The Italian Lover

by Robert Hellenga

  These robbers are called scippatori, the policeman explained, while they were waiting for an ambulance. They usually work in pairs, one to drive the Vespa and one to grab the handbag. If there had been two of them, the policeman went on, Beryl would not have been able to pull the Vespa over. Some men had given chase, but they had returned empty-handed, though the Vespa was still there, lying on its side. A crowd gathered. Another policeman arrived, and an ambulance. The crowd was indignant and sympathetic, full of advice and questions. Beryl spoke to several different people in Italian, though her nose had been broken pretty badly and she was in pain.

  Michael rode with Beryl in the modern, boxlike ambulance to a hospital, where she spent several days in a long ward. No private rooms were available. That night Michael sat on a hard chair next to the bed till she sent him back to the hotel. There were over twenty patients in the ward, and Michael watched as relatives came and went, bringing toilet paper, clean sheets, hunks of cheese, bottles of wine, bowls of pasta.

  In the morning Michael walked along the Spaccanapoli, which was like an open-air museum, from the pensione to the hospital, which was less than a mile away. Beryl was cranky. Other patients in the ward wanted to hear the story. Michael couldn’t tell it in Italian, and Beryl had trouble talking because her nose had been packed, but by the end of the day she’d created an exciting story line, and she’d managed to call Sloan-Kettering to reschedule Michael’s appointment, and to notify the insurance company and the people who were looking after their apartment. She gave Michael her Red Guide and sent him off to visit the Gesù Nuovo church in Piazza del Gesù Nuovo. Michael didn’t go into the church. Instead he walked up and down the Spaccanapoli, poking around the labyrinth of narrow alleys that branched out on either side. He bought some toilet paper for Beryl, and when he got tired, he walked back to the little piazza next to the hospital and read the guidebook so he could describe things to her later.

  At lunchtime he thought he might be able to eat something in a little restaurant in Piazza Calenda, next to the hospital. It was still early and the restaurant wasn’t crowded. He could see from the street a sign for toilette. The waiter didn’t speak English, but the owner did. He came out of the kitchen and took Michael’s order. A simple plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce and a salad.

  The spaghetti tasted like something he’d been looking for all his life, or something he remembered. It was what his childhood food memories would have been if his mother had come from Naples instead of from the Bronx. He wanted to take some of the spaghetti back to Beryl and asked the owner for a doggie bag, which he had to explain. The owner was happy to wrap the plate in foil and provide silverware.

  Back at the hospital he described Chiesa Gesù Nuovo, which he’d read up on in the guidebook, while Beryl ate the spaghetti— the diamond-point rustication, the seventeenth-century doorway, the Baroque interior, the statue of the Madonna. When she’d finished he held her hand for a while.

  He returned to the same restaurant in the evening, to return the plate and the silverware, and to eat a little supper, and then he returned every day that week. On Tuesday he was supposed to go to Pompeii, so he didn’t go to the hospital till that evening. He spent the day in Piazza Calenda, his piazza. He chatted with the proprietor of the restaurant. Dolce far niente. The sweetness of doing nothing. Michael went early at lunch and in the evening to chat with the proprietario. When the proprietario learned that he’d just shot a movie with Giovanni Cipriani—Zanni—he, Michael, became something of a celebrity.

  The proprietario had once had a small part in one of de Sica’s neorealistic films, where they used real people, not actors, and asked Michael what he thought about the future of Italian cinema. Would it ever return to the glory days of Cinecittà? It was a fair question. Michael thought that Roberto Benigni’s Johnny Stecchino and Daniele Luchetti’s Il portaborse were powerful films, and Gabriele Salvatores’s Mediterraneo.

  The food was so wonderful it overpowered the bad taste in Michael’s mouth; it overwhelmed his lack of appetite. He hadn’t been hungry—really hungry—in ages. He thought maybe the cancer had gone into remission. The owner explained all the dishes, all the sauces. He made fun of ragù Bolognese and of “thin” northern dishes. “They don’t know how to cook up there,” he said, tossing his head in a northerly direction.

