La Superba (2 page)

    
derattizzazione in corso

    
non toccare le esche

The same sticker I had spotted all over the city over the past days had been placed on the water pipes going through the wall
into my house, too. I smiled contentedly. I didn't live in a hotel. I lived in a real building, a real Genoese building with the same sticker as so many other buildings in the city. I must look up what it means at some point, just for the fun of it.

4.

My waitress has had a nasty fall. Or something else happened. I hadn't seen her for a couple of days in the Bar of Mirrors. Then I saw her walking along the Salita Pollaiuoli in her own clothes. She said “Ciao” to me. She had a bandage around her left elbow and her left wrist was stained red with iodine disinfectant. There were red patches on her left leg and foot, too. Later I was relieved to see her serving in her neat waitress uniform. Her white shirt was short-sleeved so the bandage and the red patches on her arm were visible to all. The patches on her leg were concealed by her black trousers, but she'd rolled up the trouser leg to her ankle, probably because the seam irritated the wound on her foot too much otherwise. It was clearly visible because she was wearing open shoes. Closed-toe shoes would hurt too much, I was sure of that. I repeatedly ordered drinks from her, and each time I wanted to ask what had happened and whether she was alright. But I didn't dare. I was worried she'd take the question the wrong way. I was afraid that she'd think of her tall boyfriend with the gel in his hair, that bastard, even though I didn't see him that night.

I've noticed how good friends greeted each other. Imagine this: you're a fat man wearing a dark blue polo shirt. You're wearing your sunglasses on the top of your head. You heave yourself up
onto the terrace, puffing and panting. With visible reluctance, you go and sit down at a free table as you remove your mobile phone from your trouser pocket all in a single, fluid movement. The waitress comes and asks you what you want to drink. The question is not unexpected but still it annoys you. You stare at the floor and in your mind's eye run through all the drinks in the world. Each one seems even more disgusting that the previous. Finally you order a Campari and soda with a dismissive gesture. You order it in such a way that it is clear to everyone on the terrace that you understand that you'll have to order something and you'll just order a fucking Campari and soda then. After that, you immediately continue messing with your mobile phone, causing you to puff and pant again, meaning: I'm an important man and that's why everyone's bothering me, but I hate this damn thing, this phone, if I designed one it would be so much better, but that doesn't interest me, and, what's more, that's how things always go in this country, no wonder the economy's doing so badly and that it's unbearably hot. It means: I just got a message from the prime minister but I don't know how this phone works and I wish he'd leave me alone for a moment and decide himself whether to invade Afghanistan or not, but he's incapable of it, he can't even hitch up his own trousers without me. Next the Campari and soda is served. You don't even glance at the drink, nor at the waitress who brings it. You're much too busy puffing and panting and not understanding how your own phone works, not understanding how anyone can invent a device that even you can't figure out. The waitress asks if you'd like anything to eat. You growl something incomprehensibly exotic like: just a small bowl of green, pitted olives with
Tabasco on the side. Or: gnocchi with chili sauce, hold the pesto, lemon on a stick. Or: peanuts. Then your friend turns up. He's happy to see you and particularly happy that he's not the first one to arrive today and that you're already there. He shouts, “Ciao!” even before he's walked onto the terrace and then “Ciao!” again, and then a third time “Ciao!” as he sits down at your table. All this time you don't look at him. You're much too busy.

A waitress comes over to him, too, and he orders a drink. You're just in the process of sending your message to the prime minister and you can't understand why the damn thing won't send. Your friend says “Cheers,” but you try the prime minister's other number first. Doesn't work, either. You huff and puff. Things are like this all the time in Italy these days. You slap the phone onto the table dejectedly. Only then do you look at your friend and say something like, “If Milan bought Ronaldinho, I could have told you Abramovich would put down 150 million for Kaká. It's crazy they're not investing in a center back this season. Crazy!”

