La Superba

by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

“I changed my mind, I’m going home.”

  She slammed the door behind her with a loud crash.

  35.

  But she cannot escape me. She’s a waitress, after all. She works in a public place. The next day I went to the Bar of Mirrors for my aperitif. Even before I could sit down, she came over to me. She gestured for me to follow her. We went into the porcelain grotto, the small space where she prepared the stuzzichini. She closed the curtain behind us.

  “Listen, Leonardo,” she whispered. “Promise you’ll listen to me properly and won’t interrupt. I’d rather you didn’t come here for a while. Don’t worry. It’s not your fault. But I need some privacy. You have to give me some space. I need to think. So let’s agree not to see each other for a while. Two or three weeks or so. There are enough other bars. Go to the Piazza delle Erbe. OK?”

  I nodded.

  “And you were right. Naturally you were right. Of course I wasn’t bitten by rats. I will tell you the truth. I fell. Down the stairs. And it wasn’t really an accident. He pushed me. Francesco. My boyfriend. I’m sure you’ve seen him around. I told him about you, about the interesting new customer I’d met who was always so well-mannered and polite and who always sat writing in his notebook. I told him I thought you were a poet. And then he got so jealous he pushed me down the stairs. It was a bit unfortunate that you reminded me of that last night. But you couldn’t know. So I’m not blaming you at all.”

  “And that’s why you broke up with Francesco?”

  She gave me a confused look. “What do you mean?” she said. “No, I didn’t break up with him. He’s still my boyfriend. It actually means that he really, really loves me. Getting so angry when I’m talking about another man that he can no longer control himself. He’s a passionate man. Really different from you.”

  “So why did you come home with me last night?”

  “That’s exactly what I want to think about. Go now.”

  I understood. Oh my God, how I’d understood. How could I have been so stupid? Of course she had a boyfriend. And now that boyfriend had a name, too. Francesco, the bastard. Of course she’d never leave him. If she managed to interpret domestic violence as proof of his love, what would it take to get her to leave him? I’d been living in my dreams. The dream that she could be mine. But Cinzia and the signora had been right. She was an Italian girl with a passionate Italian boyfriend, and she’d never be capable of taking the step toward a new life. She would always take the certainty of his heavy-handedness over the uncertain adventure of my hands that had stroked her more gently than the moonlight. Fine. This was it, then. I decided to cherish the night before as a precious memory and for the rest, forget about her.

  36.

  I’m sorry, my friend, that you haven’t heard from me for a while. I’d taken a break from my pleasurable obligation of keeping you up to date, via these notes, on the vicissitudes of my life in the labyrinth of my new city in my new homeland, and my striving to force myself—by fulfilling this pleasurable obligation—to mine the crude ore from which I’d win the liquid, red-hot, precious metal that would stream, shine, and scorch as my next novel, in order to dedicate myself to an even more enjoyable task if possible, which for obvious reasons will have no impact on my book, if only because real people are involved, with real feelings, and a family with three small children and a jealous husband whom readers in my home country might know. Thematically, too, this short, piquant episode has no relevance to my novel, which, as you will have understood, will have to focus on the big topical issue of immigration, whereby I will contrast my own successful expat lifestyle with the deplorable fate of all those poor fellows from Morocco and Senegal who got lost in these very same streets in their dreams of a better life and guaranteed wealth in Europe, and whom the authorities, who have declared a state of emergency, are exterminating like rats. The novel will also have to be about my own fantasy of making my long-cherished dream of a jealousy-inducing rich and carefree Mediterranean existence among true, authentic people who haven’t yet unlearned the art of attributing importance only to the things that really matter: perfume, taste, elegance, and a natural, noble way of life. Italy, oh Italy. The balmy, humming summer’s evening skies, pregnant with scooter girls, and the light-footed opera buffa of daily existence are perfectly isotonic with my soul. Being in this country has always felt like a process of osmosis, of my fusion with my natural habitat. The labyrinth of Centro Storico is just as much a metaphor for my dreams as it is the desperate fairy tale in which Rashid, Djiby, and others have lost themselves.