  After lunch Michael sat at a table outside the restaurant. He wrote postcards to his children, to make up for his long silence. He chatted with friends of the proprietario who began to gather in the late afternoon. There was always someone who spoke a little English. No one had heard of him in Italy, but it didn’t matter because he’d just directed Zanni in a feature film! They wanted to know about the film, about the book, about the sceneggiatura, and about Zanni himself. The only problem with Zanni, they said, was that he was not from Naples, which the proprietario and his friends regarded as the real Italy. Michael believed them. What was that song about filling up your senses? Naples filled up his senses. One last time.

  He always took some food to Beryl, always something special, something not on the menu. Like zucchini soup with cheese and eggs, a homey dish not found in most restaurants. He carried it to the hospital in a cardboard box. The food was always on real plates with real silverware.

  It wasn’t till Beryl’s last day in the hospital that she figured out that he hadn’t gone to Pompeii, hadn’t set foot in the Gesù Nuovo or Santa Marta or the Palazzo Filomarino, or Santa Chiara—all the important sites along the Spaccanapoli.

  “So, what have you been doing?”

  He took her hand but she pulled it away.

  “Just sitting around at this little restaurant. Dolce far niente, isn’t that it? It’s sweet to do nothing.”

  “What about the driver? The trips to Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast were expensive. Did you pay him?”

  “He picked me up at the hotel and I had him drop me off in Piazza Calenda.”

  “How much did you pay him?”

  “The hotel paid him. They’ll put it on the bill.”

  “You should have canceled.”

  “Beryl.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Beryl,” he said again. “It doesn’t matter. None of these things matters. Not any longer. Did you know that you can still see part of the old Greco-Roman wall in the piazza? Blocks of tufa. I did study that.”

  He took her hand again, and this time she let him hold it. He thought that they’d already said most of what they had to say to each other, but now the talk came freely. He described the piazza and the restaurant, and he told her that the Neapolitans didn’t eat the thick outer crust of their pizza.

  She had things to tell too. Her Italian was really good. At first, in Naples, she’d worried that she wasn’t going to be able to understand anything at all. But the nurses talked to her all day. And the doctors, and the other patients, and so she had lots of stories.

  He went out for supper at the restaurant, and he brought her back some more of the zucchini soup. He brought some special wine too. And another roll of good toilet paper.

  When Beryl was released from the hospital, they took a taxi to the hotel, and then another taxi back to the restaurant in Piazza Calenda. Everyone praised her Italian and asked her about her impressions of Zanni. They all promised to see the film as soon as it opened in Italy. Michael didn’t know when that would be, but he knew that there was a good chance he’d never see the inside of the editing room, never hear the score or see the final cut. But in his imagination he could see a broad smile spread across Miranda’s face as the camera dollies in for an extreme close-up; he could hear Zanni’s dubbed footsteps as he walks across Piazza Santa Croce, and see him stirring his imaginary polenta, taking his time, making use of whatever was at hand—a long thin rolling pin, a copper pot—just taking pleasure in being who he was.

  The Get

  The last few days had been excruciating—an impossible call list, fourteen- to fifteen-hour days, four hours to reshoot the strappo sc
ene, which had been out of focus, a whole day for the gold tooling, which they had to do without Margot. Michael was on the verge of collapse. Esther wished she could have helped him more.

  Ten days after the wrap, the production office was still open, but stripped down to two computers, two desks, two filing cabinets, a telephone, and a fax machine.

  The rest of the convent was empty. The rental company had removed the beds and dressers that they’d rented, and the TV and VCR in the common room, and all the tables and chairs. The idraulico had disconnected the big stove. Props and costumes had been inventoried, equipment returned, leftover stock sold, location problems ironed out, vendors’ contracts vetted, and bills settled.

