Chapter Twenty-One, Phoebe
Hi, Sam,
I arrived at my Roman host’s home a week ago and it’s the most wonderful place. I loved Florence but visiting in the height of the tourist season wasn’t the brightest idea. Both the apartments I stayed in were miles out of the city centre so I felt a bit removed there. I’ve seen everything I wanted to see, but I don’t feel I found the heart of that city. I’ll go back one day at a better time and do it properly, I think. Maybe you can come with me.
Rome is completely different. Tobi and Luc’s friend Giana is the perfect host and her home is wonderful. She’s already taken me to three places I didn’t even know existed. It’s nice to be in one place for a while, too. And it’s funny, but I didn’t expect to love Rome as much as I do. It’s ridiculously busy and hot and never quiet, but it’s wonderful.
Giana is fascinating. She’s an artist, originally from America, and she always wanted to live here. I feel like I’ve known her for years not days and I’ve already heard her life story. I love how she found her perfect place in Rome. And she adores books so she’s totally my kind of person!
How are the house gigs going? I bet your audiences love you. Anyone would. Have you had any more news about Frank? I hope so.
I miss you. Write soon. Or text. Or even call… You know, as we’re sticking to those rules of ours so rigidly. (I’m glad both of us are rubbish at obeying rules.)
Phoebe xx
There was no point even trying to fit everything I wanted to say to Sam on a postcard this time. I fold the piece of notepaper I’ve written my message on around the postcard of the Piazza del Popolo that I bought at the little gift shop two doors down from my current home and smile as I fit it into the envelope. I am sitting in the small library room of Giana Moretti’s apartment. She asked me to help organise her books and we struck on the idea of making rainbow shelves. As an artist it appealed to her.
Every day so far, Giana has made coffee and sweet sugary bomboloni doughnuts for our mid-morning snack. Espresso, sugar, book print and paper makes the most amazing perfume. She’s in the kitchen preparing it now and she’ll bring it to me soon. My stomach is rumbling just thinking about it.
Writing to Sam has made me realise how at home I feel here compared with Florence – and thinking of home brings thoughts of my friends back in London. I wonder how they are. I check the old wooden clock above the counter – half past ten. What will they be doing now? Meg has Thursdays off so she’ll probably be pottering around the house or maybe heading to the British Library to write. Last I heard from Osh he was neck-deep in pre-production prep for the festival film he’s finally secured funding for. Gabe will be appearing in it, in between rehearsals for his new play at the Almeida Theatre.
Picking up my phone I compose a group text:
Hi beauties! I’m making a book rainbow in the library of my new home in Rome. How’s your Thursday going? Miss you all LOTS. Tell me all your news. P xxx
Within a minute, my phone buzzes with replies:
Phoebe bloody Jones, we miss you too. Get your butt back to London and I’ll sneak you into my movie. I’m doing a movie at last! Just call me Danny Boyle! Are you going near Siena on your travels? I have 3 days filming a commercial there. Got to pay ma bills, right? Maybe we can meet up? Let me know. Big love, Osh xx
PHOEBE! You’re alive! Up for a chat later? G x
Phee! Give me 5 and I’ll call. Lots to tell! M xxx
I smile at the rush of love in my notifications. My friends haven’t forgotten me. Not that I ever thought they would, but I’ve never tested our friendship before, save for the occasional week away on holiday. We’re connected again, even though they are hundreds of miles from me. It feels good to be striking out on my own and still being part of a circle of friends.
I’m about to reply when another text arrives, just as Giana appears with a tray of the most delicious tiny doughnuts and a pot of espresso.
Unscheduled text (sorry) just to say I’m thinking of you. That’s all xx
Sunlight bursts through the single window in Giana’s library. Books, coffee, bomboloni, sun, a new friend in my host and now a message from Sam. Today is going to be a great day.
When Tobi told me I’d be staying with his deaf friend in Rome, I was nervous. I don’t know much sign language and I didn’t want the kind lady to be offended by my lack of understanding.
But as soon as I met her, I knew my fears were unfounded. And now, two weeks into my two-month stay Giana Moretti and I are firm friends. She’s an artist and translator, originally from Chicago and one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. Her lip-reading and speech are brilliant, but I’ve asked her to teach me some American Sign Language, too. I want to give her proper respect while I’m living under her roof.
But today I discovered something about her that inspires me even more.
It’s rained solidly for the past week and I’ve been earning my keep by helping Giana reorganise her new artist studio. The roof space she’s just started to rent from her landlord in her apartment building is quite small, but even on a dank day the light is lovely. We’d just finished shifting the last of the boxes her landlord had been keeping in the room and had taken a rest, pulling cobwebs out of our hair and drinking coffee from the flask she brought with us.
‘Phoebe, how would you like an adventure?’ she asked, her nut-brown eyes sparkling.
‘You mean more than this?’ I laughed.
‘Even more than this. I have a secret I think you should know.’
And that’s when I discovered just how special Giana Moretti is.
Back in her apartment, she opened a large lidded tin box in the kitchen filled with smooth pebbles small enough to sit in the palm of your hand. ‘These are my secret weapons.’
‘You throw these at people?’ I asked.
She’s still laughing about that now as we sit at her newspaper-covered dining table, a palette of paints in the centre.
‘What do I paint on it?’ I ask, the child in me thrilled by the prospect of painting a pebble.
