Straight Cut

by Madison Smartt Bell

  “Mi dispiace,” I said, which means “I displease myself,” more or less. “Non parlo l’italiano bene.”

  The guards stopped trying to talk to me. By gesture they indicated that I should walk ahead of them through the checkpoint. Once through, one of them came up beside me and guided me to a small examination room, windowless and empty except for a long metal table and two chairs, one on either side of it. At the invitation of a guard I sat down in one of these, placing my books on the table before me. One of the guards then left the room and the other stood to attention against the wall behind my back. I sat straight, eyes front. Oddly, I felt calmer now.

  And I thought I was too old to fit the profile anymore. Well, I suppose it was flattering, in its own weird way.

  After five or ten long minutes what I took to be a customs inspector entered the room, shut the door, and sat down in the chair opposite. He was young too, middle-sized, black glossy hair, dark civilian suit, horn rims.

  “Good day,” he said. His English was precise, mechanical, more correct than my own. “You will please show me your passport.”

  I complied. He examined the passport without expression, left it open on the table, and looked up at me.

  “For what purpose have you come to Rome, Mr. Bateman?”

  “I am employed by the QED film company as an editor,” I said, helplessly imitating the anglicized formality of the inspector’s speech. “I have come to edit a film which was made in New York.” In support of this contention I produced a letter on QED stationery which Kevin had given me. The inspector skimmed it and nodded.

  “How long will you remain in Rome?”

  “One month, perhaps longer,” I said. “I cannot say for certain until I have seen the film.”

  “I see,” the inspector said. “You will please show me your money. “

  I handed over my traveler’s checks and he thumbed through them. While he was doing this a guard came in and put my shoulder bag on one end of the table.

  “You carry a great deal of money for such a short stay,” the inspector remarked.

  “One never knows when an emergency may occur,” I said. “Besides, Rome has become very expensive, I am told.”

  “It is true. Rome is expensive. Where will you be staying in Rome?”

  “I must speak to the director of the QED film company before I decide the matter,” I told him.

  “I see. You will please open your suitcase.”

  I unzipped the bag and the inspector proceeded to unpack it completely. Not an interesting or suspect item in the lot, though, only clothes, toothbrush, razor, phrasebook, the manual. The inspector spread these things across the table and then fingered the lining of the bag. I could not tell if he was disappointed or not.

  “You will please empty your pockets,” he said, standing up. “Please also remove your shoes. “

  There wasn’t a very good haul from the pockets either. Keys, change, a miniature calculator, date book, lighter, cigarettes, money clip. The inspector squeezed my shoe leather between his thumb and forefinger.

  “You will please stand up and lean forward with your hands flat on the table.”

  Then I received a medium-thorough frisking. He missed a couple of places, but I hadn’t held anything back. He finished and I straightened up and looked at him. Now he did seem a little perplexed.

  “Excuse me, please, I must telephone,” he said. Then he headed for the door, taking my passport with him. In the doorway he paused to say, “You may put on your shoes.” While he was gone I did that and also put everything back into my pockets. Ten or fifteen minutes passed before he returned.

  “You are expected immediately at QED,” he said. “I have taken the liberty to call for you a taxi.” He went to the table and began to repack my bag, doing quite a neat job of it, I noticed. When he came to the books he picked up a volume of Kierkegaard and flipped through it with some curiosity.

  “You are a student of theology, I see.”

  “Ethics, really. And in any case I am only an amateur.” He shrugged and put the books in the bag, then handed me my passport.

  “Your passport has been stamped,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said. Then the guard behind me said something in Italian which had something to do with money. It might have been “What about the money?” or “Did you find the money?” The inspector snapped at him and he said nothing more.

  “Your taxi is waiting, Mr. Bateman,” he told me then. He handed me my bag and I slung it on my shoulder.

  “I hope that this procedure has not occasioned you too much inconvenience,” he said.

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “I trust that you will enjoy your stay in Rome. I hope that your visit will prove both pleasant and profitable both for you and for the QED film company.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said. I might have gone for a handshake too, but my hands had started to shiver again, now that it was over.

  The good part about all this was that the cab driver didn’t even try to cheat me.

  What with all the rush and confusion of this whole operation, I had not noticed or paid any attention to the address of the QED studio, which turned out to be not quite what I had expected. Given Kevin’s hints about the budget, I’d assumed the place would be somewhere along the Via Flaminia, or else to the east, in the newer part of the city. But the cab dropped me off on a narrow street just a bit above the Piazza Navona, what looked like a residential block.

  But the number agreed with the QED stationery. I hitched up my bag and approached the front door. On the door frame there was a vertical row of bell buttons and beside the top one someone had affixed the QED letterhead, evidently cut from a piece of note paper, with a blob of Scotch tape. I pressed the button several times, but I could not hear it ring inside. After a decent interval I began ringing the other two as well. Making a pay phone call in Rome is no simple matter. You can’t use coins, you have to buy a gettone, you have to find somewhere to buy it, and then you have to find a phone, which in many cases will not work.

