La Superba (34 page)

5.

Today, right at the end of Via San Vincenzo, just by Brignole station, I discovered a porn cinema. I must have walked past it hundreds of times, but I'd never noticed it before. There weren't any suggestive photos in the window, no screaming advertisements for forbidden pleasures. But today my gaze fell upon an amateurish poster, made in a print shop, with the English words “nonstop show.” I had to choose between screen 1 and screen 2. I asked what the difference was. I didn't understand the answer. Then I asked which show was cheaper. I was intending to choose the more expensive. The price was the same, so I ended up in screen 1.

It was a real cinema with a large screen, rows of tip-up seats, and a balcony with boxes and seating at the sides. It was dark inside. I needed the flesh-colored light of the screen to see that I wasn't alone. The silhouettes of twenty or thirty men were as widely spread around the room as possible. When we had tests at school, we had to sit a ways apart so that we couldn't copy each other. Everyone was sitting separately here, too. No cheating.

The show consisted of a French porn film, I guessed from around the mid-1980s. Its dialogue had been dubbed into Italian.
They'd left the original sounds intact in the sex scenes. This confirmed my fantasy that Italian girls only acted like they spoke Italian until you stuffed something into them. The film was actually quite good. There were pretty girls with small tits. The scenes proceeded smoothly, without a surplus of soporific gymnastics in close up. There was even a kind of storyline: the man with the long coat and sunglasses commissioned various girls to make their fantasies come true. And they did that. That was what the film was about. And so it might happen that a girl was masturbating in a graveyard at night before being taken by two supposed tramps, until the man with the long coat and sunglasses appeared on the scene to finish things off properly. There was also a remote controlled car that had special hooks that could steal the panties of girls who just happened to have taken off their panties in a public place.

I sat as far apart from the others as I could and wondered whether there was anything like this in my home country. I knew we used to have them, sure. On the day of my eighteenth birthday I'd been to the legendary Cinema Rex. Those were the days. But the whole porn business had been so Youtubed and Youporned and Redtubed over the past few years. A real cinema with tip-up seats and popcorn, velvet, and a silver screen, a counter where you had to pay to be allowed inside, the emotion shared with a room full of like-minded people in the darkness of hidden fantasies that the city didn't want to know about. And when it was over, stepping blinking out into a daylight filled with shoppers while inside your head you were still in the film. I was grateful to have found a real porn cinema.

But it didn't really excite me all that much. At least, that's what I'd decided in advance. The problem with such a lovely old-fashioned porn cinema is, of course, that, despite the relative gloom and spread-out seating strategy, you hardly have any privacy. In some ways, it's still a public building. That's why you can't smoke there, for example. And it's not really the perfect spot to have a nice long wank. At least that was the way I tended to think about it. But when I took a look around in the skin-colored gleam of the big screen, I saw that pretty much all the paying customers differed from me in that respect.

First I became aware of a jerking off kind of a movement diagonally behind me. I turned my head in such a way as to be able to check out my suspicions. And I was right. It stood out, to give a graphic description, like a sore thumb. An old, dirty Genoese man sat in the seat diagonally behind me unmistakably, convincingly jerking off with ever more frantic gestures.

As you'll understand, my friend, I was shocked. I was convinced that he was a notorious pervert who, somewhere between now and the next five minutes, would be thrown out of the auditorium for the umpteenth time. A gentleman doesn't behave like that in a place of public entertainment. But when I very discreetly turned my head to give the corner of my right eye a good view, I saw that the fat man sitting four seats away on the same row as I had his whole fucking trousers around his ankles including his dirty underpants and was sitting there with his stinking, wrinkly member in his fists. I could see the tip of his cock and his scrotum. When I went on and had a less discreet look around, I realized that I was the exception, not them. And not only because I was by
far the youngest. All those filthy, squalid phantoms of men were wanking before my very eyes. And then I saw that if they were watching the film, it was only out of the corners of their eyes. From time to time, someone would turn his face to the screen to get some inspiration or to feign artistic interest. But everyone was mainly looking at everyone else. And the privileged ones in the boxes had a fantastic view of the room in its entirety.

