Empire of Light (19 page)

It’s at this point that I finally notice the mural.

“Damn,” I whisper to myself.

It’s massive. The damn thing encircles the entire lecture room, which is the size of a small gymnasium.

In order to frame one wall, I’d have to stand in the very center of the goddamn room, which is currently occupied by a group of very stressed out Italian teens. So I can either go to the middle of the room, become the center of attention, and get the job out of the way in four shots. Or I can stay on the perimeter, on the sidelines, and expend multiple shots on each wall. With the size of my lens, I’m guessing five shots for each wall. Five shots times four walls, that’s twenty seperate pictures I have to take. What I thought was going to be a snapshot has become a logistics nightmare.

After a few tense seconds of discussion, Holofernes turns to me and gives the thumbs up. He walks up to me and places his massive meat-hand on my shoulder.

“We’re in. You take your pictures. Be quiet. Be fast. Go.”

Stay quiet. Nice advice, Mr. Cray Supercomputer. The last thing I want to do is draw attention to myself.

Say, I wonder how long my sneakers have been squeaking like this? Squeaky sneakers are something you never notice until you have to sneak past a cave full of sleeping wolves, or a classroom full of anxious students sweating out an exam.

Same difference.

Between the shoes and the noise of my camera, I’m sure I’m now the most annoying person these three hundred souls have ever encountered.

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak... Click! Whiiirrrr!

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak... Click! Whiiirrrr!

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak... Click! Whiiirrrr!

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak... Click! Whiiirrrr!

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak... Click! Whiiirrrr!

That’s one wall done.

It’s amazing how screwed I am.

I look at the instructor who glares daggers at me. To hell with this. I didn’t sign on for this kind of stress. I abandon the other three walls and walk back to Holofernes.

“Okay, I’m finished now. Let’s get out of here.”

Holofernes halts me by delicately resting his five fingertips onto my chest, as if he’s poised to tear out my heart.

“Are you sure?” he asks quietly, peering into my eyes.

“Look, I just want to get out of these people’s way.”

“Screw these brats!” he shouts in a whisper. “We’re all in this room with a job to do. They’re not gonna let you stop them from doing their job. Why in the hell are you going to let them stop you from doing yours? Are you any less of a man than them?”

It’s at this moment that I realize that I had it all wrong. I realize that this guy is
not
Holofernes.

“
Come si chiama?”
I ask, wondering what his name is.

“
Mi chiamo, Judah.”

Judah? Damn. This guy is
Judith
.

It may be a man’s body but it embodies Judith’s spirit, her will and her power to stir the courage in others.

“Enough with the nickel a dime bullshit. If you want a quicker exit, then take a more aggressive tack,” says Judah.

“If I go to the center of the room I could finish in four shots instead of twenty,” I say.

“Good. Do it! You get your shots and then go home.”

Like a man on a mission, I head for the center of the room, but still cautious, twisting and turning, trying not to bump a desk.

I fail.

“
Idiota
!” a student calls me after I brush against his arm, causing his pencil to streak across his page.

“Okay. Basta!” the instructor screams.

“Look,” I screech at her. “You think I want to be in this room? I’m on fucking
vacation
! I didn’t come 6,000 miles to hang around a bunch of stressed assholes. I could get that in Cleveland, for Christ’s sake! Let me get just four shots of these walls, and I’ll get the hell out of here. Please!”

She looks at me like I’m crazy.

“She doesn’t understand English,” snickers Judah.

“Oh. Would you mind translating for me, please?”

“
Certo
,” Judah says with a grin.

As Judah translates my rant, I calmly take the first shot with my trusty little point and shoot.

Click!

I turn 90 degrees to my left. Take my second shot.

Click!

I turn another 90 degrees. My third shot.

Click!

I turn for the final shot and face this cute babe wearing a ponytail and a delicious slathering of pink lip-gloss. She smiles at me.

Click!

And after taking her picture I get the last shot of the remaining the wall.

Click!

I’m done.

“Eh!” Screams the instructor as she points an accusatory finger at me.
“Hai fatto
cinque
satti.
You take me
five
shots. Not you do four!” she says, butchering
my
native language.

“Your English sucks,” I say.

The students—the ones that understand English—laugh.

As we exit the room, Judah and I wave and mouthe “
grazie
” to the instructor. She glares back at us like we just set a litter of kittens on fire.

Back in the hall, the two guards look proud of themselves, smirking as they gaze down at me.
We really came through for you. Right?

“Thanks, fellas. I’ll let you two get back to your work, now.”

“Wait!” Judah slaps his forehead as if he’s just had an epiphany. “I have the artist’s email.”

“What?” I ask.

“The artist who painted the mural. Come on. I give it to you.”

Now, I could really give less than a damn about this artist’s email, but Judah seems intent on helping me more. I follow him to the admin office where he digs into a file cabinet and pulls out a big brochure about the artist.

On the front of the brochure is the artist’s name and email address, like he said.

Wonderful. Whatever. But when I open the brochure I’m shocked at what I see.

“Dude, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I moan.

The brochure folds out and displays an absolutely perfect 360 degree photograph of the entire mural.