‘Whatever you feel,’ she says. ‘It could be how you feel today, or something you’ve seen. It could be a single word or just a picture. One thing that’s important, though: it doesn’t just have to be positive. I think the best way to live is to mark every moment, good or bad. In the moment when you feel it – whatever it is – that emotion is valid and has worth. If you acknowledge that, nothing has the power to silence you.’
And then she tells me how painting pebbles became part of her life.
‘All my life, I was told to be quiet. My words, they didn’t matter, you see. Because, in my family’s opinion, if I couldn’t hear them, nobody else should either. My family spoke first and always at once. Every day I would watch them fight to be the loudest. Even in the silence they were deafening. There was no room for my voice.’
‘That must have been terrible,’ I say, careful not to imply any judgement although I can’t believe a family could be so cruel to a child they were supposed to love.
‘At the age of twelve, I got new hearing aids. I hated them at first. The noise nearly drowned me. My family thought I was ungrateful and refused to listen to me when I tried to explain how disorienting I was finding the world. I struggled for a couple of years until a friend told me about a new group in my deaf community centre. Half of us had hearing aids, half didn’t, but we all used sign language. It was our safe place – our sanctuary.
‘One day, when I was sixteen, an artist came to visit, and he asked us to paint a pebble. That was my first. “Put something beautiful on it,” he said. “Something only you can see. And write a thought on the other side.” And then he said something that changed my life: “Your thoughts matter. Your views matter. For every time you’ve been dismissed, or felt less worthy than someone else, find a pebble and paint your beautiful thoughts. Then send it out into the world. Because kindness has power and your words have the potential to change the world. Like when you throw a pebble into the ocean and the ripples reach out, wider and wider, to infinity.”’ She beams. ‘That’s where it started for me.’
‘Oh wow, I love that.’
‘I’ve been amazed that one small pebble can make such a difference. Even if the difference is only the power it gives you to make it. If you believe your words have meaning, they will.’
Since I’ve been in Europe, I’ve wondered about the kind of impact I have. My life has. On this world. All the people I admire made a difference – or are setting about leaving their mark. I think about the novelists I studied for three years and loved for many more – did any of them realise the difference they were making while they were doing it? Do we ever really know our impact, or does it come later, when we’ve gone?
‘What made you move to Rome?’ I ask.
Giana tells me she has been in love with Rome since she was tiny, from a picture book her nonna sent her from Italy one Christmas, so when the opportunity to move here arose in her early twenties, she didn’t hesitate. I love that she followed her heart to be here.
‘Nonna was born in Rome before her family emigrated to Chicago. She died without seeing it again, so I wanted to see it for her. My parents didn’t approve, of course: they said I’d be back in six months. Well, that was twelve years ago. I am grateful that life has brought me here and that I made it happen. So my gratitude is in the pebbles and I send them out into the world to make a difference. To tell the world that I am here and I matter. I think maybe you need to do the same?’
She opens a site on her computer and the screen fills with painted pebbles. We scroll through them. Alongside the photographs are details of where people have taken Giana’s work home with them. Japan, Senegal, Australia, Portugal, the UK, Columbia, Latvia, Norway. On and on, country after country, visitors to Rome have taken their treasure back to their home countries all over the world and re-hidden the pebbles for others to find. It’s astounding.
‘Many people tell me they have started to paint their own pebbles after finding mine,’ she says. She taps the screen and I see that her page has hundreds of thousands of followers – complete strangers, joined together by ripples from Giana’s painted thoughts and now sending out their own into the world.
Looking at the photos of smiling people across the planet holding her artworks, I realise something: I want my life to make a difference, too.
We fill a basket with the pebbles we’ve decorated and head out into the city. It’s still raining but I’m buzzing with anticipation.
‘Where do we put them?’ I ask as we walk down the rain-glossed street.
‘Anywhere they can be discovered. I try to put some at head height, some at ground level where people won’t trip over them, and some near places where people might sit. That way all ages can find them – and they do.’
Heading out into the great city with our stash of pebbles is the most exciting thing.
We hide a couple of pebbles at the Piazza Navona, the long square where Giana tells me chariots used to race; we cross cobbled streets that catch the golden sun to leave our treasure in terracotta planters and behind pavement café A-boards; and hide a couple on the Spanish Steps where it seems all of the beautiful people of Rome come to meet and sit and be seen.
Then we head for the Campo de’ Fiori street market, with its huge stacks of every conceivable fruit and vegetable, verdant bunches of fresh herbs and whole stalls of spices and dried peppers. Giana knows everyone here, it seems. Each stallholder welcomes me to their city and insists we sample the food and drink products they sell. Within an hour I am grinning and very full. We hide pebbles there too, tucked away under the edges of tarpaulins and behind flower vases on tables in the eating area. Then we brave the crowds by the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain, slipping stones in unseen nooks while tourists from all over the world buzz around us.
I’m going to do this wherever I go from now on, I decide, a few days later, as Giana and I stroll through the Villa Borghese Gardens with its pools, elegant statues and lots of green space, which reminds me of London’s parks. A trail of my adventure through Europe.
That evening, when the dusk glows and the famous buildings are flooded with light, I leave a pebble with Sam’s name surrounded by music notes tucked beside a riverside bookstall. I don’t know if he’ll understand about the pebbles but I hope he will. He’s a musician – instead of decorated stones, he’s hiding inspiration and magic for people to rediscover whenever they need it. In that way, we’re doing the same thing.
Making our mark where we are with what we have.