Roman Daze. Brontè Dee Jackson
a few short years of marriage, who eked out a living and who was never going to be able to afford her own home. They were always together, the women of this palazzo. Those daily visits of minutes at a time made sure none of them felt on their own.
In the weeks leading up to their departure we spent most evenings with them, eating with them, going over for a chat or just sitting together. One evening, Rita read out a letter which was addressed to my husband and I. In the letter, she told us that the thought of leaving her home where she was born and where she had nursed her father until his death, had been continually traumatic and at times paralysing over the past few months, but that throughout it all she had not felt alone because of us. She told us, through her poetic writing, that just our presence across the hallway, our hellos and other greetings, and our smiles, had helped ease the burden for her and that she was grateful.
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We didn’t see Marianna the day that Francesca and Rita left. We saw her the next day as we were driving our car into the compound. Her face was haggard with grief and when she saw us she lurched towards us, almost slamming herself onto the windscreen, like a leaf in a tornado. Luckily, my husband had seen her and wound down the window in anticipation, so she did not have to bang on the glass with her fist.
‘They’ve gone, they’ve gone!’ she bellowed. ‘It is the end of an era! It is not just them, it’s the end of an era. Our mothers were friends; they knew each other. Who is left to remember my mother now? We left these apartments as brides, both of us, and returned as wives. It’s a piece of our history that has gone. That bastard that kicked them out, he’s a criminal without a heart! It’s a piece of our shared history that has gone!’ I didn’t get the rest as she subsided into tears, leaning on our car door.
They call Rome ‘The Eternal City’. It refers to the fact that it is timeless, changeless, always there. It has indeed, in many ways, resisted much of the change that has occurred in other post-industrial, European capital cities. Maybe that’s why, when it comes, it is such a shock and so hard to adjust to. It seems that when things change in The Eternal City, they do so in a big way.
Chapter 4
Il Cambiamento, The Changeover
I never tire of that delicious feeling I have every Saturday morning upon waking. The feeling that I could go to Piazza Navona for coffee if I wanted to, that I could sit there all day if I wished, experiencing la dolce vita (the good life) without having to pay for an airfare or having flown for twenty-four hours. Piazza Navona is not the latest in a chain of new coffee shops, but one of Rome’s lovelier squares. It is full of flowing fountains, sculptures by Bernini, a magnificent church designed by Borromini, modern-day painters selling their wares, gorgeous Romans taking walks and, of course, fabulous coffee.
It is a lifestyle choice that I never tire of or regret. It is an option that I insist always be present. It is a deal-breaker when it comes to deciding where to live. ‘Will I be able to go and have coffee in Piazza Navona whenever I want to?’ is the deciding question. So Rome, as a choice of dwelling place, always wins.
The principle that ‘if it is for free it is not appreciated’, slavishly adhered to in my consulting business, or the truism ‘if you live near it you never visit it’, reigns supreme no matter where you live. Maybe that is why, despite spending just under half of my life in Melbourne, I have never been to the Melbourne Cup (an international annual horseracing derby) or to Bali (one of the most popular overseas destinations for Australians). Although I can say, probably because of my shame of never having been to the Melbourne Cup or to Bali, that I have sat in Piazza Navona and had coffee on numerous occasions, despite being a resident and not a tourist.
Unfortunately, as I actually am dwelling in Rome rather than visiting it, I rarely have time to go and sit and while away the hours in Piazza Navona on a Saturday morning. It remains a rather nice idea upon first waking but never seems to quite fit with the reality of my life because I always have things to do.
Today, like most Saturdays, I may not get the chance. We residents have things to do, things like Il Cambiamento (The Changeover). When I first came to Rome and heard people saying they spent their weekend doing ‘The Changeover’, everybody else nodding sagely and expressing understanding-type noises, I was a little daunted. It seemed to be a ritual that took all weekend and got such approval when you were the first in your group of friends to do it, and was always followed by a discussion about when the other listeners were going to do it. It did not seem like something people looked forward to.
Although I am a pretty good guesser, and in fact learnt a lot of the language that way, the words themselves gave me no clue. It was always followed by discussions about the weather, so I knew it was connected somehow. Did people change their partners or lovers with the seasons? Did they have one type of partner for the summer and one for the colder weather? It sounded like a big job. Did they change apartments or décor to suit the seasons? I am talking about a population who put on make-up to go to the gym and can change their clothes from morning to afternoon, so I thought anything was possible.
I soon discovered that Il Cambiamento means something quite different. It is a serious and laborious Roman ritual that takes place at the beginning of spring and autumn each year and can take up to a week. The Changeover involves taking all your winter and autumn clothes out of the wardrobe and replacing them with your summer and spring ones.
This changing over of clothes is necessary for several reasons. Firstly, Italian apartments are not large. They do not come with built-in, wall-to-wall robes or dressing rooms, and one or two seasons at a time is definitely the maximum that can fit into an average Roman wardrobe. Storage space is usually provided but is in rooftops or cellars, or a small ‘walk-in’ cupboard provided for the entire family’s needs.
Secondly, the temperature ranges from zero, or below zero, in the winter, to high thirties with high humidity in the summer. You can get frostbitten in January without wool from head-to-toe and pass out from heat exhaustion without appropriate coverings in July. You need cashmere to cope with the first instance and linen in the second. Of course, cashmere and linen require completely different sets of lingerie, accessories, shoes, bags, scarves and hats, which take up quite some space in the wardrobe.
Thankfully, another feature of Roman weather is that it is not changeable within seasons. It is predictable; you can tell the temperature by the month. Once the temperature soars in May it does not change for the cooler until October. Therefore, there is no possibility that any of the opposing seasons’ clothes would ever be needed. When the temperature does change, however, there is often up to fifteen degrees Celsius difference from morning to evening. Sometimes this change of temperature can happen in the middle of the day. When you enter the office it is summer, then it rains and when you leave it is autumn and you barely make it back to your apartment in your sandals and linen blouse.
Il Cambiamento must be cleverly timed, or you risk having to scrabble around in boxes hidden in your roof or deep at the back of the storage cupboard before work in order to be able to leave the house. Of course, this only happens to novices who either do not know that they need to do Il Cambiamento, who have not done it in time, or who do not know that Rome’s temperatures change by the month and who are still wearing sandals in October.
I do understand those who leave it until the last minute because Il Cambiamento is a laborious task. It requires unpacking boxes of summer or winter clothes and packing them away in drawers and in wardrobes. At the same time, you have to remove the previous season’s clothes from the wardrobes and wash or dryclean the clothes before packing them away. As everyone else is doing the same thing at the same time, it usually takes over a month to get your clothes back from the drycleaners. After your clothes, boots, coats, scarves and hats are cleaned, washed, ironed and stored, you can then assess your current season’s collection for gaps and proceed to do Il shop. Okay, I just made that part up, but that is what I do.
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As my husband and I cannot face the idea of doing Il Cambiamento first thing on a Saturday morning, especially when it is being compared with sitting in Piazza Navona all day over a coffee, we go to la pasticceria