by Pino Corrias
All of them in search—so distant from those quarters of the real world—of a little light, a little money, a little good fortune to stave off at all costs the current of the drowned, to remain in the dry, warm world of the saved. But all of them also eagerly awaiting the enchanting instant (that Rome reserves in certain postcard sunsets and at dawn in the empty streets of the center and in certain piazzas of the early twentieth century and among the gardens of the residential buildings and on the terraces from which it is possible to glimpse the outlying areas of heaven) when for once they’ll no longer feel all alone.
“We are,” Oscar recited for him one evening, inspired by alcohol, looking him in the eyes, “the ones who prepare the show, who never travel incognito, and are always zipping by in the passing lane. We are the privileged few. The ones who’ll always be shown in through the private side door. The ones who get the ‘complimentary’ seats. And even when we’re behind the scenes, we always control the center of the stage. Because we are the current that powers the spotlights. And when we leave the theater, we are the ones who leave the darkness behind us.”
And then, “We are the ones people talk about because they have nothing else to talk about. The ones that people dream about because they have nothing the fuck else to dream about. And then, of course, we are the idiots. We are the actors that strut and fret their hour upon the stage. We are the ones destined never to sleep, because there’s no time, my friend. There’s no time.” The great Oscar would quote Shakespeare, but in practically the same breath, he’d also quote that great prince of the street Franco Califano, God rest his soul, when he’d say, “I hope I get old five minutes before dying.”
Andrea fell helplessly, head over heels, with Rome. After two short-term apartments, one in Prati without light, the other in Trastevere without peace, he found his top-floor apartment overlooking the Tiber. And an adorable next-door neighbor, on the same landing, Margherita, eighty-two years old, blue hair, the youngest daughter of the engineer who had designed and built the palazzo in the 1920s. She had inherited it a half century later and sold off one apartment after the other, one floor at a time, withdrawing into the top floor, where she now lives without ever sleeping, with the sole consolations of Mozart, the flowers on the terrace, and a whisky and water after dinner.
For him too, Rome unscrolled its sky full of blue light that rendered more nuanced the shadows of men, put women’s hearts on alert, mixed up lives, nourished passions, illuminating them with a Renaissance light just as it has always done with the facades of the palazzi. It then transforms them into pixels, providing theme songs and casts, arranging the debuts and entrances, seating the orchestra. And as if it were the most natural thing in the world, behold as the music descends on the city, even though almost no one hears it on account of the traffic that saturates the space, the buses full of tourists, police escorts with sirens wailing, motor scooters, wailing newborns, the Senegalese street vendors running away from Ponte Sisto. Still, that music’s there. And that music makes the air dance all the way up to the pompous tops of the maritime pines that climb the Janiculum Hill, where young couples go to kiss and feast their eyes on domes so perfect that they strip everyday life of its drama, reassuring us that it’s just a passing thing, with all its damage and its remedies, in the face of such utter eternity. They don’t know that that, too, is an illusion. “And if they do know,” says Oscar Martello when he’s had enough to drink to find wisdom, “they pretend not to. Otherwise they’d have to kill themselves.”
Fast Friends
Andrea and Oscar became fast friends one Saturday morning in that first year. It was late September, the sun was shining brightly, casting shadows. A group of Nazis had a stall in the market bedecked with fluttering Italian tricolors and crosses, on the right-hand side of Campo dei Fiori. Oscar and Andrea were cutting diagonally across the piazza, talking about murders to recalibrate and incidentally about leaving for Sperlonga, to Oscar’s villa, which had been thrice enlarged, thrice placed under judicial seal, and thrice issued a zoning amnesty.
The guy walks toward them; Andrea sees him only at the end: twenty years old, black leather jacket, black denim jeans, black combat boots, blue Celtic tattoos, fucked-up pimply face, skinny nervous chicken neck, and bobbing Adam’s apple.
He asks him, “Do you want to sign, sir?” He places himself square across their path.
Oscar grunts. The guy steps aside, but without taking his eyes off him.
Andrea feels the blood circulating a little faster through his veins. He stops. He asks him, “Sign what?”
“Against drugs,” says the Nazi, proud of his mission, with his chin jutting into the air, emitting a stinging vibration.
“No, I’m not signing,” Andrea calmly replies.
The Nazi’s eyes spin with a hint of confusion. He balances his weight and asks, “And why would that be?”
“Because I’m in favor of drugs, all drugs,” he says to him, even though he doesn’t even really believe it. He just says it to piss him off.
It’s one of those mornings that make Rome glow as if its millennia were solid gold: Campo dei Fiori rocked gently by the west wind still has the smell of summer, a whiff of apricots and basil. A light, light breeze that tousles the flowering terraces, spreading the aroma of coffee among the round outdoor bar tables, the market stands, and the conversation of the tourists.
The guy looks at Andrea and doesn’t stand aside. Another, bigger guy comes over, with a round face, the same gravedigger’s uniform, a scar with stitches on his forehead, watery eyes, arms teeming with tattoos. He and Oscar lean in, shoulder to shoulder. The big guy has a disgusted look on his face: “What the fuck did you say?”
