The August heat is liquid. You stretch out in it like in a steam bath and immerse yourself in it. You swim through the city’s alleys. The heat is tangible. It streams between your fingers and over your skin as you drift on her slow waves. It takes three times as long to reach nearby destinations in the deserted city flooded with summer, such as the latteria on the corner, if it’s even open. Perhaps it’s better not to even try to find out.
I feel like a fish in water in the deserted, liquid city of August. While everyone who can afford it has fled to the coast or to the mountains, I try to survive in this shimmering post-apocalyptic playground, along with the rats and a few similarly minded. Nearly all the attractions are closed. We, the group of survivors, show solidarity and exchange information that could save each other’s lives, like the addresses of tobacconists that are still open. There’s nothing to do, but doing something has never been my strong point—it has never been my burning ambition. To be honest, I consider it a rather overrated concept, that whole palaver. And the paralyzing heat is the ideal excuse to dismiss every kind of plan in advance without anyone thinking to criticize you for it. And so I swim small laps in the alleyways, smiling, using minimal physical effort. I don’t need to go to the sea to swim.
2.
I’d already sent the previous letter when I realized I’d forgotten to tell you something important. Something that will interest you. Let’s not be coy.
Let me put it this way. When everyone’s at the beach, parading around in only their bikinis in front of overheated, thirsty eyes that try to melt away the little fabric in the way (even my style is becoming lewder and exhibitionistickier, if that’s a word, perhaps you noticed; I’ll have to smooth it all into the correct, Calvinistic form when I rework these notes into a novel, but in the meantime I’m enjoying the freedom to speak the truth, to you at least, in overheated terms, the naked truth, we might say, if you’ll permit me this lame pun, but all of this between parentheses), then the people left in the city try even harder. So as not to look left out. To make it look like a conscious decision to be in the city in this weather. I guess you don’t understand that. But what I mean is this:
I’m sitting there innocently eating my lunch on the terrace of Capitan Baliano. On my own, newspaper in hand, a picture of innocence. It’s August. Boiling hot. Somehow this young man is sitting in the middle of the catwalk. The fashion this summer? As little as possible. There’s a financial crisis, right? Economize on fabric. But between us men, they take it to extremes. Just because they’re not on the beach doesn’t mean they have to wear clothes. In fact, they’re wearing even fewer clothes than on the beach because they want to make it clear we don’t have to pity them for not being on the beach.
Today. Four long, brown, bare legs in some kind of shorts too small to cover pubic hair that would be freshly budding if it weren’t epilated. On top: the suspicion of a vest in which juvenile breasts watchfully wait their chance. Copper thighs as thin as my wrists clasping a roaring scooter. Girls wearing just four things: a drop of Chanel, two high heels, and a fluttering summer dress. A small earthquake would be enough to make them come on the spot. I only have to stick out a finger to find myself in something wet that groans, while at the adjacent table the last transparent nothings are taken off with a sigh because it’s so fucking hot.
I’m exaggerating a little. I’m acting out my fantasies. Let’s call it an exercise in style. But the fact I’m exaggerating doesn’t mean that what I’m saying is untrue.
And don’t blame me for only being able to talk about one thing since I moved to Italy. That’s just like the joke about the student who is so sexually frustrated they send him to a shrink. He does a test. He draws a square and asks the student what he sees in it. “A square room full of naked women.” Then he draws a triangle. “A triangular room full of naked women.” Then a circle. “A round room full of naked women.” “I’m terribly sorry,” the shrink says, “but you really are horribly sexually frustrated.” “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black with all those filthy drawings of yours!” And that’s what it’s like. That’s exactly what it’s like. I’m doomed to live in a city where half-naked nymphs parade past me like doe in a wildlife park, and you blame me for being frustrated? That comparison with the joke isn’t entirely accurate, but it is like that.
