On an Evening in Roma

by Zeynep Su Öncel

As a lonely cat, traveling is a singular experience, allowing you to witness the world’s greatest wonders without waiting in lines or having to pay for museum tickets. Seeing your reflection in the tiny pool of rain in the streets of a foreign country, with meowing of different dialects accompanying your dinner. Picking up the accent just to pretend, and combing your whiskers in an attempt to feel exotic in unfamiliar territory.

Yet traveling is a skill a lot of people do not acquire. Most don’t even look down at the streets, do not search for good soil, do not watch the endless and infinite cobblestones they step on, they merely step on the artifacts that lay underneath their shoes; the oldest medallion or the stones brought all the way from Egypt for kings to kneel on whilst asking for the hand of the love of their lives. It was on an evening in Roma, I myself was looking down, to see the history laid underneath the Eternal City, I met a chameleon.

.·゜゜·　　·゜゜·．

My first two days in Rome were following the usual tourist route. Making a wish to visit Rome again at the Trevi Fountain, eating Tiramisu every second, admiring work of architecture under the Pantheon dome. However, on my third day, my route divorced from the usual path of a tourist.

On the third night, I visited a jazz bar recommended by an old friend of mine. The bar was almost hidden, below the ground level. One would have to either be directed by someone or really look down to find this jazz bar. It was in the back streets of a piazza I cannot recall the name of, right around the corner of a church, I remember vividly. By default, the interiors were dark, even though the last rays of the sun were still providing the final minutes of fresh life to the streets. Gershwin’s A Foggy Day was playing when I entered. The place had a pleasant design. Right across from the entrance was the bar,  and on the right of the entrance was a small stage for musicians—although that night, no bands were playing. I remember wondering whether the lack of live music was the reason for the stillness or the bad location. A couple snuggled in one of the booths to the left of the door, and apart from them, only a single shadow was occupying a stool at the bar. As a single traveler, I usually sat at the bar, trying not to bring too much attention to myself. Sometimes interesting conversations with the bartender would ignite, sometimes like magnets, as single travelers, we would attract each other and enjoy our drinks. Eventually we would exchange contacts, right after talking about the city and the culture, only to never see each other ever again. 

I walked towards the shadow on the bar and sat on the stool next to him.

Just like me, he was a loner coming to visit from the other side of the globe, in a curious search, unable to resist the temptations of Italy. He told me he came for the wine. I felt there was more to it than a simple admiration of good wine accompanied by history. Later, I realized he was still in search of his soil.

He had been in Rome for a week, although his Italian journey had started a month before the day we met. He was in Milan first, for the opera and a few piano competitions, in some he himself participated, yet mostly admiring other young talents. Milan, he explained, was a city of united people, always on a quest for their next collective experience. He had reservations for a few more days, but his usual loneliness, which he most admired, became a toll on him as he watched the smiles exchanged, the tears of laughter moistening the tissues, the sounds of the spoons and knives hitting the wine glasses as someone was just about to  make a toast to the people they loved the most. He changed the dates of his tickets and found himself on the first train to the town of Nesso, or The Pearl of Lake Como. He enjoyed the Tuscan wine, which according to him, was the best wine anyone could get their lips on. 

After a week under the Tuscan sun, swimming in the picturesque Como while photographing the ivy surrounding historical buildings, and picking up a few words of their dialect, he decided that he missed the rush of a city. From the way he spoke, I could see he missed the feeling of being alone in a crowd, the feeling of detachment he grew used to, that became his haven to hide from the world. On the spur of the moment, he bought a ticket to Rome and found himself next to me, drinking a glass of red at a jazz bar after an afternoon of Aglio e Olio pasta during the Aperol hour. 

“I am usually a wine guy or scotch, if offered a fine one, but it is important to adapt and respect the ways of doing something. If Aperol is a drink of sunset, it is what I am getting. A drink is a drink, after all, and one should do Italy the right way,” he told me. This sentence came later at night as we grew accustomed to each other. Our conversation started as he appreciated my choice of red.

“Anni, amorie e bicchieri di vino, nun se contano mai, an Italian saying I often heard during my ventures. Years, lovers, and glasses of wine; these things must not be counted. They should specify it as good wine.”

His voice was deep, resonant, only with a touch of authority. He was a young man, a little older than me, I would assume. He had a faded smile, the traces of happiness from his earlier life was there. Once the entire glow of the moon was in that smile, I’m sure. I simply acknowledged his comment with a nod and waited for the bartender to pour my wine.

“I hope you would be kind enough to accept my offer and enjoy your fine wine with me,” he asked, adjusting his glasses.

Just as he finished his sentence, Gerry Mulligan’s Night Lights started. I adjusted my position to fully see his face, observing his hazed smile. The bartender slowly placed my glass on a piece of white tissue. I thanked him. The mysterious man was obviously a foreigner, a lonely one, just like me, and I caught myself openly gazing at him. He was wearing a tailored wool suit, old school, with a pocket handkerchief. His overcoat was hanging at the back of the bar stool he was sitting on, black, matching the rest of his outfit. A notebook with leather covers was in front of him, right next to his glass of wine. He had an almost unnoticeable hunched back, some might have thought he was arched over to hear every word that was about to come out of the other’s mouth. He had long, elongated fingers, carrying a simple melody on the cover of his notebook. An antique-looking watch on his wrist. He wouldn’t have been considered an attractive man to most, yet he had an atmosphere of his own.

