The lady with the dog was crying today. I saw her lift the lower reaches of her skirt hem to wipe her sunburned face and wrinkled cheekbones. I watched her cut across the street, almost hurried, almost desperate, two other women hot at her heels. Slowly, surely, a crowd was gathering. I walked on, more quickly now, heading back from Campo dei Fiori, from where the church had immolated the brilliant 16th century priest, Giordano Bruno. He had committed the sin of daring illuminated questions. How many worlds had God created? Were they truly without number? Had He also peopled them? And, did Christ have to die on each one?
*
Curious, I kept on walking, heading toward Largo Argentina, right outside where Caesar habitually walked to the Senate. The little street – Via dei Giubbuonari – had now become a bustling shopping district, run over with stores, run over with tourists, with artisans and craftspeople, men and women, Bohemians, plying their trade. Panhandlers, too, took up residence, slouched beneath signs that they had scrawled together, bemoaning their own wretched situation. All day they sat around, appealing to human sympathy, soliciting a few Euros. They made me uncomfortable – these recipients of the worst life had to offer. They took up great big brushes dipped in the red ink of privilege and smeared my social status across my face. They scandalized my life of art and ease and reflection, or so it seemed, vis-à-vis their own immiseration.
And her – since first I had seen her, about a week and a half ago, I had planned to sketch a vignette about her. ‘The Lady with the Dog,’ pace Chekhov, was to be the working title. Except, this lady was no Russian of aristocratic proportions, nor yet so sensuous as to turn a man on, let alone transform his Don Juan dispositions. She was old and wrinkled! And the dog, far from the sheltered pug carried around as the embellishment of its owner, for all intents and purposes, though the lady would never admit it, was a work animal. Oh, it was cute alright. Tiny nozzle, big black eyes, auburn furry body built like every other Spaniel, except its bony pelvis seemed to suggest starvation – as one of the girls I had walked with had brought to my attention.
And there she was, clutching the small dog, huddled like an infant across her bosom, she herself whimpering like an animal. I got closer, watching. She shot back across the street and dropped onto her bottoms. Plopped down on the upside down crate that she had taken to sitting on, she proceeded to mouth anathema in a barely discernable Italian. What was she saying? Closer still, I caught a bit from one of the two women, “È reato! È reato!” the woman was shouting. “Non è permissibile!” And I, anxious to understand, What? What’s illegal? I wondered. What could the woman have done that was not permissible? Or had someone robbed her? A homeless woman? That would be disgraceful!
I had watched the two women angrily address their comments to a third, and so, I figured that that woman must have stolen the old woman’s purse.
But then, the woman shot up in a rage, as though an ant nest had erupted beneath her. She pounced at one of the two women, the one that was crying, “illegal!” flinging a menacing hand across her face. The woman dodged, but the blow connected with her forearm. The old woman’s hate was clear, and when the man standing off in the corner, amid the mob that gathered, called her down, scolding her to cease immediately, I understood in an instant. The two women were not defending her. They were denouncing her, for the sake of the dogs. For she had had not one, but several, two of which I had seen, although she carried only one at any one time.
“Ce l’ho visto!” the man called out, “Ieri!” “I saw it myself, yesterday!” And then one of the two women added, holding up the four fingers, “I cuccioli, appena nati, sarebbero potuti morire! Tutti!” “The puppies!” she called, in anger, “Newborns, they could’ve died! All of them!” And then, the old woman answered, spitting as she did so, “Va’ fanculo! Va’ fanculo!” “F*** off! F*** off!” she shrieked in clearly perceptible Italian. “Va’ fanculo, tu! I tuoi bambini! Tua famiglia! Tutti! Va’ fanculo Italia!” “F*** you! Your children! Your family! All of you! F*** Italy!”
And it intrigued me how every foreigner immediately learns to swear, even if they know no other words, in the host language. Why is that? I wondered, barely able to articulate a clear sentence, but fully equipped to damn an adversary. Some equally intrigued spirit must have been lingering about me. For though I couldn’t see it, I heard the categorical voice of its answer, “Because words are weapons,” it said, “and gross language, above all, is the sword we wield when threatened. So, whether or not the old woman speaks a staggered Italian, her ability to fence with foul words, parolace as the Italians call it, should not be held against her.” And it was right. For, living as she was, in a land that was strange to her, on the fringe of the social milieu, a nobody, a nomad, gross language was all she had.
And, of course, she had the dogs! They too were weapons. And well she knew how to wield them.
The first time I saw them together, I was moved. She was leaned up against a wall, sitting on the upside down crate, in a corner of the street that intersected just where Via dei Giubbuonari meets Via dei Chiavari. One couldn’t help but see her. The dog, on a cloth spread out before her, was sleeping at her feet. Just beside, a bowl containing sparse coins in Euro. What a darling, I couldn’t keep from thinking. And I tossed a few loose pennies inside the bowl. From then on, I would always see her – her and the small dog. They stirred tenderness within me. For she coddled it, humanized it, and lovingly attended it. Or so it struck me. It could have been an infant.
*
To me, they were friends. And once, I had seen it traipse away from her and she, stepping hurriedly behind it, had picked it up and indulgently scolded. Then one day, soon after, I told a friend about how I had watched them in a moment that was truly priceless. “The lady with the dog…” I said, “This morning? You wouldn’t believe it. I was walking by and she was out there, and the poor thing, it was sleeping, as usual, and she picked it up, ever so gently, and shifted it around, changing its position. And the little darling, it ne’er so much as twitched an eyebrow; it kept right on snoozing.”
