La Superba

by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

  “And he knew…”

  “He knew they all wanted to go to France. The Senegalese in any case. We spoke French and most of us have a second cousin or a friend in Paris. Berlusconi chartered a few ferries to Genoa that would drop us off handily at the ferry dock that just so happened to be near the international train station on Palazzo Principe, where we could get the intercity to the French border at Ventimiglia. The French wouldn’t be able to stop us since we had residence permits for the European Union and Berlusconi had solved the problem.”

  “So why didn’t you go to Paris?”

  “I don’t know anyone there. When we sailed into the port of Genoa at sunrise, I was standing on deck. Pink light fell on the pink city. I held my breath. It was such a beautiful sight. Do you know what they call Genoa?”

  “La Superba.”

  “Exactly. And that morning, as the ship maneuvered in the harbor and I saw the play of light on the houses, the towers, the city, I fell in love. I don’t know any better way of saying it. You know, Ilja, there’s no history in Africa. And from the boat, I saw nothing but history. In Africa there is no other beauty than the overwhelming beauty of the golden light on green trees growing from red earth. Everything people have built there is hideous. And that morning on the boat’s deck, I saw a living landscape of centuries-old buildings sandwiched between the blue bay and the hazy blue mountains, a manmade jungle in improbably warm pastel tints, and for the first time in my life I saw how a city could be beautiful. Now I was in Europe at last. My eyes filled with tears.”

  17.

  “But my infatuation didn’t last long. Or let’s say: my love will last forever; I’ll cherish that moment on deck until I die. I love Genoa. But the city doesn’t love me. It spat me out like a rat. That’s not a very good expression because you don’t normally want to swallow rats, but you get my meaning.”

  “Don’t worry, Djiby. I’ll puzzle over the metaphors. That’s my job.”

  He laughed. “Horses for courses. We both came to this city because of a dream, you from the north and me from the south, and we make a perfect combination. While it’s my job to carry heavy things and survive, it’s your job to think what the best comparison is for that. And you earn a hundred times more than me for that.”

  “Do you consider that a laughing matter?”

  “Hilarious.” He let out a belly laugh. “Are you also going to have me speak beautiful Italian without any mistakes?”

  “I’ll go one better, you’ll speak my mother tongue.”

  He doubled over at this. “Can I apply for a residence permit for your country, then, too?”

  “I’ll make sure you pass the language test with flying colors in any case.”

  “On paper then.”

  “But on paper is the only way that counts.”

  “Ha ha ha. You’re quite right about that, Ilja. Paper is the only thing that counts. Anyone who exists on paper has the right to exist. If you don’t have any papers, or you have the wrong papers, or not that one specific piece of paper, you’re not a legitimate person. Your existence is illegal. Do you know how that feels when someone forbids your existence? You don’t know. You’ve never experienced that. They’ve made my existence a punishable offense. I can go to prison if they find out I’m alive. The only advantage is that I’m barely alive. Anyone who looks as black as me is not licensed to see the daylight. He wears the camouflage of the night and won’t laugh so that his shining teeth don’t betray him.”

  “But you have a residence permit, don’t you?”

  “On to that already, are we? Do you want me to show you my ID? I’ve got it with me, you know. Do you want to take my fingerprints? Here, put some of that ink from your pen on my thumb, I’ll press it into your notebook. Fuck you.”

  “Sorry, Djiby.”

  “It’s alright. By now I know that your lot think like that. I know how things work in Europe by now. And this is your country. What right do I have to talk about it? You have laws and you’re proud of them. We don’t have any laws in Africa and we’re not proud that we don’t have them, but at least you don’t have to have an ID card to exist.

  “And yes, I do have that card. The temporary permit I got from Berlusconi. Valid for one year. See. It’s written here. I have just over six months left. My existence isn’t a punishable offense for the next six months. And then what?

  “But the real problem is something else. My life in the Promised Land has now been legally permitted for almost six months, and I have just a little more than the same again before I can be arrested for existing. I thought just getting here would be enough to automatically get rich. That’s what everyone told me. Once I was in Europe, I could go to the counter where they’d give me my pay and I could choose which Mercedes I wanted. I’d be able to send home a thousand francs a month for my family and friends, and then I’d still have thousands of euros left to buy a watch and sunglasses that would reflect the sun proudly when I returned to my home country for a well earned holiday.

  “In the meantime, I share a run-down two-room apartment with eleven compatriots for a hundred euros per person a month, while the rats are allowed to eat there for free and I have to stay on the right side of my landlord because he lets me carry heavy things from time to time for ten euros. But instead of paying me, he always thinks of some debt or other—gas, electricity, water, service costs—which are deducted from my wages. And he’s a good person. I should be grateful to him.

