26.
An interviewer in my home country once asked me, “Why do you keep falling in love with waitresses?” I have no idea where he got his information from. I didn’t have much time to think about it; I had to come up with a witty response: “Because they can’t escape my gaze.”
I’m writing to you, my friend, because I’m afraid things are about to get out of hand with the waitress from the Bar of Mirrors. I say afraid, and I mean for you, because she is, as I’ve repeated to the point of boring you with it, the most beautiful girl in Genoa. You’ll never see me again anyway, but given the most recent developments, I’m afraid I have to admit the fact with an ever-broadening grin on my face.
To maintain the suspense, I’ll tell you something else first. I found the Mandragola. You’ll remember I told you about my new friend Cinzia and she gave me the romantic or more accurately medieval task of going off in search of it. I used that as a reason to penetrate even more deeply into the alleyways than I usually do when I got lost. This was right at the start of my time in Genoa, when getting lost was one of my main pastimes. Cinzia is an intelligent girl. She understands stuff. I didn’t entertain for a moment the illusion that the Mandragola actually might exist. But still, I went in search of it. Anyone wanting to make their home in a new country can’t ignore orders given by clever, well-meaning local residents. You can’t ignore an order given by any woman, until you’re married to her and can secretly ignore her orders. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The Mandragola exists. It’s a restaurant. I went there yesterday. There were tables outside on a square the size of a service court when you’re playing tennis. In front of a blackened Roman church that through the centuries has been grilled, roasted, and burned down so often it has carbonized to its essence and can decay no more. The minuscule, crammed terrace is shared with a café located in the crypts of an adjacent building in medieval cellars that would be an excellent torture spot if only for the reason that the walls are so thick cries for help would never reach the outside world. And you can descend even lower, to the underground river, where there are cushions on the floor and burning torches. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to find this café, this square, or the Mandragola ever again, assuming it would all still exist the next time, if it did exist yesterday and wasn’t just a figment of my imagination. Because the way it exists, it exists in the shadowy net of dark alleyways at the foot of Santa Maria in Castello where even the rats get lost.
I was there with her. No, not with Cinzia, but with her. Really. When I finally found the Mandragola, it was thanks to the most beautiful girl in Genoa.
27.
I broached it in a really smart way, if I may say so myself. I did the unimaginable. I spoke to her.
“But…” I said.
I’m picturing a traditional Italian wedding. With a white dress and a church. Friends who fly in for it and a long table on a piazza. We’ve talked about nothing but the menu for months. Antipasta misti, we agree about that. Sardinian salami and Spanish pata negra was my suggestion. A few ripieni. Courgettes filled with minced meat. And something for the vegetarians, of course. Carpaccio of swordfish, tuna, and salmon with wasabi sauce. And fried melanzana. Acciughe impanate too, breaded anchovies, fileted and opened out so you can eat them with your fingers. But you said that wasn’t an antipasto but a secondo. And those Calabrese meatballs of yours then? You do have a white dress. So in any case we should serve food that doesn’t stain, because I know you. Crudité di gamberoni crudi. And vongole with cozze. Penne al gorgonzola. As a primo. For a wedding? Pears with Parmesan cheese, is that a primo or a secondo? I think it’s a dessert. Or let’s do trout with almonds. But that’s definitely a secondo. Tagliatelli al salmone. But are you sure with your white dress? Duck à l’orange. Not Italian enough. Then we might as well go to the Chinese restaurant. But my father would shoot himself. What, Chinese? No, ducks, you imbecile. The Chinese shoot imbeciles. And then we kiss. But still no menu. Kiss again. We’ll see. No, we have to arrange it. Cheese fondue, then? Good idea! It was just a joke. But it really is a good idea. But it really was a joke. We’ll start at the beginning. We’ll have fave. Broad beans with Sardinian goat cheese. It won’t be the right season. It’s always the right season for goat cheese, what do you mean? But not for broad beans. Not in the greenhouses? Sure, in the greenhouses in your country, maybe. Alright then, no broad beans. Risotto. Risotto? At a wedding? Yes, risotto. How? With asparagus. Brilliant idea. It doesn’t stain. With butter and ham. Are you mad? It’s summer. Then we’ll serve a tomato and mozzarella salad on the side. On the side of what? With the lamb shanks. We haven’t even discussed the secondo, let alone lamb shanks. Kiss. You see? Do I see what? That you like lamb shanks. No, I like kissing.
Go and rent yourself a suit, my friend. We still need to talk about the menu, but the white dress has already been fitted, in a manner of speaking.
28.
“But,” I said, “do you work every single evening?”
“Yes.”
“But then if you, you know…”
“I’ll be finished early tomorrow.”
“For me, tomorrow’s…I mean…”
“Pick me up here. We’ll go for an aperitif. You can pick a nice place for us. You know Genoa better than I do.”
That night I couldn’t sleep. I’d picked a special place long ago. Walking distance from the sea. A kind of pier in the harbor with a view of La Lanterna and the big ships sailing far away to fairytale destinations like the coast of North Africa, where a purple sunset will be sent back in return. Sorry, I was lying there quite romantically awake. And I could actually see her standing before me in her white dress. While I fully understood that everything was just on the point of beginning…Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, for heaven’s sake. I still didn’t know her name. But we had a date and that was the most important thing.
When I went to pick her up at the Bar of Mirrors the next day, she’d already gotten changed. This was quite an understatement in her case. She’d swapped her waitressing uniform for…for practically nothing. Two boots and then a long stretch of nothing. A kind of short frayed denim skirt. And I can’t even remember what she was wearing on top, perhaps because I didn’t dare look. She was playing the game. She was playing the game with verve.
You have to change your life, is what I thought when I saw her like that. And I realized that that was exactly what I was doing. We watched the sun set that evening. It cost me an arm and a leg because in the special place I’d chosen they know better than anyone that they’re a special place that is chosen, at great cost, to make an impression with their free sunset. We should talk sometime, too — about money. But not now.
And when the moment came that she had to go home, I asked whether perhaps she’d like to go for a bite somewhere. To my astonishment, she said, “We’ll go to the Mandragola. Have you ever been there?”
And when, many hours later, I walked her to her scooter, she said we’d see each other again very soon and kissed my cheek. I finally dared ask.
“What’s your name?”
And she told me her name.
29.
That night I lay awake, even awaker than before, if you can say that. My dreams were keeping me awake. The footage of the evening played a hundred times over in my mind, and it seemed like a film. Everything had happened exactly as it happens in films. I couldn’t find a single fault. We had talked. We’d had long, pleasant conversations about wonderful things. We’d looked into each other’s eyes. Not a cliché had been eschewed. We’d even had recourse to a sunset. And I seemed to remember a soundtrack of sloppy film music with softly swelling violins timed to her slow gestures and her subtle, precise curves. I ran my fingers along her leggy youthfulness in lengthy fantasies and felt the afterglow of her kiss on my cheek like the crimson tinge of a sacred seal.