by Pino Corrias
The next morning Jacaranda is gone. On the bathroom mirror she’d written, “Don’t try to find me,” as if they were two young sweethearts breaking up. But the two of them are nothing. Or almost nothing. They’ve made love once. And once they gave each other a bath. They shared a strange vacation. Which was actually a well-paid assignment. And during that assignment they exposed themselves more than they thought they would. Especially her. By opening up a part of her world to him. Which has just shut back down.
After all, what does he know about her?
He knows that she lives in Rome over near the Hilton, but he doesn’t know where. He knows that she makes her living as an actress, he knows her filmography. But he knows nothing about what her life is like: who she has for friends, what numbers are contained in her cell phone directory. He knows the heft and feel of her breasts, the scent of her flesh, the shape of her sleep. But he has no idea whether she’s ever been married, or how many people she’s cohabited with. Whether she ever seriously considered having children. And if so, how many? Whether she knows how to drive, swim, or cook. He knows that her anxiety keeps her from breathing at times. And that ghosts whirl around her. Ghosts that she tries to capture in packages of Xanax, as if they were chemical safe-conduct passes capable of staving off that anxiety, until she finally decides to ask the wrong person for help (“If I close my eyes, will you stay here to stand guard?”), accept the sleep that comes, sit in her dreams with her ghosts, and then wake up with the light of a smile and say, “I’m hungry.”
He knows that she contains mysteries. Hidden loves, lurking resentments. And perhaps long series of lies.
He knows her orgasm. Which arrives in gusts and expands, one contraction after another, the way waves do. But he knows nothing about the fiber that makes up the slow declension of her life, the tide that day by day fills the sea bottom with sand, clogs it with habits, appointments. Or solitude.
He knows that she’s thirty-two years old. But he doesn’t know the day of her birthday. The name of her favorite movie. The music she listens to. What size shoes she wears, a 6 or a 7? What size jacket does she wear? What’s the name of her perfume? Whether she loves gold best, or coral, or neither of the two. Whether she loves the black of velvets or the light blue of silk.
Andrea knows that there are unlikely to be any answers to these questions. The opportunity is gone. The worlds are closed now. In the eyes of Jacaranda, by now far away, this apartment in Paris will just be the thousandth empty home to add to her collection of memories.
Her request is “Don’t try to find me.” And he complied with it even before deciding to. It’s as true for Paris as for anyplace else.
Decompressions
The decompression of Andrea Serrano in Paris lasts two days. What with his endless twirling of the thought of Jacaranda through his fingers, he finally decides that he feels absolutely nothing for her. But that nothing is unexpectedly something. And if he were going to write about it, he’d start with her eyes, with her distance, and with those mysterious electric signals that she emitted from that distance—as if to communicate her position to someone out there listening, as if sending out a call for help. And then deleting every scrap of it just as quickly, passing from the white of a smile to black.
Uncertain whether or not to turn on his cell phone, he went down to the phone booth on Avenue Général Leclerc. He asked his agent for the phone numbers of Jacaranda and Milly. Massimiliano Testa pelted him with two dozen questions. Andrea reassured him with an I’ll tell you all about it later, not now. Jacaranda and Milly both had their phones turned off. Oscar answered barking and snarling on the twentieth ring, “So it’s you! What the fuck are you doing on the phone?”
“Jacaranda left.”
“I know, I’m taking care of it.”
“How the hell do you already know?”
He hesitated. “You underestimate my muckrakers.”
“You’re having us watched.”
“No, of course not, we’re just keeping an eye on the story so we can be ready. Stay put for a couple of days. We’ll get hold of the crazy girl and then get organized for our grand return home.”
“What am I staying put for?”
“You’re on full expenses and greatly appreciated. Enjoy Paris.”
