La Superba

by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

  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. Bruti
sh 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.

  Suddenly all roads led to Maddalena. I tried to walk from Piazza Soziglia to Piazza Fontane Marose, but in the place where the Via Luccoli was located at other times of the day, there was a dark alleyway which turned back on itself, coming out on the other side of Piazza Lavagna, where grubby men with their hands in their pockets walked along alleys with poetic names that were all called Maddalena, and where darkly-scented women, who were all called Maddalena, said I had pretty hair and that was why I had to go with them. They asked whether I was French. They asked whether I knew the secrets of the jungle where it could be night all afternoon in their hands. They grabbed me by the forearm to go explain it better somewhere else. They twirled my hair around their fingers and said that there was something feminine about me. They stroked the hand in the trouser pocket. Brutish beasts, they were.

  She rolls over once again on her daybed. The ebony paneling nauseates her. She gets up to open a window. There’s not enough light in this room in this house, in this much too grand house. There isn’t enough light in Genoa. The biggest problem with women is that they are inclined to expect something from men. The biggest problem with men is that they realize that something is expected of them. This realization scares them. That’s why they prefer the company of other men, men with whom they go rushing around in great seriousness, in the delusion that the city’s future is at stake. And that’s why nothing ever happens. A man wants to possess his wife, but if she wants to be possessed, he flees. It’s so tiring, waiting for the French. She stands at the open window. Far below in the alleyway there is loud laughing and joking in languages her husband won’t let her learn. She hears someone running away. She imagines he has one hand in the pocket of his trousers. She falls back onto her day bed with a sigh. She looks up at the ceiling painting.

  We all know damned well where I was going. San Luca is at the end of Maddalena. I turned right there. I walked to Via del Campo. Just before the end, ten meters before the Porta dei Vacca, was Vico della Croce Bianca.

  24.

  This neighborhood is known as the Ghetto. The name is meant ironically, but even during the daytime, it takes courage to go there. It’s dusky all day in other alleys. Here it’s always night. It gives the appearance of being renovated. And it’s in dire need of that, which you realize the moment you set foot in the area. There’s no pavement and almost everything is crumbling or half-collapsed. But it’s not being renovated. For years, the narrow, tall, impassable streets have been covered in rusty scaffolding that has no other purpose than to deny all pedestrians even that tiny strip of blue sky.

  If you look on the map, it’s a question of five or six small alleys: Vico della Croce Bianca, Vico del Campo, Vico di Untoria, Vico dei Fregoso, Vico degli Andorno, and perhaps Vico San Filipa. But the map isn’t quite right. There are also gaps between the walls, and toppled palazzi form new squares without a name. The rats are as big as lapdogs. They know their way around and take to their heels, just like the Moroccans who rub along the mildewed walls as skittish as ghosts. And everywhere I saw the same sticker that was stuck to the pipes on my house:

  derattizzazione in corso

  non toccare le esche

  I still have to look up what that means.

  The transvestites live here. The famous transvestites of Genoa that Fabrizio De André sung about as le graziose di Via del Campo. They are men in their fifties wearing high heels and fishnet stockings over their hairy legs, a sexy dress straining over their beer bellies, and a wig. They beckon you into their caverns with their stubble and their irresistible baritone voices, where, for a pittance, you can grapple with their self-made femininity. Muslims who may not deflower a woman before they’ve committed a terrorist attack eagerly do the rounds of the hairy asses on offer. A condom spurted full is worth four dead rats, and four dead rats are a meal. She doesn’t have any tits, her bra’s full of cotton wool, but if you pay extra, you can suck on them. And if you don’t pay, she’ll stab your eye out with one of her stilettos.

  I heard a story: in the nineteen-sixties a real war waged in these alleyways. For three days. The harbor was full of American warships. An American marine had broken the explicitly worded rules and ventured into these streets one night. Into the Ghetto. He had fallen in love. To him, she was the most beautiful girl in Genoa. He had the blushing privilege of being able to shower her in cigarettes, chocolate, and fishnet stockings. He secretly wrote poems for her in his diary. It was the most wonderful night of his life. But exploring between her sticky thighs afterward, he discovered the truth. He felt betrayed, swore he would take revenge, and fetched his friends. Forty heavily armed marines invaded the Ghetto. And the transvestites fought back. Stilettos vs. night-vision binoculars. Boiling oil poured from the top floor. Fences falling as soon as the troops reformed. In the meantime, running across the rooftops and the rusty scaffolding. Diversionary tactics with fishnet stockings. And the street you came through, the one guaranteeing your retreat, suddenly doesn’t exist anymore because it seems to have been barricaded with a portcullis. They won. The transvestites won. The neighborhood was declared a no-go zone for American marines.

