by Arthur Japin
The next morning, when Gala appeared before the admissions committee, she could still feel the heat of the embers on her back. And while she tried to summon up the stifled rage of the spurned woman, all her passion was extinguished by the thought of the benevolence in her father’s eyes as he did his utmost to be encouraging.
Although the results wouldn’t be in for two weeks, Gala left the audition room knowing she wouldn’t be admitted. She spent a night with Maxim drinking and swearing, dancing and crying, but when he appeared beside her bed the next morning with warm croissants, freshly squeezed orange juice, and Alka-Seltzer, she had already adjusted her plans. She’d finish her undergraduate degree, she wouldn’t disappoint her father again, but then, she told herself, “our accounts are settled and my life is my own.” She liked that idea. It excited her to postpone things. Suddenly she could visualize her freedom, like a light shining more brightly at the end of a longer tunnel. One day, many years later, she would bathe in it. She eventually graduated with honors, and none of her professors suspected that the only thing that kept her going was the thought of the freedom awaiting her.
Gala passes through the shadows of Emperor Trajan’s Market. Each of the old shops in the semicircular gallery is lit up by sunlight from the high windows. The wind of time has polished the travertine so that the sunshine reflects and scatters into every gloomy corner. Walking down the marble passage, Gala appears as a specter in the light and a smudge in the shadows. A specter in the light, a smudge in the shadows. The click of her heels echoes through the low stone rooms. What is it about that gait, so slow you want to hurry her along, tell her to get moving, even though you’d never dare? But the languor of a woman inspires more awe than annoyance. She has eternity on her side; haste is all we’ve got. Gala saunters past the deserted stalls. How tempting to mistake this calm for confidence.
“Nowhere else I know so evokes the atmosphere of ancient Rome.” The man is standing eyes shut in the middle of Trajan’s Forum. Gala hadn’t noticed any other visitors.
“With a little effort, you can see them on their way to the baths, mothers coming from the market with their whining kids behind them.”
Gala smiles and walks on.
“Try it,” the man insists, “close your eyes.”
“Don’t need to. I can imagine it like this.”
“Then you must be an artist.” He opens his eyes and looks at her as if seeing her for the first time. “Or a magician, of course.”
Gala ignores him. In the two days since she got to Rome, he’s the eighty-sixth guy who’s tried to pick her up. In her mind, she starts running through the brush-offs which, together with the conjugations of “to be” and “to have,” form the basis of every Italian course back home in Amsterdam. But the man doesn’t try to follow her. He has closed his eyes again, standing there as if he finds the dead more important. Of course, Gala is relieved that she won’t have to give him the brush-off. But for an instant so brief she hardly notices it, her stomach shrinks at the thought that she’s somehow proved inadequate. That she has disappointed him. Soon, on her way out, she is once again fascinated by the floor mosaics. She hasn’t even reached the street when, studying her map, she bumps into someone. It’s the same man. He asks where she’s going and offers her a ride.
At that moment, Maxim is ringing the bell of the apartment on the Villa Ada. Sangallo has to stop and think when he hears the visitor’s name through the intercom. Actually, the viscount buzzes him up without a clue who he could be, but as soon as the elevator doors open on the young man, he sees him once again on the Amsterdam stage in his Ariadne, with long flowing hair, his youthful body shining through the tight taffeta, one hand on the gilded dagger at his hip, and swathed in meters of crepe de chine that the viscount had flown in from Nanking at exorbitant cost, just to drape around Maxim’s shoulders.
In each of his operas, Filippo Sangallo had one or two favorites. He never forgot them. When he returned to Rome at the end of the run, they played new roles in the productions of his dreams. Sometimes one of them would visit him, as Maxim is doing now.
Reality is always a disappointment.
“Your neck is too long for short hair,” is all the old man says. No greeting, no invitation. He turns on his heel and disappears into the shadows of his apartment. Maxim is unsure whether to follow, but then the shutters are thrown open inside.
