La Superba

by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

  I’ve observed it many times and constantly ask myself why the paying clientele have to be so brutally disappointed. What kind of peculiar take on customer relations is that? The witch sits there with the cards in front of her making everything up, so why not make up something nice, I’d say. Then at least they’d come back. But I’ve realized that that was a naive thought. People go to her with problems. Her job is to take those problems seriously, to emphasize them and magnify them. Everything is much worse than you thought. That’s true customer relations. If she said that it wasn’t really all that bad, you’d go home whistling and wouldn’t return because the problem would be gone. If, on the other hand, she said with a concerned smile that she was sorry to have to admit that all your concerns were justified and that the situation was even a little worse than you thought, you’d come back a week later with your worsened problems and quiver nervously as you ask whether the cards have something a little more favorable to say now. She’d shake her wise, old head with a smile. Of course she could pretend. But she’s not like that. She’s a good person. She’ll always tell you the truth. And the truth is lying on the table before her. Unfortunately, the cards never lie.

  The witch has a name. She’s called Fulvia. I hate her. But that was perhaps clear by now.

  5.

  I went to the theater yesterday. The play wasn’t very interesting. It consisted of a succession of three short monologues from the perspectives of three different people who had fled the poverty of early nineteenth-century Italy and emigrated to La Merica, as they consistently called the Promised Land on the other side of the Atlantic. The texts were based on authentic letters and diary extracts. It was interesting material, and the artistic goal of holding up a mirror from the past to the current immigration problems was certainly legitimate, but the construction of three monologues was much too static and the piece devoid of any kind of dramatic tension.

  I went because I’d been invited by the play’s director, Walter, a very young man I met a few weeks ago in Zaccharia, the café next to the Mandragola, on the minuscule, well hidden square in front of the old Roman church of San Cosimo and San Damiano. The bar was frequented by all kinds of arty folks, mainly actors and actresses, and that was exactly why I didn’t go there very often. Put a couple of dozen, in their eyes very talented and scandalously underappreciated, thespians in one room and before long the atmosphere will be somewhat fraught and hysterical. What’s more, they all know I’m a writer and conveniently assume that I’m just as underappreciated as they are. Why else would I be in the Zaccharia? Right. That’s the question I ask myself.

  But Walter is a decent guy. At least he doesn’t complain. He’s a foreigner and that has something to do with it. Like me, he comes from the north. He is, if I remember correctly, half Danish and half French, born in Switzerland, and he’s worked all over the place, mainly in England, Germany, and Spain. Thanks to his northern European background, he is characterized by a measure of sobriety and refreshing realism. Or you could say that the fact he lacks Italian genes deprives him of the talent to wallow melodramatically in typical Italian self-pity, deriving from a paradoxical mix of conceitedness and an inferiority complex. Instead of drowning his frustrations, bitterness, and anger at the disgusting, degenerate world in which there is apparently no place left for high art amid grimly nodding like-minded people, he does something about it. Instead of waiting next to his telephone with a perpetually gloomy expression for the big job that never comes, he organizes small performances with actors he’s friendly with. Bits and pieces. An adaptation of Kafka short stories in the cellars of Bar Il Conte in exchange for free drinks; improvised cabaret in Anna’s nightclub for a hundred euros a night; an outdoor performance on the square after which the prettiest actress goes around with a hat—that kind of thing. They aren’t particularly impressive productions that will give a good gloss to his CV, but in any case he’s doing something.

  And so now it’s that play with the three monologues about Italian emigration in a tiny theater on Piazza Cambiaso in the red light district close to Via della Maddalena. It wasn’t his own idea, he was asked to stage it. And he was the first person to agree with me that it lacked dramatic development and was actually a complete failure as a play. He’d played around a bit with the letters and diary fragments the actors had given him, but he wasn’t a writer, he admitted it outright. Maybe I’d be able to take a look at it? The material was indeed interesting, wasn’t it? There had to be a lot more to be had from it? I nodded. Maybe.

