by Arthur Japin
“Or should I come over to you?” she finally asked, feeling that a happiness as great as hers carried certain obligations. But her question was so hushed and reluctant that Maxim pretended not to hear. She was glad when he hung up, because Snaporaz might be trying to get through to tell her that he’d arrived safely. If the line was busy, he might think she was trying to reach him.
Maxim has given Gala a good shaking. He has cried for her and with her. He’s pitied her and told her off. He has listened to her and consoled her, but he’s also come out and told her that she’s definitely not the only broad Snaporaz has got filed away somewhere in the city for his enjoyment. He’s shouted that the man is a son of a bitch and that she deserves better. But seeing her sorrow after the director has once again failed to contact her, he’s defended him with equal ferocity and concocted explanations for his silence, just to comfort her. Before each meeting between Gala and Snaporaz, he has tried to calm her nerves. He’s fetched vodka when she asked for it and bought condoms even though he was sure that she would never dare get them out. When she opened the door of her church to go out, he insisted on checking her makeup. He gave her that encouraging pat on the bottom or sometimes a kiss, which she accepted as greedily as a pearl diver takes one last breath before the plunge. Then she walked out beaming, quickly closing the door behind her, to throw her arms around Snaporaz’s neck. Meanwhile, Maxim was shooting upstairs to the bell tower, four steps at a time, so that he could look out from the church roof and see the car squeeze through the narrow streets along the San Andrea delle Valle before disappearing in the traffic on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. More than anything else, Maxim was gratified to know that Gala was finally happy, and in moments like these he hardly stopped to wonder why that happiness also made him sad.
He only gave in to his sorrow once she came home and returned to her position beside the phone. He did everything he could. He invented excuses to lure her out and even dragged her by the arm. In all those weeks, he only once succeeded in getting her to go out for a cappuccino at the corner bar. She knocked it back and was so anxious to leave that he pretended he’d forgotten another appointment. She kissed him gratefully, snatched her bag from the bar, and raced back to her cell as fast as her high heels and the double-S curvature of her back would let her.
After that, Maxim resigned himself to her lunacy. For a long time, he came more often, so that they could see each other for a few hours, at least twice a day. They discussed virtually nothing but Snaporaz, but he put up with it. He sometimes brought a book to read to her, as if she were sick in bed, but her thoughts were with her lover, so Maxim finally had to settle for reading on her terrace by himself.
He finally realized that he’d come to accept this bizarre situation as normal. The moment came when one of the actresses behind the windows of the theater across the courtyard began her singing exercises. Maxim, startled, looked up from the story he was completely absorbed in. For a second, maybe less, he didn’t know where he was. He immediately recognized the colors the stained glass cast on his page, but he couldn’t say whether Gala was at home or out somewhere with Snaporaz. He went to check. As always, she was sitting next to the phone. On her lap, she held a few sketches the great man had made of her. She lovingly ran her fingers over them, though Maxim had told her to be careful because a collector would pay good money for them. When he stuck his head around the corner, she greeted him with a broad smile. Maxim sat down and they chatted a little. Once again, they looked at the drawings; once again, Maxim told her how clear it was that she was tremendously important to Snaporaz. It was still terribly difficult to conceal his concern. He’d been with her for an hour and a half, yet was completely alone. He’d evidently walked in without being infuriated by seeing a woman like Gala waiting by the phone. To the contrary, he’d walked right past, as if she were a lavatory attendant with a coin-filled saucer, never stopping to think about how someone like that slowly fades, day by day, into the background.
At that moment, Maxim realized he’d lost the battle for Gala. Snaporaz had encircled her just as the Romans had done it since time immemorial: in rings that squeezed tighter every day, so that the besieged city hardly noticed that its territory was constantly shrinking, or that its citizens were being pressed ever closer together. At last, they gave in, not to external violence but to pressure from within.
Now Maxim withdraws to spare himself further injury. He’ll be present to Gala when she needs him, he decides, but he can no longer expect anything from her.
