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Before we continue where we left off, let me be perfectly clear on one point.
The fact that the Pope died the day after we arrived in Italy is just a coincidence. I'm not sure I can stress this enough. A coincidence. He was already quite ill. Look it up.
Sunday: a Day of Rest?
We let Cara sleep in while we once again braved the Metro in search of a Mass in English. Later, we would discover that this was not as difficult as it first appears. For today, however, we headed for the only English-language church we knew about: Santa Susanna.
A tiny little baroque gem, the church is administered by the Paulist fathers. Despite the ostentatious setting, the church felt very much like any small, struggling American parish. The singing, for one, was terrible: uninspired and off-key in a very Eddie-Izzard-Church-of-England kind of way. Attendance was not great, but we were at the 9:00 mass - we were told the place is fairly well packed at the 11:00. At our home parish, it's just the opposite. Apparently the Romans sleep in on Sunday.
We swung by the flat to pick up Cara and then headed for the wrong side of the river: Trastevere. Specifically, we went to its infamous Porta Portese market. Billed as the largest flea market in Rome, Porta Portese begins near the only pyramid in the city and goes on for kilometers through a fairly rough neighbourhood.
Key requirements here are good humour, a moneybelt, and a deep aversion to shell games and Gypsies. It reminded me very much of parts of Chicago.
Everything is negotiable, provided you observe the proper rituals. The highlight for me was The Coat. I espied a beautiful black wool coat from Austria. Green trim, a great cut. And it fit perfectly. The only trouble was, the owner of said coat wanted the relatively ridiculous amount of 110 Euro for it.
I brought 45 Euro to spend, and I'd already spent five on a shirt.
After trying on the coat, the fellow offered to let it go for 100. Francine played the part of the enthusiastic translator, and I acted the part of the indifferent customer. I kept saying "no", and she kept spinning tales.
Several times, I just walked away. Francine and I mock-argued; she apologetically told him "no" again.
As I said before, I had 40 Euro on my person. And in the end, that's exactly what I spent.
Unfortunately, the negotiations took up rather more time than we'd allotted, and we began a mad dash across Rome to meet up with Cousin Leone at Santa Maria Maggoire.
To Manziana and Beyond!
Along the hazy shores of the Lake of Hali Lago de Bracchiano sits the ancient city of Carcosa hill-town of Manziana. Being in Europe (where history comes from), it has a castle properly looming on the hillside above. It also contains Uncle Settimio's pensione - his smaller, second condo.
Having lost Leone somewhere along the way, Francine, Cara, and I had tea with Settimio and his wife Rosetta (no relation to the stone, thank you). We tooled around Manziana's local market (originally set up by Pope Clement XII according to a nearby sign of dubious authenticity) and met even more relatives.
This market was far more interesting to me than the "buy it wholesale" shysterama of Porta Portese. There was actually some cool junk for sale here: rusted machines of forgotten purpose, crumbling Latin breviaries, antique furniture stored for generations in a barn with the pigs - that sort of thing.
If I could have figured out how to fit it in my luggage, I'd have bought the slightly rusty iron mould and press for making hosts (or "Jesus bread" according to Francine in a moment of ditz). I have no idea what I would do with it, but man was it neat.
On to another aunt: Anita in Manziana and her son Virgilio. Virgilio is a fine, fine artist. He paints. He draws. He gets commissions from the Vatican. He does have a certain mercenary streak: he paints horses "because they sell". Some of his best work, however, won't be hanging in the Vatican any time soon...
Another night of eating, laughing, and drinking. Settimio kept pouring Sambuca in my glass, and he was matching me swallow for swallow. I had eerie flashbacks to my Onkel Otto.
We heard that the Pope would be lying in state beginning the next day, so I was resolved to go to the Vatican in the morning. I think both Francine and Cara thought I was slightly insane (or perhaps was just too deep into my Sambuca), but I was determined.
Had I known anything about what the Vatican's plans actually were, I might have hesitated. Ignorance, as they say, bliss. This is one occasion where I now take comfort in my cluelessness.
