“Or the one in Via Fiori Chiari, Art Deco with multicolored tiles,” said Braggadocio, his voice full of nostalgia. “Who knows whether our readers recall them.”
“And those not yet old enough would have seen them in Fellini films,” I added, because when you have no recollections of events, you take them from art.
“I leave that to you, Braggadocio,” concluded Simei. “Do me a nice colorful piece saying something along the lines that the good old days weren’t so bad after all.”
“But why this renewed interest in brothels?” I asked. “It might excite older men, but it would scandalize older women.”
“I’ll tell you something, Colonna,” said Simei. “The old brothel in Via Fiori Chiari closed down in 1958, then someone bought it in the early 1960s and turned it into a restaurant that was very chic with all those multicolored tiles. But they kept one or two cubicles and gilded the bidets. And you’ve no idea how many women asked their husbands to take them into those cubbyholes to find out what happened in the old days... That, of course, only went on until the wives lost interest, or else the food wasn’t up to snuff. The restaurant closed, end of story. But listen, I’m thinking of a page with Braggadocio’s piece on the left and, on the right, a report on decay in the city’s suburbs, with the indecent traffic of young women walking the streets so children can’t go out at night. No comment to link the two phenomena, we’ll let readers draw their own conclusions. After all, everyone agrees deep down that the houses of tolerance should be brought back — the wives so that husbands will not go around the streets picking up hookers who stink up the car with cheap perfume, the men so they can sneak off into one of those courtyards and, if spotted, they can say they’re there to admire the local color. Who will do me the report on hookers?”
Costanza said he would like to do it, and everyone agreed. To spend a few nights driving around the streets was too heavy on gas, and then there was always the risk of bumping into a police patrol.
That evening I was struck by Maia’s expression. As if she’d realized she had fallen into a snake pit. And so I waited for her to leave, hung around for a few minutes on the pavement, and then — knowing which route she took — caught up with her halfway home. “I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” she said, almost in tears, trembling. “What kind of newspaper have I ended up in? At least my celebrity romances did no harm to anyone — they even brought some business to ladies’ hairdressers.”
“Maia, don’t decide anything yet, Simei is still working things out, we can’t be sure he really wants to publish all that stuff. We’re still at the drawing board, inventing ideas, possible scenarios, that’s a good thing, and nobody has asked you to go around the streets dressed as a hooker to interview anyone. This evening you’re looking at it all the wrong way, you’ve got to stop imagining things. How about going to a movie?”
“Over there is a film I’ve already seen.”
“Over where?”
“Where we just passed on the other side of the street.”
“But I was holding your arm and looking at you, I wasn’t looking at the other side of the street. You’re a strange one.”
“You never see the things I see,” she said. “Anyway, let’s buy a newspaper and see what’s playing in the area.”
We saw a film of which I remember nothing. Feeling her still trembling, I eventually took her hand, warm and appreciative once more, and we remained there like two young lovers, except that we were like the lovers from the Round Table who slept with a sword between them.
Taking her home — she now seemed a little more cheerful — I kissed her on the forehead, patting her on the cheek as an elderly friend might do. After all, I thought, I could be her father.
Or almost.
9
Friday, April 24
Work went slowly that week. No one seemed eager to do very much, including Simei. On the other hand, twelve issues in a year isn’t the same as one a day. I read the first drafts of the articles, tried to give them a uniformity of style and to discourage overly elaborate expressions. Simei approved: “We’re doing journalism here, not literature.”
“By the way,” chipped in Costanza, “this fashion for cell phones is on the increase. Yesterday someone next to me on the train was rambling on about his bank transactions, I learned all about him. People are going crazy. We ought to do a lifestyle piece about it.”
“The whole business of cell phones can’t last,” declared Simei. “First, they cost a fortune and only a few can afford them. Second, people will soon discover it isn’t so essential to telephone everyone at all times. They’ll lose the enjoyment of private, face-to-face conversation, and at the end of the month they’ll discover their phone bill is running out of control. It’s a fashion that’s going to fizzle out in a year, two at most. Cell phones, for now, are useful only to adulterous husbands, and perhaps plumbers. But no one else. So for our readers, most of whom don’t have cell phones, a lifestyle piece is of no interest. And those who have them couldn’t care less, or rather, they’d just regard us as snobs, as radical chic.”
“Not only that,” I said. “Remember that Rockefeller, Agnelli, and the president of the United States don’t need cell phones, they have teams of secretaries to look after them. So people will soon realize that only second-raters use them — those poor folk who have to keep in touch with the bank to make sure they’re not overdrawn, or with the boss who’s checking up on them. And so cell phones will become a symbol of social inferiority, and no one will want them.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Maia. “It’s like prêt-à-porter, or like wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and a scarf: they can be worn just as easily by a woman who’s high society or working class, except in the latter case she doesn’t know how to match them, or she’ll only be seen in brand-new jeans and not those worn at the knee, and she will wear them with high heels, and you can see right away there’s nothing stylish about her. But she doesn’t know it and happily carries on wearing her ill-matched garments.”
“And as she’ll be reading Domani — we hope — we can tell her she’s not a lady. And she has a husband who’s second-rate or an adulterer. And there again, perhaps Commendator Vimercate is thinking of checking out cell phone companies, and we’ll be doing him a fine service. In short, the question is either irrelevant or too hot to handle. Let’s leave it. It’s like the business of the computer. Here the Commendatore has given us one each, and they’re useful for writing or storing information, though I’m old school and never know what to do with them. Most of our readers are like me and have no use for them because they have no information to store. We’ll end up giving our readers inferiority complexes.”
Having abandoned the subject of electronics, we set about rereading an article that had been duly corrected, and Braggadocio said, “‘Moscow’s anger’? Isn’t it banal to always use such emphatic expressions — the president’s anger, pensioners’ rage, and so on and on?”
“No,” I said, “these are precisely the expressions readers expect, that’s what newspapers have accustomed them to. Readers understand what’s going on only if you tell them we’re in a no-go situation, the government is forecasting blood and tears, the road is all uphill, the Quirinal Palace is ready for war, Craxi is shooting point-blank, time is pressing, should not be taken for granted, no room for bellyaching, we’re in deep water, or better still, we’re in the eye of the storm. Politicians don’t just say or state emphatically — they roar. And the police act with professionalism.”