Oscar, who is the more extroverted of the two, tells him point-blank, “Here, do this: take what the fuck he said and just fuck yourself with it, and also wash your mouth out before you speak.”
The smaller one takes a step back, as if baffled by the reaction. “Fucking drug addicts.”
Stepping back, the little guy makes way for the bigger one, who has targeted Oscar’s face and is winding up for a right hook. But he commits the unforgivable error of opening his mouth. In these situations, whoever talks loses, that’s the rule. And so as the big guy’s muttering “You filthy fucking drug addict,” Andrea aims his knuckles straight at the soft saddle between the big guy’s Adam’s apple and the jugular, also known in Italian as the acquasantiera, or “holy water fount,” hoping to knock him flat immediately, so that he’ll be able to turn and anticipate the reaction of the little guy, who has the appearance of a nasty weasel. He pulls back and lets fly. The big guy, who isn’t expecting the punch, dodges it at the last second, but in the wrong direction. Andrea lands all four knuckles smack against the guy’s ear, and can feel in his own shoulder the reverberation of the burst of energy that is unleashed into that big broad face, shattering cartilage and sharply dislocating the jaw, which emits a loud crack and shoves inward. The big guy screams in pain and collapses. The little guy lets loose with a kick meant to strike Andrea in the balls, but Oscar is quick enough to shove him off balance with a quick blow of the knee to his other leg and then a hard backhanded smack that smashes his nose in. The big guy is struggling to his feet. Andrea hauls off and kicks him, aiming at his still-unhurt cheek and his nose. Andrea’s shoe transmits the second crack of another breaking bone.
The scene is spraying blood in all directions. Passersby on all sides reel in horror. There are screams. The stand covered with Italian tricolors is knocked over. A young woman, heavily tattooed and bulked up from weightlifting, the third member of the group, screams even though no one’s touched her. The big guy and the little guy are both on their knees, both of them clutching at their faces, which are swelling up visibly. An entire platoon of Chinese tourists explodes around them. Andrea and Oscar allow themselves to be swept along by the flow of the crowd, which opens up and closes back around them, absorbing them like a breaking wave and carrying them off, to safety.
That night Oscar took him to his favorite place on earth, number 1055 on the Via Tuscolana, outside the gates of Cinecittà, which Fellini called the Threshold. And he told him—as the Jaguar purred in the darkness and kept them warm—that in those days the gates were watched by a certain Pappalardo, the security guard, who wore a long loose coat and visored cap, and above the visor was written CINECITTà in letters that looked like solid gold.
There was darkness and silence. They split two lines of coke. They smoked some grass. They got out of the car.
“One day, I’ll turn all the lights back on in this fucking place. I’ll roll in here in my white convertible. There will be a couple of secretaries waiting for me. And two dozen screenwriters, notebooks in hand.” Oscar looked at Andrea with an intensity heightened by grass and coke, but perhaps also by the sheer emotion of the moment. He leveled his forefinger at him. “You’ll write the first movie of the new era. One of these days, I’ll tell you the title.”
Andrea started laughing.
They jabbed fists like soldiers in a gang.
He asked him, “Why me of all people?”
Oscar answered, as if it were the most obvious thing imaginable, “Because starting today you and I are fast friends, do I make myself clear?” And for once, he wasn’t entirely lying to him.
On the Run toward Sabaudia
Since then, they’ve ground through three movies, six TV series, two international coproductions, a dozen or so writing projects, and five winters.
Now it’s seven o’clock on a warm May evening. They’re riding along in the very latest Jaguar that Oscar has managed to purchase under the counter and below market price, directly from the importer, a Jaguar C-X17 Crossover, a concept car that is going to be presented in four months at the Frankfurt car show, the color is Liquid Gold, interiors in cream leather, central dashboard console with touch screens, 4.2-liter, 6-cylinder gas engine, 460 HP.
The sirocco wind continues to blow in this early sample of Roman summer that runs from one curve to the next along the coastline to heat up like a steam iron the traffic jams that inch forward at walking speed, every weekend between Ostia and the Via Pontina.
The radio stations broadcast news reports about record temperatures, the first fires of the season in Sardinia, the stock market collapse, a former member of parliament fleeing the country, the opening of auditions for X Factor, plus the notable fact that over the past twenty years, twenty-four thousand rivers have vanished in China, all of them sucked dry to produce dams and hydroelectric power. “Fuck,” says Oscar, puffing out smoke now that Helga isn’t there to forbid it, “one of these days the Chinese will cut off their dicks to make Vienna sausages and sell them for half a buck each. And they’ll be happy for the profit.”
It’s only a week until the movie’s catastrophic premiere, even though if you look around there’s nothing to suggest the imminence of the general state of mourning that so obsesses Oscar—aside from the little shrines that pop up here and there along the sides of the Via Pontina, where young men swerved and crashed on their motorcycles, leaving behind, nailed to the trees, bouquets of flowers, smiling photographs, and the inconsolable farewells of mothers and girlfriends. But these relics can be glimpsed only out of the corner of the eye, memorized and immediately deleted by the living who continue to race past in cars that reek of overheated families and synthetic deodorants.
