La Superba (10 page)

To maintain the suspense, I'll tell you something else first. I found the Mandragola. You'll remember I told you about my new friend Cinzia and she gave me the romantic or more accurately medieval task of going off in search of it. I used that as a reason to penetrate even more deeply into the alleyways than I usually do when I got lost. This was right at the start of my time in Genoa, when getting lost was one of my main pastimes. Cinzia is an intelligent girl. She understands stuff. I didn't entertain for a moment the illusion that the Mandragola actually might exist. But still, I went in search of it. Anyone wanting to make their home in a new country can't ignore orders given by clever, well-meaning local residents. You can't ignore an order given by any woman, until you're married to her and can secretly ignore her orders. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The Mandragola exists. It's a restaurant. I went there yesterday. There were tables outside on a square the size of a service court when you're playing tennis. In front of a blackened Roman church that through the centuries has been grilled, roasted, and burned down so often it has carbonized to its essence and can decay no more. The minuscule, crammed terrace is shared with a café located in the crypts of an adjacent building in medieval cellars that would
be an excellent torture spot if only for the reason that the walls are so thick cries for help would never reach the outside world. And you can descend even lower, to the underground river, where there are cushions on the floor and burning torches. I don't think I'll ever be able to find this café, this square, or the Mandragola ever again, assuming it would all still exist the next time, if it did exist yesterday and wasn't just a figment of my imagination. Because the way it exists, it exists in the shadowy net of dark alleyways at the foot of Santa Maria in Castello where even the rats get lost.

I was there with her. No, not with Cinzia, but with her. Really. When I finally found the Mandragola, it was thanks to the most beautiful girl in Genoa.

27.

I broached it in a really smart way, if I may say so myself. I did the unimaginable. I spoke to her.

“But…” I said.

I'm picturing a traditional Italian wedding. With a white dress and a church. Friends who fly in for it and a long table on a piazza. We've talked about nothing but the menu for months.
Antipasta misti
, we agree about that. Sardinian salami and Spanish pata negra was my suggestion. A few
ripieni
. Courgettes filled with minced meat. And something for the vegetarians, of course. Carpaccio of swordfish, tuna, and salmon with wasabi sauce. And fried
melanzana
.
Acciughe impanate
too, breaded anchovies, fileted and opened out so you can eat them with your fingers. But you said that wasn't an antipasto but a secondo. And those Calabrese meatballs of yours then?
You do have a white dress. So in any case we should serve food that doesn't stain, because I know you.
Crudité di gamberoni crudi
. And
vongole
with
cozze
.
Penne al gorgonzola
. As a primo. For a wedding? Pears with Parmesan cheese, is that a primo or a secondo? I think it's a dessert. Or let's do trout with almonds. But that's definitely a secondo.
Tagliatelli al salmone
. But are you sure with your white dress? Duck à l'orange. Not Italian enough. Then we might as well go to the Chinese restaurant. But my father would shoot himself. What, Chinese? No, ducks, you imbecile. The Chinese shoot imbeciles. And then we kiss. But still no menu. Kiss again. We'll see. No, we have to arrange it. Cheese fondue, then? Good idea! It was just a joke. But it really is a good idea. But it really was a joke. We'll start at the beginning. We'll have
fave
. Broad beans with Sardinian goat cheese. It won't be the right season. It's always the right season for goat cheese, what do you mean? But not for broad beans. Not in the greenhouses? Sure, in the greenhouses in your country, maybe. Alright then, no broad beans. Risotto. Risotto? At a wedding? Yes, risotto. How? With asparagus. Brilliant idea. It doesn't stain. With butter and ham. Are you mad? It's summer. Then we'll serve a tomato and mozzarella salad on the side. On the side of what? With the lamb shanks. We haven't even discussed the secondo, let alone lamb shanks. Kiss. You see? Do I see what? That you like lamb shanks. No, I like kissing.

Go and rent yourself a suit, my friend. We still need to talk about the menu, but the white dress has already been fitted, in a manner of speaking.

28.

“But,” I said, “do you work every single evening?”

“Yes.”

“But then if you, you know…”

“I'll be finished early tomorrow.”

