SAN CLEMENTE

  It isn’t only Brits who talk funny, mind you.

       Mr. Los Angeles and I were on a trip to Rome, where we went one evening for a thoroughly delicious dinner at the apartment of my dear cousin Helen, a Londoner born and bred who has lived happily within spitting distance of the Tiber for most of her adult life.

Photo by Chris Czermak on Unsplash

       “What are you going to do tomorrow?” Helen asked after the meal had been enthusiastically consumed and suitable family news exchanged and commented on.

       “We thought we’d go to see San Clemente,” said Mr. Los Angeles, who is a history buff and likes to see a sight.

       Helen looked puzzled.

       “Go to see what?” she asked.

       “San Clemente,” repeated Mr. Los Angeles. “You know, the big church? It’s built on three levels from three different periods – there’s the 11th century part, there’s the 4th century part, and there’s the oldest part?”

       Mr. Los Angeles nodded his head approvingly. It is altogether possible that Mr. Los Angeles knows more about European history than do Helen and I put together.

       My Roman cousin Helen continued to look befuddled.

       “It goes back to the Roman Republic?” prompted Mr. Los Angeles. “It used to be a temple to Mithras and has a famous statue of him rising from the rock? San Clemente.”

       Helen shook her head. “I’ve never heard of San Clemente,” she said.

       We all began to laugh. It was always the tourists, we agreed, who taught the old hands new facts about their cities. Here was San Clemente, one of the most famous and popular sightseeing destinations in a city packed with famous and popular places to visit, and just imagine that in all the years Helen had lived there, she’d never even heard of it.

       “I can’t believe you don’t know San Clemente,” persisted Mr. Los Angeles. “You have, like a million people in your family, they’ve married into a million more, and it seems to me they’ve all of them come to visit you at some time or other. It seems weird that in all of those visits, not one of them has ever gone to see San Clemente.”

       “If they have, they haven’t told me about it,” said Helen.

       We began to laugh again. San Clemente, said Mr. Los Angeles, must surely be the best-kept secret in all of Rome if even Helen hadn’t heard of it.

       Maybe it was a plot, said Helen. Maybe there was something about this San Clemente place that nobody wanted her to know about.

       Maybe there was a prophecy, we speculated. Maybe it was foretold by the augurs of old that there was a light-haired woman from a northern land, who if she once set foot inside the ancient church would cause the immediate collapse of the entire Italian nation, the crumbling of the Dolomites, and, most disastrous of all, the dissolution of gli Azzurri. Maybe, we suggested, there was a longstanding government project which employed a group of locals to stand by on the street where the church was, and every time Helen happened to walk down it, they would spring into action to provide a distraction on the opposite side – a car accident, a fist fight, a political demonstration – so that in all the times Helen had passed by the church, she had been so engrossed in the excitement on the other side of the street that she’d never even noticed it was there at all.

       Maybe, said Mr. Los Angeles, who is extremely fond of my elegant and law-abiding cousin, it was simpler than a prophecy. Maybe the people at San Clemente were just worried Helen would steal their statue of Mithras.

       We all laughed some more.

       “But since we’re talking of San Clemente, Helen,” said Mr. Los Angeles, then, “maybe you can tell us the best way to get there from our hotel? I’ve been looking at the map and there seem to be a couple of different routes. Look here.”

       Like the good ol’ California boy he is, he called up the map of that portion of Rome on his cell phone and pointed his good ol’ California finger at the location.

       “It’s right there,” he said in his good ol’ California accent. “See where it says San Cluh-menny?”

       Helen looked at his phone, and her face cleared as it all became plain to her.

       “Oh!” she exclaimed in delighted comprehension. “You’re talking about San Clay-Main-Tay!”

       I said nothing, which I thought was pretty darned impressive of me.