“Look!” Sangallo is in his study, bent over the fifteenth-century chest of drawers that he uses as a drawing table. On the back of a set design he sketches Maxim’s face in a few lines, the deep-set eyes, his neck, the curve of his chest.
“That face: handsome but arrogant. It seems almost disconnected from your trunk. But let your hair grow”—he sketches it the way he wants to see it—“and the Olympus from which you look down on us mortals from under your eyelids becomes linked to your body. It makes you gentler. For you, long hair is like a frame around your face. I told you before, I’ll tell you again now. The intangible enclosed in a frame. The head and the heart unified. Is that too much to ask?” With a grand gesture he pushes the charcoal and the sheets of paper into a corner of the marble drawing board. “But now, life itself. Have you eaten? Have you ever tasted the sun in the honey of Piedmont?”
“Without extras,” Filippo Sangallo was fond of saying, “people would fall asleep from boredom halfway through life.” For years, these young men and women, each decked out more brilliantly than the singers, had been the most expensive part of his productions. In the old days, when he was Luchino Visconti’s partner, there wasn’t a theater manager alive who would dare deny his extravagant demands, but when Filippo decided to continue directing after the death of his lover, he ran into more and more resistance. The biggest opera houses were the first to close their doors. His productions were too expensive and his ideas outmoded. Dissatisfaction grew among the singers as well, whom he still arranged as tableaux vivants at a time when other directors were letting them scream and roll around on the floor. Finally, all he had left were minor companies in countries and states so small that they needed to subsidize their culture. For the audiences in such places, as undiscriminating as they were, his name still recalled the glory days in which he toured the world with Maria Callas.
Filippo saw exactly what was going on. He drew up a list of works in which he still wanted to create the images of his dreams. He had no intention of compromising his vision in any way, even though he was more and more frequently obliged to forgo his own fee to achieve it. His most important exigencies invariably involved the extras. Each was like a brushstroke in a painting inside the frame of the stage.
But it went beyond rehearsals: he surrounded himself with extras outside the theaters as well, young people he had plucked from the rabble that appeared at auditions. He chose them for a look in their eyes, a gesture, a shadow of a memory, the curl of a lip, anything that let him glimpse the kind of beauty sometimes captured in old paintings. All were enthusiasts at the start of their careers, still free of professional jealousy. He bloomed in their presence. After rehearsals, he took them to exhibitions or bookshops where he bought them expensive gifts, solely to nurture their interest in the arts. He could always spot the ones who hung around for the material benefits alone, and gave them even more expensive gifts, just to make them feel uncomfortable, and then excluded them from the dinners he held for the rest of the group in the city’s best restaurants. He insisted that everyone try all the dishes, knowing that these youngsters earned little and were used to eating badly. They worshipped him, needless to say. Most had never met a man of his caliber, and to this day it’s easy to point out the artists who were inspired by him.
During the meals, he entertained everyone with poems or scenes from old movies, and his own life was a source of incredible anecdotes, the most roguish of which he acted out in different languages and strange dialects. Although a melancholy expression came over his face whenever he felt completely at ease, he clearly enjoyed the attention. When someone c
aught one of his cynical interjections, which were mostly lost between his jokes, a grateful smile appeared on his somber face, as on that of a child who has briefly forgotten why exactly he was crying.
These meals were even more colorful around premieres, when the viscount flew in old friends from abroad to show them his dreams. For those who had known him in happier days, he hosted intimate dinners, where he would be accompanied by whichever extra he happened to be most fond of at the time. After a premiere in Scheveningen, for example, Maxim once ate in a chambre separée at the Badhotel with Louis Jourdan and James Baldwin, and they endlessly tried to outdo each other with tales of their sexual escapades. Soon after, he found himself sitting across from a thin elderly woman in Amsterdam’s Amstel Hotel. Wearing a silk turban and hidden behind enormous sunglasses, she hardly said ten words all evening, and as a result it wasn’t until midway through the second course that Maxim realized she was Marlene Dietrich, whereupon he became so nervous that he forgot to keep eating. By dessert, she could bear it no longer. She slid a plate of confectionery over to him.
