Over the next few days, as we were doing our homework (as we now called it), Simei entertained us with projects that were perhaps not pressing, but still demanded our attention.
“I’m not yet sure whether it will be for issue 0/1 or 0/2, though we still have many blank pages for 0/1, and I’m not saying we have to start off with sixty pages like the Corriere, but we need at least twenty-four. For some pages, we can get by with advertising. That no one has yet taken any is neither here nor there: we’ll lift it from other newspapers and run it as if — and in the meantime it’ll inspire confidence in our proprietor, give him a sense of a decent future income.”
“And a column with death notices,” suggested Maia. “They also bring in cash. Let me make up a few. I love killing off characters with strange names and bereft families, especially the important ones. I like the ones who grieve on the sidelines, those who don’t care much about the deceased or the family but use the announcement to name-drop, just so they can say they knew him too.”
Sharp as ever. But after our walk of a few evenings ago, I was keeping some distance from her, and she likewise, both of us feeling vulnerable.
“Death notices are fine,” said Simei, “but first the horoscopes. I was thinking of something else, though. I mean brothels, or rather, the old-fashioned ‘houses of tolerance.’ People talk of bordellos even if they have no idea what they are, but I can remember them. I was already an adult in 1958 when they were closed down.”
“I too had come of age by then,” said Braggadocio. “I explored a few myself.”
“I’m not talking about the one in Via Chiaravalle — that was a real bordello, with urinals at the entrance so that troops could relieve themselves before going in—”
“—and shapeless swaggering whores sticking their tongues out at the soldiers and timid provincial lads, and the maîtresse shouting, ‘Come on, boys, what are we waiting for?’”
“Please, Braggadocio, there’s a young lady here.”
“Perhaps, if you have to write about it,” said Maia, unabashed, “you should say, ‘Ripe in years, they strolled indolently, gestured lasciviously, before clients hot with desire.’”
“Well done, Fresia, not exactly like that, but a more delicate language needs to be found. Not least because I was particularly interested in the more respectable houses, such as the one in San Giovanni sul Muro, all Art Nouveau style, full of intellectuals who went there (so they said) in search not of sex but of art history.”
“Or the one in Via Fiori Chiari, Art Deco with multicolored tiles,” said Braggadocio, his voice full of nostalgia. “Who knows whether our readers recall them.”
“And those not yet old enough would have seen them in Fellini films,” I added, because when you have no recollections of events, you take them from art.
“I leave that to you, Braggadocio,” concluded Simei. “Do me a nice colorful piece saying something along the lines that the good old days weren’t so bad after all.”
“But why this renewed interest in brothels?” I asked. “It might excite older men, but it would scandalize older women.”
“I’ll tell you something, Colonna,” said Simei. “The old brothel in Via Fiori Chiari closed down in 1958, then someone bought it in the early 1960s and turned it into a restaurant that was very chic with all those multicolored tiles. But they kept one or two cubicles and gilded the bidets. And you’ve no idea how many women asked their husbands to take them into those cubbyholes to find out what happened in the old days... That, of course, only went on until the wives lost interest, or else the food wasn’t up to snuff. The restaurant closed, end of story. But listen, I’m thinking of a page with Braggadocio’s piece on the left and, on the right, a report on decay in the city’s suburbs, with the indecent traffic of young women walking the streets so children can’t go out at night. No comment to link the two phenomena, we’ll let readers draw their own conclusions. After all, everyone agrees deep down that the houses of tolerance should be brought back — the wives so that husbands will not go around the streets picking up hookers who stink up the car with cheap perfume, the men so they can sneak off into one of those courtyards and, if spotted, they can say they’re there to admire the local color. Who will do me the report on hookers?”
Costanza said he would like to do it, and everyone agreed. To spend a few nights driving around the streets was too heavy on gas, and then there was always the risk of bumping into a police patrol.
That evening I was struck by Maia’s expression. As if she’d realized she had fallen into a snake pit. And so I waited for her to leave, hung around for a few minutes on the pavement, and then — knowing which route she took — caught up with her halfway home. “I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” she said, almost in tears, trembling. “What kind of newspaper have I ended up in? At least my celebrity romances did no harm to anyone — they even brought some business to ladies’ hairdressers.”
“Maia, don’t decide anything yet, Simei is still working things out, we can’t be sure he really wants to publish all that stuff. We’re still at the drawing board, inventing ideas, possible scenarios, that’s a good thing, and nobody has asked you to go around the streets dressed as a hooker to interview anyone. This evening you’re looking at it all the wrong way, you’ve got to stop imagining things. How about going to a movie?”
“Over there is a film I’ve already seen.”
“Over where?”
“Where we just passed on the other side of the street.”
“But I was holding your arm and looking at you, I wasn’t looking at the other side of the street. You’re a strange one.”
“You never see the things I see,” she said. “Anyway, let’s buy a newspaper and see what’s playing in the area.”
We saw a film of which I remember nothing. Feeling her still trembling, I eventually took her hand, warm and appreciative once more, and we remained there like two young lovers, except that we were like the lovers from the Round Table who slept with a sword between them.
Taking her home — she now seemed a little more cheerful — I kissed her on the forehead, patting her on the cheek as an elderly friend might do. After all, I thought, I could be her father.
Or almost.