by Pino Corrias
But that too would be superfluous.
Oscar’s Nightmare
But Oscar really has gone home. And now he’s walking through the dim light of the deserted living rooms. How long has it been since he noticed the iridescence of the great basin with the lily pads reflecting the light from the windows, projecting the moving shadows of the city onto the cream-colored ceiling? Now they enchant him like an image lost and finally rediscovered. He searches for alcohol. He calls for houseboys who are no longer there. He finds three fingers of gin, half a bottle of cognac, and half a bottle of Cointreau. He sits down.
He drains all three bottles.
When he falls asleep, he too dreams a dream. In the dream he’s walking at night on the median of a broad avenue that seems to have no end. He recognizes the location at the blink of an eye, he recognizes the buildings and the straightaway of his Cinecittà. Out of nowhere a car comes racing, veers, almost hits the curb along the sidewalk, flips over onto its side as the windows explode into shards of broken glass. The metal body slides along the asphalt, emitting sparks of blowtorch flame, while the scent of gasoline spreads in all directions. The sparks set off the whoomp of fire that goes rushing out. Oscar waits frozen in terror for the sliding car to hit him at any instant, crushing him and sweeping him aside. His heart explodes in his head and his lungs suffocate him. Instead, however, the impact never arrives. The car sails past him with its tail of fireworks, sliding along the perimeter wall of Cinecittà. Fire that becomes roaring flames illuminates the interior of the car, where Oscar sees himself rolling and burning, covered with blood.
Just then, he opens his eyes.
Just then, he shakes off all fear.
Just then, he knows what to do.
Before dawn, he emptied the large pond full of water lilies. He gathered all the flammable liquids he managed to lay his hands on, from all the cubbies of the house: alcohol, kerosene, gasoline, varnishes, paints, solvents. Now he pours them onto the curtains in the living rooms, onto the carpets woven with Sufi techniques in Kāshān and Tabrīz, over the Flemish tapestries and the Shirvan hall runners, down the hardwood parquet corridors; onto the beds in the guest rooms, onto the towels in the bathrooms, onto the plastic and wooden toys left behind by his little daughters, Cleo and Zoe, whom right now he only wishes he could have within reach, so that he could hug them close, remembering one of the last times he saw them, at this point a good thirty days ago, at night, stretched out asleep in their little beds, arms spread, small faces serious, lulled by a slumber so profound that he went over to first one, then the other, to make sure they were still breathing.
Now he knows it too: that was another world, the world of before. It was a vast, wealthy, well-furnished world, where he had carved out for himself a dizzying place at the very heights, among the winners of the competition.
Now that they’ve uncovered him—tracking back from one hiding place to another, until they reached his special cellar, the one where he had buried the worst part of himself, or perhaps the best, certainly the most useful—all the consequences of those secrets that in the time before redounded to his advantage are now only accelerating his fall. The formidable energy that everyone acknowledges in him from now on will be interpreted, looking backward, as the intolerable arrogance of a cokehound. His courage, a reckless assault on the world. His creativity, shameless luck. His determination, an ambition that wound up devouring him.
The truth is that, after Jacaranda’s corpse, his path turned around on itself, like in a freeway cloverleaf, and from now on he and his destiny might do nothing other than to slide down down into the world of losers: the world he escaped so long ago. He can’t allow it, he can’t accept it. He is Oscar Martello, he still has a stiff, hard cock, and he can use it to screw that herd of hypocrites and gutless whiners who, in the world of before, came running to his dinner parties and marched in procession to admire his goddamned Achrome by Piero Manzoni, which now, at last, he’ll take down off the wall and set atop the pyre. If they think they can take it all away from him, they’re missing their bet. He’ll beat them to it. And he’ll do it all on his own.
If It Weren’t for the Wind
If it weren’t for the wind, the Chinese say, the sky would be full of cobwebs. And there would certainly be no roaring house fires, only slow, moribund flames that simply peter out before achieving their destiny.
But the north wind that’s blowing over La Dolce Roma tonight has lit up Oscar Martello’s villa like a gigantic torch on the Aventine Hill.
Oscar runs into the smoke. And the denser the smoke becomes, the clearer he can see. Suddenly he’s back on the stage of the Living Theatre, with all the force and the rage of his early twenties. He’s driving his very first Jaguar, the Executive XJ6, with the windows rolled down, in the passing lane, sailing toward Sabaudia. He’s at his first party on a Roman terrace, surrounded by scents he’s never smelled before and flowers he’s never seen. For the first time in his life, he’s reflected in Helga’s eyes, having run into her at the stables of the Quirinal Palace, at the inauguration of the Antonello da Messina exhibition, and she is the loveliest and certainly the most expensive of all the costly artworks on display. He says to her: May I know your name? And laughing, she replies: No, but you can help me find out yours.
The flames gallop forward in bursts of heat. And the black smoke whirls and climbs toward the ceilings, in hot blasts that fill the hallways with clouds as big as ghosts. The hardwood floors burn and the stairs up to the turret study burn. The study, the sage-green couches, the interior decorator–chosen books, and every last one of the teledickheads burn to so many crisps.
