And if Roma loses, I think I’ll leave Rome. I’ve had enough of this city, Fede added. What about you?
I didn’t have anything to bet. If Roma wins the Serie A this year, I’ll catch up with the few guys in my office and we’ll go for a beer. We’ll talk about how Totti pulled off that free kick and how Batistuta was the best ever (many won’t agree). They’ll talk about how they want some Indian food. I’ll say it’s such a pity we don’t get dosas in Rome. I’ll meet Liesbeth and the gang for the weekend, we’ll get stoned out of our balls (or uteruses) and shake our limbs in a half-lit hall with 300 other people. Then I’ll catch the metro to work and look at a woman on her iPod and a man who’s reading La Repubblica and nodding his head because this country’s going to the dogs and I’ll see young unemployed guys who fold their scarves with a triangle pointing downwards and are plotting to burn cars during the next protest. I’ll see half-done buildings and graffiti and pizzerias that don’t open in the mornings and cafés with people standing at the counter ordering their macchiato and lungo. I’ll see long coats at the metro platforms filled out with people who will all be wishing they weren’t there but when the train is late, they’ll curse and sigh and raise their hands in anger.
If Roma loses, I’ll meet the guys and we’ll bitch about Totti’s captaincy and we’ll agree that he should retire now, though one of us will say he’s still a legend. I’ll walk down Via del Corso and see giant women with little dogs peeping out of their handbags and older men in perfectly tailored suits strutting down the road and the young Goths who meet in Piazza del Popolo with their eyes painted and their silver chains hanging in crescents from their pockets to their waists and I’ll see people in metros who rush to the next available seat and the crowds in the planes who clap each time the plane lands and Italians everywhere twisting their forks into their carbonara and their amatriciana and their arrabiata. I’ll see the girls in puffy jackets and the guys with their gold chains and men in corners with their necks turning around and women with straightened hair typing into their phones. I’ll see half-finished buildings and garages with dead scooters and cats walking through the ruins. I’ll see books reading people and TVs watching over families. And then I’ll say I wish they had dosas in Rome.
Maicon foiled another attack at the back, leaping into his tackle. Roma were a goal up; and their defenders weren’t allowing the Lazio forwards any space.
This is terrific, isn’t it? Batukhan asked me.
Yes, it is. But Klose can always slip in a goal. He’s some kind of genius, isn’t he? But like an everyday working-man genius.
He’s just another sneaky Lazio striker. They never man up and volley down the pitch. They always try their slimy shimmies down the left; win a free kick on a fake injury.
Is this a normal game? Batukhan asked Fede.
Depends on how you define normal.
Batukhan stood up and stretched his arms to the roof. He curled his torso around, limbering up as if he was going in to play.
Normal is when you see it coming, he leaned over and told me. When you see your whole life rushing towards you, like an oncoming train. And you’re tied to the tracks.
Keita fell to the ground, clutching his ankle. But then the medics rushed in with a stretcher and carried him out. That wasn’t normal.
That’s why we let the game decide for us, Batukhan hissed into my ears. Then you’re driving the train. You know exactly where it’s going. Even if it’s diving over a cliff.
He straightened himself and walked over to the group of English rowdies.
Hey, he said gently. They turned their backs to him.
HEY. What’re you WANKERS doing in OUR town? Now he was screaming.
One of the men turned sideways towards Batukhan.
Batukhan pulled out his arm like a whiplash and drove a penknife into the man’s hips.
The bar exploded. Batukhan turned to me and smiled: You didn’t see that coming, did you?
When he turned his head back, a fist hammered into his face and sent it rocketing into the side of the bar. Batukhan collapsed on the ground.
Okay, let’s go. Fede pulled me towards the kitchen. We’re getting out of here. He yelled to Laura who slowly lifted her jacket. I followed, stumbling over chairs, crushing beer glasses on the floor, making way for the kitchen staff who were racing out with their meat cutters and rolling pins, screaming Dai Daiii Daiiiii. I looked back between the swinging doors and saw Batukhan ramming headfirst into a punk and hurtling both their bodies over the bar. The air was filled with chains, knives, and chair legs crashing into skulls, diving into bellies. The kitchen was empty and we walked out into the back alley.
That’s so Roman, the knife to the ass. I can’t take that shit anymore, Fede said. He leaned against a wall and raised the whisky to his lips. He still had his glass with him. This is why I’m moving to Sicily. Violence should be an act of art, not of stupidity.
I said bye to them and walked back. Then the skies split open and it started pouring. I waited under a parapet that was draped with angels pissing out rain at the edges. The walls wept with their black paint. Bangladeshi vendors scrambled out of corners, their hands filled with umbrellas for sale. Smokers outside bars threw their cigarettes at the cobblestones and rushed in.
Apparently the gods watch us all the time.
Allah scratched his nose.
Ganesha tried some modern art with his snout.
Jesus shrugged.
READING LINES
I read a story last night. And I thought of you.
Where did you read the story? Chiara was scooping out the froth from her cappuccino.
In a dream.
You read in your dreams?
