The House of Blue Leaves and Chaucer in Rome
Page 9
Forgive my sins …
Help me …
The fourth church …
MATT’S room. PETE throws the door open, FATHER SHAPIRO looks in at MATT. The PILGRIMS’ cries are loud.
FATHER SHAPIRO: Oh god. Does he want solace?
PETE: Matt. Sarah. This is my new best friend, Father Shapiro from New York, currently appearing at the Vatican.
FATHER SHAPIRO: Was he on the bus?
MATT: What bus?
PETE: No, my friend wasn’t on the bus. He had cancer.
FATHER SHAPIRO: What a relief. Close that door.
PETE shuts the door. The cries are muted.
Thank god. I’m all solaced out. Let me sit here till their sedatives take effect. We’re going to sedate them. Send them on gurneys to the airport. Get them out of Rome. Let them wake up over the Atlantic. They’re very angry pilgrims. They come to Rome to have their sins forgiven, and one little collision, they suddenly want to sue the Pope.
MATT: Sue the Pope?
FATHER SHAPIRO: The trouble with being stationed at the Vatican is all people do is bring their spiritual tsurris over and over.
MATT: Tsurris? Are you a rabbi?
FATHER SHAPIRO: My mother was Irish Catholic. My father? The one in heaven’s enough for me. I tell the pilgrims not to rush. Naturally pilgrims’ mini-tour bus number one from New Haven, Connecticut, collides into minitour bus number two full of equally desperate pilgrims from Sao Paolo, Brazil, right outside St. Peter’s while racing to Maria Maggiore. “Get me to the church on time.” They can’t blame that on me or the Pope or the Vatican. Let them sue the tour company.
PETE: Why do they keep saying four churches?
FATHER SHAPIRO: The rule of the Holy Year—II Giubileo!
SARAH: The what? I’m from New York—
FATHER SHAPIRO: Where have you been? It’s July! Forty-five million pilgrims in Rome so far!
PETE: We stay out of downtown.
FATHER SHAPIRO: You come to Rome during the year 2000, visit four special—not just churches—four Basillicas out of seven! I recommend St. Peter’s. St. Giovanni Lateran. Maria Maggiore. San Croce in Gerusalemme. Go to confession and communion. Pray for the Pope’s intention—Bingo! No time in Purgatory. Straight up to Paradise. A very good deal.
PETE: Nobody believes that.
FATHER SHAPIRO: Eighty million pilgrims do.
MATT: Eight zero?
FATHER SHAPIRO: That’s how many pilgrims will show up by the end of the year. Everybody’s predicted chaos—but, thanks to me, it all appears to be quiet. My fear—we’re going to be seeing more and more of these disasters as the Holy Year goes on. Regina Margherita is just one hospital. Every hospital in Rome sooner or later will be filled with mangled pilgrims. And it’s only July! We got pilgrims flying into Rome, walking, hitchhiking, illegal aliens in boats sailing to Rome, camping out in doorways, along the highways. And it’s not just Catholics! Queen Elizabeth shows up this week. Why? Who knows? Arafat wanted to come. I told the Pope no way! And in the mit en derrinen, it’s got to be International Gay Pride Week! Let us not forget Fashion Week. Versace. Armani. Gucci. Pucci. A truck load of models on a runway into St. Peter’s have to get blessed. A human Hiroshima. Not to mention Scorsese’s out at Cinecitta, making the biggest movie since Cleopatra. I had to go out to bless the set of Gangs of New York. But whatever Marty wants, Marty gets. I told Leonardo de Caprio he must be from Capri, so I’m schlepping him there next week to dig up any relatives.
MATT: Am I still under sedation?
FATHER SHAPIRO: I’m working my tuchis off to keep this chaos out of the papers: Rome is out of control. There’s only thirty-five thousand hotel rooms for eighty million pilgrims. One big traffic jam. And you don’t care?
PETE: No.
SARAH: No.
FATHER SHAPIRO: It is so refreshing to meet people who don’t give a rat’s ass about the Holy Year. Every day greedy pilgrims arrive. Make God give me this. Make God give me that. Have God change the world to fit me—
PETE, to MATT: Sound familiar?
MATT: All your sins forgiven?
FATHER SHAPIRO: Every one.
SARAH: What about normal confession? I thought—
FATHER SHAPIRO: You thought confession wipes the slate clean? Confession’s like pleading guilty. You’re put on parole. You’re out on bail. When you die, you might not go to Hell, but you’re a sure bet to go to Purgatory, which is Hell with an exit sign. Do the Holy Year Shuffle and you are clean!
