La Superba (24 page)

I threw up on the street. The fishmonger's was already open.

14.

But I may have found an investor.

“Then she'll guarantee a hundred,” Walter said. “And she can pay off the other half in installments if she wants. With two hundred we're in because I reckon Pierluigi's hopeless. If we want to open after the summer, we have to act now. Then we'll open with your new play about Italian emigrants. With her money, we can make it really spectacular, with a real ship's forecastle on the stage. I saw something like that in Heidelberg once. With real water, too. There's some kind of chemical salt solution. Then it really smells of the sea. And we'll invite your musicians and put them on a raft. And we'll have it sink in the final scene, not really of course, but you can suggest that really well with smoke machines, together with those special lights you have sunk into the stage. Alright, it'll cost a bit, mainly because you have to make everything waterproof. But I know a technician in Madrid who is specializes in that. We'll fly him in. I could give him a call. I'll call him right away.”

“Walter.”

“Alright. I know, I'm getting ahead of myself. But that's just my enthusiasm talking. It's how I've always managed to get things done. But you're right. Let's do some realistic math. How much
has she promised you?”

“She wasn't in any state to say anything, let alone promise anything.”

“But you said she's rich. That's the point. If you just do your work and keep on ploughing and spraying that fertile vegetable plot…”

“Don't talk like that, Walter.”

“Why not?”

“I don't like it.”

“Just keep on digging away at it, you know, and in a month we'll be raising the curtains on our first premiere.”

“Maybe we should talk to the council first, Walter.”

“Why?”

“Because I've got the impression that Pierluigi is trying to sell us something that doesn't belong to him.”

“Of course he is. I'm not stupid, Ilja. We're in Italy. But we'll pay with her money, won't we? What's her name again? Nadia?”

“Monia.”

“What difference does it make? Everyone screws everyone else here. How long have you been here? I've been here long enough to know more than you that everyone here screws everyone else. Are you really that naive, or are you trying to weasel your way out of it? Be honest with me. I have to know. Either I can go further with you or I can't. Either we get a theater or we don't. Say the word. Our friendship won't be affected. Yes or no?”

“I'm not trying to weasel my way out of anything, Walter.”

“See.”

15.

Monia kept calling me. She also sent text messages the whole time with all kinds of suggestive X's. When I returned her calls, she invited me to the opera. I had to go out shopping with her first, though. She insisted on it. She said it ten times. I had to dress properly for the opera. She'd do that, too, but she couldn't show her face with a person dressed like some old bumpkin from the Low Countries, naturally I'd understand that. Even my summer suit, which I'd bought right in all my recklessness after arriving in Genoa when I was still under the illusion that I had money, was too casual for the opera and certainly too shabby for the company of a women who over-dressed flamboyantly even to just drink an aperitif in a bar. And it was a great opportunity to obtain a really handsome Italian suit at her expense. I'd been wanting one for a long time.

It was a boiling hot day. She took me to a chic shop on Via XX Settembre. She consulted the shop assistant. I could hardly understand a lick of the details they were discussing. Finally they chose something together from the rack. It was a stunning Mafia suit with wide lapels that could also be worn as a tuxedo. I had to try that on. It was important to get an idea of whether it would suit me. I didn't have to worry about the exact fit. Everything would be properly fitted later, of course.

Monia came into the cubicle with me. This was quite normal, apparently. The shop assistant didn't bat an eyelid or blush. “Cubicle” is actually quite a modest description. It was a spacious changing room with tasteful, dark red carpet and a sofa upholstered in
the same colored velvet. There was a large, antique mirror with a gilt frame. Monia sat down on the sofa and looked at me. It was a rather strange moment. Now I was supposed to get undressed in front of her. OK, whatever, I'd just have to do it. I made a game of it, acting as though I was a woman doing a striptease. I accompanied it with a sensual dance. I teased her with my tits and my ass in the big mirror. She smiled. And then I stood there before her in my underpants with a nice big “ta-da.”

She stood up and handed me the jacket. Then she changed her mind. She put the jacket back on the hanger and the hanger on a hook. She copied my dance and slowly unbuttoned her blouse. It wasn't quite what I'd intended. “Monia,” I said, “your life lesson should be that everything will turn out alright as long as you don't do what I do.” She had to laugh. She clicked open her bra behind her back.

“Do you need to try on something too?”

“Look at me.”

Of course I'd already seen her tits. But at the time it was all late and dark and drunken. Now I saw them in real life, in daylight in a changing room on Via XX Settembre. They were scandalous. Enormous tits like that are immoral. Or at the least, you'd have to pay a fortune in tax for them. And apart from that, I didn't think it was such a good idea to be studying them in the changing room of a chic menswear store.

“Wait,” she said. “Don't move.” She wasn't concerned with her tits but with her bra. She very slowly and attentively put it on me.

“Now you're a proper pretty girl at last. Dance for me.” As she said this, she took my cock out of my underpants. “Look at yourself
in the mirror,” she said. “You're the most beautiful girl in Genoa. I'd like to comb your hair.” She worked my penis. “You could be as pretty as a doll. Look in the mirror. I want you to come for me. It's alright, I have a tab here. Or am I not doing it right? Let me bite your nipples. Let me play with your stiff, hard cunt. I know you get a lot more turned on by young girls with little titties than by me. Admit it. Admit that you're thinking of someone else right now. A girl like that waitress who used to work at the Bar of Mirrors. Say it. Tell the truth. Look at yourself in the mirror. You're wearing my bra, you slut. It's much too big for your little titties. Look at yourself. Your titties are as small as hers. You look like her. You are her. Watch me fingering her for you until she comes.” And as she came for me, I came at the same time as she in the mirror.

