“We’re winding up,” he said.
“He insisted on doing the last scene last,” she answered. “I don’t know why.”
“That’s modern,” he said emphatically. “Straight out of the Cahiers du Cinema…look out, that cappuccino’s boiling hot.”
“I still don’t know why.”
“Do they do things differently in America?” he asked.
“They certainly do!” she said. “They’re less pretentious, less…intellectual.”
“This fellow’s good, though.”
“It’s only that, once upon a time, things weren’t handled this way.”
They were silent, drinking their coffee. It was eleven in the morning, and the sea was sparkling, visible through a privet hedge around the courtyard. The vine leaves of the pergola were flaming red and the sun made shifting puddles of light on the gravel.
“A gorgeous autumn,” he said, looking up at the leaves. And he added, half to himself. “ ‘Once upon a time’…Hearing you say those words had an effect on me.”
She did not answer, but hugged her knees, which she had drawn up against her chest. She, too, seemed distracted, as if she had only just thought about the meaning of what she had said. “Why did you agree to play in this film?” she asked.
“Why did you?”
“I don’t know, but I asked you first.”
“Because of an illusion,” he said; “the idea of re-living…something like that, I suppose. I don’t really know. And you?”
“I don’t really know, either. The same, I suppose.”
The director emerged from the path that ran around the café in good spirits and carrying a tankard of beer. “So here are my stars!” he exclaimed, sinking into one of the misshapen chairs, with a satisfied sigh.
“Please spare us your speech on the beauties of direct takes,” she said. “You’ve lectured us quite enough.”
The director did not take offense at this remark and fell into casual conversation. He spoke of the film, of the importance of this new version, of why he had taken on the same actors so many years later and why he was underlining the fact that it was a remake. Things he had said many times before, as was clear indifference of the other two. But he enjoyed the repetition, it was almost as if he were talking to himself. He finished his beer and got up. “Here’s hoping it rains,” he said as he left. “It would be too bad to shoot the last scenes with pumps.” And, before turning the corner, he threw back: “Half an hour before we start shooting again.”
She looked questioningly at her companion, who shook his head and shrugged.
“It did pour during the last scene,” he said, “and I was left standing in the rain.”
She laughed and laid a hand on his shoulder as if to signify that she remembered.
“Do they still show it in America?” he asked with a stolid expression on his face.
“Hasn’t the director projected it for our benefit exactly eleven times?” she countered, laughing. “Anyhow, in America it’s shown to film clubs and other groups from time to time.”
“It’s the same thing here,” he said. And then, abruptly: “How’s the major?”
She looked at him questioningly.
“I mean Howard,” he specified. “I told you not to smile at him too much, but obviously you didn’t follow my advice, even if the scene isn’t included in the film.” And, after a moment of reflection: “I still don’t understand why you married him.”
“Neither do I,” she said in a childlike manner. “I was very young.” Her expression relaxed, as if she had put mistrust aside and given up lying. “I wanted to get even with you,” she said calmly. “That was the real reason, although perhaps I wasn’t aware of it. And then I wanted to go to America.”
“What about Howard?” he insisted.
“Our marriage didn’t last long. He wasn’t right for me, really, and I wasn’t cut out to be an actress.”
“You disappeared completely. Why did you give up acting?”
“I couldn’t get anywhere with it. After all, I’d been in just one hit, and that was thanks to winning an audition. In America they’re real pros. Once I made a series of films for television, but they were a disaster. They cast me as a disagreeable rich woman, not exactly my type, was it?”
“I think not. You look like a happy woman. Are you happy?”
“No,” she said, smiling. “But I have a lot going for me.”
“For instance?”
“For instance a daughter. A delightful girl, in her third year at college, and we’re very close.”
He stared at her incredulously.
“Twenty years have gone by,” she reminded him. “Nearly a lifetime.”
“You’re still so beautiful.”
“That’s makeup. I have wrinkles. I’m practically a grandmother.”
For some time they were silent. Voices from the café drifted out to them, and someone started up the jukebox. He looked as if he were going to speak, but stared at the ground, seemingly at a loss for words. “I want you to tell me about your life,” he said at last. “All through the filming I’ve wanted to ask you, but I’ve got around to it only now.”
“Sure,” she said, spiritedly. “And I’d like to hear you talk about yours.”
At this juncture, Mrs. Ferraretti, the production secretary, appeared in the doorway, a thin, homely, plaintive young woman with her hair in a ponytail and a pair of round glasses on her nose.
“Makeup time, Madam!” she called out. “We start shooting in ten minutes.”
3
The bell stopped ringing and the incoming train could be heard in the distance. The man got up and put his hands in his pockets.
“I’ll walk with you,” he said.
“No,” she said, shaking her head resolutely. “You mustn’t do that, it’s dangerous.”
“I’m doing it anyhow.”
“Please!”
“One last thing,” he said, “I know the major’s a ladies’ man. Don’t smile at him too much.”
She looked at him supplicatingly. “Oh, Eddie!” she exclaimed with emotion, offering him her lips.
