Looking west across the city of
I used to climb that flight, every day,
going from my house at the base to the Hilton, where I worked as a
salesman in the World-Wide Land Company’s “hospitality suite”. The company had rented one of the hotel’s halls, and,
gathering American tourists off the Roman streets, brought them there
to eat an insipid meal and swallow the expensive land offered
in the Bahamas – had I invented this story by the way I should have
invented something plausible.
But salesmen are anyway implausible
creatures. And the dozen of us employed by World Wide were among the most implausible – a typical salesman was a Turkish
Jew with a forged Argentine passport who had escaped from a Syrian
prison. Whether failed in our careers or in bankruptcy or in flight
from wives or the police, we had seized on a job that paid cash and
asked no personal questions. And though most of us had not been
professional salesmen, we succeeded in selling considerable land in
the
Because dreams were our true merchandise – indeed,
dreams were our true nourishment: of adventures dared, of enemies
defeated, of injuries revenged; what wonder that we could sell foolish
tourists the dream of getting rich on land in the dream islands?
But those who deal in dreams must understand other people’s
reality, and one among us did not; therefore, he did not succeed as
a salesman. Spiros Kotsiopoulis – the Greek – was small, thin,
ugly; his face was all deep wrinkles, whether owing to dissipation or age I never learned: although he admitted to forty-five years,
he looked sixty-five. He had been dispossessed of an
import-export company in
But since he was broke,
always begging loans against payday, that Swiss account we put in
a class with his story of having dispersed a band of punks who had
incautiously assaulted him one evening on the Piazza di Spagna: “The first thing I did,” he snarled out of the corner of his
mouth, looking fierce and savagely mimicking with dwarf fists and
mouse-like jabs, “I gouged out the eyes of the biggest one; another
one I gave a kick to the stomach and a third got a knee in the crotch. The others got away.”
Another ruined businessman was a
Hungarian whose small electronics firm in
These two the waves of fortune had washed up on World-Wide’s
beach at the same time, and since they were the oldest men there they
sought each others’ company; but George conceived a grudge against
the Greek – and for an astonishing reason: envy. Despite
his scepticism, George must have half believed in that absurd Greek’s
Swiss account; certainly, himself flat broke, he resented the Greek’s
stubborn refusal to admit that they shared the same boat. George’s
favourite anecdote concerned when he had first met the Greek. After boasting of his twenty thousand dollars in
But George told it too often, as might one who wishes to convince
himself.
One morning, before the tourists had come to eat their
scrambled eggs and dreams I was talking with the two, and they asked
why I always arrived puffing and perspiring. I explained that
every day for exercise I walked up the hundred eighty steps
of the rampa di Monte Mario.
The Greek at once began to
boast: he loved walking – had been a champion – and now walked
up to the sixth floor of his pensione every day because the elevator
was too poky. He was expanding on this when George, patting
him on the shoulder with a patronizing smile, urbanely interrupted
“I’m afraid you’re confused, old friend: you mean to say youused to do these things; but, let us admit it, we old folks, with
a precarious present and no future at all, have nothing else to
boast of but our memories.”
“It may be that you must boast of
the past,” the Greek retorted, irritated as always by George’s
insistence that they were the same age, “but I am champion now! If I wished, I could run up Monte Mario, and not breathe afterward!” Meaning, I suppose, not breathe hard.
To hear that wizened
old Greek boast of being able to run up Monte Mario must have hurt
George’s pride; one eyebrow raised he said “Oh yes, eh? You know, I fancy myself in pretty good condition – for a man of our years,
Spyros; and I propose a wager: that we meet with the young man
here” – nodding to me – “tomorrow morning at the foot of Monte
Mario, and follow him, step for his step, up to the Hilton. Whoever arrives first, wins. Agreed?”
The Greek gave him
a vacant look; George pressed “Well, Spyros?”
He cleared his
throat. “What would be the stakes?”
“As you know, I am
embarrassed. Let us say a hundred thousand liras: if I
lose, I’ll pay you on installments. But of course if you lose
you need only withdraw the money from your famous Swiss account.”
The Greek’s face expressed withering scorn. “A hundred thousand? It is not worth my while: I am champion.”
“All right,”
George said, without emphasis. “Let’s make it a million. That should be worth your while.”
As if seeking a way out the
Greek shot a glance around. “As these Americans for whom
we work say,” George implacably pursued, “’Put your liras where is
your mouth’. Either you are a walker, or you are a talker. Which?” George was smiling now, because the Greek was
clearly bluffed. Probably, that would have been the end
of it, had George kept quiet…
“After all, Spyros, what are a
million liras for a man with twenty thousand dollars American…if,
that is, he really has them.”