Oscar and Andrea get on the road after sunset, heading for Sabaudia, and those indicators of death, to their eyes, glitter along the curves like some easy-to-overlook interference of the real world with the one they’re busy inventing.
They’ve decided to eat dinner by themselves before going to Milly’s party; “there they’d probably poison us and shatter our eardrums.” They stopped at Saporetti, where they’ve just put the tables out, overlooking the last beach along the littoral that bows in adoration before the looming rocks of Torre Paola: spaghetti with clam sauce, fried crayfish and squid, espressos, two chilled bottles of Sanct Valentin, whisky to finish off the dinner and start up the evening.
The evening’s topic is the Plan. Which is getting fine-tuned now. Oscar’s opening gambit, at the start of the evening, was one of his usual gasconades: “I’ll give you the essential outlines, then you can color in all the empty spaces. Ha ha!”
And so. Andrea and Jacaranda will go to Paris, where Oscar has just purchased a very chic apartment in the Denfert-Rochereau area, fourteenth arrondissement. “The deed still hasn’t been approved and registered, but the apartment is perfectly inhabitable. Milly Gallo can’t know a thing about the plan, much less about the trip.”
“You already told me that.”
“I don’t trust that woman.”
“Okay, go on.”
“You’ll make the drive tonight. Once you’ve crossed the Italian border, you can slow down and take it easy. The important thing is to avoid using your cell phones. You’re going to have to forget about them entirely.”
The idea is that his disappearance and, most important, that of Jacaranda, should appear to be so mysterious, so sudden, that it will trigger a surge of alarm among family members and the press. “Not that we give a damn about the family members; I think she might have a female cousin somewhere up around Trieste. Instead it’s the press that War & Peace will be working methodically, with a steady drip of toxic news reports, such as the notion that Jacaranda had been receiving anonymous threatening phone calls. And that maybe over the past few days she’d had the distinct sensation that she was being followed.” He fills the glasses with ice and pours a generous slug of whisky for them both. “Nothing too precise, just clues, that way if we need to, we deny it all, and we’re done, am I making myself clear?” The police will do their best to ignore the whole case, but after the first few articles, they’ll “kick up a nice big cloud of dust.”
“And you’ll be ready with a fan to kick up more.”
“Exactly.” At that point, Oscar the oracle predicts, there’s bound to be one of those overzealous judges who’ll start an investigation so he can get his own name in the press as soon as possible. He grimaces in disgust. “I detest judges.”
“More or less than you detest critics?”
“Only a little lower down the scale. And I especially detest the fucked-up procedurals those judges write on the side. Because in the end, they never hold together, their plots are riddled with holes, just like their real investigations, when they throw some poor sucker in jail and then oil off to take a long vacation.”
Andrea bursts out laughing. “When did you start reading the right-wing press?”
“I don’t read a fucking thing about anything. And the things I think, I think on my own.”
“Are you sure?”
Oscar sighs in exasperation, ponders, and takes a drink. “Don’t play the philosopher with me. And don’t go off on tangents.”
The investigations, the idle chatter, the hypotheses, and the talk shows will all ensue: “What on earth has become of that tremendous hottie Jacaranda Rizzi?”
The social networks will make their usual noise, confusing all the issues.
A couple of girlfriends will be hired to go on TV and cry convincingly.
Another couple of days and the muckrakers will come out into the open to say that maybe it’s not the Mafia at all, but a romantic getaway. “Remember that when you want to kick up a cloud of dust and elude all pursuit, you always need to have two solutions to the mystery. When people aren’t sure, they argue about which one is right. And the more they argue, the more confused they become. And the more confused they are, the more passionately t
hey care.”
The executives of Anvil Film will play dumb, saying, “Jacaranda may be in danger. But we have implicit faith in the magistracy.” And in the meantime they’ll bring up the imminent release of the movie every chance they get.
No visits to Parisian friends. No letters, no postcards, no texts. “Get Jacaranda a hat, get her a pair of sunglasses.” Absolute radio silence for at least three days. No, make that four, or even five days. “You can just say that you lost track of the time.” That’ll give them the time they need to whip the general state of paranoia up into a froth. “When your name emerges as our little kitty cat’s new boyfriend, you can always just say you didn’t want anyone to come around bothering you, not even during your brief intermissions to go and scrub your cock and enjoy a half-dozen oysters in blessed peace, am I making myself clear? Ha ha!”
The whisky melts the ice and strengthens their union. The story expands. And so does the plan.
As the wave of fear of a Mafia kidnapping begins to decline, the general jubilation will swell over the new love story starring Jacaranda Rizzi, the diva. She will reappear in the same couple of days that the film premieres, at a sumptuous press conference held in her honor. “Someone will get hold of a couple of pictures of the two of you in Paris along with a few salty details, like how you liked doing it in the elevator.”