Director's Cut (42 page)

Since then, I've turned down all offers from Hollywood, but now, for the first time, I consider them. For Gelsomina. The Americans could find the money the Japanese have refused. It's so tempting: a few concessions, and I can make another film. But just when I'm about to start explaining my plan to the assembled herd, the dining-room doors fly open and in walks Marcello! My friend, my soul mate! People nudge each other. I look at Gelsomina, who is watching my reaction to her surprise with moist, twinkling eyes. “Marcello!” I shout, “Marcellino, Marcelloto!” I hug him and I don't let go. The surprise of seeing his familiar face makes me realize how unfamiliar everything here is. He tells me that he has come to present my Oscar tomorrow. Just a few words of his voice, and the roomful of people who are staring at us dissolves. For a moment, the glitter of sequined evening dresses becomes the afternoon sun catching the waves in the harbor, and suddenly we're at an outdoor café halfway up the hills of Riccione, discussing the girls strolling under the plane trees with their mothers. I'm overcome by an emotion as unexpected as the one that once overtook me in the Garden
of Forgotten Fruits, where my friend Tonino cultivates the endangered plants of the Maremma, when I recognized the spearmint my mother used to perfume her laundry.

Italy is my world. Its images are my language. If a man wears his hat at a certain angle, I can see that he comes from Livorno. The accent with which he greets me tells me that he was raised on potatoes with lard and fennel, and a gesture conveys the sorrow he feels about a choice he made in the war and has ever since regretted. I don't know everything about my country, but her myths are my myths. I share her collective anxieties and fantasies. When I close my eyes, I see our church statues and the hostesses of the lotto show, I hear the songs and the slogans, all the things an Italian recognizes instantly.

I'm too old to learn how to talk all over again. Gelsomina and I spend the rest of the night huddled at a separate table with Marcello, far from the big shots. We just come from a different world. In America, everyone is the same because the opportunities are unlimited; in Europe, every person develops into a unique individual because new possibilities are constantly cut off. No matter what the producers offer me that evening, I turn them all down, and my only excuse is an amiable explanation that it's much more important to me to have a dream than to see it come true.

Meanwhile, Gala is landing at the small airport of Catania. Gianni hasn't even come with her, that's how sure he is that he has her in his grip. After the previous night's assault, the sight of Pontorax is a relief. The
dottore
is waiting and raises a hand in greeting as soon as he recognizes her, beaming impatiently.

“I missed you,” he says, driving off, and she'd like to believe it.

“I'm sure you found others to console you.”

“Others?” he snorts. “Who could want others after he's had you?”

She's not entirely pleased by the way he puts it, but something within her is aroused and begins to pray that it's true. At any rate, he seems anxious for her to believe him.

“Didn't Gianni tell you that I immediately canceled his deliveries after you?”

She lays a hand on his knee.

“Others!” he says, as if the mere word pains him. Neither speaks for
a while. He's driving himself this time, so badly that even the Sicilians notice and beep their horns. All at once, he pulls onto the shoulder of the highway, too agitated to wait. He turns to face her, staring at her intently. “Others! You staying away so long … I suppose that was because of
others?”

She gazes at him and strokes his face.

“No,” she says, and, though it's something only an actress can understand, she believes it herself. “No. There hasn't been anyone since you.”

Trucks flash their lights as they bear down on them. Dr. Pontorax drives on. He doesn't take the exit to the beach and the luxury hotels, but heads to his clinic instead. It's a fortress-like building, constructed from blocks of lava from Etna, like the rest of the bleak city. Most of the staff have the weekend off, and the male nurses who see her walking down the corridors alongside the doctor look unsurprised. It is not an open institution. At every corner, Pontorax unlocks a barred door he closes again behind him.

“My wife suspects something,” he says. “She's noticed a change since I met you. She's paid the hotel staff at all my regular addresses to report on my activities. You're staying here.”

