People Go, Life Goes On - Missing Person 2

Rome, Eternal City.

Then there is Evaristo, an outstanding eccentric in a neighborhood known for its eccentrics and the often excessive tolerance, which may just be a form of resignation, of those who live within the lines. 

An elderly artist, wiry, with long, wispy white hair and most of his teeth gone, Evaristo dresses in a style all his own, with hats or scarves, bracelets or necklaces he may have found in the garbage or fashioned himself. He is an “attaccabottoni” with a passion for engaging anyone and everyone in rambling, if not eternal, conversation. If you let him, he would chew your ear off.

I never cared to converse with Evaristo. Not because he is eccentric (frankly, so am I), but because I never wanted to take the time.

Also, I regarded him as a nuisance. I know no person’s life and character can be summed up in a word, and, I admit, some people over the years regarded me as a nuisance, too. These were people who didn’t know me well and wouldn’t help me realize my aspirations. 

When I lived in my previous flat, across the piazza from his, Evaristo started ringing my bell on Sunday mornings to inquire about his cousins, who lived across the hall from me. I rarely saw and didn’t know these people and, after much insistence on my part, he stopped. Morning, noon or night, Evaristo was always striking up conversations with the young tourists who roam our neighborhood. He spoke Italian and broken English, and they their own language and broken Italian. He had a fondness for pretty girls.

Evaristo was gregarious, but he must have also been lonely with a craving for attention. A few years ago he hung huge permanent displays of colorful puppets, dolls and sundry objects loosely strung together from two of his windows overlooking the piazza. People who passed along the main street toward the hub of our neighborhood seemed to delight in these displays and wondered about the person who lived there. I always thought these creations were an eyesore but, aside from my personal opinion, if they ever fell from the windows they could seriously injure a passerby.

For a time on weekday or Saturday mornings Evaristo got into the habit of turning his powerful stereo up full blast so the whole piazza between his flat and mine could hear the nuns reciting the Holy Rosary on Vatican Radio. Not that he ever struck me as particularly religious, but, then again, I didn’t know much about him. For a time he used to roam the neighborhood streets in the quiet afternoon hours, siesta time, or sometimes late at night with a blaring transistor radio hanging from his wrist. Just in case you wanted to get some sleep, he was the angel who kept you from it.

A few months ago I asked a neighborhood friend, our local “gazette,” about him because I hadn’t seen him in a while. Gazzetta is not a gossip by nature, but she is exceptionally well informed about what’s happening in our little corner of the earth. She told me Evaristo, who lives in the building adjacent to hers and in his more vivacious moments just a few years ago used to throw his smelly garbage straight out the back window into the inner courtyard shared by their two buildings, had grown depressed and wouldn’t come out anymore. He has removed most of the objects from the windows now and his shutters are always closed, but those that remain testify to his presence.

Another friend told me Evaristo often went to the local hospital late at night to scrounge food from the kitchen. If there was anything left, the staff always obliged him.

For years his signed drawings adorned the walls of one of our local chicken and pizza dens. They were filled with color and whimsy and rendered with a deft hand. When the shop remodeled the drawings disappeared. Evaristo would tape small photocopied announcements with his name and phone number on light posts or on building walls, inviting people to see his art. He wasn’t having an exhibit. If you called him, he would arrange to meet you and talk.

Evaristo always wanted to count for something, and as he aged and grew lonelier it must have been difficult for him.

Evaristo was, and is, an artist. Although he has now withdrawn, he was, and is, a piece of our neighborhood that is slowly changing even as it remains the same.

I imagine someone from the parish checks up on him every day and makes sure he eats and is well.

Perhaps Evaristo will end up like my beloved neighbor at Trevi Fountain, Nonna Giulia. When she decided her time had come she took to her bed and died a month later, tired but in apparent good health, tended to by her daughter. At the venerable age of 93 she hadn’t done it all or seen it all, but she had had enough.

I should try to remember Evaristo more often in my prayers and when I light a candle.