First I became aware of a jerking off kind of a movement diagonally behind me. I turned my head in such a way as to be able to check out my suspicions. And I was right. It stood out, to give a graphic description, like a sore thumb. An old, dirty Genoese man sat in the seat diagonally behind me unmistakably, convincingly jerking off with ever more frantic gestures.
As you’ll understand, my friend, I was shocked. I was convinced that he was a notorious pervert who, somewhere between now and the next five minutes, would be thrown out of the auditorium for the umpteenth time. A gentleman doesn’t behave like that in a place of public entertainment. But when I very discreetly turned my head to give the corner of my right eye a good view, I saw that the fat man sitting four seats away on the same row as I had his whole fucking trousers around his ankles including his dirty underpants and was sitting there with his stinking, wrinkly member in his fists. I could see the tip of his cock and his scrotum. When I went on and had a less discreet look around, I realized that I was the exception, not them. And not only because I was by far the youngest. All those filthy, squalid phantoms of men were wanking before my very eyes. And then I saw that if they were watching the film, it was only out of the corners of their eyes. From time to time, someone would turn his face to the screen to get some inspiration or to feign artistic interest. But everyone was mainly looking at everyone else. And the privileged ones in the boxes had a fantastic view of the room in its entirety.
My first instinct was to make a quick getaway, but I had to get out on the right side of the row, and how do you ask someone to get up and make way for you when he has his trousers around his ankles and he’s holding his cock? I decided to wait politely until he’d come. But once that had happened, he started all over again. He looked at me with eyes that glistened like a false tooth in the night.
I’m not telling you the entire truth, my friend, but you’ve guessed that already. My first instinct wasn’t to make a quick getaway. As the youngest and, in all modesty, most attractive visitor at the time, I felt I was being stared at. Something was expected of me. I was an object of fantasy. I could feel it in my veins. My first instinct wasn’t to get away as quickly as possible, but to unbutton my fly as slowly as possible. Glittering eyes gazed at me like wolves in the night. I’ve seldom felt so turned on. And by the time I had slipped down my underpants agonizingly slowly, I found myself the owner of a monumental erection that gleamed in the light of twenty, thirty, or forty pairs of eyes. I was blind to the film now. Nice and slow like a woman, I began to play with my cock as though it were a pussy. My own imaginary breasts turned me on like a transvestite. I took off my top and played with the world like I was fucking myself in my thoughts. If a horny old pervert had come up to me that moment waving his festering member, I would have sucked him off like I was wearing lipstick. I was La Superba. La Superba was me. I almost ejaculated at the thought, but delayed it a little for sake of the show, and instead, something quite different happened.
All things considered, it’s a terrible story—embarrassing, filthy, and humiliating for me. Naturally, I would never put something like that in my book. Or I’d invent another character who did it. And even then. I’m only telling you, my friend, because I trust you and I want to make something clear to you in this unusual fashion. That afternoon I was a victim of my own imagination. I felt sexy, but I was just a fat writer behaving scandalously in a public place in Genoa. Anyway, you get the point. The circumstances were extreme, but the truth of the matter is that I sincerely believe we are all like that. We dream our dreams, feel desired, inspired, and admired until the lights go on.
Because suddenly the lights went on. The French film had finished, clearly. I’d stopped watching it. A new film was put on the reels. It was a nonstop show, after all. But in order to change the film, the light had to go on. Just for a moment. A minute is enough. And there I was. There I was with my titties, my teased-up top, my remotely-removed panties, fondling myself like a girl in a Milo Manara drawing, with a painfully postponed orgasm on the fifth seat from the right of the second to last row of a cinema at the end of Via San Vincenzo, close to Brignole, in front of all of the eyes of Genoa. Somehow, all the dirty old men had suddenly turned into impeccably dressed, fine gentlemen. It was only then that I made a quick getaway.
6.
