Strange Happenings on Via Silla

In my apartment building – via Silla 8, near the Vatican and metro station Ottaviano, Line A – there is something very odd happening. The authorities are excavating in our street, but that should have nothing to do with it. The warm spring nights have arrived, but that should have nothing to do with it. The Romans are linking arm in arm and wandering through the parks in the late evening warmth, but that should have nothing to do with it.

My neighbours are equally as curious as I am, and equally as perplexed. But we are all such busy people: professional people who work and shop and jog through the ancient streets of Rome in our Adidas runners and our golden Lotto tracksuits, and work and shop and sleep, fitfully. Just by chance we all happen to work in similar fields: we could be embraced under the term ‘communications’ – we work as publicists, public relations officers (like myself), journalists and marketing officers, and, oh yes, there is a professor as well, a difficult person to live with. Curious people by trade, we are all used to talking to other people for our living; our product though is sometimes nebulous…but I am beginning to digress.

The concierge is worried too, though she doesn’t want to offend anybody; none of us do. We want to be able to get on with our lives with the least inconvenience. Everything we do is so tightly scheduled there is no room in any day for the slightest thing to go wrong. The owners of the building have been sent a fax, but they have informed us in a roundabout way (they will never put anything on paper) that they are not overly concerned and as long as everyone pays the rent it has nothing to do with them. We have formed a Tenants’ Association – our first meeting was this evening – and we have agreed on a course of action…but I am beginning to digress.

What I am about to tell you is the truth. I witnessed it with my own eyes; and I am a reliable person. I have often been complimented on my reliability. I have won awards. I would not have obtained my present job – as the senior public relations officer for a respectable company that makes chemicals and plastics – if I did not appear to be trustworthy and believable.

And how could you possibly hope to represent the major polluter of the ancient city of Rome if you don’t appear to be believable? My suits are French (Givenchy), my shirts American (Arrow) and my shoes are Swiss (Bally). I wear freshly ironed and lightly perfumed shirts with button-down collars, and ties – silk, floral, opulent. You will never see me casually dressed. I earn a lot of money, get pay rises regularly and shop on the via Veneto. I love shopping and cook well. My apartment is spotless. I keep a black Himalayan-Persian cat (whom I adore) with the most exquisite orange eyes whom I (ironically) call Mussolini…but I digress again…it’s a bad habit of mine.

To get to the point though, something strange is happening in our apartment block. We are all feeling less secure than ever. I will tell you our problem: there is a family living in one of the two basement apartments – the one on the left as you go down the stairs.

But I suppose that is not enough information to impress you. There are many families living in basement apartments all throughout Rome I hear you say. Well, listen to this carefully. The family wear togas, they keep a number of slaves, and the head of the family writes on wax tablets with a stylus and makes speeches in Latin.

I know…I don’t know what to make of this either. It is disturbing. All we want to do is be allowed to get on with our lives and make some money. Not too much, for that would be greedy, but just enough to be comfortable…Money isn’t everything, you know…Though it does help, with all those little things in life. It’s not that we’ve chased money, it’s more that money has…well, been thrust upon us; though at the expense of time. Everything has to be so tightly scheduled: work, twelve hours; jogging, one hour; shopping, one hour; cooking, one hour…and before you know it, there goes the day. That’s why we can’t tolerate disturbances.

We are all perturbed. Life just hasn’t been the same. At the back of our minds there is this nagging feeling that something is not right. The edges of happiness are mitigated by this new discovery. We have to get rid of them. We have decided on a course of action (which is unusual for us – we are so much better at simply discussing).

We don’t know how long they’ve been there. We have had a string of concierges in the last year (there is neither heating nor air-conditioning in the concierge’s tiny apartment), and while all of them have been contacted none have been able to tell us when the family arrived though our present concierge, Maria, says with a wan smile that the family has always been there, it’s just that we the tenants have not noticed before. She says they ought to be allowed to stay, because they were here first. We say that they have to go because they pay less rent than us – as they live in the basement – and that they are disturbing our peace of mind. I brought up the point at our tenants’ meeting that the ancient family was the worm in the apple of our present happiness. A sentiment which was applauded for its felicity of tone and the poetry of its expression and was agreed with by everyone; everyone, that is except for stubborn Maria.

It is a very disturbing thought: that we are living our lives on top of an ancient Roman family. It is hard to buy clothes, shop, jog and watch television (the big game is on tonight – Italy versus Holland in the finals of the World Cup – I mustn’t miss it) while being aware of this.

Before the awareness of the ancient family we were living perfect lives: now we have become shifty and guarded with each other in the apartment building. Something has changed, but we’re not sure why. If we get rid of the family we get rid of our disturbance and our lives can go back to normal. That’s all we seek: normal lives; undisturbed, uneventful lives – so we can maximise income.

I, and my neighbours, can see into the family’s apartment by means of the porthole in the door. At nine at night, after work, shopping and jogging, I go down into the basement and stand in the darkness watching the family. It is better than television.

