Not that I’m an expert, but they did seem big. For the catch of the day we had Dilbar with Madame Gu on the side. Russian oligarchs, not that anyone could have guessed. If nothing else, the towering silhouettes grandstanding against a departing greyish day can always fill in an apathetic holiday snapshot. I’m told they work a dream in selfies as well. Even the profusion of the most unusual tax-haven flags can be quite impressive at times. I spotted the St. Kitts and Nevis one amidst some less obscure examples. But it wasn’t yachts I was after. There has to be more to Porto Cervo than the foxy yachts. In this case, there was a story I’ve been promised several times. Monica’s.

 

He’d given me his word he would reveal the whole thing and after some insistence I managed to get him around a decent plate of grilled seabass hoping to find him in the right mood to indulge me. In all fairness, I was entirely certain that an obscene restaurant bill would be coming my way in no time in return for what in all probability would turn out to be buckets of hogwash, but isn’t the truth often just a paltry and forgetful detail? Monica’s story eventually started welling up after he called for the second bottle.

 

Early-seventies, he thinks, not sure. It doesn’t matter, apparently. It was during the time he worked as a postman. So, seventy-five, six. Maybe earlier. We pace the seventies to and fro for a while and settle on seventy-four. Or six. Definitely one of the two. He lived in Arzachena then and would come to Porto Cervo for a few weekends in the summer to earn some extra money. There was always someone looking for a pair of hands to help out on a reception, at some swanky party, an extravaganza, you know how these things were. I didn’t, but could sort of guess.

 

So there he was at this party, walking his cocktail platters amidst the mass of merrymakers. The house of some purported Cineccità tycoon desperately pimping out his doe-eyed bimbo of a daughter to the highest bidder. Did this guy have a name? Probably, but he couldn’t remember it. Anyway, she was one of the guests. He first spotted her fenced in by the swarm of hystericals they used to let loose on these occasions.

 

Now we’ve got an interlude for him to wax lyrical. The cutlery is respectfully laid on the table and his gaze finds a bewitching spot over my head and rests there for a while in a bout of contemplation. He couldn’t help but be entranced by her allure, her magnetism, spell, charisma. And also her aura. A very striking aura, if judged by the length of silence that goes with it. Not the star-stricken type, not diva-like at all. Demure and courteous, despite the rabid horde. A bit uneasy, a touch shy. Another silence. And? And he carried on his cocktail roving duties and didn’t see much of her until much later.

 

We wait with reverence for the waiter to finish jotting down our order of seadas.  Not that much of Monica until later in the evening. Then he must have felt tired, or at some point just decided to go inside the main house for a quick fag or do some other stuff. We’re back in vague-land. And there she is again. No horde now. On her own this time. Dazzling head to toe. Mesmeric. Satin-dressed angelic material. The seadas arrive exactly on cue, otherwise the flow of descriptives would have kept dragging on.

 

It was an enormous lounge with a carpeted floor, but in the centre of it stood what resembled a gigantic chessboard. He found her on her knees, bent forward, playing a game, afloat in a galaxy of her own. He had some trouble describing what sort of game it was. There’s a mention of the Winter Olympics. Curling? Curling it is. In a nutshell, she was on her knees sliding her purse on the chequered floor trying to score make-believe points in a makeshift curling-like match. A delightful sample of a troubled soul in all its splendour. Not an everyday sight. He couldn’t really do much different other than allow his wanton eyes to roam free for as long as luck would allow it. Eventually, she caught sight of him leaning against the doorframe, ogling her. He thought his party over but she greeted him with a quick twinkle in her eyes. His stare again lingering above my head, a comatose grin stuck on his face, perhaps his peculiar shot at attempting to convey a four-decade old image. She teased him into joining her in the infantile pantomime. He dallied a bit before jumping into it – not exactly reticence or shyness, just making sure she wasn’t having a laugh. I preferred not to ask how he did that and just nodded approvingly. They played for a bit, each kneeling at either side of the chessboard thing, the purse sliding back and forth on the floor. Every time she scored – and I thought it better not to go to the trouble of trying to get some enlightenment on rules or scoring at this stage – an unfettered discharge of laughter would gush forth to be almost immediately quelled by a prudish out-of-placeness. Another fixed-gaze-and-silence interlude. And now for the anti-climax. The match had to be called off because people started to come inside. The spell broken, she promptly got up and scuttled upstairs, bestowing him a final glimpse of her spectre before dematerialising for good at the turn of a corner. Until this day. Saw her in pictures – many times, evidently – but other than that he didn’t even know if she had ever again set foot in this part of the world.

 

It’s my turn to sport a still stare. I can’t quench the irksome sensation that the anticipation of an extra dent on my credit card is producing. I wanted a story and am getting a well-rounded script. Shame it’s already been filmed and made famous. How far should one take the charade?

 

Was it because it started raining that people went inside? My utterly innocuous question seemed to jolt him back from another stupor, at which point he literally jerked in his chair. How could I know? Yes, though it wasn’t really rain, more an annoying drizzle. Certainly not a downpour. But it had certainly got colder when the weather turned sour. No downpour then. I feel a lust to press on. And fully clothed people jumping into the pool, that sort of Gatsby stuff, was it? No, apparently no pool also, where was this pool coming from? I switch to the direct approach.

 

Come on, you’re just making it all up as you go along, aren’t you? The chessboard floor, your playing with a make-up case. Not a make-up case, a purse, one of those small ones, a clutch bag or whatever they call it, metallic gold. Look, it’s not for me to decide whether you believe it or not. You wanted the story, this is the story as it happened. You don’t believe it? Tough luck.

 

Sure it is, and at which point did Jeanne Moreau join your little party? Have you dallied with her as well? Or might you have discussed this chance encounter of yours with Antonioni later on in the evening? He surely thought it would make for a good scene and decided to film it. In fact, fifteen years before it happened. That’s what I call foresight. At which point I can’t help the delight of observing his focus shifting towards his second seada of the evening that seems now to take all his undivided attention.

 

I have more to say though. Right, and what about the Anna Karina episode, with whom you supposedly chatted in a bar while listening to Marianne Faithful singing, there, in person, who by sheer coincidence just happened to be sat nearby? It’s the kind of scene you seem quite prone to stumbling upon every other day, isn’t it?

 

At this point I’ve got to concede I’m not at all prepared for the large cheeky beam that takes shape on his ruddy face as he holds his hands up apologetically. He of course finishes his glass and calls for another bottle before deigning to enlighten me. Indeed, he’d splashed some colour on that otherwise insipid narrative. In truth, the whole palette. He had actually seen her – in ninety-three, ninety-four? – perhaps later. Not the knockout sixties Anna Karina, rather the fifty-something lady she’d turned into thirty years after her heyday. It seems that she used to come to the Costa Smeralda from time to time and he simply recognised her from afar, just that one time. Never ever got to speak with her or had even been to the places where she was. But he remembered watching the scene of the bar where Marianne Faithful sings a cameo in a Truffaut film (not Truffaut – the other one), and for the fun of it he had come up with that fable. It was mainly intended as a joke. For goodness’ sake, it was common knowledge that this Anna Karina thing never took place, he just got a bit carried away by the film.