by Arthur Japin
“For you,” he whispers.
It suddenly occurs to her to wonder how a doctor got so inordinately wealthy.
In the same instant, Pontorax closes the steel door, slips off her shoes, and slides his tongue between her toes.
• • •
On the day of the Academy Awards, Gelsomina and I can no longer escape the madness. The circus starts early in the afternoon, when you’re expected to appear in front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in evening dress and stroll down an endless red carpet. Journalists and camera crews are positioned to your left and right behind crush barriers. They’re not interested in us at first, since I’m bald and Gelsomina has never had a face-lift, but as soon as our names are called they start yelling to attract our attention, and when we’re awkward enough to look in their direction, they ask about our favorite cocktails and who designed the handkerchief in my breast pocket. Hundreds upon hundreds of cameras flash until my head is spinning and I have to cover my face with my hands. Gelsomina, whose English is even worse than mine, mistakes this attention for admiration and wants me to stop and respond in detail, but I answer them all in Rimini dialect to discourage further questions. In this manner, we effortlessly overtake Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep and are the first to reach the VIP lounge. I collapse into an armchair in a fit of petulance, so dizzy from all the lights that I resolve to stay there and not speak to another soul until it’s time for me to ascend the stage in the evening.
Gala gets into an argument with her dottore over dinner. As she tries to make him realize that this will be her last visit, he does his best to convince her to come and live in Sicily as his mistress.
They finally patch it up and make love for the second time that day. She does her best to cushion the blow, but he remains resentful and goes home to spend the night with his wife.
Gala is left alone in the hospital room. Where else can she go? He hasn’t given her any money. She doesn’t even have enough lire for a bus ticket into town. She lies down and tries to sleep. Only after an hour does she realize that she doesn’t have any medicine. Normally Pontorax provides it, but this time, in his anger, he forgot. She calls for help, but this wing is not in use. She tells herself that she’s making a fuss about nothing, that everything will seem better in the morning. She falls asleep, only to be tormented hour after hour by demons that are too terrible and too dangerous to stir up in that cell. One moment keeps replaying in her mind: Pontorax saying, “I want you to be my wife.” He is on his knees beside the hospital bed.
“You’re already married,” she says, full of compassion.
He slowly rises to his feet. He straightens his coat. He is trembling with disappointment. Suddenly he storms out into the corridor.
“I’ve broken stronger people than you!” he bellows, locking the heavy steel door from the outside.
Just before the presentation, the VIP lounge is full of stars. I’m slumped in an armchair, seasick from all the swaying bottoms and glittering diamond spangles, when a skinny man accosts me. A fat cigar is protruding from the corner of his mouth, but because of the California smoking ban he’s only sucking it. He’s wearing an enormous cowboy hat with his tuxedo and introduces himself as Philastus Hurlbut. To my surprise, he speaks in a singsong Italian full of archaic expressions. Like all Americans, he greets me as if our mothers used to bathe us together every Friday night. Beaming with pride, he reveals himself as the brain behind Snaporama. I congratulate him without having the slightest idea what he’s talking about. While he showers me with compliments and treats me to a lecture on the decisive influence my films had on his adolescence, I signal for Gelsomina to come to my rescue, but she’s talking to Jack Lemmon on the other side of the room. Even gestures that a harbormaster could use to steer an oil tanker into port only elicit from her a cheerful wave. I am thus obliged to listen politely to how the young Philastus Hurlbut of Dripping Springs, Texas, located a copy of Dante’s Purgatorio in the school library and used it to master my language, which explains why he offered me a drink as if he were sitting in the council chamber of San Gimignano, trying to sway the Ghibelline faction. If I’m to take him at his word, his whole life has been nothing but one big buildup to the day he would meet me, and—he declares as if I’ve just won the lottery—“Today is that day!” I can’t get away from him. The room is hermetically sealed by security men and the only escape route leads back down the red carpet, past all those cameras. I don’t mention that I meet people who tell me this same story every day, and raise my glass to the Texan’s great moment as if the excitement were mutual. Then he starts off again about Snaporama. While he rattles on, I dredge up a vague memory of a piece of mail that I filed with all the letters from stalkers and other fanatics, the ones I save for a day when I might need something to light my barbecue. Like all the rest of them, he has mistaken the lack of reaction as encouragement and set to work. His Snaporama turns out to be a high-tech carnival attraction for one of the massive amusement parks that have arisen around the city’s big film studios. Like the rest, it will have a cinematic theme, and the theme, in this case, will be my work. If all goes according to plan, a ride will soon be whisking twenty visitors a minute—twelve hundred per hour—through my world. In keeping with the requirements of the age, it will loop the loop no less than three times.