  Genoa’s old nickname is La Superba. You can interpret the name in two different ways and you understand this best when you approach the city from the south, across the sea. All of a sudden there she is: a beautiful piece of scenery with towering palazzi in a mountain basin. But while you are enjoying it, you realize that the pomp and glory form an impenetrable wall. She is beautiful and heartless. She’s a whore who beckons but whom you can never make your own. She is alluring and reckless. She seduces and destroys. Like the rats lured into traps with poison that tastes like honey. In that sense, Genoa, La Superba symbolizes Europe as a whole. Behind her impenetrable walls of border checks, asylum procedures, investigators, and forced expulsions, she lies there showing off her promise of new Mercedes and BMWs. Anyone managing to force their way in takes this as reason enough to believe they’ve achieved their dream. They’re in paradise. The rest will follow as a matter of course. And then they’ll wither away in a leaky two-room apartment with eleven of their countrymen and be exterminated like a rat.

  That’s what it should be about. And about the past. Seven score and ten years ago, millions of destitute, desperate Italians boarded ships in the ports of this very city, dreaming of a better life and guaranteed wealth in La Merica, as they called their wonderland on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. In the place from which millions once set sail, now millions are chased away like rats because they are doing exactly what their hosts did fifty and one hundred years previously: hope. That’s what it should be about, for fuck’s sake, and not about the trivialities I contemplated telling you.

  Alright. Of course it also has to be about her, too. You’re much too good a reader not to have picked that up from the first line I wrote to you. Of course it has to be about the most beautiful girl in Genoa, who, as befitting the most beautiful girl, works among mirrors. She is a fairy tale. I’m not sure which role I’m going to invent for her in my final work of art. It depends of course on future developments. If there are any future developments, which, to be honest, I seriously doubt. She was La Superba. And she was the fantasy in which I have gotten more and more lost. This was another good reason for taking a break for a few days and devoting myself to a juicy reality. I’ll tell you about it, my friend. But I’m presuming that you understand that I’m trusting you to keep to yourself what I’m about to tell you.

  37.

  The story actually began a few years ago. I was at one of those many compulsory literary parties in my homeland, which I always frequented with great displays of bravado and bluster and which I miss like a hole in the head. As I was standing there holding forth on an interesting topic among a group of jealous admirers and jealous rivals, a woman came up to me and introduced herself as my German translator. She was blonde and statuesque, slightly plump, but all in all pretty impressive. She’d just been asked to translate a selection of my poetry. I’d heard about it. Her name was Inge. Maybe I’ve mentioned her to you before.

  After that first meeting we saw each other with some regularity to discuss her progress. Generally, I like to have as little contact with my translators as possible, but in her case it was a pleasure. I noticed—or perhaps just fantasized it—that she got dressed up especially for our meetings. Or in any case, she could have chosen to show off a less deeply-cut top at a work meeting with one of her authors. You could put it another way. In complete concordance with my poetics, she accentuated her excesses. On my part, I didn’t have to make any
effort at all. I’d already written all my poems. I didn’t even have to spray my armpits to give her the idea that she had the right to flirt with me.

  Last week she sent me an e-mail saying she’d like to talk to me because her translation was as good as finished. I replied by e-mail that it would be a great pleasure and that I was keen to see it, but that I was living in Genoa at present. She wrote back saying that, in that case, she’d come to Genoa. I said: OK. And then she came. She’d booked a flight to Milan–Malpensa and reserved a place on an intercity. She texted me a specific time of arrival.

  She was married…is still married to an American agent who has been frequenting parties in my homeland with great displays of bravado and bluster since time immemorial and still hasn’t been able to muster the decency to lose his all-American barbecue accent. He’s a bastard. They have three small children. For form’s sake, I’d taken an option in her name on a grimy hotel room in the Doria on Vico dei Garibaldi, the worst hotel in the neighborhood, which she’d certainly want to swap for another after the first night and then it would be a Saturday and all the hotels in the city would be fully booked. But the ruse was completely unnecessary. I waited for her at Palazzo Principe station at her specific time of arrival and she came running up to me in all her flamboyant, un-Italian blondeness. She embraced me like she never would have done in the fatherland, kissed me on the lips, and asked, “Is it a long way to your place?”