• • •
The same cannot be said of Gianni. He has invested in her. This weekend, she’s going to pay. To get rid of him, that’s what she promised in the La Cesarina toilet: “As soon as Snaporaz is out of the country.” He had come up from behind her and held her face so tightly that her words were almost impossible to understand. He made her repeat it.
“As soon as he’s out of the country, I’ll do what you want.” She was prepared to promise him anything as long as Gianni disappeared without mentioning it to Snaporaz. “I’ll do Sicily one last time, all right, one last time, damn you!” Then she sank her teeth into his hand and kicked with her high heels until he let go. She panted like a wild animal, bending forward with her hands on the sink. “One last time and then we’re even!”
Tonight, he enters unannounced. Gala is on her terrace listening to the music coming from deep within the theater: a performance of La Fanciulla del West. She doesn’t know the story of Puccini’s opera and can only make out snatches of the libretto, but she enjoys the passion in the distant notes that resound so loudly in the empty courtyard that they sometimes make the glass in the church window shake in their leaden frames.
“Che faranno i vecchi miei
là lontano, là lontano,
che faranno …?”
It takes a while before she notices another sound she can’t place. Someone is fumbling at the door. She briefly imagines it’s Snaporaz, but he’s on the other side of the world. Before she knows it, Gianni is standing right there. Gala feels an urgent wave of panic, which she suppresses. She knew he’d make her keep her promise, but she had no idea that he knew where she lived, let alone that he’d found a key.
Determined to maintain her dignity, she walks inside to pack for the trip.
“That can wait,” he says, pushing her back onto the terrace. She backs up until he’s pressing her up against the church window. He kisses her on the neck. She gasps for breath. He kisses her on the mouth. He pulls her dress up and her underpants down. He grabs her wrists and spreads her arms against the enormous stained-glass window. He’ll deliver her tomorrow; today he’s sampling the merchandise.
“Il mio cane dopo tanto,
il mio cane mi ravviserà?”
Under the pressure of the bodies, the colored panes groan in their grooves. One breaks. Gala feels splinters. They fall on her bared shoulder, fine as sugar crystals. Rather than looking at the man who is having his way with her, she looks up. Despite the city lights, the stars are shining.
Close by, on the Ara Coeli, Maxim sees them too. They stretch in a long winding line from the Gianicolo to the Aventine. He was on his back looking up at them until it got too cold. He walks down the stairs on his way home. He passes the Largo Argentina. He passes the theater and turns into Gala’s street. He wonders if she’s lonely with Snaporaz on his way to the States. Then he does something he could never have imagined until recently, walking past her church without even ringing the bell.
It’s after one by the time he goes to bed. He’s just fallen asleep when Geppi arrives in her nightgown to tell him he’s got a call.
“Why are you still up?” Sangallo blares down the phone. “Go to sleep at once, there’s something very exceptional. I’ll pick you up before dawn.”
Tunnel
I always forget how much I like Los Angeles. The city reminds me of one big seaside promenade, and its inhabitants seem to be on permanent vacation. No matter how far you wander from the ocea
n, you still see people strolling around in shorts and flip-flops with newspapers tucked under their arms. Tanned and muscular, they walk down their boulevards like my boyhood friends in Rimini, who would parade along the Lungomare showing off for a class of Austrian schoolgirls.
We arrive early in the morning and are met by a limousine apparently designed for stilt walkers. The windows are armored glass, but we open them to let in the smells of jasmine and honeysuckle, which are flowering everywhere. On the leather of the backseat, Gelsomina’s hand seeks mine. She squeezes it. I can tell she’s trying to keep a secret because whenever I look at her she bursts into laughter, hiding her face in the collar of her coat and giggling behind it. I do what I’ve done for the last fifty years: pretend not to notice. As always, she seems to believe it.