“I would be lying if I said I am shocked by a doubtful cat looking at a stranger tentatively.”

In my years of traveling, I learned to leave room for doubt. The ones that fit the sun’s warmth into their smiles turned out to be like vultures over a grave. Yet, this strange chameleon had the calmness of a well with thoughtful eyes as foggy as a cold winter morning. I was captivated by his presence.

Soon we exchanged names, places we visited, the wine we enjoyed, and the pasta we filled ourselves with. He was a fellow cobblestone man, enjoying looking the other way. His eyes sparked as soon as I mentioned the cobblestones and the seven layers of history that would lay underneath them.

“Seven layers of history, can you imagine,” I asked. “The ground we are working on is built upon forums, ancient churches, streets…yet no one bothers to look down.”

He was slowly shaking his wine glass as he listened; never loosening his grip on the words that left my mouth. 

“Looking the other way, actually looking at something, I learned in my short time, is a talent not every person is born with or able to adapt themselves to.”

As the night continued, we found ourselves right back on the cobblestone we both admired. One paw after the other, him changing color with every passerby. He looked thoughtful, nauseous even. Every change of color made him look like he was in an agony of some sort. He had a few drops of sweat forming on his forehead. 

“Why do we change,” he asked me suddenly, breaking the silence of the night, his foggy eyes only illuminated with his curiosity.

It was a surprising question, coming from a chameleon to a cat.

“You are a cat, you do not open up to others. By nature, you are a predator, not a victim—a loner. I am a chameleon who did not acknowledge it for the longest time. I thought I could be a bird, sing just like them, if I turned myself into blue. I thought I could be a crocodile if I turned to green, slow and violent. I thought I could be a fox, cunning and fast if I turned myself into brown. Years of trying to fit in and be-be anything but myself.”

“Is that why you asked me to sit with you tonight, listening to me intensely? To understand a cat’s world. Am I your next color, ginger as a Chausie?”

“Maybe. Maybe I will be you for the rest of the week or month, maybe a year. But, why I talked to you is because you seemed unbothered by the camera, at least, your appearance tells me so. How did you become a cat? Tell me how one can flourish.”

“What camera?” I asked. At that point, I questioned whether I did the right thing by sitting next to a stranger, a chameleon. I was used to talking to fellow travelers for company. Even a cat sometimes misses a conversation, yet none of the conversations I had in my past journeys lasted this long or turned out to be this odd. This was beyond the usual pleasantries and advice about where to visit.

“The camera. The camera in the room,” he must have been caught up in his own thoughts, just spitting them out to not see my forced smile or dense air. . The night breeze enveloped my body inside out, yet the cold was absorbed by the enormous silence that was now between us.

“It all happens one day, just like Samsa waking up as a cockroach, you wake up one day and see it. You are given the act and the play but not your role. You are not a cockroach. You are a daffodil bud waiting to flourish.”

I was speechless after his minutes-long monologue about cameras and changing and nature. He turned my way and  glared at me.

“You do not understand, do you? But one day, you will understand. You will see it creeping in the background, always following you around. Your shadow leaves you at night or is dependent on street lights, but the camera doesn’t. It feeds off of the shadows in your head. Let me give you a single piece of advice—no-no. It is not where to eat gelato or which wine to drink. This is important, this is about the play. Look around. You started looking down, and you are starting to see it. You are starting to disassociate yourself from others. Look at you, you became an actual cat. But let the shadow in. No knowledge is not better than none. If you don’t question, you will never find the right soil. You will die without breathing in the world as more than a bud.”

His lips that uttered all these words now formed a single line. He looked at me, he wasn’t surprised by my gleaming silence. I could imagine my face at that moment, an empty gaze, lips shut tight as if every word that left my mouth would leave a bittersweet aftertaste.

He smiled as he was slowly turning himself into ginger. 

He solemnly whispered, “I want to forget, but you cannot play chess without losing a few pawns.” He apologized if he ruined my night, wished for the best, turned to leave, following a trail of clueless strangers with the faintest of smiles. Leaving nothing but afterthoughts more intense than the wine we had.

All I have now of that night are the words I wrote down in an attempt to record a surreal occurrence.. In an attempt to prove myself that I am not delusional. Needless to say, I never saw him, or any other chameleon ever again.

.·゜゜·　　·゜゜·．

Like the start of a joke without a punchline. One day a chameleon and a cat were sitting at a bar. They talked about wine, cobblestones, and looking down. Chameleon asked the cat how a daffodil bud could flourish under the lens of a camera. Cat couldn’t answer, then they parted ways in the night. Later, the cat thought about it. How can a bud flourish, how can the bud find suitable soil before it was too late? The cat realized, one had to take the path not taken for fresh soil. If it meant being alone under the camera lens, so be it said the cat. Then one day, the cat woke up and flourished, not into a daffodil, but into a beautiful lily.