La Superba

by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

  I woke up and thought it might be better to go and lie back down on my sofa bed, because if she returned, she’d certainly think she had a right to her privacy on her enormous mattress covered in cuddly toys. She was certain to come back. Though it wasn’t certain that everything would be fine and I would be happy.

  I dreamed that she came back. She opened the heavy lock and closed it behind her with the long key. She said nothing. In my dream, I secretly opened one eye to look at her. She wasn’t wearing thick, gray clothes any more. She was naked like a sick rat. I saw her wounds. On her feet, her leg, her lower arm, all over. She’d turned them pink with iodine, perhaps hoping they might stand out less that way. She was bald, small, wounded, and helpless. I was the only one who could save her. If she allowed me to. If she wanted me to. She didn’t look at me. She was too proud to even cry.

  I dreamed that the next day she’d be beautiful again and that she’d bring me stuzzichini as though nothing had happened. As though everything that had happened was of no importance. As though we all had a different life than the one we had. As though we’d never meet because of this.

  41.

  Someone who looks like a banker walks into the BNL bank on Piazza Matteoti. Someone who looks like a crook—with a broken nose, low forehead, and big, protruding ears—comes out of the police station next door, while eight carabinieri stand smoking on the pavement and laughing and acting out on a friend how they’d arrest him. Someone who looks like an elderly Italian gentleman saunters past as an elderly Italian gentleman would saunter on his afternoon stroll along the Via San Lorenzo to Porto Antico where he’ll sit on a bench to look at the ships.

  Everyone is the embodiment of their own fantasy. Everyone looks the way they imagine and lives the life that goes with that. The butcher on Via Canetto Il Lungo looks like a butcher—a colossal hunk of meat with a bloody apron and magisterial claws made to plow through carcasses. He looks like that because he immerses himself so well in his fantasy of being a butcher. And the elderly Italian gentleman sits on a bench on Piazza Caricamento near Porto Antico, looks at the ships and fantasizes about far-off destinations: Barcelona, Tunis, Panama, La Merica. And when he returns home obediently in time for dinner, he feels satisfied, enriched, and somewhat tired, like a man returning home after a long, adventurous sea voyage. His grandchildren wanted to offer him a cruise to Barcelona but he refused the gift because he’d been going there every afternoon all those years and every afternoon it was beautiful weather and the most beautiful people strolled along the unnaturally beautiful boulevards toward the seafront to sit on a bench every afternoon and fantasize about Genoa, La Superba, that robbers’ den on the Mediterranean, where the whores are as black as the endless night in the alleys, where the only light flashed off flicked-open knives, and where you might be kidnapped on every street corner and sold as a white slave in the slums of Tangier or Casablanca. Every afternoon, the elderly gentleman had to smile about their fantasies of his city. But he’s grateful for them because the myth they invent makes Genoa deeper, richer, and more beautiful. And there are days when he’s in the mood to believe their myth. Those are the days he returns home a little later than usual, almost too late for dinner. And like every evening, he says nothing about his adventures.

  Everyone’s had the nightmare that the world around him has been created by an invisible director—that he’s living in a stage set populated by extras and that everyone knows about it apart from him. Like in that film. What’s it called again? I’ve written about it before, in another book. Look that up for me, my friend, would you? Entire religions have been built on that nightmare. Almost every religion. At least, every monotheistic denomination. The world we think we see is in fact the perverse fantasy of an omnipotent director who wants to test us in a complicated game. It’s up to us to guess the rules of the game. A fantastic game show of life and death. If you guess right, you get seventy times seven vestal virgins under streams of ambrosia and harp music in the blinding artificial light of the Almighty One. If you guess wrong, you burn in Hell for all eternity. A golden formula that scores high viewer ratings among the ever-critical, ever-bored audience of immortals.

