Esther’s job was to exude confidence. She was standing in front of Sotheby’s Florence branch. They were still waiting for a city official to open the Giardino dei Semplici. A traffic policeman had arrived and was using various elaborate gestures to order the driver of the camera truck to move on. The driver was Guido, the dolly grip, the one who’d saved the day when the boom of the crane got stuck up in the air. Guido wasn’t arguing, but he was moving his hands and touching the policeman, first with one hand, then with the other. Esther approached. There was a strike, Guido explained in English, a sciopero—not a strike like in the U.S., but a slowdown. That’s why the official hadn’t arrived to open the gate.
The art department had dressed the exterior of Sotheby’s on Via Capponi to look like the London headquarters, flanked by Tavernier on the left and Richard Green on the right, and when Esther turned around to go back to the porter’s lodge she was transported for a moment to New Bond Street in London. Harry had bought her a pair of diamond earrings at Tavernier for their twenty-fifth anniversary, and afterward they’d bought a Rembrandt engraving at Richard Green. She still had the earrings, but Harry had taken the engraving. Her transport lasted only a moment. She had something stuck between her two front teeth, and when she tried to dislodge it with her thumbnail, she got a sliver of thumbnail stuck too. It was tiny, but it made her head feel like it was swelling up on one side. She turned her back to the porter in the porter’s lodge in order to floss. She always kept a spool of floss in her purse. But the last bit of floss frayed, and a piece of it got stuck along with the sliver of thumbnail.
Things had been going well. Too well. They’d been shooting four pages a day; thanks to the convent, they were significantly under budget in spite of the crane; Gordon Talbot from Leviathan had been really excited about the dailies and about the scenes Eddie Franklin was cutting together. He told Esther not to cut corners, told her he was looking ahead to other projects. But today was going to be difficult, and whatever they had to do had to be done before the sun went down, because it was the last day before Easter week, and everyone had to be out of the hotels the next morning since all the rooms had been booked a year in advance. Miranda was going to stay with Margot and Woody. Esther thought she might stay in the convent.
The set dresser was afraid of giving a lighting estimate that was too short and wanted an extra hour. Esther tried to calm her down by going over, once again, the shots they’d need. They would have to light the auction room—the sala monumentale—only once, so there shouldn’t be a problem. Some of the extras, distinguished older Americans and Brits who’d been rounded up at the American and British churches and outfitted at the convent, had arrived early and were crowding the entrance on Via Capponi, where they were going to shoot the Vatican Police scene. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and they were already an hour behind schedule.
Guido was still talking to the traffic policeman. Esther gave him a fifty-thousand lire note and asked him to see if the policeman might find someone to open the gate. She asked Zanni, the only one who seemed to be enjoying himself, to use his contacts to locate another stills photographer. She deployed Michael to handle Miranda, when she arrived from Makeup. She herded the extras into the Sotheby’s courtyard where the PAs could get them to sign their releases and warn them about flashing the camera.
When the policeman returned with an official and they got the gate open and the camera truck off the street, Esther sent one of the PAs to get more dental floss, dental tape too, if she could find it.
Michael shot the Vatican Police scene with two cameras so that any shots he wanted to cut together would work smoothly, but they were still behind schedule when they finished the scene, and the extras were getting anxious.
The auction scene was long and complicated, the most expensive scene in the film. They had to do only three setups, but there were lots of actors—the bidders, the auctioneer, the Sotheby’s men, who reminded Esther of the soberly dressed men in suits who stood around at funeral homes. And lots of extras to fill the seats. They really needed two days, but Sotheby’s schedule had made it impossible. They could have filmed on the weekend if they hadn’t had to get everyone out of the hotel rooms.
Michael had accepted Miranda’s script change, so that she was going to bid on the Aretino instead of leaving it to Sandro, but she seemed unsure of herself on the first two takes, and then Margot showed up in the middle of the third. Margot was blazing. She entered the sala monumentale, not through the big doors at the back but through one of the big windows overlooking the garden. Michael saw her and yelled “Cut.”
