Blue Bear_or the Impossibility of Anonymity

by Joseph Grady

  “What?”

  “Well, I smelled a lot of things, actually. But among others, I caught a very faint whiff of,” I pointed at her with my paw, “you.”

  “Of me? I haven’t been over there in months.”

  “Yep. Of you. So I dug around for a little while, and towards the bottom, I managed to pull out that green jacket, and,” I threw the black rain pants onto her bed next to the jacket, “these too.”

  “Blue Bear!” she said, curling herself up even tighter into her chair, “those pants have been worn by a murderer. They’ve got blood all over them. They’ve spent a week in a Roman dumpster — a dumpster that even you think smells bad. What the hell makes you think that I would want them on my bed?”

  I’ve definitely made some progress over the years, but I don’t think I’ll ever fully adjust to civilization. Why are there so many completely incoherent rules about what sorts of things can be placed next to other sorts of things? Okay. I get it. It’s true. In her defense, the dumpster did not smell great. I understand her confusion. But in my defense, the absolute best smelling thing in that dumpster was her rain jacket and pants. Any other normal creature would have taken it as a huge compliment if I had thrown those things on her bed. But modern humans, who have no sense of smell, have all these pretentious ideas about these things, so much so that they get all bent out of shape when more sophisticated souls behave rationally and try to express our admiration. I had been giving up my precious sleep to work my butt off all morning, and all she could do was scold me for not being human. Great. I’ll admit that I was a little bit offended. However, not offended enough to really make a scene. But despite that, I also knew I needed to gain some leverage in the conversation. So I rolled my eyes and sighed again. She realized that she had just broken one of those tacit rules of how our relationship would work.

  “Blue Bear, come here,” she reached out from her chair, grabbed onto me, and wheeled herself over to the middle of the room, where I was sitting, throwing her arms around my shoulder.

  I nudged her with my nose, in acceptance of the apology, and then shook her off of me. She kept her feet off the ground, and wheeled herself away from me by shaking her hips until the chair had jerked itself back to the spot in front of the desk.

  I had gained the moral high ground, so I pressed it to my advantage. “I mean, I guess the point is this. The last two days, you guys haven’t done anything. Okay, yeah, you’ve read the newspaper, you’ve re-read the interrogation transcript, you went to class, you’ve sat around thinking. That’s all something. Sure. But if we’re gonna figure out who did this, we’ve got to get active. We’ve got to start looking for stuff.”

  “Sure. But where do we start?”

  “We start with what we’ve got.”

  “A bloody jacket? Some random keys? What do you want me to do? Should I just walk around and try the keys on random locks?”

  “Somehow you’re still not in the papers,” I suggested. “If you are planning on walking around doing shady stuff like that, it’s probably better to do so sooner than later. If they ever do decide to publish something, people are going to recognize you.”

  Three different people in Rome were listed in the yellow pages under the name “Eugenio Galli.” Nobody with a Facebook account under that name lived anywhere near Rome. Sunday morning, a train carried Lucy to Gemelli hospital, where one of the Eugenio Galli’s was listed as a hematologist.

  At the front desk, assuming hematologists don’t work on Sundays, she asked the lady, “Buon giorno. Io sono una vecchia amica di un dottore ematologo che lavora qua. Stavo qua in giro e pensavo, magari ci sarebbe anche lui oggi. Sarebbe bello poter salutarlo.”79

  “Come si chiama?”80

  “Eugenio Galli.”81

  “Oggi, sì, c’è.”82

  The receptionist’s response at once verified that Dr. Galli was still alive — thus eliminating him as a candidate for the Eugenio Galli that Lucy was looking for — but also caught her unaware. She hadn’t been prepared to actually meet him.

  “Grazie,” she said with wide eyes, then turned and walked away.