“For me, tomorrow's…I mean…”

“Pick me up here. We'll go for an aperitif. You can pick a nice place for us. You know Genoa better than I do.”

That night I couldn't sleep. I'd picked a special place long ago. Walking distance from the sea. A kind of pier in the harbor with a view of La Lanterna and the big ships sailing far away to fairytale destinations like the coast of North Africa, where a purple sunset will be sent back in return. Sorry, I was lying there quite romantically awake. And I could actually see her standing before me in her white dress. While I fully understood that everything was just on the point of beginning…Let's not get ahead of ourselves, for heaven's sake. I still didn't know her name. But we had a date and that was the most important thing.

When I went to pick her up at the Bar of Mirrors the next day, she'd already gotten changed. This was quite an understatement in her case. She'd swapped her waitressing uniform for…for practically nothing. Two boots and then a long stretch of nothing. A kind of short frayed denim skirt. And I can't even remember what she was wearing on top, perhaps because I didn't dare look. She was playing the game. She was playing the game with verve.

You have to change your life
, is what I thought when I saw her like that. And I realized that that was exactly what I was doing.
We watched the sun set that evening. It cost me an arm and a leg because in the special place I'd chosen they know better than anyone that they're a special place that is chosen, at great cost, to make an impression with their free sunset. We should talk sometime, too—about money. But not now.

And when the moment came that she had to go home, I asked whether perhaps she'd like to go for a bite somewhere. To my astonishment, she said, “We'll go to the Mandragola. Have you ever been there?”

And when, many hours later, I walked her to her scooter, she said we'd see each other again very soon and kissed my cheek. I finally dared ask.

“What's your name?”

And she told me her name.

29.

That night I lay awake, even awaker than before, if you can say that. My dreams were keeping me awake. The footage of the evening played a hundred times over in my mind, and it seemed like a film. Everything had happened exactly as it happens in films. I couldn't find a single fault. We had talked. We'd had long, pleasant conversations about wonderful things. We'd looked into each other's eyes. Not a cliché had been eschewed. We'd even had recourse to a sunset. And I seemed to remember a soundtrack of sloppy film music with softly swelling violins timed to her slow gestures and her subtle, precise curves. I ran my fingers along her leggy youthfulness in lengthy fantasies and felt the afterglow of
her kiss on my cheek like the crimson tinge of a sacred seal.

And we had looked into each other's eyes. Or did I already say that? I could repeat it a hundred times, as that night, dreaming with my eyes open, I gazed a hundred times into her eyes. And there, through the magnifying glass of her dusky, self-assured gaze, I found myself in a different world, where nothing was sure anymore and everything tottered. Under the gentle force of those eyes, I would deny myself three times before the cock crowed without a second thought. In those eyes, I'd get so drunk without drinking that I'd feel the billowing morass under the crust of civilization that was the gray granite pavement. If I stood up, I'd be weak at the knees. But I didn't stand up—I swam like any person not able or willing to sleep, and finding it ever harder to separate dreams from reality.

Take me to the underground river with the flaming torches in the medieval cellars of that next-door café and torture me, please, torture me, because nothing can cause greater and sweeter pain than your towering legs of sorrow in your prettiest torture skirt as you look at me with an expression that singes me, gives me hope, and spurns me all at once, and which burns all my hopes and dreams down to a single plea for this to go on. As I re-dreamed the evening in my rickety IKEA bed in my apartment on Vico Alabardieri, I had more and more difficulty believing that this evening had really taken place. The only thing that could convince me that it really had was the fact that the fantasy had been more wonderful than anything I could have imagined. I'd been on a date with the most beautiful girl in Genoa. Just those words: a date. I'd written them down before I'd thought about it. I don't think I'd ever written those words down before with
all their connotations of a neatly orchestrated evening from an aperitif by a sparkling crystal sea to a kiss on the cheek after midnight. I don't think I've ever been on a date with anyone before. Sure, I've sat in a pub with a woman on occasion. But that wasn't a date. That was just boozing and then tumbling into bed together afterward. Or not. But seeking out a romantic place for a girl, somewhere you'd never go to on your own, and making a particular effort to make it a special evening for her—that wouldn't even occur to me in my home country. But I know how Italian girls think. In my new home, I was changing from a blunt Dutchman into a suave Casanova who could even organize sunsets. One who is attentive enough to even think of doing it. And this transformation was due to her. The most beautiful girl in Genoa had bestowed upon me a full evening—long with her full and uncensored presence. Not bad for an immigrant. And when we'd said goodbye at her scooter, she'd even said we'd see each other again soon. And she'd told me her name.

