From the Fire Hills

Santa Maria in Trastevere

57 SANTA MARIA IN TRASTEVERE He tries to conjure Mary in the glittering mosaic, her face a hundred tiles, stars in the firmament of the apse. A halo, maybe. He thinks of a simple courtyard barred with iron. All the fastidious looking after a church like that must see. Even the scent he almost musters: toasted almond, cedar. When he tells his wife, continents away, he’s going to Santa Maria in Trastevere for the first time, she tells him he’s been there, with her, twice. He doesn’t know what awaits him in the church he’s already seen, in treacherous Trastevere, a name which simply means Across the Tiber, a ten-minute walk from his rented room, down streets he knows, toward the bright waters of lapis lazuli he hopes will surround him, in the church he has imagined, across the river. ...