Set Me Free

by Salvatore Striano

  Satisfied, I step back and look at my handiwork. I realise it’s the first time I’ve really, with my own hands, made something for her.

  When I hand it to her the next day during her visit, she gets pissed off.

  ‘What’d you do that for? Who’d you give my photo to? One of those jerk-off friends of yours—who knows what he did with it before sticking it here?’

  She can’t believe that I made it myself. Better not tell her I had help from Ferdinand—she’ll think it’s the name of some lifer.

  ‘Are you dumb?’ is all I say in protest. ‘I only ever look at your photos at night, so that nobody else sees them!’

  She’s always been able to tell when I’m lying, so she sees now that I’m telling the truth. The expression on her face is one of disbelief.

  ‘You made it? Really? What brought that on?’

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ I ask, a little disappointed.

  ‘Of course I like it! I like it a lot!’ And she bursts into tears.

  ‘Oh God, Monica…don’t cry…’ I don’t know where to look now. I’m pleased that she’s touched, but who knows what Gaetano will think. He’s over in the corner. His wife cries all the time, but it’s because she wants to leave him. ‘I didn’t want to make you cry…’

  ‘No, no, it’s just that it’s such a beautiful thing…but…you’re not you anymore.’ She looks at me, her eyes a mix of tears and astonishment.

  She’s right. I’m no longer me. But, at the same time, I’m more myself than ever before. I’m still Sasà, but now I’m also Ariel, and Ferdinand, too. All I can say is, ‘It’s because this theatre thing is doing me good.’

  ‘You’re turning this Shakespeare thing into an obsession…’

  Women. They worry when you’re doing badly, they worry when you’re doing well, if you’re doing the right thing, or the wrong thing…I shake my head, trying not to get emotional myself, otherwise this will start looking like a Greek tragedy, and I’m not a fan of those.

  I try to explain. ‘It’s because he…Shakespeare…tells me the story of my own life. He allows me to make his words my own, to say them in my own way. He’s in my head because what he wrote, you see, is true for everybody.’

  ‘As long as you’re feeling good…’ she says shyly, still not quite understanding. ‘And as long as you keep making beautiful things like this!’ She points to the mirror with her photo and finally smiles, my Miranda.

  Maybe it’s true, I think, as I go back to my cell. Maybe I am turning it into an obsession. But with all this metaphor business, Shakespeare really opens up your mind. The stuff he writes, the situations and characters he creates—they’re not only true in that one situation. He’s constantly renewing himself, so he never gets old. Thanks to Shakespeare and Ariel, I’ve begun to understand my life, and to read it differently from before.

  Before now, quite simply, I hadn’t read the script properly. Thanks to him, I’ve learned that the world is not chaotic, I just never knew how to interpret it. That’s the greatest tip an artist could ever receive.

  But am I an artist?

  9

  ‘Pardon, master, I will be correspondent to command And do my spiriting gently.’

  Ariel in The Tempest

  Act I, Scene II

  ‘Prospero’s not that harsh in this scene!’ I can’t take it anymore. This time it’s coming straight from the heart. When Cosimo turns around to look at me, his eyes are already spitting flames.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Cosimo.’ We’ve been rehearsing together for months but I’m still deferential towards him. I know he prefers it that way. ‘But the thing is, over the course of the play, Prospero changes emotionally. He starts out being very harsh, and goes all the way through to granting forgiveness…’ Cosimo might be the lead actor and head of the company, but his Prospero keeps the same level of rage from beginning to end. He doesn’t grow, he doesn’t change and he’s not convincing.

  ‘What a load of nonsense!’ he snorts. ‘Prospero’s a harsh man, bitter…’

  ‘He is at the beginning,’ I say, nodding. ‘But then he finds peace. At the end he weighs it all up, delivers his judgments, and puts everything right. He grants the dukedom to his son-in-law, along with his daughter, because they’re the next generation, he forgives his brother, he forgives everybody, and he says to the good Gonzalo: “noble friend, you helped me, I respect and value you.”’