  Everyone is familiar with the opposite fantasy too. Everyone has played God at some point in their thoughts. The world around us exists only because we observe it, give it meaning, and invent it. Without our eyes and thoughts, the world wouldn’t exist or would just hang around pointlessly on its own somewhere like a far-off galaxy still waiting for us to discover it, see it, and give it a name. Everything that exists exists only in our minds, otherwise it doesn’t exist. And who says that there are many of us? Who says I’m not the only one? Who says that you exist, my friend? It’s much more likely that I’ve made you up. In the same way, I’ve made up the street names, the pavement, and the people strolling by. And not just because I’m a writer. I only see what I want to see, as all people only see what they think they know or expect. If I invented a butcher, I would invent him exactly like that: a colossal man with a bloody apron. Maybe he’s a banker and the redheaded girl on a scooter is the butcher. But it isn’t like that because it’s not like that in my mind. And as soon as I see an elderly Italian gentleman sitting on a bench watching ships, I’ll imagine what he’s thinking. It’s my job. But that’s not the point. We’re all like that. You too, my friend. We all live in each other’s invented worlds without any real contact. We are extras in each other’s fictional autobiographies. We are the decor of each other’s illusions.

  Of course I invented Genoa. In some ways, the city also exists without me, at least I’d be happy to assume that. You can go there yourself. It has an airport named after Columbus, who supposedly came from Genoa. He’s the man who invented America. His dream was to reach India by going west and get rich. He reached Haiti and saw people in funny clothes. “Oh, you must be Columbus,” they cried elatedly. “Hooray! We’ve been discovered!” His fantasy was that he’d reached India and that’s why he called them Indians. And that’s where the fairy tale that cowboys have to shoot Indians comes from. In the meantime, Genoa had become rich off the silver from the wilderness now called Argentina. But when the cowboys had well and truly won and built skyscrapers, tens of thousands of destitute Italians left from the Port of Genoa, following in Columbus’s footsteps, chasing the dreams of wealth and a new life. But flights to Christopher Columbus Genoa International Airport are rather expensive at the moment. I’d advise you to fly to Pisa or to Milan–Malpensa. Then you’d arrive late at night to Brignole station or Palazzo Principe. From that second station, you can easily walk along Via Balbi past the budget hotels to Largo di Zecca, Via Garibaldi, and Piazza de Ferrari. But you can also go straight from the station to Africa, to sailors, whores, and danger. The best way to arrive is by boat from the south. Then the city looms up like an impenetrable wall of overconfidence. Genoa, La Superba. Of course you can come here. But of course I invented it. You’ll never see it the way I see it, until I tell you how to.

  I’ve also made up the fact that this is my city, the natural home of my true soul, where I will be truly happy for the first time, as I’d previously made it up that Leiden was that place and, before that, Rijswijk in Zuid Holland, and as Casablanca, Tunis, Zanzibar, or Gotham City could very well be in the future. Not that I’ll ever leave this place, but it’s about the principle. I watch the ships every day. And if, on a windy morning, a large ferry from foreign climes docks in the distance behind Darsena, and the labyrinth fills with fresh strays, then, on a morning like that, in my city, at walking distance from Capitan Baliano, Piazza delle Erbe, and the Bar of Mirrors, as the fishermen curse and the whores want to love me, as dark clouds gather about the fortresses on the hills, then I feel…strange to say it…then I feel…strange to believe in your own fantasies…but then I feel truly happy at the same time.

  As I write this, a tramp who looks like a tramp shuffles by. He is wearing a kind of alien costume made of objets trouvés and junk. Bedraggled teddy bears dangle
from his suit of armor. He has a magic mask made of compact discs. He uses a found stick to rhythmically beat an empty Coca-Cola can as he walks by. He is a shaman. He is God in the depths of thoughts. He sees nothing and nobody. He makes us up when he needs us. He lives entirely in his own fantasy. He looks completely happy. I feel very much akin to him.

  42.