The Bar of Mirrors is like a porcelain grotto inside. People walk up and down the inclined street outside. The street goes up to the Piazza Matteotti before the Palazzo Ducale. You might also say that it goes to the Via San Lorenzo or the Piazza de Ferrari. It goes down, too. But not many people dare go that way. You get to the San Donato, the touristy bit, which is alright, but then it begins to rise up again. The Stradone Sant'Agostino is the least adventurous. It leads to the monastery and Genoa University's Faculty of Architecture and, behind that, the Piazza Sarzano. From Piazza Sarzano you can go back down again to the harbor, the sea. If you really have to. But it's not recommended. The medieval Barbarossa
Walls are in the way. And the small streets that do exist can't be found on any map. “Small streets” is not a good description, they're more like staircases or improvised temporary walkways over crumbling stones.

The street that ascends and descends is called Salita Pollaiuoli. If you dare turn right before San Donato, you come out on the Via San Bernardo. As the crow flies it is about another fifty meters or so to the Torre dei Embriaci where there's a good bar. But just try finding it. I'd be interested to know if I'd ever see you again.

Of course I'll see you again. I bump into the same people all day, even though the labyrinth stretches from Darsena to Foce, from the sea to the mountains, from the harbor to the highway, from Principe Station to Brignole Station. I've asked myself how that's possible. You'd expect a maze to have been built so that people would be out of sight of each other, so they wouldn't bump into each other all the time—a maze of this size ought to reduce the chances of bumping into the same people to zero. But now I understand that it's the exact opposite. People can avoid each other in a city of straight lines with clear boulevards and avenues between home and office, office and gym, gym and supermarket, supermarket and home, departure and destination. The person who knows where he's hurrying doesn't notice a thing and is no longer observed. In a city of straight lines, people are like electrons in a copper wire—fast, interchangeable, and invisible. The stream can be measured, but individuals cannot be observed with the naked eye. A labyrinth is precisely the place to encounter other people. You can never find the same place twice. But because no one can, everyone wanders around those same alleyways all day.
Some spend their whole lives wandering around here. Or longer. I'm sure I'll see you again, my friend. It's impossible to find the same piazza twice or walk along the same alleyway twice, unless you are trying not to.

5.

Today I thought about all the different kinds of girls in Genoa.

Some women don't fit into any category, that's true. Like the girl in the Bar of Mirrors. She's made of different fabric than other girls—the same stuff smiles are made of: pathos and summer days. Her mere existence makes me as happy as a small child, and I imagine myself sobbing against her soft shoulders. We'll leave her aside then. We're talking about girls, not the rare epiphany of a goddess.

I used to think were two kinds of girls: pretty and ugly. But in light of my most recent research findings, that dichotomy is no longer valid, although I fear the simplicity of the model will always retain its charm.

Of course there are pretty girls. That's not the problem. You'd like to sketch them carefully with a pencil. You'd like to skate over their smooth undulations with precise fingertips. You'd like to briefly taste the perfect balance of their curves, lines, forms, and volume with a connoisseur's tongue. Even more than that, you'd like them to take their clothes off and then not to have to do a thing. They might be like a photo you'd be all too happy to download—perfectly suggestive, or explicitly spotlighted.

Girls like that are the way Milo Manara draws them: hieroglyphs of promise. They're never not posing, though they don't even
need to pose since they already fulfill every standard just standing there. You'd never actually be able to smell them, never be able to tease them by playing with a minuscule roll of fat, nor lick the sour sweat from their armpits, if only because they're imaginary, just drawn that way. There is something artificially innocent about them, something oo-la-la-ish. Of course they end up in army barracks without their panties, but that's just because they happened to be kidnapped by soldiers when they were in the middle of undressing. You get that a lot. But they'll never ring your doorbell without their panties asking if they can give you a handjob in the rain because they've never done that before. They'll never sit on your silver candelabra without further explanation, then lick your table clean before disappearing on home without saying a word.

Recently I got one of those celebrity magazines free with
Il Secolo XIX
, full of photos of real Manara girls in little more than bikinis. In the accompanying interviews, they say stuff like, “I love men who are honest”; “My daughter is the most important thing in my life”; “I'll never have sex if Love with a capital L isn't part of the picture”; and “I'll always have a special place in my heart for God.” Seriously, just give me the ugly girls then. At least they understand they have to do their best. Or the pretty girls, but then without the interviews, for God's sake. Or just the bikini-less ones, preferably captured on film.