  Michael and Beryl had gone to Naples instead of Venice and then to Sloan-Kettering for a checkup. The plan was to meet in L.A. at the end of the month, but in fact Esther didn’t expect to see Michael again.

  Miranda had gone to Rome with the dolly grip.

  Zanni had disappeared.

  Esther didn’t know what they were going to do if they needed any automated dialogue replacement. Maybe fly everybody to L.A. Except Zanni would need a visa.

  Esther was going over the books with the production accountant and firing off faxes to the postproduction office in L.A. when the get emerged from the fax machine. It was from Temple Beth Am in Fairfax, where she and Harry had gotten married. Now she’d have to ask Margot to take her to Severiano again.

  Half a dozen men filled the small office at the synagogue in Severiano, all in wool suits and yarmulkes. The rabbi himself wore the same bow tie he’d worn at the Seder. He sat at his desk. Esther was glad to have Margot with her. She was very nervous, expecting the rabbi to disapprove, and was prepared to endure a sermon, which Margot would have to translate. Divorce was not a good thing. But everyone seemed cheerful, especially the rabbi, and Margot joked with them in Italian.

  “What are they saying?” Esther wanted to know.

  “That it’s a nice day,” Margot said.

  “They’re saying something more than that.”

  “Esther, just be quiet. I can’t hear what they’re saying if I’m trying to listen to you.”

  Rabbi Kors said something directly to Esther, and Margot translated: “He wants to know if you’ve got the bill of divorce, the get, from your husband.”

  Esther looked bewildered. “It’s in your handbag,” Margot said.

  “Right,” Esther said, opening the big leather bag she’d bought at the San Lorenzo market.

  The six men stood around the rabbi’s desk.

  “You have to give Rabbi Kors the get,” Margot said.

  “I can’t find it,” Esther said. Her hands were shaking. She was remembering her wedding day, the klezmer band, and the accordion player, who wasn’t Jewish. And the rabbi, ultraconservative, and her father, who was not religious, dancing in the old way. Skipping. Like Saint Francis dancing before the Pope in the Lodovici fresco in the Badia, the one that Zanni had strappoed off the wall. And Harry dancing too. Harry and her father and the rabbi. Like peasants in that Brueghel painting. She remembered firing Harry, and then going to dinner with him at Musso and Frank’s. And their first film together, The Bagman. And their first apartment, a two-bedroom flat on Brooklyn Avenue in East L.A., over a kosher bakery. Cannes. Venice. One of the first successful films at Sundance. The films were the children they’d wanted. They’d brought them into the light of day, or the light of the movie theaters. Given them life. Some ups and downs. A couple of turkeys. Oh Harry, Harry, she cried to herself. Only yesterday.

  “Esther, Esther,” Margot said. “Pull yourself together.” She looked in Esther’s bag. “It’s right here.”

  “What do they want?”

  “You have to answer some questions.”

  “Don’t be angry.” Esther was in tears.

  “I’m sorry, Esther.”

  The rabbi read the get in Hebrew, and one of the other men translated it into Italian as he went along. Then Margot translated it into English for Esther.

  “I am the agent . . .” (Hebrew)

  “I am the agent . . .” (Italian)

  “I am the agent . . .” (English)

  “to deliver the get”

  “to deliver the get”

  “to deliver the get”

  “to Esther Sarah Klein.”

  “to Esther Sarah Klein.”

  “to Esther Sarah Klein.”

  “Here I have the get”

  “Here I have the get”

  “Here I have the get”

  “and the document”

  “and the document”

  “and the document”

  “proving that I was duly delegated”

  “proving that I was duly delegated”

  “proving that I was duly delegated”

  “by the husband.”

  “by the husband.”

  “by the husband.”

  “You, Esther Klein, consent to receive the bill of divorce sent to you by your husband, Harry Klein.” Margot translated.

  “Yes.”

