Read Online La Superba by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer - Free Book Online

antidepressant that numbs the emotions. You can see it on the faces of the people in my homeland. They have the limp expressionlessness of people who no longer have to fight for anything and aren’t particularly pleased about it because it’s become normal for everything to functionperfectly. Or sometimes the sensation takes the form of a kind of unspoken complacency that looks down on the world pityingly from the top of a tall, gangly body with the expression of someone who doesn’t have to have seen everything to fully grasp everything that’s different and automatically consider it inferior. Although there are more poets than tax inspectors, my homeland isn’t a very poetic country.
    â€œHere in Italy nothing goes without saying and everything has to be continually re-fought. Because the system doesn’t work. Because there is no system. And if there were one, nobody would believe in it. Or circumnavigate it for a joke. Out of habit. Or to gain some minute advantage. Or not even. In the perpetual opera buffa of daily life, the simplest of actions, like buying bread at the bakery, or picking up a parcel from the post office, can come complete with the most unexpected complications. This entire country called Italy depends on improvisation. That’s why Italians are the most resourceful, resilient, and creative people I know. I enjoy that. It awakened me. That’s why I’m here. Is that an answer, Rashid?”
    He didn’t say anything, but finished his beer and stood up. Salvatore walked past with his bad leg but ignored us.
    â€œWhat is it, Rashid? Have I said something wrong?”
    â€œIs there poverty in your country? Have you ever gone hungry there? Is there a fucking civil war? Are you being politically persecuted? And how did you get here—in an unreliable inflatable dinghy without any gas, or by EasyJet?”
    â€œSit down, Rashid, please. I only told you my story because you asked for it. Let’s talk about your story now.”
    He went to the toilet, came back, picked up his bucket of rosesand walked off without saying anything. Without even thanking me for the beers. But that was fine, I understood. Maybe he had just enough time to walk all the way to Nervi and sell part of the contents of his bucket. When I finished my Negroni and went inside to pay, it turned out he’d already paid the entire bill.
    16.
    Before disembarrassing myself of her for the second and final time, I wanted to see her again. I got the plastic bag out of the wardrobe and began to open it. It was difficult. I’d knotted it really well. And that turned out to be no bad thing because when I finally managed to open the bag such a foul smell wafted out I almost vomited. Holding my breath, I quickly re-knotted the bag even more tightly than before. And when I remembered that I’d stroked and caressed that dead, rotting piece of human offal, I really did throw up.
    If I ever reworked these notes I’m sending to you regularly, of course I’ll take out that shameful fumbling with the leg. That stays between us, my good friend, you’ll understand that. But that would be a bit of a shame because I’d be leaving out an opportunity to exploit the affair as a striking metaphor for that misunderstanding we call love. You love a woman with the passion of a man who, against his better judgment, decides to believe in a forever—which, once you’ve realized that she only exists in your fantasies, is yet again surprisingly brief—upon which you dump her; and when you think back later to that umpteenth best time of your life and re-read the diary in which your sensitive caresses reverberate in the blistering blindness of your delusions, a smell of decay risesup that almost or actually does make you throw up at your own naive romanticism. Something like that. I’d put it less crudely so as not to scare off too many readers. And I’d invent an affair to breathe