At one euro for a leak he can’t last long. As far as he’s able to ascertain, that seems to be the going rate and he’s stopped even trying his luck. It’s now the fifth back-alley option he’s attempted, though the outcome so far is still not up to standard. He’s jammed between two cars, as far from the main sources of light as he’s managed to position himself, and yet still has the vexing sensation of not being entirely out of sight. He’s grappled with this privacy thing over the years but has always come up with a satisfactory way quite quickly. This time, though, it’s taking its time and is turning into one of those unforeseen nuisances for which he would have to come up with a proper and definitive solution the following day. It might seem a trivial matter, this diuretic business, but what’s inherent in trivial issues is that they stop being so as soon as they become one’s own issue.

 

First day in Cagliari and so far mixed reviews. It takes him a given time to settle every time he moves to a different place. He wouldn’t put himself forward as the most adaptable type in any sense of the word. As a matter of course the first couple of months would be punctuated by a pervasive longing for the loss of the convenience of a few routines until these started gradually being replaced by a new set. Some routines, though, had nothing to be missed – Spiaggia di Palmasera in Gonone for one.

 

Roaming aimlessly back and forth in a pure act of self-contrition in disguise, a three-foot pile of straw hats balanced on his head, the ubiquitous cardboard with sunglasses displayed on one arm and a medley of Milan-branded handbags on the other. For starters you get fed up very quickly by being offered five euros for the pile of hats. But the truly nettlesome ones are those that come dressed in a compassionate complexion, with a full voyeuristic trend in all colours and fabrics, intent on partaking in a bit of organic knowledge of the sordid nitty-gritty of crossing the Mediterranean. At first sympathy is not always easy to tell from outright bloodsucking salivation. However, after the first few days he couldn’t care less and wouldn’t hold back from bubbling up with the most abject and deplorable details. For all those hungry enough to hear – and there was never really a shortage – he would describe with the due thoroughness required the filthy amounts of dollars the smugglers charged to set them pretty much adrift in a sinking rubber dinghy, how an extra hour of survival ends up tasting like nothing short of a chimerical accomplishment, how dignity very quickly becomes a cheap commodity that you look forward to trading at the first opportunity. Or how it feels to wait cramped in a police station for the news of the bodies of your wife and children to arrive. Especially when it never arrives. One or two sunglasses and a hat was as good a means of easing one’s conscience as any. The sole detail he tended to leave out was the dull fact that his crossing had involved a plane, making full use of the aircon and watching a few films while observing the waves from thirty-eight thousand feet on his way to visit relatives with whom he’d stayed for a few months in the Mediterranean-facing six-room ritzy villa where they lived in Romazzino. And that a couple of months after his visa had expired he’d been politely invited to try the art of fending for himself. But he could see no point spoiling an otherwise touching account with too much information.

 

Becky’s Hen Do. With a rusty command of English, to make loose use of a euphemism, he hardly understands a word from within the cacophony of giggling, chortling, squealing, gibbering and a few other hysterical gerunds that go on around the table. French would help, but they don’t even know what that is. He tries a bit of Italian and gets a similarly puzzled response. He racks his brains over the meaning of it. A few of the girls wear these t-shirts with the Becky’s Hen Do logo, and he’s quite sure the expression is not totally unheard of. Though he might be completely off the mark on this one, there’s a vague memory of that word in a South African cookery book his father had kept for years in the restaurant. It was the only book in English he could recall ever seeing during his childhood. But some of the recipes had left an impression because of the funny drawings that went with them. He could swear a few recipes sported that word in the title. Although it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense in this context, even if in a way, looking closer at what’s going on at this table, it sort of does. Though it most probably has nothing to do with that whatsoever. His best shot is that it might be related to some kind of medical school graduation party. Because of the uniforms. Not the real kit, not proper hospital outfits – this is party gear. He’s seen quite a few of them before, but not such a parade of the stuff.

 

He can’t avoid taking a fancy to one of the nurses. The slim one. She’s strikingly good-looking. A mournful pair of amber irises coupled with assertive plumpish lips, all enshrouded by a jumble of large curls. And a swarthy bronze skin hue that had fortunately escaped the contagious orangey pigmentation the others have caught. She manifests every sign of someone already wasted for the day, tanked up and totally incapable of a coherent response even to the most potent set of stimuli, were they available. It doesn’t surprise him to see one of the books reaching her corner of the table to be greeted with a proper blank stare of lethargy. People react to booze in many a different fashion, this one simply showing herself to be of the limp sort, and very unlike the rest of the catalysed lot that put to circulation among them the other two books in a maelstrom of rapturous delirium.

 

When his father died and his time came to take over the family restaurant in Dakar, it quickly became manifest that he hadn’t inherited the pragmatic acumen and organisational skills needed to keep it afloat. But even the most sceptical struggled to keep up with the speed of the sinking routine. The cooking mystique, however, survived. Somewhere between the prototypes of exotic restaurants featuring the lost delicacies of bygone African realms and dreams of prolix writing on all sorts of culinary gemmary, he had to settle for some more earthly venture. Hence the Senegalese cookery books. Not the ones he would write, but some stolid, cheap and picture-sparse, French-written books that he had unsuccessfully been trying to sell during day one in Cagliari. Experience has taught him that pretty much everything can be sold if you’re lucky enough to stumble upon the right buyer. The fondness the good people of Dorgali had for the panoply of wooden sculptures he used to peddle in their Eurospin car park never stopped amazing him. No reason then for him not to believe it might still be within the realms of the lower miracles if a few French or Corsican tourists were to develop a similar rapport with some Senegalese recipes. But from that bunch of insane nutters all he aspires to is to get his books back in one piece. Which he doesn’t, because when he cannot hold it any longer and goes out chasing after a place for a frantic leak, cursing his lot in life and the abundance of light the back-alleys seem to be getting for no good reason other than making his life a living hell, it gives the kinky nurses all the time they need to swap hospitals.

 

He calms down after a while. His sales turnover had gone from zero to negative figures in the blink of an eye, or in this case and to stick closer to the facts, in the time it takes to empty a complaining bladder. In fairness, not everything was lost. Not if one chooses carefully the right prism to see through. Why would they have taken the books had they not felt drawn to them? They had elicited plenty of brouhaha, he’d been a witness to that, especially some of the pictures. True, there was the language issue, that might present a few problems for someone determined to follow every step of the recipe, but in some cases the pictures could certainly give useful tips. At the end of the day, they could always Google-translate the stuff, couldn’t they? It looks like a good omen after all, and he realises at this point that there is indeed a larger market for that sort of merchandise than he had previously envisaged. All in all, a promising start.