Searching for gold amongst our rubbish. A letter from a Sunday in August

I spotted him while waiting at a traffic light, almost directly outside my home. It was the last Sunday in August in Milan, a sweltering afternoon with not a soul in sight. There, next to a bin, was the man, bent over, rummaging through the rubbish. ‘Poor chap,’ I thought to myself. Then the light turned green.

Upon arriving home, I discarded a bag containing empty bottles and sweet wrappers into a bin. Moments later, I turn and observe the same individual running toward me, as if drawn by the scent of potential finds. He retrieves the bag, reseals it, and plunges his hands into the waste. I pause to observe. He does not appear to be elderly, nor does he look like a foreigner. I have some peaches in my car; I hand them to him, and he replies, “How kind of you!”

He is Italian. I observe him as he turns into the next street.

Upon arriving home, I retrieve some biscuits, a snack and a bottle of water. Descending the stairs, I observe the individual in question two rubbish bins further along, as anticipated.

But now, sitting on a step, he crumbles some bread onto the pavement and is surrounded by about twenty pigeons, pecking away enthusiastically. He looks at them and smiles, and, I think to myself in wonder, he seems happy.

He is approximately thirty years old, dressed, yes, like a tramp, with long brown hair. However, if he were to clean himself up a bit, he would be just like any other Milanese. Perhaps he comes from a middle-class family. And yet the serenity of this solitary young man, with his flock of birds, seems to say: there are other ways to be happy.

I give him the biscuits; he says thank you, but I’m not sure if he really cares. The way he rushed over to that bin made me wonder whether the man was searching through our rubbish for a treasure – gold, amongst things that are worthless to us.

And all those pigeons? In Milan, they are now considered outlaws: they make a mess of the window sills. When we were children in Piazza Duomo, we used to feed them rice; now that is over, finished. Instead, there are plenty of plump, squawking rooks about. Could the council have put them there to get rid of the pigeons in an eco-friendly way? In any case, I have not seen as many as there are today in front of my homeless man for quite some time.

An almost Franciscan echo. He smiles, mysteriously, in the empty city.