La Superba by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer Read Free Book Online Page B

referee’s fault for not spotting a foul. Each goal conceded is proof of the scandalous inferiority and the appalling ignorance of the opponent who has gone and gotten it into his thick skull to score against their team. They cheer if a player on their team brings an adversary down with a violent tackle and jeer when the referee penalizes this action. And, in general, even with the best will in the world, no one can understand how, these days, the best-paid top players constantly make the most basic fuck-ups. The game is mostly unwatchable, because when Italian clubs compete with each other, they never take a single risk, and their lineups only have half a striker.
    It’s the same every Sunday. No one takes any pleasure in it. But they wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’s ritual. The week exists by the grace of Sunday afternoons. It wouldn’t surprise me if the same match had different results in different parts of Italy. On the Genoese subscription channels, Genoa beat Palermo 4-0, after which an orgy of pretty things you can buy if you’re happy explodes onto the screen. Palermo probably won the same match 4-0 on the Sicilian subscription channels.
    Like every religion, Serie A has a gospel. But it’s much better than those four books in rotten Greek the Vatican’s had to makedo with for centuries. It’s printed on pink paper and appears daily with new messages of salvation every time: the Gazzetta della Sport makes it possible to lose yourself in fantasies about Sunday afternoon all week long, with retrospectives that are updated daily, prognoses, statistics, and charts. You don’t need any other newspaper if you want to be an Italian among the Italians. Tutto il rosa della vita is its slogan—everything pink in life. The world’s fucked, hundreds of thousands of poor bastards are landing on Lampedusa, the government has declared a state of emergency, there are soldiers in the streets, and people are dying of poverty, but if you read the Gazzetta dello Sport , none of that has to bother you. There, it’s just about the things that are really important, like the percentage of risky passes from the left wing in comparison to the 1956–57 season.
    Italy lives in its imagination. The opium of its people is pink.
    12.
    I often thought back to my short and confusing relationship with the leg, or rather with the girl I’d fantasized onto it. I was ashamed. But I had to get over that. In a certain way, it had been perfect love. Because I’d dreamed her up myself, she was the woman of my dreams. And yet she was concrete, material and physical enough to have me believe that I wasn’t dreaming. I could actually touch her, stroke her, feel her, and she moved, sighed, and groaned exactly as I imagined in my loveliest fantasies.
    The problem with complete women is that they can interfere with your fantasies. There’s a good amount of body to grope, butin fact you do exactly the same thing as when there’s only a single leg available to you. You quench yourself with her skin, while her melting thoughts become your thoughts. You moan sighs into her mouth. You create an image of her and expect her to live up to it. The more she manages to match your unspoken fantasy, the better she is.
    Good sex is the illusion that the other finds your lovemaking good. Love is like a mirror. You see your own countenance in the delighted face of the other. You hope the other sees herself reflected in you, while you project your own longings onto the emptiness of her astonished eyes. I mean: everyone finds true love sooner or later. But there are at least six billion people on earth. How probable is it, statistically speaking, that the collection of limbs lying next to you in bed happens to be the one unique person who makes your existence complete? How likely is it that “The One” should drop onto your lap like a snow-white dove who has died in midflight right above your