Mantova, Saturday, 8th September.
We are staying in Residence in Centro, in Mantova, having got kicked out of our previous place (more later). The room is a small flat with its own kitchenette (we can do our own coffee in the morning) and the bedroom on a kind of landing, up some creaky wooden steps. All very nice – except for one problem. The series of ‘flats’ are in a converted outbuilding. The way they have been built means that you can hear a pin drop about 3 ‘flats’ along (not quite, but you get the idea).
It’s about 6.30 in the morning. I am woken by the sounds of a woman moaning. I have nothing against sex but, if you’re in a place that it can be heard by others, I would do it quietly. It went on for about 10 minutes. It wasn’t that it was particularly loud but loud enough to wake me. And, unfortunately, once woken, I do struggle to return to sleep. Still, as long as she was enjoying it, I thought …
It’s about 7.30 a.m. I hear a phone call being made. The lady (American) is trying to find her luggage which has been lost by some airline. Luckily, she is being backed up by the man, with whom, I guess, she was having a moaning session only an hour earlier.
She is going to Paris tomorrow. She is to attend an important conference. She has nothing to wear. It is impossible for her to go to the conference without anything to wear as it is very, very important. She doesn’t understand how they cannot find it. Oh wait, they have found it. Her supportive male tells her that she should say that they will send a taxi and charge the airline. She doesn’t say that. He is very irate. She, at least, is trying to remain calm. One would think that the man had nothing to wear for the conference. However, she stresses (moans, in that whiney voice that, it seems, only Americans can do really well) that the conference is very, very, very important and, what do they expect her to do? Buy clothes – here – in Mantova?
Ah, wait, the bags may be in Mantova! Can’t we go round and get them rather than wait for them to be delivered? Doesn’t the person on the other end realise how important her conference is and how she couldn’t possibly go without something suitable to wear? The man, meantime, is helpfully suggesting that she should tell them that if they don’t allow them to go round immediately, there will be some dire consequences as this is too important a conference for her to just turn up to, in rags, like someone who was unimportant. She doesn’t tell them that. I want to scream through the walls (although just to say it in a loud voice would have been enough) that we are in Italy. And it’s a Saturday. It will be almost impossible to do this. She is appealing to their better nature. She is desperate to have something nice to wear to the important conference.
No, there was no point in delivering it to the place that she was staying at now, on Monday as, by then, they would be in Paris and she would be attending the very important conference. The man continues to argue the fact that they appear not to be able to go and get her luggage immediately. The woman remains steadfast in ignoring the man entirely whilst at the same time moaning continuously about the problem of nothing to wear at the very important conference.
As far as I could tell, there was no real resolution although the phone call had lasted the best part of 40 minutes.
Later we learnt that it was, as I thought, the white (and I mean deathly white) American, bright-red-lipstick-wearing, shockingly-red-haired, striking-but-not-attractively-so woman who, on Thursday evening, had been so concerned about removing all traces of the websites she had visited on the computer in the Green Room at the Festival. She did thank me for the help I gave her but not really nicely. More as if it were my job to do so.
Apparently she had been so depressed with having to wear her man’s shirts, which were baggy, that she proudly showed off the new pair of earrings she had bought that day which were to cheer herself up and give her, at least, something nice to wear. Later still, we saw her in a figure-hugging black dress. Did she ‘manage’ to buy it in Mantova or get her luggage delivered after all? I didn’t dare to ask as then she might have realised that I could have heard her other moaning earlier that day. And that’s just a little too personal.
She would have been better to have stuck with her man’s shirts, in our opinion. Oh and dye her hair and get some colour in her face. Didn’t notice the earrings myself.
In the end she turned out to be the partner of the agent of someone mildly famous. I normally feel some sympathy to people who have lost their luggage but, in this case, I really didn’t like her, her look, or her moaning – of either sort.