  I lacked the energy for any of that, so I stayed where I was, alternately ringing and pounding. Eventually the front door opened a crack and I saw a pair of black eyes glittering in the darkness behind it. A small dry voice spoke to me in Italian.

  “Mi dispiace,” I said. “Non parlo l’italiano bene.” It was one of my more useful phrases. I slipped the QED letter through the crack and it was drawn away. After a moment the voice spoke again.

  “Inglese?”

  “Americano. “

  “Triste.”

  There was an insult, if you like. However, the door did open at this point. A small froglike woman stood on the sill, swaddled crown to toe in dusty black. She stepped to one side and beckoned me in. I couldn’t recall how to ask which floor so I just started up the stairs.

  The QED letterhead appeared again, taped to a door on the fourth floor, the top. I rapped on the door and there was no answer, but the catch slipped and the door creaked open a bit, so I went in. A thirtyish woman was sitting behind a butcher-block table in what looked like a rudimentary kitchen, with a small espresso pot and a cup on the table in front of her.

  “Hello,” I said. “I am the film editor from New York.”

  “Non parlo l‘inglese, signore.”

  Terrific. She was dressed like a doll, in a tiny white dress with an enormous red bow at the waist, bows on her shoes, a red bow of lipstick where her mouth must be. She had a sort of flapper haircut, with flat dark bangs chopped level with her eye sockets. After she had spoken she smiled widely, a bright empty smile which suggested that no one was at home behind it. I recalled the business at the airport with some discomfort. She looked like she was doped to the gills.

  The smile ended abruptly, like a light bulb burning out. She turned to her left and called.

  “Dario?”

  No reply. The woman turned back to me, smiled again more briefly, and took a sip from her coffee, leaving a crimso
n smear on the rim of the cup. I dropped my bag and strolled around the table into the rest of the apartment, a sort of attic space with many alcoves coming off the central area like bones from the spine of a fish. The ceilings were angled and low, and there were skylights here and there. Toward the rear there was a door that looked as if it might go somewhere, and I opened it, resisting an impulse to jump to one side as I did so.

  The first thing I noticed was a Steenbeck flatbed against the rear wall, a world-class editing machine, its presence a reassuring sign that someone was actually planning to cut a film in this place. I did wonder how they ever got it in, though; it was about the size of a Volkswagen and far and away bigger than any of the doors. Stacked on the floor around it were reels of film and sixteen-millimeter mag stock, and a couple of empty bins.

  There were also two people in the room. A squat frizzy-headed man was operating the flatbed, which I saw he had misthreaded. I also noticed that the image on the screen was negative, which meant that they were playing with original footage and probably scratching it all to hell. The second man lolled on the bed in a tangle of unwound film, which he was busily smearing with fingerprints.

  “Che cazzo fai?” I screamed, another useful phrase which is an impolite way of asking people what the hell they are doing.

  The man on the bed raised himself on an elbow. He seemed a bit of a dandy: pleated pants, silk shirt, a sort of ascot at his throat.

  “We cut zee film now,” he said languidly.

  “Not like this you don’t,” I said. I went to the flatbed and unplugged it and ripped the plug off the end of the cord. This got everyone’s attention. The man at the flatbed leaned back with his mouth hanging open and the other sat all the way up on the edge of the bed.

  “Work print,” I said. “Nobody touches anything again until there is a work print. Do you understand?”

  It was clear that they did not.

  “Work print,” I screamed. “Goddamn.”

  I went back into the other room and dug the manual out of my bag. There is a useful section in the back which translates basic terminology into different languages. I found the line with “work print” on it and showed it to the man on the bed.

  “Si, Si,” he said, nodding repeatedly. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  “Well, get on it, then,” I said. I was too angry to have any more conversation at this point. I can take almost any amount of personal indignity, but abuse of equipment gets me badly annoyed. So I put the plug from the Steenbeck in my pocket and slammed out the door.

  Outside, I stalked along a cobbled street until I reached the river, fulminating silently against Dario, whichever one he was, and against Kevin and the whole enterprise in general. At length I reached the river, near the Ponte Umberto, and I walked a little way out onto the bridge. The water was low and there was a swath of brownish grass along the bank, below the heavy stone wall, which contained the river when the water was high. Looking at the river calmed me and after a little while I merely felt exhausted.

  I walked slowly around the bend of the river and then turned back into the city. It occurred to me then that I had left my belongings, practically everything, back in the QED madhouse and film butchery. Moreover, I did not know exactly where I was. Well, it would work out somehow. I finally stumbled into the Piazza Navona and found a seat in a sidewalk café on the eastern edge of it.

  It was a bright sunny day and there were many tourists milling among the assorted local hustlers in the piazza. Fatigue from the flight made it difficult for me to think, but my senses seemed abnormally acute and everything looked sharp and clear. Each sound, each sensation, was isolated, as though nothing resembling it had ever happened before;

  “The rough cut’s a little rough,” Kevin had said.

  I began to laugh out loud. People sitting nearby looked at me strangely. A waiter stopped by and I attempted to order a beer. What I got in the end was a glass of ice tea, but under the circumstances I thought that was just as well.