To cut a long story short, what I wanted to say was that I think your friend is in love. I think I know it for sure. And if earlier I might have jokingly written or suggested that I was in love, I was only joking. Now it's real. Now it's finally real. And that's what was missing. That's what I'd been searching for all that time. Instead of losing myself passionately in my new life, the first contours of a legitimate reason for me to settle here with passion were finally beginning to take shape. Anyone opting for a new life might find the new life not new enough. This is exactly the adventure I needed because it affected me in a new way.

I know, my friend, the way I'm expressing myself is a little
muddled. Or maybe “tentative” is a better word. But in any case, this is precisely the main reason I left my fatherland. Not because anything there drove me away, but because to me the story was old and stale. I needed this so that I could invent myself in a new life. Emigrating is like writing a new novel whose plot you don't yet know—not its ending, nor the characters who will prove crucial to how the story continues. That's why everything I write has something tentative about it.

But now that I've gotten to know the decor and feel at home, the curtains can go up on the opera. Everything is just beginning. Everything is just on the brink of beginning.

30.

There are two shops on the ground floor of Palazzo Agostino e Benedetto Viale opposite the Bar of Mirrors on Salita Pollaiuoli. On the right at 74 rosso, Laura Sciunnach's jewelry shop, and on the left, at 72 and 70 rosso, in a property twice the size, a lady's fashion shop called Chris & Paule. Both are specialist shops in the sense that almost no one ever goes in them. Both look nice with well tended window displays and tasteful window boxes on the wall. These are the things that attract the customers who do flutter into them, without the intent to actually purchase anything. Set against this is the fact that the products in both shops are exclusive and that one or two customers a day are sufficient to keep the business going. The staffing costs are low. Both shops can be easily kept open from early morning 'til late at night by a single store manager; to the right, Bibi; to the left,
a beautiful and sad lady of a certain age. They are what I wanted to talk about.

There are some rifts in Genoa that can never be bridged. In the labyrinth alone, there's an invisible, electrically charged curtain at the level of Via Luccoli separating the Molo quarter from the Maddalena quarter. Tourists aren't aware of it and I wasn't, either, at first, but the force field gains intensity the longer I'm here. It exists in that special gaze of the signora as I tell her that I had coffee on the other side, in Via del Campo or on Piazza Lavagna. I know every rose seller and every busker in Molo—they don't venture into Maddalena, just as its beggars don't dare venture into Molo. The girls there are different, the dogs bigger. Thugs and whores and the old, flaking transvestites from the Vico della Croce Binaci, the middle-aged men with beer bellies and fishnets with two packets of cotton wool in their bras—they all live in Maddalena.

In the same way, there are two football clubs: Genoa and Sampdoria. One is the best club, the other always wins. As the oldest football club in Italy, one of them fosters tradition, the other has the money. They share a stadium in Marassi and when one is playing home, the other plays away. Their supporters never meet, except at the derby. And everyone in Genoa supports one of the two teams, including the women and children. They don't have to wear the club's colors. You can tell from a person's nose whether they are familiar with the depths of suffering or whether they've plumped for success.

Nor will you ever be able to close the gap between the inhabitants of the labyrinth and the hundreds of thousands of others happy enough to call themselves Genoese—those who
occasionally travel in cars or on Vespas to the historic center from their luxurious lives in outlying apartments with sea views ten or twelve kilometers away in Quinto or Nervi so they can poke around in cute little shops like Laura Sciunnach's or Chris & Paule and carry on like it's their city—while just twenty meters beyond their shops they'd be hopelessly lost. The store managers come from outside, too. They arrive every morning with a scooter helmet dangling from their wrists and every night, carrying the same helmet, they go back to their sad, ordered lives in the flats of San Fruttuoso, Marassi, or Castelletto without knowing about the rats, the whores, the old transvestites with their beer bellies, and the foul-mouthed fishmongers around the corner.