He put his arm around her waist, bending her backward. Looking into her eyes, he slowly brought his mouth toward her and gave her a passionate kiss, a long intense kiss, which aroused an approving murmur, and some catcalls.
“Stop!” called the clapperboy. “End of scene.”
* * *
—
“Lunchtime,” the director announced through the megaphone. “Back at four o’clock.”
The actors dispersed in various directions, some to the café, others to trailers parked in front of the station. He took off his trenchcoat and hung it over his arm. They were the last to arrive on the street, where they set out toward the sea. A blade of sunlight struck the row of pink houses along the harbor, and the sea was a celestial, almost diaphanous blue. A woman with a basin under her arm appeared on a balcony and began to hang up clothes to dry. She carefully hung a pair of pants and some boys’ T-shirts. Then she grasped a pulley and the clothes slid along a line from one house to another, fluttering like flags. The houses formed the arches of a portico and underneath there were stalls, covered during the midday break with oilcloth. Some bore painted blue anchors and a sign saying FRESH FISH.
“Back then, there was a pizzeria here,” he said, “I remember it perfectly, it was called Da Pezzi.”
She looked down and did not speak.
“You must remember,” he continued. “There was a sign ‘Pizza to take out,’ and I said to you: ‘Let’s take out a pizza from Pezzi,’ and you laughed.”
They went down the steps of a narrow alley with windows joined by an arch above them. The echo of their footsteps on the shiny paving stones conveyed a feeling of winter, with the crackling tone that sounds acquire in col
d air. Actually there was a warm breeze and the fragrance of mock-orange. The shops on the waterfront were closed and café chairs were stacked up around empty tables.
“We’re out of season,” she observed.
He shot her a surreptitious look, wondering if the remark had a double meaning, then let it go. “There’s a restaurant that’s open,” he said, gesturing with his head. “What do you say?”
The restaurant was called L’Arsella; it was a wood and glass construction resting on piles set into the beach next to the blue bathhouses. Two gently rocking boats were tied to the piles. Some windows had blinds drawn over them; lamps were lit on the tables in spite of the bright daylight.
There were few customers: a couple of silent, middle-aged Germans, two intellectual-looking young men, a blond woman with a dog, the last summer vacationers. They sat down at a corner table, far from the others. Perhaps the waiter recognized them; he came quickly but with an embarrassed and would-be confidential air. They ordered broiled sole and champagne and looked out at the horizon, which was slowly changing color as the wind pushed the clouds. Now there was a hint of indigo on the line separating sea and sky, and the promontory that closed the bay was silvery green like a block of ice.
“Incredible,” she said after a minute or two, “only three weeks to shoot a film, ridiculous, I call it. We’ve done some scenes only once.”
“That’s avant-garde,” he said, smiling. “Realism, cinéma-vérité – only fake. Today’s production costs are high, so they do everything in a hurry.” He was making bread crumbs into little balls and lining them up in front of his plate. “Anghelopoulos,” he said ironically. “He’d like to do a film like O Thiassos, a play within a play, with us acting ourselves. Period songs and accessories and transitional sequences, all very well, but what’s to take the place of myth and tragedy?”
The waiter brought on the champagne and uncorked the bottle. She raised her glass to make a toast. Her eyes were malicious and shiny, full of reflections.
“Melodrama,” she said, “Melodrama, that’s what.” She took short sips and broke into a smile. “That’s why he wanted the acting overdone. We had to be caricatures of ourselves.”
He raised his glass in return. “Then hurrah for melodrama!” he said. “Sophocles, Shakespeare, Racine, it’s all melodrama. That’s what I’ve been up to myself all these years.”
“Tell me about yourself,” she said.
“Do you mean it?”
“I do.”
“I have a farm in Provence, and I go there when I can. The countryside is just hilly enough, people are welcoming, I’m comfortable, and I like the horses.”
He made more bread-crumb balls, two circles of them around a glass, and then he moved one behind the other as if he were playing solitaire.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said.
He called the waiter and ordered another bottle of champagne.
“I teach at the Academy of Dramatic Arts,” he said. “My life’s made up of Creon, Macbeth, Henry VIII.” He gave a guilty smile. “That’s my specialty: hard-hearted men.”
She looked at him intently, with a concentrated, almost anxious air. “What about films?” she asked.
“Five years ago I was in a mystery story. I played an American private detective, just three scenes, and then they bumped me off in an elevator. But in the titles they ran my name in capital letters…‘With the participation of…’ ”
“You’re a myth,” she said emphatically.
“A leftover,” he demurred. “I’m this butt between my lips, see…” He put on a hard, desperate expression and let the smoke from the cigarette hanging between his lips cover his face.
“Don’t play Eddie!” she said, laughing.
“But I am Eddie,” he muttered, pulling an imaginary hat over his eyes. He refilled the glasses and raised his.
“To cinema!”
“If we go on like this we’ll be drunk when we go back to the set, Eddie.” There was a malicious glint in her eyes.