  But the play wasn’t the main reason he’d invited me. It was the theater. He gave me a tour after the show. It was a modest but exquisite renaissance palazzo with marble columns and frescoes by a pupil of Michelangelo. It had recently been wonderfully restored. A majestic marble staircase led to the upstairs floor where there was a tastefully furnished bar and small restaurant. The hall with columns and Gothic vaults on the ground floor gave access to the theater. It was intimate, no more than a hundred seats. But it was ultramodern, completely decked out in the technical sense and maximally flexible with a completely collapsible stage, state-of-the-art audio equipment, and an arsenal of lights that many a technician from a big theater would find delectable. It was a polished pearl, a brilliant jewel, hidden in the deepest depths of the labyrinth.

  “And do you know what the most remarkable thing is?” Walter said. “They hardly do anything with it. The current owners don’t have a clue how to run a theater. They want to get rid of it. They’ve put it up for sale and already asked me if I might be interested. Of course I’m interested. It’d be a dream. But it’s impossible for me to organize it all on my own. And that’s why I thought of you, Ilja. How would you like to buy this theater with me?”

  6.

  I was honored that Walter clearly had that much faith in me, but of course I wasn’t going to buy a theater. I’d never wanted to do that, so why would I suddenly want to do it now? Apart from that, I didn’t have any money. So it was an easy decision.

  I was charmed by the idea of doing something with the witness accounts of the great Italian emigration. Walter was right. It was fine material. And there was undoubtedly a lot more in the archives than these few letters and diary fragments he’d worked into his play. It had all happened a relatively short time ago. The two major emigration waves of Italians leaving for the United States or Latin America were at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. It was a movement of unprecedented scale, a true mass migration. I’d googled the figures and was shocked by them. The various sources I could quickly put my hands on were more or less in agreement that between 1860 and the beginning of the Second World War, a total of around twenty million Italians risked the crossing to the Promised Land on the other side of the Atlantic. Pause and let the magnitude of that sink in, my friend. Twenty million. That’s almost a third of the current population of Italy. That’s twenty-five percent more than the total population of my home country, infants and the elderly included. I know you can’t use the figures like that because those twenty million Italians emigrated over a period of eighty years, but still, to get an idea of the gigantic dimensions; imagine if a third of the population moved somewhere else, or in the case of my home country, more than the total population. The entire country would be left empty. No one would live there anymore. Everyone gone to America. And then us in Europe worrying when a few hundred Senegalese get washed up on Lampedusa.

  What’s more, I began to realize that the story of the mass Italian emigration was enormously connected to this city. The Genoese and other inhabitants of Liguria were pretty much the pioneers. They were overrepresented in the first wave of emigration. Their favorite destination on the paradisiacal continent La Merica was the mysterious Land of Silver. They settled in large numbers in a district of Buenos Aires they called Boca, after their beloved fishing port, Boccadasse, which by now has been swallowed up by the city and is part of the Genoa Sturla area, but has lost none of its idyllic pull. Sup
porters of Boca Juniors, one of the big famous football clubs from that part of Buenos Aires, still called themselves “Zeneisi”—Genoese in Genoa dialect. The famous song “Ma se ghe pensu,” the nostalgia-drenched anthem of all Italian emigrants, is sung in Genoese dialect. The story goes that the Genoese immigrants in Buenos Aires invented jeans. That’s why they are called jeans—a bastardization of the word “Zeneise.” I’d heard that story before and naturally I’d never believed it, but it seems it’s true. I’ve found various reliable sources that confirm this.

  But later, too, when the Genoese were less inclined to leave and when the emigrants from other parts of Italy arrived, their story remained linked to this city. Almost two thirds of all Italian emigrants set sail from Genoa for the journey of their lives, the passage from poverty to the promise of a new and better existence. Each day, thousands of desperate people waited on the quaysides at this city’s port for a chance to board one of the large ocean steamers that were called passenger ships but more closely resembled freight ships with human cargo. The stench and the sanitary conditions in third class were notorious. Concerned physicians wrote alarming articles about it at the time. Passengers contracted terrible illnesses during the weeks-long crossing. Many didn’t survive it.

