The Rome Plague Diaries E-Book

Matthew Kneale

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

On the first morning of Rome's Covid-19 lockdown Matthew Kneale felt an urge to connect with friends and acquaintances and began writing an email, describing where he was, what was happening and what it felt like, and sent it to everyone he could think of. He was soon composing daily reports as he tried to comprehend a period of time, when everyone's lives suddenly changed and Italy struggled against an epidemic, that was so strange, so troubling and so fascinating that he found it impossible to think about anything else. Having lived in Rome for eighteen years, Matthew has grown to know the capital and its citizens well and this collection of brilliant diary pieces connects what he has learned about the city with this extraordinary, anxious moment, revealing the Romans through the intense prism of the coronavirus crisis.

Leseprobe

The Rome Plague Diaries

Matthew Kneale is the author of seven novels and three works of non-fiction. His debut novel, Whore Banquets, won the Somerset Maugham Award, Sweet Thames was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and English Passengers was shortlisted for both the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Award, and won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. His previous non-fiction book, Rome: A History in Seven Sackings, was a Sunday Times bestseller. He lives in Rome with his wife and two children.

‘The novelist Matthew Kneale has lived in Rome for 18 years and his response to the news of Italy’s first Covid lockdown was to unburden himself by writing a long email to family, friends and even people he’d lost touch with years ago... Collected here, his wry and questioning meanderings lace an ordeal with charm.’ New Statesman

‘Fascinating… It’s a book to delight anyone with an interest in European culture.’ NB Magazine

‘Joie de vivre radiates from every page.’ Strong Words Magazine

‘An unflinching look at the Italian capital during its shutdown last year.’ Monocle

Also by Matthew Kneale

FICTION

Pilgrims

Mr Foreigner

Inside Rose’s Kingdom

English Passengers

Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance

When We Were Romans

Sweet Thames

NON-FICTION

An Atheist’s History of Belief

Rome: A History in Seven Sackings

The Rome Plague Diaries

Lockdown Life in the Eternal City

Matthew Kneale

Published in hardback in Great Britain in 2021 by Atlantic Books,

an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Matthew Kneale, 2021

The moral right of Matthew Kneale to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-83895-301-0

E-book ISBN: 978-1-83895-302-7

All photographs copyright © Matthew Kneale

Map artwork by Jeff Edwards

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

For Shannon, Alexander and Tatiana

Contents

Introduction

Tuesday the 10th of March

All locked down

Wednesday the 11th of March

Discovering our new and smaller world: postal district 00153 Roma – and doing the virus dance

Thursday the 12th of March

A stroll across the river

Friday the 13th of March

Eccentrics, and being an honorary Roman

Saturday the 14th of March

Chatting with friends (at a safe social distance)

Monday the 16th of March

A street warmed by opera

Tuesday the 17th of March

Insanity in the UK

Wednesday the 18th of March

On the need to connect – and a recipe for pork and slow-cooked onion pasta

Thursday the 19th of March

Our vanished market

Friday the 20th of March

Growing to love the green area and sometime rubbish dump below our apartment

Saturday the 21st of March

All about my mother

Sunday the 22nd of March

Rome’s plagues past

Monday the 23rd of March

Making my own DIY surgical face mask

Tuesday the 24th of March

Scammers – and a recipe for Pasta cacio e pepe

Wednesday the 25th of March

About our building

Thursday the 26th of March

How to buy a used car in Rome

Friday the 27th of March

Roman love of regularity, homeless Romans and Romani Romans

Saturday the 28th of March

Rome: the city that globalization forgot

Sunday the 29th of March

A bad day at the supermarket, and getting to know our new bubble

Monday the 30th of March

Writing on walls

Tuesday the 31st of March

My family, tiny nation

Wednesday the 1st of April

What brought us to Rome: a film that was never made

Thursday the 2nd of April

In pizza we trust

Friday the 3rd of April

The strange story of the Tomato King

Sunday the 5th of April

Our local Syrian temple

Tuesday the 7th of April

An atheist and the Catholic Church

Friday the 10th of April

Breaking out and seeing Fascism

Saturday the 11th of April

Spring is here – and a recipe for Pasta alla vignarola

Sunday the 12th of April

Mysteries, conspiracies and the shooting of Sister Piera

Monday the 13th of April

Daring to look to the future: Rome in four seasons

Wednesday the 15th of April

A down day – and a recipe for comfort pasta

Friday the 17th of April

Is it a lie that Romans are friendly?