Monia licked her fingers. All of a sudden she was all decent and dressed again. She stood there fiddling with my lapel. I was very hot. She grunted in approval. “We'll make a man of you, Leonardo, a real Italian man. Just leave that to me.”

I was still confused when I got to the register. The August heat was making me feel dizzy. “Leonardo's a poet,” Monia said. “And he's a friend of mine. Give him a good price.” Ten percent was taken off and the amount rounded down. I had to pay twelve hundred euros. But the amount wouldn't really sink in until an hour later. Monia was walking haughtily out of the shop ahead of me. I gave the shop assistant a kind of apologetic nod.

“It wouldn't be the first time,” he said quietly.

16.

What the hell? I was furious the next day. I'd been hoodwinked into buying a suit for twelve hundred euros, about as much as your money order, while the whole idea was that her credit card was supposed to be on the ebony counter, not mine. Investment, you say. Let's fucking hope so.

“But are you sure…” Walter asked.

“Yes.”

“I mean, do you know how much money that is? She's investing that in us then, in our project.”

“I think I was the one paying, Walter.”

“But you have to learn to think like the Genoese. She let you spend that much which means she owes us now. More important than that—it's a sign that she trusts us and that she'll certainly want to invest more in us in the future.”

“With my credit card?”

“That's not the point.”

“What is the point, then?”

“It's about the network. Everything in this city revolves around knowing the right people. That's how we need to think, Ilja. If we still want to get our theater off the ground this summer, we have to think like that. And you know it.”

I nodded, although I didn't agree with him. I nodded because I had made a decision. I was going to get my revenge. I was going to take revenge on Monia. I was going to do everything I could to extort from her the fortune we needed to take over the theater. I nodded grimly.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Alessandro De Santis.”

“Is he that actor?”

“No. He was on the
Andrea Doria
. He boarded the 24th of May, 1894, and on June 25th, he arrived at Ellis Island, the newly opened immigration center for New York. He'd contracted whooping cough on board, but he still managed to be admitted, mainly because during the journey he'd learned a booklet by heart containing the best answers to give to the authorities in English. He'd never seen any authorities before and never heard any English. He was a farmer's son, born in a village in Piemonte. What did he know? He knew nothing.”

“What's this got to do with Monia?”

“I'll come to that. Listen. Just imagine it. Alessandro arrives in New York. He had no other possessions than the things his family could do without—a woolen blanket, a chicken, which he ate during the crossing, a photo of his mother, and a letter with the address of a distant cousin who'd emigrated years earlier.”

“What was she called?”

“That doesn't matter. Elena. She was called Elena.”

“And then?”

“Alessandro couldn't find any work, even though they'd promised him that he'd automatically get rich if he managed to reach La Merica and be admitted. But he didn't look for his distant cousin. He didn't want any help. He was an Italian. He had his dignity. He finally got a job as a day laborer on the railways. He and a large group of other Italians were put to work building a new track outside the city. It was incredibly demanding and dangerous work, paid
a pittance, and the foremen didn't like foreigners. They were treated like scum. They were sworn at, spat on, and hit. One day a railway sleeper fell on his foot. He could no longer walk. He was fired.

“After that he had various little jobs around the city as a newspaper seller, garbage man, road worker, and warehouse assistant. None of it added up to much. He could barely survive. The worst thing was that he was ashamed. His mother back in Italy was under the impression that her son was a rich, successful man by now in the Promised Land, where everyone got rich and successful without even trying. He sent the small amounts of money he could do without to her so as not to spoil the fairy tale. But he never wrote to her. He couldn't bring himself to tell the truth and write that sometimes he had to resort to stealing to stay alive, but neither could he bring himself to lie to her.”

“Did you make this all up?”

“No. Listen.”

“I'm convinced you made this all up.”

“I went to the archives, Walter.”

“Carry on.”

“Years went by in this way. And one day the news reached Alessandro that his mother was dying. He had to go back to Italy. He wanted to go back. He wanted nothing more than to be with her. He hoped he'd be in time. But he didn't want to disappoint his mother on her deathbed. He wanted her to die with the dream that her son had become a rich, successful man in New York.

“He decided to set aside his pride and ask for help. There was nothing else to do. He managed to trace his distant cousin.”

“Elena.”

“Elena, yes. And he borrowed a large sum of money from her. Part of it was for the crossing and with the rest he bought the most beautiful, expensive, chicest suit he could find.

“He was just in time. His mother was incredibly ill and weak but she was still alive. She was overjoyed to see him. And she was overjoyed to see him looking so good. ‘I've missed you terribly all these years,' she said in a weak voice, tears in her eyes. ‘But my one consolation has been knowing that you've become rich and successful. You wrote so nicely about your new life. Thank you for writing faithfully every week to tell me about it. Since you left, your letters have been the most important thing in my life. Thank you.' With a happy smile on her face, she breathed her last breath.”

“His father.”

“Yes. It turned out that his father had been writing letters every week on his behalf and making up excuses to go into the city every week to post them.”

“And then?”

“That's where the story ends.”

“You did make it up, didn't you?”

“Yes. But knowing that it was true.”

“You're right. I'm sure it happened like that. It must have happened like that at least once, even though he might not have been called Alessandro. I think I saw a film once with almost the same story, only it wasn't about an Italian in New York but a different kind of immigrant.”

“It still happens. People still lose their way in their dreams. And people still do everything they can to keep the fairy tale alive.”

“But it's a wonderful story. We'll definitely have to use it in our
play. But better still would be if we could work in the story of Monia and your suit in some kind of way. That would give a nice contrast. The upscale immigrant, the expat who buys an expensive suit so he can go to the opera with his rich, older mistress…”

“And the poor sod who gets himself into debt trying to make his mother happy with a dream. And then to think that whole business with the opera suit was only to make our own dreams come true of getting a theater in which we can put on the play about the painful contrast.”