  I look across at Proietti, who squares his shoulders proudly. He’s perfect as Gonzalo. A man in his sixties who fully embodies his role, who truly believes in it. His hair is completely white and when he acts his bright blue eyes become tinged with red because he’s close to tears. He always gets emotional, and he’s right to, because his character has one of the most beautiful monologues in anything I’ve read so far by Shakespeare, and by now I’ve read a great deal.

  ‘You want to teach me how to play my character, but you haven’t understood a thing,’ Cosimo cuts me off disdainfully. ‘Prospero accepts the situation, but he doesn’t forgive those who betrayed him. And they were the very people who were closest to him, too.’

  I’m guessing in his past Cosimo must have been betrayed by some real infami.

  ‘Well, obviously…people who don’t know you can’t really hurt you, can they?’ I point out. ‘You’d have to be really unlucky to get betrayed by someone who doesn’t even know you.’

  ‘That doesn’t justify it!’ Cosimo protests. ‘It’s the disappointment over the betrayal that explains Prospero’s rage.’

  ‘But what you’re taking on stage isn’t Prospero’s rage,’ I say, even though I know I shouldn’t. ‘It’s Cosimo’s rage.’

  He purses his lips and I can see that he’s absolutely furious, like he’s never been before. This is where all his accumulated frustrations really emerge. I know he’d like to throw me out, but he can’t, and this makes him even angrier.

  ‘This discussion is really interesting,’ says Cavalli, stepping in before things turn ugly. ‘But let’s start back up again. It was going well.’

  I keep quiet, but I’m not entirely grateful to him for intervening. I’m not the kind of person who’ll never change his opinion, but nor am I someone who’s happy to keep his mouth shut. I’d really like to resolve this Prospero business. I don’t like the way Cosimo plays him: so harsh, bitter and unmoving. I feel like he’s taking something away, a lot away in fact, from the greatness of the character Shakespeare created.

  I don’t see Prospero as a negative character. He’s not a cop, who weighs everything up and then delivers your sentence. He makes a point of promising Ariel freedom and giving his blessing to his daughter’s wedding, but chooses not to eliminate the men who twice tried to kill him. He works on them through the heart, showing by example. He basically says to his brother, ‘I do not despise you; you should despise yourself.’ His punishment is to make his brother ashamed of himself, simply by telling him what a wicked infame he was. A voice can do more harm than the sword: to do good requires deeds, but true vengeance comes through words. Words can wound more, yet leave the body intact. They cause damage on the inside, not on the outside, but with that damage they can heal. This is exactly the message Shakespeare sends with Prospero: when you find yourselves in truly serious difficulty, talk to one another, discuss it, use the word as an instrument, ultimately, for healing hatred. This is the true magic of Prospero: turning vendetta into justice.

  But how can you convey that message if Prospero stays enraged right to the end? If the acting doesn’t show his great act of forgiveness?

  I’m not going to keep quiet.

  ‘Prospero is a man of his word,’ I start up again, determined. I see Cavalli signalling for me to be quiet from behind Cosimo’s back. I see Cosimo stiffen; he’s already offended. I don’t care. These guys haven’t understood Prospero. It’s up to me to defend him. Since I’ve already put my foot in it, I decide to go all the way. I get up on the highest bunk bed, the one Ar
iel often jumps and speaks from. ‘Prospero is a man of mercy. In the end, who else shows forgiveness? Only Prospero. What is it that’s harsh about this man? What was he supposed to do? Is it his discipline that you’ve got a problem with?’ I ask mournfully. All the others are looking up at me.

  ‘It doesn’t hurt to be a little harsh in this perverted world, where no one respects anyone anymore. Prospero absolves everybody in the end, forgives them all, reconciles them and even helps two people come together, one of whom is his only daughter, so that a new generation can begin…Who has that sort of ability nowadays? Where are the great men? Where are the Prosperos? Send someone out to find them, because we sure need them…There are no longer any masters. Or, perhaps, we all want to be masters, but nobody wants to do the hard yards.’