Peering in at the family I feel vaguely uncomfortable – like a voyeur. One of the slaves is teaching the youngest boy to write, the little girl is playing with her pet rabbit while the older boy is walking with a pigeon on his shoulder, the father is practising making speeches (perhaps he is a senator) while the mother is seated in a high-backed chair occupying herself with a distaff and a spindle; there is a statue of Venus in the corner, and another of Bacchus. When the father finishes practising his speeches he lolls on one of the embroidered couches eating grapes…That couch would be worth a fortune. (Maybe I could buy it from them at a low price.) The mother is burning incense and looks distractedly into the foreground.

A typical family scene, how pleasant, you might say. Not so pleasant if you have to live above them, I can assure you. Though I am curious to find out more about the family – especially now that I have been elected as the spokesperson of the group and it is thus my obligation to inform them – the ancient family – that they will have to leave their home.

But I can’t stand peering in at them all evening because a) there are others waiting to peer over my shoulder, and b) it is time to have supper, and c) my cat will have been missing me all day and will become neurotic if I don’t see him soon and comfort him, and d) I need to adjust the television set so that the picture will be clear for the big game, and e) I need to relax with a celebratory whisky (Glenfiddich, double malt) and enjoy the satisfaction of my first big pay rise for the year.

The pay rise was long overdue as the work I do is very taxing. How would you like to be the senior public relations officer for a large chemical and plastics firm that is chiefly responsible for much of Rome’s pollution (especially now we have come into spring and the days are still and warm, with hardly any wind)? Can you see my problem? The worst thing is that I am more aware than most – as I have access to the appropriate information – of the amount of pollution our company is responsible for, and yet I’m paid, and paid handsomely too, to deny it all, to deny it totally, to deny it convincingly. Increasingly my boss has been urging me to lay the blame on our major competitor. I work long hours and I have to be so polite, so diplomatic, so even-tempered. I have to put up with personal abuse from journalists and I have to listen for hours to the ‘lies’ (usually true) that these journalists are spreading about the company. So you can see how richly I deserve the largesse that has been bestowed upon me.

But to return to the problem at hand: to live above an ancient Roman family is most disturbing. From my observations and my study of the classics I would say they are a family circa 50-100 AD. They are suitably well behaved but still they have to go, and I will go down soon, after another glass of whisky, to tell them the wishes of the group.

Our sense of well-being and comfort is disturbed by their presence. We are all professionals in this apartment block, with modern concepts of living, who all work very hard. What then is an ancient family doing beneath us?

The family is completely at home in its surroundings; it’s like we are the outsiders now. Yet we pay our rent like good citizens, and our extortionately high taxes, and we keep the economy going by buying our fair share, or more, of the available consumer durables. The other thought, which has just crossed my mind, and which may have nothing to do with anything, is that the only inhabitants (couples and affluent singles) in this whole apartment block who have any children at all are the ancient family. It’s an odd thought, but maybe the children of the ancient family will outlive us! Maybe the family will outlive us. Maybe they have always been there. Maybe long after our gold Rolex watches have rusted away the ancient family will still be there, living in the ground floor apartment, on the left as you descend the stairs. I have never felt more mortal than when thinking about the ancient family. None of us in this apartment block will ever have children; it’s just not our style, we are professionals after all…Have you ever worked out the cost of children? Horrendously expensive! And the time involved!

I have managed to catch a glimpse of the floor of their apartment: it is covered with mosaics of fishes and cups of wine in blues and blacks and reds – sumptuous, refined, elegant. Those ancients had such exquisite taste! Such a sense of order and beauty. And yet the family still has to go. Their aesthetics won’t save them. The smell of freshly baked bread escapes from their apartment in the early hours of each morning. Presumably the slaves are baking for the day to come. I have never heard screams of pain, so they must be treating them properly…It’s so hard to get good help these days. (Maybe with my pay rise I could get Juliana to come an extra day?)

Though the one thing that comes to mind is that with so many slaves – there must be four or five – there would be no privacy. How would you like it if all your bodily functions were supervised? It must be rather crowded down there. Though no one is sure how large that basement flat is; maybe it is cavernous; it might extend in all directions. What a horrifying thought!

There are bowls of beaten silver standing on the mosaic floor (maybe I can buy them – I’ll take my cheque-book) and there are burgundy and ruby-coloured rugs (I’ll buy them too) on the tiles (maybe I could rent their apartment when they leave). They must be well off, with no need to work (obviously, as no one has ever seen them leave their apartment). They look so self-contained, so smug in their domestic way. It’s unbearable – they simply have to go.

It is the strangest feeling when I arrive home late at night, having caught the metro to Ottaviano (I’m so glad they have finally put this line in – it feels so incredibly modern and urban to arrive home via the metro) to think while gazing out at the still, warm Roman night that I’m living above such a family…Maybe they are like us after all. Maybe all they want is peace and quiet. Unfortunately, I will have to disturb them. (It’s nothing personal though.)

