Rome by Sea

Her head peeked out of the balcony. Raindrops quickly accumulated and darkened the floor beneath her feet. Ominous clouds covered the skies and umbrella sellers rushed out to the streets to arm the panicked people who hadn’t anticipated summer’s sudden departure.

“It’s raining!” she calls out to alert her roommate. “To the Pantheon!”

It had become a bit of a joke.

Raindrops, run to the Pantheon. Rain stops. Walk away. Rain drizzles, run to the Pantheon. Drips and disappears. Curses overhead in a most sacred place.

Visit the Pantheon three times, the assignment reads. Make that four, five, six, seven times. Eight for the presenter. Yet none of the visits were made intentionally for this purpose. The Pantheon became such an important landmark, it was impossible not to pass by it at least twice a week: around the corner of that gelato place, absentmindedly following the subliminal McDonald’s mini truck ads, wandering off the wrong end of the Piazza Navona…

They didn’t just crave to see the massive columns again. Nor did they particularly anticipate the way the sun’s rays would spotlight a corner inside of the orange-shaped dome. The students wanted to catch Her in a different mood, see the tears fall out of the oculus and be framed by the particles of light. They wanted to see the way the water would swirl into the drains in front of the altar and the color of the shadows that gray clouds would cast inside.
Her roommate swiftly grabbed her shoes and changed out of her pajamas. No umbrella: a proud Seattleite. The other girl, meanwhile, contemplated not bringing hers for a different reason. Experience thus far in Rome had taught her that when one brings an umbrella, it always stops raining. Would she single-handedly be responsible for changing the course of nature and ruining their chances at the Pantheon?

Such was the scarcity of rain and the seriousness of the task which precipitated superstitious behavior. She decided to consult Fate instead and grabbed the little blue umbrella on the way out.

They ran.

Down seven flights of stairs and onto the wet pavement outside, past the umbrella sellers and the hooded merchants. They ran until their sides hurt, they ran despite the funny looks they would receive from the businessmen in scooters. The cheap umbrella spattered in the rain and protested much in the wind, and still, they raced forward in devout determination.

A brief interlude of empathic understanding: so this was how it felt like to drive around the city. This is what it was like to maneuver around people at two speeds (fast and faster). This is what it was like to shift gears and feel the occasional side pangs followed by swift recoveries. In a rush to get there but always slow in arriving: this was the Italian journey.

The street before them parted with the covered people walking alongside the road and the unprepared ones shuffling about and struggling to stay dry under the store roofs. Even under the shield of her umbrella, the girl got wet from the puddles she couldn’t avert in her dash. The cats in the Torre di Argentina ruins were long gone as the sanctuary filled up with mud and glistening marble.What sights She must have seen.

Ripped apart on all sides for the marble. Stripped from pagan symbols to be replaced by a new denomination of faith. Facing mopeds and trendy cafes today, being observed by tourists with flashy devices and dissected by students with notepads in hand. Shading the hundreds of citizens and tourists made equal in their vulnerability in the face of nature. The Pantheon stood, looming over the piazza, as solemnly and majestically as it had all those centuries ago.

The girls were drawn by the elevated platforms and the shipwrecked columns which floated along the Nile River now gracing the entrance. They slipped their way through the sea of people huddled outside under Her protective pillars. The people in T-shirts and shorts observed with inquisitive looks on their faces: why were they going in, when everyone else’s objective was to stay out and wait for the rain to cease?

There were considerably less people inside the curving walls of the basilica. A few nuns in see-through ponchos looked at the paintings hung inside the niches and a German tourist group walked around making loud explications with matching gestures. A low murmur could be heard inside of the dome where Rafael slept. A few people were gathered under the light beam of the oculus looking down at the wet marble below.

They looked up.

It wasn’t the silly, dramatic downpour that they had envisioned made visible by the occasional flashing of the torrential lightening bolts. The raindrops, which had seemed so big and destructive when they were running through it, sprinkled down from the hole like heavenly mist. Occasionally, a larger drop would accumulate in weight on the right side of the rim and drip down rhythmically every few minutes.

It was only fitting that She would maintain such elegance and composure after all these years of reverence and abuse. The girl slowly stepped back to follow a drop that noiselessly blended with the sea already forming below, on its way to a graceful slide over the holes.

Behind them, more people followed.