On the rooftops of Rome

Oh, yes, it’s ever salutary to be traveling with a literature professor of over 20 years. "Ma’m Beni," a.k.a. Dr. Benilda Santos, Chair of the Filipino Department of Ateneo de Manila University, can call her marks anywhere in the world. She recounts how once in Manhattan she heard a call from across the street, "Ma’m Beni! Ma’m Beni!" Turned out to be a former student, who proved all too happy to show her around.

I was reminded of how some weeks back, while passing the time at the smoking section of the Davao airport with the distinguished Dr. Gémino H. Abad, University Professor no less at U.P. Diliman, a lady turned around in her seat at the sound of his voice, and shyly proceeded to introduce herself as a former student in an English composition class.

Jimmy Abad subsequently confessed that he couldn’t recall her at all. But such was the lady’s delight in recognizing an old mentor (well, in Jimmy’s case he hardly looks it) that despite her initial diffidence she managed to exult before his smiling Peter Pan mien: "Sir, you haven’t changed at all. You look exactly as you did 20 (or 30) years ago." Now, I suppose that’s the height of compliment, however unintentionally fulsome.

In Ma’m Beni’s case, it was her turn to express her delight in finding out that former students now boarded with the Jesuits in Rome. That was where Benilda and I found ourselves for six days starting Monday, November 5, as part of a Cultural Diplomacy lecture/reading tour of three European countries. Sponsored by the NCCA (National Commission on Culture & the Arts), the 18-day swing through Italy, Belgium and the United Kingdom had us delivering talks on contemporary Philipine literature before mixed audiences of European students, lit faculty, diplomats and the typically ubiquitous Filipino/a.

Foremost poet in Filipino Virgilio S. Almario, a.k.a. Rio Alma, was supposed to complete our threesome. But he took sick at the last hour, and only managed to join up for the second leg, in Belgium. So Beni and I had to carry the national cum Ignatian colors throughout the first week in Rome.

And that was where Dr. Santos’s Jesuit connections immediately installed us under the aegis of the Roman gods of benevolence, warm hospitality, and occasional sunshine.

The gracious and effervescent Ambassador Philippe Lhuillier had arranged for us to stay at a nunnery. Uhh, make that the Casa per ferie "S. Coure" of the Suore Francescane dei Sacre Cuori managed by Franciscan sisters, mostly Filipino, at the Domus Pacis compound on Via di Torre Rossa. Beni and I were "pilgrims" entitled to single rooms with private baths, free breakfast, and all the fine cappuccino that could be summoned automatically from an impressive coffee machine at the refectory.

Sister Carmelina led the Filipina nuns in attending to all our needs, including being urged to reach out for more oven-fresh bread and a variety of fruits in the morning, and, at least once, the starter pasta, grilled veal chops, so very sweet peas, and steamed milagrosa rice that composed a fine lunch.

The expansive grounds were well maintained, with a row of stately poplars lining the driveway, and several clementine trees fruiting lushly in time for impending winter. At seven in the morning, we would wake to mellifluous bells playing Ave Maria from another religious compound close by.

The only downside, if at all, was a 10:30 p.m. curfew that was eventually rescinded on the strength of an official communication from the ambassador attesting to the need for our presence at consecutive formal dinners. But naturally these would lead to further manifestations of the Eternal City’s extravagant night life.

Otherwise we were fetched daily by an embassy driver for our lectures – the first at the University of Rome’s "La Sapienza" (Wisdom) campus, the second at the Pontifico Collegio Filipino – and take uncommonly early dinners tendered by the very friendly and extra-efficient Consul General Ellen Jaucian and Consul Margie Ibayan, before being deposited back to the comforting solicitousness of the nuns from the Visayas and Mindanao.

The same good sisters took the trouble of contacting Fr. Jose Quilongquilong, S.J., who turned out to have been a former student of Beni’s at the Ateneo. The very next morning heralding a free day, Fr. Joe came to fetch us for a memorable full day’s tour of the Vatican grounds and buildings, including areas that were off-limits for tourists.

Principal of these was the Jesuit Curia that overlooked Piazza San Pietro, on the elegant rooftop of which we drew a bead on the Basilica and the Pope’s very quarters just across the square.

As an earnest xenagogue, Fr. Joe proved formidable with his knowledge of the Vatican’s, and Rome’s, private byways and secret lifts, entry to which were attended by remarkable historical data he verbally provided. His prodigious memory certainly enhanced each turn of gaze or awestruck stare at an item or institution of antiquity.