There has been a lot of excavation in Rome during the last year. The authorities have had to dig up the streets to put the new metro line – Line A – underground and they are still excavating. They have discovered ample evidence of ancient Rome but to the best of my knowledge they haven’t yet discovered an entire family (let alone one that is still alive).

I will have to go and confront the family in a few minutes and, on behalf of the Tenants’ Association, ask them to leave. At first I was reluctant to be the one chosen but then when it was mentioned that the elected representative might be able to purchase a few little nick-nacks I thought I would put my knowledge (fragmentary) of Latin to some use and provide a civic duty to the other tenants at the same time.

The meeting decided that we should not inform the media. We intended to until the two journalists present were so passionate in their opinions that other ‘despicable journalists’ would invade the privacy of the tenants in the most unseemly fashion that we decided the path of discretion was the appropriate one to take. We had discussed storming the apartment and forcibly ejecting the family but we have all noticed the gleaming array of daggers, swords, spears and pitchforks lying in the corner next to the statue of Venus along with the shiny, oiled, rippling muscles of the taller slaves and so we decided that ‘communication’ would be more appropriate, and in a room full of communication experts I was chosen. (I suppose I should be flattered.)

One more glass of Glenfiddich and then I’ll go. I must get back in time for the big game though – not long to go now. Italy is doing well, we’re in the finals again, we’re going to win it again.

I peer out from my eighth floor apartment at the lights of Rome. Vaguely, through the polluted haze that my company has helped to create, I can see the lights that illuminate the exterior of the Castel St. Angelo. If I half close my eyes (blocking out the modern buildings that I don’t want to see) then for a while I tell myself that this is exactly the same ancient city that the family belongs to. I am back in the first century AD, they belong to the dominant group and I am the intruder. But the moment passes quickly enough. I stroke Mussolini’s sleek black fur (he spends all day cleaning himself) then choose an expensive shirt (freshly ironed today by Juliana, the little angel!) and an appropriate outfit to wear. I don’t want to disturb the family unduly so I dress in an elegantly understated manner, as befits my station in life. I choose my favourite suit together with my best pair of shoes, as I want them to think well of me, and glancing back quickly at the ordered life of my apartment I begin to descend the stairs. I hastily check my Rolex; not long to go now.

It is quite dark at night on these stairs; the lighting is contained in cream shells that flute the light upwards; it is very beautiful but it means that it is difficult to see where you are going. I don’t know what I’ll say to these guardians of lost time but I feel confident that the right words will come at the right time. They might get violent, which is not something I would be prepared for. What a disturbing thought.

There are many stairs to descend. (It’s almost like going down through the centuries, I think lightheartedly.) But what’s this? The hair starts to bristle on the back of my neck; the heartbeat quickens; my breath gets shorter. I feel a touch of vertigo coming on as I look down the length of the ornate circular staircase…

Peering below me carefully I can vaguely perceive shapes coming towards me – human shapes, ancient shapes. It is the family! They are clunking up the stairs towards me. Here is the father leading the way – looking confident and relaxed. Behind him is his wife, looking serene. Then there are three children holding rabbits and pigeons with four slaves – two male, two female – bringing up the rear; each slave holds a loaf of bread and a wine pitcher. I stop where I am, hesitant to move. They are coming closer and closer. A metre away and I can hear the heavy breathing of the father; he passes so close to me that I can feel his sour, ancient breath on my face. He seems so benign, as do they all. I start to relax…After all we live in a rational world and there must be some meaning in all of this which will reveal itself at some later stage.

They all pass by me, without taking any interest in me whatsoever, and I follow. I want to see where they are going. They have passed by the seventh floor and now they are climbing the staircase up to the eighth floor and now they are standing in front of my apartment – number 13. (I’m not superstitious, after all we live in a rational world where normal things happen.) I graciously squeeze past them, unlock the door and let them in. They become quite animated, all chatting noisily as though they are going to a party. I can’t really understand what they are saying; they are speaking too rapidly. I gesture that they should make themselves at home. Smiling all the while I offer them seats. They break the bread which they have brought. It is still warm. I taste a mouthful. It is delicious. I show my appreciation with animated gestures. The father is speaking to me loudly, forcibly. The others are backing him up with words and gestures. The slaves find a glass and pass me some wine which I drink thankfully, greedily. Everything is happening so quickly. I pass round the beer (Heineken) and crackers (local) then get a few more cushions for the slaves to sit on. They are all facing the television set. The chattering continues until the father waves his hand imperiously and everyone is immediately silent.

The father speaks directly to me, very slowly and loudly though with an affable tone as if I was a foreigner. He says, I am starting to make it out now, TEMPUS LUDO EST.

He gestures towards the television set. He repeats what he has just said. I work it out. He is saying: IT IS TIME FOR THE GAME. I look at my watch. But of course, it’s just past nine. Time for the kick-off. It’s a very important game. I have money riding on this game (a lot of money).

So I turn on the television. They are happy at this. We pass round the bread and wine and the beer and crackers. The game has been going for six minutes. Nil all. Italy is in attack. Antobelli has been given a corner. We all lean forward with excitement. We all watch with interest to see what will happen next…