Speak of the Devil

It's amazing how Rome celebrates its ruins.

I'm in Hotel Forum, where Raffi's bar really exists and where I have a reading of the Rome chapter of the novel.

Outside, the white marble columns of the decaying Roman Forum jump out of the darkness beside the silhouettes of palm trees. Traffic lights flash around the Colosseum. This may really be the most exciting place on earth where 'then' slides so easily in and through our sense of 'now.'

The hotel staff has set up a reading of The Boston Castrato in the luxuriant lobby of the hotel, where the story has lain in wait for me. Raffi mixing martinis. The allupata Stefania.



When I approach a banner of the novel's cover before the reading, the concierge comes over, motions me closer, and whispers, "Sir, did you know there is an Italian word castrato, too?" He's concerned for me and would like to save me from embarrassment. When I say yes, he says, "But...sir, do you know what it means, in Italian?" He looks to his left and his right. Then he shoots his left forearm in front of his waist and makes three quick cutting motions from left to right with his other hand--whisk, whisk, whisk.

But when he listens to the story, he understands the fable and it's all right. Interesting people have floated into the lobby to hear, including a woman at seminary school and a music executive who's worked with Judy Collins and Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

When it's over, I indulge in one of Raffi's magic martinis: "Ice cold gin, a whisper of vermouth, and a single, lusciously pendulous caper berry." I ask the bartender how long he's been at the Forum.

"Eleven years."

I start to speak, then stop. Finally I blurt it out. "There was a person who worked at the bar before you. It was about 18 years ago." In fact he looked like a pocket Rutger Hauer–a flash of lightning-blond hair standing up in a scary way. It was like Marlon Brando's disturbing blond hair in The Young Lions. "Do you know who he was, or have you ever heard someone speak of him?"

My wife and I were traveling with our dear friend Johanna, and back then we sensed something pass wordlessly between Johanna and this bartender of 'before."

"What was that?" I asked Johanna.

She smiled and looked down. "It's nothing. It's just...we're both Germans."

I asked a thousand follow-up questions, but she wasn't talking. Mysterious people seem so relaxed in their mysteries. Johanna died two years ago, of MS. We miss her terribly.

"I think he was German," I say to our 'new' bartender. "Have you ever heard of anyone like that?"

"There was no German here before me," he said. "No." He disappeared into a little side room to check out his inventory. Maybe it was where he kept the rarest vintages. I hadn't seen this little side door before. Five minutes later, he came back.

"Unless you're talking about Fausto," he said. "His nickname was Faustino."