***
Isabella lifts her left hand (the right hand is still in Artur’s trousers), touches his hat, takes the hat off the old man’s head, puts it on her own head, puts it back on the old man’s, on his hairless head, the old man is called Artur.
Why? Why do you collect hats?
This town has no class, says Artur. My grandmother was Italian. From Alessandria. Her name was Teresa, he adds.
Once upon a time Artur’s mother tells him, once upon a time, Serbian officers in the Austro-Hungarian army were stationed in barracks in Lombardy. Alessandria is in Lombardy, says his mother. Serbian officers go out in Alessandria looking for women, because the town is full of pretty girls, yes. Later, the town was full of hats, says his mother. I’ll tell you a story she says.
Once upon a time there was a young man named Giuseppe. In the year 1857 he came to Alessandria, caught a heap of rabbits and started making hats from their fur. The business flourished. When Giuseppe died, he left behind a large hat factory. That was in 1900. His factory made 750,000 hats a year. Many people worked in his factory. Giuseppe had a son and a daughter. The son took over the factory and the daughter’s name was Teresa. Years passed by. Hat production increased immensely. The hats were exported to every corner of the world. Two million people walked the globe wearing hats from tiny Alessandria. When Fascism came, production fell and you, Artur, were small, mother tells him. When Fascism comes there are more important things to produce.
There is a dish called Escalope Borsalino. It’s served in France. Artur has been to France, to the Loire, he visited the castles on an organised tour. That’s why he knows.
Alessandria lies on a river. The river is called the Tanaro. It has banks covered with rushes and rushes rustle in the wind, they rustle like whispers.
So Artur reads guidebooks and studies the small history of the Alessandria where his father was born, in the rushes.
See, it’s like a fairy tale, Miss Isabella. That Alessandria.
I adore fairy tales.
Artur adores his hats, he doesn’t know what he’d do without them, how he’d live without them. His hats are his past. And his present. His sons no longer visit him.
This model is called Borsalino Como.
It’s a nice model.
It’s made of fur felt, rabbit fur.
It’s a hat for conclusive, sorry, exclusive occasions. It’s extremely expensive.
How much?
Four hundred and twenty thousand liras.
Isabella quickly takes her hand out of Artur’s trousers and wipes it on her thick brown stockings. On her brown stockings opaque white smears appear. There are no chocolate balls that expensive. No, there aren’t, whispers Isabella. She brings her hand to her nose. Sniffs. They smell authentic, she says. Artur nevertheless brings his middle finger to his mouth. Sucks. Artur sucks his middle finger as if he has just cut it.
From her pocket Isabella takes two chocolate balls. The chocolate balls are hard. Compact. You have to hold them in your palms for a long time before they become soft. It’s cold outside. Isabella adores chocolate balls. There are lots of different ones on offer, different makes for sale. Isabella is a real connoisseur. Isabella knows chocolate balls filled with pieces of candied orange or raspberry: orangeade and Razzmatazz balls, perfect balls, perfect for mornings that follow bad dreams. Isabella knows the dark, bitter balls Choc-a-lot and Loca Moca, she saves them for when she watches thrillers on television because they are exciting and keep her mind alert. Isabella eats milk chocolate balls when she feels loneliness coming on. She saves the milk chocolate balls to comfort her in different ways; mostly for small troubles, daily ones. She throws them into her mouth and rolls them left and right with her tongue, gently. Then, when they have melted to the right texture, exactly right, Isabella penetrates them with a sharp movement of her tongue, enters inside them, breaks in. With her tongue. Inside, in her chocolate balls, a different sweetness is waiting. Soft cream, thick cream, across her palate, across her mouth cavity, it spreads out like tiny kisses, like a velvet cloak. Then Isabella closes her eyes and smacks her