I’m pissed.

“Dude! What the hell? Why didn’t you just give me this in the first place? This is exactly what I wanted!”

The two guards laugh at me.

“No, seriously! This whole thing was totally unnecessary. What is wrong with you people?”

Judah laughs harder as he lights up a cigarette and pats me on the back.

“Let’s go, my friend,” he says, laying his paw on my shoulder and escorting me back downstairs, my jaw hanging slack. We reach the exit, and I’m all but ready to get the hell out of there and back to my vacation.

“Okay. Well, thanks again. I’ll see you around, Judah,” I say, holding my hand out for a shake.

He grabs my hand like a vice and won’t let go.

“Do me one favor before you go. You owe me. You do this for me,” he says with a big smile, leaning awkwardly into my personal space.

“Um, Okay. But…”

Before I can finish my sentence, Judah throws down my hand and runs into his office.

He returns with a big ass CD Boom Box on his shoulder like he’s from 1984.

“You do Crip Dance with me! Come on! We do Crip Walk
together
!”

Okay, my jaws are now tight with anger, but this time I’m pissed at myself.

Lord help me, but I actually know how to Crip Walk.

There’s nothing worse than validating a stereotype.

Nothing.

“Damn it. Okay, fine. Let’s do this.”

Here’s the deal, Crip Walking is not a dance for everybody. It’s no joke. It’s not something you’d see the kids doing on MTV’s New Years Eve Party. Only members of the Crips gang are allowed to perform it and a civilian could easily find himself with a bullet lodged in his ass if he’s caught performing it. Either a Blood will shoot you because he thinks you’re a Crip, or a Crip will shoot you for you’re perpetrating a fraud.

Crip Walking is a sophisticated means of communication that could convey insults or signal an attack, but more than anything, it’s used to convey love and loyalty to your brothers.

“Walk with me,” says Judah.

So the question you should be asking yourself is how come an upstanding young black man from the suburbs knows how to perform this dance. I was young and all the elements were in place for a knucklehead to learn something as dangerous as C-Walking.

Fifteen years old and stupid.

Parents out of town.

Xzibit’s
Get Your Walk
music video saved on the DVR.

A surplus of Mom’s Arbor Mist wine coolers in the garage fridge.

Judah drags me outside the building where there are now tons of students milling about and he slaps the play button on the boom box.

“Yeah, let’s do this nigga!” he screams.

Did that fool just call me
nigga
?

A monster beat blares from the box,
Bow Down
by the Westside Connection and Ice Cube.

To the students’ delight, Judah the security guard and I begin to bounce about the sidewalk, nimbly executing the complex heel-toe footwork and flashing West Coast Crip gang signs like a couple of idiots, urged on by Ice Cube’s boastful rhymes.

I’m both shocked and jazzed at seeing this white, six-foot Italian getting down with the gangland hop. You know an element of inner-city culture is dying when a suburban kid masters one of its dances in the basement of his parents’ $200,000 Colonial home. However, when a white Italian rent-a-cop is getting down with it, stick a fork in that sucker, it’s done. At this point, I realize that Crip Dancing is only about three years from being in a Coke commercial.

But, for now, here in Rome, the dance is making me the man. University of Rome students surround me and are bouncing their heads en mass to the beat. They think they are witnessing authentic American gangland culture, and who am I to kill their buzz? I’ve never felt so at the center of anything, and I love it.

Life in this town is about being aggressive.

Come the next Caravaggio targeted on my list, I think I’ll bring a little more
Cube
to the table.

14 

Feed the Box of Light & See Miracles

Painting 6: Saint Matthew and the Angel

Painting 7: The Calling of Saint Matthew

Painting 8: The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew

I’M STANDING ON HALLOWED 
ground. My jaw goes slack as I look up at the sign hovering above me.

Chiesa S. Luigi Dei Francesi - Dipinti Del Caravaggio (1598 – 1601)

It says,
Saint Luis of The French Church - Paintings by Caravaggio.
The American sports equivalent of this sign would probably be read like this…

Yankee Stadium -The House That Ruth Built (1920 – 1934)

It was some time in the early 70s when Vittorio Storaro wandered into this church and saw three Baroque masterpieces for the very first time.

Saint Matthew and the Angel

The Calling of Saint Matthew

The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew.

Vittorio had just messed around and discovered Caravaggio.

This is ground zero.

It’s the birthplace of the religion of light.

It’s Mecca.

As far as the AFI Bourgeois Pig set is concerned, this church is hallowed ground; the very spot where the Gospel of Don Vittorio was born.

Bow the hell down!

I dash inside the church and find the three paintings. After standing there in awe for a few minutes, I rip my sketchbook out of my bag. I sharpen my pencil and flip to a pristine white sheet of paper.

It’s a bit dark. I look to my right and discover the light box. It’s on a timer, like a lot of lights you find in church altars, but this one has a Euro symbol emblazoned upon it.

Wow. A coin operated light box. Is there nothing that kills a spiritual buzz quicker than a collection plate? I gaze at the light box, and I swear it begins to talk to me, like the burning bush to Moses.