  It’s a place that has an unusual pull on me. Probably partly due to that story. Or because it’s the place that is the furthest away from my fatherland. Or for other reasons. I don’t know. We’ll come back to the subject.

  25.

  Rashid was limping when I saw him again. He had a black eye as well.

  “Come and sit down. I’ll order you a beer. Sorry about last time. And thank you. But what happened?”

  “A disagreement,” he said.

  “Did you go to the police?”

  He tried to giggle but it made him cough, which clearly hurt his ribs.

  “Are you here illegally?”

  He stared into his beer.

  “Sorry, Rashid. Perhaps you don’t feel like talking at all.”

  “Could you order a few of those free appetizers for me maybe? What are they called again? Stuzzichini.”

  “Of course.”

  “Sorry to ask but there are some things here that a foreigner like you gets more easily than a foreigner like me.”

  He ate like a dog. He ate like someone who hadn’t eaten for a week.

  “I haven’t eaten for a week, Ilja.”

  I ordered more free snacks for him under the pretext of ordering them for myself.

  “And I’m privileged,” he said with his mouth full. “Can you imagine? Where I live, we live with eleven or nine or thirteen, it’s different every day. Two rooms. Nine hundred and eighty euros a month. Most of them are Moroccans like me. But there are also a few Senegalese. It’s even harder for them than it is for us. But they make it difficult for themselves, I have to say. I’m not a racist but those black people ruin it for all of us. I mean, I came here to work, Ilja. I’m an honest man. Tell me it’s true. I’m a good Muslim, even if I do have the occasional beer. But those blacks have a completely different mentality, you can’t do anything about it, it’s just like that. They steal. They even steal from their own housemates. And if you say anything about it, they kick the shit out of you and give you a black eye. They’re used to taking advantage of others. It’s not even their fault, really. It’s their culture. You have to respect that. You’ll agree with me about that, Ilja, that you have to respect their culture.”

  I began to feel more and more uncomfortable about this conversation.

  “But to return to your question,” Rashid said. “No.”

  “Sorry, I lost the thread.”

  “I’m not here illegally. I have a temporary residence permit. Not like thos
e blacks. I have the right to be here. They arrive on rubber boats via Lampedusa, Malta, or the Canary Islands. I came here with a passport. I’m a skilled worker. I installed air-conditioning for work in Casablanca. I’m a good person, Ilja, do you understand?”

  “And why did you come here?”

  “Do you want an honest answer?”

  “No.”

  Rashid had to laugh and then cough and then his ribs hurt again. He slapped me on the back.

  “Really, you’re my only friend here,” he said. “It’s quite an honor for a white man, me saying that, you should know that. Since you asked, I’ll give you a dishonest answer.”

  He took a sip of his beer.

  “I came here to write a book and not to earn money. I came here to gather inspiration and to enrich my life with new experiences, like being robbed and beaten by my own housemates, and I didn’t come here to survive. I got bored with my work in Casablanca. It was the same old. I came here to look for a new challenge. Like not even being able to get the most basic job with a name like mine. Here I’m a pariah. But it’s fascinating sharing a two-room apartment with nine or eleven or thirteen others, plus the rats. It makes me resourceful. It makes me creative. It keeps me on my toes.”

  “I’m sorry, Rashid. I understand what you want to say. But why don’t you go back?”

  “You don’t understand a thing, Ilja. I’ve already explained it to you. The first time we met. Don’t you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re lying. But I’ll explain it to you one more time. If you’ll order me another beer.”

  I ordered him another beer with stuzzichini.

  “Let’s take one of my housemates as an example. So that it’s not about me but someone else. That makes it easier. He comes from Senegal. He’s black. His name is Djiby. Yes, write that in your notebook: Djiby. Got that, concerned white citizen of the world? Great. He’s a man with a spectacular refugee story. Go and interview him. I’d be happy to introduce you to him.”