Instead of that I went into her study to look for her cleaner’s number. “Emergency?” “Emergency.” As I waited for her, I had a better look around the study. I noticed that I couldn’t see a single piece of mail or any documents that related to any kind of work whatsoever. There was a pile of fashion magazines, a big pile of brochures advertising long-distance travel to exotic places, and an even larger pile of unopened envelopes. I took the liberty of opening a couple. It was an emergency, after all. They were all unpaid bills—with some court injunctions among them. Some already a year old.
The woman had arrived within half an hour, and half an hour later she’d mopped everything up. Monia was already asleep by then. “Sorry,” I said to the cleaner.
“I never say sorry to anybody,” she said. “Life is as life does.”
“How much do I owe you? I hired you to do the job, after all. How much does Monia pay you?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
“You might have thought you’d found yourself a rich, older mistress. I know your type. You’re an artist, aren’t you? We have to work for our money. But I won’t hold it against you, don’t get me wrong. But she isn’t rich. And she’s not your mistress anymore, if I can give you one piece of good advice, though it’s probably no longer necessary. Goodbye.”
“Oi, oi,” the neighbor said. He prayed to a few more saints, then he, too, figured it was time to go home.
26.
She came and sat down opposite me, uninvited—Fulvia, the witch—and said this: “I’ve been hearing a lot of things about you recently, Leonardo. My grandmother always said, ‘Leave the wheat growing when it’s growing and break glasses in November.’ My grandmother was a wise woman, she knew things people today have forgotten. I don’t blame them. In every lunar cycle in history you see the same shifts. It goes from Venus to Mars and vice versa. That’s how it progresses from the Major to the Minor Arcana.” She smiled omnisciently. “The magnetic field under this city was designed many cycles ago as a kind of blueprint for the new era. But we have to interpret it ourselves, a lot of people forget that. We have to learn to think in meridians. From north to south. Like lines on a hand. Let me see your hand. No, your left hand. You see. Do you know what I can see? If you don’t die of illness or an accident, you’ll live a long life.”
Naturally, I was happy with this news. But I kept wondering whether there were any other causes of death aside from illnesses and accidents. Old age perhaps?
“Thanks.” I thought about the different ways a man could die. A tortoise fell on Aeschylus’ head. But that falls into the accidents category. And apart from accidents or illness, what’s left? Murder?
“You mustn’t be so negative, Leonardo. That karma will turn against you. The earth goddess only embraces those who see the pendulum move.” She smiled triumphantly.
“Lay down some cards,” I said.
“That’s not how it works, Leonardo.”
“How does it work, then?”
She smiled. Alright. I got it. I went inside to order her a dry martini cocktail.
She smiled. That was how it worked. She began to lay the cards on the table.
“These are all the things you already know.”
“What then?”
“You’re from Germany.”
“Holland.”
“You’re a painter.”
“Writer.”
“Exactly, but your mother worries about you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re at a spiritual stage in your life where you listen to fairies not elves.”
“What does that mean?”
“Don’t interrupt. I’m just beginning to make contact with your spiritual underbelly. No, really, there’s a lot of resonance there. Do you know what, Leonardo, tell me honestly—do you have that thing that sometimes you feel really good and sometimes you feel really bad and sometimes in the middle? Yes? I can feel it. I understand it.”
She lay a few more cards. As she did this, she made a dismissive gesture. That upside down king of swords in combination with the fool didn’t tell her anything new. In fact, that’s what she’d been trying to tell me the whole time.
“What?”
That I was a man who lived with my heart but also with my head. I was a sensitive person but intelligent, too, unfortunately. I liked love but I also needed my own space. I was strange and typical at the same time. Although I thought I’d found something, I was searching. Although I thought I understood something, I was questioning. Although I thought I could deny the truth of the cards, my future was extremely uncertain.
She laid three more cards. The king of cups, a scythe cutting hay, and an upside down seven of wands.
“Look,” she said. “On the basis of these three cards, what would you conclude about my opinion of you?”
“You despise me.”
“That’s pretty much the first time you’ve said anything truthful.”
“But your pebble-dash opinion is uninformed and will turn against you like the tides against the position of the moon and the rocks against the sea during the equinox.”
I was tired of her. I stopped talking.
“You don’t understand a thing, Leonardo. Write that down in your little book.”
“Ach.”
“What, ach?”
“What, ach? What do you want to know? What’s your name again? Fulvia. I find you—thank you for having the courage to ask me—a thoroughly reprehensible person.”
“Could you explain that, Leonardo?”
“Yes.” I went inside to pay for everything, both my drinks and hers, as well as everyone who had sat at her table before me. I put the receipt in my back pocket. Then I ordered another bottle of Prosecco in an ice bucket. I paid for that, too. I took the order to her table personally, took the bottle from the ice bucket, put it on the table and said, “Fulvia, do you know what my grandmother always said? ‘You have to keep a cool head.’ My grandmother was a wise woman.”
27.