But in a different way, you do have a point. When I rework these notes into a novel, I’ll need to pay attention to the balance—you’re much more aware of that than I am. On the one hand, I need a large dose of southern sensuality, partly to do justice to my fantasies, and partly to do justice to the clichéd image that readers in my home country have of Italy. Clichéd expectations deserve to be frustrated, but it would be a pity to go that way on this subject. On the other hand, I shouldn’t let this reach an orgiastic mess, though many of my readers would have no objections to that. It has to have a minimum of thematic relevancy, let me put it that way. But I’ve already thought of something for that. One of the main themes will have to be that the various characters, including the first-person narrator, disappear into the fantasy of a new, better life in various ways, like tourists getting lost in the labyrinth of the alleyways. By giving my own fantasies free rein, or if necessary exaggerating them, I’m underpinning this theme. It would be nice if something else could be added. If the self-conscious machismo of the first-person narrator in such passages could stand in contrast to something else, for example, the increasing effeminacy of another character, leading to his ruination. I haven’t met a character like that yet. Perhaps I’ll have to make him up.
3.
There was a TV crew on the piazza this evening.
Back home, I’ve had plenty to do with them, I don’t need to tell you that. There’s always the interviewer who has left everything to the last minute and thinks his lack of preparation gives him the right to insult you. He brings a cameraman with an enormous camera. His status comes from the size and weight of the camera. He sighs before he’s even over your doorstep. This is related to having had to lug his enormous camera up all those stairs. And he blames me personally for that. His gaze accuses me of having got it into my head to live so far up and having made my home only accessible by way of a medieval torture device called a stairwell, while, given my status, I should have known that camera teams would be constantly coming to visit. Cameramen are always fat too. It doesn’t help. And while they are still sighing on the stairs, they start to complain in advance because what they finally encounter on the top floor after their long journey up the stairs doesn’t meet their high artistic and professional standards in any way. The light is wrong. They’d seen that when they parked in front of this goddamn building you took it into your head to live in. And given the shitty light, the arrangement of your furniture is downright catastrophic. They start to drag around your sofa, your dining table, and your bookcases, still panting from the stairs, without even taking off their jackets. “Would you like some coffee perhaps?” you try. The interviewer does fancy a coffee but doesn’t dare say so because the cameraman has made it quite clear in both word and deed that he wants to get this over with as soon as possible because such horrific amateurism hinders his work, and, anyway, he should have picked a different career. The final interview is usually conducted in shy whispers under the evil eye of a person who had this pegged as hopeless in advance and whose every unfortunate hunch is confirmed on a daily basis. Why does no one ever listen to him? His bosses at the station, oh, the station. If only he were a freelancer, he’d be better off. There’d be none of this bullshit for a start.
An Italian camera crew has a different makeup. The cameraman is a shy working student who gets down on his hands and knees and thanks God for every small job he gets; he’s had to buy his own equipment, which he has scraped together over the years with the help of a friend who gave him discounts on outdated models and a competitor who wanted rid of all of his stuff for too much money because he could afford better now. The Italian cameraman is an invisible
slave who would descend, panting, into the deepest underground vaults to do his utter best to film something in the impenetrable darkness, all while muttering his humble apologies.
The team is completed by at least three female editors. They walk around with factsheets and storyboards. It’s what gives them their importance and the fact that no one sticks to them afterward doesn’t matter. But the true star of the team is the interviewer. She is a priori Famous with a capital F. Even when no one knows her, she’s Famous. Because she acts that way. When, after a lot of fuss, everyone’s finally ready for the interview, she’s disappeared without a trace. She’s in the bathroom putting on lipstick and waxing her bikini line. She’s had the broadcasting company pay for her plastic Barbie legs and the surgically pointed breasts under her lacy blouse. When she interviews someone, the interviewee is rarely in the shot. All the cameramen in the country know the rules. And although the questions she asks may sometimes seem naive, everyone knows that the point of the questions is her divine smile when she poses them.