No. Okay, I read it on the Internet. I thought it would be more evocative if I said I dreamed the story. Someone else put it up. But now that I’m saying it to you, I suppose it’s my story too.
What is the story? she asked me.
One day you wake up and your nipples have disappeared. No scar, no groove, just flat, smooth skin. And then when you leave your bedroom your phone rings and you find out your father died the previous night. When your nipples don’t return for a week, you realise what had happened. Your whole life, while you were sleeping, your father would sneak into your room and suck on your breasts to give you two enormous hickeys that you thought were your nipples.
Chiara continued licking her spoon.
And your father did it not because of any sexual urges, but because he just wanted you to feel normal. That was his sacrifice: giving you nipples.
This is your dream?
No, I told you. I read it on the Internet.
But the Internet is our dream now.
Maybe it is our collective dream. And someday it will come alive.
I read a story about you too. Chiara put her spoon down. Where?
I read it at the same place.
Then how do you know it’s about me?
If the story fits, then it’s your story. Stories are not custom-made. If you feel like it is your tale, then it is yours.
What did you read about me?
Your mother died and you were really upset. In fact you were going hysterical with grief, throwing yourself on the ground, beating your chest and howling like a wolf. Your relatives were worried about you. So an old uncle gave you something from his medicine bag to relax. But he had Alzheimer’s so it turns out he gave you Viagra. And then you had an uncontrollable erection. And the more you grieved, the larger your hard-on got. Till it was a huge tower, bigger than the rest of your life. You were pinned under the tower and they couldn’t cremate your mother’s body because she was stuck under you.
Do you always specialize in fairy tales? I asked her.
Yes, I had called Chiara back. I figured there was no point staying away. So, we met for a coffee. Then we headed to San Calisto for a couple of beers. She wore a full jacket, though it was quite warm that evening. But she had to: her broken life is for display on her arms.
San Calisto was the cheapest place in Rome. It’s right at the bottom of the barrel in terms of fanciness. Which also means you get to see the dregs of the city. And people who don’t need much light. Grab a drink, get hold of one of the plastic chairs strewn around the front and in five minutes you’ll have a freak join you. If you aren’t one yourself. A poet with a feather in his hat joined us. He read us his poetry. The poem was in Italian. I said I was Indian; and he said so was he and pointed to his feather. Then he read his stuff in stumbling English. He was about sixty. He had written a really good poem when he was eighteen. We both said we loved it. And then he insisted on reading more. Everything else was crap. He wrote about dark valleys and souls with no light and how he hated God and he was one of God’s abandoned children. Chiara asked him to leave. He said fuck you to her, and then to me as well. Chiara said he should have died before twenty, in which case she might have liked him. He said he did die at twenty. Since then, he’s been waiting to be buried.
He asked me for a drink. I gave him some money for a grappa, so he’d leave us alone.
And then we were alone. At the bottom of the barrel. We didn’t need much light. Anyway the place didn’t have any lighting. We were lit up by joints all around us, like fireflies in the savannah (do they have fireflies in the savannah?).
What have you been up to? Chiara said.
Nothing much. I have an office report to work on. Went out a few times.
Have you jerked off recently?
Not very often. Couple of times a week.
What did you think about?
Thought about you once.
What were we doing?
We were stranded in an airport, I think it was Frankfurt, we had both missed our flights (separate flights: you to Rome, me to Delhi). And we were arguing with the airline staff.
Are all your sexual fantasies stories?
All fantasies are stories.
What happened next?
You asked me a tautological pseudophilosophical question and I lost all interest in banging you. So I left the airport and took the train instead.
She laughed. A man in a large woolen shawl behind her laughed as well for no reason; her laughter was as infectious as cholera in a sewer pipe. In front of us, a Bangladeshi immigrant played out some magic tricks. I had seen the guy before. He started swallowing a sword. Deeper and deeper it went. He started screaming, waving his arms in the air, just the handle of the sword sticking out of his mouth. The crowd applauded. Bravo, bravo caro, e pazzo. Yes, he was crazy. And then he sent around an upturned hat through the chairs for us to drop our coins. Chiara pulled out a fistful of small change and dunked it into the hat. She was happy. Maybe we all can be. Sometimes the story demands it, and then we have to smile.
This is a fairy tale.
We went back to Chiara’s place. And we had sex. Yes, however you define it, Bill Clinton or Hugh Hefner style, we had sex. Which was good.
She wasn’t looking away. I wanted to, but didn’t.
When we were done, I was lying next to her. She told me about her writing. She said she wrote only for herself. And for Marco. I had got used to Marco being the main deal in her life. I was okay being subsidiary. I felt like I was incidental in my own life. She said Marco was her reader. He read all her work. And he read her, all the time. She said she would send me some of her writing. But I shouldn’t comment. Or reply.
I said I could send her my report. That’s the most significant piece of writing I’ve ever done.
She didn’t have anything more to say. We didn’t speak. I could feel the little island of the bed flooded with our silence.
I felt very alone. But it was nice to be alone with someone.
