THE ETERNAL CITY

It was a long flight from Melbourne and by the time Veronica got to Rome she was feeling ill. When she arrived at the hotel on Piazza della Minerva she was too sick to do much more than crawl into bed and wait for Evan to find her. She had told him he needn’t meet her at the airport but she had hoped he would be waiting for her in the hotel. She’d been up for 48 hours yet it was still difficult to fall asleep in a strange bed with the eternal clamour of Rome outside her windows.

Evan arrived drunk on absinthe, hours later. He was a rush of words falling into bed with her. A rhapsody of secrets revealing themselves in his mind as he spoke—of the cosmos and its inevitable glory and the rampant perfection of every living thing within the vibrating membrane of existence. His hands moved over her body, fingertips tracing her out as though she was a map of home. She curled up and told him she was too ill to allow his fingers to do more than reminisce. He didn’t want to catch her bug so he stayed away from her lips. Evan went on talking for hours and Veronica felt herself drift off again. Where previously it had been a fitful sleep, her legs filled with an unpleasant current of energy, this time the comforting voice of her fiancé led her to a deep pool of pure oblivion.

Veronica woke slowly; coasting on the verge of consciousness for hours. Perhaps they had kissed after all and a green smudge of absinthe had been on his tongue. There were moments where she was fully conscious yet a dream persisted, scrambling her mind with images she couldn’t make sense of. Passing hallucinations rolled in as seasons that would last as long as an autumn or spring. Whether from a few drops of absinthe, exhaustion or illness, it didn’t make a difference—they were eternal moments she couldn’t dispel by telling herself she was awake.

Veronica knew she wasn’t back in her Melbourne bed and yet the dream went on, persuading her that she was. The Italian voices coming through the hotel room doors became the sounds of men the landlord had sent to paint their apartment—Evan had agreed on the date and time. The Italians painted the walls and every bit of furniture. The picture frames on the walls weren’t removed; the roller brushes covered them in paint. Doors opened and closed. She heard their footsteps across the carpet. A sheet was placed across her body to protect her from spatters of paint. The feel of fine linen on her face was real. She murmured to the painters beyond, even though she knew they couldn’t really be there painting everything white—she told them she would need to get up soon and that the weight of the sheet was beginning to suffocate her. They moved things around so they could do their work. She could feel the mattress moving beneath their feet. Maybe they were painting the ceiling. One of them might even have fallen on her. She moaned and wanted to wake. He groaned and pushed away. There wasn’t the usual darkness behind her closed eyes. There was a light in her mind that was gradually getting brighter, whiter, until there was nothing that hadn’t been bleached.

It was dark outside. She’d been asleep so long, full wakefulness felt as if it might take days. Traffic flowed outside her windows with horns blaring no matter what time of day or night. Perhaps the blinds were perfect in the de la Minerve because it was always evening in her hotel room. She couldn’t get out of bed and thought she was still sick until she realised that her last meal had come from a plastic tray on the airplane. She could barely swallow, her mouth and lips were so dry. She managed to call Evan’s name. She called out six times before she reached over and found nobody there. Veronica got up onto an elbow, blinked her eyes open a few times before she could see clearly.

There was a note on Evan’s pillow. A page torn from his Moleskine told her in language of the same rhapsodic flavour of the night before that he was going to join friends down in Capri. He’d be back within a few days or she could come straight down and join him. She’d be feeling better soon, he was sure, and they would have a great time on the island. A long rest was best for her. She couldn’t argue with Evan’s note. He’d been in Europe for a month and she could feel how everything had opened up for him into a grand adventure. Veronica hadn’t had a day off in a very long time. She’d worked right up until she was set to join Evan in Europe.

Capri would be nice. She picked up the page again. She’d always loved his handwriting. Through blurred vision it looked like the wavering lines of a chart tracing a pulse across unfolding paper. An elegant heart. She was beginning to tremble and flopped back down on her pillow. The phone was on the bedside table. She needed to pick up the receiver and push the room service button but she couldn’t move. Come on, she told herself. Don’t think about anything else. Just get some food. Everything will be fine on a full stomach. Maybe they serve pasta to your room in Rome. She could imagine steaming clams. And there would be delicate Italian wine in a small glass resembling a goblet. The bathroom was lovely. There was an immense bath she could soak in for hours. Luxuriate in perfumed bubbles.

Evan had written that he was going to stay a night in the abandoned villa of Emperor Tiberius. Veronica was part of a literary audience when he wrote these letters. She didn’t feel as though he was writing only for her. She just had front row seats to his life. Evan had been told you could sleep in the ruins of the villa and you would remember every moment of every dream you had during the night. He was hoping to move deeper than his own consciousness and find a racial dreaming where origins whispered from the faces of living gargoyles. The doors of paradise have ever remained open—they might say to him. No heaven or hell. Rather, an underworld where rivers need to be crossed to arrive at eternal pleasure or pain. And then there was the Blue Grotto, a cave that could only be reached from the sea through a small hole in a wall—illuminated within by majestic azure lights, scintillating against the cavern’s rock. If Evan and Veronica swam into the Blue Grotto as he hoped, their bodies would glow with that electric radiance. She put aside the piece of paper. It had been carefully torn from the book so that the words wouldn’t be damaged.

Veronica couldn’t call him because he’d dropped his mobile while up north—on the Rialto Bridge in Venice. He had brought back a postcard but there was nothing written on the back of it. It must have slipped from his books and papers, lost in the sheets of the hotel bed. Did the empty postcard mean Evan was done with Venice and Veronica would have to travel there alone? It was the only city in the world that didn’t have cars and she wanted to stay there a night or two. She liked the idea of sleeping with an open window, no engines and horns, the sound of an ancient ocean caressing the smooth stone below. Travelling down to Naples from Rome by train, ferrying across the bay to Capri, and then finding the place Evan was staying in on the island, didn’t sound easy. She would have to wait for the phone to ring. How long would it be? Maybe a day. Hopefully not longer than that. They couldn’t afford this hotel. It was an extravagance they’d booked for the beginning of their holiday and it was a shame she was too ill to enjoy it.

Veronica folded the page from Evan’s notebook and tossed it back onto his pillow. It was as though he had already kept company with Tiberius and swum in the bay of Naples to find that hole in the island. His words were charged with everything he’d been told by fellow travellers. The friends he wanted to meet in Capri had been made a few days ago in Bologna.

When she found the strength to lift herself to sitting at the side of the bed, she decided she didn’t want exotic food and wine. She couldn’t imagine anything better than a club sandwich and a glass of orange juice.

She picked up the phone and was about to speak when she felt Evan’s residue run from her. She had been so deeply asleep, she’d been so tired and unwell—practically a corpse. He must have undressed her and he must have redressed her after he had finished.

The Italian voice on the phone was asking Veronica how he could help her, first in his language and then in English. She put the phone down. It was a small discharge, almost over already. A warmth that soaked through her underwear and rapidly went cold.