  And I didn’t have to make up the guest bed that night. She joined me in bed like a sumptuously shaped cloud. She smelled of the north, not of Genoa. I wanted her to undress, but she said I had to dance for her. She watched me as I stroked my own body tauntingly slowly. I looked in the mirror to see the way she was watching me as I watched myself like a pole dancer. Then she said she wanted to see the most beautiful girl in Genoa. Then she said we should undress her together. She began to kiss her. I kissed her while she enjoyed my fantasy. We played with the girl in the mirrors for hours on end, the two of us, and we were given ourselves in return, as shining and clear as our own reflections.

  It’s just struck me that it sounds a bit odd when I tell it to you like that. And yet it was exactly as I said. I had soft, sweet lesbian sex with Inge, about whom I’d long fantasized, and with my own fantasy. And then it got even crazier.

  38.

  The next day it was raining. We went to have coffee in the Bar of Mirrors. The girl was there, but she didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with us. She didn’t greet us, let the other waitresses serve us, and didn’t look at us. When the rain had stopped, I paid her, leaving a big tip. She didn’t even thank me. When we walked out, I saw her watching us in the mirrors. She quickly turned her face away when she saw in the mirrors that I was watching her in the mirrors. But I’d seen it in the mirrors. She was crying.

  I took Inge on a long walk through the labyrinth. We walked to Porto Antico and back up via the dirty streets near San Cosimo and Santa Maria in Castello, over the cobblestones I love so much, through the gates and arches so fond to me, past the names which sing so in my ears, downwards along Vico Amandorla to Campo Pisano. The sun broke through. But I had a strange, dark feeling in my stomach. She was crying. I was sure of it. I’d seen it.

  Every time I thought about it, I felt a nest of baby rats gnawing at my innards, at my masculinity, and my convictions. But Inge was walking along very obviously enjoying herself. Her blonde hair shone like Saint Elmo’s fire in the night. It was all strolling hand in hand for her. It was all getting lost in a fairy tale to her. It was, for her, like it was for me the first time I got lost. And when we passed the high bridge under Ravasco, which is the bridge to Carignano, and caught sight of the colossal spaceships stranded in the no-man’s-land of the Giardini di Plastica, she said, “It looks like some kind of virtual world, like Second Life. It’s amazing.” She took a picture of me with her mobile phone.

  Later in the afternoon, we walked the long route parallel to the sea, from Via Canneto Il Curto, Via San Luca, Piazza Fossatello, and Via del Campo toward the Pré. I wanted to show her Africa. I wanted to see how exotically she, in all her colossal blondeness, would stand out against the dark background of alleyways filled with danger and grinning white teeth. She was surprised by how many wig shops there were. “Which would you choose?” she asked. “For you?” “No, I’m already a dumb blonde. For yourself.” I pointed out a blonde wig that looked a bit like her own hairstyle. “No, no need to be sweet. I know you want that one.” She pointed out a wig of beautiful, long, dark Italian hair you’d be able to wear up, just like the girl in the mirrors. “Then you’d be the most beautiful girl in Genoa,” she said. She kissed me on the lips. Then she burst into a fit of giggles.

  After that I had to show her the transvestites in the Ghetto around Vico della Croce Bianca, you’ll understand that. She was frightened in the dark streets filled with the shadows of scummy men searching for hairy-assed fifty-year-olds in fishnets. I had to hold her. She pressed herself to me as though I were a local guide who could protect her from the savages. But she found the transvestites themselves endlessly fascinating. Although she was frightened, we had to take the same route three times. “That was the most impressive bit of Genoa,” she’d say the next day when we said goodbye at the station. “After you, of course.” And again she’d burst into a fit of giggles.

  39.

  In the evening, I wanted us to go to Capitan Baliano to watch the match. She had no interest in football, but it was the derby that evening and I told her the experience would crucial to her understanding of the city. I had to see the match, I’d been looking forward to it for weeks. For days, I’d read about nothing else on the pink pages of the Gazzetta dello Sport. The bar was packed. She was one of the few women there and was therefore offered a seat. She sat there sending text messages to her American husband or her three children. I stood behind her chair and laid my hand on her shoulder.

