By Sophie
YELLOW ROSTI – Sophie’s Tour
July 9, Monday
Unforgettable moments this morning with the Inquietante, at the Rosti knitwear factory.
Imagine (without too much effort) a cube-shed in any industrial-craft area, one of those that grow spontaneously on the edge of the highway. On the ground floor there is production, cutting, printing, sewing, packaging: it is the kingdom of Maurizio, the Reassuring brother. On the upper floor offices, design, research & development and showroom: the kingdom of Giovanni, the Disturbing.
“Did you do your homework?” he asks me.
I nod, and in the meantime I send him the first installment of my diary-novel. But he is already asking me: «Did you also study advertising at the Sorbonne? What do you think of the Rosti brand? Can you give me a report before 10?»
The wall clock says 9:10. I get to work. I start from the first impression I had, watching the races on television. I saw the Rosti brand even where it wasn't there. I go online, do some research, and at 10 I have my own idea. And the courage to expose it.
So at 10:01 I look up from the computer and say: «The Rosti brand is a scientific trick. Graphically and chromatically it recalls the logo of a brand in the same sector, much more widespread, which represents a scorpion. The human figure, instead, is taken from the logo of American basketball. I think it is the work of a large agency that has scientifically mixed the two references, to signify a leap in quality upwards.... »
Help! I'm in the thick of it now, I can't stop. I turn my laptop screen toward him, with the 3 brands, the crab competitor, NBA basketball, and Rosti.
"As you see..." I continue, "the use of red and black, moreover..."
“Are you finished?” he interrupts me.
He looks like a bull before charging. He gets up, moves a pile of papers, opens a drawer, curses. He goes to the filing cabinet, looks through it, curses, calls someone, curses. Then he disappears, comes back, curses, disappears again and comes back with a crumpled sheet of paper in his hand, and still cursing, but with a different tone. He has found what he was looking for. He carefully folds the paper and puts it in his wallet. Then he says to me: «Follow me».
I stand up, and he looks me up and down, as if I were a horse. What is his intention? He squeezes into a maze of shelves, occasionally pulling something out and stuffing it in a bag. Finally he hands me the bag and points me towards a changing room.
“See if everything is the right size.”
Shoes, socks, overalls-tutu with a strange padding at the crotch, shirt, fingerless gloves, helmet, sunglasses. Everything perfectly tight, like a sheath. I look at myself in the mirror. With this all black outfit, with skulls and rock heavy metal style writings, I feel ready for a manga!
«Follow me».
A minute later I find myself on the road, on a space mountain bike, matte black (carbon?), very light. The Disturbing, in cut-off jeans and a t-shirt, pedals ahead of me on an old women's bike. A few kilometers, and we take a small road in the woods that descends steeply to the river. We find ourselves on a bike path on an embankment: on one side is the river, on the other the canal. It stops, we stop.
“Here,” he says. And he tells. Many years ago, they were kids, he, his brother, and their dog.
"We were acting silly, trying to see who could get there first, while the dog, even more stupid than us, tried to cut us off to gather us together, as if we were sheep. My brother was racing ahead, but the dog was overtaking him, and so as not to run him over with his weight, he took a leap from the pedals into the canal, a fantastic leap, like an angel."
As I imagine the scene, he takes out his wallet. “I liked to draw, I always have. As soon as we got home that night, I drew my brother flying.”
From his wallet he takes out the folded sheet of paper, an old yellowed notebook sheet, and hands it to me.
“Years later, when we took over my mother’s sewing workshop, this design came up, and we made it our brand.”
I am very impressed. But not sunk.
"Okay, I was wrong, the Rosti brand has a beautiful history. Communication science students would go crazy for it. But the substance of my analysis does not change. Simply, the contamination did not occur scientifically in a large advertising agency, but spontaneously in your unconscious as a boy-drawer, an unconscious in which both the sign of Scorpio and that of American basketball were certainly present".
For a moment he looks at me in real shock. Then, saying "I give up," he melts into a very sweet smile.
I like Bardet
I like Bardet's face, I like it a lot. When I answered "I would like to marry Bardet", I didn't even know what he looked like. In semiotics they are called "self-fulfilling prophecies". You say something, you believe it, and it happens. Bardet has exactly that kind of delicate, sophisticated, blue-blooded face that nevertheless hides the soul of a warrior. I might want to marry Bardet just for the look he has.
