The secret of the Black Widow

The Dowser

The Dowser

‘Kid, you need to understand that as long as you stay in Italy, you’ll have a narrow vision of the world. Go out, travel, try, fail and try again. Follow your passions, do what makes you happy, and never give up. The people who stop trying are the ones who fail, but those who keep trying might just not have found the right answer ... yet. Thomas Edison used to say, “I have not failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.” Damn, Thomas himself said that, not the village i***t!’ Then he added, ‘Ah … and don’t get married too young, remember that. f**k as much as you can. Spend some time in England, the country of promiscuity. If you don’t get any luck here, at your age, it means you’re a desperate case!’

It was the summer of 1998 and I was almost seventeen years old when Mr Pindar distributed his advice on flirting – which he jokingly called the arts of seduction. We were sitting at Torbay Quay in Torquay on the south-west coast of England where I was visiting as part of a secondary school trip. Pindar, whose real name was Francesco Prandi, was my English professor and the ‘responsible adult’ who’d taken us there that summer. He was the only person who, as time went by, ever actually taught me anything in the classroom. Who would have thought that a few years after that trip, I would move to the United Kingdom?

I moved to England with all my family, following my father’s job, more to make my parents happy than out of curiosity.

‘Doing nothing for nothing, at this point you might as well come abroad with us. At least you will learn English,’ my mum had said repeatedly.

In January 2004, my parents moved to Birmingham and then to Manchester. I joined them a month later, hoping to learn the language. I promised myself I would stay for three months, and would then decide whether to return home or not.

Those short, wintry days – blasted with strong winds that made the weather as sharp as a blade – are still in my mind. I remember looking up to the sky, which was full of dark clouds. Perversely, it was at that moment that I started to realise this grey setting could well be my home for some time to come. After a few years living abroad, both my parents returned to Italy, whereas I had begun to enjoy living in that cold island of Northern Europe; the liberal, multi-ethnic culture and, above all, a merit-based society appealed to me. I ended up living in Manchester, finding that which made me happy, just as Pindar had told me to. To scrape a living, I started teaching Italian to English students; years later, I ended up working as a real estate entrepreneur. That gave me the freedom to have a good time: the one currency I have learned to value and hold tight.

Back in secondary school, I was way too shy. And going on a trip to Torquay represented a unique opportunity. I wanted to improve my relationship with others, but especially with girls. Teenagers don’t really think about anything else.

As we were underage, however, we couldn’t move freely and each decision had to go through Mr Pindar, our guardian.

‘If you’re looking to f**k things up and disappear off somewhere, come and see me first. I don’t need to be woken up in the middle of the night by a call from the police station and, most of all, I don’t want to explain to your parents how you ended up there. Have I made myself clear?’

Frankly, those things didn’t affect me. I wasn’t generally drawn to risk, and even less so in a foreign land. While we were seeing the local sights, such as they were, I tried striking up conversations with girls from other schools that were also visiting the area. I began to enjoy it, and, as soon as I got a ‘no’, I immediately swooped in on another prey.

The Professor observed me from a distance, giving me feedback with hand gestures: ok; so-so; what the f— are you doing? The last one was unambiguous, even from a mile away.

Once, during an outing in the Devon countryside, we stopped for a packed lunch in one of those vast public parks dominated by a perfect expanse of evenly cut grass. That day, the clouds were stretching their legs, and the sun took advantage. I was sitting under a tree, choosing a song from my portable CD player, when Mr Pindar sat down next to me. He was wearing tubular jeans, loafers and one of those canary-yellow windcheaters typical of these outings; he had one hand in his pocket, while in the other he held a Marlboro Red. In those days, he always wore a Havana hat, with his long grey hair flowing out from under its rim. Even when looking in another direction, I always knew when Pindar was close, thanks to his eau de cologne, which gave off a light but pervasive fragrance that reminded me of the flavour of the sea.

‘Kid, you’ve been busy. You’re like a dowser!’ He covered his mouth as he laughed.

The Professor had coined this nickname – Dowser – because he said I went around looking for maidens as if they were a water source hiding underground. And actually, he had a point.

‘What are you listening to?’

‘The Platters!’ I replied.

‘What? The Platters?’ he said, somewhat annoyed. ‘Seriously? A boy your age shouldn’t be listening to stuff like that. No wonder you’re not having much luck! Every significant event in our lives can be summarised by a song. Right now, you are living the rock moment of your life. You need to listen to different music. Do you like rock?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You can’t be a dowser if you don’t know rock. Take this, listen to it carefully. It’s yours.’

Pindar pulled out a disc from his backpack, where he had his CD player along with his old, orange-sponge headphones. I still wonder from which Walkman they were ruthlessly taken – they looked very out of place when laid next to that technological marvel which could read discs with a laser beam.