  And for all those thousands on the quays, it was the ultimate dream to gain access to this hell in the belief that the hellish journey would culminate in the paradise called La Merica. They stood, sat, and lay down here to wait, sometimes for days on end. Farmers, artisans, beggars, rogues. Their few paltry belongings with them. They spent the nights on their duffel bags or simply on the ground among the rats. Some of them could afford a place in one of the long, underground dormitories or in an attic without light or fresh air. They were hungry. They’d been hungry all their lives anyway, but here at the Port of Genoa the prices for even the simplest foods reached astronomical heights due to the enormous demand. The Genoese are good but they are not crazy. If you have that many hungry, poor wretches lying on your streets, of course you’re going to ask a pretty price for your bread. You have to feed yourself at the end of the day. A Zena a prende ma a non rende, as the old saying goes. Genoa takes and gives nothing for free.

  They arrived in the new world, destitute and broken, where they had to fight for their lives afresh against the gangsters, Mafiosi, slumlords, brothel keepers, high and lowlifes who were waiting to take advantage of them again with a big smile on their lips. The official website of the research institute for Italian emigration to both Americas emphasizes that the Italian emigrant was characterized by pride in his fatherland and an unwavering belief in human progress based on work and a strong awareness of civilian virtues and religious piety. It’s actually there in black and white. This is comparable with the things I’ve sometimes heard right-wing Italian politicians say: the Italian emigrants went in order to work, while the African rabble flooding Europe have only come to steal. And then to think that the research institute is financed by the province, which since time immemorial has been in left-wing hands, you can just imagine.

  I feel more and more like spending time in the archives excavating letters and diaries that reveal how things actually were, which not one Italian institute would dare put on its website. I don’t know if it’s going to result in a new play, like Walter wants, but perhaps it might, who knows, why not? In any case the material could be useful when I rework these notes I’m regularly sending you into a novel in which immigration and emigration need to be the major themes.

  7.

  Yet Walter’s proposition kept bugging me. I mean, of course it was too ridiculous for words. As an ambition, it was a long way from anything I’d ever envisioned for myself and was, in practical terms, completely unrealistic. Where was I supposed to find the money to buy a theater? My financial situation in general wasn’t rosy and at the moment it might even be called dire. And Walter didn’t have any hidden reserves, either; I didn’t even have to ask him to be very certain of that. I’d paid for his beer in Zaccharia.

  But Walter was a professional optimist and he told me not to look at it all that way. Money wasn’t the problem. We’d find a solution for that. “It’s a rare opportunity, Ilja. Have you seen how that theater’s outfitted? I’ve worked in big theaters in Germany, England, and Spain that had less than half the resources. You have to imagine all the things we could do there, you and me, with our different backgrounds and talents. We’d quickly become the most talked about theater in Genoa—we’d make sure of that, right?” He slapped my shoulder with a broad grin.

  “And yet we can’t completely ignore the question of the money, Walter.”

  “No, of course not. But you don’t understand a thing. We’ll actually make money from it. I figured that all out long ago. Otherwise I never would have gotten you involved. It’s a goldmine. Just think. Open seven days a week, and everything’s possible: not just plays, but music, cabaret, jazz, cinema, you name it. And at the end of the night, away with the chairs and the stage and BOOM—dance parties with the best DJs! And all that time the restaurant will stay open. Not to mention the bar. Ha! We’ll cover the acquisition costs one way or another. If necessary we’ll borrow. It’s only a temporary investment. We’ll have it paid back within half a year. And then we’ll be talking. We’re going to be rich, Ilja, you and me, in this fantastic place, with our talents.”

  “Or we’ll find someone to invest on our behalf.”