  7

  WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WAS that I passed out in the café and slept there for nearly four hours. It was afternoon by the time I woke up, as I could see from the changed color of the light. I was stiff and sore from sleeping in the café folding chair, but my disposition seemed to be considerably more temperate than it had been that morning.

  The ice had melted in my tea, but no one had cleared it away. I drank what was left and put some money on the table. Then I picked my way back to the QED studio. This time around it was easier to get in, because someone was waiting for me just inside the door: a smallish dark young man with an anxious expression and a bow tie. He spoke English quite well, if hesitantly.

  “Excuse me, you are Mr. Bateman?”

  I agreed to that.

  “Ah, Dario sends his regrets, ah, his apologies. He wishes to apologize. If he offended you this morning.”

  “Please tell him that I apologize too,” I said. “The flight was long and I was tired and I lost my temper too easily. Also, I speak Italian very badly and that makes me impatient sometimes.”

  “Yes, of course,” the young man said. He was probably twenty-one or -two, I thought. “Excuse me, I am Mimmo. In future I will translate between you and Dario. I am also to help you with the editing. If you wish it.”

  “Praise the Lord,” I said. I leaned my shoulder into the doorjamb. The cobbles of the street were beginning to float gently up and down like billows on the sea.

  “I don’t suppose you know where I’m supposed to stay,” I said.

  “Yes, of course. Excuse me, one moment, I will get the key.”

  When Mimmo returned I found that I was sitting on the doorstep. I had been dreaming about a field of yellow flowers. Mimmo had my bag with him, I saw.

  “Is it far?”

  “A walk of half an hour.”

  “Perhaps a taxi.”

  I returned to the field of flowers. Mimmo roused me when the cab arrived. I dozed through most of the ride, though I did vaguely register that we had crossed the river. When I next became conscious, I was leaning against a plaster wall. Mimmo was working a key in a huge padlock which was set in a crossbar in front of a green door.

  “Eccola,” he said, when the lock gave way. He pushed the door open and I stumbled through it. Mimmo reached in and handed me the key.

  “At the trattoria on the corner they also have a key,” he said. “In case yours should be lost.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very much.” I was leaning against the door, which was open only a crack.

  “Tomorrow …,” Mimmo said.

  His voice faded as I closed the door. It was dim inside, though a window toward the rear let in a little light. There was a large bolt high on the door, which I drew shut.

  Underneath the window of the little room there was a bed. Little puffs of dust rose from the spread when I lay down. The petals of the flowers were turning scarlet. I sat up and dragged my bag closer to the bed, so I could hold the handle while I slept. The petals of the flowers were turning blue.

  The next time I woke up it was dark outside. I got off the bed and began looking for a light switch, tripping over hard heavy objects that seemed to be scattered all over the floor. Then I found a lamp on a shelf opposite the bed.

  It was a small room. There was the bed, with an impression of my body in the dust on the coverlet. On the floor there were a lot of welded metal sculptures. These were what I had been stubbing my toes on, I could see. There was also some welding equipment and a mask in one corner, near the door.

  A couple of steps went up into another room. I went in there and found a wall switch. This room was larger and had fluorescent ceiling lights. There were several plain wood tables and some stuffed furniture. Shelves on the walls held more sculptures, smaller ones, and a litter of papers and books, the latter in both French and Italian. One wall was lined with windows which overlooked an enclosed courtyard. Toward the far end of the room there was a refrigerator, a double-burner hotplate, a
sink, and a shower stall.

  Whoever normally lived in this place didn’t look to have been home in a long time. I was sneezing from all the dust. So I took a shower. After I had dried off and dressed again I felt a bit more alert. I started trying to figure out what time it was in America, but that was too complicated.

  There was a box of dried pasta in the kitchen area and I boiled this up and ate it plain. It went down better than you might have expected. It had been many hours since I’d eaten.

  I cleaned the pot and went back into the front room, where I found a door to the courtyard, which I hadn’t noticed before. The courtyard was sizable. There were a couple of ironwork chairs out there and a broken table and some more of the welded sculptures. A wire trellis, about six and a half feet off the ground, covered the entire area. There were vines growing all over the trellis, but they looked more like weeds than grapevines to me. Still, not bad.

  I went back inside to see if there was anything to drink. I found the end of a liter of red wine on a kitchen shelf, but I could smell that it had turned. Never cared much for wine anyway. Since I didn’t feel up to going out I decided to forget it. I wandered around the main room fingering the small metal sculptures on the shelves. They didn’t seem to be much good to me. But behind one of them I found half a liter of Polish vodka.

  Eccola.

  I had taken a drink of it before it occurred to me to wonder if it might be metal polish or something like that. But it tasted pretty much like vodka, and it didn’t kill me right away. I took the bottle out into the court and sat down on one of the chairs. There was a palish light filtering down through the weeds on the trellis. It might even have been moonlight, could have fooled me. I had another drink or two. Then I corked up the bottle and went back to bed.

  In the morning I woke up at a decent hour and went out to the trattoria on the corner. With some help from the phrase book I was able to buy some rolls and espresso. Then I spread out my map on the table and started trying to figure out where I was.