The gentle man in black stood in the piazza, the rain falling softly around him. He stood alone. He stood still, umbrella angled sightly to the front and right of him, held in a gloved hand.  He wore a collared shirt with a red tie. An elegant long black coat covered the tailored trousers that gently caressed his black leather shoes.  He was by far, the most elegantly dressed man in the whole piazza. 

This photo was taken in the same piazza that forms the wallpaper for this blog. The piazza is located within a town called Castallana di Grotte and is a 20 minute drive west of Monopoli.  The town is famous for the largest cave system in Italy, attracting thousands of Italians every summer.  There was a tour of the caves scheduled for midday and I had promised my colleagues that we would be counted among the tour group, but first we had to find the caves.  We followed signs that took us through narrow streets, each sign promising us that we were coming ever closer to our destination and then, as has happened so often on this trip, the signs just stopped being there. As though the men whose job it is to erect signs come so far and then stop for an afternoon aperitivo on a hot summer's day and decide the signs are close enough to the destination. Well, this Australian having driven beyond the last sign only to reach a roundabout with five exits would like to meet with the sign men and share an aperitivo and perhaps express a different opinion on how far the signs should actually go, towards a destination.  And so it was, that after coming across the same piazza from four different directions after the signs to the grotto dried up, we had come to the conclusion that the entrance to the grotto must be within the piazza.  I parked the car and we three Australians ventured into the piazza.  

The day was wet and cold, the greyest and wettest day of our two week stay.  In the piazza, a crowd of men stood in a loose gathering.  There was no formal queue but optimistically I felt these men standing in the wet, and decidedly chilly air would surely be waiting to enter the grotto at midday. But as we searched the piazza for a ticket office or an entrance, our confidence became increasingly diluted in the rain.  And like the predawn light that slowly and gently creeps across the horizon to illuminate a brand new day I realised with increasing clarity that the men were standing in the rain with the sole purpose of  conversing with each other.  

I stopped walking and stood there too, in the piazza, in the rain, in the cold.  For a few seconds, I was perhaps part of the tradition but then the other men noticed me standing there and they stopped their conversations and looked at me looking at them.   They must have known that I was not a local.  I took out my compact camera and idly took some photographs of nothing in particular and the men returned to their conversations. It was while I was taking random photographs that I first noticed the man in black.  He was different from the others.  He had a presence.  He stood alone, in his own space, metres from any of the other uomini.   He was an elderly gentlemen, well groomed, immaculately presented.  Even his hat spoke of his classic styling, a styling that had been practiced over decades so that the final effect was achieved with effortless grace. He stood motionless. He did not even move his head to look at the others.  He was waiting.   I stood several metres in front of the man.  The rental Fiat, my colleagues and midday lay beyond him.  As I walked past him, several metres to one side, he looked at me.  Our eyes connected and something unsaid passed between us, it was loneliness.  And then our eyes averted and I carried on walking.  I felt a great heaviness come upon my heart in that moment.  Close to the car, I stopped and turned around and I took the photograph you now see, in remembrance of him.

I put my camera back into my pocket and I stood for a few moments looking at his silhouette.  I knew now that he was waiting for someone who would not be coming, not today and not tomorrow.   I knew he could feel me looking at him and at that moment he started to turn his head in my direction.  I turned quickly and walked hurriedly towards the Fiat.

Inside the warmth of the Fiat I turned the key in the ignition, reversed back onto the street, slipped into first gear and drove up the street past the man in black.  He remained motionless... waiting.

I know that in the future, when loneliness puts his hand on my shoulder, I shall think of the man in black.