  “And even though I’m legal for now, I’m still careful not to go out after a certain time of night. A black man on the loose after nine p.m., the carabinieri get very nervous about that, I can tell you. There’s a sticker on my house that says:

  derattizzazione in corso

  non tocare le esche

  “Do you know what that means? I’ve looked it up in my dictionary. It’s the joke of the century. It means that pest control is underway and it’s inadvisable to touch the bait. While the rats inside the building clearly aren’t put off by the sticker, or maybe they are, in the sense that they take more care not to touch the bait, I’m personally more and more inclined to a metaphorical interpretation of the text. Since if the real rats aren’t being exterminated, it must mean something else, mustn’t it? You’re a writer, you know that kind of thing. That’s how metaphors work, isn’t it? And who lives in the tumbledown buildings with the stickers on them, aside from the rats? Exactly. And that’s exactly how I feel in this Promised Land called Europe: like the rat the stickers on my house warn people about. And the bait that brought me here—the guaranteed riches, the Mercedes, watches, and sunglasses—can’t be touched. I feel like a pest that should be exterminated in this city I once fell in love with from the deck of a ship. The truth is that I’m a rat to everybody in this city, even to you, Ilja.”

  18.

  I denied this most emphatically.

  “Can you maybe lend me fifty euros, Ilja?”

  “Why don’t you go back, Djiby?”

  “Are you listening to what you’re saying?”

  “That’s not the way I meant it. I…”

  “I know you didn’t mean it that way. No one who says that kind of thing really means it. That’s the problem with us black people. The whole time everyone keeps saying stuff about us that they don’t mean. But they do say it. And you’re a good person, Ilja, I’m sure you know it. You’re not a racist, no more than those hundreds of shop, bar, and restaurant owners I’ve asked for a job are racists. They simply don’t have any work for me. And you’re paying for my beers because I’m telling you my story, but you’d never lend me fifty euros. We’ll never be real friends. You’re too afraid for that, you think I’ll ask you for another fifty euros then and you won’t be able to refuse because we’re friends. Some people are afraid of me because I’m black, but there aren’t actually that many of them. Most are afraid of me because I’m poor. They can tell because of my black skin. And if a person’s poor, you’re better off keeping your distance. Everyone kn
ows that, even in Africa. It doesn’t have anything to do with racism, even though the fact you’re rich or poor has everything to do with the color of your skin. But it’s the same in Africa. The way a white in our country is rich by definition, a black man here is by definition poor.”

  “Do you really want to borrow fifty euros?”

  “I know you’re only asking so you can write down that you’ve asked me. That’s the only reason you’re talking to me anyway, so you can write me down. And as soon as you have enough material, we’ll smile for the camera one more time and after that, we’ll never see each other again. You won’t avoid me, but you won’t look for me, either, or invite me to your table. But don’t feel guilty. It’s fine. I want my story to be told.”

  He smiled. “Order me another beer. Make it a big one because all this talking has made me thirsty. What did you ask again? Why I don’t go back? To Senegal? Are you kidding me? I’ll tell you exactly why, but first more beer.”

  19.

  “Do you know how much it cost to get me to Europe? And by that I don’t mean everything I went through and the fact it nearly cost me my life several times. What I’m talking about here is money. I worked it out. Everything added up would be about three thousand euros in your currency. Three thousand. Do you know how much money that is? For a boy in Africa? For a boy in Africa with his family? My uncle has a good job. He works in a steel factory just outside of Dakar. It works out to about a hundred euros a month. In Senegalese terms, that’s a good income. He’s the richest in my family, anyway. My father has a barbershop and my mother works as a seamstress. Maybe combined they make it to a hundred euros a month. And my mother’s work is drying up because the Chinese do it even cheaper. A good friend of mine runs a shop for used mobile telephones and spare parts, but he doesn’t have many customers and the margins are narrow. Apart from that, there’s nobody in my family with a regular income. I didn’t have any work myself and neither did my two brothers. From time to time, I helped in my friend’s shop and occasionally I had temporary work. The same goes for most of my good friends. Can you imagine how big a sacrifice it was for my family and friends to get together the three thousand euros necessary for my journey? And they all contributed. My father even took out a loan and two of my friends did the same. They got into debt for me, Ilja. But they did it with conviction. They saw it was an investment that would pay out ten or a hundred times. It was guaranteed I was going to be rich, after all. By contributing to the costs of my travel, they bought the right to a share of my immeasurable riches.

  “And then you just coolly ask me why I don’t return to Senegal? Do you think I’d still have friends? Do you think my family would welcome me into their arms like a prodigal son? They’d see me coming, their mega investment for whom they’d gotten themselves into major debt, returning penniless, empty-handed, without cars, gold bars, washing machines, luxury yachts, smartphones, diamonds, or even a dishwasher, come to explain that alas, nothing worked out, that he slept surrounded by rats, with eleven fellow countrymen, was able to find no other work than carrying heavy things from time to time, and that the whole idea that you automatically get rich in Europe was a misunderstanding as far as he was concerned.”

  “But…”

  “Hang on Ilja, I’m still talking. Because on top of that, I’d be the first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone in Senegal knows that it’s a long way to Europe, fraught with danger, which only the strongest survive, making it an investment accompanied with large risks, so the family has to choose the best candidate to undertake the journey. But everyone also knows that every Senegalese who has actually managed to reach Europe has become rich. If I were to admit I hadn’t managed it, I’d be the first one not to manage it. Can you imagine what kind of shame it would bring upon me?”

  “And the eleven other Senegalese sleeping among the rats with you? And all the others on the Via di Pré? It’s a fairy tale.”

