Townsend Walker - You'll Never Imagine

Townsend Walker

You’ll Never Imagine

The setting is Luisa and Sergio’s apartment in Rome in 1998. A battered suitcase sits near the door.

Luisa: Now, or never!

Sergio: Why Now or never?

Luisa: Why, why -- with you, it’s always, “Why?” I’ll explain. Tell me, now, where you’ve been, or you will never set foot in my house again.

Sergio: It’s difficult to say.

Luisa: I hope so! I’ve been alone here for two months, with two babies, and no one knows where you’ve been. I’ve been so nervous that even my mirror doesn’t talk to me any more.

Sergio: You’ll remember I went down to buy cigarettes. I walked in the door of the tobacco shop, and I suddenly found myself in the lobby of the Hotel La Fenice et des Artistes in Venice.

Luisa: (after a long pause that is punctuated by the soft cries of an infant offstage) You’re serious?

Sergio: I am, and then I walked out of the hotel and found myself in the Campiello della Fenice. You’ll never imagine what I saw.

Luisa: (the baby quiets) You’re right, I’ll never imagine.

Sergio: I saw my name on a billboard outside Teatro La Fenice. It said, “Tonight, at eight o’clock, the famous pianist Sergio Rossini will play Mozart’s Piano Concertos No. 23 and No. 25.”

Luisa: You are not the only Sergio Rossini in the world.

Sergio: No, but my photograph was on the billboard, too.

Luisa: Which only tells me you were dreaming.

Sergio: No. I wasn’t. That night I played the Mozart concertos. And, according to the newspapers, I was fantastic.

Luisa: Now he wants me to believe that he performed, and that he was magnificent.

Sergio: (taking a scrap of newspaper from his pocket and opening it) Certainly, read the review.

(reading it himself) “Il Gazzettino. Venice, 2 October 1909. Last evening we had the grand pleasure of hearing Maestro Sergio Rossini’s Mozart. His interpretation was clear as a summer’s day, luminous as the sun, pure as the heart of a young girl.”

(a baby cries, then another)

Luisa (rising): Basta! I’ve heard enough!

Sergio: “Maestro Rossini will be leaving tomorrow on a two-month tour of the principal European cities -- Paris, London, Berlin and Vienna. Our loss is Europe’s gain.”

Luisa: A wonderful story. But you have had two months to work on it. And where did you find the newspaper clipping? Make it up? Have it printed?

Sergio: Here -- the ultimate proof, my darling Luisa -- one thousand gold francs, a gift from Prime Minister Clemenceau in Paris.

(He empties a purse of clattering coins onto the table)

Luisa: (her hand at her neck) Welcome back my love, do you have enough cigarettes for this evening?

Townsend Walker is a writer living in San Francisco. His stories have been published in Crimson Highway, Static Movement, and L’Italo-Americano; another is forthcoming in AntipodeanSF this summer. On the non-fiction side, he has published three books -- on derivatives, foreign exchange, and leasing. Townsend began writing short stories while living in Rome in 2005, following a career in finance.