He opens a cell. The walls are padded, but otherwise the furnishings are remarkably luxurious for a hospital. Gala remembers that once, when he was drunk, he boasted that influential Sicilian families sometimes asked him to get rid of bothersome family members, all legally, of course, and only after an official declaration of non compos mentis.

Muted light from valuable bronze lamps illuminates a luxuriant bunch of tulips, fresh from the Dutch flower auction. Beneath them, an expensive box of chocolates with an extravagant bow, and there's a bottle of champagne in a cooler. On the accompanying card, the
dottore
declares his love again. He opens a steel wardrobe. Hanging inside are twelve magnificent dresses, with various pairs of high-heeled shoes beneath, all her size.

“For you,” he whispers.

It suddenly occurs to her to wonder how a doctor got so inordinately wealthy.

In the same instant, Pontorax closes the steel door, slips off her shoes, and slides his tongue between her toes.

•  •  •

On the day of the Academy Awards, Gelsomina and I can no longer escape the madness. The circus starts early in the afternoon, when you're expected to appear in front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in evening dress and stroll down an endless red carpet. Journalists and camera crews are positioned to your left and right behind crush barriers. They're not interested in us at first, since I'm bald and Gelsomina has never had a face-lift, but as soon as our names are called they start yelling to attract our attention, and when we're awkward enough to look in their direction, they ask about our favorite cocktails and who designed the handkerchief in my breast pocket. Hundreds upon hundreds of cameras flash until my head is spinning and I have to cover my face with my hands. Gelsomina, whose English is even worse than mine, mistakes this attention for admiration and wants me to stop and respond in detail, but I answer them all in Rimini dialect to discourage further questions. In this manner, we effortlessly overtake Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep and are the first to reach the VIP lounge. I collapse into an armchair in a fit of petulance, so dizzy from all the lights that I resolve to stay there and not speak to another soul until it's time for me to ascend the stage in the evening.

Gala gets into an argument with her
dottore
over dinner. As she tries to make him realize that this will be her last visit, he does his best to convince her to come and live in Sicily as his mistress.

They finally patch it up and make love for the second time that day. She does her best to cushion the blow, but he remains resentful and goes home to spend the night with his wife.

Gala is left alone in the hospital room. Where else can she go? He hasn't given her any money. She doesn't even have enough lire for a bus ticket into town. She lies down and tries to sleep. Only after an hour does she realize that she doesn't have any medicine. Normally Pontorax provides it, but this time, in his anger, he forgot. She calls for help, but this wing is not in use. She tells herself that she's making a fuss about nothing, that everything will seem better in the morning. She falls asleep, only to be tormented hour after hour by demons that are too terrible and too dangerous to stir up in that cell. One moment keeps
replaying in her mind: Pontorax saying, “I want you to be my wife.” He is on his knees beside the hospital bed.

“You're already married,” she says, full of compassion.

He slowly rises to his feet. He straightens his coat. He is trembling with disappointment. Suddenly he storms out into the corridor.

“I've broken stronger people than you!” he bellows, locking the heavy steel door from the outside.