How to Get Sunburned in the World's Smallest Country
Day Four dawned, but we didn't care. We slept. Recovery time was required after the madness of the previous two days. It was after 11:00 before we ventured onto the Metro.
Already the crowds were gathering.
People poured out of the Metro station. Clumps and knots and streams of people were sucked out of Rome's mazy neighbourhoods towards Piazza San Pietro, drawn swirling through the streets as if by a neutron star that had interrupted its cosmic wanderings to pause and rest a moment at Vatican City.
It was crazy.
(I will note parenthetically that as the week wore on, it only got worse. If you'd have asked me Monday, I'd have flat told you the notion was ridiculous. And yet, the crowds continued to swell exponentially until by Friday the pilgrims outnumbered the Romans by a million or more.)
When we arrived at the Piazza San Pietro, it was barely a quarter full. I thought I detected a line of sorts snaking towards the basilica entrance.
Francine and Cara were having none of it. Francine suffers from claustrophobia. She took one look at the queue (an Italian queue, meaning a barely contained mob), and decided that she and her niece would much rather spend the afternoon shopping.
So we made plans to meet later.
Plan A: 17:00 at the fountain in Piazza de Spagna
Plan B: 19:00 at the flat (to see Cara off to the airport)
Now. Quiz time: what is it about plans and Rome?
So there I was, alone in Rome with maybe ten words of Italian, most of which coalesced into the two related thoughts of "I don't speak Italian" and "do you speak English?" No troubles.
It just occurred to me that the second sentence is fairly useless in Italian. Hi ho.
I got into line. Quite suddenly, the line dispersed. Confusion.
A lovely couple from Texas provided the answer. Apparently this was the regular "visiting the basilica, tourist style" line, and Vatican security was now clearing out the basilica. The honeymooning Texans had been scheduled for a tour of the Vatican crypts. Cancelled.
So outside we waited. For what exactly, no one knew, but the piazza was filling up in anticipation of... something.
The piazza was divided by barracades into rough quarters, with alleyways in between. We went to one of the quarters closest to the basilica steps.
Slowly, a cadre of English speakers gathered around us. There was the lady from Iowa who had flown in that morning and walked from her hotel immediately here. There were two college girls from California on Spring Break. There was an Englishmen who spoke halting Spanish, and his Spanish friend who spoke halting English and Italian. At last, we were able to talk in a meaningful way (even if third-hand) with the security forces.
Turns out, they didn't have any idea of what was going on either.
As the afternoon wore on, the Texans left to catch their train to Venice. They may have been the last who left. Oh others tried, but the Great Minds managing security had set up a cordon under the Bernini colonnade. It was, by now, difficult to get into the piazza, but it was flat impossible to get out.
It was mid-afternoon by now. I was maybe fifty feet from the front barricades. The rumour was going through the crowd that the Pope's body was going to be moved in a procession through the piazza from the Sistine Chapel to the basilica.
Volunteers from all over Italy, wearing the ubiquitous neon-orange security vests, were handing out bottles of water. This being Italy, it was carbonated.
I got a sunburn, and I wasn't the only one.
By now the crowd was beginning to approach Metro density. You couldn't bend down to tie your shoes. My legs, already fatigued from three days of walking, were fairly screaming.
A little girl, maybe six or seven years old, began to chant, "GioVANni PAUlo", and the crowd would answer with a rhythmic clapping, clap-clap clap CLAP clap clap. Over and over, call and response.
She kept it up for over an hour, and the crowd kept up with her. After a while, she was so tired that her parents carved out enough space to lay her down with an umbrella.
Even flat on her back, she led the crowd, "GioVANni PAUlo!" (clap-clap clap CLAP clap clap)
And still, the crowd grew. Flags appeared in the throng, mostly Polish, but also Mexican, Spanish, Italian, Austrian, American, Brazilian...
Something Happened
News crews magically appeared along the tops of the colonnade and on the roofs of the Papal apartments. Giant video screens on either side of the piazza flicked to life, showing the Pope lying in state in the Sistine Chapel.
I looked at my watch. Even if there was any chance of getting out of the piazza, I still wouldn't make my Plan A rendezvous with Francine.