I stare at Hurlbut as if I’d experienced the whole torment of the ride just by hearing about it. When I flatly tell him that I’m not interested, he insists on describing every detail of the insane enterprise.
The spectacle begins on the Via Veneto, where the visitors are seated on little red Vespas. As far as I can make out, they’ll then plunge into subterranean Rome, zooming down catacombs and zipping through Petronius’s bacchanalia. They are catapulted from the alleys of Casanova’s Venice to Rimini, where they’ll ride across the snow-covered square and into a brothel, where they’ll be treated to a ride past, over, and under the women from all my films, who have been re-created with the latest technology and are indistinguishable from the real thing. This dizzying roller coaster ends on the rolling hills of a gigantic replica of the breasts of La Saraghina, between which the poor visitors finally disappear in a free fall, at the end of which they shoot out of the Trevi Fountain, scooter and all, ending with a big splash in the pond, where a Marcello lookalike is waiting to pluck them off their Vespas. In this way, pleads Hurlbut, a whole new generation will be familiarized with all my ideas in less than three minutes.
“Three minutes, sir?” I exclaim, insulted, leaping to my feet. “I’ve spent my whole life stretching those few minutes into an entire oeuvre. I’d have to be mad to let you condense them again!” I think I must have stood up too quickly, because I start seeing stars. Everything is spinning. I try to drop back into my chair, but I can tell from the shriek that Gelsomina lets loose from the other side of the room that I’m not going to make it. I’m not hurt, but there is enormous consternation. Between all the faces bending over me, mainly lawyers wanting me to sue the organizers for inadequate air conditioning, I can no longer make out Philastus Hurlbut’s. Later, too, once I’ve shoved them all aside and am sitting calmly holding my darling’s hand, he’s nowhere to be seen. I must have given him an awful shock.
Gala awakes in the clinic. She hasn’t slept well. But the first thing she sees is a delicious breakfast set out with a fresh rose. The sun is shining. There’s nothing wrong, and the fears of the night have evaporated. Yet: the place still worries her. She spent enough months in hospitals when she was a child. Gianni can’t complain. She’s done what she said she would. Now she wants to go outside. What’s more, she’s got to have her pills. She calls out again. First just “Hello!” Then, a few times, “Pontorax!” Then, suddenly, she loses her nerve. She walks barefoot to the door. She wants to open it but doesn’t. She stands there paralyzed.
How often has she stood like this over the last few months, longing to talk to Snaporaz: next to the phone, staring down at it, but incapable of picking up the receiver
or dialing the number. She knew he loved her, but she was still terrified of discovering he didn’t. Now, too, despite her firm conviction that the door is unlocked, she doesn’t dare reach out to reassure herself with a simple gesture.
You’d have to be crazy to want to know the truth when it might confirm what you’ve been dreading. There are so many more possibilities in delusion.
And now she hears them in the distance: the insane, hallway after hallway of them, jiggling the steel handles of their cell doors. Their disappointment redoubles inside the building. It’s deafening. The sound of their fumbling at all those locks is like a murmuring sea. The noise builds like a wave.
Gala jumps away from the door. She prefers not to know so she can hold on to her hope.
“I need my medicine!” she screeches. “Who’s got my medicine?”
But it’s too late. The wave is approaching from behind. She feels a presence. Her head is drawn to the left. There, she sees the bloodred lining of the cape being wrapped around her.
