Rome was built on seven hills and St. Stephen’s International School, where I taught for seven years, was built on the Aventine Hill. Diagonally across the street was the Circo Massimo, the Palatine Hill and Roman Forum. A block further up loomed the vast ancient baths of Caracalla and the Coliseo. Our school was next door to the United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and most of the parents of our students were UN employees. St. Stephen’s curriculum is offered in English and awards the International Baccalaureate Diploma. The school had formerly been a red brick and stone monastery and was the perfect size for our 220 students grades 9 through 12.
Up the via Aventina to our left was a bank, dress shop, and a gourmet delicatessen. Next door to that was a florist, and then a fruit and veg store. On the corner was a tabaccaio which sold smokes, stamps, bus and metro tickets and cheap toys. Across the road from school was a kiosk for newspapers and magazines, a hair salon, a café-bar, an optician, a dry cleaner, a shoe store, a pharmacy, a fine restaurant and, on the corner, a full-service petrol station.
Within the ancient walls, Rome is a compact village dotted with various architectural ruins and churches. I could walk the walled city in an afternoon, past the Piazza Venezia, down the via Corso window shopping and up the via Condotti to the Spanish Steps. There I could sit at a sidewalk café and people watch under a dark blue Mediterranean sky amongst Romans who always looked casually stylish behind designer sunglasses. On these walks I would inevitably run into parents, colleagues and students from school. One could not be anonymous in Rome!
Our first two years in Rome my husband, a physics teacher, and I, English and IB Coordinator, lived in an apartment within the school. We were dorm parents to the 36 boarding students whose FAO parents had been transferred out of Rome before their children had completed their final two years of the IB Diploma.
We had come to Rome after four years teaching in Athens, Greece and just before our move, my husband had had emergency heart surgery in Athens, but had recovered well under the care of an Italian cardiologist. As the term was winding down toward the Christmas holiday, the neighborhood reflected the coming celebration with lights, garlands and bows over doorways, and pyramids of boxed panettone and baskets of torrone nougat. My husband and I were preparing to drive up to Switzerland to celebrate Christmas and ski
with friends. Beginning the packing process, I crossed via Aventina to pick up some dry cleaning. As usual after classes, students were sitting at the sidewalk tables of the café having cappuccino and socializing.
Crossing the cobblestone road, I looked to the left to make sure I had time to get across. At that moment a black Pontiac Firebird careened past the oncoming cars. I remember the roar of tires on the cobbles and seeing bugs on the grill before I was hit. I flew up in the air, my head cracking the windshield before I slid to the ground, unconscious. The horrified students witnessing the event, ran into school screaming that I had been killed by a car. By the time my husband arrived on the scene, I was being loaded into an ambulance. My husband’s shocked face leaned close to mine and he whispered, “You’re not supposed to die first; I am.” I was just coming to and mumbled, “Salvatore. Salvatore,” before lapsing back into darkness. I ended up at San Giovanni hospital; there my legs were x-rayed to ascertain that nothing was broken. I kept saying, “Mia testa,” trying to point out that it was my head that was injured. Finally, the technician took a scan of my head and found a mild concussion. The young driver of the Firebird entered the hospital room crying; he had a black eye. I told him I was fine and asked if he had hit the steering wheel. “Non, non. Futbol,” he explained touching his swollen eye. Some of my American colleagues encouraged me to sue, but I had no desire to go that route. The young man had had the fright of his life and had learned a valuable lesson. Later that night I checked myself out of the hospital and took a taxi back to school to continue my dorm duties and reassure the students that “rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated” (Mark Twain).
Days later, the school was shut for the holiday; my husband and I were packing our car for the trip north when he looked solemnly into my eyes, “Mollie, who is Salvatore?” He obviously thought I was calling out to a lover with my dying breath. Knowing what he had been up to with our young French teacher, I should have let him think that I had a liaison with a hot Italian named Salvatore. Instead, I touched his arm and replied, “Salvatore Mundi Ospedale; I wanted to be taken to the private Catholic hospital.” He looked sheepishly relieved.
From then on, in the neighborhood, I was referred to as La donna bionica, for the miracle of my survival.
The Cortile