On that first rooftop we enjoyed an exhilarating view of the Vatican grounds and central Rome beyond the River Tiber, with all those towers and spires accenting the marvelous panorama. Below us, by the foot of a hill, lay a low rectangular building in faded lemon yellow, which Fr. Joey pointed out as the Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu (AHSI). Founded by the Jesuits in 1932, the archives held a treasure trove of Filipiniana in Latin and Spanish, among many important documents.

Fr. Joe, who’s completing studies to gain a Ph.D. in Theosophy, recounted how he had unearthed an interesting story about a Boholano lad who had served as an assistant to Jesuit missionaries in the late 16th century.

The mentors were so impressed by his exemplary conduct that they wrote up his life story to serve as a model for edifying Spanish students in Madrid.

Then there was Pedro de Chirino’s second volume of writings on the Philippines, discovered only ten years ago, and which remained untranslated from Spanish, in which language alone it has been published as a sequel to the historic first volume.

To hear Fr. Joe tell it, the Filipiniana materials in the archives have barely been uncovered by Filipino scholars, historians and researchers.

Oh, except for Fr. Miguel Bernad who had visited last May.

Later toward evening, the high point of the guided tour turned out to be the awesome interiors of the Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Here the architect Grassi and the painter-muralist Pozzo had collaborated on a magnificent ceiling with a majestic trompe l’oeil. With funds running short for the completion of the dome above the altar, the ingenious Pozzo, whose friezes on the lower walls featured commanding figures that seemed to project in 3-D toward any viewer below, fashioned out a feigned cupola that continues to elicit wonder to this day.

Fr. Joe steered us to a standing position on the very center of the church, marked by a red star in marble. From this spot, one gazed upward, all too vertiginously, to behold what appeared to be an inifinitely ascending cupola in the middle of the dome. Several steps forward toward the altar, however, this view was significantly altered. The trick had been played on the viewer; the domed ceiling was false. Having been painted on a flat ceiling, its cupola was now exposed at extreme off-center.

Fronting the church was Piazza Minerva before the Sienna chapel, where an Egyptian obelisk stood on a curious pedestal carved by the famous baroque sculptor Bernini, in the form of an intricately shaped elephant.

The story goes that Bernini felt much beholden to the Jesuits, such that he always featured Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier in his friezes, and never charged the Society for his architectural and design services. But that when commissioned by the Dominicans to help build their curia, Bernini made sure to ask for an arm and a leg. Worse, as if to declare his own sympathy for the Vatican’s view that the Dominicans only ruled the roost when it came to political intrigues, Bernini made sure to place his elephant so that its rump would greet any viewer from the Dominican building’s windows and balconies.

Laughing heartily, Beni and I placed our trust on a Jesuit’s dismissal of possible apocrypha, and had our photos taken before Bernini’s insolent elephant. Some minutes later we found ourselves standing on yet another private rooftop, that of the Collegio Bellarmino where Fr. Joe stays with a couple of other Filipino Jesuit scholars.

The charming Fr. Badge Urara, also a former student of Beni’s at the Ateneo, joined us for dinner at the refectory, where Jesuits of several nationalities gathered for meals in the 150-room residence. They complained jestingly of the freshly arrived Mexican nuns who had been doing the execrable cooking of late. Their complaints must be valid, we remarked, when Fr. Urara brought out a microwave-heated dish of adobo to complement the communal tables’s varied offerings.

Such was the marvelous free day we spent with Fr. Joe Quilongquilong.

For our first lecture at "La Sapienza," attended by over 80 students and faculty at the Odeon amphitheater, Beni and I agreed to halve the chores and still manage to include Rio Alma’s scheduled overview on Philippine culture. I read Rio’s text that accompanied the slide projection on various facets of our indigenous culture as prepared by the NCCA, after which I segued to my own prepared lecture on Philippine contemporary literature in English, inclusive of the increasing dynamism of expatriate Philippine literature. In turn did Beni conduct her lecture on Philippine contemporary literarure in Filipino, with particular focus on Women’s Writing, essentially poetry.

To say that our lectures were well-received would be to mount our own pedestal, if not improperly dismiss any possible allegations of apocrypha.

Suffice it to say that the bright faces of deepening interest among the audience – with a good number of the students taking careful notes – supported the Philippine embassy staff’s appraisal that we had driven home, at the University of Rome, a significant point of pride with regards our culture and literature.