“And now,” she said, “it is eat or die.”
The viscount is tall and heavy as a bear, yet his massive body is as nimble as his mind. It’s hard to believe that someone who seems to weigh so upon the earth can zigzag through a room like a dragonfly. He shuffles along so quickly that it’s hard for a young man in sneakers to keep up with him. Now he’s standing on the balcony, picking some basil from a pot and drawing it through a plate of honey. He holds it up to the light and watches the golden liquid drip off the leaves. Then he puts them in Maxim’s mouth as though feeding an infant. When his fingers touch Maxim’s lips he is suddenly embarrassed, afraid he’s gone too far. He puts down the plate and peers into the distance at the heavy clouds over the cypresses of Villa Ada.
“We shall have to discover Rome anew,” he says after a while, “nothing else for it. Come Sunday morning and I’ll have a car.”
Maxim is already in the hall when Sangallo asks him to write down the number of his hotel.
“I’ll only be here one more night. Everything’s full. I don’t know where I’ll end up.”
“Just give me the number where you’ll be tonight. In case something comes up. Oh, and put your name with it, otherwise I’ll lose it.” The viscount slips the piece of paper with the name that’s eluded him the whole time into his pocket without looking at it. He gives the young man an umbrella with a walnut handle, a paper bag full of grapes, a couple of sprigs of basil and the jar of honey he liked so much, a bound edition of Goethe’s Italienische Reise, an opened bottle of vin santo, and a lithograph of Cola di Rienzo’s Flight to Castel Sant’Angelo.
Arms full, Maxim stands in the elevator. For a moment Sangallo studies his face.
“Yes,” he sighs, then presses the button and slams the iron grate shut between them. “That’s what’s exciting about beautiful things. They know when enough is enough. A blink of the eye and it’s gone!”
Gala proves the opposite, Maxim thinks. She emerges from the bathroom with her hair wet, as beautiful as ever. Or is beautiful even the word? Nothing about her resembles classical beauty. Her nose, if you look at it closely, is too flat. Her head is too square. It’s almost too big for her body, and her features are irregular. But still, there’s not a man who doesn’t feel attracted to her and longer than the blink of an eye, longer than a night, longer than the years Maxim has known her. No, Gala’s secret is anything but fleeting.
Her body is crooked as well. Legs and hips, as mentioned, but especially her back. It hurts after a long day’s walking. She drops onto the bed and rolls over onto her stomach with difficulty. Maxim straddles her on his knees and rubs her aching muscles.
“He seemed nice.”
“A man who just comes up to you on the street?”
“He wasn’t pushy.”
“Well, thank goodness for that.”
“Ouch!”
Maxim plants his thumbs between Gala’s shoulder blades and moves them in little circles, constantly changing the pressure, as he follows her backbone. He can trace two curves. The first, gradual, runs almost the entire length of her spine, and then right at the bottom is a sharp little kink, just above her buttocks. This area has grown more sensitive over the past few months, but no matter what Maxim says, Gala insists on high heels.
“What do you suggest?” she asks. “We have to move somewhere tomorrow morning. That count of yours is no use.”
Maxim pours her a glass of vin santo. He dips some basil in the honey.
“Bite first, then rinse.”
Gala tastes it and says, “I take it all back. The man is priceless.”
Maxim searches through her bag for the other half of the map.
“Don’t worry,” Gala reassures him, “we’ll find something. We could live off the wind in a land that makes things like that.”
He spreads the two halves of the map out over the bed and Gala, who is still lying on it. He tries to fit them together on her back.
“And the house that guy was talking about …”
“Gianni is not just a guy. You’ll see, he’s very much a gentleman.”
Every time Gala breathes, the city splits open, revealing a strip of skin between the streets. Redness shows where Maxim pressed too hard.
“What’s the area called where that house is?”
With its embassies and galleries, Parioli is one of the best neighborhoods in Rome. The houses were built in the nineteenth century on the slopes of the Valle Giulia, and most of the gardens back onto the park of the Villa Borghese. The Via Michele Mercati turns out to be on one of the quiet streets behind the National Gallery of Modern Art.
