The virus has made the world big again

The brother of Stella’s boss, who is also a bit boss, regularly travels by train up and down between Alassio, where he lives with his mother, and Milan, where his fast brother runs the mother branch of the art dealership. During his stops in Genoa, paintings and important documents are exchanged between their Milan office and Stella’s gallery.

Early this morning Stella had to deliver a landscape with peasant women from Angelo Morbelli worth a luxury sports car to platform 17 of Genova Piazza Principe station. With these kinds of appointments, I often go with her as her bodyguard. Similarly this morning. The shadowy operations on the platform have the allure of an old-fashioned spy film and amuse me.

It was the first time since quarantine that we took a taxi. The driver’s seat was hermetically shielded from the rear seat with clear plastic. A hatch was cut, which closed with Velcro, so you could slide money.

It was also the first time that we were back at the station. It was transformed into an ingenious one-way trail with a fortune in signage stickers and barrier tapes, where, as in IKEA, you are forced to drive through the entire building before you get where you need to be. At the bottom of platform 17 our body temperature was measured with a gun. But Stella and I are experienced and cold-blooded spies.

The brother of Stella’s boss was suddenly no longer a commuter, but a traveler who could tell stories from far away places. We asked his head about the situation in Alassio and the situation in Milan. We hung on his lips as he talked about the strange societies he had seen outside the historic center of Genoa.

I think that the virus has made the world big again, is something we should cherish.

Writer Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer lives in Genoa. Here he writes about the impact that the coronavirus has on life there.