I looked at the CD with curiosity. It was golden with a band name in the middle: Made in Japan, a live concert given by the English band Deep Purple.

‘Kid,’ Pindar said, ‘this is the best live hard rock concert ever recorded. Mark my words!’

From that moment on, hard rock formed the beat of my life.

Apart from the occasional bit of dowsing, that summer I also enjoyed spending time with my professor; we established a wonderful relationship that ventured far from just English literature and tips on seduction. Talking to Pindar was like my secret weapon; listening to his words of wisdom gave me a feeling of mastery, a sort of personal crystal ball.

I have always appreciated the thoughtlessness and the impudence with which the Professor interacted with others, especially with women – he had an innate ability. I watched him go into action with his witty remarks and innuendos, and I sort of felt sorry for him. But deep down, I knew that his way actually worked – especially with the English, who are colder than Italians but at the same time like to surround themselves with passionate souls like ours.

Back home after the trip, I completely changed my attitude to life. The things that I’d thought were important got pushed into a drawer labelled ‘unimportant thoughts’. Alas, dowsing is a powerful art which, if mismanaged, can cause serious damage. This I learned at my cost, as things like Latin, Greek and maths ended up by mistake in the drawer, too.

To cut a long story short, the next year, instead of studying for my final exams, I went out looking for water. I walked tirelessly around all day, looking for girls.

My parents, concerned, asked me about my upcoming exams.

‘Don’t worry, Mum. Everything’s under control.’

‘If you fail those exams, I’m going to slap you into next week.’

I graduated with sixty per cent – the minimum required. I’ve never been a brilliant student, but neither was I an i***t. In short, I was a middle-of-the-road animal who had underestimated the need for revision. Unfortunately, the trip to England had left an indelible mark.

The memory of that torrid June day is still vivid in my mind. Alone, standing in that corridor, looking at the noticeboard, I realised I’d received the lowest score in the class. I stood before that dull number – sixty – speechless, trying to fathom out how I’d ended up with such a terrible mark. I couldn’t work out how things had gone so wrong.

If Pindar’s advice had come with a warning – careful, if used at a young age, these instructions may seriously damage your studying – maybe I would have cleaned up my act.

What the hell should I say to my mother? She was going to kill me. There would be no more holidays for at least the next twenty years. Oh god, what a mess!

I stared at that noticeboard, at that war bulletin bearing the name of a single fallen soldier (me) and I let my mind wander, looking for something reasonable to say to my parents.

I could make up an excuse, like the tests had been forged by the professors. Maybe I could add that the Latin teacher, that evil b***h, had helped out a student whose father had bribed her, and I was her chosen victim for reporting the incident to the examiners, who were all corrupt to the bone.

Yes, it might work. It was quite believable …

A voice behind me brought me back to reality. ‘As long as you don’t mention in which year you graduated.’

Once again, that unique smell of the sea caressed my face. It was Mr P., trying to boost my morale, and also taking the piss out of me in his own way.

‘Sorry, what did you say?’

‘As long as you leave out the graduation year, or pretend that you were in the year above, you’ll be fine.’

That year, for the first time, a new mark system – based on hundredths instead of sixtieths – had been applied. Pindar had a point: provided that I didn’t mention my graduation year, my pitiful sixty would magically take on the looks of the highest mark. Without doing a thing, I’d turned my fate around. This was a better spin than any politician could perform!

‘Kid, don’t worry too much about these numbers. They mean nothing on their own. Now the world is in your hands. Go out and explore. But keep two things in mind. Number one: if you don’t want to get into a mess, always say hello first. And number two: always follow the Berber proverb.’

‘What does the proverb say, Professor?’

‘If you have a problem and you know the solution, don’t get angry. Because you can solve it. If you have a problem and you don’t have the solution, why are you getting pissed off? You can’t solve it and it’s out of your hands!’

His logic was flawless.

In my mind, that advice was like a bucket of icy water: cold but revitalising.

‘Take it easy, kid.’ Pindar turned away and was gone.

I didn’t meet him again for many years. When I moved to the UK, I was sucked into a whirl of events so sudden that I lost the perception of time. I ended up on a speeding train, which I was fortunate to board, but I had to hold on for dear life or be thrown around like a rag doll.

Life went on with its joys, doubts and sorrows. I ran into Pindar a few years later at an airport in Rome, coming back to Italy from Manchester. He had landed a little before me, with a group of school kids, returning from who-knows-where. That scene reminded me of our time together back in Torquay. I didn’t stop him, though. I contented myself by watching those young people parading in a group. I looked at their eager faces and tried to find someone displaying the effects of Pindar’s learned arts of seduction.

I was looking for a worthy heir for the Dowser moniker, but I was disappointed.