Saturday the 18th of April

Politics, populism and wickedness from the distant past

Tuesday the 21st of April

Rome’s worst plague of all

Wednesday the 22nd of April

Interior decorating and paganism

Thursday the 23rd of April

Are Romans really such bad drivers?

Friday the 24th of April

How to survive Roman red tape, and what it taught me about Brexit

Saturday the 25th of April

Liberation Day and Roman criminality

Monday the 27th of April

Is Roman cuisine really any good?

Wednesday the 29th of April

Rome: ideological showcase – and a recipe for Pasta all’Amatriciana

Thursday the 30th of April

Is there a film that truly captures Rome?

Saturday the 2nd of May

What do Romans think of their city’s past?

Sunday the 3rd of May

Was there a golden age of Rome?

Monday the 4th of May

Unlocked – and a recipe for Pasta fredda

Acknowledgements

Introduction

There’s nothing like a crisis to show what people are truly like. The Romans have endured more than their share of disasters over the millennia – floods, fires and numerous brutal invasions and sackings. Having lived in Rome for close to two decades, and having written about the city both in novels and historical accounts, I finally found myself sharing some troubled times with them during the Covid pandemic.

On continental Europe, Italy was the country that was struck earliest and most brutally by the disease and the Italian authorities responded by invoking the harshest of restrictions. This book recounts how the Romans – a people not always known for their obedience to rules – fared under one of the strictest lockdowns outside Wuhan. Romans innovated, from marketeers who drove fruit and vegetables from country fields to people’s doors, to the circus owners who fed their hungry tigers and llamas with the help of meals on wheels volunteers. Inevitably there was also a bleaker side of Italy’s lockdown, from Covid inspired murders to an epidemic of scams – including a fake government official who went from door to door claiming she had to disinfect people’s banknotes.

As well as describing how the Romans responded to the Covid pandemic, I have used the crisis as a springboard to relate what I have learned over the years about the Roman way of doing things, from the perils of buying a Roman used car, to Romans’ delight in writing and daubing art on walls. I also look city’s tendency towards ambiguity, whether in the case of thoroughly mysterious (and happily non-lethal) shooting of a nun, to unsolved murders, to the still open question of whether the corpse buried beneath the altar of Catholicism’s greatest church is really that of Saint Peter.

Along the way I have recounted something of my own existence in Rome, and the apartment block where I and my family live, that is watched over by our very Roman portiera, Cinzia. And, for good measure, I have included a few recipes for favourite Roman dishes that helped sustain our spirits. Most of all, I offer a portrait of my adopted home, and of the Romans, for whom I have never felt such warmth and respect as during these difficult days.

The book first began as a series of emails that I sent out to friends and family in the UK, to describe the dramatic events in Italy as Covid first struck (when it only just begun to affect Britain). I sought to warn people, as Italy’s experiences had already made clear how dangerous Covid was, and I was very concerned that the UK authorities were not taking it sufficiently seriously. The book was written during the intense two-month period of Rome’s first lockdown, from March to May 2020. I have extended the first entry, to recount our lives in the weeks before the lockdown, as the virus approached, but otherwise I have changed the diary entries as little as possible. I felt they should remain just as they were, retaining their original sense of immediacy, unspoiled by hindsight, and with any misconceptions preserved intact. A time of plague is not a moment of wise reflection. It’s a time of fear and adrenalin, of rumours and lies, of over-confidence and under-confidence, and this was what I hope to relay.