“Well,” my friend responded “she drugs the dogs. You do know that, right?” “What?” I answered, startled, “You can’t be serious.” “Yup,” she assured me, “Usura told me.” “Usura said that they do the same in Pakistan. Homeless people go around with dogs and they drug them. The dogs spend their lives sleeping, and unsuspecting people, passing by, moved by the sight of them, think they’re cute or pitiful, and offer money. It’s all a ploy,” she said.
“No,” I said, disbelieving. “It’s true,” she confirmed. “Plus, they hardly feed them; didn’t you see the hips on that one dog? You didn’t see how meagre and limp and saggy it was? Alescea said that that’s where they start to lose weight. It’s the first sign of starvation.” (Alescea and Usura were acquaintances in the group I had come to know. Several times in the days preceding, we had tsk’d rather wistfully that such treatment of animals could never be tolerated in the country we were from.)
And if her account was not enough to convince me, my friend recounted a harrowing episode that she herself had seen. Only a few days before, she was walking along Corso Vittorio Emanuele: the great big concourse that stretches along Roma Capitale, outside what used to be Mussolini’s offices. Along the way, she saw a homeless man, sitting with a dog. It was a large one. At the same time, approaching from the opposite direction was a lady walking a pug. When she saw the vagrant, the large dog, she stooped down and scooped up her dog. The pug, however, was excited. Seeing the big dog, it began to yip and yap and wag its little body, obviously wanting to approach it.
This lady with the dog, at first reluctant, nervously gave over to her pug. She set it down and, just as promptly, it ran right over to the vagrant. But the big dog was not friendly. It snapped at the pug, sunk into its neck, hoisted it up, and started flinging it around. My friend started screaming, as did the owner of the pug. The street-person continued to sit there, despite the painful yelps of the dog. “Make it stop! Make it stopped!” my friend hollered. But the man did nothing. Not until the pug’s owner caught hold of a stick and presently began to beat the monster down, only then did it release it clasp. The small dog promptly ran back to its owner, tiny wincing sounds emitting from its snout.
*
To me, it was a scandal. And then I thought about the puppies and the old woman with the dog. Two days ago, a group of us had walked by and oh the start it gave us. “Where? When? How?” we gasped, confounded. For what we saw was not simply the lady, not simply the dog, but the lady with the dog and a brand new litter! Four tiny, black all over, so minute, they could fit in your palm, each one – puppies! We could hardly believe it. The dog had never so much as appeared to have been pregnant!
But then, we realized that it wasn’t the same one. They looked alike, but this was a different dog, and here it was with a brand new litter: barely but a few hours come into the world. I, for my part, could not resist them. Not only did I ask whether I could take a picture and promptly proceeded to do so, I also tossed a generous amount of loose Euros into the old container. A number of admiring passers-by did the same thing. And I gather that that was one of her most profitable days of panhandling.
And then it rained, later, the same morning. In torrents. For Rome had come under an unusual system: hot, suffocating days, punctuated by violent, extended downpours. Around midday, I was going by and saw her cupping the puppies in her hand. She was removing them hastily from the cloth spread out before her, tucking them into her skirt. I saw, as well, my friend go by, looking across at them, visibly perturbed. I called out to her and waved hello. She acknowledged my greeting and, getting nearer, said how bad she had felt for the dogs. Didn’t I think that she should go buy them an umbrella, she inquired, and give it to the woman, so she could keep them from the storm? “I suppose you could,” I said, “but you can be sure she collected a lot of money today,” I added. And then, hurriedly, in afterthought, “But don’t let me discourage you; if buying them an umbrella is what you want to do, then, by all means, do that. I only meant that I saw her smoking, so I figured …” “It’s just that they’re in the rain,” she interrupted, regretful.
*
And that, precisely, was the point of the two women jostling her now with words. “We don’t care about her!” they were screaming, “We care about the dogs! You saw her with them, newborn puppies, in the rain; you did nothing. How come?” They were addressing the passers-by who were reprimanding them for harassing the old woman, “la zingara” was the Italian term. For her part, the woman went on crooning. And when a passing stranger went over to inquire what had happened to be the matter, she took hold of the woman, leaned into her shoulder, and proceeded to weep on her neck. This unexpected gesture made the woman shirk, at which point the woman took hold of her face and pathetically kissed her. Was it thus that Judas had kissed Jesus?
Others walked by and stopped short to condole with her. A middle aged man berated the animal activists as anti-Italian, “Partigiani,” he ejaculated, spitefully. “Grazie!” one of them retorted. A couple of other women, colluding, started to usher the old woman away from the crowd. The one, young, covered in tattoos, surprised me most of all. I had thought, until that point, that tattoo-aficionado went hand in glove with animal rights activism. It was confounding that hardly anyone stood ground with the two women. And by this time, as one of them had managed to be standing quite near me – for I had gone and got myself smack in the middle of the row – I leaned over and quietly mumbled, “Ha ragione, signora; è uno scemo; ce l’ho visto anch’io, ieri; ho pure scattato delle foto.”
The young tattooed lady, in concert with another woman, took hold of the woman’s arm. Presently, they began to whisper conspiringly and proceeded to carry her way, “Va’ via, va’ via,” they told her. “Just go along, leave, get away.” But the two women wouldn’t allow it. They followed, rounding round her like hounds upon a jackal, blocking up the way. “She can’t leave,” they insisted. “The cops will soon be here.”