Noon at the Pantheon

On the steps by the fountain in front of the Pantheon. Sprawling bodies with tired feet are everywhere, but I manage to curl up on the bottom step to enjoy a granita from Tazza d'Oro. One step up, a middle-aged American tourist speaks of his first impressions of Rome. He discusses the implications of having the Pantheon door wide open, which it is right now, as usual, admitting the constant ebb and flow of tourists. And the currents of air, carrying Roman smoke and dust freely through that open door into the monument's interior. Ruins the art, he says. What's being done to prevent this?

He muses for a moment, going silent. After a few seconds I hear murmurs grumbling outward from deep inside his chest. The American spits. Nothing, nothing! He exclaims with fury and throws up his hands in anger and frustration. Anger directed at the government, the tourism board, at the ignorance of all Italian authority. Passionate indictments of a dispassionate European attitude towards history, archaeology. Wait, did he just accuse Italians of being a dispassionate people?

I begin eating faster.

I wonder if this guy reads Noam Chomsky.

The man lounging on the ground beside him offers a quiet affirmative. How bored and listless he looks in the face of this emotional fountain, which now outburbles the obelisk-topped water behind us by far. A strong accent, maybe Czech, obscures his full response. But the horse attached to the (tourist trap alert!) carriage in front of us seems to comprehend every word, and it nods vigorously in agreement, licking and flapping its lips. Little white flecks of wet fly everywhere.

Today, I learned that profanity is a medium for universal understanding. Foreign curses... probably denouncing the horse's mother and all its relatives, or something like that. It's a common theme for insults here. The emotional fountain stops gurgling to roar at its Czech companion's distress at the involuntary shower. You think this is funny...?! said a murderous look in return. This sort of fountain does not wash horse spit from clothes.

Two globs of drool fall near my shoe, glistening like baby oysters. I twitch a little but I'm much too tired to move my feet. The lacquered wood of the carriage echoes the coachman's creaking groans. He wipes the horse's lips with a white terry cloth, trailing in surrender, banner-like in his hands.