I saw a tourist girl at San Lorenzo with her tourist boyfriend. He had a camera, she had pink high heels, a yellow handbag, and a scandalous denim miniskirt. They were Russian, you could see that. I checked it for you just to make sure, my friend: they spoke Russian. He wanted to take a picture of her in front of the cathedral.
She protested. She wasn't looking her best today. But when he got ready to take a shot anyway, she put her middle finger to her bottom lip and her other hand to her crotch. They took dozens of photographs like that: next to one of the lions, then the other, in front of the big door, on the steps next to the tower, and so on and so on. She adopted a porno pose for every shot. She wasn't particularly good-looking, more shameless than refined. She was bored but not so listless to not realize she'd have to do something for a sexy result. I watched her, breathless. There wasn't a spark of humor or fun in her poses, no fiery lust in her eyes. She bent her body mechanically for the predictable desires of the photographer and all those future browsers who'd click the thumbnails into a cliché of lust. And that was exactly what was so irresistibly sexy.

You've also got women with spunk lighting up their eyes in anticipation. In a manner of speaking. They're usually too young for their age. Lacey nothings frame their gym-fed, well-baked muscles. Someone like that is dry and unpalatable. She dresses like an unwrapped mummy, like that woman of indeterminate age somewhere in her late forties, with short black hair and skirts that get shorter by the day—the one who pays a neighborly visit a couple of times a day, smiling mysteriously, to Laura Sciunnach's jewelry shop in the Salita Pollaiuoli, across from the Bar of Mirrors, because Bibi with all the tattoos works there, the perfect Don Juan, whose scorn for women causes them to swoon. She's ugly, but she walks along the street as though she'd inserted two vibrators before closing the door and stepping out onto the street. She never double-locks the door when she comes home drunk at night. She's like a hungry keyhole through which she wants
to be spied. If only somebody would ravish her, for God's sake. Dripping with lust, she'd report it to the disbelieving
carabinieri
half her age in their shiny boots, their shiny, shiny boots. And she's not that ugly, really. I tried to make eye contact with her. I try to make eye contact with her several times a day from the terrace of the Bar of Mirrors.

On the terrace of the Doge Café on Piazza Matteotti, I saw a girl who had painted a girl on herself. She was Cleopatra behind her own death mask. Or maybe she was someone completely different behind Cleopatra's mask, the only people who know that are the ones who wake up beside her the next morning, rub the sleep from their eyes, full of disbelief, and begin the difficult process of reconstructing the night before in an attempt to figure out the identity of this pale, unknown lady who has so obviously nestled herself between their sheets. And it's not until she has restored her façade for hours in the bathroom that they remember. Women like that cost money. They don't just need lotions and potions but designer clothing for every hour of the day, in line with the fashion of the moment, and a lot of shoes, in particular, a lot of shoes. All of those clothes and shoes are only bought to take off again. But to achieve that goal, they have to be expensive, everyone knows that. Each morning she turns herself into the woman she thinks a woman should look like—as she thinks I want her to look. It doesn't matter whether she knows what I want or not. It's more important that she does her best to satisfy her image of my image of her.

The worst are fat American women who are under the misapprehension that intelligence is more important than looks. That's
such a stupid concept. They talk about immigration laws in slow, clear English. She was on the terrace of the Doge Café in front of Palazzo Ducale, too, but she was a misunderstanding. With her tits like burst balloons in a comfy summer dress like a pre-war tent, she had no right to talk about any subject whatsoever. She should withdraw to a dark sitting room in Ohio and sit at her computer with shaking fingers and send messages to Internet forums for women with suicidal tendencies under the pseudonym FaTgIrL. She was eligible for a postnatal abortion. Her mere existence was bad enough. The fact she wasn't ashamed, that she marred, insulted the elegance of Genoa's, of Liguria's, of all of Italy's Piazza Matteotti with her pontifical presence, and the fact she also thought she had the right to be considered a human being rather than an ugly, fat woman, was repulsive.