I didn’t know exactly what he knew or how he had found me, but he knew things and he’d been able to find me. I don’t know his real name, but everyone called him Il Varese. That was how he introduced himself to me. I’d seen him before, only I couldn’t remember where. He turned out to be the exclusive brewer of Bryton, an authentic Ligurian beer that was undrinkable, but brewed using a method based on well documented archeological findings. Yeah, well, exactly. That was what it tasted like, too. He was a large, broad, fat man who looked like a beer drinker, like someone who sweated and stank and pissed liters of clear piss out of his shriveled fire hose that hung under a massive belly that blocked all view of what, in his wet dreams, was still the instrument of his futile ambition. Misery led him to try to become a successful businessman instead, in the hope that supplicating nymphets might be prepared to suckle on his sorry little pee-pee on the basis of his commercial success. But it hadn’t completely worked, that ingenious master plan, and he didn’t really know what exactly had gone wrong, either. Somewhere on the way to becoming rich and famous, he’d missed both boats. Since then, sighing with arrogance and condescension, he’d been permanently clamped to his mobile phone filled with important contacts who for incomprehensible reasons kept failing to call him the whole time. But he wasn’t going to give up. After all, he could still sell his own beer. He called Berlusconi on his private number in Portofino, but for some unknown reason he didn’t pick up. That was definitely the work of the communists. They had special gadgets to prevent honest businessmen from doing business with honest politicians who understood that the country needed honest businessmen. What Italy needed was modern entrepreneurship, of which he himself was a shining example. An archeologist finds a few traces of scummy beer in an earthenware pot almost two thousand years old and sees a business opportunity. That was his skill. That was his genius. With a sigh, he scratched his musty crotch again.
Perhaps I’m not describing him with complete
objectivity, I know, but I simply don’t like the man. He rudely sat down opposite me.
“So,” he said.
And suddenly I knew where I’d seen him before. Right here, on the Bar of Mirrors’ terrace. I’d even written about him, I think. Sometime early on. When I’d just arrived in Genoa and was happy and naive, when I described how an Italian greeted another man he clearly had arranged to meet. That was him. But don’t look it up, it’s not important.
“So you want to buy my theater.”
I gave him a confused look.
“You talked to my partner.”
“Who?”
“My partner, Pierluigi.”
I nodded.
“I’ve come to warn you about him. How much was he asking? Two ten? Two twenty?” He saw from my expression that he was somewhere close. “What a rogue. The cheeky devil. That guy is even more untrustworthy than I thought. Shall I tell you something? He doesn’t have anything at all to sell.”
“I know.”
“Because I bought it. That’s to say—two years ago I bought it for about that amount. He’s only a partner on paper since it was handy for administrative reasons. But the theater’s mine.” He looked at me triumphantly. “So. Now you know just in time. You should thank me. I’ve just saved you from being conned out of more than two hundred thousand euros. You have to be on your guard if you want to do business here in Italy.”
He took a sip of his disgusting beer. The Bar of Mirrors was the only place in the city that sold Bryton beer, somewhat out of pity since he’d been a regular for so long. He was the only person who actually ordered it, but they didn’t dare tell him. And what they dared tell him even less was that they regularly had to jettison bottles of it because it was past its sell-by date.
“Therefore,” he began, “if you want to talk about taking over the theater, you need to talk to me. But the good news for you is that I’m prepared to discuss it. I’m in no hurry, but I would part with it for the right amount. It’s always been more of a hobby for me, really. But I simply don’t have enough time for it. I’m too busy with other things, import-export, that kind of work. So tell me, what are you offering? We don’t have to come to an agreement right now, but maybe we can scope out the possibilities.”
“But you don’t have anything to sell, either.”
He didn’t understand. “What are you saying?”
“I said you don’t have anything to sell, either. The theater doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the council.”
First he gave me a look of total astonishment, then he roared with laughter.
“I’m not joking. The theater belongs to the council. I don’t know how much Pierluigi made you pay, but he’s sold you something that didn’t belong to him. It’s all there in black and white in the contract.”
Now he looked a little concerned. “What contract?”
“I happen to have it on me. See for yourself.”
And over the next five minutes a spectacle unfurled nearly beyond description. He put on his reading glasses and began to read indifferently. But he soon paled. His hands began to shake. Sweat pearled on his forehead. Then he turned bright red. And he looked even more distended than he already was. Finally he exploded. He banged his hand on the table, swearing. “I’ll murder him,” he screamed. He got up and stormed off.
28.
“Vaffanculo.”
“Pronto?”
“I’ll hang you from the highest tree on the highest mountain I can find, Leonardo. My father will fuck you so hard up the ass with all his contacts that you’ll wish chairs hadn’t been invented. We’ll strip you so bare you’ll wish you were still in your shirt tails. We’ll shit on you, crap on you, and defecate on you, Leonardo. And given the belly rot you’ve given us, it won’t be a pretty sight, I can tell you that now.”
“Who is this?”
“Who is this? Who is this? I’ll tell you who this is. You’re talking to the person who is going to break both your legs, pull out your nails one by one, and then punch all of your teeth out before hanging you publicly on the square by your shriveled balls.”
“Sorry, I didn’t recognize your voice. Hello, Pierluigi. How’s it going?”
