by Arthur Japin
The screenplay for a comedy is taking shape: two elderly music hall artists meet again at a sanatorium on Monteverde after many years. They have both had strokes and are in a hospital. Though they are paralyzed, they discover that they can communicate through their old gags. They drive their doctors mad, but have the time of their lives. Success at last! At last an audience that can’t walk out on them.
Coma prima! is a good working title. As soon as I can, I’ll travel to Japan in search of backers.
Then there is also a quasi-scientific work that constantly requires my attention. It will be more than just an ordinary consideration of history. It will instead describe evolution as the principle of narrowing possibilities. My thesis is that all progress is the result of limitations of some kind. I’m not entirely sure what that means. But that is how I feel about everything important. So I am more and more convinced that I am on the right path. Snippets of this foolish study flash through my daydreams. All I have to do now is order them. I’m thinking of three sections: (1) God limits man; (2) Man limits God; (3) Man limits itself. That’s the story of the world. Once you realize this, you can’t understand why you never noticed it before. Mankind only moves ahead when other directions are cut off. As they are now, for me. It won’t be that bad. I reinvented Rome; that was surely harder than reinventing myself.
As soon as the war was over, we wanted to start filming. My friends and I wanted to tell of the things we had seen. But the studios of Cinecittà had been bombed. So we recorded what we saw on the street, with the sun as our spotlight. The people walking past became actors. And that is how a style was born: because there were no other possibilities.
My characters have remained realistic. They walk on by: real people with their buttocks, breasts, and grimaces, looming up out of the crowd. But you only see part of them. That makes them seem larger than life, extreme. That’s how I draw, trying to evoke the life that is hidden behind their outsized appearance, like the teahouse behind the lantern.
My friends and I spent our evenings in front of the Moviola studying the footage we’d shot on the streets in the daytime: scene after handheld scene, all silent. That’s the best way to watch a film, even now: in a small dark room without sound, forcing the little picture on the monitor to tell the whole story.
Later critics sometimes claimed that I couldn’t show real people, fully developed, flesh-and-blood creatures—that I am too baroque, that I resort to caricature because I am afraid of the psyche. Nonsense. Every part contains the whole. What do I care about a nicely rounded character, when I notice a gesture while passing someone in the street? A whole life has preceded that casual gesture; it is the outcome, at the instant that I see it, of all those sorrows and emotions. I see them all in that one gesture. Of course, I recognize my own tears too. Both are equally genuine. I see the whole person when I see someone unthinkingly pursing their lips. That gesture is the sum of their character. It is all I know about that person and all I need to know. I collect moments like that. I magnify them. Baroque. Hands, faces, images that tell a wordless story.
That’s why my stories seem crowded and my actors experience such wild adventures. Everything I show existed once. I saw it somewhere and quickly whisked it away, because what is reality other than the simple truth? The truth does nobody any good. It can only distort.
PART TWO
Les nouveaux pauvres
The essence of Rome, my Rome, the city that moves and excites me, cannot be found in the Forum or in the palazzi, in the immortal works of art lining the walls of churches and galleries. No, the essence of the Eternal City is inconspicuous—spread over the suburbs and the surrounding countryside.
Its heart is not in the history that has been saved from destruction but in the mementos that have disintegrated so much that no one can be bothered with them.
They’re everywhere: looking, at first, like piles of rubbish, overgrown mounds of bricks, or pieces of crumbling stucco where ragazzi have scratched their names. But look more closely, behind those old newspapers and that tangle of plastic bags from the local supermarket, and you can still make out the curve of an arched vault, a wrought-iron wall clamp, the remains of a window or door. The tile floor has collapsed to reveal the heating system; and the reddish brown, black, and yellow pebbles once formed a mosaic that is now lost forever.
This is the ancient Rome that interests no one. And most of the fragments are ugly, hidden away in Campagna Romana, between the modern neighborhoods, beside the highways, and in the fields. They’re everywhere, up to Monti Prenestini in the east, the Alban Hills in the south, and the hills of Tuscany to the north, but nobody seems to notice, so many that archaeologists don’t give them a second thought. Some were once cordoned off, but even the fenceposts have long since vanished, and the no entry signs rusted away. The chicken wire has been trampled by children who wanted to play in the ruins, or by couples who couldn’t wait to be alone. Only when a new housing project is being planned is a bit of historic cement discovered on the drawings of the land register, causing the developer, who hadn’t noticed, to curse heatedly and adjust his plans to make the remains of the racecourse, the gladiatorial barracks, or the nymphaeum disappear behind the waste containers or in the median strip in the middle of the road where they won’t ruin the view.
This is where I often linger. Here, in a small way, I touch eternity. I recover something and simultaneously I get lost. Between the modern buildings and the debris of the past, a piece of lead from an ancient water pipe brings tears to my eyes. Why? Who knows? Perhaps because it seems an answer to a question I have not yet been asked.