  “It’s a fairy tale everyone in my home country continues to believe because none of us has had the courage to be the first to admit that it’s a fairy tale.”

  “But sooner or later they’ll realize that their investment hasn’t paid out?”

  “What do you mean, Ilja?”

  “That no money’s coming.”

  “But of course money’s coming.”

  “How then?”

  “I send a couple hundred euros a month. Through Western Union. I have to.”

  “And that’s how you sustain the fairy tale.”

  “I don’t have a choice. That was the deal.”

  “How do you get the money?”

  “I borrow it. We all do.”

  “And how are you ever going to pay it back?”

  “I came here with a dream of a better life. In the meantime, I got lost in that fantasy. That’s my story. That’s what I had to say. Funny, isn’t it?”

  20.

  A few months later, I was sitting on Caffè Letterario’s terrace on my own, thinking about things I’ve already forgotten, when I saw my Senegalese friend again. He saw me, too, and came over. It seemed like he’d been looking for me. It worried me because it could only mean he wanted something from me. What was his name again? I should be more careful about making friends with those kinds of people. At the end of the day, they all expect you to help them. Of course, I hadn’t really made friends with him, don’t worry. I was simply curious about his past. Let’s call it research. My interest was less in him than his horror stories about his hellish journey to the Promised Land, Europe, which I hope I’ll be able to use in my novel, where discrimination against immigrants will be a major theme. But professional interest is all too often confused with friendship in those cultures. He had a desperate look on his face. What was his name again? Djiby. What does it matter. But, well, I think it was Djiby. He always looked desperate, but now more than usual. I prepared myself for the worst and resolved to be nice to him but not to give him money under any circumstances.

  “I don’t need anything today, Djiby.” I shook his hand. I’d have been better off not doing so because it gave him permission to sit down at my table.

  “You have to help me, Ilja.” There we had it already. I tried to put on my strict but fair face.

  “I’m sorry, Djiby. These are difficult times for everyone. I mean…”

  “I mean…Ilja, listen. Do you know what happened?”

  “It’s terrible, Djiby, but I really can’t help you.”

  “There were four of them. It was about one in the morning. Maybe a bit later. I was on my way home. I was walking along just near here, there, on Salita del Prione. They cut me off. A car with bright headlights. Slamming doors. They forced me to the ground.”

  “Carabinieri?”

  “Four Italians. Not in uniform. They said they were from the police. One of them showed me his ID. But I didn’t see anything, it all happened so fast. They asked for my papers. They took them from me. After that, they searched my pockets. They stole everything. Even the six hundred euros I had on me.”

  “Six hundred euros? How did you get hold of six hundred euros?”

  “And the four of them kicked me all over. In my belly, in my face, in my…I had to go to hospital, Ilja. I was lucky it wasn’t a lot worse.”

  “You were attacked on the street and beaten and robbed by Italian policemen?”

  “You don’t get it, Ilja. They pretend to be police. They show you a fake ID and then they rob you and beat you up. And sometimes they don’t even do that. This happens in Genoa if you have a black face.”

  “Did you report it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  Djiby sighed. He stared into the distance, right through the centuries-old houses, across the sea to a continent where he’d never been free, either, but where the authorities that had mistreated him had been just as black as he, although that didn’t necessarily mean it was any better. If you’re beaten up because the color of your skin i
s different, at least there’s some kind of reason. But what does it matter? These are my thoughts, not his. I’d have looked right through the houses in a northerly direction, in any case, just as I’d once daydreamed myself away from my home country with its dark gathering clouds when I still skulked around there, as he’d once daydreamed himself away from Africa to the north where everyone got rich without trying. It’s all the same romanticism. Djiby probably wasn’t gazing at a meaningful horizon like me, but just taking a brief pause to reflect on the best way to get money out of me with his wretched story.

  “They asked for my papers. I’ll have to tell it a different way. I was sent from one police station to the next. When I got to the police head office and was finally able to tell my story, they asked me whether I knew the four men. Of course not. But did I want to report it anyway? Of course I did. They asked for my ID to do so. But my papers had been stolen, that’s exactly what I’d just explained. They gave me a look of reproof. And do you know what they said then?”

  “What?”

  “If you don’t have any papers, you’re an illegal. Being an illegal is a crime in Italy. If you disappear now, we can pretend we never saw you. Otherwise we’ll be forced to arrest you.”

  “But why did you have six hundred euros on you?”

  “What it comes down to is that the Italian law allows you to assault and rob a black man as long as you remember to steal his papers. Then he can’t report you.”

  “I don’t believe your story, Djiby.”

  “It wasn’t my six hundred euros. It was my friends’ money. I was supposed to give it to the man who arranged their travel and our accommodation. He’s a businessman. He has little patience with clients who don’t meet their financial obligations. He won’t believe my story. And neither will my friends. I’m fucked, Ilja. I’m fuckeder than fucked. But I’m not asking you for money. I just want you to tell my story. Because you were such a good listener last time when I told you about my journey. For your book. I want you to tell it to the people in the north. That’s the only thing I’m asking. Promise me you’ll do that, Ilja?”