She gripped my fingers and ran them down her arm slowly. I could feel the grooved highway of her life. The slit-lines ran from below the elbow all the way to the wrist. Some were smooth and straight and my fingers knew exactly where the wound began and where it ended. Some were a rash of angry strokes and I couldn’t tell one from the other. When my fingers reached her wrist, she started pulling them back up her forearm.
She wanted me to read her lines.
But I didn’t even know my own lines. How could I read hers?
Why? I asked her. Because you wanted to die?
No. Because I wanted to feel.
CAKE OR DEATH
OR
YOUTUBE DREAMING
On YouTube, a big man wearing a dress—a cross between a kimono and a cocktail outfit—and perched on high heels asked me: Would you like cake or death?
Cake, I said.
He wasn’t pleased, so he asked again. Cake or death. And I repeated my answer.
Then he was in my living room. His name was Eddie (it was written on his bra straps; I couldn’t see his bra, but he told me it was written on his bra straps). He said his question was rhetorical, because he had neither cake nor death to offer me. He had thought of being a baker at some point in his life, but his mother held the opinion that it didn’t suit a man to bake cakes for a living; it didn’t fit in with existing or foreseeably altered gender roles. So he started crossdressing instead. His mom thought that was cute.
Eddie didn’t make much sense.
I asked him anyway if I could choose only death. Is there no cake on offer?
Eddie said death is not on offer either. It’s an all-or-nothing choice.
What would that mean? All or nothing of death?
You get all of death or you get nothing of death.
What’s the difference?
There is none. We haven’t figured out a way to measure death yet. It’s always larger than life because way more people and animals and sentient beings have died than are alive at the moment. But all of us doing the measuring are alive and have no experience or knowledge of death. But again, everything that is alive now will be dead, so life is just a subset of death. He drew a diagram on my tablecloth (he had one of those Magic Marker pens).
But then he contradicted himself. He said death consists of absolutely nothing at the same time, because where death is, nothing else is.
Where’s death? I asked him.
It’s not there.
So what do we do about it?
About death? Eddie asked. He was getting a little impatient.
Yes, about death. That’s all I’m concerned with. I’m not interested in your stupid cakes.
You can’t be interested in death. It’s like being interested in a pink elephant that’s practicing its salsa moves on Jupiter. It’s just not there.
I’ve heard a similar argument before, I told Eddie.
Where could you have heard that?
Someone was explaining God, and said God is like a teapot in orbit around the earth.
You heard me. You heard what I have to say. All I can do is offer you cake. Do you want strawberry or warm chocolate?
Could I have both?
I’ll make it happen. If you’ll make it happen. I’m in your book.
When Eddie served me my second piece of cake, he said something that truly terrified me:
When you die, no one will remember your memories.
I asked him for a third piece: blueberry cheesecake. I needed some after hearing that line about my memories.
CHIARA’S CONVERSATIONS WITH GHOSTS
From: Chiara
Date: Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 3:41 PM
Subject: Conversations with Bolano
To: [email protected]
Hey K, so this is what I was talking about. My conversations with Bolano. This is the first message I sent to Roberto Bolano’s Facebook page:
“Dear Mr Bolano
I have read, and enjoyed, a lot of your writing. I am a writer too, but not as successful or as brilliant as I would have liked.
Last year, my mother killed herself. I had to carry her to the hospital. But we couldn’t save her. I have found that my narrative has broken down since then. I am also with a partner I love deeply (he�
�s in London and I’m in Rome), but we don’t know how to show our love. We think freedom is love. Maybe it is . . .
I am working on a text (don’t know what to call it—novel/ memoir/ rant) on suicide and storytelling and narratives. I think writing this has helped me find some disjointed/ crazy way to think and speak again. I found this escape partly through your style and imagery.
I have finished 15,000 words. I will keep writing. But I don’t think I’ll show it to anyone.
Thank you for your books.
Warm wishes
Chiara
Maybe love is for the ones who suffer, the ones who know there is no warm light at the end. Who revel in the slow burn of their decaying flesh.”
And then I sent a second message:
“And, of course, since you are dead, you will probably never read this. And since you died before Facebook, even your ghost won’t.
But I thought I would just acknowledge your presence in my writing. That’s it. Thanks.”
I initially thought the above two messages were symptomatic of me going crazy. Then I realized the messages might have been pointless, but at least they were self-aware.
I talk to ghosts a lot. So why not Bolano?
And then the ghost of Bolano replied.
“Un gran abrazo, Chiara. Muchas suerte.”
Anyway, that’s it. I think I’m done talking to Bolano.
From: Chiara
Date: Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 11:13 PM
Subject: Story
To: [email protected]
And this is the story I had started. I have no idea what to do with it. Maybe I’ll just let it be, let it stew in its incompleteness. The protagonist’s name is mine. I hope that’s not too distracting. Or maybe that is the whole point. Here goes:
Chiara’s world had filled with sorrow, like water in an aquarium, but she did not feel it because she had also grown gills. Does a fish know what water is or what swimming feels like?
One day she found the words and told her friend Giovanna just how she felt. She said: I feel like I am surrounded by sorrow, but the sorrow is like water and I am a fish, so I don’t really know what sorrow feels like.
No Direction Rome Page 9