The decompression of Oscar Martello—with his film finally out in the movie houses, various fibrillations on the pages of the social networks, cautious, but positive, critical reviews, a sharply rising curve of ticket sales—lasts the entire weekend; the intrusion of that strange investigator, who has penetrated so easily into his sheltered world, has the annoying weight of a mystery and perhaps, also, a danger. That is why this is a more troubling decompression than usual. One that needs a hand, a body, a bit of excitement, to win its way back to the surface, seeing that Helga and the girls have flown off again to Courmayeur, leaving him in the midst of a void. And so he got a girl to fill that void and the girl finally fell asleep on the couch in the study, the glassed-in room high atop the turret, while he slept on the large cushions that slid off onto the floor and now he feels like every one of his bones is broken and his stomach is in flames, burned by his gastric juices and by the bottle of Caol Ila that they drank off, chasing it with rails of cocaine and plenty of hashish, just to keep the thing going. Flames that awaken him with the early sunlight of Sunday morning. With Filipinos galloping upstairs from the kitchens—in response to a couple of grunts from him over the intercom—bearing American-style coffee, ice-cold water, aspirin, and Maalox.
Oscar gets up off the floor, stretches, spits. He looks at the time, it’s six in the morning. He throws open the window onto the cool air that makes the domes and flowering terraces glitter. The whole city is still asleep, under the sky that’s a special blue dedicated to men like him, men in penthouse apartments in cobalt dressing gowns that in these moments of secret sincerity and well-protected solitude ask themselves in their heart of hearts, in the face of that spectacle of immense beauty and privilege, how they ever managed to climb all the way up there, what merits, what alliances, what good luck, what determination, what muscles, what threats, what humiliations, what pills, what lost sleep, what deceptions, made it all possible. And whether those deceptions have now been adequately concealed.
He knows his own with absolute certainty. They are the faces of the actors he deceived, the out-of-energy screenwriters he never paid, the old movie stars he sent shuffling into the slaughterhouse, the partners he duped.
He remembers the first time he ever saw Eusebio Reverberi and how much weakness he’d sensed in that man, by now overtaken by wealth, damaged by cocaine, softened by privilege. And he remembers when, years later, but at the right moment, he first saw an adolescent Maria, that is, Jacaranda, and the rapidity with which he had the illumination: she was lovely, desirable, with her breasts in flower. She wore a white tank top with a drawing of a strawberry in the middle, a pink miniskirt, a pair of red ballet flats. She was a little girl-woman. And there was a light in her eyes that he recognized because he’d had it too when he was a kid, when he wanted to escape the gray skies of Serravalle Scrivia. The hard light of those who believe, in solitude, that they’ve focused clearly on life, that they’re clever enough, sharp enough, to snatch it for themselves: now or never.
And he remembers the last time he left Eusebio Reverberi behind him, pumped up with cocaine and fury, barefoot, unshaven, empty gin bottles on the side table, shouting at him that he’d turn him in to the police, he’d ruin him, he’d destroy him once and for all. He buried those images far from his surface life, filed away in the darkness, wrapped in the cellophane of bad memories, and then closed up in a plastic container, stuck in a drawer, inside a cabinet in the deepest cellar of his past, his special cellar, where he keeps the worst part of himself.
And if anyone ever managed to track back from one hiding place to another and finally snatched away even that last protection of his first secret, it would still be his word against that of the snoopy
intruder, his regret, his gaze of crystalline innocence. And of course, the complete array of his lawyers, with their leather briefcases, the tough tanned hide of their faces, and their dizzying hourly rates. Who can compete with the great producer’s team of lawyers? Jacaranda with a couple of tears? Some nosy cop in a hazelnut wool suit?
No, no one, not even the truth in person. Wait, hold on, are you telling me that there’s anyone left alive who’s innocent enough to believe that such a thing exists as the truth in person?
There, it’s Oscar Martello asking himself the same question for what must be the millionth time. At dawn. Breathing, all alone, like all the men in all the penthouses. It’s the doubt that’s been eating away at him for years. That never lets him get enough sleep. The fissure that cracks his well-furnished world, always threatening to shatter it to pieces. That torments him with its tiny and absolute blackness. At least until the phone call at six thirty in the morning comes to save him—the hour when the men in penthouses call each other to talk about everything, everything except the terror that just woke them up—the phone call from the inevitably bored senator who asks for gossip about a new actress, from the bishop’s secretary offering him a real estate deal, from the director at BNP Paribas inviting him to come see him, from a certain wealthy swine at the Ministry of Public Works who just saw a little boy in a TV movie and who wants to know how to get in touch with him so they can play doctor.