PETE: Suppose Hitler showed up?
FATHER SHAPIRO: Hitler, Hitler—yes, go on—
PETE: Der Fuhrer comes to Rome, hits four churches, spouts off those prayers. Would God then say, “Good boy, Adolf, go in peace, now you’re pure”?
FATHER SHAPIRO: Is Hitler sorry?
PETE: Hitler is really sorry.
FATHER SHAPIRO: Then God would forgive him.
MATT: Stalin?
PETE: Charley Manson?
SARAH: Pol Pot?
MATT: Idi Amin?
FATHER SHAPIRO: Anyone can be forgiven. It’s all in the attitude.
PETE: God is a softie.
FATHER SHAPIRO: That’s what I don’t like about God. I like a harsh God. A good old-fashioned punishing God. An eye for an eye. I liked it when everything was a sin. Oh! To let your hair down!
MATT: What kind of sins do they want forgiven?
FATHER SHAPIRO: Ask yourself first—what is sin?
SARAH: The Seven deadlies—I can’t remember—
FATHER SHAPIRO: Pale gas.
PETE: Pale gas?
FATHER SHAPIRO: Pale: Pride. Avarice. Lust. Envy. Gas: Gluttony. Anger. Sloth.
FATHER SHAPIRO, PETE & SARAH: Pale gas.
MATT: Add ‘C’ for cancer. This cancer is a sin. I’m guilty of cancer.
SARAH: You don’t believe that. Disease is not a sin.
PETE: He had cancer. Do you have special prayers for that?
FATHER SHAPIRO: Please. Go to a therapist.
MATT: If I crawled to the four churches and said the required prayers, would I be allowed to paint again the way I want?
FATHER SHAPIRO: Saints can do things like that. I hate saints.
PETE: He’s better than a saint. He’s an artist.
MATT: A painter.
FATHER SHAPIRO: What are you doing in Rome? Go to Milano. That’s where the scene is. Gianni and Marella Agnelli took me to the new galleries in Torino. I was at the opening of the Guggenheim in Bilbao! I blessed Bilbao! You know Frank Gehry?
MATT: No.
FATHER SHAPIRO: Oh baby, get thee to Bilbao.
MATT: I’m in Rome.
FATHER SHAPIRO: Well. Maybe there’s hope. They are building a new modern art center here designed by Zaha Hadid, the Iranian architect out of London. A fabulous woman. You know her? A gas—
MATT: Please.
FATHER SHAPIRO: I went to L.A. to bless the Getty! Does Steve Martin have any of your work?
MATT: No.
FATHER SHAPIRO: He will now. Let me introduce you to him! Steve comes to Rome. I take him to Piperno’s for the artichokes!
A GRIZZLED PILGRIM appears in the door on crutches and yells at FATHER SHAPIRO.
GRIZZLED PILGRIM: I stole money to come to Rome so God would forgive my sins. Why would God put me in a bus crash before I got to the fourth church?
FATHER SHAPIRO: God works in ways that we don’t always understand. You want to read something nice? Read the Book of Job. Wonderful story—
FATHER SHAPIRO slams the door on him.
Excuse me—these pilgrims—the attitude—Look at you! Young people! Wonderful! Here’s my card at the Vatican press office. Marriages. Annulments. I got an exorcism at four. At six p.m. yet again, the Holy Father’s apologizing to the Jews. Whatever you want. Call me. I’m good to know. Would you like to come to the Pope’s mass at seven a.m.? Only a hundred people invited everyday.
SARAH: No no—
PETE: Thank you—we’re working.
MATT: Father? I have to tell you I don’t believe in God.
FATHER SHAPIRO: I have to tell you that is so refreshing.
FATHER SHAPIRO blesses them and goes. They adjust the chairs, two in front of two. Bright music.
A cabdriver aka IL TASSINARO appears and takes the driver’s seat. MATT and SARAH sit in the back, PETE sits next to the driver.
PETE, to us: We checked out of the hospital and called a taxi to take us back up to the Academy. The cab moved slowly in a traffic jam.
To IL TASSINARO:
The Accademia Americana—the Gianicolo—Porto San Pancrazio—via Angelo Masina Numero cinque
SARAH: The way you speak Italian. It’s like being in a dubbed movie.
PETE: Giving a cabbie an address is not speaking Italian.