Tuesday the 10th of March

All locked down

Ring-a-ring o’ roses,

A pocket full of posies,

Atishoo, atishoo,

We’re all locked down.

I’m sitting in a cafe and bakery in Testaccio, just a few minutes’ walk across the river from our home. The cashier has put two flowerpots on the ground in front of her till, so you have to stretch out your arm to pay, and there’s black tape on the floor to make it clearer still where you can’t stand. A man wearing latex gloves comes to collect empty cups and when I go to get my second coffee, I find the staff assembled behind the cake display, engaged in a very serious-looking meeting. When the lockdown was announced last night, I imagined the Romans would bend the new rules a little, or even be downright rebellious, but no, it seems they’re getting quite into this. People have an air of busy correctness, and a pride, too, in doing their part against the virus.

For the most part I feel we’re reasonably well prepared. I’ve long had a sensitivity, even a slight paranoia, concerning plagues, probably because I owe my existence to one. In 1918 my grandfather, who was a theatre and opera critic in Berlin, married for the first time. He was fifty-one and his bride was nineteen (I make no comment). Within months she was pregnant and shortly afterwards she and her unborn baby were dead. The Spanish Flu, in mirror image to Covid-19, spared the old and was most dangerous for those in young adulthood, and especially pregnant women. Two years later, my grandfather was married again, to one of the bridesmaids from his first wedding, who was also nineteen (again I make no comment) – my grandmother.

Any word of alarming new diseases catches my sense of danger. Our friends in Rome found it very amusing when, during the 2003 SARS epidemic, they saw that I’d stockpiled pasta, cheese and long-life milk. They were right to laugh, as Italy had only four SARS cases and no deaths – and we never did drink the long-life milk. This time, though, my paranoia has proved useful. In January I usually start thinking ahead to the summer, arranging house swaps to get away from Rome’s heat, but this year, as the news from China grew worse, I avoided making any plans, and put off a trip to London that I needed to make. At the end of January Italy had its first two cases of coronavirus, both in Rome – a Chinese couple on holiday from Wuhan – and the country declared a state of emergency. I began venturing out with our wheelie shopping bag and purchasing food and general supplies including, I admit, some loo paper – though not sackfuls of it. And, despite my SARS experience, I got some long-life milk.

I also tried to deal with anything that I normally might have put off. Our son, Alexander, had mislaid his identity card and I now badgered him into coming with me to the Comune – the city of Rome’s local authority – to get him a replacement (and I’m very glad I did, as he’ll now need to carry it on him whenever he goes out). When something odd happened to my eye, I didn’t wait a week or two to see if it got better of its own accord, but went straight to an optometrist, who assured me it was nothing to worry about. I made an effort to buy anything that might prove tricky to get, such as a toner cartridge for our printer.

In late February a number of new coronavirus cases began to spring up in the north of Italy. This was the same moment when our children were due to go on school trips. Our sixteen-year-old, Tatiana, who departed on the Saturday, got away. Alexander, who left on the Sunday, was just about to step out the front door with his bag when he got a text to say that the Italian government had banned all such trips. We’re not people who usually eat out much but over the next few days we took Alexander to several restaurants, partly to make up for his cancelled trip (he’s very into good food) but also because I had a feeling that going out would soon be difficult.

By the end of that week the virus had taken firm hold across northern Italy. Though the number of cases was still relatively low, the rate of increase was alarming, and it was clear from the news elsewhere that something very serious was happening. During these same days Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Israel, Nigeria and the Canary Islands reported their first cases, and in every instance the sufferer was a recent arrival from northern Italy.

Yet Rome seemed strangely immune. Aside from the Chinese couple and one other case, all of whom were recovering, the city remained untouched. It seemed Lombardians were happy to fly to Africa and Israel but couldn’t be bothered to take a three-hour train journey to Rome. The first new case in our region of Lazio – a woman recently arrived from Bergamo in the north – was finally announced on the last day of February.

