La Superba (26 page)

Her tongue churned around in my mouth like a wet piece of cloth in the drum of a washing machine. I felt like a prostitute letting herself be penetrated for business reasons. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the waitress avert her gaze in embarrassment.

“We have to go,” she said. “If you pay for the aperitif and buy the tickets at the theater, I'll treat you to dinner. I've reserved a table at my favorite restaurant for us afterward. Chichibio, it's called. In Via Chiossone. Do you know who Chichibio is?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything you don't know?” she asked, laughing.

“I don't know.”

20.

Chichibio is a character from one of the stories in Boccaccio's
Decameron
. It's befitting to name a restaurant after him because he
was a cook. He worked at the royal court. In Boccaccio's version it's a bit different, but I'll tell you the story the way I heard it. When the king gave a festive banquet one day, Chichibio prepared an exquisite dish of roasted crane. But the king noticed that each bird that was served only had one leg. That old rogue Chichibio had kept a leg from each crane to sell himself. Cranes went for a good price in those days. The king summoned him.

“But your majesty,” Chichibio said, “cranes only have one leg. I'm amazed you didn't know that.”

“You're a liar, Chichibio.”

“I swear I am telling the truth.”

“Then tomorrow we are going to investigate. But I'm telling you now, your punishment won't be light if it turns out I'm right.”

When they arrived at the lake the next day, all the cranes were standing on one leg. “See, your majesty, I was right. Cranes only have one leg.” The king clapped his hands a few times. The flock flew up. It was clear to see that each bird had two legs.

“What do you say about that, Chichibio?”

“But your majesty, that doesn't count because last night you didn't clap for my dish.”

Even during the short walk from the Bar of Mirrors to the Carlo Felice opera, this story gained an unexpected relevance. Monia was so unsteady she seemed to be walking on one leg. All things considered, she was blotto. I tried to support her and prop her up but it still went wrong on the incline of Salita Pollaiuoli. She tripped, tore the train of her dress, and broke the heel off her right shoe. Then she really did start walking on one leg, while the full weight of her limp, drunken body hung on my arm. We made a fine couple.
Her bright yellow torn and dirtied train flapped along after us like a rope with dented tin cans behind the car of a pair of newlyweds off on their honeymoon. Luckily, it wasn't far to the opera.

The tickets cost me an arm and a leg. And the aperitif with all her cocktails had already been quite pricey. But it was an investment, let's say. At some point I'd get it all back in duplicate or triplicate. At least that was the intention. To start with, I resolved to entail considerable costs at the restaurant that evening. I had never been to Chichibio in Via Chiossone but I'd walked past it on occasion and it looked sufficiently chic and expensive for me to rack up a hefty bill if I ordered enough.

During the overture it looked like she'd fallen asleep. That wasn't such a bad idea perhaps. As long as she didn't start snoring. But she didn't fall asleep. She kept staring with wide-open, rolling eyes. And all of a sudden she cried out something. It was at the beginning of the first act. I hadn't understood it but it had been loud. People in the rows in front of us turned around with irritated expressions. I laid my hand on her knee and gestured for her to be quiet. She laid her head on my shoulder. But a minute later she was suddenly bolt upright again. “Vegetarians!” she screamed. “You're all fucking vegetarians!” It was unclear to me what this conclusion was founded upon. Perhaps it had something to do with the first act taking place in the great outdoors and to emphasize this there being a variety of plastic plants and trees on stage. But whatever it was, it didn't seem like a good idea to me to start abusing the singers during an opera in a loud voice because of presumed eating habits. The people around us were in complete agreement with me. We were being given nasty looks. There was hissing.

