La Superba by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer Read Free Book Online

people who are painlessly happy like that blow away like a Sunday paper in the wind of an early day in spring. This place was once a kind of Abu Ghraib. Prisoners of war were locked up here after La Superba’s army and navy had finally put down their archenemy Pisa for good. The curses of the defeated and humiliated Pisani still ring out to thisday. Symbols of Genoa’s power are worked into the pavement in mosaics made of uneven pebbles. I’m the only person about at this time of day. The green shutters on the houses are closed. The wine bar won’t open until the evening. In the distance I can hear a goat bleating, or a ferry honking.
    Vico Superiore del Campo Pisano is a dead end, but Vico Inferiore del Campo Pisano isn’t. Or the other way round. It depends which day it is. One of the two of them is a new wormhole, not back to Genoa and the present, but to America and yesterday’s future. The road curves gently downhill to the left and leads to a grotto. Dampness and vegetation seep from moldy walls. These are the vaults of the bridge that links Piazza Sarzano with the Carignano quarter. The high priest lives under the last arch. His skull is older than the city. High above him, the people of Genoa go in search of parking spots and bargains. Closer to the sea the fast traffic races along the Sopraelevata, the raised motorway along the coast.
    The grotto opens out into a post-apocalyptic landscape, or to be more precise: this is the perfect location to film an old-fashioned science fiction film, preferably in black and white. Its official name is Giardini di Baltimora, but people know it as Giardini di Plastica, the plastic garden. It’s a gigantic dog-walking spot that also serves as a shooting-up area for heroin addicts and a kissing zone for young couples without places of their own. It looks like a 1960s or ’70s version of the twenty-first century. Desolate green with charmingly gray mega-office-blocks. Above-ground nuclear bunkers in a field of stinging nettles. Pre-war spaceships that have crashed in a forgotten hole in the city and gradually been reclaimed by nature.
    All kinds of pathways go back up to the Middle Ages from here, or to Piazza Sarzano or Via Ravecca. But you can also walk under the supports of the rusty behemoths, across the underground car park beneath which the motorway runs to the sea, past peeling bars and clubs with unimaginative names, under the skyscraper, to Piazza Dante. The city will reveal itself to you there once again, with an ironic smile. Yes. After your epic journey, you’re simply back on Piazza Dante. Thousands of Vespas, Porta Soprana, Columbus’s house, the cloisters of Sant’Andrea, in the distance the fountain on Piazza de Ferrari and, on the other side, Via XX Settembre. You know every street here. It’s just a three-minute walk to your favorite bars. You burst out laughing in surprise. But how am I ever going to write about this, my friend? How can I ever make people believe that a city makes me happy?
    11.
    Religion is the opiate of the masses. Although Italy has flirted more often and more intimately with Marxism than most other Western European countries, it is one of the most drugged up countries I’ve ever seen. The Holy See actively gets involved in politics. The pronouncements of the Holy Father are even widely reported in progressive and left-wing newspapers. Not a week goes by without a public debate that is only a debate in that the Vatican has regurgitated one of its anachronistic opinions in a press release. There are few politicians who have the courage to commit electoral kamikaze by distancing themselves from the dictates of the Holy Mother-Church or casting doubt on the authority of theold right-winger who believes himself Christ’s terrestrial locum.
    Genoa is a civilized, northern, and even explicitly left-wing city, where money is earned, where people can read and write, and where all the old people go to