You decide, Mandelkern,
and then Svensson’s friendliness catches me completely off guard as I cling to the steel ladder on the quay of Osteno (as if he were pursuing a strategy). With his hand he keeps Macumba away from the concrete piers, and declares what a pleasure this has been for him. I hope I was some help to you, he says, your questions are questions I sometimes ask myself! He’d like to continue our conversation, out here there’s not much chance to talk. With Kiki Kaufman, for example, he speaks exclusively English, and Lua too has grown taciturn (he says: in another language one is another person). Tuuli refuses to remember anything, says Svensson, shifting the outboard into first gear, Tuuli only thinks about tomorrow, the boy is ultimately a mystery to him anyway (Svensson is now talking as if he wanted to tell me these things). Then he revs up the motor and Macumba stirs the green water. Feel better, Mandelkern, Svensson shouts as he departs, leaving me behind on the dock (Macumba is a sort of voodoo among Brazilian peasants, that much I learned last night). On the dock a ferry timetable (Società Navigazione Lago di Lugano).
Piazza G. Matteotti, Osteno, 8:30 AM
It will get better soon, I think, a short stroll through the village will dispel the nausea, the fresh air the burning from the tobacco, a coffee the fatigue (solid ground underfoot). Osteno a deserted place without a real restaurant, without a supermarket and with only one café, early in the morning the two plazas are empty (Piazza Ugo Ricci, Piazza G. Matteotti). In the morning fog a black eagle with outspread wings commemorates the local dead (World War I + II). The only store in the village is closed, a paint and lacquer shop (Colorificio). On the wall of the village hall a poster announcing a fair in Porlezza for the summer of 2002 (Luna Park), there are also the recent deaths in the village. I follow the serpentine Via Val d’Intelvi up the mountain, in the cemetery overlooking the village an old woman in an army raincoat is kneeling in front of a gravestone. To avoid intruding, I wait among the urn compartments at the other end. I wait for the wretched nausea to go away (she nods at me before she leaves). On the small gravel grave a tiny brass bicycle and a wooden model of a boat, behind the gravestone a beer glass for watering flowers (Aronne Gobbi, 1937–2002). Felix Blaumeiser must have died the same year, if I am to believe Svensson, but his Astroland manuscript breaks off at that decisive point. I should ask my main informant. In the whole cemetery there are no living plants, on the Via Mulino behind it only stinging nettles (I throw up into the weeds).
How do I get out of here?
Porlezza 13:05
Osteno 13:20
San Mamete 13:28
Oria 13:35
Gandria Confine 13:40
Gandria 13:45
Castagnola 13:58
Paradiso 14:08
Lugano Giardino 14:15
What would I like,
asks the maybe forty-year-old waitress in the only bar in the village, first in too-fast Italian and then in somewhat antiquated German. I need a coffee, or else I’ll fall asleep before the ferry or Svensson picks me up. The bar is a flat shed, the only bungalow in a row of whitewashed, multistory harbor houses. At the red plastic tables in front of the bar, four men are playing cards (coffee cups & Tuttosport). An old man with white hair and the yellow and black armband of the blind is sitting off to the side and drinking Prosecco, even though it’s only nine o’clock in the morning. Here too sparrows on the tables. I order: espresso for the fatigue, mineral water for the headache. The waitress’s reply: immediatamente, Signore. The old man with the Prosecco glass hears my whispered German and extends his arm in a Nazi salute, the waitress goes over to him and pushes down his outstretched hand with a smile. Sorry, she says, looking at me, are you unwell? Sembra pallido (my Italian is doing miserably). And because all words and reasons for the answer fail me, I alternately nod and shake my head (headache).
BAR del PORTO/Caffè Manzoni
I wait for recovery. Plastic seats under pruned lakeside lindens, on the sidewalk orange-red umbrellas (Algida), the gold-green paint is flaking off the window frames. Linden leaves, a toy vending machine full of blue, pink, green capsules (the ferry back doesn’t leave for three hours). Two days ago I fell out of time. I’ve been here since Saturday, two days without a word to Elisabeth (two days outside my life). Two days ago I bought the Süddeutsche Zeitung at the Hamburg Airport: caesaerean risk and air running out in a sunken mini-submarine in the Black Sea, along with three notebooks. Un altro espresso? asks the waitress behind the bar, as I slowly slink back from the bathroom. Even with my finger in my throat there was nothing left but thready saliva and useless coughing (Lua). I can’t get rid of last night. Si, I say, and flop down on the plastic chair next to the entrance. Elisabeth and I didn’t make an arrangement as to when to give notification of my absence (the absence of my article). By now she will have called several times, sober on my cell phone, insistent with Lufthansa, indignant with the hotel (her singing-resistance-to-pieces frequency). Tomorrow evening the next issue will go to print. Mandelkern is the perfect man for this story, Elisabeth said. I should have refused the assignment outright. The nausea isn’t subsiding, the ferry isn’t coming. I notice that I’ve forgotten my Svensson file on Svensson’s desk, along with the Süddeutsche Zeitung and my shirt with the red wine stains (Svensson won’t find out anything new about himself). This morning too the mini-submarine with the eight confined crew members will still be on the bottom of the sea. They’ll calculate their oxygen, as Svensson calculated his oxygen on September eleventh (my coughing after all the cigarettes). The blind man with the white hair has extended his arm again and is babbling German and Italian commands to himself. I would have liked to reread the article about the risks of caesareans, I would have been interested in the report on the mobile lifestyle (Elisabeth and me). When the waitress sets another coffee in front of me and my notebook, it becomes clear to me that I should call, but there’s chewing gum stuck to the pay phone of the Bar del Porto.
the deeper water
I go to the bathroom two more times, I lean on the scrawl-covered tiles and order water when I return (the change accumulates next to the notebook). Between retches I search for words for my next decisions. I’m a journalist, I say to the waitress, I’m researching a story. I should leave, I could stay, I could examine Svensson’s manuscript, possibly his attempted autobiography, maybe his Speculations about Felix. I would sleep with Tuuli (I would have decided). I observe a fisherman on the shore and, later, Ceresio, the name of the ferryboat that travels between Lugano and Porlezza. A couple disembarks, the man is carrying a backpack, the woman is holding a child. A few boxes and cartons are thrown onto the metal dock (the mail). The flags along the shore are hanging, the blind Prosecco drinker’s white hair is lying straight (the age of the people on the quay). My body isn’t calming down. The lakes of Ticino, Elisabeth said on Friday on the way back from the restaurant, are deep, in winter the snow never stays there, and in summer they keep their shores pleasantly cool. Lake Lugano is a stable body of water. Not all that back and forth like the Atlantic, not all that burbling like the Baltic Sea. It can be relied on, Mandelkern. In the early afternoon Ceresio could take me back to Lugano, but I remain seated (I myself can’t rely on myself).