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Piedmont not very far from here, I’ve never been there, I remember in Venice I had asked in a travel agency if there were any boats to Alexandria and the employee (a blonde Venetian, a kind of barrette held in her mouth like a toothpick) had looked at me stunned, to Alexandria but there’s a train, and in that immediate confidence one has in professionals I had pictured, for a second, a train that would go from Venice to Alexandria in Egypt, direct via Trieste Zagreb Belgrade Thessalonica Istanbul Antioch Aleppo Beirut Acre and Port Said, a challenge to geopolitics and to the mind, and even, once I had understood her confusion, Alessandria in Piedmont, I began to dream of a train that would unite all the Alexandrias, a network connecting Alessandria in Piedmont Alexandria Troas in Turkey Alexandria in Egypt Alexandria in Arachosia, possibly the most mysterious of them all, lost in Afghanistan far from railroads, the train would be called the Alexander Express and would go from Alexandria Eschate in Tajikistan to Piedmont through the lips of Africa in thirteen days and as many nights, Alexandria in Egypt another decadent city a decadence that does not lack charm when it rains or when it’s dark, I remember we had a hotel there on the Corniche the first time we spent hours on the balcony facing the Mediterranean until a big block of cement broke off and came within two inches of killing a guy sitting on the terrace below, he barely raised his eyes, an Egyptian used to the sky almost falling on his head every day, in that double room I slept with Marianne, she got undressed in the bathroom, she had a body, a face to rend your soul and mine asked for nothing but that, in the scent of the Alexandrian rain and sea I got drunk on Marianne’s fragrances, our hotel was not the Cecil, nothing of Durrell in our stay, at the time I didn’t know any of his books, or Ungaretti or Cavafy that sad little employee in one of the immense banks still there in Ramleh, or in the cotton market, leaving work he visited the giant bakeries where he dreamt of Antony the vanquished one of Actium as he watched an Arab waiter sway his hips and the sun set on the Mameluk fort, at night everything looks alike, I could be in Alexandria, in that hotel on the Corniche beaten by sea spray just as my window now is streaked with rain, it was sad out and it rained, one night, slowly now, almost at a walking pace like the Italian train I join Marianne in that frozen hotel where we shivered, I close my eyes to remember this contact, the sort of crude, quick coitus, did it take place, did she just let me kiss her, I don’t think so, she had kept her sweater on her scarf the room was full of drafts but in the morning there was a big sun the sea was very blue Marianne soon left for Cairo I stayed a few more days walking around in the city and in alcohol, “Ricardo the real Alexandrian pastis” terrible Egyptian anisette I drank without ice in a plastic glass as I watched the sea, glorious solitude, in the morning a tea in one of those bakeries near the Ramleh train station with a cement croissant weighing at least a pound, watching the streetcars rattle by, in a leather armchair that might have known the idle asses of Tsirkas, of Cavafy, of Ungaretti, ghosts in this city gnawed by poverty, with its back to the Mediterranean the way you have your back to the wall, filthy and unhealthy as soon as you leave the downtown neighborhoods that are already filthy, a fine place to wait for the end of the world while you eat fried fish under a big winter sun in the hollow of the sky scoured by the wind, it’s very warm in this car, I’ll doze off, I’m already half asleep rocked by Marianne with the white arms, her face changes, deformed by the twilight elongated by the trees passing by, I went back to Alexandria I often went back there and not always in dream, to carry out more or less secret transactions with Egyptian generals whose importance was measured not by the