I find out what kind of man Bardet is. I read that he is an atypical biker, a graduate, reads a lot. An intellectual, then. Maybe also a refined bon viveur, an aesthete? We don't know, but we like to imagine it. In the portrait that Polvere, the cycle-literature magazine, dedicates to him, once in the saddle Bardet "follows his instinct, listens to the road, has imagination and, above all, does what he wants" and it can happen that at a certain point he decides to "cut off all communication with the flagship. No more earphones. No more heart rate monitors. No more on-board computers that tell you how many watts you are producing, how much you are consuming, how long you will last. Romain abandons himself to instinct and instinct tells him: go!".
In an interview he says that his favorite movie is “Reservoir Dogs,” and the cult book “A Confederacy of Idiots.” I imagine that any reference to the team is completely coincidental. Because today there is a team time trial. All for one, one for all. Each team starts with eight riders, and must arrive with at least four, the time is taken from the fourth who crosses the finish line. It seems to me that in this type of test the team can be a driving force for the men in the general classification, but also a burden. The shark Nibali, for example, devours his teammates. At the end of the day there will be aspiring yellow jerseys with one or two minutes gained, or lost, thanks to, or due to, the team.
The favorites are the English of Froome's Team Sky. Then the Americans of BMC. Bardet and AG2R at the first split time are already 30 seconds behind Sky. Meanwhile BMC conquers first place. At the finish line our 4 musketeers pay 1'15''. Not very well, but nothing is compromised. The yellow jersey is Van Avermaet of BMC. In three days of racing the yellow jersey has already changed owners three times.
My Bardet hasn't been seen much in these first stages, but he's there, he's there. He hasn't been involved in any falls or accidents like other GC riders who are already 1 minute behind.
I watch the Tour waiting for it to be framed, waiting for my Bardet to rip off his earphones and overtake everyone. For the rest I look at the castles, the cows, the cyclists' buttocks, the calves, the farms, the canals. Every now and then I get sleepy, like when you watch Soviet films with Polish subtitles.
The most beautiful city in the world
The upper city of Bergamo is spectacular, very high walls, on a hill, all medieval, all churches, little squares, towers and stairways. I found a room for three months in a sort of convent-hospice of very old nuns in a very old ruined building from 1300, fourth floor without elevator, crazy view from the Alps to the Apennines. I wander around freely, attracted by everything I see, like a child in Disneyland.
Despite all the weight of my culture/intelligence, I radiate happiness like an idiot. When I think of the Disturbing One, I struggle to keep from laughing, and from talking to him in a flurry about the thousand things I see, feel, think and imagine.
I feel like the first Parisian in the world to discover this city, but that's not the case, obviously. In a bar in the old square I see old photos of Catherine Deneuve and Jean Paul Belmondo hanging up, drinking at the tables of the bar itself. And then, under glass, a paper handkerchief with a sketch of the square, and the phrase, in French, "without cars, the most beautiful city in the world", signed: Le Corbusier. Not far away, on a noble Renaissance building a plaque says: the young Stendhal lived here during the Napoleonic campaigns, here he wrote "The Red and the Black". I slip into a portico, I find myself on the embankments of the walls, clear sky, sunset, in the distance the skyscrapers of Milan are clearly visible, but what strikes me, closer, is a red sign, it looks like a marker swipe, it is the Km Rosso, the Brembo research center designed by the star architect Jean Nouvel. Further ahead, I spot another ribbon, silvery from the reflection of the sun, it is the river, and there, somewhere, with its red and black logo, is the Rosti knitwear factory.
It's been a very long day. Tomorrow I'll talk to him about Stendhal, Le Corbusier and Jean Nouvel. I haven't forgotten that among the tasks that the Disquieting One has given me is that of making his Bergamo ignorance react with my French culture, he said something exactly like that.
July 10th
Today's stage is strange. At the first km, four of them break away, two French and two Belgians. Tonight at the World Cup there is the semifinal France-Belgium. They run alone for the entire two hundred kilometers. At the last km, they are caught by the group.
I was scared when I saw one of our AG2R riders, wearing a Rosti jersey, on the ground, in pain.
is that my Bardet? No, it's Domont, he has a broken collarbone, he has to retire.
The sprint is won by Gaviria over Sagan. I watch it several times, the energy is impressive, the power they unleash in the brief orgasm before the finish line, it seems like you can hear the engine, the heart, that goes over revs, and risks exploding. Even the bikes seem on the verge of breaking, due to the violence, the fury of the men who ride them.
I watch the zoom in slow motion on the pedaling of the two sprinters in the sprint, and I think back to the speech that the Disturbing One gave me yesterday. We were riding our bikes back to the knitwear factory after the pilgrimage on the embankment of the legendary leap in quality (episode The Origins of the Rosti saga). We were on asphalt, and he had come alongside me saying: «let's increase the pace». At which point I obviously poured out my heart, and after a minute I thought I was going to die. But I had never gone so fast on a bike, faster than on a scooter! And meanwhile he was alongside me, effortlessly. And he was looking at my legs! And he was shaking his head, while I was panting and sweating and wriggling. A moment before I felt like Wonder Woman, and now his gaze told me that I was a lame camel at a gallop. I inspired pity in him. He had signaled me to pull over, like a traffic cop.
