San Luigi

We had met once before, although that morning I struggled to remember when. A mutual friend had put us in touch. You were staying for a few weeks in one of the backstreets behind Campo de’ Fiori. I suggested we meet under Giordano Bruno in the piazza, one Tuesday morning, and then take a walk up towards the river.

‘I’m sorry for my hearing’, you said the moment we met. ‘And I hate English’, you added quickly, and then you lifted both your hands inside your jacket pockets so as to say: and that’s that.

‘You hate English?’

‘The language. Yes.’

‘OK.’

You switched to French, which I could understand but hardly speak, in order to explain that you had lost all hearing in your left ear and that your right ear ‘tired fast’: ‘So I prefer to walk in silence. If you have something to say, we will stop.’

With this rule established, we could start walking in silence. It was late March and there had been heavy rain through the night, which meant the sharp smells of the flower market mixed with the damp of brown puddles sprung up around street corners. The air felt heavy. On Vittorio Emanuele, the sun cut through behind us and we followed our shadows up towards the river. I filled the silence with questions that I could have asked you, but no question seemed worth stopping us for. I had read a poem of yours last night, translated from the Polish into Italian, and I turned the ...