Director's Cut (39 page)

If I am a worm, let me at least have as much pleasure as imaginable. Because I now have the love of my life
and
someone to strengthen inside me the love for my own life.

“People have less and less imagination,” the monsignor says. “It's emptying out of them like air from a leaky tire.” At his desk, in his vestments, he's flicking through my drawings and ideas. Every once in a while, he picks one out and emits a wistful sigh. “With your films, you are one of the last holdouts against the human desire to rationalize.”

“Ah, your reverence,” I reply, “I might as well make films opposing gravity.”

The head office of the Banco Ambrosiano is at the rear of the Vatican, between St. Peter's Station and the Via Duodo. From the advertising department window, I gaze over the Leonine Wall and see the sunlight shining on a fountain in the Papal Gardens. Below us, a train full of pilgrims sings at the tops of their voices to let the pope know they're on their way.

On the pages before us, I've sketched out some twenty dreams, the last few weeks' bizarre nocturnal inspiration. Why should I do things differently for a commercial rather than a feature film? I tell the monsignor that instead of a single ad, I want to make a short series for his bank. In each film, Paolo Villagio will play me. He's a slightly anxious, corpulent comedian I've often worked with. Each ad will consist of one of my foolish nightmares and end when Villagio awakes with a bang to discover that he's fallen out of bed. While he lies on the floor, trying to untangle himself from the sheets, a woman's voice will sound from downstairs. “You should've listened to me,” she snaps. “If you'd taken
your money to the Banco Ambrosiano like I told you to, the saints and the angels would be watching over it and you could get a decent night's sleep!”

The monsignor nods. He's not impressed, but he's seen stranger miracles and thinks I might just pull it off.

“Let's make
one
to start off with. Then we'll see.” The monsignor slides the sketches back to me. “Choose one. You have carte blanche.”

Astonished to have found such an accommodating Jesuit, I gather it all up, including the fat prostitutes and the sketch of a masturbating Romulus suckling at the teats of the wolf.

“But Reverend Father,” I say, standing at the door with my folder under my arm, “why on earth did you ask me? All my life I've made fun of the Church. I've shown topless nuns and priests on roller skates. I dressed them in absurd robes and pushed them up onto the catwalk. I've done nothing but sin my whole life long, and I don't believe in anything.”

“You've always claimed that dreams seem more real than reality.”

I can't deny it.

“Our request comes from His Holiness himself,” explains the monsignor. “How do you think we can convince people that God exists if they can no longer recognize truth in the improbable? You, Snaporaz, are our last hope. Imagination is the only erogenous zone that the Faith applauds.”

Gala screams when she sees Gianni. This only seems to entertain him. He was simply sitting in the corner, in an armchair, when she entered the room in Parioli, but in her blind spot. He didn't speak. And since she wasn't expecting anyone, Gala closed the door behind her, kicked off her clothes, and climbed into the shower without noticing him.

She tries to regain her composure as she watches him approach. It's only two blows, but they're so hard that she loses her balance and bangs the back of her head against the tiles. Gianni knows where to hit a woman without leaving bruises that might compromise her market value.

“Sicily is growing impatient.”

He looks down on the naked woman, turns off the hot tap, and walks away as if he had lost all interest.

Soon afterward, Geppi comes in. She finds Gala lying on the tiles, shivering under the cold water. She turns off the tap, wraps a towel around her, and rubs her hair dry.

“I'm sorry,” she mumbles. “I'm so sorry.”

I do feel that Gala's upset, but she won't admit it.

“But what is it, my Gallinella?” I ask several times that evening, struck by the distant look in her eyes and her forced smile. After dinner, I lure her into the Palazzo del Freddo and have them pile a banana boat high with scoops of all the fruit flavors. Gelato never fails to console, and sure enough, by the time she reaches mandarin, her eyes close with pleasure. Her will power is back when she opens them again.

