Suddenly all roads led to Maddalena. I tried to walk from Piazza Soziglia to Piazza Fontane Marose, but in the place where the Via Luccoli was located at other times of the day, there was a dark alleyway which turned back on itself, coming out on the other side of Piazza Lavagna, where grubby men with their hands in their pockets walked along alleys with poetic names that were all called Maddalena, and where darkly-scented women, who were all called Maddalena, said I had pretty hair and that was why I had to go with them. They asked whether I was French. They asked whether I knew the secrets of the jungle where it could be night all afternoon in their hands. They grabbed me by the forearm to go explain it better somewhere else. They twirled my hair around their fingers and said that there was something feminine about me. They stroked the hand in the trouser pocket. Brutish beasts, they were.
She rolls over once again on her daybed. The ebony paneling nauseates her. She gets up to open a window. There’s not enough light in this room in this house, in this much too grand house. There isn’t enough light in Genoa. The biggest problem with women is that they are inclined to expect something from men. The biggest problem with men is that they realize that something is expected of them. This realization scares them. That’s why they prefer the company of other men, men with whom they go rushing around in great seriousness, in the delusion that the city’s future is at stake. And that’s why nothing ever happens. A man wants to possess his wife, but if she wants to be possessed, he flees. It’s so tiring, waiting for the French. She stands at the open window. Far below in the alleyway there is loud laughing and joking in languages her husband won’t let her learn. She hears someone running away. She imagines he has one hand in the pocket of his trousers. She falls back onto her day bed with a sigh. She looks up at the ceiling painting.
We all know damned well where I was going. San Luca is at the end of Maddalena. I turned right there. I walked to Via del Campo. Just before the end, ten meters before the Porta dei Vacca, was Vico della Croce Bianca.
24.
This neighborhood is known as the Ghetto. The name is meant ironically, but even during the daytime, it takes courage to go there. It’s dusky all day in other alleys. Here it’s always night. It gives the appearance of being renovated. And it’s in dire need of that, which you realize the moment you set foot in the area. There’s no pavement and almost everything is crumbling or half-collapsed. But it’s not being renovated. For years, the narrow, tall, impassable streets have been covered in rusty scaffolding that has no other purpose than to deny all pedestrians even that tiny strip of blue sky.
If you look on the map, it’s a question of five or six small alleys: Vico della Croce Bianca, Vico del Campo, Vico di Untoria, Vico dei Fregoso, Vico degli Andorno, and perhaps Vico San Filipa. But the map isn’t quite right. There are also gaps between the walls, and toppled palazzi form new squares without a name. The rats are as big as lapdogs. They know their way around and take to their heels, just like the Moroccans who rub along the mildewed walls as skittish as ghosts. And everywhere I saw the same sticker that was stuck to the pipes on my house:
derattizzazione in corso
non toccare le esche
I still have to look up what that means.
The transvestites live here. The famous transvestites of Genoa that Fabrizio De André sung about as le graziose di Via del Campo. They are men in their fifties wearing high heels and fishnet stockings over their hairy legs, a sexy dress straining over their beer bellies, and a wig. They beckon you into their caverns with their stubble and their irresistible baritone voices, where, for a pittance, you can grapple with their self-made femininity. Muslims who may not deflower a woman before they’ve committed a terrorist attack eagerly do the rounds of the hairy asses on offer. A condom spurted full is worth four dead rats, and four dead rats are a meal. She doesn’t have any tits, her bra’s full of cotton wool, but if you pay extra, you can suck on them. And if you don’t pay, she’ll stab your eye out with one of her stilettos.
I heard a story: in the nineteen-sixties a real war waged in these alleyways. For three days. The harbor was full of American warships. An American marine had broken the explicitly worded rules and ventured into these streets one night. Into the Ghetto. He had fallen in love. To him, she was the most beautiful girl in Genoa. He had the blushing privilege of being able to shower her in cigarettes, chocolate, and fishnet stockings. He secretly wrote poems for her in his diary. It was the most wonderful night of his life. But exploring between her sticky thighs afterward, he discovered the truth. He felt betrayed, swore he would take revenge, and fetched his friends. Forty heavily armed marines invaded the Ghetto. And the transvestites fought back. Stilettos vs. night-vision binoculars. Boiling oil poured from the top floor. Fences falling as soon as the troops reformed. In the meantime, running across the rooftops and the rusty scaffolding. Diversionary tactics with fishnet stockings. And the street you came through, the one guaranteeing your retreat, suddenly doesn’t exist anymore because it seems to have been barricaded with a portcullis. They won. The transvestites won. The neighborhood was declared a no-go zone for American marines.
It’s a place that has an unusual pull on me. Probably partly due to that story. Or because it’s the place that is the furthest away from my fatherland. Or for other reasons. I don’t know. We’ll come back to the subject.
25.
Rashid was limping when I saw him again. He had a black eye as well.