  But the front desk lady yelled back after her, “Aspetta! Eccolo arrivare adesso.”83

  A young man in a white jacket turned the corner before she had a chance to escape. Lucy turned bright red, and backpedalled out of the lobby, explaining that she must have confused him for another friend of hers who was also an Italian hematologist named Eugenio Galli. It was always in moments like these that speaking Italian became difficult again. The doctor and receptionist both squinted at her, as she tried to find the right words, before she gave up, turned around and high tailed it out of the hospital.

  Another series of busses took her out to the residence of the second Eugenio Galli, on Via Nomentana. Both of the mystery keys found no success in opening the front door of the apartment building, so she puttered around outside until she got the chance to follow someone inside. The keys were equally useless on the door of the apartment itself. Not ready to give up, she put on her sunglasses and sat down on a bench outside the apartment entrance, contemplating her next move. Dr. Eugenio walked right past her and up to the apartment building. Lucy stared and Dr. Galli smiled politely back. Once he reached the door, though, he did a double take. He opened the door quickly, slipped through it, and slammed it shut behind himself. Lucy’s stomach doubled over and she turned even redder than before, speed walking away from the building.

  So there were not three people with the name Eugenio Galli listed in Rome, but only two. At least one of them was still alive, but was listed twice in the phonebook: work and home.

  “Well, he didn’t have to slam the door so quickly, did he?” she asked herself, walking away. “A lot of people would be flattered to have me as their stalker.”

  Monday morning she left Palazzo Mortimer like normal. Now close to mid-October in the Mediterranean, it was getting a little chilly every morning, and like most Italians around her, Lucy had, over the years, without realizing what she was doing, started dressing in heavier clothing than she ever would have imagined wearing in similar weather in Colorado: a thick white fisherman’s sweater, jeans with the cuffs rolled, one of those light scarves that Europeans wear at the first sign of a breeze, aviators, thick walking moccasins, and a leather school bag with frills — also of her own making.

  She hurried past Gambetti at the porter’s station without looking at him — “Ciao, bella, come stai?” “Ciao Gambetti. Sto bene, grazie.” — and descended the Janiculum hill. Across Piazza della Rovere she took Ponte Savoia to get to the other side of the Tiber, where, most mornings, she would catch the number forty or the number sixty four.

  At the high point on the bridge, a motorino slowed down and stopped next to the sidewalk where Lucy was walking. It was Andrew.

  Most Italians thrive in the midst of conflict. They can’t live without it. Most Americans prefer to avoid conflict. They avoid even awkward situations for as long as humanly possible. Even though she was sporting a heavy sweater in relatively mild weather, Lucy remained American. Conflict aside, though, the absolute worst thing imaginable, in Lucy’s book, was having to apologize, especially in a situation in which the other person was mostly at fault. Lucy, of course, was convinced that Andrew was one hundred percent at fault for last Thursday’s incident. Even living in close quarters, she had done an exceptional job of not crossing paths with Andrew, ever since her right fist had made contact with his left eye. Luckily enough for Lucy, Andrew had not been the type to insist promptly on a formal apology, or the type to initiate a group discussion on roommates and boundaries, or even worse, the type to propose helpful tips to improve interpersonal conflict resolution management skills. Thank God there were no RA’s at the Palazzo.

  But out in the open, on the bridge, with him staring her down, there was no avoiding him. So she halted and shot him a blank stare, putting all of her effort into communicating a nonverbal Don’t you dare even think about bringing up last Thurs
day, because you don’t understand the half of it.

  And he didn’t. “You off to class, then?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded at the space behind him on the scooter. “Well, hop on, love.”

  She stood there for a moment questioning his motives, hoping that once she was on the bike he wouldn’t turn it into an opportunity to bring up an unwanted conversation. In other circumstances she would have refused, but the offer of eliminating up to twenty minutes of travel time off of her normal morning commute was too good to pass up. He had already opened up the compartment beneath the seat and was passing her the extra passenger helmet.

  “Do I have to wear that?”

  “If you care about your head, yes. I always wear my helmet. You know that. And nobody rides on my scooter without one.”

  She snapped on the helmet, tightened her school bag, and swung her leg over the back of the scooter.