He took off the imaginary hat and laid it over his heart. “Better that way. We’ll be more melodramatic.”
For dessert they had ordered gelato with hot fudge sauce. The waiter arrived with a triumphal air, bearing a tray with ice creams in one hand and the steaming chocolate sauce in the other. While serving them he asked, timidly but coyly, if they would honor him with their autographs on a menu and shot them a gratified smile when they assented.
The gelato was in the shape of a flower, with deep red cherries at the center of the corolla. He picked one of these up and popped it into his mouth.
“Listen,” he said. “Let’s change the ending.”
She looked at him, somewhat perplexed, but perhaps her look signified that she knew what he was driving at and was merely awaiting confirmation.
“Don’t go,” he said. “Stay here with me.”
She lowered her eyes to her plate as if embarrassed. “Please,” she said, “please.”
“You’re talking the way you do in the film,” he said. “That’s the exact line.”
“We’re not in a film now,” she said, almost resentfully. “Stop playing your part; you’re overdoing it.”
He made a gesture as if he wanted to drop the whole thing. “But I love you,” he said in a low voice.
“Sure, you do,” she teased, slightly condescending, “in the film.”
“Same thing,” he said. “It’s all a film.”
“What is?”
“Everything.” He stretched his hand across the table and squeezed hers. “Let’s run the film backwards and go back to the beginning.”
She looked at him as if she didn’t have the courage to reply. She let him stroke her hand and stroked his in return. “You’ve forgotten the title of the film,” she said, trying for a quick retort. “Point of No Return.”
The waiter arrived, beaming and waving the menus for them to autograph.
4
“You’re crazy!” she said laughing, but letting him pull her along. “They’ll be furious.”
He pulled her onto the pier and quickened his steps. “Let them be furious,” he said. “Let that cock-of-the-walk wait. Waiting makes for inspiration.”
There were no more than a dozen people on the boat, scattered on the benches in the cabin and on the iron seats, at the stern. Their dress and casual behavior marked them as local people, used to this crossing. Three women were carrying plastic bags bearing the name of a well-known shop. Plainly they had come from villages on the perimeter of the bay to make purchases in the town. The employee who punched the tickets was wearing blue trousers and a white shirt with the company seal sewed onto the pocket. The actor asked how long it would take to make the round trip. The ticket collector made a sweeping gesture toward the bay and enumerated the villages where they would be stopping. He was a young man with a blond mustache and a strong local accent. “About an hour and a half,” he said, “but if you’re in a hurry, there’s a larger boat that returns to the mainland from our first stop, just after we arrive, and will bring you back in forty minutes.” He pointed to the first village on the right side of the bay, a cluster of ten houses, lit by the sun.
She still seemed undecided, torn between doubt and temptation. “They’ll be furious,” she repeated. “They wanted to wrap it up by evening.”
He shrugged and threw up his hands. “If we don’t finish today we’ll finish tomorrow,” he countered. “We’re paid for the job, not by the hour, so we can surely take an extra day.”
“I have a plane for New York tomorrow,” she said. “I made a reservation, and my daughter will be waiting for me.”
“Please make up your mind, Ma’am” said the ticket collector. “We have to push off.”
A whistle blew twice and a sailor started to release the mooring rope. The ticket collector pulled out his pad a
nd tore off two tickets. “You’ll be better off at the bow,” he remarked. “There’s a bit of breeze, but you won’t feel the rolling.”
The white iron seats were all free, but they leaned on the low railing and looked at the scene around them. The boat drew away from the pier and gathered speed. From a slight distance the town revealed its exact layout, with the old houses falling into an unexpected and graceful geometrical pattern. “It’s more beautiful viewed from the sea,” she observed. She held down her windblown hair with one hand, and red spots had appeared on her cheekbones.
“You’re the beauty,” he said, “at sea, on land, anywhere.”
She laughed and searched her bag, perhaps for a scarf. “You’ve turned very gallant,” she said. “Back then you weren’t like that at all.”
“Back then I was stupid, stupid and childish.”
“Actually, you seem more childish to me now. Forgive me for saying so, but that’s what I think.”
“You’re wrong, though. I’m older, that’s all.” He shot her a worried glance. “Now don’t tell me I’m old.”
“No, you’re not old. But that’s not the only thing that matters.”
She took a tortoiseshell case out of her bag and extracted a cigarette. He cupped his hands around hers to protect the match from the wind. The sky was very blue, although there was a black streak on the horizon and the sea had darkened. The first village was rapidly approaching. There was a pink bell tower and a bulging spire as white as meringue. A flight of pigeons rose up from the houses and took off, a wide curving line by the sea.
“Life must be wonderful there,” he said, “and very simple.”
She nodded and smiled. “Perhaps because it’s not ours.”
The boat they were to meet was tied up at the pier, an old boat looking like a tug. For the benefit of the new arrival it whistled three times in greeting. Several people were standing on the pier, perhaps waiting to go aboard. A little girl in a yellow dress, holding a woman’s hand, was jumping up and down like a bird.
Message from the Shadows Page 20