Also known as: Chestor Dan Daniel (on paper), Brandoloo and Don Fluffone (rejected), Apostle of Beatings Torn from Heaven
Occupation: Policeman. Precinct 10, where I was a regular for eleven years.
First appears: Chapter 003, as dozens of missed calls
Status: Not answering, which is unlike him.
Usually seen with: A mustache that changes size according to his mood.
His philosophy of life, as far as I could reconstruct it
Officially, Baloo believed in the liturgy of Precinct 10: beatings at fixed hours, as in a monastery, and stupidity as the only virtue permitted in the basement. Neologisms land you in the slammer; metaphors put you in the grave. He believed none of it. Under a suit two sizes too big, a starched collar and black shoes bought one at a time, years apart, he carried the most scandalous thing a policeman can carry: a carefully concealed gentleness. When I asked him why he kept letting me go, he said, “Someone helped me once.” That was his entire theology.
What I think he thinks of me
A calamity. He said so the first night, when I was eighteen and a bit, with a hole in my head and a cracked rib, and I offered to sponsor the spiritual effervescence of his station. He let me go on one condition: that I disappear. I disappeared. Then I reappeared, at intervals of a few weeks, for eleven years. Fifty-odd offenses, a fire extinguisher thrown from the thirteenth floor, a painting I should not have taken. He knew most of the sordid details of my life. I knew that his mother’s name was Pia. Neither of us called it friendship.
What I think of him
Marlon Brando, Baloo the Bear and, probably, a chinchilla. That was my first diagnosis, and I have not revised it. A massive bald head on a neck the size of a plinth, a mustache thicker than the Amazon jungle, and eyes so expressive and sad that, in that composition, they looked like an editing mistake. I remain convinced that Jesus Christ will use precisely his voice at the end of history to summon the dead from their graves. I never saw him outside Precinct 10, or in daylight. He is the man who told me my parents were dead. He did it badly. There are men with a gift for finding the right words at the wrong moment; Baloo had the rarer gift of finding the wrong words at every conceivable moment. I have never been so grateful for it.
Things he said to me, in that voice
“They say a beating is a piece torn out of Heaven. I’m sure you’ve wondered who tore it out.”
“Stupidity is the only virtue permitted here! Neologisms land you in the slammer. Metaphors put you in the grave.”
“See? It’s easy to be ironic!”
“Jebeleanu, you’re a calamity. The question isn’t how you could make me happy; it’s what I can do to get you out of my life.”
“Jebeleanu! Tell me something, man. Do soulmates exist?”
“Someone helped me once.”
“Be careful. Van D. doesn’t play games. Never has.”
Andrei’s footnote: He married Tatiana Tatoiu despite my objections to her name. I was wrong about that, too.