The camera team that unexpectedly made its appearance on the Piazza delle Erbe this evening was only from local TV. You could tell from the stickers. But they ticked all the boxes. The bright red interviewer who was almost as tall as I and, at the most, a quarter of my weight, asked random people on random terraces of random bars questions about their experiences of this or that. I sat quietly writing at my table on Caffè Letterario’s terrace; I observed it all from a distance and I have to say, my good friend, that I was amazed they didn’t ask me anything. Not disappointed but amazed. That was alright by me, I didn’t need them to pay attention to me, but let’s face it: a camera crew chancing upon me in the wild and then not immediately pouncing on me, is a bit… let’s say, strange. It might sound somewhat arrogant, but that’s not how I mean it. I know you understand what I’m trying to say.
And you’re right, of course. This is exactly the reason I decided to leave my home country and domicile myself in the labyrinth in all anonymity. Rather than forcing myself to conform to an invented image that media pressure and my celebrity kept forcing upon me in a caricatured way, here in Genoa I’ve re-earned the freedom to be and become who I am. In my home country, I’m Ilja who knows about the composition of a camera crew; here in the labyrinth, I’m Leonardo, who has taken leave to get lost in his imagination without that immediately having to be coupled with a witty justification in one of the national talk shows. That’s the way I wanted it, you’re completely right. But then actually being passed over by a camera crew from local television, however desirable that might be, is still an unsettling experience.
This brings me to another matter. I received your money order. Many thanks again for that. It makes me feel good to know that there’s someone left back home who understands that temporary financial problems can be solved elegantly. My self-sought loss of status in foreign climes comes with certain material repercussions in the short term. I’m no longer available for commercials and I no longer give readings. And that was exactly enough and I’m grateful for your understanding. You’re a true friend.
And something else: I’ve just learned from my accountant how much the tax authorities in the fatherland want from me despite all the things I did for my former fatherland in the past. There isn’t the slightest chance I can meet their obligation. But I don’t want to bother you with that.
4.
There are women who go somewhere and sit down, and there are others who make an appearance. This second type can be divided into two categories, too. There are those who make a haughty appearance a chic hour and a half late to splice the world with a glance, and there are those who approach with an expansive display of power and forcefully request with a false smile the place she deserves. Film stars and duchesses, that would be an easy way of summing up the dichotomy. The difference between knock-knees and awe, hope and fear, wet dreams and nightmares. What they have in common is that they are goddesses in the depths of their minds and that every man believes in her because she believes in herself. Whenever she makes her appearance, people stand up spluttering excuses to give her the most comfortable seat, which she’ll sit down in with such stunning matter-of-factness without thinking for a second to thank the person who made the sacrifice for her or even deigning to look at him, thereby reducing him to the worm he is while giving the rest of the company ample time to gape at her.
Since the beginning of the summer, there has been a blonde woman who makes an appearance as a duchess almost every day on the terrace of Caffè Letterario on Piazza delle Erbe. Just as Her Majesty’s arrival in former times was announced by a chorus of trumpets, her appearance is preceded by her barking lapdog, which isn’t on a leash and which runs along ahead of her barking hysterically because it has learned by now that Caffè Letterario’s terrace is a place where they serve aperitif snacks that little dogs can cajole for themselves if they look cute enough, or, if that doesn’t work, tenaciously make it clear with irritating barking that the only way to shut them up is with a tasty morsel. She follows along at an appropriate distance. She has long, blonde, frizzy curls that stand out quite noticeably among this Mediterranean constellation and wraps herself as a rule in long, loose garments. She’s of an indeterminate age above sixty. She walks just a little too slowly, as though suffering from physical discomfort, and along with this, the smile she bestows on everyone who stares at her is a little too forced, as though to show that she’s a brave, strong woman who won’t be daunted by physical discomfort. But both the painfully slow walk and the fake smile she tries to mask are put-on. She is consummate phoniness. Although there’s nothing wrong with her, she plays the role of someone who is smiling bravely to show there’s nothing wrong with her.
