La Superba (8 page)

Her handkerchief certainly came in handy. My first hunch was that it would be in the area around Maddalena, which has those kinds of little squares like Piazza della Lepre, Piazza delle Oche, and Piazza della Posta Vecchia—squares as big as a parking spot, which translocate mysteriously each night. There are tiny bars on them but they translocate, too. The art is to catch the streets during their nighttime displacements. But it happens inaudibly and very fast. Or very slowly. I'm still not sure about that. I walked in circles and squares around Palazzo Spinola, Vico della Rosa, Vico dietro il Coro della Chiesa die Santa Maddalena. These are places where the sun never shines. It was nighttime. The shadows had eaten up
the sun. The prostitutes and tourists had gone. The alleys were the domain of rats, pigeons, and pickpockets, as they almost always were. Witches hissed at me. A person I didn't trust asked me for a light. A rogue roared with laughter in an alleyway.

I went off to search the other side of the Via Luccoli, in Sestiere del Molo. I knew this neighborhood better but I realized that there could be streets between Via San Bernardo and the towers of the Embriaci that I didn't know. It all goes uphill there toward Castello, to the architectural faculty and the Sant'Agostino cloisters, and I don't like going uphill. So the Mandragola might very well be located there. These paths had not been trodden recently. Or if that wasn't the case, they'd been shat upon by vermin even more recently. There was a tinkle of glass in the distance. Closer by there was screaming. I strayed until I happened upon the Piazza Sarzano, near the Metro. I hadn't found the Mandragola. But in any case, I knew where I was again. And that wasn't good. I don't feel at home in this neighborhood. During the day Piazza Sarzono is too hot, and at night it's deserted, while the alleys like Via Ravecca are populated by distrustful elderly Genoese who don't want to have anything to do with foreigners, not even white ones.

“How's business, maestro?” It was Salvatore. I felt a two-euro coin in my pocket. But of course I didn't give it to him. “Sorry, Salvatore.” He came up to me and whispered in my ear, “The man you were sitting on the terrace with yesterday is a Moroccan. Did you know that?” “So what?” He held his finger to his lips meaningfully and hobbled off on his good but purportedly bad legs.

I knew how to get to the Cantine della Torre dei Embriaci. That's a bar I'll have to take you to sometime, my friend.
It's in the cellars of one of the medieval watchtowers. The space is amazingly big when you go in and renovated in the best possible taste, preserving all its authentic features. The owner is called Antonio. He's in love with his own bar. If you're there, it doesn't matter whether it's in the morning, afternoon, or evening, he'll be busy improving his café by moving a halogen bulb or two just less than two millimeters to the left. Or to the right. When you go in it's always empty. And if you cautiously ask Antonio whether he's open as he stands on a bar stool tinkering with his light bulbs, he'll say, “It was a madhouse.” Or he'll say, “It was a madhouse yesterday.” Or, “It's quiet now but tomorrow, pff…It'll be a madhouse.” Then he'll get down off his bar stool and ask what you want to drink. No, I'm saying it wrong. First he starts complaining about Italian laws, then he goes outside to smoke, then he comes back, and only then does he ask you what you want to drink. “A beer.” Wrong answer. He has sixty different kinds of beer and likes to serve them with a shot of whisky and a little cocoa powder on the foam. Which whisky would you like? And which beer? If you like, you could also have it with honey, but then it would be quite a different kind of drink. Then I'll have to add Limoncello, too. Or, on the contrary, something salty. But perhaps he might make another suggestion. A surprise. No, don't ask. I'll make you a beer. You can tell me what you think of it later.

Then he brings a few snacks. My God, does he ever bring the snacks. Cured anchovies with a salt crust. “Made them myself. This afternoon.” A bowl of
penne all'arrabiata
with extra chili. “I always make a bit of this on Thursdays. For my friends.” Meanwhile you drink English strong ale, pimped up with two measures of grappa
and a shot of Benedictine, with cinnamon on top. “I always give my friends a glass of vermouth to go with it. Maybe you'd like one? With or without basil and brown sugar? You know, my friends are the reason I own this bar. I like to give something back from time to time. Shot of Grand Marnier in the vermouth?”

His bar is devoted to the memory of Fabrizio De André, the brilliant poet and singer whom almost no one outside of Genoa knows. I know who he was. He was really brilliant. Antonio has constructed a wall of memorabilia: photos and paintings and a real guitar. Only his music is played in this bar, preferably on vinyl on a crackly record player in the corner. “I knew his mother. Her aunt was friends with my gym teacher and she was his cook. That's how.”