  Organized is not the first word anyone has ever used to describe Roman traffic. It’s not that there are no traffic rules — there are — it’s just that those rules, like with all things Italian, are less about the rules themselves, and more about the relationships between persons. (In this case, vehicles are seen as extensions of personhood.) For example, the lanes are not Kantian categorical prescriptions of where a vehicle absolutely must be, in and of itself, rather, they are indications and suggestions about how one ought to behave towards others. That is, any area that is not already occupied by a car, becomes de facto scooter territory. Using a motorino is not for the faint of heart. Riding as a passenger, even more so, means placing your life entirely in the hands of another person. And depending on the size of the scooter — Andrew’s was on the small side — there’s also really no way of being the passenger without getting very close to the person in front of you. It has little to do with your affection, or lack thereof, for the driver. Instead, out of affection for your own bodily integrity, you grab onto whatever is available and hold on tight, even if that means grabbing onto the person in front of you.

  Despite the high level of physical proximity, given the noise of traffic, there’s little way to communicate with one another, except when parked at stoplights. Lucy was thrilled when the first three intersections were green, thus eliminating the possibility of conversation. But between three and four, a question presented itself to her with urgency, so much so that on Corso Emmanuele in front of the Chiesa del Gesù at stoplight number four, which was red, she felt the need to break the silence herself.

  “Andrew.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you drive with just one eye?”

  “Everything’s legal on the road in Italy.”

  “No, not are you allowed to drive with one eye, but can you drive with just one eye?”

  “I can drive a lot better with three eyes on the motorino.”

  “What?”

  “Nevermind.”

  “Oh, I get it.”

  The light turned green, Andrew hit the accelerator, the scooter gave a little bang and a shimmy, puffed out a good deal of smoke, and they sped off again down Via del Plesbitico towards Piazza Venezia. That was as much as they needed to say about Thursday’s incident, or at least, that was as much as Lucy needed to have said about Thursday’s incident.

  Driving from the Janiculum to Sapienza University, they passed directly through the heart of 2,600 years of history layered in circles around itself. Lucy sometimes felt like Rome is just one giant museum disguised as a city, or a museum surrounded by a city. The most ancient parts that are still visible above ground are the ruins of the Roman forum, in the kilometer between the capitoline hill and the Coliseum. Most everything after that, from the middle ages, has been thoroughly destroyed twice over by invading barbarians, so the forums are surrounded by the next layer of history: heaps and heaps of over-the-top opulent renaissance era buildings, stretching between St. Peter’s basilica and St. John Lateran. Around these areas, there are nineteenth and early twentieth century neighborhoods with grid street patterns from the time of Italian unification, when Rome decided it needed to imitate every other European capitol. It is precisely this contrast between ancient ruins, renaissance exuberance, and nineteenth century elegance that makes Rome one of the most beautiful cities on the planet. Lucy enjoyed the great privilege of taking it all for granted, and looking down on those who didn’t.

  Andrew, for his part, was more interested in another of Rome’s beauties. Flying through the giant roundabout in Piazza della Repubblica, his head turned to observe three supermodels with cameras around their necks. Once his eyes returned to the road, though, he suddenly swerved to avoid a near collision with a slow old man on a bicycle. Lucy instinctively leaned in and grabbed even harder onto Andrew’s abs, as he clenched them in fear. Once he regained control of the motorino his midsection started to shake, and she could tell he was laughing. It took her a moment to release the tension in her limbs, and take stock of how close she had just come to certain death. It’s strange how adrenaline can produce affection in humans. Her tight grip on Andrew became less mechanical and almost endearing, natural.

