Ilja Pfeijffer - La Superba

22.

I could almost forgive Walter for running away, the cowardly weasel. They really are doing it. But I won’t let them drive me away. This city is mine as much as it is theirs by now. What are they thinking? That I was going to surrender fearfully to their southern dirty tricks like a pale mollusk from the flabby north? I can see their big brown hook-noses being seriously put out of joint. What’s all this? I will fight. I will crush them.

Sorry, my friend, I’ll try to explain the situation to you calmly. The letter I found yesterday at home was an official missive from Antonio Bentivoglio. He’s a famous lawyer in this city, as he never fails to impress on everyone. I’ve googled him now. It’s true. It’s even an understatement. He is the most expensive, most successful lawyer in Genoa. He is famous for the scale of his network and his unconventional, aggressive methods. In the forty years he’s been in the profession, he has practically never lost a case. And there are a few big scandalous cases among them.

Antonio Bentivoglio wrote to me on behalf of his clients Abramo and Pierluigi Parodi. The first one must be the father. I had to read the letter five times before I understood it. I needed a dictionary. It’s not written in Italian but in Legalese, the official jargon of bureaucracy, which even native Italian speakers have trouble with. In the end I managed to decipher about ninety percent, enough to understand that he wanted me to believe I was in deep shit.

On behalf of his clients he was seeking two hundred and twenty thousand euros for the breach of a verbal purchase agreement, an amount that would be increased in accordance with interest rates and with two or three offsets. Aside from this he was also demanding more or less the same amount for the fact that I’d leaked confidential information to their business partner. The total reparation would come out to just over six hundred thousand euros, including costs and legal aid fees. On behalf of his client, he suggested a settlement of four and a half within two weeks of the date of this letter. In the case of a failure on my part, a hearing date had been set shortly after that, at which my presence would be very much appreciated.

See. Of course it’s just cheap scaremongering. I’m no legal expert but I know enough about the law to see that his claim doesn’t stand a chance. I don’t know anything about Italian law, but I’ve enough confidence in the universal principles of law to believe that no judge would find it reasonable for me to have to pay twice for the same theater, one I didn’t buy and which therefore isn’t in my possession. I mean, let’s face it, my friend, even in Italy they couldn’t do that. And if they did, I’d go to the European Court in Strasbourg. And their so-called verbal purchase agreement is nonexistent. But that’s their word against mine, it’s true. But even if it did exist, there are conditions of termination. Then I might owe them a percentage, but certainly not the entire amount. Let alone twice the entire purchase price.

In short, you don’t have to worry, my good friend. We’re certain to win this case. I’m worried about just one thing, and that’s Antonio Bentivoglio. The two of us on our own can hardly go up against a man of such stature. We don’t speak his language. Quick as a flash, he’d have us caught up in some kind of procedural trap. We shouldn’t be stupid, my dear friend. We need to get hold of a good lawyer. I know I still owe you money. You’ll get it back as soon as possible. But if you could just send me another couple of thousand, I’ll get us a good man. And I guarantee you’ll get that money back within two weeks, as soon as we’ve won and they have to pay the litigation costs. Perhaps we’ll even be able to get some juicy compensation out of it. See it as an investment, my dear friend.

23.

They were dark days. The winter hung like a gray horsehair blanket over the inhospitable city. Day and night were one in my apartment on the ground floor of the narrow Vico Alabardieri. If I’d closed the shutters, it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference. I had to go out. But I didn’t want to. I’d go out into the night where the same ghosts roamed as in my darkest thoughts. The alleyways were printed in black on a black background on the map of the city. I would lose my way again, my head sunk deep into the black collar of my long black coat. I would disappear like a crow in a coalmine, like a gravedigger in his own catacombs.

During the nine-month-long summer, the half-light in my house had felt like a pleasant chill. But during the three months of winter, which seemed to last three times as long, it was a tomb. The walls are so thick that my mobile doesn’t have a signal inside. I can forget about Internet. I have to go out for all those things. And that’s not a problem: in the summer, it’s exactly what I want to do. I toddle drowsily in my pajamas into the alleys to drink coffee and read the paper. I shower at the sight of fountains. I clean my teeth with the smiles of random passersby. But in wintertime, I sit there with the knowledge that it isn’t much better outside than it is in.

I pressed the buttons on my phone out of boredom. No messages. I was in an isolation cell, an isolation cell whose key was in my own keeping, in a Siberian prison camp without fences. I was my own prison guard. I could free myself whenever I wanted and escape into the vast expanses of the dark winter. After a while, I’d return to my cell on my own, my tail between my legs, if I hadn’t succumbed under the weight of the night in the meantime, or been torn apart by the bears and wolves of my doubts.

I had to go out. I put on my coat and pulled my iron door firmly shut behind me and locked it with my big, authentic Genoese key. I had to go some-fucking-where to drink strong fucking coffee. Fuck the winter.

When I was outside, my mobile beeped. I had a message. “ Ciao, grando uomo! Come sta? Io vengo per vistare te presto, nel caso che per tu va bene! Va tutto ben! Sono anche imperanda Italiano! Io desidero stare con tu! A presto alora! ” With a fat blonde smiley. The world record for grammatical mistakes in a single SMS was suddenly hanging on a thread. It was Inge, my German translator. She messaged me a specific time of arrival.

24.

The weather was bleak. The wet snow had melted into a kind of inconstant drizzle that was slapped into your face by the strong wind like a wet tea towel. Deeply unpleasant.

“Maestro.” I only had a two-euro coin. I gave it to him anyway. I was in a kind of defeatist mood, if such a mood exists. Water was seeping through the wooden planks. The wood creaked. Sooner or later we’d sink. Two euros more or less wouldn’t make any difference.

“Why don’t you go back, maestro?”

I looked at him in surprise. “What do you mean, Salvatore?”

“Why don’t you return to the north where your friends are?”

“My friends are here.”

“Where?”

“Don’t be so rude. You’re my friend.” I smiled.

“Could you lend me fifty euros perhaps?”

“I’ve just given you two euros.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what? What do you mean, Salvatore?”

“You never give two euros. The fact you’re doing it now means something. Because everything has a meaning. Without a meaning, everything would be pointless. And since that would be pointless, it can’t be true. Quod erat demonstrandum . What do you think of that, maestro?”

“You could be a medieval philosopher, Salvatore.”

“I was once.”

“When?”

“Are you putting me on? In the Middle Ages.”

“How long have you been here, Salvatore?”

“Oh maestro! Time is long and memory is short. For me it’s all about what I find in my cap: florins, euros, pieces of silver, emergency currency, francs from the mountains, francs from over the mountains, Vatican scudos, Neapolitan or Sicilian piastras, soldi, denari, sesini, ducati, grana, tornesi, cavalla, Sardinian centesimi, florins from Tuscany, Lombardy, or Venice, quattrini, paoli, Austro-Hungarian guilders, pounds, kreuzers, crowns, and marks, just as long as they’re round and shiny. I’ve been here as long as the rats, and I’ll be here until the last rat jumps ship for some better place. Just get used to it, maestro. You’re my customer. I will find you wherever you are in every era. But I’ll always give you a good price. Because like you said, you’re a friend.”