He listens to them all, one by one. Because they all occupy the steps that will lead to him finally crossing the Threshold in a white convertible. Cinecittà isn’t some toy that you can buy with a check or a line of credit. In this country of recommendations and Mafiosi, you need the money, but the money’s not enough. You need the go-ahead from everyone who’s secured themselves a fucking padlock and a little smidgen of power: the little tycoons of television and the great traffickers of Angelina Casagrande, just for starters. The mayor and the trade unions. The undersecretary and the cabinet minister. The prince of the Freemasons and the cardinal. The English bankers. The American bankers. And in the end, even Three-Fingered Jack, the one who does the Almighty’s dirty work.
He heaves a sigh, feels an immense weariness wash over him, and then a jolt of adrenaline—there’s someone standing behind him, watching him.
It’s a young woman in flesh and blood, who also woke up early and is now looking at him from the threshold of the French door, completely naked, except for the coat she found on the floor and threw over her shoulders, and she says to him, “Are you already at work, kitty cat?”
Oscar, turning around, silently absorbs the question, evaluating the harmony of that body, so young, so smooth, so light, and yet which he has no desire even to touch; she shouldn’t be there, not at that moment, not in the middle of that headache. And yet she also stirs a sense of sudden nostalgia deep inside, a heartbreaking nostalgia for the things that are lost once and for all, and a tone of gentle kindness comes into his voice, surprising him: “It’s still early, go back to sleep, Domiziana.”
The young woman gazes at him, entranced, nods her head yes, like a good little girl, backs away behind the glass door, lets her overcoat slip to the floor, then comes back, reappears in the doorway, and says, “My name is Domitilla.”
Offshore Charity
Raul Ventura, stretched out on the Naugahyde sofa in his one-bedroom apartment with a mortgage and faucets that drip time in regular intervals, reads more accounting reports about the superwealth of Oscar Martello. As he does it, he tries not to think about everything that furnishes his life as a public functionary earning €2,200 a month. Giulia, who’s set off on tour with her wake of cheerful good humor, has left him with his black thoughts to confront, the first of which is devoted to Dobro Tanic, without even needing to leaf through the dossier that he’s memorized by this point. The second thought turns to his father, who flew away a year ago, whereupon he realized that he knew nothing, absolutely nothing about him, and the third black thought is for his mother, who has been taken prisoner by Alzheimer’s, and who would be so much better off in heaven, mending clouds, but who instead remains in the hell on earth, nailed in place by certain physicians who torment her with lifesaving pharmaceuticals, even though what she’s been living hasn’t been a life for years, just a chill she can’t get rid of.
He reads that Oscar Martello’s palatial Roman mansion is 66 percent owned by an anonymous company domiciled in the Cayman Islands, 9 percent of the ownership is in the name of Helga, and the last 25 percent is assigned to the nonprofit Food against the Storm, where for Italy the administrator is none other than the queen of flowers herself, Donna Angelina Casagrande, who takes in money for an infinite array of charitable pursuits, soup kitchens, and free clinics in Africa, as well as first-welcome centers for immigrants. The same accounting contrivance applies for the ownership of the eighty-foot Marine Magnum tied up at Fiumicino, though it sails under an Irish flag. For the artworks, including the Manzoni Achrome. For the fleet of automobiles, with their respective leasing agreements and insurance coverage. For the houses in Courmayeur, Sperlonga, Milan, Venice, and, naturally, Paris. For the twelve apartments collected in Rome, in the quarters of Testaccio, San Lorenzo, and Prati, all of them snapped up at bargain-basement prices in the last years of black economic downturn.
“All apartments,” reads the summary of the investigation carried out by his men, “that in the golden years of television drama, were financed and purchased by screenwriters, directors, and actors confident they would be looking at good incomes for years to come. But reckless in their forecasting and unfortunate in their chosen remedies, when the market collapsed and forced them to sell at low prices what they had so lavishly acquired.”