I froze. She was simply blind drunk. The realization dawned upon me that I was sitting in the opera with a blind drunk older woman who was impossible to keep in check. Feverishly, I began to think of what to do. Luckily, she was quiet for the moment. But if she wanted to interrupt again with her shouting… And just as I was thinking that, she did. On impulse I pressed my hand to her mouth and wormed my other hand under her legs. I picked her up and began to carry her out. She wasn't heavy and thank God we were at the side and not right in the middle of a row. Nevertheless, I still had to carry her past a few other audience members, who stood up horrified from their seats to make space for me. The people in the row behind us began to applaud. I worked her out of the auditorium via a side door. I slapped her face. She collapsed onto a bench there. Then I noticed that she'd lost a shoe on the way, the left one, without the broken heel. But there wasn't a hair on my head that contemplated going back for it. I had to get her out of there. Concerned ushers came over to us. I asked them to call a taxi. It arrived within five minutes. I tried to get her upright to take her to the exit. And as I tried to lift her, she vomited—all over my suit. I managed to get her out of the building with the ushers' help. Getting into the taxi, it went wrong again. She lost her balance, fell, and because I was just in the wrong position, I couldn't catch her. She took me down with her. I fell onto one knee. There was a big tear in my suit trousers and my knee began to bleed. I stuffed her into the taxi, slammed the door shut, gave the driver her address and then twenty euros. “That's to take her upstairs. Good luck.”

I went straight to Piazza delle Erbe, sat down at Caffè Letterario
and began to drink furiously. I looked at my suit. It was completely ruined. I threw it away that same evening.

21.

The thing I sometimes worry about is that some of the situations I get myself tangled up in here, and many of the people I really have actually met in this foreign decor, are so colorful, not to say grotesque, that they run the risk of being barely believable as fiction.

If I'm ever to transform these notes, in which I take you into complete confidence about my trials and tribulations, into a novel, I'd be forced to violate the truth to a substantial degree. To start with, I'd naturally have to change all these names pretty damn quick. And perhaps also some of the overly conspicuous characteristics of their appearance or personality. If the Genoese I'm telling you about ever get wind of me telling the truth about them, I won't have a life left here, you do understand? And the Genoese always get wind of talk about other Genoese immediately; it's funny, that's why the book doesn't even have to be translated into Italian. They'd do anything for a choice tidbit of gossip. If necessary, they'd learn another language for it.

But the biggest thing is that I'd be forced to seriously soften the truth, because if I told it exactly as it happened, the way I'm telling it to you, everyone would think I'd made it up. That's often the problem with the truth: it's completely unbelievable. But it seems that that problem keeps cropping up continuously here. This medieval labyrinth appears to be populated exclusively by unbelievable novelistic characters of ever-increasing picturesqueness.

For example, how could I ever introduce Alfonso Gioia into my novel, Monia's acquaintance, with whom I have a meeting due to his putative excellent contacts at City Hall? He was a skinny young man, with a boyish, if not to say almost childish, appearance, with short, black, lank hair and small round glasses. That's all fine, until it dawns on you who he looks like. If you saw him in real life, or if I sent you a picture of him, you'd see it at once: Harry Potter. He's the spitting image of Harry Potter. That's fine, you might say. Alright. But he is him, too. Not because his nickname is the Harry Potter of Genoa, that doesn't say much, that could be purely based on his appearance, too. No, it's much worse. He is a wizard. Not a magician, but a wizard. That's his job. I'm not lying. He told me about it at great length. His own words were that he has an enormous collection of magic objects and books of spells. And he told me at great length how just the night before he'd been to an Autogrill on the motorway toward Savona to exorcise the spirits that had been haunting the place for some time. He'd managed it. He'd solved the problem. The management of the Autogrill chain had paid him handsomely for the service. And that was only fair, he said, because it had taken him a lifetime of study. And he had to live off of it—this was his profession.

He also told me he had a special gift of being able to get in touch with the spirits of dead people, or those people floating on the boundary of life and death. Not so long ago he'd had a good conversation with Michael Jackson on his deathbed. I wondered how that conversation had gone because as far as I knew, Michael Jackson didn't speak any Italian when he was alive, and Alfonso Gioia doesn't speak a word of English. I checked that by making
a brief, fake telephone call in his presence, in which I gradually introduced funny jokes about him. He didn't flinch.