The procession began. First, the Swiss Guard took up their positions on the basilica portico. Then came an altar server with a towering crucifix and two others with candles. They were followed by several dozen altar servers. Then the priests. Then the bishops. Then a hundred or so cardinals. Then twelve pallbearers carrying the body of John Paul II. More Swiss Guardsmen brought up the rear.
The reason for quartering the piazza with barricades now became obvious: the corridors between were for the procession. Slowly, slowly they came up the steps and filed into the basilica. Thousands of arms shot into the air with cameras.
When the pallbearers got to the entrance, they slowly turned around and tilted the bier so the massive crowd could get one good look at their Pope.
The applause rolled through the piazza like the swell of the sea.
From somewhere to my left, I heard the plaintive voice of a young girl start up her chant, "GioVANni PAUlo!" The crowd responded.
And then the pallbearers slipped into the basilica. Moments later, the Swiss Guard followed. The video screens went black. Show over.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people tried to leave. Within fifteen minutes I found myself standing at the front barricade.
Most of the people who left couldn't actually leave the piazza. There was nowhere for them to go. By now the crowds were backed up down the avenue as far as you could see.
We waited.
The Sun Set Behind St. Peter's
It was by now past seven in the evening; I had missed the Plan B rendezvous. There wasn't particularly a Plan C.
More water was distributed, and a knot of volunteer security began to form in front of the barricades. In the by-now traditional absence of actual information, rumours plied the crowd.
They weren't going to let us in.
They were going to let us in, starting at nine.
They weren't going to let us in until tomorrow.
They were going to start with the right-hand quadrant and proceed clockwise (meaning the even though we were in front, we would be last).
Nobody knew. By now, the uniformed security men were just shrugging off questions and smiling. Insufferable bastards.
Eight o'clock. Floodlights were on now in the piazza. The density of the crowd seemed to increase. I looked back: they were letting people from the avenue into the piazza. The only way out now was clearly through the basilica.
Eight thirty. The video screens came to life, showing an aerial shot of the piazza and the staggering crowd. The camera pulled back, and you could now see the crowd outside was just as big. Still the camera pulled back, and the crowd snaked through the city for kilometers.
Once again, the crowd roared, and I could feel it in my lungs, in my bones.
Volunteer security climbed over the front barricades and spread out into the crowd, eventually forming a rough rectangle around perhaps fifty of us.
While we were distracted with this, uniformed security let through a group of about a dozen handicapped people - folks in wheelchairs or with braces or crutches.
Then they opened the gate and let in the fifty of us.
As I climbed the steps of the basilica, I turned around to survey the crowd. There were perhaps twenty people ahead of me, but there were a million behind me.
So the lady from Iowa and I entered St. Peter's basilica. It's enormous, two football fields long and a football field high. And it was dark, lit only by candle light and a few dim spots at the edges of my vision.
The lady from Iowa elbowed me in the ribs. "You've got to breathe, you know."
She was right. So I did.
As we walked into the enormity of that place, we were utterly silent. I could hear the scuffling of our feet echoing across the marble floor.
As we first fifty approached the bier where the Holy Father lay, the people in front of me took out their cellphone cameras, trying to capture the moment.
At first, I was appalled, but then it hit me that this was a tribute; in mediaeval days we would have been carrying candles forward instead. I took out my camera. I managed three shots.
But mostly, there in the candle-lit cathedral before the body of Pope John Paul II, I was lost in awe and majesty and prayer.
It was one of the most amazing moments of my life, one which I shall always treasure and for which I am profoundly grateful.
Eventually, we were ushered out into the chill night. Unfortunately, they let us out to the left, and the Metro stations were to the right, with the full weight of pilgrims between us and transit. Walking around the line to the nearest Metro station took the better part of an hour.
They soon gave up on the idea of keeping to groups of fifty; it became one continuous queue from Castel Sant'Angelo to the altar of St. Peter's. Later pilgrims would spend twenty or 24 hours in that line.
Here's the story from the New York Daily News. The author pretty much hit it.
Pictures from days three and four
On to our next exciting episode: Day Five!
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