  “What do you think my biggest problem is?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t look at me, either. She took a sip of her cappuccino, slowly lit a cigarette, and stared across the square. Her gaze was cold. She didn’t look like a person pondering a difficult question but like someone demonstratively ignoring the questioner in annoyance at the fundamental lack of understanding the question testified to. She exhaled her smoke, but it was as though she was sighing. She didn’t move, but it was as though she was shrugging. She was beautiful. She was even more beautiful than normal. She had changed from an Italian girl into a sculpture of an Italian girl. She was a Madonna in the Doge’s private chapel, sculpted from the finest Carrara marble. He delighted in the fine features of her immobile, silent face each morning during prayers and once again at vespers. He kneeled, hands clasped, and was amazed at the way her nose, her chin, her jawline could be both angular and soft at the same time. She was noble. During his prayers, he imagined what it would be like to kiss her. And her wrists and ankles looked so breakable. It was incomprehensible that she could exist in marble like a featherweight fantasy of spun sugar. And in real life, in real life—he imagined how her hands, her arms, her whole body would succumb like a snow-white butterfly to his embraces and caresses. The statue had become more precious to him than his own wife. It was to her he prayed. He had ripped off the artist with a budget price for which the Doge couldn’t even organize a banquet.

  What he didn’t know was that the destitute sculptor had modeled the Madonna on his great love, the daughter of the baker on Piazza Fossatello. He dreamed of her every night. Every morning, he went to the bakery to catch a glimpse of her. She never showed the slightest bit of interest in him. She never even gave him a second glance. For her, he was just another bum from the alleys. But for him, just seeing her was enough. A day that began with the sight of her was a beautiful day with golden yellow sunshine on the palaces of Genoa. A day that began without her, because she was ill or had been sent on an errand that morning, was as black as the night with bitter rain in the dark alleys. He worshipped her. Oh, if only she knew who he was. If only she could come with him to the Doge’s Palace and see how he had caressed her into existence with his hammer and chisel. But how could a baker’s daughter ever gain access to a Doge’s private chapel? His own access to the palace had been blocked the day he’d completed his masterpiece and received what he saw as a very generous payment.

  But one day the baker’s daughter did enter the Doge’s Palace. She’d been sent on an errand that morning. She had to deliver baskets full of focaccia for the banquet being held that evening. She happened to come out of the kitchen just as the Doge was coming down the stairs. She’d taken the wrong door, and to her horror, found herself in the large stairwell used by the noblemen and women. He saw her. She was the spitting image of the love of his life. She had the same angular and soft lines in her face. There was the same flimsiness to her ankles and wrists. Her hands looked like fragile confectionary concoctions.

  “You live in your fantasies too much.”

  She still wasn’t looking at me. But she’d replied. She had actually deigned to give me an answer. Although it was intended as a reproach, it was still an interesting answer. I heard three deep blasts of a ship’s horn. In the harbor, a large ship was about to set sail for Barcelona, Tunis, Jerusalem, or La Merica. Of course I live in my fantasies too much. It’s my job. Every day I have to reinvent Genoa and populate it with the people I see and bring to life the thoughts they have. I have to caress Genoa into existence each day out of the meaningless, rough blocks of marble from the palazzi with my hammer and chisel, and model them to fit the image of my imaginary beloved. I have to fantasize myself in her arms and invent that I am at home in her embrace, and happy. I have to fantasize myself into a Genoese. I have to blow the salty sea wind from my lungs into the alleyways. I have to make the shutters rattle and every baker’s daughter or fishmonger curse. I put the stoccafisso, the cima, the trippe, and the pesto on the shelves of all the stinking shops in Via Canneto Il Lungo, in Macelli di Soziglia and in the Sottoripa arcades. I have to paint the whores black and make the knife shop on the corner glitter. I have to construct the terraces and the roofs, the corners and the cracks, the squares as big as a Fiat Cinquecento and the alleys as wide as a handcart. I have to spit out the dirt, the stench, and the rats into the labyrinth. I have to make the Moroccans and the Senegalese suffer, eleven to a room.

  “But is that bad?”

  She didn’t answer. With a snow-white cappuccino in a snow-white cup on a snow-white saucer, she stared across the snow-white marble square in front of the Doge’s marble palace.

  “You think you’re a good man,” she said. She took a drag of her cigarette and stared into the distance. The tourist train from Porto Antico to Porta Soprana jingled past. “But that’s just your imagination.”