Everything burns that his enemies would have liked to take from him. It all burns the way the papier-mâché burned in that unforgettable masterpiece Quo Vadis?, before the laughter of Peter Ustinov in the guise of Nero, he too the emperor of a Rome that had turned its back on him.
He has no recriminations to make. He’s had his run. He’s fucked the most beautiful women. He’s discovered that people at the top of the world are every bit as rotten as those at the bottom, but at least they’re richer. He started from the street and now he’s back in the street, all alone. But in the meantime, he had himself a lot of fun.
The fire deletes everything, the reasons, the wrongs, the vendettas. Even the prison. Devouring everything right down to the bone, and then also the bone.
Right down to the ash that flies away, whitened first by the heat and then by the flame-retardant foam sprayed by the firemen who are arriving in force to surround the blazing dragon that fights its last war against the dark-blue night sky only to dissolve, bit by bit, until the dawn of the next day, followed by the closing credits.
And the closing credits really do seem to trend toward the black with which these stories all end, sooner or later. Except that in La Dolce Roma the house lights only come up to announce the beginning of the next show.
And so, on a certain day many months later, Andrea Serrano’s phone rings. It’s dawn. He opens his eyes in the dim light and on the display appears an unknown number that, instead of stopping ringing, just goes on. And when Andrea answers, “Hello!” he hears a voice from far, far away.
“Are you going to answer or not?”
The distance of a call from across the ocean, an unmistakable voice.
“Oscar!”
“Good job, it’s me.”
“I can’t believe it.”
Instead he believes it, and how: the corpse of Oscar Martello was never found among the ashes of the Aventine. Ventura and Interpol have searched half of Europe for him. For some time now, they’ve come to the conclusion that he’s fled to Argentina, or Chile, or else New Zealand, but in order to continue the search, they’d need personnel and resources they don’t have. Moreover, bankers and churchmen got involved, men specialized in carding that airy wool used to blunt corners, lull all imprudence to sleep, and suffocate all curiosity in the name of live and let live.
Not even H
elga and her hyena of a divorce lawyer are interested in pursuing the manhunt any longer. Helga has paid off her law team, inaugurated new alliances, and has gone back to living in high style, after auctioning off the paintings that she’d carted away and then taking possession of the bank accounts and apartments that were also in her name as well as Oscar’s. She sold her version of the story, entitled The Martello Scandal: The True Story, to a weekly TV news show, but more for revenge than for the money, which was small change anyway. She now has two lovers, a young builder for the present and an elderly Supreme Court judge for the future. Two incomes, two sources of protection, both useful in different ways and inverse proportions.
The actors and actresses of Anvil Film’s stables have been absorbed into other scripts. The lawyers have started the routine processes of clawing back debts, but without kicking up too much dust, to keep their fingerprints from being noticed.
Aside from Ventura and Andrea, no one else really cared what had become of Oscar and his story arc.
“What are you doing, sleeping?”
“At five thirty in the morning? Why would I be?”
“Ha ha! It’s nice to hear your voice.”
“Here people might not say the same thing to you. You didn’t leave a very good memory when you got out of here.”
“It’s just because they’re fucking jealous.”
Oscar feels no shame whatsoever at showing up again. And Andrea feels no resentment about sitting there listening to him. The way it is throughout La Dolce Roma, where everyone is so damned guilty that no one ever really is. And at the end of the day—betrayed and betrayers, robbers and robbed, priests and pimps, wives, lovers, hookers—all go out together to Il Bolognese for dinner.
“How are you?”
“I can’t sleep, I can’t shit, I can’t fuck, I have an ulcer, and I drink too much. Otherwise, just fine.”
“I’m not going to ask you where you are, I don’t want to know. But how you’re getting by, yes, tell me.”
“I had some money set aside. And some people who owed me.”
“Do you plan to come back?”
“There’s plenty of time for that. Right now I have a better idea.”
“Which is?”
“Do you remember that time I took you right up to the gates of Cinecittà? We stopped right out front. I told you my plan, my secret plan. I told you that I already had decided what the first movie I would make would be. It was nighttime.”
“Yes, I remember, it happened in the other life.”
“Fuck that. This is still my life. And it ain’t over yet.”
“So then, what do you want to do with your memories, make your next film?”
“No, not a film, a book.”
“Jesus Christ, Oscar, do you want to write your memoir?”
“No, I want you to write it for me, you adorable little dickhead.”
“Are you joking?”
“I’m not joking in the slightest. A book about my rise and then my persecution.”
“Persecution? The victims of persecution are generally innocent.”
“As usual, you get tangled up in details: guilty, innocent, nobody gives a damn. The book will be a tremendous success, and success, as Liz Taylor used to say, is an excellent deodorant.”
“Why me?”
“Oh fuck, you asked me the same thing that other time. In all these years, you haven’t changed a bit.”
