Marco

The first season of the formidable TV series »Better Call Saul« closes with an episode that’s also been given the title »Marco«. The episode’s opener is a flashback in which we see Jimmy McGill say farewell to his friend and partner in (petty) crime Marco Pasternak.

A flashback, too, was triggered in my own mind when I was going through my rampantly growing book collection the other day to pick two or three tomes that I could give to the charity book store (thus making room for new acquisitions …). From one shelve, I pulled Primo Levi’s »If This Is a Man«. Ages ago, I got it as a present for my 22nd birthday by my flatmates Marco and Oliver and Marco’s girl-friend Maria. The book had been Marco’s choice.

I shared a flat with Marco for three years, in an old and rather decrepit house. Not much time all in all. And yet Marco left a remaining impression and I can still vividly recall several scenes from back then. – Like when Marco, Oliver and I sat around the kitchen table one winter evening and made gnocchi. I can assure you that, without Marco, I’d never even have dreamt of making gnocchi myself. And without him, I’d probably still have my spaghetti with some ready-made sauce (into which I’d chop a couple of Wieners for refinement).

Marco came from Brescia in northern Italy, not far from Milan, and he was four, maybe five years my senior, still in his twenties. Like me, he studied architecture. But he’d already been a student of architecture in Milan and done almost all exams and design projects there. He’d come to Germany for the final diploma project.

Although he was only a couple of years older, it somehow felt as if he was much farther ahead of me in many ways. Back then I saw it merely as a difference in interests and temperament (the Italian, not the German, being the more disciplined and calmer one …). Today, many years and experiences later, I come to another conclusion: it was a difference of maturity.

I was still more of a teenager, gifted and capable of doing some really good, serious work (especially in the engineering sciences) but with my head still in the clouds much of the time and my mind and heart full of vague dreams of being an artist and living a free life against the grain (yep, there was quite a dose of ravenously devoured and only half-digested Nietzsche in it).

Marco, in comparison, was much more grown-up. And, crucially, his was not that rather depressing grown-upness of those who’ve never been young or who are simply conformist. He was an individualist but he was endlessly more reflective and conscious in his stance toward the many aspects of life than I was at the time (and than I stayed for at least another decade, for that matter). There was only one thing that clearly showed Marco was still a twen: however impeccable his appearance, he was utterly incapable of keeping his room in a state even remotely resembling order. (Oh, and he was a brute towards houseplants – I remember the ficus we’d given him as a birthday present, a poor thing that he’d habitually trap in the door and that would never have seen a drop of water hadn’t I taken care of it.)

But this only gives more nuance to what I’ve already said: Marco’s maturity was nothing that was forced upon him from the outside and that impaired his being a warm-hearted fellow with quirks and minor flaws.

One thing in which Marco was far ahead of me was his striving for perfection – perfection for its own sake, not for a good grade or applause. I sometimes helped him a bit with his diploma project and saw and heard him ponder for hours over minute details just as about the overall consistency of his design. He agonised about things that, at that time, I regarded as trifles. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t just leave his very good project a very good project, get his diploma and be done with the whole matter.

He was a very keen-eyed and outspoken critic of the works of others, too. For instance, he took a great interest in the comics I drew (I was already publisher of a little magazine with cartoons, comic strips and short stories). But while everyone else praised my artistic talent enthusiastically, Marco pointed out details I could do better and suggested that I study the masters of comic art and try to emulate and adapt their different approaches to hatching, lettering and panel composition, and thus improve my skills and expand my repertoire of tools and techniques.

He was an ardent admirer of Hugo Pratt – »’ugo Prrraht« – and lent me his »Corto Maltese« albums.

I, however, felt a bit offended. The praise I was used to hear had gone into my head already and I felt entitled to a place in the Hall of Fame of comic artists, among Hergé and Morris. And here comes my flatmate and advises me to put more work into details and hone my skills? I reacted rather indignantly and pretended not to care. – But then, some days later, I found myself sitting at my desk and trying to apply shades to a comic panel with a new hatching technique, something I’d seen in Pratt’s works …

You see, that’s what I mean when I use the word maturity. Nothing showy, nothing that’s meant to impress people, to make you respected among the older – nothing superficial but something intrinsic and directed, first and foremost, at oneself. And it’s not necessarily coupled to age. Many people spend a whole life without showing any signs of this kind of maturity.

When I look back at those three years and the way I went since then, I’d not think it improbable that Marco had – without me being conscious of it – provided me with a role model. He impersonated values that I couldn’t fully grasp then but that I cherish today and that I’d condense into these seven points:

• Play fair – not only in sports.
• Mind your duties and your rights alike.
• Be well-groomed and dress decently but don’t be a dandy.
• Learn how to cook but don’t talk about it.
• Be picky about the right things.
• Be communicative but not garrulous.
• Never shout except on the football pitch.

Don’t get me wrong here: I do not claim to always consequently follow these maxims. Or to even have a chance of ever succeeding. But I try. These are the things that, for me, make a mature person. Combine it with what I’d call the Mother of All Rules: »Don’t take yourself too seriously« – and you have an ethical compass that should guide you through life and prevent you from being too much of a douchebag.

It’s strange to have spent so many words on someone – and then to have to close such a eulogy with the confession that I have no remembrance at all of the moment when our ways parted. I cannot even say if Marco moved in with his girl-friend or went back to Italy. Or if we gave each other a hug or just shook hands. Probably, I didn’t care too much back then and had my head full of new plans already. – We never saw again. (And this is not quite as dramatic as it sounds, for after all it was the 1990s when without mobile phones and internet it was a rather common thing to lose sight of someone.)

P.S.: Above, next to the dedication that Marco wrote into my copy of Primo Levi’s famous book, you can see a sticker that he gave me after he’d read a letter (well, rather a passionate speech of a dozen or so pages) that I sent to all political parties in the Bundestag. The sticker says »Use the pen as your weapon« in Italian. – When he liked something, Marco didn’t hold back on his applause.