  Beyond Piazza della Repubblica they entered the areas where most of the population lives, the blocky 1930’s fascist neighborhoods and the mid-century modern apartment complexes that surround the old city. Uneven cobblestones gave way to potholed pavement. After WWII, Italy had an unexpected decade of economic boom, (cfr. Fellini’s La dolce vita) when everyone decided, for a short decade, that they were going to work like capitalists. Unfortunately the building boom was contemporaneous with the 1950’s, a decade when they still hadn’t gotten over the idea of fascist block architecture. As a result, most of the buildings in the most populated areas of Rome, despite what you’ll see on TV, were built in that style, and not in the more beautiful aforementioned areas. Palazzo Mortimer was old enough to have been spared this fate, but the main campus of Lucy’s school, Università Sapienza, was directly from this era.

  Moving from the Janiculum to Sapienza every day meant hurtling herself through every epoch in the history of Western civilization, from the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous to the most cringe-worthy ugly, all while trying to avoid becoming a part of that history by way of an automobile accident. Every commute, whether she was aware of it or not, was a thoroughly human experience.

  Andrew parked the motorino at a lot just outside the main entrance to the campus — a massive series of imposing block gates. If you didn’t already know it was a university, you would think you were entering an evil villain’s fortress or some kind of socialist prison block.

  Lucy handed off her helmet to Andrew, adjusted the strap on her bag and stood next to the bike as Andrew locked up the helmets and wound a medieval chain through the front wheel.

  “Thanks, Andrew. Have a good one.”

  “No problem. Yeah, I’ve got class every Monday at this time. Just let me know whenever you’d like a lift.”

  “Alright. Thanks. I will.” She made a mental note to run into Andrew again next Monday morning, then turned and walked against the flow of students in the direction of Eugenio Galli number two’s apartment building, which was near Sapienza.

  “Or wait… no,” he called out after her. “Next Monday I’ll be at my cousins’ house down south, but every Monday after that, yeah.”

  “Okay. Thanks!”

  She turned and took another two steps away before Andrew called out again. “Lucy, isn’t the Lit. building over there?” He pointed towards the gate.

  “Oh yeah… you’re right. I guess I’ve just never been to this side of campus before,” she lied.

  She turned around and joined the stream of 130,000 people who filtered in and out of the Sapienza University system. Of course, not all the faculties were housed on one campus, but the sheer volume of people at the main campus made it impossible to tell. Her white fisherman sweater stuck out among the cynical European students, walking with their heads down, sporting little to no color in their apparel. They all marched o
n through the imposing gates into a small city of buildings, a walled-in ghetto of European intellectuals, detached from the rest of reality. The most acerbic characters joined Lucy at her faculty building: literature. Most of Lucy’s classmates were the type to be seen reading Nietzsche and Dostoevsky on the morning subway commute, complain to their girlfriends about their profoundly complex existential angst at dinner, and take the train home to the countryside every weekend to make sure that mamma could cook them a good meal and do their laundry. Welcome to Europe.

  Inside the literature building, she killed time perusing the bookstore, and even considered attending her morning lectures. After standing among the shelves and reading the last paragraphs of part I of Wendell Berry’s Storia della vita di Jayber Crow, adventure called, and she came skipping out the front steps of the building.

  Eugenio Galli number two lived in a mid-century modern apartment building on a block full of mid-century moderns, maybe a half mile from Sapienza. The keys did not work on the main entrance to the complex, so she took a seat outside, hoping that Eugenio number one did not own two apartments. After just ten minutes, sitting paid off. A grumpy old man flew out of the building in haste, allowing Lucy to get up and lodge her foot between the door and the doorframe just in time.

  Upstairs, the keys did not work. This was almost a relief. What was she going to do if they did work? Break in? Dust the place for fingerprints? Exiting the building, she held the door open for a woman in a yellow Poste Italiane uniform, carrying a letter bag. Lucy stood rooted on the spot in the doorway staring at the mail lady and holding the door open as a thought crossed through her mind. The woman turned and glared at Lucy, who rummaged through her bag, pretending to have forgotten something. She came back inside the building and disappeared up the apartment stairwell. Once she heard the mail woman leave, she scampered down to the lobby and searched for the mailbox to Eugenio number two’s apartment number. The first key did not fit. But the second —