It was a cold night and had started snowing again. The snow didn’t even melt but settled. I was looking for a bar that was still open. It was Sunday, so the options were limited. Even the Britannia was closed. I went to the Piazza delle Erbe but all the shutters had already been rolled down. There was no one out. I pinned my hopes on the historical Bar Barbarossa on Piano Sant’Andrea under the Porta Soprana. I walked uphill along Salita del Prione, my head deep in my collar. I had to watch my step as I climbed. The street was definitely too steep for these weather conditions. I almost fell over twice. But it was too late to change my mind. The journey back downhill would be just as slippery, and what’s more, there was nothing to do down there, as I’d already found out.
In the distance I saw the shadow of someone trying to descend the same street from the other side. It was a woman. She didn’t seem to have any trouble with the slipperiness of the snow-covered cobblestones. She barely seemed to touch the ground.
We met halfway. She was an old woman, I could see that from her face. But she moved almost weightlessly. She looked almost transparent. She was wearing strange clothes, a long black skirt, and a gray shawl—she seemed to come from another era. In a strange way, she looked older than she looked.
She spoke to me. I didn’t understand a word she was saying. She spoke too quietly. I apologized. She apologized in turn and repeated her question. I realized she wanted directions, but she was speaking the Genoese dialect and I could only half understand it. I’ve heard drunken heating engineers and roadworkers at Paolo’s enoteca screaming in the dialect at each other that the other has a tiny belín, but I’d never heard friendly, polite Genoese. She repeated her question. Vico dei Librai? I’d understood. Vico dei Librai. Did I know where it was? That’s where she lived and she couldn’t find her house anymore.
I reflected. I knew Centro Storico very well by now, but I couldn’t place a Vico dei Librai. Was it in Centro Storico? Yes, it was just near the port, near Porta Soprana. It did sound like the name of an alleyway in Centro Storico, I had to admit. She didn’t seem demented or confused. She seemed to know exactly what she was talking about. But I didn’t know. I’d never heard of that alleyway.
But at the same time, under these circumstances, I couldn’t allow myself to just shrug apologetically. It was cold, snowing. She was an old lady who couldn’t find her way home. I couldn’t abandon her to her fate at this time of night. I was charmed by the idea that, as a foreigner, I could be the savior of a woman who was so Genoese she didn’t even speak Italian. I suggested going to Bar Barbarossa. They’d certainly be able to help us there. And I was on my way there, anyway. She nodded, turned around, and walked along beside me.
The Barbarossa was open but practically empty. I ordered a Negroni for myself and asked what I could get for her. She didn’t want anything. I insisted. I said it was cold. I ordered her a hot cup of tea. I said it was the least I could do for her.
We stood at the bar. She didn’t touch her tea. I asked the barman whether he might know where Vico dei Librai was. He didn’t know, either. I said it had to be in the neighborhood and that it was important because the lady had to get home. He did his best, looked in the phone book, but couldn’t find the street in question. How did you spell it again? Dei Librai? Like the booksellers? Strange. Wasn’t in the index. The woman was still standing silently next to me. He fetched a colleague. He had a smartphone with navigation. The problem would be solved within two minutes. I ordered another Negroni. She still hadn’t touched her tea. But Vico dei Librai didn’t exist. His smartphone gave no results. Maybe he didn’t have a signal. Maybe it was because of the snow. She thanked us. She laid a banknote on the counter to
pay for the tea she hadn’t drunk a drop of. I protested. The barmen protested, too. But she was already on her way out. We followed her with the money she’d left behind. She was nowhere to be seen. There weren’t any footprints in the fresh snow. What she’d left behind turned out to be a one hundred-lira note from the Kingdom of Italy.
7.
“Your coat smells like a cage of wet, wild animals.” It was the signora. “If you want to become a Genoese gentiluomo, you’ll have to start going to the dry cleaners from time to time. But I’m prepared to forgive you that today on the condition that you give me your dirty arm and accompany me to the Bar of Mirrors. It’s slippery for a lady. And I’ll thank you with a drink. As long as it’s coffee and not the usual shit you drink. What’s it called again? Negroni. That’s healthier for you and cheaper for me. I have to think of everything, Leonardo. Promise me you’ll go to the hairdresser’s soon, too?”
