So that was how I spoke to Viola’s grandmother. She was so Italian and so come si deve I thought she’d prove entertaining training material.
9.
“My name is Franca. But it’s better that you call me Signora Mancinelli and use the formal mode of address because you have to practice your Italian and the formal modes are more difficult. And you? What? Giulia? Giulian? Gigia? Leonardo. That is a bit easier, indeed. Like Leonardo da Vinci. I can remember that. Or, if you asked today’s youth, Leonardo DiCaprio. I’m an elderly lady of the upper class. They still had education in my days. I know who Leonardo da Vinci was. See that man over there? Look hard.”
He sits on the terrace at the Bar of Mirrors almost every day, a bon vivant, suffering from some subsidence, who acts too young for his age. He has white hair and wears brightly colored Hawaiian shirts from the plastic boxes of remainders at the market. When he comes shuffling along with his plastic bags from the Di per Di, he looks like a tramp. But once he’s sitting down he orders a mojito. Tramps don’t drink cocktails. And he has plenty of chitchat. Everyone who says hello to him is treated to an undoubtedly priceless anecdote, freshly plucked from the riches of his daily life. He bares his teeth as he smiles and draws passersby and waitresses into his monologue. He wears glasses on his forehead, which are supposed to give him the air of an elderly intellectual. But I don’t fall for that. He has holes in his shoes. His eyes are deep-set, his cheeks have caved in, and his stubble sticks to his chin like the frayed edges of an unwashed bathmat. He nods briefly at fellow tramps passing by over the gray paving stones.
“Watch out,” the signora says. “He’s a very important man. Bernardo is his name, Bernardo Massi. He’s rich.” She leaves a meaningful silence. “Very rich. Although they say his wife left him. But I know he still has a palazzo on the Piazza Corvetto.” I nodded to show I’d understood how significant that was. I tried to get a better look at him but some tourists had sat down at the table between him and me. They were seriously blocking the view with an excess of cameras and sticky body parts, peering at a map. The waitress came and they ordered a beer and an iced tea. The waitress asked whether they wanted anything to eat. They have the charming habit here of serving a range of snacks with the aperitif, with the compliments of the establishment. But the tourists became acutely suspicious, suspecting it was a dirty trick to make them pay for more than the two drinks they’d ordered and which would certainly be too expensive, here right in the center, and you know, you have to be very careful in these southern countries because they’ll rip you off right in front of your nose, and in any case we’re never coming back here, it’s much too expensive, but why am I fussing about it, are you fussing about it, we’re on holiday, so we’d better enjoy it, otherwise you don’t really have a life do you, that’s what I always say, it’s pretty important to enjoy yourself in life, even on holiday, so let’s just drink our drinks.
I don’t know whether it’s shamelessness, indifference, or a cultural code. But why in God’s name do tourists have to wear their dirty underwear as soon they sit down in a southern country and block my view? He was wearing a stained t-shirt from a German football club and shorts that had been washed to shreds; she was wearing comfy, baggy holiday shorts. They looked like intelligent, wealthy people to me. No doubt they had a house in Dortmund and a delectable DVD collection in their designer shelving unit, a car with fancy wheel trims in the garage, and evening wear for their work’s New Year’s reception in their recessed wardrobe.
In the Pré quarter, where Rashid lives along with the rest of Africa, every underprivileged illegal immigrant spends the first sixty euros he earns on a fake Rolex with imitation diamonds so that he can begin to fit in a little bit with the respectable Europeans, and those heirs of the wirtschaftswunder were just sitting there in their underwear. What kind of an impression do you think that made? And what do you think it means? What did they mean to say by this? If you’re on the beach by the Deiva Marina or at a campsite in Pieve Ligure I can understand it. But this was right in front of my view, on the most precious terrace in the city, in the shadow of centuries, in the historical center of Genoa, La Superba, the heart of the heartless one that had allowed them to penetrate to the roots of her pride. Does it mean they don’t understand or they don’t want to understand? Or are they sending out a special message? Like: We just happen to be on holiday here, nice to get away from all the stress, and that’s why we’re doing what we want, just having a lovely nice time being ourselves for those three weeks a year, you know. Or: Those Italians don’t know a thing, it’s just one big hip-hip-hooray beach from the Costa Brava to Alanya. Or is it actually intended as a status symbol dressing like that, does it mean you can permit yourselves to go on holiday without caring about anything whatsoever?
“Don’t be fooled by appearances,” the signora said.
“My apologies, signora, I was distracted for a moment.”
“He looks like an unmade bed. He dresses as though he has shares in the illegal sewing shops in the Pré. It wouldn’t surprise me if he did. I must ask Ursula some time.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Ursula Smeraldo. She has a countess in her family. By marriage, though. And just between you and me, she’s rather down on her luck, if you get my meaning. But we’re practically neighbors on the Via Giustiniani, and it would be strange if I didn’t greet her. What’s more, she knows what’s going on.”
The tourists’ shamelessness reached a new low. They’d unfolded their map and asked the waitress where something was. They had the goddamn guts to speak to her! Probably about something ridiculous like the aquarium. She stood bent over their table for minutes on end, giving them all kinds of explanations. My waitress. She was sacred. No one can ask her the way to the aquarium in their underpants. She’s not allowed to reply, and certainly not so extensively and sweetly and prettily. Not so sweetly and prettily. Not so extensively. Not so bent over and so much in my line of vision it hurt.
“I know about her, too.”
I gave the signora an irritated look.
“Ursula told me that Bernardo Massi broke up with his wife. But everyone knows that he’s powerful and important, that he’s rich, I mean, even though he dresses like a tramp. Don’t be fooled by the exterior. Everything is hidden in Genoa. We don’t have any squares with fountains, no palazzi with fancy façades. All the gold and art treasures are hidden away behind incredibly thick walls of common gray limestone. A true businessman stashes away his fortune in an old sock and goes out onto the street wearing tatters in the hope of receiving alms. In Milan and Rome, everyone wants to show off everything, fare bella figura, with a flamboyant display of good taste and excess. In Genoa everyone understands that it doesn’t give you an advantage. To the contrary. The man who splashes his wealth about ostentatiously has far too many friends, as the saying goes. The saying is a bit different from that, but you understand what I’m saying. Do you understand what I’m saying? You have to learn how to behave in this city. It’s a porcelain grotto.”
“I think I can only see the exterior,” I say. Only then did the waitress turn around. She asked us whether we might like something to eat. She asked it coolly, unapproachably, and proud, like someone with a countess in her family, like the marble duchess herself — La Superba.