  “Or we’ll find someone. Exactly. We just need to put together a good business plan. Anyone with a bit of sense in their heads will see immediately that with the right artistic management, this could be a gigantic success. So you’re in? Let’s agree on this. Let’s in any case go and talk to the owners and see what they are actually asking for it. Then we’ll see. Alright? I have to go now. Can you pay for my beer? I’ll talk to you later.”

  I had my doubts about the guaranteed riches that would rain down on us as soon as we had the keys to the joint, but I had to admit that I didn’t entirely disagree with Walter. There was potential for a successful commercial operation. I could see that. It would be hard work, certainly at the beginning. But as soon as we’d built up a name, we’d grow automatically as long as we continued to deliver quality. I could use my connections back home. I counted among my friends some of the most excellent actors, musicians, and composers in Europe. I’d worked with them. That would be possible here too. They’d be happy to come to Genoa. And Walter had a wealth of international contacts. We’d be able to exploit that fact and our international orientation would make us stand out from the other theaters in the city.

  I had to admit that the idea of having a source of income here in my new fatherland, especially over the long term, wasn’t unattractive, certainly in light of my precarious financial situation. And there was another matter. Working here would mean putting down roots. Instead of just staying here, living off pen, paper, and my imagination, which in principle would be possible in any other place in the world, I’d have a role and a mission that were directly connected to this city. The idea pleased me. I was also receptive to the thought of being able to give something back to the city that I had so much to thank for. Of meaning something to the one who meant so much to me. And apart from that, there was another thought that I tried to suppress but that kept raising its head—I’d be a theater director. The idea alone appealed to my vanity. They’d be impressed by that back home. And all those failed thesps in Zaccharia would finally take me seriously.

  Later that day I ran into Cinzia. We had an aperitif in the Bar of Mirrors. I asked her whether she knew the theater. She shook her head. There you go, I thought, the current owners are charlatans. People don’t even know the theater exists. We’d be sure to be much better at that. I described the place at length and told Cinzia about our plans. She listened attentively. I also said that all of this information was highly confidential, obviously; I don’t know why, but it sounded kind of professional. She nodded. She wouldn’t say a single word to anybody.

>   “The only thing that worries me is the investment. I’m hesitant to get into debt for this.”

  “What you need,” Cinzia said, “is a rich mistress.”

  I found that hilarious. But she wasn’t laughing.

  8.

  The theater was closed. We rang the bell. No answer. We looked through the window. It was dark inside. Our appointment was at three, wasn’t it? It was already a quarter past. We rang again. Nobody. The door was padlocked on the outside, so there was no way there was anyone inside. We waited. In the meantime, Walter tried to telephone to confirm that our appointment was at three o’clock. No one picked up. We decided to wait a bit longer. And just as we were about to give up and leave, he showed up. It was almost four.

  “Where did you get to? I was inside. I’ve been waiting for you for an hour. Did you ring the bell? Then I didn’t hear it. No, and my telephone doesn’t have any signal inside. I was just about to leave in fact. But fine. I’m glad I finally found you.”

  “But how did you get in?” Walter asked. “The door’s padlocked. When we saw that, we stopped ringing the bell.”

  “That’s why? But I went in through the back entrance.”

  “There’s a back entrance? I had no idea. Can we see it?”

  “Another time. Come.”

  His name was Pierluigi Parodi. He was one of the two owners, and rather young for a theater director—somewhere in his late twenties, I guessed. He was a textbook case of what they call a fighetto in Italian—someone who acts the handsome young man and is the first to believe he’s a handsome young man. He had clearly spent much of his life in front of the bathroom window. Blow-drying such a studiously nonchalant coiffure and trimming that ostensibly unkempt goatee would take hours. He wore expensive designer clothes and box-fresh sneakers, and naturally he had Ray Bans perched on top of his head. He was a poor little rich kid and went to no trouble to hide it. His manner of speech and his gestures also betrayed the mentality of a person who considered himself privileged and superior because everything always landed on his lap. He was terribly smug.