Just before the presentation, the VIP lounge is full of stars. I'm slumped in an armchair, seasick from all the swaying bottoms and glittering diamond spangles, when a skinny man accosts me. A fat cigar is protruding from the corner of his mouth, but because of the California smoking ban he's only sucking it. He's wearing an enormous cowboy hat with his tuxedo and introduces himself as Philastus Hurlbut. To my surprise, he speaks in a singsong Italian full of archaic expressions. Like all Americans, he greets me as if our mothers used to bathe us together every Friday night. Beaming with pride, he reveals himself as the brain behind Snaporama. I congratulate him without having the slightest idea what he's talking about. While he showers me with compliments and treats me to a lecture on the decisive influence my films had on his adolescence, I signal for Gelsomina to come to my rescue, but she's talking to Jack Lemmon on the other side of the room. Even gestures that a harbormaster could use to steer an oil tanker into port only elicit from her a cheerful wave. I am thus obliged to listen politely to how the young Philastus Hurlbut of Dripping Springs, Texas, located a copy of Dante's
Purgatorio
in the school library and used it to master my language, which explains why he offered me a drink as if he were sitting in the council chamber of San Gimignano, trying to sway the Ghibelline faction. If I'm to take him at his word, his whole life has been nothing but one big buildup to the day he would meet me, and—he declares as if I've just won the lottery—“Today is that day!” I can't get away from him. The room is hermetically sealed by security men and the only escape route leads back down the red carpet, past all those cameras. I don't mention that I meet people who tell me this same story every day, and raise my glass to the Texan's great moment as if the excitement were mutual. Then he starts off again about Snaporama. While he rattles on, I dredge
up a vague memory of a piece of mail that I filed with all the letters from stalkers and other fanatics, the ones I save for a day when I might need something to light my barbecue. Like all the rest of them, he has mistaken the lack of reaction as encouragement and set to work. His Snaporama turns out to be a high-tech carnival attraction for one of the massive amusement parks that have arisen around the city's big film studios. Like the rest, it will have a cinematic theme, and the theme, in this case, will be my work. If all goes according to plan, a ride will soon be whisking twenty visitors a minute—twelve hundred per hour—through my world. In keeping with the requirements of the age, it will loop the loop no less than three times.

I stare at Hurlbut as if I'd experienced the whole torment of the ride just by hearing about it. When I flatly tell him that I'm not interested, he insists on describing every detail of the insane enterprise.

The spectacle begins on the Via Veneto, where the visitors are seated on little red Vespas. As far as I can make out, they'll then plunge into subterranean Rome, zooming down catacombs and zipping through Petronius's bacchanalia. They are catapulted from the alleys of Casanova's Venice to Rimini, where they'll ride across the snow-covered square and into a brothel, where they'll be treated to a ride past, over, and under the women from all my films, who have been re-created with the latest technology and are indistinguishable from the real thing. This dizzying roller coaster ends on the rolling hills of a gigantic replica of the breasts of La Saraghina, between which the poor visitors finally disappear in a free fall, at the end of which they shoot out of the Trevi Fountain, scooter and all, ending with a big splash in the pond, where a Marcello lookalike is waiting to pluck them off their Vespas. In this way, pleads Hurlbut, a whole new generation will be familiarized with all my ideas in less than three minutes.

“Three minutes, sir?” I exclaim, insulted, leaping to my feet. “I've spent my whole life stretching those few minutes into an entire oeuvre. I'd have to be mad to let you condense them again!” I think I must have stood up too quickly, because I start seeing stars. Everything is spinning. I try to drop back into my chair, but I can tell from the shriek that Gelsomina lets loose from the other side of the room that I'm not going to make it. I'm not hurt, but there is enormous consternation. Between
all the faces bending over me, mainly lawyers wanting me to sue the organizers for inadequate air conditioning, I can no longer make out Philastus Hurlbut's. Later, too, once I've shoved them all aside and am sitting calmly holding my darling's hand, he's nowhere to be seen. I must have given him an awful shock.

Gala awakes in the clinic. She hasn't slept well. But the first thing she sees is a delicious breakfast set out with a fresh rose. The sun is shining. There's nothing wrong, and the fears of the night have evaporated. Yet: the place still worries her. She spent enough months in hospitals when she was a child. Gianni can't complain. She's done what she said she would. Now she wants to go outside. What's more, she's got to have her pills. She calls out again. First just “Hello!” Then, a few times, “Pontorax!” Then, suddenly, she loses her nerve. She walks barefoot to the door. She wants to open it but doesn't. She stands there paralyzed.

How often has she stood like this over the last few months, longing to talk to Snaporaz: next to the phone, staring down at it, but incapable of picking up the receiver or dialing the number. She knew he loved her, but she was still terrified of discovering he didn't. Now, too, despite her firm conviction that the door is unlocked, she doesn't dare reach out to reassure herself with a simple gesture.

You'd have to be crazy to want to know the truth when it might confirm what you've been dreading. There are so many more possibilities in delusion.