Patrizia Cavalli
TRANS. BY Gregory Mellen
The Porphyry Column
The electricity company, the telephone company, the city’s water department, and every other business or agency that digs in the earth—they had all gotten together (this was about twenty years ago) and decided they were going to transform downtown Rome into the example par excellence of the phenomenon “UNDER CON- STRUCTION.” And they pulled it off, that’s for sure. Their success was such that no street or piazza lacked its precise dose of ditches and potholes, each one surrounded by barriers so nobody could fall in, each one provided with planks so human beings could get where they needed to go—or at least make it to the bakery on the weekend. The disturbance was so violent, and so widespread, that you’d hear little children shouting excitedly: “Ma’, hey ma’, is there a war going on or something?”; whereas adults would mutter under their breath (unclear to whom exactly): “God help us.”
Of course, Rome’s streets have never really known peace, as far as I can recall. And realistically I don’t think they ever will. Anyway, even then, in those few stretches of sidewalk left unmarred by the universal excavation, one could still walk. What I mean is, you could still engage in that simple, pleasant activity which takes place when your gaze, lifted up toward the next looming object, or to the lovely buildings, or to your presumed destination, doesn’t feel that continual itch to glance down and examine the path in front of you in all its details—in other words, when your eyes don’t have to babysit your own feet and legs, just so they can go on their merry way without getting twisted or broken. No, back in those days, in those few spots at least, one’s gaze could wander, you could daydream even, confident that the street would proceed according to a reasonable principle of smooth continuity. In those few stretches, the cobblestones that the Romans call sampietrini still stood there aligned in mutual solidarity—as is right and proper—and, hugging each other close, they united to form the so-called “walkable route.” Not like now: ooohh, no. Now the sampietrini have become antisocial and wobbly. They feel they’ve been snubbed en bloc, insulted by the construction workers’ hasty incompetence, and they stick out purposely, to exact their sharp, lonely revenge on any random victim, or else they sink down, treacherously, transforming into pitfalls and precipices.
Well, all this is just to say that one day, I was going for one of those old-fashioned strolls, when all of a sudden I glanced down, fleetingly, into the abyss of a new construction site at the intersection where the Public Records Office meets Via del Pellegrino—and I saw something red. It seemed sort of like a huge plastic tube, you know, a portion of an underground duct; but this sort-of-seeming lasted only a split second, just long enough for my heart to redouble its beating and plunge me into the depths of a vision: the vision of the column.
What I had seen was a porphyry column. A column made of imperial red porphyry, a red that was the epitome of redness, but with streaks of milk inside of it. And it was precisely the milk that made the red so red, an aquifer of milk permeating the column, blossoming here and there, from the depths, into so many minuscule splotches on the surface. No wonder it’s called “milky porphyry”—the rarest and prettiest kind, something utterly different from those little purplish fragments you usually see, a few of which I already possessed. And then, right then, on top of the swirl of emotions issuing from the column’s redness and its milky whiteness, there supervened another even more riveting sensation: a sense of certainty, the certainty that that column belonged to me—not like it belonged to me in spirit, but in the sense that it would actually become mine, in fact.
That this sensation implicated a theft didn’t bother me a bit. I was worried about something else entirely: I had to make sure I didn’t reveal my enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, after all, is contagious; it attracts rivals. Instead, I told myself, if I pretend nothing has happened, they probably won’t notice; nobody else will think to come and steal the column for herself: not everybody spends her time daydreaming of marble columns. But I couldn’t bear to leave the site. I almost felt as if the column would disappear if I lost track of it. And in any case, I needed to make a rough calculation of its weight, and that meant I had to measure it. So, there I stood, with my back turned to the column, looking around as if I were waiting for somebody, and meanwhile, with my hands behind me, making use of the planks lined up along the ditch, I measured the space corresponding to the length of the column. Extended, I knew my hand was twenty centimeters long; I counted nine hand-lengths along the plank. That’s 1.8 meters. Then I made a quick estimate of the diameter. At the end of the day, it wasn’t massive, this column, but it was just so stunningly beautiful, and it was certainly big enough—big enough that it would elicit in anybody who saw it (and I already knew exactly who would see it) a shudder of ineffable awe. For the proper aesthetic effect, the column, I decided, would have to be situated in a garden—not, of course, my garden, at my house, with its staircase—no, it’d be in a private garden, of which I’d possess the key, so the column could be brought in by night. And the next day, there I’d be, sitting on the column, taking a break, and when the wide-eyed question came: “What. Is. That ?!” I would respond, cool and collected: “What does it look like? It’s a column of porphyry. . .of milky porphyry.”
“Oh my god. How did it get here?”
“I had it brought here myself. It’s mine. But if you really like it, I might even give it to you, as a gift.” And there I’d be, the porphyrogenita— born in the purple, but casual about it; just a lady to whom no one could say anything but yes.
Then I came to. I shook off my reverie and returned to the practical tasks at hand. Length, diameter, volume, weight. These are tricky calculations. Well, reader, I made them: the column must have weighed 500 kilograms. Or perhaps more. How do you move something that’s 500 kilograms? How do you even lift it off the ground? The only way to do it, I thought, would be with a mini-crane mounted on a pickup truck. But where does one get one of those mini-cranes? Who has them? Who lends them? Where can you rent one? I looked everywhere, but nobody had a mini-crane. It seemed incredible to me that as soon as there was need of a mini-crane, it was simply impossible to find one.