  “Si. Just say ‘si,’” Margot said to Esther. “Then I won’t have to translate ‘yes’ every time.”

  “You agree,” the rabbi said, “of your own free will and without compulsion.”

  Margot translated.

  Esther: “Si.”

  “If there is anyone who has a claim against the validity of this get, he will come forth now before it is too late to state his objection.”

  They looked around them. No one came forth.

  “You hold your hands this way,” the rabbi said in Italian, holding up his hands to demonstrate.

  “And my assistant will hold the get over your hands and let it go. You catch it.” Margot translated, and Esther held up her hands.

  “Don’t let it go till I tell you,” the rabbi said.

  “I know,” his assistant, a man in his sixties, said. He held it over Esther’s hands.

  “This is your get, the bill of divorce,” the rabbi said, “which your husband sent to you and therewith you shall be divorced from him from this very moment and permissible to anyone. Lift it up high.”

  Esther held it up high.

  “Now put it under your arm.”

  Esther put the get under her arm.

  “Now walk away.”

  Esther walked away.

  “Okay, come back to me. Give me the get. That’s all. When I cut the get, you are cut open. You are not allowed to marry for ninety-two days. God bless you and grant you peace and fulfillment.”

  Margot translated.

  “I need to sit down,” Esther said.

  “You still have to do the whipping,” the rabbi said. Margot translated.

  “The whipping?”

  But it wasn’t so bad. The rabbi gave Esther a whip made of willow switches and told her to whip the floor five times. Esther looked at Margot. “It’s easier if you get right down on the floor,” the rabbi said. Margot translated, and Esther knelt down.

  “Go ahead. Whip the floor five times.”

  Esther whipped the floor five times.

  “There shall be five sweetened severities,” the rabbi said, “through striking the willow switches on the floor.” He asked Esther to read. The book was in Italian, and Margot translated the words of a prayer of thanksgiving, and Esther repeated them after her. “The Lord will open for you His bounteous treasures, the heavens, rain for your land in season, and bless all the work of your hands. Amen.”

  Dognapping

  They sat companionably on the rapido from Florence to Bologna, where Woody had some business to take care of at the Association of the Families of the Victims of the Bombing. Their shoulders and upper arms touched; they were absorbed in their reading, or pretending to be. Neither one felt like talking. Everything had been settled. There was nothing more to talk about. Woody had given up trying to persuade Margot to come back to St. Clair with him. And Margot had given up trying to persuade Woody to stay in It
aly, and maybe they were both a little relieved, ready to step back into their old lives. Margot had crossed a line and couldn’t go back. Not to small-town Illinois. She couldn’t leave her studio. She had circled round to this place for the last time. She couldn’t go home because she was home.

  Margot was reading La Repubblica. Andreotti’s new coalition government, which was almost identical to his old coalition government, was proposing new initiatives to deal with pressing economic and social problems. The new initiatives were almost identical to the old initiatives. General elections had been set for 1992, and the Socialists and the newly renamed Communists were beginning to test the waters. A Sicilian businessman had been gunned down in front of his home in Palermo. A rear admiral, who’d been forced to give up his command in January for saying that the Persian Gulf War might have been avoided, was going to speak at the University of Florence. Tough new immigration laws were being enacted to stop the flow of Albanian refugees into southern Italy.

  Woody was reading the Odyssey, in Greek, in his Oxford onion-skin edition. Odysseus, entertaining King Alcinous and his guests on the island of Phaeacia with tales of his adventures, was about to reveal his true identity:

  But first let my name be known to you,

  and if I shrink from pitiless death,

  friendship will bind us, though my home lies far away.

  What Woody found in the great Homeric poems was a way to affirm the goodness of life without lying or deceiving himself, which was the problem with Christianity, which always wanted you to affirm things you knew weren’t true. That’s why he couldn’t get through Dante. He just couldn’t do it. Dante was too teleological.