It’s done her a lot of good just to have this trip to look forward to. I was afraid the excitement would wear her out, but in fact she’s actually recovered much of her former zest. For the last few days, she was leaping around the Via Margutta like a doe, getting everything packed and arranged. Gelsomina doesn’t know it, but despite my insistence that it was the Roman taxi drivers who talked me into it, I have come for her. I always sit in the front of the cab. I don’t tell them how to drive, but they tell me how to make movies. In the last few weeks, they were grinning behind the wheel until I let slip that I wasn’t planning on traveling to Hollywood. At that, they stamped on their brakes and told me that I had a duty to the nation to collect that Oscar in person. Otherwise, they added, I could get out and walk.
I don’t feel well. My arthritis is worse than ever. I don’t know what’s wrong with my body. It used to be my friend and we worked together, but now we’ve lost touch. These days, it has its own unpredictable will, and one that constantly overrules me. There’s nothing as difficult as standing before an audience when you’re not feeling well, especially with the whole world watching. I’m only doing it for her. She doesn’t have much time. And I can already see her beaming. Over the years, Gelsomina has always enjoyed my honors far more than I have, and I realized only recently that she feels more honored when I receive a prize than she does when some film festival somewhere bestows an award on her. For my four previous Oscars, she was beaming in the front row, as if it was all thanks to her.
I also forget how much I dislike Los Angeles. Bewildered by the time difference, we sit down to a dinner being held at what feels like five a.m. It has been organized in my honor by the Academy, so I can’t possibly get out of it. All night, I’m surrounded by producers wearing gold chains who find everything about me extraordinarily fantastic and brilliant: not just my films, but my wife, the color of my skin, the cut of my suit, my garters, the way I hold my little pinkie a bit crooked when I raise a glass to my lips. When I get up to go to the toilet, the whole flock shuffles along behind, and when I overlook a glass door in all the kerfuffle and bump into it—not hard, mind you—I have to kick and lash out to stop them from sticking me in an ambulance and carting me off for a brain scan at the Cedars-Sinai hospital. No matter how much I snarl at them, they offer me a fortune to come to America like Forman and Polanski and make films here.
I explain that I already tried that in ’54, after winning my first Oscar. I received the same invitations and signed a contract committing myself to Hollywood for twelve weeks. I was very well paid, though all I had to do was hang around and think up some ideas. Secretaries, chauffeurs, and a house in Bel-Air were placed at my disposal. Cooks and gardeners were provided, along with journalists, pets, masseuses, and a daily supply of fresh flowers and new friends. I used the time to get to know those idols of my youth who were still alive: Mae West and Buster Keaton, George Raft, Joan Blondell, and Douglas Fairbanks Junior. I loved America because it was a ready-made film set. I became fascinated by how Americans erect their own facade and then start believing in it with all their heart. The myth of unlimited opportunity encourages Americans to think not only that dreams can come true, but that they should. I found this gullibility moving. Hoping, even though you know better! I imagined that no other place would suit me as well. The result was a flood of ideas. I laid one after the other on my producers’ desks. They leapt up from their chairs. “Magnificent!” they shouted, and “How extraordinary!” while simultaneously looking like they’d bet on a crippled horse. Not until years later, when I was leafing through my notes, did I realize that not one of my ideas showed the American dream. Instead, they were aimed at the army of the dissatisfied watching that dream in the dark theater, on the other side of the fourth wall. Among those smiling faces, I zoomed in on the odd characters who live their lives underwater, awaiting their one big chance to surface, to take a deep breath of air, just once, in a spasm of terrible clarity.
Since then, I’ve turned down all offers from Hollywood, but now, for the first time, I consider them. For Gelsomina. The Americans could find the money the Japanese have refused. It’s so tempting: a few concessions, and I can make another film. But just when I’m about to start explaining my plan to the assembled herd, the dining-room doors fly open and in walks Marcello! My friend, my soul mate! People nudge each other. I look at Gelsomina, who is watching my reaction to her surprise with moist, twinkling eyes. “Marcello!” I shout, “Marcellino, Marcelloto!” I hug him and I don’t let go. The surprise of seeing his familiar face makes me realize how unfamiliar everything here is. He tells me that he has come to present my Oscar tomorrow. Just a few words of his voice, and the roomful of people who are staring at us dissolves. For a moment, the glitter of sequined evening dresses becomes the afternoon sun catching the waves in the harbor, and suddenly we’re at an outdoor café halfway up the hills of Riccione, discussing the girls strolling under the plane trees with their mothers. I’m overcome by an emotion as unexpected as the one that once overtook me in the Garden of Forgotten Fruits, where my friend Tonino cultivates the endangered plants of the Maremma, when I recognized the spearmint my mother used to perfume her laundry.
