As Helge Gram turned the corner into Via Condotti in the dusk a military band came down the street playing “The Merry Widow” in such a crazy, whirling time that it sounded like wild bugle calls. The small, dark soldiers rushed past in the cold afternoon, more like a Roman cohort intent on attacking barbarian hosts than peaceful men returning to their barracks for supper. That was perhaps the cause of their haste, Helge thought, smiling to himself, for as he stood there watching them, his coat-collar turned up for the cold, a peculiar atmosphere of history had pervaded him—but suddenly he found himself humming the same tune, and continued his way in the direction where he knew the Corso lay.
He stopped at the corner and looked. So that was the Corso—an endless stream of carriages in a crowded street, and a surging throng of people on a narrow pavement.
He stood still, watching the stream run past him, and smiled at the thought that he could drift along this street every evening in the dusk among the crowds, until it became as familiar to him as the best-known thoroughfare of his own city—Christiania. He was suddenly seized with the wish to walk and walk—now and all night maybe—through all the streets of Rome, for he thought of the town as it had appeared to him a while ago when he was looking down on it from Pincio, while the sun was setting.
Clouds all over the western sky, close together like small pale grey lambkins, and as the sun sank behind him it painted their linings a glorious amber. Beneath the pale skies lay the city, and Helge understood that this was the real Rome—not the
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Rome of his imagination and his dreams, but Rome as she actually was.
Everything else he had seen on his journey had disappointed him, for it was not what he had imagined at home when he had been longing to go abroad and see it all. One sight at last was far beyond his dreams, and that was Rome.
A plain of housetops lay beneath him in the valley, the roofs of houses new and old, of houses high and low—it looked as if they had been built anywhere and at any time, and of a size to suit the need of the moment. In a few places only a space could be seen between the mass of housetops, as of streets. All this world of reckless lines, crossing each other in a thousand hard angles, was lying inert and quiet under the pale skies, while the setting sun touched the borders of the clouds with a tinge of light. It was dreaming under a thin veil of white mist, which no busy pillar of smoke dared penetrate, for no factory chimney could be seen, and no smoke came from a single one of the funny little chimney pipes protruding from the houses. The round, old, rust-brown tiles were covered by greyish moss, grass and small plants with yellow blossoms grew in the gutters; along the border of the terraces the aloes stood immovably still in their tubs, and creepers hung in dead cascades from the cornices. Here and there the upper part of a high house rose above its neighbour, its dark, hollow windows staring at one out of a grey or reddish-yellow wall, or sleeping behind closed shutters. Loggias stood out of the mist, looking like parts of an old watchtower, and small summer-houses of wood or corrugated iron were erected on the roofs.
Above it all masses of church cupolas were floating—the huge, grey one, far on the other side of what Helge supposed to be the river, was that of St. Peter.
Beyond the valley, where the roofs covered the silent city—it well deserved the epithet “eternal” tonight—a low hill stretched its longish back toward the skies, carrying on the
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far-away ridge an avenue of pines, the foliage of which formed one large mass above the row of slender trunks. And behind the dome of St. Peter the eye was arrested by another hill with villas, built among pines and cypresses. Probably Monte Mario.
The dark leaves of the holly formed a roof over his head, and behind him a fountain made a curiously living sound as the water splashed against the stone border, before flowing into the basin beneath it.
Helge whispered to the city of his dreams, whose streets his feet had not yet touched, whose houses did not harbour one single soul he knew: “Rome—Rome—eternal Rome.” He was suddenly struck by his own loneliness and startled at his emotion, though he knew that there was nobody to witness it, and, turning round, he hurried down the Spanish stairs.
And now when he stood at the corner of Condotti and Corso he experienced a quaint and yet pleasant anxiety at the thought of mixing with those hustling crowds and finding his way in the strange city—to wander through it as far as Piazza San Pietro.
As he was crossing the street two young girls passed him. They looked like Norwegians, he thought, with a slight thrill of pleasure. One of them was very fair and wore light-coloured furs.
It was a joy to him even to read the names of the streets carved in clear, Latin type on white marble slabs set in the corners of the houses.
The street he took ran into an open space near a bridge, on which two rows of lanterns burned with a sickly, greenish flame in the pale light pouring down from the restless sky. A low parapet of stone ran along the waterline, bordered by a row of trees with faded leaves and trunks, dropping their bark in big white flakes. On the opposite side of the river the street lamps were burning among the trees, and the houses stood out black against the sky, but on this side the twilight still flickered
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on the window-panes. The sky was almost clear now, and hung transparent and greenish blue over the hill with the pine avenue, with here and there a few reddish, threatening, slowly moving clouds.
He stopped on the bridge and looked down into the Tiber. How dull the water was! It flowed on rapidly, reflecting the colours of the evening skies, sweeping twigs and gravel and bits of wood on its way between the stone walls. A small staircase on the side of the bridge led down to the water’s edge. Helge thought how easy it would be to walk down the steps one night, when one was tired of everything—had any ever done so? he wondered.
He asked a policeman the way to St. Peter’s cathedral in German; the man answered him first in French and then Italian, and when Helge repeatedly shook his head, he spoke French again, pointing up the river. Helge turned in that direction.
A huge, dark stone erection stood out against the sky, a low, round tower with a jagged crest and the jet-black silhouette of an angel on top. He recognized the lines of the San Angelo fort, and went close up to it. It was still light enough for the statues by the bridge to show up yellow in the twilight, the red skies were still mirrored in the flowing waters of the Tiber, but the street lamps had gained power, and threw out paths of light across the river. Beyond the San Angelo bridge the electric tramcars with illuminated windows rolled over the new iron bridge, throwing white sparks from the connecting wires.