“I have them!” the Greek excitedly
shrilled. “I have them! And I accept the wager! You will see! You will see how I speak vainly!”
George
paled under his tan; but outwardly calm he wrote a simple agreement
that stated whoever finished second or gave up first would pay the
other a million liras – around fifteen hundred dollars. Signed
by them, it was entrusted to me. .
The next morning I
awaited them at the foot of Monte Mario, nervously looking up the
steep steps and then down the Trionfale, hoping they had decided to
cancel the bet. I was not so much afraid that their hearts
would burst – finally, there are worse deaths than to die in honourable
defence of the dream that makes your life bearable. Rather,
I was afraid that both would survive: because one would
then see himself despoiled of his sustaining dream – the true
stakes.
They now got off a bus a half-mile away and walked
towards me. There too the slope is rising, and the sun was already
shining to announce a fine summer day; presently they were standing
before me, breathing hard and sweating.
Forcing himself not
to pant, George panted “Now you…must climb up…at your usual pace…and
we … shall follow. Don’t think to ….spare us.”
I looked
to the Greek. “Run…!” he hissed. “…I shall …keep …up!”
Intending to exhaust them on the first flight and thus force a draw,
I took it at a trot. It is the easier: forty steps through
shady trees up to a landing, and then another forty up to the
first curve of the Trionfale. It is the second flight that hits
hard: completely open to the sun, it rises up much longer and
steeper, with fifty high steps that lead to a landing, and then another
fifty ever steeper, to the head of the flight and the Trionfale once
again. The last ten steps never failed to take my breath, and
I needed the quarter mile from the top to the Hilton to regain
it.
Well, still walking fast I passed the first landing by and
stopped at the Trionfale. But they had kept pace and, although
they were breathing harder and perspiring more profusely, they
showed no signs of giving up.
I dared to say “It gets steeper
now…”
“Cham…pion” wheezed the Greek.
“A…pleas..ant walk…till
now,” croaked George.
At a pause in the traffic we crossed and
began the real climb, I walking now slowly as I dared without offending
them. Tenaciously they followed, although more slowly, and when
I reached the landing they were twenty steps behind, George one step
ahead. I could hear their stertorous breathing; it drearily
resembled the gasping of two old bulls who have fallen into the holes
they themselves have dug pawing at the ground.
George staggered
onto the landing and panted “You…al…waysrest…here?” I
hastened to nod. The Greek now came stumbling up the last step
and they stood, faces mortally red, eyes bloodshot, lips white with
dried spittle, mouths convulsively gulping.
I hesitated,
but George gasped “Ifeel….muchre…freshed…” and put a foot on the first
step up; the Greek too took a step ahead, raucously whispering
“Nowyou….willsee….”
I ascended slowly, looking behind,
seeing each step a tombstone; but on they came, under a burning sun,
neither permitting the other to get ahead, climbing each step as if
it rose to their waists, elbows pumping and feet stumbling and only
just not falling. Straining clogged arteries and catarrh-sedimented
lungs they levered themselves up those last killing steps and unseeing
stumbled past me, hands flattened against drumming hearts, sucking
in the inadequate air and explosively exhaling through slack mouths.
They staggered ahead up the path among the trees lining the Trionfale, apparently unconscious of what they were doing or why, but nonetheless
obstinately striving to be first, the one ahead, unable long to sustain the pace, always falling behind. I hovered nearby, watchful
that they, blindly bumping into trees and each other as they were,
not blunder into the traffic to be mowed down by some machine effortlessly
speeding past.
The Hilton now stood a hundred yards ahead and
the race was still open; they, for an instant stumbling ahead side
by side, now once again bumped into one another and, tiredly
gripping each other as if to regain balance, stuck. Their
arms rigidly closed around each others’ shoulders, taking a last step
ahead they collapsed beneath a tree.
I discreetly scrutinized
them. Mentally declaring the race a draw, I pursued the path
to the Hilton. A little later they entered to seek me out, George
to affirm in confidence that he had been struck down by a cowardly
blow of Greek karate, and the Greek to confide that when that perfidious
Hungarian had tripped him, he remained down on purpose, unwilling
to take a poor man’s miserable pennies. Each felt, I suppose,
that while he had not lost his illusion, he had rather too casually
put it in mortal peril.
But even so, I had been a fool to fear
for them; when they confronted the real threat, they knew how to cope
with it, did those two—those two tough old men.