  And how things turned out with the baker’s daughter and the Doge is something you can come up with yourself, my friend. Did they get married? What do you think? And when nine months later her disgrace saw the light of day and she said he was the Doge’s son, do you think they believed her? And what if they didn’t? Just fantasize, my friend. Unfortunately, as is generally the case, your darkest fantasies will turn out to be the truth.

  43.

  I hadn’t seen Rashid for quite a while. Other rose sellers had taken over his neighborhood. They were even less successful than he had been. I would be lying if I said I’d thought of him often. From time to time I thought of him, but I didn’t go to any trouble at all to try and track him down.

  And then all of a sudden I saw him at the end of the Via del Campo, close to the Porta dei Vacca. He had visibly gained weight and was wearing a nice suit with an Italian cut and a pair of sophisticated shoes. I greeted him. He didn’t see me. I greeted him again.

  “I’m busy, Ilja.”

  I apologized. “You look well, Rashid. Did you find a job?”

  He nodded.

  “As an air-conditioning installer? The same work you always did back in Morocco?”

  “Sorry, Ilja. I have an appointment.”

  After that I saw him a couple more times, mainly on Piazza delle Erbe, toward the end of the evening. He had stopped greeting me. He avoided my eyes. He usually installed himself at the yellow tables of Bar Gradisca. He waited for others and when they appeared, he went into the labyrinth with them. Sometimes he came back later to wait for other clients, sometimes he didn’t. He had become a businessman and didn’t deem his old friends worthy of a second glance.

  And after that, he disappeared completely. I asked Oscar, the owner of Gradisca’s, whether he knew anything. He shrugged. When I continued to ask, he walked away. I asked Mustafa, a fellow Moroccan who put the tables out in the morning for Oscar, whether he’d heard anything. He said that all his friends were Italians, that he didn’t know a single Moroccan, and certainly no one called Rashid.

  A few days later, Oscar took me aside. He didn’t say anything. So that I could never say he’d said anything. He put his index finger to his lip to emphasize the point. After that he closed one nostril with the same finger and made a snorting noise with the other. Then he put both of his wrists together in a gesture that suggested handcuffs. “Marassi,” he whispered. And I’d been in Genoa long enough to realize he didn’t mean the stadium but the prison in the same neighborhood.

  44.

  And one evening, when I came home, I found a letter. It wasn’t in an envelope. It was nothing more than a single, folded sheet that had been shoved under my front door.

  “Dear Leonardo, I’m so sorry things turned out the way they did.
Like I said the last time we saw each other—your problem is that you live too much in your fantasy. You think you understand things, but everything you understand you only understand in your own thoughts. If you paid more attention to reality, none of this would have had to happen.

  “I was in love with you, Leonardo. I loved you. But those feelings were so strong and so new, they confused me. That’s why I needed time. That’s why I asked you to leave me alone for a couple of weeks. And do you know what? I had a really good think. I began to understand that the things you said about Francesco were right. Or didn’t say but thought. I began to understand that I wasn’t obliged to stay with someone who pushed me down the stairs. I began to understand that I had the right to make my own choices and that I could also choose adventure. Nobody could stop me.

  “And you know what, that very day, two days before the derby, I had made up my mind. I had decided to choose you. And I broke up with Francesco, however difficult that was. I dreamed of being with you and maybe even going to your country one day. I dreamed of learning your language, being able to read your poems and beginning a new life in the north with you one day. I couldn’t wait to tell you.

  “And the next morning you turned up with her. With that blonde girl who was the opposite of me in every sense. And I saw the two of you talking in your own language and looking at each other. You paid absolutely no attention to me. You seemed to have completely forgotten me. Or you were deliberately ignoring me. And during the derby I saw the way you laid your hand on her shoulder. And after that on the Piazza delle Erbe, I saw how you were talking like two people in love. I saw you kiss. And after that I followed you. I watched you walk back to your house, hand in hand, that same house where I lay in the moonlight in your hands and where in my dreams I had wanted to live with you until we went to your country. How could you be so heartless, Leonardo? How could you forget me so quickly?