“It’s such a privilege to be able to keep you company that I insist you allow me to thank you by offering you anything you would like.”
She smiled. “You’re learning, Leonardo.”
We sat down inside, in the porcelain grotto, at the small round table next to the window. I ordered a Negroni and she a hot tea with Cognac.
“If you’re the one paying, I’ll have one, too. You’ll understand that, as a Genoese.”
“Thank you, signora. As a Genoese, I understand that you are doing me a service by so unambiguously accepting my hospitality and I can only hope that I will soon find myself in a situation whereby I can pay you back.”
“I see that my lessons are starting to bear fruit. You’re indebted to me for that, too.”
“I was only too aware of that.”
“What happened with the theater?”
“How do you know about that? I mean, which theater? I mean…”
“As a Genoese you ought to know that, as a Genoese, I know everything about you.”
I nodded to say that I should have known and I shook my head in response to her question.
“Parodi?”
“It didn’t go that well.”
“I hope you haven’t turned them against you. They’re powerful in this city.”
“I know that now.”
“Where is the theater actually?”
“Piazzetta Cambiaso.”
She gave me a confused look.
“That little piazza on the crossroads between Vico dietro il Coro di Santa Maria delle Vigne and Vico delle Lepre, opposite Da Francesa, the fish restaurant, between Piazza Soziglia and Via della Maddalena, actually on the corner of Piazza Lavagna.”
“I don’t know that part.”
“De Maddalena.”
“I never go there. I never go further than Piazza Soziglia and Via Luccoli.”
There you had it again. Maybe it was better that the whole project had ended in disaster. Real Genoese like the signora didn’t even dare to set foot in those alleys.
“But you know the rest of Centro Storico.”
“I’ve lived here a lot longer than my youthful appearance might suggest, Leonardo.”
“More than twenty years?”
“Don’t flatter me. At least, not in such a cheap way. I know every street in this neighborhood, Molo.”
“Do you know Vico dei Librai?”
She seemed to freeze. “Why do you ask that?”
“Oh, no reason. It’s just…”
“Did somebody ask you the way?”
“Yes, it was…”
“An old woman? Where?”
“Just next to Porta Soprana. On Salita del Prione.”
The signora made the sign of the cross.
8.
“You’ve met her,” the signora said, “the old lady of Vico dei Librai.” She was speaking softly all of a sudden, as though we were discussing someone who had just died.
“Is she famous?”
“You could say that. Or, rather, you couldn’t say that, because to be famous you at least have to exist, which in her case is definitely the question. But that question is famous. She’s a myth, but anyone staying in these dark alleys long enough, where the shadows are more skittish than the rats, runs into her sooner or later. What did she look like?”
I told her the whole story. She nodded. “Yes,” she said quietly, “that’s exactly what the other witnesses said about her. And that hundred-lira note, do you still have it?”
“No, the barman in the Barbarossa kept it. She was using it to pay for a drink, after all. But please tell me who she is.”
“Vico dei Librai doesn’t exist, at least, not anymore. It was in the area that used to be called Madre di Dio, just near the old Barbarossa city walls, at the foot of Porta Soprana. It was an old working class neighborhood. One night in 1942, the neighborhood was flattened by shelling from the English fleet. And after the war, they built that hideous new Genoa that you know, with new streets and tarmacked squares named after poets who’d have been rendered speechless at the sight of those underground motorways and fly-overs. Piazza Dante, Via D’Annunzio, and the Giardini di Plastica. Vico dei Librai used to be somewhere there. Until one winter’s night in 1942.
