X.ii. Dr. Galvani, please help us

"Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy."
- Bertrand Russell

On Wednesday, Sarah had left for Germany to pursue a language course. Abandoning her to Bavaria on a train platform felt like the onslaught of another winter, and so I wandered about Bologna, heeding her advice and not returning alone to my apartment. My life had changed, I think, since the day I had met her and try as I might it could not be changed back. My loneliness, though, didn't last for long, because later that same evening John and Bronwen returned from Tuscany, where we had left them to their own devices. If they minded the lack of electricity in my apartment, they certainly didn't say anything, though secretly perhaps they thought it a bit odd that such a misunderstanding could have occurred between myself and dear old Dr. Caramori.
    But John and Bronwen are good old friends, and were a necessary reminder of why the adventure I had thrown myself into could only ever last a year. Italy was not my home, and it probably never would be. In fact, I was coming to realize that my niche in the world was completely independent of place, or at least nationhood, and resided instead in the people, wherever they may be, that understand my universe.
    Aldous, who had left Italy for Austria a week earlier, returned at an ungodly hour of the morning and woke us all up in the process, his humour as always making up for his occasionally jarring demeanour. Later in the day, we visited the vast university museums, which include displays on most of the major scientific personalities who have studied at the institution. For obvious reasons, I silently begged a portrait of Luigi Galvani, the discoverer of biological electricity, to help me.     Aldous was only stopping in Bologna or a day or so on his way to Naples. Originally, I was supposed to accompany him, but in the end I felt I had more pressing issues to deal with, and he left on his own, though not before a lunch at the cafeteria Al-Salaam, and a splendidly torch-lit dinner of risotto with porcini mushrooms and asparagus. Early the next morning, I was alone again.