Gala strides from one gate to the next looking for the number Gianni has given her. Maxim follows with his pack and her suitcase. He got up this morning without waking her. First, he went out to change money and get some bread, then he paid the hotel bill and packed their things so that everything would be ready before Gala opened her eyes.
These are small tasks that Maxim always takes upon himself. That’s how things have turned out. If he doesn’t do them, no one else will. They’re practical matters, and Gala has no interest in them. They simply don’t seem to exist for her. She assumes that everything will turn out fine. And it always has. For years. Maxim doesn’t even know if she realizes how much he does for her. He doesn’t care. He likes doing it. It makes him feel good. Like a father looking after his child, Maxim doesn’t expect anything in return. It feels warm. It feels like love. It’s enough just being part of that carefree life of hers, which gives him so much hope.
Number seventeen is scarcely visible from the street. The moment Gala steps onto the drive, a watchdog starts to bark. Maxim hesitates.
“Why would someone offer us a house like this?”
“Why not? We’re not in Holland anymore. Anyway, it’s only a room.”
A young man is sitting on a rhododendron-shaded bench at the side of the house smoking a cigarette. When he sees Maxim and Gala, he immediately makes himself scarce.
The house is run-down.
“Angels! There you are. Angels, descended among my flowers.” A woman has thrown open the shutters on the first floor. “The front, go round to the front.” She gestures frantically, leaning dangerously far out of the window. “I come as fast as I can. The big yellow doors. You can’t miss them. For you, I’ll open them. Just a second.”
She only comes up to Maxim’s navel and seems as broad as she is tall. The coarse material of her black dress is tight at the seams. One moment she’s wringing her hands, the next she’s running her fingers through her gray hair and pushing loose strands back into her bun. She introduces herself as Geppi, the concierge, and seems to have been expecting her two guests, so much so that Maxim is afraid she’s mistaken them for someone else.
“Not at all. Signor Gianni called me. Two shining North Stars. She is as seductive and beautiful as a panther, and him … Well, he’s big and blond and
taller than seems humanly possible. And straight. Up into the sky like an obelisk.”
Her eyes are gentle but too nervous to hold your gaze for long. To conceal her insecurity, she chatters away nonstop about the adventures of the forgotten cartoon character she was named after, Geppi, la Bimba Atomica.
“Did you tell this Gianni what I look like?” Maxim asks in the meantime, but Gala shakes her head. Geppi takes a bunch of keys and leads them down a narrow hall beneath the grand staircase. There are no windows here. The only light comes from under the doors. There is life in some of the rooms. The rays are interrupted by people moving around inside. At the end of the hall, the concierge opens a room with a bathroom en suite.
“This is too expensive for us,” says Maxim.
“Heavens,” laughs Geppi, “if we measured our happiness in money …” She opens the shutters. There is a small, round window, set high in the wall. The room is sunk below in the garden, which slopes up toward Monte Pincio on this side of the house. For people inside, the path and the trunks of the rhododendrons are at eye level. Two pinstriped legs walk by.
“What’s more,” Geppi continues, “it’s up to Signor Gianni to decide what things cost. Of course, you have the use of the furniture, and that’s quite something. This wardrobe, that bed, and just look at this magnificent clock. It’s the kind that’s only right twice a day, but who could expect more from something so gorgeous?” She helps Maxim take off his backpack and throws it onto the bed. Then she lays her hands on his shoulders and stands on her toes to look into his eyes.
“How big they are, and how blue, sainted innocence, it’s going to be mayhem! Crick, crack, I can already hear the first heart breaking. Boom, bang, my ears are hurting. Don’t let it get you down, son, the first heart’s always the noisiest. Afterward they just fall softly, plomp, ploff, like newborn sparrows falling dead onto the moss.”
“It’s a whorehouse,” Maxim says, refusing to unpack his things. “You can see it, you can smell it. What’s behind all those doors?”