By then we had a decision to make. In a few days’ time my wife, Shannon, was set to use the winter break at the American University where she teaches – John Cabot – to go to Canada to visit her parents. It was a week-long trip that she’d arranged months earlier. The number of reported cases in Lazio was still negligible, while it looked like it would be a long time before she’d have another chance to go to Canada and her family were very much looking forward to seeing her. She decided to go. Hardly had she made up her mind when, on the 3rd of March – a week ago – the government announced that all schools in Italy were to close with immediate effect. Our children came home on the tram weighed down with every book they might need. This was Alexander’s last year at school, he has his all-important final exams in May, and what would become of those now was anybody’s guess. For the moment we were all in a state of bewilderment, wondering what on earth would happen next.

We socialized more than usual. We felt a need to get together and share our anxiousness and excitement with friends. We’d meet for a drink or a pizza and discuss the coronavirus; it felt somehow cathartic, as if the epidemic would be somehow tamed by being talked about. Five days ago Shannon left for Canada. Her parents were delighted to see her, though she was very concerned that she might have brought the virus to them – both are elderly and have health worries. Her journey had involved a change at Frankfurt and a woman just ahead of her in the queue for the first flight had been coughing and sneezing and looked far from well. Shannon tried to keep a distance from her parents but it was hard when they were all in the same house.

The day after she left I got together with two friends, Seth and Paul, who share my fascination with history, meeting at a Testaccio bar, L’Oasi della Birra (the Oasis of Beer). I’d imagined that, in these virus days, the place would be quiet, but it was packed and we struggled to get a table. It seemed everybody in Rome had been seized by the same mood of manic sociability. Several times the waitress leaned over us and had us move places to make way for others who had booked. In the end we hardly discussed history – we talked about Covid-19.

The next day the Italian government announced that a large part of the north of the country, including all of Lombardy, was to be locked down. And the following evening – last night – to our great surprise, it was announced that from midnight the whole of Italy would be locked down. As of today, the 11th of March, all shops and workplaces that aren’t essential will be closed, and unless people need to travel for reasons of work or for medical appointments, they should stay in their postal districts. They can take exercise and walk the dog, but as far as possible they should stay at home.

Now that the initial surprise has worn off, I have to say that it seems exactly the right thing to have done. It’s a great relief. Until this moment I had a sense of being beneath a great wave that was about to break, and that there was nothing I could do. Now, suddenly, there’s hope. Now we can be saved from ourselves. This is the end of ignorant calculations: there still aren’t many cases – maybe this is a good time to get together with friends while we still can? Everything is clear. We know where we are. It’s not only me who feels like this, and Roman faces look more cheerful than they have done for a while.

Now, I’m at home ready to go to bed. It’s so quiet outside, with no voices on the street below and hardly a car going by, let alone the blast of a car horn. It doesn’t sound like Rome should at this hour. When Alexander and I walked back from the bakery this morning, the streets were largely empty. A restaurant which is normally very popular, with long queues at night, now had only one diner sitting at an outside table. He was watched over by four amused-looking waiters, all socially distanced from one another as they chatted to their solitary customer. I doubt they will have had any more today. All bars and restaurants now have to close by six.

When we got back home, Cinzia, the portiera (concierge) of our building, gave us the latest news. She has a kind of kiosk by the entrance to our apartment block, where she sits each morning, when she’s not cleaning the stairways, watering the plants or chatting with friends. She’s a strongly Roman presence in all the best ways: loud, warm and with a splendidly cynical sense of humour. She sometimes tells me Roman phrases, such as ‘l’erba cattiva non muore mai’, which translates as ‘The bad plant never dies’, and refers to annoying people whom you can never be rid of.

She told us – not emerging from her cubicle but shouting through the glass – that there was chaos at the supermarkets this morning: long queues and people only being let in two at a time. I hope they won’t have given each other the virus as they waited. I decided I’d leave the shops for a day or two, till they’ve had a chance to quieten down. We may yet have to resort to our long-life milk.