“It can't go on like this,” she says. I immediately assume she is referring to our love and get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I automatically think that the moment I've come to dread more with every passing day has arrived: that final shot, when the last love raises her hand and walks offscreen with a simple
“Ciao.”
Words fail me and I can't look her in the eye. I concentrate on the ice cream, but the little scoops keep rolling off my long silver spoon before I can get them to my mouth.

Then, thank God, she continues. “I have to get away from Parioli. There's no other solution. As quickly as possible, but don't ask me why.”

The apartment is no more than a convent cell hidden at the back of the church, squeezed between the transept and the roof above the altar. It winds around two buttresses, splitting the living space over three levels. One has room for a bed, one for a desk, and between the two is an awkward corner with a simple chair next to a side table with a telephone on it. Fortunately, it has a small terrace, closed off on one side by the colorful stained glass above the holy of holies, a large window depicting the Madonna and Child. The terrace looks out on a secluded courtyard with a gargoyle and the tall windows of the Teatro Argentina dressing rooms. On this warm afternoon, they're open. Several ballerinas are sitting at a row of mirrors, twisting their long hair into buns beneath the glare of the makeup lights.

Meanwhile, the cagey priest who is showing me all this is inspecting
the cardinal's seal on my letter of introduction. The Vatican moves in mysterious ways. Nowadays, the Church's greatest miracles are reserved for those with the right contacts. The monsignor is a man of the world. When I explained matters to him, he immediately understood their importance and, with a smile confirming the open secret that celibacy is taken much more seriously outside the Vatican than within its walls, gave me this address. The church stands in the middle of the old Campo Marzio, its foundations resting on the Curia Pompei. It is one of the holy places that is almost forgotten amid the frantic city's traffic. The shepherd of this parish recognized me immediately, and appears to take a less frivolous view of my work than his superiors. He nonetheless shows me around, just as the monsignor's letter requests, and when I suggest a princely rent and immediately slip a generous donation toward the restoration of the confessionals into the collection box, the steely cast falls from his face, as if he's suddenly aware of the challenge before him. In the twilight of his life, hope dawns, that he might yet convert a real sinner. Wrapping his hands around mine, he slips me the key without so much as mentioning a lease, telling me that from now on his congregation would be honored to welcome me to Sunday-morning Mass.

I return with Gala that same evening. The front door is halfway up a stone spiral staircase. It is low. She has to bend to enter. Gala can hardly believe it and I am delighted by her astonishment. She throws her arms around my neck and for the first time since the war I make love on a bare floor, which my knees and back will remind me of for days to come. Immediately afterward, her doubts set in: she doesn't want me to think she's rewarding my efforts with her love. I have no way of knowing why she's making such a fuss and brush her reservations aside. Downcast, she sits on the floor of her new apartment, tugging her clothes on as quickly as possible. I'm getting used to her mood swings: she acts so impulsively, shocking herself so much in the process, that she forgets everything else around her. She can freeze in the middle of a busy street, hands in her hair, running through all the possible consequences of her actions. Horns blare, cars dart past on every side, but she's paralyzed with horror, and I have to try to drag her to the sidewalk. At such moments she drops everything, sometimes literally, because her fingers spread as if to fend off a suddenly looming disaster.
As if she's due some punishment and someone's about to give it. I've seen this brand of seductive impotence in cartoons, but never before witnessed it in a living creature. The effect is irresistible: both funny and touchingly foolish, like a comedian's double take, when something the whole audience long since realized slowly dawns on the performer. But Gala's delayed hesitation is not an act. I recognize it. It's the same eternal doubt that always overtakes my pleasure after the initial sprint. It doesn't show with me, but Gala's panic is so hopelessly direct that it freezes the laughter on your lips. All you want to do is take her in your arms and rock her.

No matter how desperate she is to escape Parioli, she'd rather stay there than accept this little bolt-hole as a gift from me. I assure her that the rent really is quite modest, mention a third of the actual amount, and tell her she can repay me as soon as she can afford it. She relaxes, takes my hand, and has a closer look at her new accommodations. We step out onto the terrace. The lights burning inside the church shine through the stained glass to throw colorful illuminations on the terrace.