  They have to understand that Prospero is not a harsh man for the sake of it, but out of a sense of responsibility. He’s harsh because he sees that human beings are undisciplined. Prospero comes up close and he says to you: ‘You’re a false and insolent swindler, but you should be living a pure, honest life.’ He says: ‘You can’t do that, how dare you?’ We should have more school principals like Prospero. We could do with a Prospero in Naples. We should welcome figures with this kind of harshness, but alongside it, a sense of justice.

  ‘Think about it for a moment. Prospero even saves Caliban and turns him good. In this way he shows that if you want to do a good deed, you can transform even the very worst material. Like Ariel, Caliban is a servant, but while Ariel is a good spirit—and Prospero is harsh with him because he’s too naïve and he has so much to learn—Caliban is an animal. And yet he doesn’t eliminate him. If there’s one quality Prospero has above all others, it is a love of life, and of love itself. He shows it in the way he allows his daughter to share with Ferdinand everything that Prospero never got to share with his own wife, and through that act he restores everything to the way it ought to be. He’s not capable of hatred. He has the capacity to govern, but in such an evil world he can’t do it, because everybody is attached to power, apart from him. It’s no surprise that he’s enraged. He’s been betrayed not once, but twice…yet in spite of it all, he doesn’t line the traitors up for execution, like he could. No, he uses a new language: a language of forgiveness. This is the strongest element of all, stronger even than revenge. As strong as freedom.’

  On the word ‘freedom’, my voice catches in my throat. I’ve yet been able to come to an agreement with freedom.

  I look down at all the astonished faces and I realise I’ve given a monologue of my own, as though I fancy myself some kind of Shakespeare. I also realise that Cosimo is never going to forgive me.

  I jump down off the bed and run to Gaetano and tell him I’m unwell. I ask him to take me back to my cell or get another guard to take me back. I’m in too much of a mess to stick around. He can tell I’m upset and I manage to get taken to my cell. The whole way back, Prospero’s exchange with Ariel keeps pounding through my head.

  How now? Moody? What is’t thou canst demand?

  My liberty.

  Before the time be out? No more!

  I had trouble with Prospero to begin with, but in rehearsal I learned to accept that I have to serve him to gain my freedom. The fact is, though, when you’re in prison, talk of freedom hurts. A lot.

  I am Ariel. I messed up and I lost my liberty, both physical and emotional. If I mess up again, I’m not getting out. Prospero warns me, tells me what not to do, if I don’t want to make things worse without realising it. And if I accuse him of behaving unjustly because he hasn’t yet given me my freedom, he attacks me, and rightly so. Have I forgotten how things used to be? I was imprisoned in a tree, imprisoned in my own story. He gave me another story. And now I’m complaining? I deserve to go back into that tree if I can’t appreciate what I’ve received.

  And I do appreciate it, truly, I think, pacing up and down in my cell. I’m not like Prospero. I can’t always be just and reasonable. I’ve taken a lot of short cuts in life, and not by chance.

  In the evening I visit don Pasquale. I need to talk to him. Just seeing him go through the motions of making coffee calms me down. It’s like a ritual.

  ‘I had an argument with Cosimo.’

  ‘With Cosimo? How come? Did he order you about too much?’

  Don Pasquale knows me so well. The only person I take orders from is my mother.

  ‘Not this time. In fact, I ordered him about too much.’ And I explain what happened.

  When I’ve finished speaking he sits down in front of me with an intense look on his face, unlike any I’ve seen before.

  ‘Sasà,’ he says in a serious tone, ‘why is this business with Prospero having such an effect on you?’

  ‘I told you! Because Cosimo just doesn’t get Prospero, he doesn’t know how to play him and—’

  ‘There are other actors in the group who aren’t playing their characters well,’ he gently reminds me.

  ‘But he should be able to. He’s the head of the company!’

  ‘The problem is not that he doesn’t know how to act,’ he replies, not letting up. ‘It’s that he doesn’t know how to play Prospero.’

  ‘Yes. And that’s no small thing.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he says, nodding. ‘But it still doesn’t explain why you’re getting so worked up.’

  ‘Because…because I don’t like seeing an injustice done to Prospero.’