That means that they had let their ambitions run away with themselves, some of them to such a degree that they had brought into the world both mortgages and children, both of which grew far faster than they’d expected, especially after the ten sumptuous seasons of Spells, Hospital Ward Hearts, and Ibiza had gone off the air, and the revenues had dwindled as the contracts had failed to renew. Which meant apartments for sale at fire-sale prices. Apartments that Oscar Martello, the producer with a heart of gold of, that’s right, Spells, Hospital Ward Hearts, and Ibiza, had been only too willing to pick up, with a little cash up front, an appreciative hug for the discount, a reassurance reported back by “our confidential informant,” that said, word for word, “Prices have collapsed, you know it as well as I do, and I’m doing you a favor.” Plus, the promise of a first installment of a future contract to write a story about orphans or lusty lifeguards or homosexual couples, a contract that of course they’d never see.
Likewise, the acclaimed Anvil Film, according to parliamentary investigations, has its feet on one side and its head on the other: ownership lies with a Belgian holding company that has its legal headquarters in Ireland, and its tax domicile in London with a tax rate discounted by 20 percent. A modest corporate capital base, less than thirty thousand euros (“thirty large, basically nothing”), total revenue in the last fiscal year of nineteen million euros (“nineteen lovely rocks, do I make myself clear?”), from which to deduct expenses, losses, and prior debts amounting to roughly the same amount. Moral of the story: nothing actually owned by Oscar Martello, except for a small tax liability just to save face and the occasional flash of glory to show he still has the knack and the luck. Or even the other way around.
Ventura starts to wonder whether Andrea Serrano, the man’s friend, the least misfit of all the screenwriters, is also implicated in the darker side of Oscar’s dealings. And whether he’s a knowing accomplice, a member in good standing of Martello’s and Casagrande’s gang, or just a puppet with an expense account who’s looking at jail time with nothing to show for it. To judge by the look of things, though, the man’s just a fool.
What’s more, dumped unceremoniously at a certain point even by the sad and drug-addled Jacaranda, who had left him to twiddle his thumbs in Paris. Which left him unrequite
d and restless, wandering from one to another of the art house cinemas that specialize in career overviews of auteur directors, or else out on aimless, aperitif-less strolls, but also reasonably self-sufficient, given the facility with which he was able to strike up acquaintances with young ladies for a morning out in the Luxembourg Gardens, only to give them the slip and tiptoe all alone into the restaurant and hotel Select, whose brown leather armchairs were his favorite place to leaf through magazines. And so it went for two days straight, until he flew back to Rome, where it all began just a week ago, and where it was now bound to come to an end, one way or another.
Part Three
* * *
WE’LL SLEEP WHEN WE’RE OLD
Bad News
The flight back from Paris was one long slumber, dreamless, ending in the bright sunlight of broad Roman midday. So warm that the minute he’s outside the bounds of the airport, Andrea decides to tell the cabbie to take him not straight to Rome, but instead to the Ristorante Nautilus in Fiumicino, so that he can slowly reacclimate, seeing that it’s one of his favorite spots, with boats and fishermen in the background to brighten his mood.
Sitting in the shade, in front of a bottle of white wine and the sea, Andrea finally turned his cell phone back on. And it came back to life with an avalanche of emails, missed phone calls, and text messages. Text messages—all of them super urgent, all of them buried after days and days in mothballs—from newspapers, magazines, journalists, TV shows, web editors. Messages from his agent, Massimiliano Testa, in Milan, from his girlfriend Fernanda, a.k.a. Ninni, and even from Margherita, his elderly next-door neighbor. There was some kind of note from everyone he knew. But nothing from Jacaranda—though hers was the only one he was anticipating. And he realized, as he hunted for it, that Jacaranda had taken a little piece of his heart. In just a few days. In an hour. In a minute. Perhaps because she had showed him just how unattainable, how off-putting, she could be. Distant even when she seemed close, in those few minutes of intimacy spent in front of the mirror, in the bathroom, seeking each other with desperate hands, practically without undressing, and looking at their reflections, she with an intensity bordering on pleasure, but also on yearning nostalgia.