And there were more things I was curious about. What had possessed Monia to put me in touch with this clown? How the hell was he going to be able to help us? I asked about his so-called excellent personal contacts with key figures in local politics. He said that, without wanting to be immodest, he was, thanks to all his contacts, one of the most important people in Genoa. He had personally assisted pretty nearly all the politicians with any clout in their election campaigns, whether they were left, right, or in the middle. He was a person who could deliver votes. He showed me a fat folder bursting with papers covered in names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. “This is the membership list of the paintball club I'm president of. That's more than three thousand votes. That's how it works in Italy. Almost every politician owes me a big favor.”

But perhaps the most important thing, as he told it, was that he had an important role in the local Freemason's lodge. Naturally, he couldn't say much about it, but in strict confidence, he could let slip that he was the Honorable Grand Master himself. “And anyone who knows anything about the political situation in Italy knows that nothing gets done without the Freemasons' approval. We run this country.”

I explained the situation regarding the theater to him and asked whether he would be able to get hold of the agreement between the current owners and the council.

“That's no problem. I can give you that contract tomorrow.”

“I'd be very grateful. Thank you. We'll see each other again tomorrow, then.”

“But then you'd owe me a favor in return.”

“Tell me what I can do.”

“You're a writer, aren't you? And you write for various foreign papers, don't you? I'll make sure you get that contract on the condition that you publish the following information abroad.”

He handed me a thick document he'd put together himself. I began to read it. It slowly dawned on me what I was holding, and I could hardly believe my eyes. The document aimed to prove that he was the real Harry Potter. The writer J.K. Rowling had supposedly based her world-famous character upon him. The evidence, as one might expect, was very flimsy. In 1991, when he was fourteen, he had been a guest on an Italian television show
I fatti vostri
as the youngest wizard in Italy. That must have been the exact moment Rowling had come up with the idea for her series. The first volume was published six years later. And it wasn't just that he looked like the eponymous hero. No, she had modeled Harry on Alfonso. The similarities in appearance were too staggering to be coincidental. And there were other indications. On the show, Alfonso said that he'd been a student of a man with a long, white beard. And the name of one of the four founders of the school Harry Potter went to was Godric Gryffindor, which means “gilded griffin,” a central element in Genoa's coat of arms. That was all the proof he needed. It could no longer be coincidence.

I promised him I would inform the world of his shocking discovery. First, I was keen to see whether he could actually get hold of that contract. I no longer had much faith in that. He was a fool. To be honest, it would surprise me if I ever saw him again. And perhaps it was better that way, too.

But he did actually turn up again the next day for our
appointment. And to my astonishment, he had a copy of the contract. I gave it a fleeting glance, but there was no shadow of a doubt. He'd delivered the goods. This was the right document. This was the very document I'd been fruitlessly chasing after.

So that same day I wrote a short press release in which I did my utmost best to make something of his absurd claims. I e-mailed it to one of the papers in my home country that I regularly contributed to.

The next day I got a phone call from the editor in chief. “What the hell's this, Ilja?”

“I know, Rob. I'm sorry. It's a long story. But please just place it as a favor to me. It's important. If necessary you can put it in an inconspicuous corner somewhere. Please do, in fact. And I don't have to be paid for it. And I'll write my next piece for you for free, too. Just place it, please. And can you send me a copy of the paper?”

A week later the paper lay in my postbox. My piece had been neither cut nor edited. Alfonso Gioia was satisfied. We were even.

22.

“But what it finally comes down to is that not one goddamn thing is true.”

Succinctly put, that was exactly my conclusion, too.

“Naturally, I knew the whole time that something wasn't right, but now we've got it in black and white. Do you understand now why I kept on pressing for us to get this document? He was lying through his teeth, Pierluigi Parodi. With his cigars. It was all lies. And I mean all of it. What do you think, Ilja? Don't you see now
that I was right?”