  ‘You don’t like seeing an injustice done to Prospero…’ Don Pasquale’s eyes narrow. He’s a falcon about to swoop down on his prey. ‘…Or to your father?’

  He’s gone straight for my heart. Those dark eyes of his capture me and I feel myself whirling and plummeting into a well, where all my memories are held. When I was nine years old, my mother was the woman in my life; I wanted to marry someone exactly like her. And my father was a hero, next to whom I ought only to have felt ashamed, even at that age.

  I didn’t belong to his stock: they were all good people, hardworking, incapable of malice or dishonesty. I was the alien, the black sheep. Worse—I was patchy and stained, ugly and mangy. I had never done anything to be worthy of his name—and perhaps never would.

  My father could never understand why we did all that stuff—cutting cocaine, even in the house, carrying weapons—he just couldn’t understand. And I couldn’t understand him.

  ‘What’s the point of going to the docks at five-thirty every morning to unload a ship, just so you can come home at the end of the day too worn out even to lift a spoon from your bowl to your mouth?’ I used to sneer.

  It was only later that I understood. After the turf war and the crisis, when I had to go into exile in Spain. That was when I understood that I’d taken after my mother in every way. She taught me to love my friends but respect my enemies. She taught me to fight, and to survive. Whereas my father, a man of few words and many actions, tried until his dying breath, but never taught me anything. Or maybe he taught me values I didn’t realise I’d learned until I met Prospero: patience and justice.

  Prospero who turns everything upside down, who turns black into white. Prospero who, after so many years, placed a hand on my head and said to do what I was told and ‘thou shalt ere long be free’. Prospero who helped me understand how I should behave when I recognise love, whether my own or witnessed. How to respect it, how to observe it. Prospero who explained that you should never take revenge, not under any circumstances, because it will never fill you up, in fact it empties you out, because it even takes from you the victim, the person you’d attacked in the hope you might hate yourself a little less. Prospero who showed me that it is wiser to humiliate than to eliminate, that cold revenge just means killing yourself day after day, until you turn around and say, ‘Enough, I understand how I should behave.’

  No wonder I got pissed off when I heard Prospero being denigrated.

  ‘Don Pasquale, you’re a genius.’ It’s only when I speak, that I realise I’m sobbing.

  ‘Not at all. I’m a fa
ilure.’ He’s choked up, too, and he looks at me as though I’m his son.

  ‘Don’t say that.’ I’m alarmed by the desperation in his voice. All this time locked up inside himself is not healthy. I’ve been aware of that for a while. The counsellors try to get him leave permits but he says to give them to someone else. He’s crushed. He’s let himself get fucked over by prison and now that I’m seeing him in tears for the first time, I have confirmation of this. He’s in exile inside his cell, on his island, but he’s too weak to summon up a tempest.

  ‘I don’t have the strength anymore. Maybe I’ll end it all,’ he murmurs.

  ‘You don’t mean you want to kill yourself?’ The shock stops my crying and takes away my manners. But he doesn’t take offence at my brutal question.

  ‘I have nothing to do in this world,’ he says in reply.

  ‘But why? Don’t you know how many people out there love you and need you?’

  I’m Ariel, trying to fix everything, but I have before me a broken Prospero. Between the two of us we don’t have enough certainties to get through a single evening.

  All we can do is hug in silence.

  In here, you can’t do anything for anybody else, I think, as I feel his tears on my neck. Unlike Prospero, don Pasquale can neither give nor take forgiveness.

  What about me? Can I forgive, or be forgiven?

  ‘You’re contagious.’ The section head has an unfriendly look on her face. And yet I haven’t proposed anything bad. ‘You make lifers cry, you get the guards dancing in the corridors…’ They must have told her about yesterday, when I was washing the floors, and practised in front of Gaetano a few of the leaps I plan to do on stage as Ariel. Damn CCTV cameras. ‘And now this. Doing theatre is bad for you. You’re dreaming too much.’

  On this point, she’s probably right. Is it possible to dream too much? It seems like a good idea to me, and it’s clear by now that I’m not someone who gives up easily on a good idea.