IL TASSINARO: Ah, Lei è italiano
PETE: No no. I love Italy. You say “Ciao, bambino,” they say “Ahh, Lei è nato qui”—“you’re born here!” Relax, Matt! You’re safe.
IL TASSINARO is on his cell phone, gesticulating wildly.
MATT, contracts in pain: Tell him to drive carefully—my stitches—
PETE, to IL TASSINARO: Lento, piu lento! I know you’re making an important phone call, but do you think—
SARAH: Are we the only three people in Rome not on a tele-fonino?
PETE, to us: I looked up. I saw a blimp floating over Rome. I tried to read the words. Is it “Goodyear”?
MATT: These stitches—
SARAH: Lean on me—Look! Look up there on the Roman wall—
PETE: Nude girls? Am I crazy?
MATT: Where?
SARAH: They’ve gone—Am I seeing things?
IL TASSINARO, to PETE: La rivista “Hustler” sta facendo un servizio fotografico sulle donne Romane del Giubileo. Senza veli.
PETE: “Hustler magazine is doing a nude photo spread on the women of Rome in the Holy Year—Senza veli—without veils.”
MATT: Ahhh, Fellini! You didn’t go far enough—
PETE: Do that! I haven’t forgotten my bet. Idea Number One: Porno in the Vatican on the steps of Saint Peter’s.
MATT: That’s not an idea.
PETE: Idea Number Two. Take mud from the Tiber River. Paint portraits of ancient Roman heroes in the same mud from the same river those heroes swam in! Drank from! Bathed in! The river of time.
SARAH: Oh, I like that.
MATT: No.
IL TASSINARO curses; they are stuck in traffic.
PETE: Some sort of march. My god! Is that a centurion in a gold jock strap?
SARAH: Look! A lion with its mane painted purple!
PETE: It’s International Gay Pride week—Hurrah!
IL TASSINARO: Questo cazzo del Giubileo.
PETE: “Fucking Holy Year.’” We’ll be here till the next mill—
There is an explosion.
PETE, to us: I saw thick smoke ahead. Flames. I got out and looked into the smoke.
FATHER SHAPIRO comes out of the flames. He is very happy.
FATHER SHAPIRO: What did I tell you? Clockwork collisions.
PETE: Another crash?
FATHER SHAPIRO: Another crash. The bus driver driving the Portuguese pilgrims apparently saw a transvestite Madonna who opened her blue robes and flashed a pene. The driver drove into a mini-bus full of blind Canadian pilgrims.
PETE: How many churches did they get to?
FATHER SHAPIRO: The good news is these poor pilgrims made it to all four churches.
MATT: Are they all right?
FATHER SHAPIRO: Not one survivor. They died happy. Including the Madonna. No sins. Everything forgiven. Right up to heaven. At least they can’t sue. Can you give me a lift? I have to get back to the Vatican Public Relations office—Where are you headed?
PETE: The Accademia Americana—
FATHER SHAPIRO: Up on the Gianicolo? I have so many friends up there! You know Bob Rauschenberg? Scoot over—let me in!
MATT: No! We don’t have room—my stitches—
FATHER SHAPIRO: I’m trying to help you.
MATT: I don’t need any help.
FATHER SHAPIRO: Hey, you’re an artist. You need all the help you can get.
MATT: I can’t paint.
FATHER SHAPIRO: Then get to work! You wanted prayers? To work is to pray. Laborare est orare! Take them to the American Academy in Rome!
MATT, PETE and SARAH turn out to us. Music. Vivaldi.
MATT: And we came to The American Academy.
If there were curtains for the hospital and the taxi, they drop down, revealing the terra cotta splendor of the Academy. The fellows appear.
FELLOW, to us: A year living on the highest point of Rome!
FELLOW, to us: This magnificent McKim Mead & White Beaux Arts building—
FELLOW, to us: One hundred and thirty rooms.
FELLOW, to us: Bedrooms. Studios.
FELLOW, to us: J.P. Morgan bought the land because it looks down onto the French Academy.
FELLOW, to us: Joseph Brodsky, the Nobel Prize—winning poet, said that being at the American Academy was a shortcut to paradise.
FELLOW, to us: Beautiful gardens—
FELLOW, to us: —Where Galileo used his telescope to find man’s true place in the universe. You still feel his passion for the truth!
FELLOW, to us: Over there is the villa where Garibaldi lived while leading the revolutionaries on to unify Italy.
FELLOW, to us: The air here is filled with his zeal!
