La Superba. Ilja Leonard PfeijfferЧитать онлайн книгу.
this in mind, I always sit writing on the terrace. Almost everything I’m giving you to read has been written there, in that outside space with the dark green tables on Salita Pollaiuoli with a view of her. Maybe that’s the reason I write about her so much. Maybe that’s the reason I write so much, my friend. Just be thankful to her.
Because sooner or later her curiosity will have to be piqued. If you have a customer who comes back every day, polite and irreproachable in his newly-purchased Italian wardrobe, which obviously must have cost a fortune, with a real panama hat, everyone knows how much they cost, a foreigner who has clearly settled here and who sits at a table on his own every evening writing in small, meticulous handwriting in a Moleskine notebook—an artist but also a professional with an income who is probably a celebrity in his home country—then sooner or later your curiosity would be piqued, wouldn’t it? “May I ask what you are writing, sir?” “Oh, just some notes for myself. Actually I’m a poet.” “Really? A poet? I’ve always wanted to meet a poet. Are you famous?” “Ach, what can I say…?” “How exciting! Will you write a poem about me sometime?” “With pleasure. But I’d have to get to know you better first.” Name. Phone number. Date, kiss, and into the sack. And the bastard with the gelled head goes to the back of the line.
But she never speaks to me. And meanwhile I’m falling more and more in love.
22.
The old stones are steeped in the smell of rotting waste, piss, and something else, something acidic, something you taste on the roof of your mouth more than you smell it. Rats dart away and climb into the crevices. Their gnawing sounds like an evil thought. The sea wind brings a heavy salt spray, causing people to pant and groan. They’d love to throw off that last suffocating item of clothing. It is as damp as the forbidden cellars of the secret hunting lodge of a perverse prince. The mold and shadows that rub themselves up against the clammy walls day and night leave behind scent trails. No one need be afraid of anything chivalrous here.
They act like this is their city. They pretend to be walking along the street. But their expressions are too dark for that, their legs too long, their steps too small. No one is going anywhere. No one walks past only once. No one walks past without shining like a gold tooth in a pimp’s rotten grin.
I walk over the curves and between the crannies and gashes of this city I know my way around like no other, where I pretend to be out walking, where I repeatedly and deliberately get lost like a john on his rounds. The pavement yields willingly under my feet. Underneath flows the morass of pus we’ll all plunge into once we find the opening.
They act like this is a city. They act like they’re walking and wearing clothes. But underneath those clothes they are continuously naked. They touch themselves with their hands while pretending to be looking for their keys, a mobile phone, or loose change. Their thighs rub gently against each other as they walk. From time to time someone will just pause for a moment, happy, self-absorbed, as though standing under a hot shower.
I wander in circles around the labyrinth like a corkscrew being screwed into a cork. When it’s freed, a bouquet of tarry, sweet wine with legs like dripping oil, matured on groaning rotten oak, with full notes of earth, decay, pleasure, and piss will rise up. We’re all drunk before we even start, as we screw ourselves deeper and deeper into the cork, into the smell of the cork, into the promise of smell. What do you mean, prejudice? This is no city for a lone male. I have to come up with something. I have to do something about it before I do something, God forbid.
It was a tiny item in the local paper, Il Secolo XIX. I chanced upon it. In the burned forests above Arenzano, a charred woman’s leg had been found. Using DNA testing, the authorities had managed to link the leg to a crime committed some time ago. The victim’s name was Ornella. It was the name she’d used when admitted to hospital. She had never formally reported the crime. Her real name was unknown. She had disappeared without trace.
It slowly sunk in that this was my leg. How many severed limbs could there be knocking around Genoa and its surroundings? But how could it have gotten there? And then I remembered the yellow fire-fighting plane maneuvering above the bay of Nervi. I closed the paper in shock. But then I realized I should be happy. In any case all the traces had been wiped out. I was relieved. For a moment, I toyed with the idea of trying to track down the mysterious Ornella the leg had been attached to. If she was as I’d imagined her, a missing leg didn’t have to be a problem. In fact, if I’d managed to fantasize her onto one of her legs, I’d surely be able to compensate for the lack of a single leg with my imagination. But I knew that wasn’t right. The less reality there is to disturb the imagination, the more effective, attractive, and exciting the fantasy. And what’s more, she’d see right through me. “Hey babe, you won’t remember, but we’ve already met.” I should count my blessings that it had all gone so smoothly. I needed to forget that entire leg, including the Ornella I’d imagined onto it, as quickly as possible.
23.
I went for a so-called spontaneous stroll with my hand in the pocket of my trousers. It was beautiful weather, but we all know only too well where I was off to. It was the white hour after lunch, the blank page upon which some secret language could be scribbled in pencil, something that should be rubbed out again instantly as soon as the shutters were raised and life started again in black and white with profits, proceeds, and protests. For the time being, the city lay dozing, her belly bulging into the dreaming alleys, which nonchalantly changed their position with a soft sigh, the way a woman would languidly roll over on the couch she’d settled upon after the digestif. Suddenly, all the alleys led to Maddalena. She lived nearby in Palazzo Spinola four centuries ago, among the glory and splendor of the family she managed to marry into. Portraits of doges and admirals stared down at her body with the dusky glances of age-old lecherousness. Sometimes, at this hour when the palace sleeps and the men are at sea or wherever they are, she undresses in front of the cardinal’s life-sized official portrait. Soon she’ll have to sit and keep quiet again. She doesn’t have anything else to do. She has a lot of servants. She lies on her day bed and stares at the ceiling upon which a scene of half-naked Romans kidnapping naked Sabine virgins has been painted. If only she were a Sabine virgin. Her husband, the Doge, says that they’ll lose everything if they lose the war and that this is why he is often away. “Even my clothes?” she’d asked. “Yes, even your clothes,” he had replied, after which, with a serious expression on his face, he’d gone out to continue his war. Who were they fighting again? She has no idea and she doesn’t care, either, as long as they rip the clothes from her body. Pisa probably, otherwise Venice. They are always having wars against Pisa or Venice. Or perhaps it’s the French. Might the French soldiers also be half-naked when they come to kidnap the Genoese women? It wouldn’t surprise her, she’s heard all kinds of things about the French. Brutish beasts they are, without a jot of respect for a lady’s honor. Her husband has often told her that, adding that she doesn’t understand a thing about state affairs. She understands enough to hope that Genoa will lose a war for once, by preference to the French. Through the open window of her bedroom, she hears a woman screaming like a stuck pig far below her in the alleyway. Brutish beasts they are, oh, brutish beasts.
Suddenly all roads led to Maddalena. I tried to walk from Piazza Soziglia to Piazza Fontane Marose, but in the place where the Via Luccoli was located at other times of the day, there was a dark alleyway which turned back on itself, coming out on the other side of Piazza Lavagna, where grubby men with their hands in their pockets walked along alleys with poetic names that were all called Maddalena, and where darkly-scented women, who were all called Maddalena, said I had pretty hair and that was why I had to go with them. They asked whether I was French. They asked whether I knew the secrets of the jungle where it could be night all afternoon in their hands. They grabbed me by the forearm to go explain it better somewhere else. They twirled my hair around their fingers and said that there was something feminine about me. They stroked the hand in the trouser pocket. Brutish beasts, they were.
She rolls over once again on her daybed. The ebony paneling nauseates her. She gets up to open a window. There’s not enough light in this room in this house, in this much too grand house. There isn’t enough light in Genoa. The biggest problem with women is that they are inclined to expect something from men. The biggest problem with men is that they realize