How to Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays Read Online Free PDF Page B

the Gare du Nord, they've brought you to the Gare de l'Est—after all, there are plenty of trains at both stations.
    In New York, as far as I can tell, you can't summon a taxi by telephone to some club; in Paris you can; but they don't come. In Stockholm you can call them
only
by phone, because they don't trust any old stranger walking along the street. But to discover what phone number to call, you would have to stop a passing taxi, and, as I just said, the drivers don't trust anybody.
    German drivers are courteous and correct. They don't speak, they just press the accelerator. When you get out, white as a sheet, you realize why they come to Italy for relaxation and drive in front of you, doing sixty kilometers per hour in the fast lane.
    If you set a Frankfurt driver in his Porsche to compete with a Rio driver in his battered Volkswagen, the Rio driver would arrive first, partly because he doesn't stop at traffic lights. If he did, he would see another battered Volkswagen pull up beside him, full with boys just waiting to reach out and snatch his passenger's wristwatch.
    In any part of the world there is one sure way of recognizing a taxi driver: he is that person who never has any change.
    1988

How Not to Talk about Soccer
    I have nothing against soccer. I don't go to stadiums, for the same reason that I wouldn't go and spend the night in the basement of the Main Railroad Station in Milan (or stroll in Central Park in New York after six in the afternoon), but if the occasion arises I watch a good game on TV with interest and pleasure, because I recognize and appreciate all the merits of this noble sport. I don't hate soccer. I hate soccer fans.
    Please don't misunderstand me. My feelings towards fans are exactly those that xenophobes of the Lombard League feel towards immigrants from the Third World. "I'm not a racist, so long as they stay home." By "home" here I mean both the places where they like to gather during the week (bars, living rooms, clubs) and the stadiums, where I am not interested in what happens. And for me it's a plus if the Liverpool fans arrive, because then I can amuse myself reading the news reports: if we must have
cir-censes,
some blood at least should be spilled.
    I don't like the soccer fan, because he has a strange defect: he cannot understand why you are not a fan yourself, and he insists on talking to you as if you were. To convey my meaning I will give you an analogy. I play the recorder (worse and worse, according to a public statement by Luciano Berio, but to be followed so closely by a Great Master is a satisfaction). Now let's suppose that I am in a train compartment and, to strike up a conversation, I ask the gentleman sitting opposite me, "Have you heard Frans Brüggen's latest CD?"
    "What? Eh?"
    "I'm talking about the
Pavane Lacbryme.
If you ask me, he takes the opening bars too slowly."
    "I'm afraid I don't understand."
    "I'm talking about Van Eyck, of course,
[slowly and distinctly
] The Blockflöte."
    "Look, I'm not.... Do you play it with a bow?"
    "Oh, I understand, you aren't—"
    "No."
    "That's funny. Did you know that, for a custom-made Coolsma, there's a three-year waiting list? So an ebony Moeck is better. It's the best, at least of those on the market. Galway says the same thing. Tell me something: do you go as far as the fifth variation of
Derdre Doen Daphne D'Over?
"
    "Actually, I'm getting off at Parma."
    "Oh, I see. You prefer to play in F rather than in C. It's more satisfying in some ways, I know. Mind you, I've discovered a sonata by Loeillet that—"
    "Lay who?"
    "But I'd like to hear you in the
Fantasias
of Tele-mann. Can you manage them? Don't tell me you use the German fingering?"
    "Look, when it comes to the Germans, I.... Granted, the BMW is a great car, and I respect them, but—"
    "I get it. You use the baroque fingering. Right. Though the St. Martin's-in-the-Fields bunch—"
    There. You understand my point, I'm sure. And you will sympathize