“Yes!” she calls out blissfully. “Yes!” As if there salvation lies.
• • •
They save me till the last, like cream in a cornetto. In the auditorium, they show a compilation of my most famous scenes, which, from behind the screen, I see as ghosts. Marcello gives a speech, listing the others who have been granted this rare honor: Chaplin, King Vidor, Hitchcock, all men I admire deeply. I feel very clearly that they are with me. Not only with me: they take me by the arm, they push me forward. When I stroll onto the stage, a standing ovation erupts. It feels like it’s never going to end.
“Sit down, please!” I shout at the audience when I’ve had enough. “Make yourselves comfortable. The only one who needs to be uncomfortable here is me.”
“For you, Snaporaz,” says Sophia Loren, who is holding the Oscar. I have always found her breasts less astonishing than her muscles, which are also exposed this evening. “In appreciation of one of the silver screen’s greatest storytellers. Congratulations. May I give you a kiss?”
“Yes, please!” I exclaim eagerly, making the audience laugh. Then I turn to face them. I have a speech prepared, but I can’t be bothered. I curse myself because I’m afraid of being overcome by emotion. For people of my generation, in my country, “America” and “cinema” were virtually synonymous. Standing here now … My silence sets off a second ovation. I cut it short and do what everyone always does in this situation. I start thanking people.
“I cannot thank everyone,” I say. My eyes seek out Gelsomina. “But one name, the name of both a great actress and my wife …” She beams just as I expected, but she’s crying as well. The cameras seize on her. She appears in close-up on the enormous screen behind me. She bites her lip. Big fat tears roll down her cheeks. The director keeps her in the shot, so that I appear all over the world as a tiny little man at the chin of a weeping giantess. Two rivers stream out of her eyes and threaten to wash me away.
“Thank you, darling Gelsomina,” I manage to gasp, then add, “and for God’s sake stop crying.”
Then I take my Oscar from Sophia and walk away.
Meanwhile, in Rome, the next morning is dawning. The door to the Sistine Chapel is unbolted. Sangallo and his young friend are admitted. The viscount can’t stop grinning about his exceptional surprise. It’s Sunday. The museum is closed to the public and it’s the Japanese team’s day off. They are midway through their project. Their scaffolding bisects Michelangelo’s masterpiece. On one side, the colors are bright and warm; on the other, somber and sooty. The elderly viscount ascends in the freight elevator; the young man climbs the scaffolding with short, supple movements. The guard stays below and opens the latest issue of Oggi. At the top, both men need to pause, less to recover than to realize where they are.
High up, near the ceiling of the immense space, atop the scaffolding, a plank floor has been laid. The planks bounce with every step, reinforcing the sense of floating in space.
They have a good view of the more distant paintings. The nudes and the prophets are gigantic. Between them, the sibyls. Sangallo squints to study the one from Cumae.
“She wrote the future of the world in nine books. Then, disguised as an old woman, she took them to Rome, where she offered them to King Tarquin for three hundred gold coins. He thought that was a bit steep, even for the fate of humanity, and sent her away. Every few weeks she came back, each time with one book less, but always for the same price. Not until Rome was plagued by disease and mysterious omens, when a newborn babe screamed ‘Victory!’ and ships sailed through the clouds, did Tarquin relent. For three hundred gold coins, he bought the three remaining books, which contained all the foreknowledge that would make Rome great. Everything predicted in those books, from the death of Caesar on the steps of the Curia to the birth of Christ, has happened exactly as foretold. Imagine,” sighed Sangallo, “what mankind could have achieved if the sibyl hadn’t burned the other six.”
“Why didn’t the king have her rewrite the lost volumes?”
“What do you think? He asked her, of course, but she refused. ‘This has taught you,’ she said, ‘that whenever something is of real importance, the smallest fraction is as valuable as the whole.’”