"You can't pedal"
I can't pedal? Slumped in the saddle, not even using all 180 points of my IQ could understand what he meant.
"The problem is not in your legs, but in your head."
In a three-minute operation, he had opened my head and replaced a fuse, the one that controls the foot-brain connection. My mistake was to think of the pedals as something to step on, to push on. My pedaling in this way was a half pedaling. To heal myself, I now had to think of my feet on the pedals in exactly the opposite way, I had to lift my feet and the pedals, not step on them. Learn to do the other half pedaling. Later he would put in a new fuse, with both phases, and I would arrive at the famous “round pedaling”, homogeneous, like an electric motor, with less kinetic dispersion of force, I understood this.
I can't wait to get back on the saddle. Tonight I'll be riding my bike back from the knitwear factory to the boarding school. The Inq. has decided to entrust it to me (along with the set of technical and urban clothing) to explore the territory and understand what it means to ride a bike. "This bike is worth more than you and me put together, you can never give it up, take it to the room where you sleep, if it gets stolen I'll come get you, and I'll hold you by the ears until you've paid for it."
“You tempt me!” I snapped back, irritated. Adorable, before bursting into laughter, that moment of bewilderment. A kind of hesitation of childish amazement, typical of the ancient alpha male, and I think of Sean Connery. A species on the verge of extinction, in this age of digital males.
A bit grumpy, he asks me to include reviews of the things I wear in my reports. Inspired, I shoot him a retro-style slogan: "Rosti, the uniform of the ancient male, also worn by the modern woman."
July 11-13
Fifth stage. The graph with the altimetry of the route looks like the electrocardiogram of a sloth, up and down with a regular, continuous trend, without peaks. The arrival instead is uphill, the road is narrow, tortuous. Sagan wins the sprint over Colbrelli, second victory for the Slovakian world champion, and for the second time Colbrelli is beaten. Just after the finish line, out of breath, he says: «I tried, but his name is Sagan, I'm Cobrelli»
In the standings, few changes, Van Avermaet still in the yellow jersey
Sixth stage, the Wall of Brittany. At 100 km there are 5 of me in the breakaway, and the group has split into three sections. I fall asleep. Luckily I wake up in the last 10 km. Compact group, no one in the breakaway. Dumoulin punctures 3 km from the finish, immediately after Bardet, my Bardet finally protagonist, but with a puncture. The group goes like a train, and the two punctured cannot get back. Martin wins, Dumoulin arrives 50'' late and Bardet 30''.
Seventh stage, and we are Chartres, the longest stage of the Tour, 230 km, the most boring, I fall asleep I don't know how many times. All compact, each behind their companion, the group seen from above looks like a moving carpet, made of long colored threads. At 10 km in the flat plain you can see the spires of the cathedral. Groenewegen wins the sprint over Gaviria and Sagan.
It's Friday, and the Inq. asks me: "Do you like the Tour?".
"The truth? At the seventh stage, crisis. The love between me and the Tour is dying of boredom."
Very serious, he says: «let's talk about it», and it makes me laugh.
We end up talking about physics and philosophy, but it's him who turns on the light, explaining to me that TV has changed racing (then I explain to him Heinzenberg's uncertainty principle: the observer with his presence modifies the event, always. Therefore our society based on the scientific measurement of every human fact is pure madness, or rather: impure).
«In reality, what you saw today, this sort of transfer caravan that has nothing of television appeal, is the true nature of stage races, which has changed today, with live television coverage».
"Stage races were born as regularity marathons, with moments of challenge, which are the mountain stages, the time trials, and the sprints. For the rest, there is nothing to watch. Once upon a time, television followed the top moments, the climbs, the sprints, and connected for the last kilometers. Before, nothing happened, they were all in a group, they stopped to eat with the fans, they seemed to be on a trip. Then when the television was connected, the runners flexed their muscles, and the race began."
"Today, TV is connected to the start, and the race starts immediately. People who are in 200th place in the standings break away at the first kilometer. Once upon a time, they would have been slapped. In reality, TV creates new opportunities for emerging teams and riders."
«For example, at the Giro d'Italia, our Androni was in the breakaway every day, with our beautiful Rosti brand in the foreground, and it's not that I was disgusted by it»
"So relax. We'll all watch the mountain stages together, here in the knitwear factory, on the big screen."