My first instinct was to make a quick getaway, but I had to get out on the right side of the row, and how do you ask someone to get up and make way for you when he has his trousers around his ankles and he's holding his cock? I decided to wait politely until he'd come. But once that had happened, he started all over again. He looked at me with eyes that glistened like a false tooth in the night.

I'm not telling you the entire truth, my friend, but you've guessed that already. My first instinct wasn't to make a quick getaway. As the youngest and, in all modesty, most attractive visitor at the time, I felt I was being stared at. Something was expected of me. I was an object of fantasy. I could feel it in my veins. My first instinct wasn't to get away as quickly as possible, but to unbutton my fly as slowly as possible. Glittering eyes gazed at me like wolves in the night. I've seldom felt so turned on. And by the time I had slipped down my underpants agonizingly slowly, I found myself the owner of a monumental erection that gleamed in the light of twenty, thirty, or forty pairs of eyes. I was blind to the film now. Nice and slow like a woman, I began to play with my cock as though it were a pussy. My own imaginary breasts turned me on like a transvestite. I took off my top and played with the world like I was fucking myself in my thoughts. If a horny old pervert
had come up to me that moment waving his festering member, I would have sucked him off like I was wearing lipstick. I was La Superba. La Superba was me. I almost ejaculated at the thought, but delayed it a little for sake of the show, and instead, something quite different happened.

All things considered, it's a terrible story—embarrassing, filthy, and humiliating for me. Naturally, I would never put something like that in my book. Or I'd invent another character who did it. And even then. I'm only telling you, my friend, because I trust you and I want to make something clear to you in this unusual fashion. That afternoon I was a victim of my own imagination. I felt sexy, but I was just a fat writer behaving scandalously in a public place in Genoa. Anyway, you get the point. The circumstances were extreme, but the truth of the matter is that I sincerely believe we are all like that. We dream our dreams, feel desired, inspired, and admired until the lights go on.

Because suddenly the lights went on. The French film had finished, clearly. I'd stopped watching it. A new film was put on the reels. It was a nonstop show, after all. But in order to change the film, the light had to go on. Just for a moment. A minute is enough. And there I was. There I was with my titties, my teased-up top, my remotely-removed panties, fondling myself like a girl in a Milo Manara drawing, with a painfully postponed orgasm on the fifth seat from the right of the second to last row of a cinema at the end of Via San Vincenzo, close to Brignole, in front of all of the eyes of Genoa. Somehow, all the dirty old men had suddenly turned into impeccably dressed, fine gentlemen. It was only then that I made a quick getaway.

6.

It was a cold night and had started snowing again. The snow didn't even melt but settled. I was looking for a bar that was still open. It was Sunday, so the options were limited. Even the Britannia was closed. I went to the Piazza delle Erbe but all the shutters had already been rolled down. There was no one out. I pinned my hopes on the historical Bar Barbarossa on Piano Sant'Andrea under the Porta Soprana. I walked uphill along Salita del Prione, my head deep in my collar. I had to watch my step as I climbed. The street was definitely too steep for these weather conditions. I almost fell over twice. But it was too late to change my mind. The journey back downhill would be just as slippery, and what's more, there was nothing to do down there, as I'd already found out.

In the distance I saw the shadow of someone trying to descend the same street from the other side. It was a woman. She didn't seem to have any trouble with the slipperiness of the snow-covered cobblestones. She barely seemed to touch the ground.

We met halfway. She was an old woman, I could see that from her face. But she moved almost weightlessly. She looked almost transparent. She was wearing strange clothes, a long black skirt, and a gray shawl—she seemed to come from another era. In a strange way, she looked older than she looked.