“The story goes that the old lady of Vico dei Librai was on her way home that evening. She’d taken bread to the orphans and flowers to the church. She was later than usual that night because she’d had to shelter from the bombing. When things finally quieted down, she continued on her way home. She was overcome by the cold somewhere near Campo Pisano. She stopped to rest on the steps of the doorway to a palazzo and passed out. Or died. Or maybe it’s the same thing. But when she woke up, her neighborhood didn’t exist anymore. Since then she’s been roaming the city, particularly on bitter winter nights, asking the way to Vico dei Librai in antiquated Genoese dialect.”
9.
In terms of ghosts and spirits, I’ve had a clear policy all my life. Although there is no scientific evidence for their existence and every checkable and verifiable foundation of modern metaphysics excludes the possibility of their existence, I’ve always chosen, against my better judgment, to believe in their existence because it’s more amusing than justifiably not believing in them. The stories are too wonderful to dismiss as nonsense and then ignore. I’ve believed in them as I’ve believed in the characters of novels who have come into my life and whom I understand in so much as they play a part in a story that interests me. And in that way, I can picture them as fully alive.
But you can imagine, dear friend, that it’s a rather unsettling experience if ghosts suddenly decide to exist on their own, instead of me beneficently allowing them to exist. That’s not what’s supposed to happen. Then I lose control. Neither do I want a character in a novel whom I’ve invented to come and sit down at my table and interfere with my chapter structure and the way I’m depicting him, threatening to inform the trade union for fictional figures about my dubious practices and considering taking that ultimate measure: going on strike. That would be a pretty mess. It happened to me before, with my last book, Real Life: A Novel, when the characters, under the leadership of master schemer Drinsky, started a revolt because of what they considered to be disappointing catering, and it turned into a bloodbath. I had to make an example of that Drinsky and execute him. I don’t want to have to go through that a second time. So the last thing I need is a ghost who decides to exist.
And I wasn’t even drunk that evening. I had been planning to be, but everything was closed and that was exactly why I’d slipped and scrambled uphill to the historical Bar Barbarossa. I really did see her. I really did talk to her. I really did hold that hundred-lira note. I can start doubting all those things retrospectively, but that’s just as irrational as believing in ghosts.
The signora gave me a book about Genoa’s ghosts, poorly written tourist trash, but she’s in there, the old woman of Vico dei Librai, and everything was the same. That was exactly what she’d looked like, exactly how she’d acted, exactly the question she’d asked and that was exactly the way sh
e’d mysteriously vanished. If I’d read the book first, I might have been able to invent that I’d actually met her. But the other way round, no, that doesn’t work, there are too many consequences.
I read the whole book as a knee-jerk reaction. Genoa was truly infested with ghosts. And the worst thing is that I’m seeing them everywhere now. I go to Piazza San Matteo and bump into Branca Doria, who shows me his blood-smeared hands. Centuries ago, he used to live in the beautiful palazzo to the left of the church. His good friend and brother-in-law, Michele Zanche, while visiting him, was betrayed and murdered in cold blood by Doria. This led Dante to place Doria in the third zone of the ninth ring of hell, even though he was still alive when Dante was writing. But at that time, people knew that anyone betraying a friend would immediately lose their soul and reside in hell, while their earthly body would be possessed by a demon, until their heart gave out. Doria tried to wipe off his bloodied hands on the second column on the left of the church.
At Porta dei Vacca, I saw the coach driven by a monk who was faceless under his hood, taking the restless victims of violence to a quiet place in the mountains. I heard the prisoners’ chains rattling on Campo Pisano. I saw the veiled woman of Vico del Duca, and on Piazza del Amor Perfetto I saw the beautiful prostitute holding a cabbage from a window on the fifth floor, but when I took a better look, I saw that it wasn’t a cabbage but the head of a jealous lover.
Just by there, on Piazza Banchi, at night I heard the ethereal music of the composer Alessandro Stradella, who had met with major success in Venice but had fallen in love with the wrong woman there. He’d fled to Genoa and hidden in the labyrinth. But an assassin had been able to find him and stabbed him on the steps as he tried to escape into the church.
La Superba Page 29