Rome’s entire history is in these pieces of junk. They mean nothing but contain everything. They reduce eternity to its essence. I, at least, feel its extent more keenly when standing next to an overgrown pile of grit behind the gas station at the Cecchignola exit than when faced with the reliefs of Trajan’s Column or the chiseled capitals of the Forum, which were carved by the hand of a master. My Rome is more to the point. The dome of the Pantheon demands respect for the mind that designed it, but in a brick I see the handiwork of the mason and the sweat of the man who lugged the buckets of mortar. I smell the urine of the neighborhood boys, the droppings of the sheep that grazed there. Like a stray dog, I rest against the cool marble of a wall that crumbles away a bit more every year, and casts a shorter shadow every spring. This summer, a circus pasted its posters on it. Local residents jog by. They’re not interested in eternity. The most they’d do is wipe an oily rag off on it when they’re fixing the car, or use it to anchor a wash line. This very dereliction moves me to a sad ecstasy. I shudder, and the girl riding past on the back of her boyfriend’s Vespa throws me a suspicious glance. See, the relics say, this is what’s left now of the great baths.
• • •
That’s how it is with your own memories as well: the stronger they are, the more they get in the way of your own freedom to think. People want to pin everything down, but I say: let it go!
I notice it now that I’m sort of lying about my studio. How much time do I have to get rid of the shapes of everyone who was dear to me? To erase their facial features, the laugh lines, the tracks of tears that turned out so differently from how I intended? Ghosts are my only remorse for my next project.
The more I get to know someone, the less I understand him. This characteristic has always interfered with my relationships. Yet I can read the history of an entire family in an anonymous face in a crowd, imagining it so precisely that I decide that this stranger has a maiden great-aunt called Narda. I see the marks her elbows leave in the plastic tablecloth on her kitchen table and how she reveals the last remaining tooth in her lower jaw when she laughs. I’m that much of a fantasist! I’m even convinced that I know why the old spinster is so entertained, and why her head was resting on her hands so despairingly.
But I can stare into the eyes of my own sister and have no clue to what’s going on inside her. This incapacity has caused a lot of grief
, but for me it is vitally important. My lack of involvement with those dearest to me allows me to take my full measure of interest in the rest of the world. There’s no challenge in something I understand, but things I don’t know I can interpret any way I want.
I’m afraid my wife, Gelsomina, never understood my fascination for strangers and could get jealous that she had to compete for my attention with people whose names I didn’t even know. This is my excuse: by fantasizing about the lives of the unknown, I hope to better understand mine.
Precisely because the teahouse is hidden behind the lantern I can imagine what it’s like.
This characteristic was essential to the conception of my films and is now coming in handy as I strive to complete the screenplay I’ve been toying with for weeks. I can see more clearly now what the ghosts who have been haunting my thoughts are up to. I fill in their actions with details, absolutely sure of things it’s impossible for me to know.
• • •
Now that the building is starting to crumble, I can set to work with the debris. Soon, at last, I’ll be free to take the pieces and reconstruct the dreams I saw before life got in the way.
Why should we fear the future? Everything is still possible there. Better to shrink from the past, the place you’d had such high hopes for.
1
Rome in the mideighties.
Halfway down the Via Due Macelli, Gala gives up. The rain pours straight through her umbrella. Water gushes into the deep gutters and washes over the pavement. She takes her shoes off and walks on, barefoot. The street feels warm. The memory of the sun in the paving stones of Rome is enough for the city to survive the first autumn squall.
October is the worst time to come to visit, the only month of heavy rains. What’s more, the hotels are crammed with conference-goers. From the Coppersmiths Union to the Association of Head Cooks at Franciscan seminaries, everyone seems determined to gather annually during the Roman storms.
A cloudburst doesn’t stop Gala. The Dutch are born with their feet in the water. She laughs at the Italians who flee into doorways at the first drops. The group she just passed were cowering under the awning of a bookshop. Between the women with bags full of fennel from the Via Arcione market and the ladies going to their couturiers in the Via Condotti stands a man with a red scooter he’s trying to shelter. Every time he sees a splatter, he wipes it off with his silk handkerchief, cursing and invoking the Madonna all the while. Just then, a taxi speeds through a puddle. A bucket splash of water. Under the awning, the ladies scream. They assess the damage to their clothing. Indignant, Gala does the same. The man is happy that his scooter is still dry, thanks to the young woman who has just taken the brunt of the blast. He watches her flick the mud off her dress. Globs of it glide down her legs. She realizes that it’s no use, closes her umbrella, puts it in her purse, and lets the rain stream over her shoulders. She tilts her head back for a moment and stands there with her eyes shut the way a normal person might warm her face in the sun. Meanwhile, the dark patches in the red fabric spread across her body.
This flaunted femininity elicits a snort from one of the working-class women under the awning. How is she to know that Gala never does anything for effect? Or, more to the point, that she has no idea how people react to her? She simply doesn’t see them. If only Gala were aware of the impression she makes. Even if it robbed her of half of her apparent self-confidence. Then she might have noticed the man standing between the women under the awning and the way he was looking at her. After a few seconds, she runs her fingers through her hair and walks on, swinging her hips. Even the swaying of her lower body, which attracts attention even in a packed shopping street, is unconscious and caused by a difference in the length of her legs, a slight aberration, imperceptible to the naked eye.