  All of a sudden, I saw her in the big mirror behind the bar. She was looking at us, still crying. I searched for her in the crowd but couldn’t find her. Is she a girl I can only observe through mirrors? When I looked in the mirror again she had disappeared.

  I couldn’t concentrate on the match. In the second half, Milito, the Prince, scored the only goal. An inferno of joy burst out. People jumped in the air, their fists clenched. Beer and coffee poured over the tables. Fabio the barman danced for joy in front of his flat screen. I hugged Inge so I could celebrate on a busty note and then I saw her again. She was standing motionlessly in a corner, crying. I went over to her but she wasn’t there.

  Genoa won the derby against Sampdoria 1-0. The city’s statues were covered in red and blue flags. Cars drove along the Sopraelevata tooting their horns. The fountain on Piazza de Ferrari was danced empty. Fireworks were set off on Piazza delle Erbe. We watched it through the windows of Caffè Letterario, where we had good, long conversations about beautiful things. We kissed. “Isn’t that that girl?” Inge asked. I couldn’t see properly through the smoke from the firecrackers and rockets. I went outside and saw her running away along Vico delle Erbe toward Piazza Matteotti and Palazzo Ducale. I tried to catch up with her but she was too far away and the square was too full of frenzied joy. I tried to find her in the alleys behind Palazzo Ducale and even ran all the way to Piazza Campetto, but she had disappeared in the labyrinth that was pretty much impenetrable thanks to the hordes of boisterous football fans.

  When, deep in the night, we walked back to my apartment along Via San Bernardo and Vico Vegetti past the smoldering embers of a memorable day, I was certain she was following us and thought we’d be too intent on each other to look back. I didn’t look back because I knew she’d have run screaming back into the underworld of the labyrinth.

  That night, Inge played gently with me like we had played with her together the night before. She squeezed my tits and kissed my nipples. She slowly stroked my fat belly full of gnawing rats. She burst out laughing. “What is it?” “I just remembered that y
ou’re a very famous poet.” She moved her hand downwards and began to work my cock a little. “You’re a very strange girl,” she said. “You’re a pregnant transvestite.” She kissed me and fell asleep.

  40.

  I dreamed that I woke up next to the most beautiful girl in Genoa. She wasn’t in the Bar of Mirrors where she belonged, but on a double IKEA mattress on the flagstones of the sitting room in my apartment on Vico Alabardieri. She was lying there asleep with a lot of cuddly toys. I was lying on a rickety one-man IKEA sofa bed with my head facing the other way. I started, because instead of her shining, chestnut Italian hair she had short white hair with various bald spots. I stroked her head and she smiled. She stirred slightly, slipped into my bed, squeezed my nipple, and began to carefully and gently fuck me. No, that wasn’t how it went, because I climbed out of my creaky bed to go feel her pink hair. I lay down next to her on the big mattress. She was small, almost as small as a cuddly toy. She stirred slightly and said, “Don’t I have any goddamn right to privacy?” I said she shouldn’t worry. I actually wanted to say that the crux of what they call love is trying to get closer to someone during difficult periods, not shutting the other out. Or something like that. I couldn’t quite articulate it. She had already gotten up and dressed in a lot of very thick, gray clothes. “Where are you going?” But she’d already closed the door behind her. She’d already turned the big long key twice in the lock.

  Then I dreamed I’d fallen asleep again and that I was dreaming I was in an English pub in the middle of Genoa. I was allowed to smoke there and everyone spoke Italian. It was dark and there were nice seats to sit on, like in a bus. There were names and hearts scratched into the tables. On the seat I was sitting on, someone had written in Italian in felt pen, “I have no money or things I can give to you, only all of myself and the nights we spend together.” From the grammatical form of “all of myself” I could tell that this outpouring had been written by a woman. Swedish music by ABBA was playing; they were singing in English that breaking up was never easy, but knowing each other the way they did, it was the best thing to do.