Toward the end of my hour’s talk, I had occasion to give a sample reading of three poems, the first two by Cirilo Bautista, written after a visit to Italy. These were "Among the Fountains of Villa d’Este" (with the terrific opening line: "As if he owned the ocean.") and "Capri Amore" ("I stand on the mountain of Capri and say/"Collect, I am yours to kill!’ If death/ ends all, let it begin, but with a fluorish,/ spume and spray bathing the sun in solid/ sorcery, from the coast of Sorrento/ to the bay of birds ....") It was enough to stoke topical empathy from the majority of Italians in the audience.

These poems I followed up with a reading of my own appropriate offering, "The Italian Translator Who Bequeathed His Grappa" – about how Ubaldo Stecconi who "once upon a time made U.P. Diliman/ a much nicer and more intelligent/ place ..." had allowed the guests at his despedida party to cart off all the unconsumed bottles of alcohol. The poem closes thus:

"First you turn our words into/ e-ter-ni-ta for feeding the lions./ Then you drink us to la dolce vita./ Grazie, grazie for the grappa."

That ensured some degree of mirthful acceptance, occasioning me then to produce and wave aloft a copy of a softcover book printed in Milan in 1999, titled Balikbayan: Raconti filippini contemporanei. The book, I explained, anthologized ten short stories written originally in English by Filipino writers, as translated by Stecconi into Italian. I wound up my turn at the dais with a reading of the opening and closing paragraphs of my story "A Balikbayan Christmas," which had been translated into "Un Natale Da Balikbayan."

Earlier in the day, I had asked Sister Carmelita to listen to my best Roberto Benigni imitation of the rhythmic rise and fall in accent, aware as I was of the pitfalls of pronouncing certain words and phrases well beyond my comprehension. After correcting a few slips, the good sister led me to the Mother Superior, an Italian, who gamely sat up on her bed to listen patiently to my comic efforts. Thus did I come to the fateful hour at the university confident that I had properly marked the stresses in such lines as "Sette anni a Las Vegas come croupier avevano finalmente dati quelche frutto, e che bei cocomeri ce erano."

"Co-CO-meri," Mother Superior had corrected on the term for watermelon.

So that as I concluded the excerpts, with "Adesso non vedo l’ora di vedere Brenda, quella dei co-CO-meri, ... quando mi esce ancora un Tris di Sette dopo che mi sono fatto i co-CO-meri." – I had the studentry in stitches over the reference to the Pinoy croupier in Vegas dating a blonde Brenda of the watermelon breasts.

A little more serious was our next lecture, conducted for some diplomat-friends of Amb. Lhuillier and a predominantly Filipino crowd at the Collegio Filipino run by our priest-scholars. This, too, merited appreciation, and countless requests for photo-op poses with the Filipinas in attendance.

Rendering musical numbers in between our lectures was a pair of musical prodigies on a fresh, five-year scholarship granted by Amb. Lhuillier. The 19-year-old coloratura soprano Dianne Arguilla did us all proud with her powerful voice that belied a slim frame. She was accompanied on the piano by 20-year-old Jourdan Petalver, with whom she had earlier visited Rome as part of a young musicians’ group from Manila. Both were virtually plucked from U.P. Diliman with the grant of scholarship at a conservatory in Rome.

Later that evening, to precede a formal dinner at the elegant Il Peristilio Ristorante in the company of a touring posse of Filipino congressmen, Amb. and Madame Lhuillier presented the duo once more, much to the delight of the opera-loving restaurant owners. Dianne sang Maalaala Mo Kaya, Ang Maya and Donizetti’s Vienni al mar, while Jourdan showcased keyboard artistry with a soulful rendition of Chopin’s Ballade in F. Major. Such young geniuses they were, and we were all honored by their music and company.

Our poetry could only half-aspire to such ascendancy of sublime art and spirit. But, oh well, someone had to do the job, this so-called cultural diplomacy, and Beni and I were only too glad to fit the bill for the season. So glad and enthused, in fact, that from Day One in autumnal Rome, we often thanked the skies, whether blue or grey, with a supplicant’s affirmation that soon became our slogan and battlecry for the entire tour: "Life is beautiful."

Indeed, whether we first sensed it flying out of NAIA I, or immediately upon landing at Fiumicino airport or in the bosom of hospitable nuns – well out of range of Manila or CNN news, or of the Washington Wizards’ losing streak – or while walking the streets of Florence for a glimpse of yet another magnificent D’Uomo, or riding on Bus No. 89 out of Via di Torre Rossi, or Bus No. 64 into the very heart of ancient Rome, indeed we felt that while in the service of the Filipino we could exult in a foreign clime: "Life Is Byoo-ti-ful!"

We would feel it even more strongly when Rio Almario eventually joined us at the university town of Leuven, Belgium. But as the Italians say, that’s another his-TO-ree.