The Third Person

I paid the entrance fee, peeling off more notes from my thinning bundle, and was allowed through a clicking turnstile onto a stone walkway, overlooking the skeletal, overgrown remains of the Colosseum’s guts. It was like looking into an old beehive, with most of the middle scooped out to reveal the layers of honeycombs inside: a husk of a place. A great ellipse of stone terraces curled around the central floor of the arena, which had been stripped away over time to uncover underground cells, tunnels and passageways. Grass was stuttering out of the rock. Nature seemed to be reclaiming the place, even as it was being branded, franchised and hollowed out: robbed of its original meaning even as it was traded on. And all the time, the sun was pressing down hard upon it, like a hot amber palm. Tourists were taking whirring, flashing snapshots. There was the trudge of feet, and the sucking, scratching sound of bored straws exploring the bottom of cardboard cartons.

Half the people in the world: if you told them to take a pilgrimage to a public toilet, they would – cameras and fat fucking children and all. The other half would go and daub graffiti on it when they thought nobody was looking. And all of them would imagine it meant something.

I found a place by the barrier and slid my backpack off with a mixture of relief and revulsion. The air – although warm – instantly chilled the back of my T-shirt, which had been stained beige by a mixture of sweat and dust. At least I was clean. The night before, I’d bedded down at a campsite two bus journeys out of the city centre, and I’d managed to get a shower and tidy that morning. But I’d last washed a T-shirt a few weeks ago, if you could call that a wash: standing at a dirty outdoor sink, squinting in the sun, mashing it up in grey, foamy water.

Now, uncaring of my appearance, I unclipped the side pocket of the backpack and drew out my notebook. The stone barrier, although rough on my elbows, provided a good place to lean as I took the top off the pen, opened the notepad at the scribble page and tested the nib with a few blue curls of ink. It was working fine. I flipped back to the first free page in the pad.

And then I looked up at the Colosseum – which had once held fifty thousand Romans, screaming for blood – and I started to write.

‘Impressive piece, isn’t it?’

I turned away from the picture to see Walter Hughes, moving into the room. Once again, I was surprised by how easily he got around for such an old man – carrying his cane with a swing, like some kind of dapper toff, but not really requiring it. His bodyguard followed him in, closing the door behind. I wondered if he’d gone to a school where they taught you to do that. Not really.

Hughes poured himself a brandy, or whatever the fuck it was.

‘In fact, it’s one of my favourites. Would you like a drink?’

‘No,’ I said, feeling confused. ‘What the hell is that?’

I looked at the writing again. When I didn’t try to take in the words, it just seemed like a sheet of paper with some text scrawled upon it. But the moment my eye caught a sentence and started to follow it, my head was filled with images of the Colosseum. The heat on my skin and the sweat on my back. Hughes moved over beside me, appraising the picture. I forced myself to look at him instead, but he remained focused on the writing.

‘I particularly like this bit, here.’ He gestured with his drinks hand; the brandy rocked in the glass. ‘The attention to detail.’

I looked where he was pointing, and could immediately see a fuzzy spray of red graffiti over rough brown rock. The right-hand side of my face felt warm, and I could hear somebody saying something in Italian behind me.

Hughes’ voice pulled me back into the study.

‘The graffiti adds such an unexpected element, don’t you think? There’s contrast between the old building and the new shops – obviously – and then somewhere in-between you have this graffiti. This vandalism of both, with the youth of the city claiming the space as their own. I find it poetic.’

I didn’t say anything; I just looked at him. He was one of those men who looked thoughtful by looking blank.

After a second, he turned to me and smiled.

‘You’ve never seen anything like this before, I take it?’

I shook my head.

‘What is it?’

‘Come and sit down.’

He gestured over to the seats in the centre of the room, and we moved across. Before I could sit down, however, he picked up a towel from the side of the nearest chair, unfolded it and laid it out over my seat.

‘There.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. I’d never realised that my ass was potentially that damaging.

‘You’re sure you won’t have a drink?’

‘No. Thanks anyway.’

I glanced back over at the picture, almost nervously, and saw Hughes smile, his face creasing quickly from one position to the other.

‘You’re stunned, aren’t you? Obviously, you are. It happened to me the first time I encountered his work. I have been addicted ever since.’

Summing things up to perfection for once, I said:

‘I don’t understand what just happened.’