Italy is my world. Its images are my language. If a man wears his hat at a certain angle, I can see that he comes from Livorno. The accent with which he greets me tells me that he was raised on potatoes with lard and fennel, and a gesture conveys the sorrow he feels about a choice he made in the war and has ever since regretted. I don’t know everything about my country, but her myths are my myths. I share her collective anxieties and fantasies. When I close my eyes, I see our church statues and the hostesses of the lotto show, I hear the songs and the slogans, all the things an Italian recognizes instantly.
I’m too old to learn how to talk all over again. Gelsomina and I spend the rest of the night huddled at a separate table with Marcello, far from the big shots. We just come from a different world. In America, everyone is the same because the opportunities are unlimited; in Europe, every person develops into a unique individual because new possibilities are constantly cut off. No matter what the producers offer me that evening, I turn them all down, and my only excuse is an amiable explanation that it’s much more important to me to have a dream than to see it come true.
Meanwhile, Gala is landing at the small airport of Catania. Gianni hasn’t even come with her, that’s how sure he is that he has her in his grip. After the previous night’s assault, the sight of Pontorax is a relief. The dottore is waiting and raises a hand in greeting as soon as he recognizes her, beaming impatiently.
“I missed you,” he says, driving off, and she’d like to believe it.
“I’m sure you found others to console you.”
“Others?” he snorts. “Who could want others after he’s had you?”
She’s not entirely pleased by the way he puts it, but something within her is aroused and begins to pray that it’s true. At any rate, he seems anxious for her to believe him.
“Didn’t Gianni tell you that I immediately canceled his deliveries after you?”
She lays a hand on his knee.
“Others!” he says, as if the mere word pains him. Neither speaks for a wh
ile. He’s driving himself this time, so badly that even the Sicilians notice and beep their horns. All at once, he pulls onto the shoulder of the highway, too agitated to wait. He turns to face her, staring at her intently. “Others! You staying away so long … I suppose that was because of others?”
She gazes at him and strokes his face.
“No,” she says, and, though it’s something only an actress can understand, she believes it herself. “No. There hasn’t been anyone since you.”
Trucks flash their lights as they bear down on them. Dr. Pontorax drives on. He doesn’t take the exit to the beach and the luxury hotels, but heads to his clinic instead. It’s a fortress-like building, constructed from blocks of lava from Etna, like the rest of the bleak city. Most of the staff have the weekend off, and the male nurses who see her walking down the corridors alongside the doctor look unsurprised. It is not an open institution. At every corner, Pontorax unlocks a barred door he closes again behind him.
“My wife suspects something,” he says. “She’s noticed a change since I met you. She’s paid the hotel staff at all my regular addresses to report on my activities. You’re staying here.”
He opens a cell. The walls are padded, but otherwise the furnishings are remarkably luxurious for a hospital. Gala remembers that once, when he was drunk, he boasted that influential Sicilian families sometimes asked him to get rid of bothersome family members, all legally, of course, and only after an official declaration of non compos mentis.
Muted light from valuable bronze lamps illuminates a luxuriant bunch of tulips, fresh from the Dutch flower auction. Beneath them, an expensive box of chocolates with an extravagant bow, and there’s a bottle of champagne in a cooler. On the accompanying card, the dottore declares his love again. He opens a steel wardrobe. Hanging inside are twelve magnificent dresses, with various pairs of high-heeled shoes beneath, all her size.