In the meantime, every three hours or so I went to make sure the column was still there in its spot. Luckily the work was proceeding at a snail’s pace; sometimes you wouldn’t even see a single worker on site. After four days, though, I arrived and saw the column propped up against the edge of the ditch. Well, there you have it: I’d left the column alone, and somebody else had noticed it; maybe she’d even decided to take it away for herself. I was seized by panic. I had to move fast. But the next day they’d moved it back into the middle of the ditch. Then it was back at the edge. They kept moving it back and forth, without a care in the world—lucky bastards, they obviously had a mini-crane, these guys. If I had a mini-crane, I’d have performed the operation in broad daylight. Anyway, the workers were never around, and even if they had been, with all that hustle and bustle of bulldozers and excavators, nobody would have even noticed a thing. But I still couldn’t find myself a mini-crane. I called a friend for advice, and he managed to convince me there was no need of the mini-crane after all. He knew some guys, expert movers; if they put their minds to it, 500 kilograms was a piece of cake. The only thing was to find a way to transport the column. My car was too small. I asked a friend if I could use her SUV. She agreed without hesitation. Ah, friends! How obliging they are, always ready to support your every endeavor!
The time set for the movers was three in the morning. At that hour Campo de’ Fiori is usually deserted. For that matter, though, getting caught, even getting arrested, was the least of my fears. What really scared me was the possibility of failure, the chance that the guys might not be able to lift the column. There were three of them. The first was tall and muscular, with blue overalls, looking like a real worker. The second was a little guy, worn-out seeming, with a hurt and unhealthy look on his face; it was hard for me to imagine any strength in him to speak of, at all. The third one—clearly the boss, since he had a sort of briefcase under his arm—was utterly, terrifyingly average, in every single respect. I lost confidence immediately.
“You sure you can handle it? It’s really heavy, you know. . .”
“No need to worry, we know what we’re doing,” the boss said. They must have some special technique for lifting things, I kept telling myself. I gave them the last bits of instructions. When the work was done, we were to meet in front of my building. Five minutes later they were back.
“You think somebody could lift that thing?” the big one said, and without waiting for an explanation, I shouted, “I told you guys we needed the mini-crane; I told you, didn’t I?!”
“You think somebody could lift that? 500 kilos? You gotta be kidding me, 500 kilos. Ain’t nobody lifting that thing.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“Fuck if I know,” the skinny one interrupted. “Anyway, nobody’s lifting that. We put in our time though, so you gotta pay us.”
“What?!” I shouted at my friend, “I am not paying those guys! Are you for real? They go for a stroll, they take a look at a column, they turn around and ask for their money. No fucking way I’m paying them.”
“Pay them,” my friend said, “cause if you don’t, who even knows what kind of headache they’ll make for you, and it’s not a position you want to be in, you know, it was attempted theft, after all. OK, all right. I’ll try to ask them for a discount.”
He called back: “They’ll take 150,000 lira,” he announced with satisfaction. “At the end of the day, they did show up. Come on, it turned out all right for you, all things considered.”
I paid them, and I went to bed, full of hatred for those men, who had swindled me, and for my friend, for being such a clueless dope. I felt wretched, miserable. But after I woke up, my suffering began to yield to a sweet sensation of relief as I imagined the potential disasters I had avoided: the truck’s chassis might have cracked, and there we’d all have been, with our asses scraping along the ground, the column dragging along behind, or perhaps a police officer, catching a glimpse of that suspicious cargo, might have stopped us—and what kind of story was I going to come up with then? And the movers, too, who knows what kind of mess they might have made afterward, even if they had been able to lift the thing. . .Well fine then! The column would never be mine; at this point, I had to resign myself to the prospect of a chaste infatuation. But at least I could gaze at the column with innocent desire as long as I liked, I could publicly sing the praises of that stunning red, I could ask the workers how much it weighed, what they were going to do with it, I could even let myself lose control, I could make a scene: how could you possibly be so irresponsible? How could you leave such a thing unattended? Jesus, any old person could just up and run off with it! I got dressed as fast as I could, and with greedy strides I headed straight to the construction site. But the column was no longer there. And none of the workers knew anything about what had happened. “Beats me, ma’am. Maybe the Fine Arts Council seized it,” they said. “They don’t tell us anything, ma’am, ‘fraid nobody here got a clue about any column, ma’am.”
Patrizia Cavalli (1947–2022) was one of Italy’s most beloved contemporary poets. She published numerous collections of verse, from Le mie poesie non cambieranno il mondo (Einaudi, 1974) to Vita meravigliosa (Einaudi, 2020). Her only volume of prose, Con passi giapponesi (Einaudi, 2018), was shortlisted for Italy’s Premio Campiello.
Gregory Mellen (he/his) is a teacher and translator living in Florence, Italy. His translations of 20th-century Italian writers (Mario Luzi, Virgilio Giotti, Patrizia Cavalli) have appeared or are forthcoming in the Journal of Italian Translation, Asymptote, and the Massachusetts Review.