The black man

I don’t have any change for the biliardino, but if you like I’ll buy you a shot and you pay for the game, so we’re even —even though the game costs fifty cents and the shot two euros, but really, don’t worry, it’s my pleasure.

I was going to buy a round anyway; I have something to celebrate.

Don’t worry about the darts, I don’t feel like playing and I’m not even that good.

Every time I walk into my building I feel like some kind of star from that black-and-white cinema, the one idealized by certain very specific people who aren’t exactly lovable—at least on the surface. There I am, walking with my last two, maybe three if I’m lucky, drags of a cigarette, one eye half-closed and a hand in my pocket, rummaging in a way far too theatrical to be believable—especially to my own hand. And then I imagine that from the corners of the square and from the supermarket run by the Bangladeshis near the doorway, dozens of photographers and other people—who for some reason emit an absurd amount of light and flashes—come pouring out.

They all ask me something; some congratulate me, others ask me to reveal my secret, many simply shake my hand with that smile all the fake good guys have before they turn out to be double agents in American movies. Americans, with their smiles in films, are (decidedly) predictable.

The worst part is that I can’t even pretend to be surprised. Yes, I let the cigarette fall, but out of politeness, as if to say—“Oh, well, you really got me, I was so startled I didn’t even finish my cigarette, it just slipped from my mouth.”

Obviously I knew perfectly well they were all lying in wait. I’d noticed for days that they were following me. One particularly stupid one got caught one day as I was passing by (just about to drown my hand in my pocket). Right at that moment, don’t I see one of the Bangladeshis forcing the head of this big-moustached photographer down into the crates of bottled water, shouting some unrepeatable insult?

It’s all about knowing how to behave, about managing the impulse.

So I say I’ll buy a little shot for everyone, and then we’ll see about the foosball game, no problem. But they keep crowding in without really listening. A couple who catch my words look at each other and laugh (freeloading scoundrels), while the others seem almost to be losing their pants in their rush to pile on top of one another. Truth be told, they don’t even seem that interested in dealing with me. It feels like, exactly a palm’s width from my front door, there’s a gigantic strawberry-and-cream cake and these lunatics want to dive into it, one by one, in no particular order.

The solemn black and white that forms the backdrop to my (almost epic) entrance into the building always ends with me taking one last look at the street, because that bastard of a door is half broken and has to be shut in two stages. Which isn’t entirely a bad thing. One last moment of true, intimate glory.

This cold of a doorway allows me to cast a noble and playful glance—sometimes at tourists walking by, sometimes at the bartenders across the street, often at everyone else. The tragedy is that, as per routine, at the very peak of aristocratic poise, the weight of the door becomes excessive, and I’m forced into a thoroughly unnatural twist of the torso, very little “drawing-room.” This charming athletic gesture almost always warps one eye and half my mouth, so that I must also carry the guilt for that poor Bangladeshi child (with a father decidedly inept at hiding moustached photographers in water crates) who saw me just before I went in, because I’m strangely certain I’ll haunt his nightmares for quite some time.

At least I’ll be able to say I’ve inverted the infamous, racist, filthy, evil myth of the bogeyman.

You’re welcome, world.

I think it must have been to thank me that the world (damn new-age pages, damn Coelho) made me meet her.

A splendid forty-year-old woman (she says she wears it well) with the same hollow cheeks as Littlefoot’s dying diplodocus grandmother in The Land Before Time.

It must be said that a diplodocus would eat those damn bar snacks with more grace and less noise. For my queen, the only purpose of those chips is to “correct” the now-ignored consistency of the beer and the almost entirely lost sensitivity of her nostrils. She looks at me with a decadent frivolity that is no less enchanting for it, the pupils dilated to her temples underscoring it with unusual delicacy. And meanwhile she talks—no, she tells stories. And I learn.

First of all, that if there were more forty-year-old cocaine addicts in the world, we wouldn’t need social media or universities anymore. In every square with at least two bars and a table there would always be, within arm’s reach, constellations of swollen, incorrigible nostrils capable of enveloping you and trapping you helplessly in their speeches. I imagine my queen before the crowds in the squares (always in black and white, of course), declaiming, inflaming and encouraging the masses—“I have a dream!”—between a chewed-up chip and a tap-dancing step of her right nostril. Even my foolish fantasies convince me that I love her.

What I love most of all about her is the knowing gesture of covering her mouth every time she laughs. I adore these little mannerisms, almost involuntary tics (and no less wise and venerable for that), refined and perfected over the years. As if she didn’t know I would love her even if I saw those little windows between one tooth and another. When I talk about her I almost feel like stroking myself, simply because only in those moments do I remember that I too am capable of caring for someone so deeply.

She’s a fascist, but in her own way (she says): with whites and blacks, with straights and gays, with yin and yang. If someone behaves well, they’re good; if they behave badly, they’re bad. The guys who sometimes still try to sell her stuff in the square, for example, are bad—and she’s no better than they are when, judging by how she’s talking tonight, she buys that stuff and snorts it in the bar bathroom.

All my suppositions, of course—but either that, or the latest-generation cybernetic nasal implant purchased from Mr. Musk is in need of maintenance.

My gentle little nymph isn’t the clingy type—she told me—she’s always respectful and polite with everyone (though don’t make her angry).

She told me this after we said goodbye today, perhaps for the last time.

She almost seemed to feel guilty that I didn’t want to speak to her anymore—more precisely, because of that now uncontrollable love of mine. She looked around lost, as if someone had switched off the light in the room. She hadn’t even finished her beer. I bid her farewell with reverent courtesy and walked away. I didn’t even turn around, and yet, peeking through the glass doors of the bar, I saw her putting her purse on her shoulder, fixing her sweet eyes on my back.

Goodbye, my nymph. Take care of yourself. Wish me luck in finding some leftover crumbs of that great strawberry-and-cream cake near my doorway.

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The black man