieving population of organ grinders and bricklayers. But even during this outburst his anger was not as strong as a feeling of weakness and shame. He was terribly ashamed of himself, and when he picked up his empty wallet and put it in his pocket, he felt as if his heart had been plucked out and broken. Who could he blame? Not the damp ruins. He had asked for something that was by his lights all wrong, and he could only blame himself. The theft might happen every day?some lecherous old fool like him might be picked clean each time the bus stopped. He got to his feet, weary and sick of the old bones that had got him into trouble. He dusted the dirt off his clothes. Then he realized that he might be late. He might have missed the bus and be stranded in the ruins without a cent. He began to walk and run through the rooms, until he came out into a clearing and saw in the distance the flock of old ladies, still clinging to one another.
The guide came out from behind a wall, and they all got in the bus and started off again.
Rome was ugly; at least, the outskirts were: trolley cars and cut-rate furniture stores and torn-up streets and the sort of apartment houses that nobody ever really wants to live in. The old ladies began to gather their guidebooks and put on their coats and hats and gloves. Journey’s end is the same everywhere. Then, dressed for their destination, they all sat down again, with their hands folded in their laps, and the bus was still. “Oh, I wish I’d never come,” one old lady said to another. “I just wish I’d never left home.” She was not the only one.
“Ecco, ecco Rome,” the guide said, and so it was.
STREETER WENT to Kate’s at seven on Thursday. Assunta let him in, and, for the first time, he walked down the scala without his copy of I Promessi Sposi, and sat down by the fireplace. Charlie came in then. He had on the usual outfit?the tight Levi’s, with cuffs turned up, and a pink shirt. When he moved, he dragged or banged the leather heels of his loafers on the marble floor. He talked about baseball and exercised his owlish laugh, but he didn’t mention Uncle George. Neither did Kate, when she came in, nor did she offer Streeter a drink. She seemed to be in the throes of an emotional storm, with all her powers of decision suspended. They talked about the weather. At one point, Charlie came and stood by his mother, and she took both of his hands in one of hers. Then the doorbell rang, and Kate went down the room to meet her uncle. They embraced very tenderly?the members of a family?and when this was over he said, “I was robbed, Katie. I was robbed yesterday of four hundred dollars. Coming up from Naples on the bus.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said. “Wasn’t there anything you could do, George? Wasn’t there anyone you could speak to?”
“Speak to, Katie? There hasn’t been anyone I could speak to since I got off the boat. No speaka da English. If you cut off their hands, they wouldn’t be able to say anything. I can afford to lose four hundred dollars?I’m not a poor man?but if I could only have given it to some worthwhile cause.”
“I’m terribly sorry.”
“You’ve got quite a place here, Katie.”
“And, Charlie, this is Uncle George.”
If she had counted on their not getting along, this chance was lost in a second. Charlie forgot his owlish laugh and stood so straight, so in need of what America could do for him that the rapport between the man and the boy was instantaneous, and Kate had to separate them in order to introduce Streeter. Uncle George shook hands with her student and came to a likely but erroneous conclusion.
“Speaka da English?” he asked.
“I’m an American,” Streeter said.
“How long is your sentence?”
“This is my second year,” Streeter said. “I work at F. R. U. P. C.”
“It’s an immoral country,” Uncle George said, sitting down in one of the golden chairs. “First they rob me of four hundred dollars, and then, walking around the streets here, all I see is statues of men without any