Andrea reviews the scene in his mind, and tells him, “I know what you told me, too: ‘Because we’re fast friends.’ But we’re not anymore.”
“I still am, you asshole. And anyway, you know the characters. And the characters are what make stories.”
“If I wrote it, I’d be on Jacaranda’s side, not yours.” He really thinks it. After all, he doesn’t give a damn about Africa, about the undrilled wells, the fake hospitals, and the money that Oscar embezzled from the community, it’s all just one more drop in the bottomless sea of cruelty.
In the pause that follows, Andrea can hear that Oscar is smoking, and he imagines him surrounded by his cloud of Cuban smoke, as he hacks and spits.
“Not once I’ve told you the part you still don’t know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That Jacaranda wasn’t what she seemed. She was a junkie. She was a nutjob. She was in love with me. That’s what it’s supposed to mean.”
Andrea doesn’t feel like listening to him. He doesn’t feel like befouling himself with more venom. Instead he just sits there. “It’s a little late now for this sort of bullshit. Maybe it would be better if I just hang up and we decide to be done with this.”
“But think it over: If she hated me so much, why did she make the movie with me? Why did she come to Paris? She knew all about the money in the car.”
Now he’s awake. “What?”
“Half that money was for her.”
“What the fuck are you saying?”
“The truth. She was blackmailing me. She wanted me to leave Helga and marry her.”
“Fuck, we’re in a soap opera. Before long, you’ll be telling me that Jacaranda was your niece and that you’re the Count of Monte Cristo.”
“If you want to know the truth, in those bygone days I even screwed her aunt. She was the one who introduced me to Jacaranda. Otherwise how the fuck was I supposed to have met her? Are you listening to me?”
He’s listening.
“And it was Jacaranda who couldn’t wait to suck old Eusebio’s dick. People do things that they later regret or are ashamed of. But they still do them, am I making myself clear? You just need to have the guts to leave them behind you. Instead all she ever did was obsess over them. And I became the worst part of her obsession.”
Andrea hunts for a gap in the logic of Oscar’s words: “Did you think up this escape hatch all by yourself? Or is this your new script?”
“You don’t believe me? Well, she was calling me three times a day from Paris, did you know that? No, of course you didn’t know that. You didn’t know anything about anything. While I knew everything about the two of you. The strolls, the dinners. That you went up the Eiffel Tower to take pictures of the Japanese tourists. That you had dinner at the Brasserie Lipp. And also that you fucked in front of the bathroom mirror.”
Andrea takes in the full weight, word by word, wound by wound. And as he does, he sees the images of those days in Paris pass before his eyes, days that he thought he’d spirited to safety, in a dry spot at the center of his heart. And just to do himself more harm, he thinks back to the last words recorded by Jacaranda, which have never stopped echoing in his mind: “Today my sickness is ending and with it I too am ending my name is Jacaranda Rizzi get someone to tell you my story my misbegotten love affairs I’m an actress and because of that some of you may think you know me but it’s not true I don’t even know myself.”
Not even in that last message to the world did she have the courage to tell the truth. Or else that was all the truth that she had the stomach to take.
Oscar is talking to him from far away: “Are you there?”
Andrea takes a deep breath. “Yes. Everything you’re saying is bullshit.”
“You know for yourself that it’s all true.”
No, he doesn’t know it, he doesn’t want to know it. “Jacaranda detested you.”
“Maybe she did. But that doesn’t mean anything. She detested me and she loved me. Don’t ask me why, but she loved me. And she enjoyed hurting herself. Are you listening to me?”
Yes. Instead of hanging up, he listens.
“There are people whose wounds never heal, and in the end they just die. They’re called hemophiliacs or something like that, did you know? She was like that, the wounds never healed. Forget about her. Together we’ll write a great book. And we’ll make the book into a great movie. I already have a title in mind, but I’m not going to tell you. Hey, Andrea, are you listening to me?”
He hears him. He says, “I don’t have the time.”
“Of course you do. And if you don’t, you can find it.”
“I’m sleepy.”
“You’re sleepy? Life is galloping over the hills like wild horses and you’re sleepy? There’s no such thing as being sleepy, Christ on a crutch: we’ll sleep when we’re old.”
Andrea thinks that this would be a good title, but he doesn’t say so.
He wants to hang up, but he doesn’t.
Oscar keeps talking, but he’s not listening to him.
He’s looking at the leaves illuminated by the first rays of sunlight on the terrace. And he’s thinking that if it weren’t for the wind, the leaves would hang motionless. Instead they move so much that eventually they fall. And the same thing is true for men and women.
About the Author
PINO CORRIAS lives and works in Rome. He was a special correspondent for La Stampa, one of the most prestigious newspapers in Italy. He has produced several successful investigative reports and dramas for Italian television. He also collaborates with various important newspapers and weekly publications, including Il Fatto Quotidiano, Il Venerdì di Repubblica, and Vanity Fair.
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Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Pino-Corrias
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