In the afternoon, over a cup of tea, I considered that, all in all, things could have been far worse. The weather was beautiful, a glorious early spring day with more forecast. Alexander and Tatiana were both in good spirits. Their school has been very efficient and their online lessons are coming together, so they can enjoy the sight of their teachers looking foolish as they try and cope with the tech. In some ways Zoom works better than the classroom for Tatiana, as she’s a little shy and finds it easier to speak up online. We don’t have masks or gloves but otherwise we’re fairly well prepared. My only real regret is that I never got around to having a haircut. I wrote it down on my list of things to do and went by the barber’s a couple of times but there was always a queue. Now every barber in Italy is closed. It could have been worse, as I don’t have much hair left up there. It will just have to go a bit shaggy.

But then we had a new concern. Late in the afternoon Shannon rang from Canada, very upset, as she’d just learned that her flight back, booked for next Sunday, has been cancelled. News has just come in that EasyJet, Ryanair and British Airways have ended all their flights to Italy. Shannon wondered if she’d ever be able to get home. She was torn between booking a different flight for Sunday – which might also be cancelled – or trying to come home right away. Travelling immediately seemed the safer option, even though it meant she would have spent very little time with her family. A phone call later she’d managed to buy a ticket for later tonight (the small hours of the morning our time) to Rome via Frankfurt, and she ended the call to begin hurriedly packing. The last message she sent was that she was setting out on the two-hour drive to Toronto airport.

Wednesday the 11th of March

Discovering our new and smaller world: postal district 00153 Roma — and doing the virus dance

I woke to good news from Shannon, or mostly good news. She made it to Toronto Airport just in time and was now on her flight to Frankfurt, though the airline staff hadn’t been able to guarantee that the Frankfurt–Rome leg would fly. What mattered was that she would be back in Europe. There are lots of flights from Frankfurt to Rome, and even if hers was cancelled, there would surely be a way for her to get home.

Concerned that I should have a good dinner ready for her, I went out on my first shopping expedition since the lockdown. There’s nothing like a dose of plague to change one’s sense of space. As I walked along pavements, I found myself stepping away from people coming towards me, and they did the same. This new virus dance is more difficult in supermarkets where every inch of space is filled. Modern capitalism really isn’t well designed for plagues. In the smallish supermarket we often go to, I found myself awkwardly stepping by someone as we were edged close together by a huge bank of Easter eggs. When I went to pay I found that the queue – which is normally a tightly packed scrum of people – had a strangely spread-out look. Pieces of tape had been laid on the ground marked ‘1 metre’ to separate queuers from one another, though some metres looked rather bigger than others. Staff at the tills were guarded from customers’ breath by Perspex shields.

I then visited our delicatessen, Antica Caciara, which is something of a local legend. It’s run by Roberto and his wife, Anna, who regularly travel round the Apennine area of Norcia – a zone famed for its cheeses and cured meats – to seek out the best traditional suppliers. They have the finest Pecorino Romano cheese in Rome and two huge wheels of it are always to be found in the front of the shop as you walk in, which fill the shop with a wonderful aroma. Roberto had put up a sign at the door saying that no more than eight customers were allowed in at any one time and had laid out strips of black and yellow tape on his floor to show how people must keep distant from one another. A Scottish friend and neighbour of ours, Carolyn, who happened to be there when I walked in, was showing Roberto and his wife Anna how famous their shop had become – a photo of it, with the black and yellow tape, had appeared this morning on the websites of both the BBC and the Guardian. Their Rome correspondents clearly know their food. Yet Roberto and Anna weren’t too interested. They had other things to think about. They told me that, regretfully, they are going to close from Sunday for at least a couple of weeks. Operating during the lockdown was proving too hard. I suspect it will be a lot longer than two weeks.

