“You’ll be based in the Swiss office here in Zug as from now, and not at home in your cosy stables near Como,” David informs me during my next visit at the Zug office.
The daily trip to the office is something I’ve not had for many a year; it’s not something I’m fond of. This caused me to make a fast but well-considered decision: I took a sheet of A4 paper and wrote a quick handwritten resignation.
“You can’t mean that!” David’s face crumbles.
Me, I’m impulsive, in a planned sort of a way - he hadn’t expected that. In retrospect I enjoy thinking about the power I had then and think I should have made more of it at the time. What went with me were the contact details of clients and potential clients. After all, I had been selected as their first Managing Director for Europe. And not just because I was fluent in three languages, knew the music scene inside-out thanks to my previous work at MTV, was great at establishing contact with people and always took “no” to mean “not just yet”. Of all my jobs to date, the most interesting by far has been this: being part of the birth of a new TV station. I was actively involved in the launch of VH1 in Germany, a subsidiary of Viacom and sister-company of MTV Europe. Took clients to rock concerts. Was Marketing Manager for Fortune 500 at mega events. Clients and potential clients of NetJets quite enjoyed meeting up with me, too: that was my advantage as a beautiful woman, daintily longlegged in stiletto heels, trying to find takers for those expensive private airplane shares. Swiss publishers, musicians of all nationalities, Russian oligarchs, directors of giant multi-nationals, owners of mid-size family businesses; tall, short, fat, thin, friendly, hostile, young but more often old, impotent, grey-haired, bald-headed, voracious, greedy-for-success, power-driven, controlling MEN.
“Don’t you ever come to Monte Carlo?”
“When can I see you in St. Moritz? I have a chalet in Suvretta. But not over Christmas, that’s when I’ll be there with my family.”
“Nice try!”
I’m paid well by NetJets, thank you. And I don’t do double-work: it’s either for money or...
But, instead of really savouring this feeling of power after tendering my resignation, I sat in my office, drank too much coffee, smoked one cigarette after the other and called Dottore in Ferrara. He would have to know, just like all the other clients and contacts, that in future he could no longer get in touch with me at NetJets. Arrogantly, he said:
“You rang to ask me for a job, didn’t you?”
How smug... A NetJets colleague warns me. He’s Italian, an engineer who maintains our planes and used to maintain those of the “multitude of bright colours” in the Veneto.
“Dottore’s family is in Sicily,” I learn. “There’s this lady billionaire he is, or maybe was, supposedly associated with, whose ex-husband is apparently in jail, put there by her because of corruption. A straw man fronting their illegal dealings,” my colleague Federico explains to me.
I think he’s mistaking him for someone else... Lots of people live in Ferrara after all. Wipe that thought away; don’t even allow it.
“Voglio la mia independenza!”
I want my independence! ... That’s what Dr Amos writes in his book. Independenza. A term, name, word with the simple meaning “independent” - he likes that very much.
“A good friend of mine named his yacht “Independence”,” Amos explains to me like a little kid talking about his toys.
He wouldn’t let it go, regarded my phone call as an invitation to tango.
“When can I see you?” he asks me. “Are you coming to Ferrara? Or Monte Carlo? To Milan?”
“No, I can’t. And I’m not calling to ask for a job. Have made plans, know what I’ll be doing,” I say confidently.
“So when can I see you?” He won’t leave it alone...
“May I call you?” Yes, of course, he may...
BERLIN
I left the office and drove myself and my midnight-blue Porsche Carrera 4 back to Como, to Don Juan and Devina and to my removal boxes because I had made my decision: back to Berlin. My friend Aurelia was living in my flat now. I didn’t want to give up completely on my love for Italy, but the infatuation had weakened in the grey, damp chilliness of the Northern Italian February. Tomorrow, Evita and Alexander will arrive from the stables near Berlin, to collect me, my horses, my Hutschenreuther dinnerware, the crystal glasses and silver spoons, and my designer clothes by Versace, Chanel, Cavalli and Valentino. Three suitcases full of shoes: stilettos in every shade of colour, courts of all types, Sergio Rossi vying for space with Prada. Handbags for every outfit. Louis Vuitton next to Hermes. Chanel dresses, riding boots, spurs and saddles cuddled up to each other in Alexander’s Dodge, pulling the horse trailer with my Westphalian Don Juan and my Hanoverian Devina. Travel in style! We spent a lovely evening in the little pizzeria in Como and I floated in-between feeling bad for not having managed to survive in macho country as a straniera - a foreign woman - and congratulating myself for having had the guts to at least try. Probably it had to do with the mist over Lake Como, a place I have not missed to this day.
In the February cold, accompanied by fog, ice and snowstorms we drove in convoy across Austria to Berlin - Devina, Don Juan, Evita, Alexander and I.
How beautiful is the rain in Berlin during the winter months! Aurelia was waiting for me and a wonderful time began. She had problems: job, money, family, men... We went back and forth between Berlin and Verona, where she had a flat right next to the Arena. We enjoy our life, currently so easy, in-between cappuccino, prosecco, pasta, sex, the sea and the future.
IN LOVE WITH YOU
Dottore got in touch with me almost daily, rang me and allowed himself to be carried away enough to tell me: “Talking on the phone with you makes me feel as though I’m standing in a flower meadow.”
Who on earth is taken in by that? ME!
A short time later, Dottore came to Berlin. I picked him up in my Porsche Carrera 4, a car that had cost me a fortune in money and nerves: a lemon. In Italy they would say, “fatto un giorno di sciopero” - they would know! - built during a strike. And so it came to pass that Porschina, my nickame for HER, went on strike on the way from the airport to the Four Seasons Hotel at the Gendarmenmarkt - back then, the hotel was still there. Maybe I should have listened to the Technology Angel who kept taking my Porsche out of action. I didn’t, though. Porsches were invented for beautiful women -for women who want to slowly meander around town on four wheels. Who want to cruise. To be seen. Women who don’t respond to all those admiring glances. These cars are driven with pride by women. And not just from their fiftieth birthday onwards - no: they’re in their early thirties. Arrogant and of childbearing age. Beautiful, the right side of forty. Curious, seductive, prepared. Provocative - ahead of their time. In knowledge, looks, intellect, internationality - a dazzle of emotions, sensitivity, vanity. Aware of their power. Searching for danger.
During the drive, Dottore talks about Carolina, his exgirlfriend. “In the end I had to persuade her to have an abortion, I didn’t even know whether the child was mine or not. I was there - during the abortion. What a horrible experience she put me through!” A pause. He forces back tears. I keep quiet. Concentrate on the traffic. Feeling sorry for himself, again? Yes, apparently so. Carolina started an affair with some other guy whom she married in the end. They had three children together, Dottore presumes.
After dinner he took my hand - looked deep into my eyes and uttered the craziest sentence I’ve ever heard in connection with a seduction:
“I have just made love to you with my eyes!”
We still addressed each other formally... in Italian... and we did it six times that night... hallelujah! He felt like a seventeen-year-old and when he talked with me on the phone, he saw himself in