It was pretty much empty when I went in. “Pfff. It was a madhouse this evening. Look at all these dirty glasses. All friends of mine. But I'm happy to oblige.” There were still a couple of tufts of windswept people. A valiant small girl took the guitar down from the wall and began to play. It was the official sacred guitar but it was allowed. She sang. She sang Fabrizio De André songs. I've never heard anything like it. She sang for an almost empty bar and she sang with a voice that gave me goose bumps. She sang very differently from Fabrizio De André, but with deadly accuracy, taking no prisoners. It was also the fact that this was Genoa and that this was all living culture and that a valiant girl was singing all those songs I really love just like that in a bar in the night, so unexpectedly and on the holy guitar and almost solely for me—I sat in the corner and wept. Tears poured down my cheeks. They really did, my friend, I know you don't believe me. And for one reason or another, I had to think of her, the waitress at the Bar
of Mirrors, the most beautiful girl in Genoa, and I thought how wonderful it would be to share this moment with her, which made me cry all the more.

And there I sat in Genoa without a handkerchief. “That girl,” I said to Antonio. “That girl who sang, I'd like to thank her if you see her again. She's really special.”

“Oh sure, with pleasure.” Then he bent his head over my tear-streaked cheeks and admitted, “She has a lovely cunt that one, it's true.”

21.

These days I'm visiting the Bar of Mirrors every day for the aperitif, from around five until they close at nine and after closing time I hang around the neighborhood for a bit, and naturally you understand why, my friend. She works there every day during exactly those hours. And when she comes out around ten, after cleaning up, in her normal clothes, carrying a scooter helmet under her arm, sometimes I manage to walk past by complete coincidence and say “Ciao” to her before she goes home. Or to her boyfriend's flat with his ugly gelled head, the bastard. Or maybe they live together. No, that's not possible. It's simply not allowed.

Usually I sit on the terrace on my own. Sometimes the signora drops by, but when Bernardo Massi, the old man with the wild white hair and the wild Hawaiian shirts, rumored to be powerfully rich, is there, she prefers his company to mine. And he's almost always there. He's the owner of the entire palazzo which the Bar of Mirrors is part of, it seems. But I like sitting on my own.
That way I can watch people undisturbed. I'm afraid she is starting to become a real obsession. I get goose bumps when I see her. She glides before my eyes like a poem written in calligraphy. She's like an elegant swirl in an art nouveau ornament. I can't keep my eyes off her. And I time it so that I take the last sip of my Negroni when she comes out of the porcelain grotto onto the terrace so that I can order my next drink from her rather than from one of her nondescript colleagues. I'm as polite and respectful toward her as possible. I never try to speak to her, except to order something. That's also because I just don't dare. I know it sounds crazy but I really don't dare. I'm afraid to ruin the fragile fairy tale by saying something trite. Meanwhile, I'm waiting for the moment when she'll say something to me.

With this in mind, I always sit writing on the terrace. Almost everything I'm giving you to read has been written there, in that outside space with the dark green tables on Salita Pollaiuoli with a view of her. Maybe that's the reason I write about her so much. Maybe that's the reason I write so much, my friend. Just be thankful to her.

Because sooner or later her curiosity will have to be piqued. If you have a customer who comes back every day, polite and irreproachable in his newly-purchased Italian wardrobe, which obviously must have cost a fortune, with a real panama hat, everyone knows how much they cost, a foreigner who has clearly settled here and who sits at a table on his own every evening writing in small, meticulous handwriting in a Moleskine notebook—an artist but also a professional with an income who is probably a celebrity in his home country—then sooner or later your curiosity would
be piqued, wouldn't it? “May I ask what you are writing, sir?” “Oh, just some notes for myself. Actually I'm a poet.” “Really? A poet? I've always wanted to meet a poet. Are you famous?” “Ach, what can I say…?” “How exciting! Will you write a poem about me sometime?” “With pleasure. But I'd have to get to know you better first.” Name. Phone number. Date, kiss, and into the sack. And the bastard with the gelled head goes to the back of the line.

But she never speaks to me. And meanwhile I'm falling more and more in love.

22.

The old stones are steeped in the smell of rotting waste, piss, and something else, something acidic, something you taste on the roof of your mouth more than you smell it. Rats dart away and climb into the crevices. Their gnawing sounds like an evil thought. The sea wind brings a heavy salt spray, causing people to pant and groan. They'd love to throw off that last suffocating item of clothing. It is as damp as the forbidden cellars of the secret hunting lodge of a perverse prince. The mold and shadows that rub themselves up against the clammy walls day and night leave behind scent trails. No one need be afraid of anything chivalrous here.

