New column! "Music and Memories: The Anecdotes of T0bler0nich."
As a young man, I worked for a few months in a large hotel in a city in northeastern Italy. I was at the reception desk.
The establishment belonged to an eccentric Argentine lady, heir to a great fortune of mysterious origins.
She would sometimes appear at the hotel for tea at five in the afternoon, in the lobby.
She would show up suddenly, proudly flaunting the refinements of her attire.
Her gaze hidden behind a huge pair of black sunglasses, the arms inlaid with pearls and gold embroidery, perched atop her head were hats of every style—veils, feathers, straps or lace—the individual elements, the accessories, crowning her in elegant ensembles of bold monochromes or flowery patterns.
She was always accompanied by a tiny peach-colored dog.
She never spoke, would sit and leaf through magazines or swipe through a tablet, sometimes staying motionless, staring at the street through the glass window.
The piped music system played all day a selection of sophisticated pop rock tunes, nonchalantly chosen from across the decades.
I never understood whether it was a radio station broadcasting them or not, there were musical jingles between songs, but they gave no clue as to the origin of the endless compilation.
Prefab Sprout, Joni Mitchell, Donald Fagen, Sade, China Crisis, Swing Out Sister, Roxette's "So Far Away"...
At least once a day, however, one specific song would be played, at different times depending on the day of the week: "Save a Prayer" by Duran Duran… it felt like a transgression against the subdued mood of the rest of the selection, but it was also the only song among all those present to be hummed by anyone who happened to listen to it.
The Bengali bellhop and I would exchange knowing looks the moment we heard the synthesizer intro: "it's time."
The businessman, at the end of check-in, would greet me with a "don't say a prayer for me now save it till the morning after"; the cultural tourist—Japanese, Australian, American—would instead say to me, "take a chance like all dreamers, you can't find another way" as they handed over their passport.
One day I plucked up the courage and asked the owner, the Argentine lady, if that music was the schedule of some radio station or if the songs were selected by someone working there.
She stared me in the eyes, through the lenses of her sunglasses, and after nine seconds of silence, she answered: -Nunca lo sabrás. Nunca se sabe.- then she turned on her heel, imperiously, and vanished.
Once, at dawn, during the shift change with the night receptionist, a lady from Parma came to check out.
She looked a little like Francesca Neri.
Aged, but attractive charm.
Her full lips were smeared with a grayish-white, gelatinous paste that she seemed determined not to wipe off as she spoke. With her eyes downcast, red... Ricordi: settimana:
