Читать книгу La Superba - Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer - Страница 9

31.

I could barely repress the urge to tell all my new Genoese friends about my fairy-tale evening. But it turned out to be entirely unnecessary. Everyone knew about it already. I flattered myself with the thought that she’d gone around telling everyone but realized at the same time I shouldn’t entertain any illusions, because everyone always knows everything already in Centro Storico. “Entertain no illusions,” she said. “You know I had my bathroom redone recently? The work was done by two carabinieri wanting to earn a bit of cash on the side. The day before yesterday I met them in a bar around the corner from my house to pay them. ‘You’ve been hanging out with that foreign poet a lot recently,’ one of them said. And I don’t even live anywhere around here.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like that.”

She was silent.

“Aren’t you happy I completed your quest and found the Mandragola?”