Every year, around this time, I remember the months that I lived in the Aventine, the most peaceful neighborhood in Rome. I spent long hours in the library of the Pontifical Athenaeum S. Anselmo, where I had been welcomed by the learned Pius-Ramon Tragan, a monk from Montserrat, an expert in biblical exegesis, who was then the rector of that university. To disconnect from work, he went for a run through the Circo Massimo, absorbed the serenity of the columns of Santa Sabina or contemplated, from the Giardino degli Aranci, the city with all its domes, crossed by a Tiber winding like a snake.
At the end of October, I got used to going down to the Testaccio district, where you hardly see any tourists. I stopped for a moment in front of the display window of the Salumeria Volpetti, where all the cured meats and cheeses of Italy are lavishly assembled; he would walk for a few minutes along the noisy Marmorata Avenue and immediately arrive at the Cimitero degli Inglesi, next to the small Cestia pyramid. On the right side, the tombs are piled up between trees and flower beds. I used to go to Antonio Gramsci’s grave, always adorned with red roses. The left part of this cemetery is a meadow dominated by the pyramid. Here and there elegant pines and ancient funerary marbles. In one corner, the tomb of John Keats, a young English poet, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 25, having written verses in water. Near that tomb there is a bench where I used to sit and read Pavese. “The death will come and it will have your eyes”. Although above all my mind wandered, possessed by the beauty and calm of the place. In a very natural way, while admiring that funerary landscape, I began to evoke the dead of the family, starting with my mother. Soon other dead arrived. Sitting in the Citroën DS, shark, of taxi driver Bruguera. We were studying high school in Palafrugell and we went out very late. There was no longer a bus to return to La Bisbal. If they didn’t catch us hitchhiking, we had to go to the taxi driver. We almost always found him eating stewed beans for dinner; a formidable smell of garlic took possession of the magnificent Citroën. Of the five of us who got into that taxi, two, Xevi and Miquel, died long before their time.
I have always been accompanied especially by those who have left too soon. I think of them when I visit any cemetery. Montse and Anna, friends from the COU. Àngels, who shot himself with the pistol of his police lover. Jaume, so severe. Roser, who was crushed on the freeway. My brother-in-law Artur, who died at 42 of cancer. Narcís, the most missed. Quim, the family’s handyman. Vicenç, so brilliant, the last to rush. Those of the Citroën shark enjoyed with me the light of that Roman autumn, which varnished the funerary marble.
Visiting cemeteries and retrieving the history of one’s own dead are old-fashioned customs. Now it is a trend to do without tombs. Death is dealt with quickly: corpses are disposed of in the polished incineration ovens and their ashes are scattered anywhere. Archaeologists find precious information about past societies in the excavation of tombs. They won’t find our bones; just garbage. We will end up closing the cemeteries. They are useless for the way of dying that is used now. From the asepsis of cremation to the gestures of the poured ashes. Now death must be clean and leave no trace. Hygiene and nothingness are now synonyms.