The man watches until she disappears into the gaping mouth of the traffic tunnel under the Quirinale. With a sigh he puts the handkerchief back in his breast pocket and pushes his motorino out onto the street. He looks down sadly at the gleaming metal that will get dirty, but revs the engine and, cursing, rides off after Gala. He makes sure to stay a dozen or so meters behind her, which isn’t easy because Gala is walking so slowly he can hardly keep his balance. She has no idea that she is being followed. On the other side of the hill, the sun is already coming out.
The light shining into the tunnel is like a halo around her silhouette.
After getting off the train at Termini, Gala and Maxim walked to a nearby pension that Maxim’s mother had recommended. Pensione Gasser, where the woman had spent several happy months, was not only still operating after all these years, but Providence allowed that they could spend their first couple of nights there.
Tomorrow they’ll be out on the street. They’ve spent the whole morning searching for a place to spend the night. Each has covered a different part of the city and they are now meeting around noon, as agreed, beneath the portico of the opera house. As soon as Maxim sees Gala, he rushes up to meet her. They kiss.
“I told you this was no weather for walking!”
“Only the barbarians came to Rome to stay indoors.”
Arms around each other, they cross the square to a bench, where he lays her out to dry with her head on his lap. He takes her shoes out of her bag and wipes off the mud.
“Did you bring another pair?”
“I thought Italian fashion was developed enough that I might find some shoes here.”
Maxim laughs. He puts the wet shoes out in the sun, then removes their map of Rome from the bag. It’s dripping wet and tears when he unfolds it. He spends a while flapping the two halves back and forth in the hope of drying them.
“I did the whole length of the Via Nazionale,” he says. “No rooms anywhere.”
“I tried every hotel I passed.”
“We can’t afford a hotel.”
He dangles the bunch of grapes he bought at the market over Gala’s face. She snaps at them, but he pulls them away. Growling, she sits up and snaps again. She’s got them now and tears away at her spoils.
“Wait,” says Maxim, “I have to wash them.” But Gala bursts the fruit open between her bared teeth. The juice runs down over her chin. She tries to lick it up, but it’s already dripping down her neck. He wipes the drops from her chest and licks his hand clean.
The opera employees are streaming out the stage door on their way to lunch on the Piazza Gigli. Two elderly ladies nudge each other.
“Aren’t you the gentleman who asked the manager about Signor Sangallo?” one of them asks.
“Yes,” Maxim replies, “but no one seems to know him here.”
“Ah, tastes change so fast. One year it’s in to be stylish, then it’s out again. This winter, God willing, he’ll be back for a revival of La Clemenza, and then who knows? We all get old. Nowadays the opera is in the hands of youngsters like yourself. But you, at least, have not forgotten the maestro. Is he a friend of yours?”
“In a way.”
“Here’s his old address. I wrote it down for you. And his telephone number, but that might have changed.”
She’s scribbled it on a scrap from an old pattern. Maxim tries to find the street on one of the quadrants of the map. The woman’s friend takes her by the arm. “If you see him, give him a kiss from Estrella. Now those were costumes! When you sewed them, it felt like little angels were holding up the fabric!”
Maxim wonders whether to drop in on the elderly opera director or announce his arrival in advance. It’s been three years since he last saw him. There’s a pay phone on the corner of the square, but a man has been using it the whole time they’ve been sitting there.
Gala’s shoe leather is stiff as he forces her shoes back on. They agree to meet at six in the little hotel near the station where they can stay for one more night. They kiss again as they leave. It’s a ritual, but not an altogether natural one. Their lips seek each other’s and cling briefly.
Before turning the corner, Maxim waves. He almost knocks over the red sco
oter of the man who is still standing there, on the telephone. The man grits his teeth but shows his back until Maxim is out of sight. He looks over the top of his sunglasses at the young woman, who throws the strap of her bag over one shoulder and heads off for the Forum. Her heels are so high she has to tilt her pelvis to walk.
Gala had promised herself Rome.
Halfway through her second year in college, she and Maxim had such fond memories of The Mannequins’ Ball and were so fed up with classes and discussions that they applied for the theater school. The day before the auditions, Gala went home to break the news to her parents. She told Maxim she thought her father would respond by faking a coronary, lamenting his fate, and sucking furiously on his pipe, then locking the liquor cabinet because you can’t trust actors. Instead, Jan Vandemberg didn’t get up to any of his usual antics. He seemed at a complete loss. The blood drained from his face and the strength from his muscles.
“Aren’t you going to let me have it?” suggested Gala uncertainly.
“Choices like these are beyond us.” He slumped down on a chair and stayed there, so lethargic it seemed he’d sink into the cushions and disappear. “It’s your life. Your mother and I gave it to you. It’s not up to us.”
Then he asked to be left alone until dinner. Rather than demonstratively staying away as everyone expected, he arrived, forcing Anna to hurriedly set a place for him, doing his best to seem cheerful and participate in the conversation. Over cognac, he asked Gala to perform the monologue she’d prepared for her examination. Standing in front of the fireplace, she acted out an excerpt from Lorca, and when she had finished he broke the silence by applauding with wide flapping arms.
“Just look at that,” he said to his wife, “just look at that, you spawned an actress!”