They act like this is their city. They pretend to be walking along the street. But their expressions are too dark for that, their legs too long, their steps too small. No one is going anywhere. No one walks past only once. No one walks past without shining like a gold tooth in a pimp's rotten grin.

I walk over the curves and between the crannies and gashes of
this city I know my way around like no other, where I pretend to be out walking, where I repeatedly and deliberately get lost like a john on his rounds. The pavement yields willingly under my feet. Underneath flows the morass of pus we'll all plunge into once we find the opening.

They act like this is a city. They act like they're walking and wearing clothes. But underneath those clothes they are continuously naked. They touch themselves with their hands while pretending to be looking for their keys, a mobile phone, or loose change. Their thighs rub gently against each other as they walk. From time to time someone will just pause for a moment, happy, self-absorbed, as though standing under a hot shower.

I wander in circles around the labyrinth like a corkscrew being screwed into a cork. When it's freed, a bouquet of tarry, sweet wine with legs like dripping oil, matured on groaning rotten oak, with full notes of earth, decay, pleasure, and piss will rise up. We're all drunk before we even start, as we screw ourselves deeper and deeper into the cork, into the smell of the cork, into the promise of smell. What do you mean, prejudice? This is no city for a lone male. I have to come up with something. I have to do something about it before I do something, God forbid.

It was a tiny item in the local paper,
Il Secolo XIX
. I chanced upon it. In the burned forests above Arenzano, a charred woman's leg had been found. Using DNA testing, the authorities had managed to link the leg to a crime committed some time ago. The victim's name was Ornella. It was the name she'd used when admitted to hospital. She had never formally reported the crime. Her real name was unknown. She had disappeared without trace.

It slowly sunk in that this was my leg. How many severed limbs could there be knocking around Genoa and its surroundings? But how could it have gotten there? And then I remembered the yellow fire-fighting plane maneuvering above the bay of Nervi. I closed the paper in shock. But then I realized I should be happy. In any case all the traces had been wiped out. I was relieved. For a moment, I toyed with the idea of trying to track down the mysterious Ornella the leg had been attached to. If she was as I'd imagined her, a missing leg didn't have to be a problem. In fact, if I'd managed to fantasize her onto one of her legs, I'd surely be able to compensate for the lack of a single leg with my imagination. But I knew that wasn't right. The less reality there is to disturb the imagination, the more effective, attractive, and exciting the fantasy. And what's more, she'd see right through me. “Hey babe, you won't remember, but we've already met.” I should count my blessings that it had all gone so smoothly. I needed to forget that entire leg, including the Ornella I'd imagined onto it, as quickly as possible.

23.

I went for a so-called spontaneous stroll with my hand in the pocket of my trousers. It was beautiful weather, but we all know only too well where I was off to. It was the white hour after lunch, the blank page upon which some secret language could be scribbled in pencil, something that should be rubbed out again instantly as soon as the shutters were raised and life started again in black and white with profits, proceeds, and protests. For the time being, the city lay dozing, her belly bulging into the dreaming alleys,
which nonchalantly changed their position with a soft sigh, the way a woman would languidly roll over on the couch she'd settled upon after the digestif. Suddenly, all the alleys led to Maddalena. She lived nearby in Palazzo Spinola four centuries ago, among the glory and splendor of the family she managed to marry into. Portraits of doges and admirals stared down at her body with the dusky glances of age-old lecherousness. Sometimes, at this hour when the palace sleeps and the men are at sea or wherever they are, she undresses in front of the cardinal's life-sized official portrait. Soon she'll have to sit and keep quiet again. She doesn't have anything else to do. She has a lot of servants. She lies on her day bed and stares at the ceiling upon which a scene of half-naked Romans kidnapping naked Sabine virgins has been painted. If only she were a Sabine virgin. Her husband, the Doge, says that they'll lose everything if they lose the war and that this is why he is often away. “Even my clothes?” she'd asked. “Yes, even your clothes,” he had replied, after which, with a serious expression on his face, he'd gone out to continue his war. Who were they fighting again? She has no idea and she doesn't care, either, as long as they rip the clothes from her body. Pisa probably, otherwise Venice. They are always having wars against Pisa or Venice. Or perhaps it's the French. Might the French soldiers also be half-naked when they come to kidnap the Genoese women? It wouldn't surprise her, she's heard all kinds of things about the French. Brutish beasts they are, without a jot of respect for a lady's honor. Her husband has often told her that, adding that she doesn't understand a thing about state affairs. She understands enough to hope that Genoa will lose a war for once, by
preference to the French. Through the open window of her bedroom, she hears a woman screaming like a stuck pig far below her in the alleyway. Brutish beasts they are, oh, brutish beasts.