Afterwards, Alexander and I took a stroll round the boundaries of our new, more limited, world: postal code area, 00153 Roma. It could be a great deal worse. As well as our home district of Trastevere, 00153 Roma extends across the river and includes the Aventine area, with our children’s school (now closed, of course) and also the district of Testaccio, which has one of the best food markets in Rome – this was our first destination. The place was quiet and some stalls were shut, but it was still functioning and lots of food was on offer, though with new working arrangements. When I started to pick some oranges the stallholder told me, in a friendly enough way, that these could only be touched with gloves (as I had none, she chose them for me).

On our side of the river, in Trastevere, we can still walk up the Gianicolo Hill to the Villa Sciarra Park, the huge fountain where the Acqua Paola aqueduct arrives in the city, and on to Porta Settimiana in the old city wall. But no farther. Our Rome has shrunk for the foreseeable future. The Pantheon, Piazza Navona and the Campo de’ Fiori, that I used to stroll by almost daily, are now foreign territory.

Shannon rang from Frankfurt where she was waiting, anxiously watching the departures board as flight after flight was cancelled. By lunchtime she had good news. Her flight was scheduled to go ahead and she was in the queue to board. I started thinking about how we should arrange things in the flat so we could social distance from one another. Aeroplanes and airports are prime places to catch diseases. For that matter I could be the danger, especially after my evening in the packed Oasis of Beer. Shannon and I share a very small study, and I moved my desk from there into a corner of the sitting room. I got out some bedding so I could sleep on the sofa.

In the early evening Shannon walked through the door. It was wonderful to see her and for us all to be reunited, but there were no hugs or kisses.

Thursday the 12th of March

A stroll across the river

We woke to the news that Trump has banned everyone from the EU Schengen area from entering the US. I imagine more travel restrictions will follow, involving Canada and Europe. Thank goodness Shannon left when she did.

Here, the rules are growing ever tighter. What’s striking about this crisis is the speed with which things change. A week ago, we were reeling from the news that our children’s school had closed. The virus seemed a northern Italian problem that could hardly touch us. Under the latest decree, issued yesterday evening, all bars and restaurants in Italy, which previously could open during the day, are to be completely closed. Likewise, all stores must shut apart from pharmacies, food shops, and a few others, such as tobacconists, car and motorbike mechanics and tech repair places. In some ways, it’s all beginning to feel a little Mussolinilike. A ban on all gatherings, including even dinner parties. Police checking everyone who’s outside. Arrests for those who don’t have a good reason to be where they are and who don’t have the right piece of paper. I’m struck by how easily people have adapted. It’s almost as if some part of them has been ready. And, of course, the authorities are right to do all of this. They have little choice.

There was one thing I very much wanted to do if I could: to see the centre of Rome empty of people. The regulations state that people can leave their postal districts for health appointments, to travel back to their homes and also for reasons of work. Surely the last category included me. I write about Rome, both books and journalism, and I take accompanying pictures, and if there was a moment that I should capture, in photographs and my memory, then this was it. I printed my autodichiarazione (self-declaration form) and filled it in, stating I was an author who needed to go around Rome for research purposes. For good measure I took a copy of the Italian translation of my latest book, to show any doubtful carabinieri.

I needn’t have worried. When I reached the frontier of 00153 Roma – the Ponte Sisto bridge over the Tiber – there were no officials demanding to see my documents. In fact, nobody checked anything during the whole morning. Once, when I was taking a photograph of an especially striking empty scene, a police car drew to a halt just beside me, only for the policewoman inside to lean out of the car window with her phone and take a picture of the same spot. We exchanged grave looks and agreed that the situation in Rome was ‘incredibile’. I imagine the people who are likely to get into trouble – and there have been a number of arrests and fines – are those who are still behaving as if the virus isn’t a problem: sitting about in groups, looking cheerful and trying to enjoy themselves. If you go around alone, keep walking and look serious you’ll be left in peace. At least for now.