Despite the impression it gives from below, the ceiling is anything but flat and smooth. The plaster has been dolloped on so roughly that it sags in places, so much so that the two men, much taller than the Japanese, often need to bend to avoid hitting their heads. They move cautiously toward the middle of the scaffold, trying to make out the figures above them, but that’s impossible. They are so close to the paintings that their perspective is completely distorted. Maxim realizes he’s looking at a face, but only because he can make out the color of skin against the blue of the sky and God’s purple robe. Then he spots an eye. And a mouth, which looks twisted, stretched out like an anamorphosis.
Maxim and Sangallo walk to the center of the chapel, where, at the moment of Creation, God and Adam are floating opposite one another. Not far away are two of the high, wheeled platforms where the restorers lie as they work. Maxim and Sangallo hoist themselves up to see the work of art just as Michelangelo saw it while he painted, no more than an arm’s length away. Maxim lies there, being solemnly impressed. For minutes on end, awestruck, he studies the brushstrokes in the plaster. He discovers a hair caught in the paint. It’s sticking out a little. He wonders whether to pull it out and keep it as a relic. He imagines the emotions of the old viscount, who has spent a lifetime looking forward to this windfall, and lies as motionless as possible to avoid disturbing him. He’s enjoying a few pink strokes in the purple, but when he finally dares to look to the side, Sangallo is already on his way back to the lift.
“What are you lying there for?” he says impatiently. “There’s nothing to see.”
“But what about the hand of the master?” Maxim splutters.
“Sometimes a miracle is so great you can only see it from a distance.”
“And the power of his strokes? The sureness of the touch of …”
Sangallo clambers into the elevator. He presses a button and slowly descends out of sight.
“If Michelangelo wanted us to lie around with our noses pressed up against it, he’d have painted the whole thing on the floor.”
Now Maxim is alone. He wonders whether he should go back down immediately or stick it out a little longer. He’ll never be this close again. Procrastinating, he recognizes God’s finger. It’s as big as a man, but unmistakable. Here is the fingertip, a fold of skin around the knuckle, the nail. It’s bent and looks relaxed. Maxim looks to see where it’s pointing. There’s Adam’s finger. It is more forceful and extended, longing for that touch. From this distance, it’s impossible to see who is giving life and who is receiving it. Is man born of God or does God come into being because man needs Him? Does the Almighty create the insignificant or vice versa? Contrary to what Maxim always thought, the two fingers do not touch. They strain to reach each other with all their might, but fai
l. There is a strip of sky between them. Their enormous fingers press against it in vain. Maxim measures the gap with his hands. It’s nothing. A bit of air—as unbridgeable as the invisible magnetic field between two like poles.
“That’s what happens when you relax after a stressful period,” Pontorax explains. His face has come so close to Gala’s that their noses brush. “That’s still the best recipe for a grand mal.” She feels his breath on her eyeballs. She wants to blink but can’t. Her upper and lower eyelids are held back with little clamps. Leather straps hold her head down on the examination table. When she tries to feel where she is, she can’t move her arms, either. Her wrists and ankles are attached to some medical apparatus, and a tight belt is chafing around her hips.
As soon as she opens her mouth to scream, he inserts a hardwood bit to stop her from biting herself.
“Take it easy, now,” the doctor says solicitously. He mixes a liquid at a tall granite counter. “Fortunately, you’re in the best of hands.”
She rolls her eyes in every direction to try to make out the obsolete devices she is at the mercy of. There are wires going to her head. Now she can also feel the moist paste that attaches the electrodes to her scalp.
“You understand,” whispers Dr. Pontorax, who is approaching with a pipette. “Above all, I blame myself. I don’t know who caused you so much stress, but I’m the one you dared to relax with. There you have it, even a man with the best of intentions can unleash something awful.”
He presses his lips against her forehead.
“Yes,” he sighs, “a man who loves has a lot to answer for.”
He drips the local anesthetic, which he has prepared lovingly, into one eye and then the other. Gala is shocked by the cold drops rolling over her dry eyeballs. Now Pontorax positions her directly before a battery of lamps and pulls a lever. She tries to look away, but her muscles have already stopped responding.