When she finally reaches the terrace and the dog is jumping up at her barking enthusiastically, her gaze grows fixed. There are actually a few tables free but they don’t come up to her strict requirements. As everyone in her duchy ought to know, she drinks dry martini cocktails, and these are served in low wide glasses with a stem and filled up to the brim. That’s why it would be impossible for her to sit down at a sloping table. That almost every table on the slightly sloping medieval cobblestones of Piazza delle Erbe is sloping is no excuse in her eyes. And as she stands there in a posture that radiates head-shaking incomprehension at the shocking lack of class awareness in her subjects, one of the waitresses comes running outside to set up a new table especially, while uttering exhaustive apologies. “Thank you, waitress,” she says without looking at her, before draping herself over her chair with a sigh.
Her whole attitude doesn’t suggest that she has come to Piazza delle Erbe to merely enjoy drinking dry martini cocktails—she is granting an audience. Sitting there the whole evening drinking while her lapdog barks incessantly is a favor she bestows on the people out of kindness and generosity. When no one appears to lap up her wisdom, which sometimes happens for unknown reasons, she reaches for her mobile phone to provide random victims from her almost endless list of contacts with unrequested hours of good advice. She adopts a pained smile when confronted with so much ignorance at the other end of the line and is visibly impressed with herself for not losing her patience while she generously explains for the nth time how the world works, if you look at it objectively. She understands every imaginable topic: politics and spirituality, men and dogs, gastronomy and health, astrology and ethics, interior decorating and exorcism, psychology and the weather—and when anyone else offers a different opinion on these subjects she considers it a waste of her precious time. Worse still, it’s a failure to appreciate the inexhaustible well of knowledge she delves into and, in fact, nothing less than an insult to the generosity with which she imparts it to those lucky individuals, but she’ll hide her disappointment at so much ungratefulness behind a fake smile that actually means she’s hiding her disappointment at so much ungratefulness. She’ll never ask a question because she knows all the answers, even to the questions we’ve never asked ourselves. If it had been up
to her, she could have solved everyone else’s problems before they even happened. Her thankless vocation is to explain everything, to just keep on explaining everything over and over again to the deaf ears of the blind populace because she is, as we ought to know, a good person.
And as soon as anyone sits down at her table, the true source of her wisdom is revealed. It’s her voluminous handbag, along with other objects that she lugs around with her each day that mark her out as a woman of the world, prepared for anything—like a glue gun, mace, a spare wig, a roll of barbed wire, a goldfish bowl, underwear in all sizes, an angle grinder, and a spirit level. And what she fishes out of the bottom of her bag are the Major Arcana.
For a dry martini cocktail or five euros in cash, she’ll read your cards. In Italian they are called tarocchi—elsewhere, tarot. She has a large pack of cards with the most traditional illustrations and they are well used, anyone can see that from a few feet away. And the people who make use of her services aren’t all superstitious old women, who are beyond rescue in any case. A remarkable number of uncertain young women turn up at her table. For them, five euros or the equivalent in martini is a serious amount of money. She shakes her old, wise head of frizzy blonde curls as they drink in her every word, shaking with nerves in the hope of catching a glimmer of good news about their future, or, if that’s not possible, an ambiguous phrase that might also be interpreted positively with a bit of good will. Unfortunately, the cards leave no room for doubt. All character failings are visible and mistakes made in the past will be avenged and hope is an expression of naïveté or ignorance. And she can see in the cards that a young man will soon announce himself, but there isn’t anything good to be expected from him, either. The witch smiles apologetically. The girl has to understand that she, unlike the many charlatans, doesn’t beat about the bush. She tells them what the cards say, even when the message is tough. This is proof of her goodness. The girl goes up to the register, salty tears on her cheeks, to pay for one cocktail. She had hoped for better news, but still, she’s grateful. Now at least she knows the truth. And that’s worth more than wishful thinking. Isn’t it?
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