It was a shocking Rome I found myself in. Most shops were shuttered. More disturbing were the closed restaurants and cafes. Coffee bars are closer to the heart of Italian life than anything else. They’re what pubs are to the English, if not more so, and it’s hard to go more than a hundred yards down a Roman street without passing one. It felt very alien, walking and walking without the chance to stop for a quick stand-up espresso. And the city was so quiet. Not wholly deserted, but emptier than I have ever seen it – a paradise for the kind of person who stands for hours, trying to get a shot without anyone in the frame. Who was still out? Dog walkers. The occasional workman, doing repairs. A few people like me, trying to get some shots of the city. Police, and also little clusters of soldiers guarding tourist sights – though these now seemed rather redundant, as any fanatic going on the rampage these days would struggle to find victims near enough to wound.

A class of people wholly absent was beggars. Only a few days ago the city was crowded with them, as it generally is. Not for the first time I found myself thinking back to the Mussolini era. When he took power, beggars and vagrants were among the first to be driven from the streets, shunted into out-of-town slums where they couldn’t spoil the image of the new, modern Fascist Italy. Today I imagine, and hope, the reason for their disappearance is more mundane: there’s nobody to beg from.

All the while the weather was painfully beautiful. I could walk around in just a shirt and the trees had the first green fuzz of spring. Once or twice I caught myself thinking thoughts that I’d normally have in this season – wouldn’t it be good to get away for a day or two and go and see friends in the countryside? What should we do this summer? But it’s not that kind of year. It’s a case of don’t look down. Better to take on the fascinating strangeness of what’s happening and hope it won’t be as bad as people fear. And, most of all, keep washing your hands.

Friday the 13th of March

Eccentrics, and being an honorary Roman

It’s getting closer. Yesterday our cleaner, Ermie, told us that a friend of hers, also a cleaner, works for somebody who has come down with the virus. Rather foolishly we didn’t think to ask how close a friend this friend was, nor when Ermie had last seen her, or whether the friend had cleaned the patient’s home lately. We might think twice before having her come again next week. Then, yesterday afternoon, Shannon saw an ambulance draw up outside an apartment block just up the road from us. A medic got out and began pulling on the familiar plastic suit. For the first time this is becoming something that’s happening around us rather than something we just read about in the Guardian and La Repubblica.

All this does concentrate the mind. I find myself aware of days in a new way. In particular I’ve been counting how many have passed since I met Seth and Paul at the Oasis of Beer. It’s six days so far. (Six days – it already seems like another era. We were all laughing about the virus.) The average incubation period for the coronavirus is thought to be five days. Of course, it can take a good deal longer. It’s now a week since Shannon left for Canada and she flew back just two days ago. As infection rates in Canada are still low, the flight out from Rome, changing in Frankfurt, was probably riskier. Though, of course, the flight back was via Frankfurt as well.

I’ve also become very aware of surfaces. Door handles of any kind seem sinister and in our building I’ve taken to using the stairs rather than taking the lift so I don’t have to open its various doors. Anything that comes into the house has an alien aura to it. I’m getting better at supermarkets. One hazard is joining the queue outside at the wrong place. Some more cautious Romans socially distance themselves so far away from the person ahead of them that you don’t realize they’re waiting at all, and they call out and complain at your queue-jumping. Once you finally get inside it’s easy: you shop, you queue at a distance to pay and it’s all done. But it’s very annoying if – as I often do – you realize just after you’ve left that you forgot to buy the most important thing.

With so few people out, eccentrics are very visible. Rome has always had a good number of these. When we first moved here, I’d sometimes see a man who liked to walk around with an enormous cockatoo perched on his shoulder. Another cycled fast down main roads with a white cat clinging to him (it seemed to quite like it). If you walk around Testaccio you may pass a woman who takes her pet pig for walks on a lead. And now, at the very moment the coronavirus has arrived, a new eccentric has turned up: a man who goes about Trastevere bare-legged, wearing what look like animal skins. He has a pouch around his waist in which his two very small dogs sometimes sit. I managed to get a photo of him making a call from a phone box (a pretty eccentric act in itself these days).