“It’s not going, you dirty foreigner. Think you can come here to my country, my city, ruin my business with your cocky, northern, bulging potato head full of soggy noodles? You’re the barbarians who plundered Rome and now you’re coming here in person for a pathetic replay in my back garden. I’ve spent years building something out of crystal glass and you come along with your big, fat, soft, pale body and stamp on it with your clumsy feet. But I can tell you one thing—crystal glass is expensive, and I’ll recover every last cent back from you to cover damages.”
“I thought we were friends, Pierluigi.”
“Right. So did I.”
“So?”
“Tomorrow at eleven at my father’s office. And please realize this is your last chance to come up with a proposal that will convince us to delay our legal proceedings against you. And that final proposal has five zeros, I can assure you of that.”
“Where’s your father’s office?”
“Find out for yourself. You always know best.”
“That’s not how it works, Pierluigi.”
“Piazza della Vittoria 68/24.”
“Look forward to it.”
“You shouldn’t.”
29.
Walter and I were on time. Piazza della Vittoria 68 turned out to be a stately marble building once designed to impress that still fulfilled its function with verve. Next to the main entrance were copper plates with the names of lawyers, judges, and notaries, each one grander than the last. We were expected. We had an appointment. Number 24 housed Parodi’s office on the fifth floor. At the end of the corridor on the left. Two lifts. The left one didn’t always work. Better take the right.
Walter was visibly intimidated by our surroundings. His nonchalant thespian appearance clashed with the strict patrician marble. He felt uneasy in these palaces of power, probably because he was a director and accustomed to situations where he held the reins in shabby practice rooms in abandoned squats.
“The name’s Parodi,” Pierluigi’s father said. He was sitting at the head of a relatively modest oval table in a spacious, bright office at the front of the palazzo overlooking Piazza della Vittoria. Pierluigi was there, too, but he wasn’t allowed to talk. His father was doing the talking.
“The name’s important. Sit down please. My son Pierluigi here is an absolute idiot, of course. You don’t need me to tell you that. That’s why I arranged the theater for him, to keep him off the streets, and because he can do relatively little harm there. But he’s a Parodi, too. Do you know what I mean? He might be a prick, but he’s my prick. If you’ll excuse my French, but I’m trying to make something clear to you.
“That is to say that as soon as you try to put a spoke in that retard’s wheel, I am compelled to protect that mongoloid. He’s my son. He bears my name. My name is my most important asset in this city. I’d defend my name to the last. I know that you’re an intelligent man. And I know you’ve been in this city for long enough to understand me.
“You’re from northern Europe, which is why you think in legal terms. You think that the contract I arranged for my son for that theater is a public matter. I’ll have to admit you’re right, in essence. And I’d also like to compliment you on the way you managed to get hold of the document. I honestly thought it was sufficiently protected. But clearly you have contacts I didn’t take into account.
“All of this makes you a sizeable opponent. But an opponent. By showing that document to my son’s partner, you’ve caused my son substantial financial damage. And you’ll understand that I’m left with no option but to collect those damages from you in the Parodi name.
“You still look quite unmoved, sitting there at my table. I know what you’re thinking. You believe in Europe and in the idea that Italy is a democratic constitutional state and the
fantasy that Genoa is part of Italy. You believe in your democratic rights and in the protection of law. Part of me would like nothing more than for you to be right.
“When you came in, did you see the copper nameplates of all the people with offices in this palazzo? Do you have any idea of my network? You might stand a chance in Strasbourg, Brussels, or at the international court in The Hague—if you had enough money for substantive proceedings against our legal team. But in Genoa you don’t stand the slightest chance. Not against me. I seldom lose cases, and I’ve never lost a case when my good name was at stake.”
“What do you want from us?” I asked.
“Two forty.”
“We’d already reached two twenty with your son.”
“My son’s an idiot and I’ve already initiated proceedings to impound all of your possessions.”
“Why should I be afraid of you, Mr. Parodi?”
“I don’t want to insult you. You’re undoubtedly a respected person in your home country. You’re a writer, aren’t you? A poet even, look at that. Has your poetry been translated into Italian? I’d like to peruse some of your verses sometime, when I have nothing better to do. No? There you go, we’re back to that. It’s exactly what I’m trying to make clear to you. You are in Genoa, where my friends and friends of my friends have been calling the shots for centuries, and although I’d like to compliment you once again on the way you attempted to adopt our way of thinking, you will always remain an outsider to us. Worse still, a foreigner. We can tolerate your presence in our city up to a certain degree, and even welcome it as long as you stick to your own business. But as soon as you start stepping into our territory, you’re worth little more than your average Moroccan or Senegalese fellow—an irritating but relatively minor problem we can easily rid the world of—we have plenty of experience in that.
“That leaves me to thank you for a fruitful discussion. If you’ll allow me to summarize the conclusion we have mutually reached, I’ll look forward to your transfer of two hundred and forty thousand euros within, let’s say, a fortnight. Is that reasonable enough for you? And if you fail to fulfill the obligation, which naturally seems highly unlikely to me, I will, in accordance with our mutual understanding, be charging you for breaches you never even dreamed existed.”
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