“Oh God,” she says suddenly, looking at me in horror. “Now you must think I'm ungrateful.”

“Why would he think that?” says Maxim. “He's the one who should be grateful.”

“All the trouble he's gone to … and I don't even have the grace to accept it without grumbling.”

Gala walks into the bathroom in Parioli for the last time.

“You let him fuck you, didn't you?” Maxim calls. “Take it from me, the man is satisfied.”

He's folded and packed her clothes. Then he fills her toiletries bag, lays it on top of the clothes, and zips up her bag.

“But it's still a mystery to me why you want to get away from here so suddenly.” He pulls his own clothes out of the wardrobe and starts to fold them as well.

“The rent is too much for me.”

“Fortunately, we can always find our way around that.” He laughs.

“I said, ‘It's too much for
me,'
” Gala shouts, louder.

Maxim pulls his suitcase out from under the bed.

“Oh well,” he says, “it
is
a rat's nest, but I've been very happy here with you.”

“Yes,” she says warmly, “I've been happy with you too.” A little later, she says, “I'll miss that terribly.”

He has just picked up a pile of shirts.

“You'll miss it?” he asks. “What do you mean?” But as he stuffs his clothes into his suitcase, her meaning sinks in: she's moving alone. She says something else, but his surging grief drowns it out.

Then Gala flushes the toilet. He grabs the bag and tries to shove it back under the bed before she comes in, but now that it's full it won't slide so easily. She catches him.

“But, sweetheart,” she says, laying a hand on the back of his neck. “Surely you didn't think …”

“Of course not,” he says in a futile lie.

Giacomo, who is working with me on the sets for my commercial, measures Gala's convent cell and turns my sketches into technical drawings that I can take to scenery. It's not the first time the men there have done a little work on the side fixing up one of my love nests, but I can tell from the surprise on their faces that it's been quite a while, and they set to work with a certain degree of admiration. Mirrors are the essence of my plan to make everything seem deeper and wider, and the utmost attention is paid to the color and quality of the fabrics. The floor is tiled according to a pattern from the Domus Aurea and the walls are marbled in sections. The props department provides a sofa that dates back to the feast in my adaptation of Apuleius, and the artists of Cinecittà use cushions and mattresses to transform it into a three-quarter bed. I'll have to hang on to her to avoid ending up on the floor, but there's no room for anything bigger. They also design a desk that fits perfectly into a corner, leaving enough space for a minute dining table. Finally, they gild the telephone chair and upholster it with a thick layer of purple velvet. A trompe l'oeil based on Boromini's colonnade in the Palazzo Spada is painted on the blank wall of the terrace, so that at first glance it looks twice as deep as it is. It's all done as carefully as my film sets and within three days these deceptions have transformed the cell into a mini boudoir. Finally, I have spotlights mounted outside so that, at the press
of a button, a suggestion of moonlight shining through leaves can be achieved. I'm not saying it's tasteful, but it is atmospheric.

The work is almost complete when Gelsomina strolls in during my final discussion with the carpenter. She looks at the drawings spread out on the table.

“What's that going to be, a doll's film?” she asks, referring to the dimensions of the rooms that are almost bursting out of the church.

The carpenter lends me a hand by pretending that it's just a suggestion for the commercial, when in fact I'm already halfway done with it, and I explain, most plausibly, that the Banco Ambrosiano budget simply doesn't stretch to large sets.

“The whole film is set in a cellar,” I explain. “I'm dreaming I'm in a cell.”

“Finally a dream that might come true,” she teases. “But I can't believe it will be solitary confinement!” She says it with her sweetest smile, which could mean anything to bystanders, giving me a hard pinch on the cheek.

“By the way,” she calls on her way out, as if it just popped into her mind, “the Academy in Los Angeles wants a definitive answer on that Oscar. I told them we're thrilled and will absolutely be there. That's all right with you, isn't it?”