lips. Her Carmalita, her Nutropolis, her Coco Motion and Butterscotch-cha-cha. Her music, yes, oh yes. Lindor chocolate balls, packed in boxes of 48 for 50 Marks – one ball, one Mark. Lindor chocolate balls are eaten deliberately. Isabella eats them sparingly. Ferrero Rocher come in smaller boxes of only 30 balls. Baci Perugina are crunchy inside, like the bites of her nervous lover. Most of all Isabella likes Swiss Teuscher balls, she knows them best, she knows them inside out, thoroughly. Marzipan, fruit, all kinds of fruit, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, dark chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate, raisins, coffee, all kinds of joy from the imagination of Dolf Teuscher, in his village in the Swiss Alps. A hundred and one chocolate secrets hidden in the chocolate balls of Dolf Teuscher. Dolf Teuscher, the great lover. Rum balls, coconut balls, balls filled with Irish coffee and balls filled with maraschino in which floats a tiny cherry. Yes! Chocolate balls with tiny inebriated cherries, all spaced out, dark red like a drop of Isabella’s blood, like her clitoris in the days of her youth. My little cherry, that’s what Isabella calls her clitoris. Her clitoris is no longer red, it doesn’t pulsate, it’s not soaked with passion. Her clitoris is slack and pale pink. I’ve got an anaemic clitoris, says Isabella. Artur helps himself to a chocolate ball. Here’s an almond inside, says Isabella, not a cherry.
Artur munches. The chocolate sticks to Artur’s palate. The softened chocolate, blending with Artur’s saliva, runs slowly down Artur’s front teeth. Artur smiles. He has a brown smile, a little brown smile because he is clenching his teeth, because the chocolate ball isn’t very sweet. It’s bitter, says Artur, and keeps on smiling. Artur looks foolish. It’s now four o’clock and forty-five minutes. The dawn still hasn’t arrived. It’s cold.
That’s a new one, says Isabella.
The new chocolate was launched in Chemnitz. From 1953 to 1990, Chemnitz was called Karl-Marx-Stadt. The balls are wrapped in red tinfoil with a picture of Karl Marx on them. The balls carry Karl Marx’s portrait printed on them, all in chocolate, including the beard. In Chemnitz, long ago, they erected a bust of Karl Marx. The sculpture was placed in the centre of town. That’s logical, it’s logical that Karl Marx’s bust be installed in the centre of a former East German town previously called Karl-Marx-Stadt. The bust weighs 42 tons. Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto.
Isabella agrees: the chocolate balls with Karl Marx on them are not very tasty. The silver paper is pretty. It has a star. It can be used for wrapping up walnuts and hanging on Christmas trees. Like in her childhood, her youth. Isabella knows Chemnitz.
Isabella is thirteen. The headmaster of her school removes the statues of two boys, the statues are on top of the building. They are there as decoration. There are eight of them, eight statues, the headmaster takes two of them away. The headmaster orders that the statues be destroyed. Grown-ups smash the statues, they smash the statues of the two boys. Downstairs, in front of the school, with stone hammers, they violently smash the boys to pieces. Isabella watches. The blows echo. Children watch. The boy Moritz was the sculptor’s model, Isabella doesn’t know the name of the sculptor, he’s no longer in Chemnitz. Moritz is a Jew. The boy Moritz is a Jewish boy and his likeness must be destroyed.
People are leaving Chemnitz. Mummy says, Let’s go, Daddy says, I’ll watch the store. People leave. The invisible leave. Daddy says, We won’t go. We won’t go yet. After the war, people return to Chemnitz. Fifty-seven people return. After the war. Chemnitz is a small place. A small number of people return. Now a new century is beginning. A new return to Chemnitz. Chemnitz has three hundred Jews. Chemnitz gets a new synagogue. People set the old synagogue alight; Isabella Fischer’s neighbours burn down the old synagogue. The flames are high, the night is cold, it’s November of 1938, it’s the eighth of November 1938, fires everywhere. Isabella watches. Isabella is fifteen years old, she’s no longer small.
Chemnitz