FLORENCE in 2245

Cue (NZERS), Issue 37, 15 December 1945, Page 34

FLORENCE in 2245

THE Vandenburgs’ private'helicopter touched down lightly on the flat roof of the Hotel Minerva, and Senator and Mrs Vandenburg, with the two horribly precocious little Vandenburgs trailing behind them, descended with exclamations of delight that they had at last achieved their cultural Mecca. “Say, Sadie,” cried the worthy Senator, “this is sure swell.” Then, as they descended into the hotel he turned to the porter. “Is it true,” he said, “that this is the actual hotel occupied by the Kiwis during the last Great War but seven?”

“Oh yes, Signor,” replied the porter, “this was Headquarters. In fact it was A B Mess.”

“Still looks a b—mess to me,” snorted the Senator. “Haven’t you redecorated since then?”

“No sir. This now national monument. Nothing touched. Very antique, very interesting. General’s bed reserved special for you. Only thousand lira extra.”

Flattered by this kindly attention, the Senator soon unpacked, and in a few minutes the family were on their way, their Baedekers in their hands.

“Wanna see the Bailey” cried Dwightia Vandenburg. She was named after the old-time general, a distant ancestor of the Vandenburgs. “Wanna see the Bailey” she repeated. “It’s got two stars in Baedeker. Must be a cracker.”

“All right”, agreed the Senator as they set out riverwards,

Coming to the Arno they stopped thunderstruck by the beauty of the

ancient Bailey bridge, whose lovely wrought steel span spoke of a time when craftsmen plied their trade in the old unhurried way, creating things of beauty that could stand the test of time.

Passing finally over the time-mellowed footway of this masterpiece, they made their way to the Pitti Palace, where an exhibition of Epstein’s sculpture, and Picasso’s paintings, with a room devoted to Salvador Dali’s surrealist works, was on view. Even the odious little Dwightia and the repellent Horace were hushed by the sheer lyrical beauty of Epstein’s Genesis. They went on to drink in the mellow romantic appeal of Picasso, though they were less taken with the rather photographic realism of Salvador Dali, whose “Horse speaking unto a Melting Telephone,” though acclaimed as the acknowledged peak of early XXth century art, seemed perhaps a little obvious in theme. But in general their feelings were well expressed by Mrs. Vandenburg.

“I’d give all our new-fangled meaningless modern art for just one of these beautiful things,” she cried. Her bosom palpitated with the exquisite emotion of a tourist at the goal, but after three or four short palps settled down before anything shook loose. Sadie was too well-drilled to spend over long an anything in this rapid modern world.

“Say, Hiram” she said, “we’ve spent fourteen minutes here already, and we’d only allowed twelve and a-half in our schedule. Lets get cracking.”

So on they went, to stop admiringly at a lovely block of reinforced concrete flats.

“Look at the proportions of that building,” droned Hiram.

“I guess they don’t build like that any more. That pre-atomic architecture certainly had something, though it must have felt awfully risky living right out in the open like that. Don’t know that I don’t prefer our cosy little home under 100 feet of solid rock.”

“Daddy,” squealed Dwightia, “did people really live right spang out on the surface like that, with a bomb liable to just melt them up any time at all?”

“Yes, dear,” replied the Senator, “but you see, they hadn’t invented the uranio-radio-selenio bomb in those days and unless a bomb landed right on you you were pretty safe. And as long as you lived near the railway station you were alright. The bombs usually missed them by a mile or two. Precision bombing they used to call it in our pre-atomic air-force. Just an example of how word-meanings change in the course of two or three hundred years.”

He was going, on, but a warning “Hiram” from Sadie pulled him up short. The poor man, an ex-school-tea-

cher, was apt to forget his family were not a class. The family didn’t forget. “Pop,” said Horace, “Wanna coke.” So they stopped at the Magazzino Nero for a couple of pepsicolas each. This cost them two cigarettes and an old pair of socks, for shopping in Florence was still conducted on the quaint old principles instituted by the Cheewees, as the Florentines always called their one-time liberators. Money had never really regained its popularity since 1945 and many Florentine houses were still papered with attractive designs in AML notes.

The climax of the tour for Senator Vandenburg, an ardent book-collec-tor, came when, in a bookshop in the Via del Moro, he acquired a genuine first edition of “The Saga of Herbert Simkins” for a dress shirt and a pair of sock suspenders. This rare collector’s item, worth at least five thousand dollars in the States, filled him with glee. He was about to hurry back to his Hotel to put it in the safe when unfortunately Portugal, having decided to declare war on Uruguay, dropped an entirely new sort of atomic bomb, which disintegrated the whole globe, including Senator Vandenburg, Sadie, Dwightia and little Horace. And thereafter there was peace.