SARAH, to us: We’re all fellows here—
PETE, to us: The genius of the Academy is the way it forges a disparate pack of highly talented quirky people into a lucid community.
SARAH, to us: The only rule—
PETE, to us: Unspoken—
SARAH, to us: —Is everybody eats together once or twice a day—lunch—dinner—the cross pollination—
PETE, to us: —Cross-pollinazione?
SARAH, to us: Musicians meet archaeologists. Architects meet writers. Painters meet scholars—
PETE, to us: That’s how I met Matt and Sarah.
MATT & SARAH, to us: That’s how we met Pete.
PETE, to us: We all became friends.
MATT, to us: And friends we are. Jules and Jim.
SARAH, to us: I am Jeanne Moreau.
PETE, to us: Romulus and Remus.
SARAH, to us: I am not the She-Wolf.
MATT, to us: She is definitely not the She-Wolf.
PETE, to us: The Academy possesses one of the great classical libraries where I spend my time. I’m getting back to my fingernails.
MATT: Across the way from the front gate is a white temple. It is my painting studio. I don’t belong here.
RENZO, the gatekeeper, aka II Portiere, appears, laden with flowers and cards.
RENZO: Benvenuto, forestiero! Come sta! Welcome home! Look at all the cards and flowers! Everybody sends you the best.
SARAH: Go in—get to work.
MATT: Give my prize to the runner-up.
PETE, to MATT: Be a paratrooper. Get in there. We’ll find a new way for you to work.
SARAH and MATT go into the studio. It is filled with coffee cans, brushes, plastic bottles, palettes thick with paint. Squeezed tubes of paint. Canvases. SARAH takes clean clothes out of a plastic bag.
SARAH: Give me the old Pollack pants—give me—take them off.
MATT takes off his paint-stained pants, SARAH hands him clean pants.
SARAH: I’m going to bring you some nice, clean, minimalist pants.
SARAH goes. MATT, alone, holds his paint-stained trousers to him.
MATT: I used to be a painter. No! I am a painter.
MATT screams in defiance, kicks off his shoes, flings down the pants, pulls off his shirt and squeezes a tube of paint onto his hands. He begins rubbing the paint onto a blank canvas. The blue is fierce, dark, sensuous. He dips his arm into a bucket of paint and flings it on a blank canvas. SARAH stands at the door of the studio.
SARAH, screams: No!
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br /> Her cry echoes. MATT turns in anger.
MATT: Get out! Go!
MATT, howling maniacally, smears paint on the large canvas.
PETE, to us: I was in the library when I heard Sarah. I ran out through the cortile down the main stairs of the Academy into Matt’s studio.
PETE sees MATT painting with his bare hands, the blue paint streaming down his arms, his body, fighting off SARAH, who tries to restrain him. PETE tackles MATT, throws him down and straddles him. MATT screams in pain. SARAH covers MATT with a towel.
SARAH: Get this paint off you.
She takes a can of turpentine and pours it on MATT’S arms, hands, chest, SARAH takes rags and wipes the blue paint off MATT.
SARAH: You’re sweating. It’s making you sick.
MATT: Withdrawal symptoms from not painting.
PETE: It’s turpentine. Wash it off. Get some air.
SARAH: Oh Christ. Look what it says on the label: “May produce cancer—liver damage”!
MATT: Let me work—
SARAH: Baby oil—let me get baby oil—
SARAH rummages through her bag and finds baby oil. She starts cleaning MATT.
PETE: I will kill you with my bare hands but you are not going to kill yourself with—Open the windows—the doors. Is that eggs cooking? Renzo! Renzo!
RENZO comes in.
PETE: We need fans! Multi ventilatori! The smell in here—
RENZO goes.
SARAH, to us: Matt mixes his own paints—he melts beeswax—
MATT, to us: Ten parts linseed oil. One part lead. A few eggs.
PETE: Come over to my place for dinner. We’re serving death.
RENZO carries in lots of electric fans. RENZO turns them on.
SARAH: Look at the labels on this tube: “Cancer agent. Exposure may cause difficulty to the testes.” No!
PETE, reading the tube: “Nervous system, kidney, or bone-marrow difficulty. Contains soluble lead.”
MATT: I’m freezing—
SARAH: “When using, do not eat, drink, or smoke. Wear a work apron.”
PETE: Apron? He works naked!
SARAH: “For further health information, call 1-800-628-3385 in Piscataway, New Jersey 08855.” That’s a help.