She spoke to me. I didn't understand a word she was saying. She spoke too quietly. I apologized. She apologized in turn and repeated her question. I realized she wanted directions, but she was speaking the Genoese dialect and I could only half understand it. I've heard drunken heating engineers and roadworkers
at Paolo's
enoteca
screaming in the dialect at each other that the other has a tiny
belín,
but I'd never heard friendly, polite Genoese. She repeated her question. Vico dei Librai? I'd understood. Vico dei Librai. Did I know where it was? That's where she lived and she couldn't find her house anymore.

I reflected. I knew Centro Storico very well by now, but I couldn't place a Vico dei Librai. Was it in Centro Storico? Yes, it was just near the port, near Porta Soprana. It did sound like the name of an alleyway in Centro Storico, I had to admit. She didn't seem demented or confused. She seemed to know exactly what she was talking about. But I didn't know. I'd never heard of that alleyway.

But at the same time, under these circumstances, I couldn't allow myself to just shrug apologetically. It was cold, snowing. She was an old lady who couldn't find her way home. I couldn't abandon her to her fate at this time of night. I was charmed by the idea that, as a foreigner, I could be the savior of a woman who was so Genoese she didn't even speak Italian. I suggested going to Bar Barbarossa. They'd certainly be able to help us there. And I was on my way there, anyway. She nodded, turned around, and walked along beside me.

The Barbarossa was open but practically empty. I ordered a Negroni for myself and asked what I could get for her. She didn't want anything. I insisted. I said it was cold. I ordered her a hot cup of tea. I said it was the least I could do for her.

We stood at the bar. She didn't touch her tea. I asked the barman whether he might know where Vico dei Librai was. He didn't know, either. I said it had to be in the neighborhood and that it was important because the lady had to get home. He did
his best, looked in the phone book, but couldn't find the street in question. How did you spell it again? Dei Librai? Like the booksellers? Strange. Wasn't in the index. The woman was still standing silently next to me. He fetched a colleague. He had a smartphone with navigation. The problem would be solved within two minutes. I ordered another Negroni. She still hadn't touched her tea. But Vico dei Librai didn't exist. His smartphone gave no results. Maybe he didn't have a signal. Maybe it was because of the snow. She thanked us. She laid a banknote on the counter to pay for the tea she hadn't drunk a drop of. I protested. The barmen protested, too. But she was already on her way out. We followed her with the money she'd left behind. She was nowhere to be seen. There weren't any footprints in the fresh snow. What she'd left behind turned out to be a one hundred-lira note from the Kingdom of Italy.

7.

“Your coat smells like a cage of wet, wild animals.” It was the signora. “If you want to become a Genoese
gentiluomo
, you'll have to start going to the dry cleaners from time to time. But I'm prepared to forgive you that today on the condition that you give me your dirty arm and accompany me to the Bar of Mirrors. It's slippery for a lady. And I'll thank you with a drink. As long as it's coffee and not the usual shit you drink. What's it called again? Negroni. That's healthier for you and cheaper for me. I have to think of everything, Leonardo. Promise me you'll go to the hairdresser's soon, too?”

“It's such a privilege to be able to keep you company that I insist you allow me to thank you by offering you anything you would like.”

She smiled. “You're learning, Leonardo.”

We sat down inside, in the porcelain grotto, at the small round table next to the window. I ordered a Negroni and she a hot tea with Cognac.

“If you're the one paying, I'll have one, too. You'll understand that, as a Genoese.”

“Thank you, signora. As a Genoese, I understand that you are doing me a service by so unambiguously accepting my hospitality and I can only hope that I will soon find myself in a situation whereby I can pay you back.”

“I see that my lessons are starting to bear fruit. You're indebted to me for that, too.”

“I was only too aware of that.”

“What happened with the theater?”

“How do you know about that? I mean, which theater? I mean…”

“As a Genoese you ought to know that, as a Genoese, I know everything about you.”

I nodded to say that I should have known and I shook my head in response to her question.

“Parodi?”

“It didn't go that well.”

“I hope you haven't turned them against you. They're powerful in this city.”

“I know that now.”

“Where is the theater actually?”