«In the meantime, you can also not watch each stage from start to finish, and just go to the Rosti Bar at the right time, or watch the rerun or the summaries in the evening, and in the afternoon go for your bike rides, and in the morning come to the office to write»
This way, my theoretical 4 hours a day of internship become 12. I point this out to him.
"But do you want to be a writer or not? A writer works 24 hours a day, or not? What would you like, to have some free time? To distract yourself?"
I hate him, but he's right, and I cash in. More, we need to do more. The leap in quality!
“I went to the river again today,” I say.
I tell him that I have arrived at the big iron bridge. I show him the photos I took.
"We had a friend in our group, he was a great biker, he wanted to be a champion, he dreamed of winning the Tour. We would lie down right under the arches," he says, "and when we were dead tired we would lie down there, under the arches, we would imagine we were in Paris, under the Eiffel Tower. We were eleven or twelve years old."
Then he doesn’t say anything else. I ask him: “And did this friend of yours become a professional?” He shakes his head. I should have been satisfied, guessed, stopped there. Instead, idiot, I insisted on knowing what had happened to that boy who could see the Eiffel Tower by looking up at a railway bridge.
"After ten years of heroin, he threw himself off the Eiffel Tower."
July 14, the Marseillaise
Today is a national holiday for us French, the storming of the Bastille, to the sound of the Marseillaise. And I will begin to look for my father. Or rather: the unknown. All I have is a postcard from Brembate, where my father's father worked, before emigrating to Marseille. Last year, between September and December, I lived in Marseille looking for my father, and today I am in Brembate for the same reason. My mother died when I was nine, without ever having told anyone anything about my father, or at least that's what I understand after years of questioning everyone, from relatives to my mother's friends. Doing the math, I realized that I was conceived in the middle of summer, when my mother and my grandparents moved to the old family home on the French Riviera, near Saint Tropez. Then one day a buried memory. The last summer together, my mother would die after a few months. Maybe she already knew she was sick. A precise memory, a day in the car with my mother to Marseille, then hours and hours waiting, first with her, then alone, in the petrol-colored Renault 4 parked under a small, run-down building. I had left immediately for Marseille. Marseille has 1 million inhabitants, of which 300,000 are of Maghreb origin and 300,000 are of Italian origin. I despaired of finding that old, dilapidated building again, they will have torn it down and in its place there will be a glass and steel cube, I thought. And instead, after a week, I had found the place again, in the old port area.
Of the six apartments, two are empty, three are occupied by Maghrebians, but in the last one there is Mademoiselle Louiselle, an old Marseilles native, a fascist senile, an ugly, mean-spirited spinster. For a month I go to see her every day, I do her shopping, I take her wherever she asks me, in the hope of reawakening her memory. She remembers perfectly (apart from the names, and the surnames!) this Italian family, the young son "a very beautiful boy" who worked as a lifeguard in Saint Tropez in the summer. The father, already very old, was a "comrade" who escaped from Italy at the end of the war. Daughter of a lifeguard, granddaughter of an old Italian fascist? Am I sure I want to know? I was about to give up the enterprise, when, helping her tidy up the attic, a shoebox full of old postcards jumps out. And among the others, a postcard from Italy, with the image of an old plane. On the back: Brembate, many warm greetings to our Louiselle! Signed: Cesare, Antonia, Vittorio. No surnames.
"Of course! Cesare! He worked in an airplane factory. He died a few months after his wife, twenty years must have passed. And who knows where Vittorio ended up!"
With that postcard in my hands, I left Marseille.
And today, with this old postcard in my hands, I enter the Rosti Bar. The TV is showing the Tour. There are a few kilometers left until the finish in Amiens. The Rosti uniform is like a guarantee. I say I work at the knitwear factory, they make me sit with them.
The stage ends with a violent sprint. Sagan starts perhaps too early, Greipel squeezes Gaviria against the barriers, but Gaviria resists great without fear. But the winner is Groenewegen, who climbs undisturbed on their right.
In the meantime, I studied the subjects. They are all old retired workers. I take out my postcard.
An old aircraft factory in Brembate. Old people always know everything about their territory. They don't have the disambiguation problems that Wikipedia has.
«The Caproni, but it wasn't in Brembate» says a certain Marelli.
«It was in Brembate Sopra» specifies the leader of the pack, called “Il Gino”.
Ok, I guess Brembate Sopra is the upper part of Brembate.
But the third, who was introduced to me as “Berlinguer”, says: «There will be at least 20km between Brembate and Brembate Sopra».
«Here you are on the Island, there you are already in Val Brembana».«They are two different worlds, like the sea and the mountains».
Are they subtly making fun of me?