Esther knew that she had to face Margot alone, had to protect Michael. She could see that he was feeling the pressure. He’d been fussing about small things that didn’t usually bother him, and she figured he was upset about Beryl’s affair. It would have been so much simpler if Zanni had taken up with Miranda instead. It would have settled Miranda down. But that hadn’t happened, and now Esther needed to protect the shot. It was two o’clock.
Margot was heading straight for her, for Esther. “When I finished reading the screenplay,” she said in a loud voice, “I thought I wasn’t going to say anything. I didn’t think I’d be able to speak to you”—she was almost hissing—“but when you called this morning and asked me to find someone to unlock the gates to the Giardino dei Semplici . . . You push and push and push. You want more and more and more.”
“Can we talk outside?” Esther asked.
“How could you do this to me? I thought we were friends. You said you thought of me as your daughter, and now —”
“Shhh. We’ve got to finish this shot today. It’s now or never.”
“This isn’t what Woody and I wrote. This is a piece of shit. It’s worse than the original screenplay for MGM.”
“Please, Margot, let’s go outside. I’ll explain everything.”
“You’ve trashed the story. There’s nothing left of it. There’s not even a flood. A broken drainage pipe floods Piazza San Pier Maggiore and the Badia? The Badia is two kilometers away. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of. How can there not be a flood?”
“Do you have any idea what it would cost to do a flood? A flood would double our budget.”
“There’s all kinds of stock footage you could use, and all you’d have to do is pile a little mud up in San Pier Maggiore to get the effect. But that’s your job, not mine. And you’ve totally misrepresented the convent. The convent was a wonderful place, a feminist enclave, not a prison. And my parents? a drunk and a slut? And Margot marries Sandro in the end? What are you thinking of? You’ve got to get Sandro out of the way so Margot can do her thing. On her own. Without a man to rescue her or take over her life. I don’t mind all the extra sex. Why not? Miranda Clark has a beautiful butt. Why not put it out there for the whole world to admire? But why does she have to be such a nitwit? She can’t even speak Italian in the movie. There’s no reason for her to be in Italy. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And Sandro. He’s supposed to be sophisticated, not a dope. Who’s going to want to see a dope and a ninny fall in love. You betrayed me. You stabbed me in the back, Esther.”
“Margot, listen to me. You can’t have the male lead disappear halfway through the movie.”
“Why the fuck not? If that’s the fucking point of it all? Why the fuck is he hanging around? Get him the fuck out of there. Why did you want to make this film if you’re going to give all the important stuff to Sandro? It’s my story, not his story. It’s my story that you’re fucking up. My life. As far as I’m concerned, you can go to hell. You belong right down there with the betrayers in Dante—the traditori. Judas and Brutus and Cassius. And now Esther.”
“You got paid, didn’t you?” Esther shouted. “You cashed your checks. Ninety thousand dollars for a screenplay that I had to rewrite and . . .”
But Margot was already climbing out the window, the same way she’d come in. No one was in a mood to linger. They did the mast
er shot in one more take, and Michael said “Cut, Print,” and then they set up for the medium shots and the close-ups. Esther checked the window. There was a balcony and an outside stairway, so she knew that Margot hadn’t jumped.
Esther was upset—who wouldn’t be?—but by the time they wrapped, her take on it was that maybe things weren’t so bad after all. Margot had no control over the script, and she’d seen worse. Authors were always a problem. She could tell some stories that would curl your hair. One thing was sure: they couldn’t have afforded a flood. And you really couldn’t have the male lead disappear halfway through the film. You just couldn’t. She didn’t know how she could have done things differently.
Easter Week
Beryl was not completely surprised by the person she turned out to be in Italian. She’d had a glimpse of this person when she was drinking tea with the concierge in the Protestant Cemetery, and again when she was eating supper with Zanni and Michael in Trattoria la Maremmana. Instead of being witty, sophisticated, in control, she was tongue-tied, awkward, and vulnerable. What did surprise her was that in Italian she was a nicer person. She couldn’t afford to be angry because she had no weapons. Sarcasm and irony were beyond her linguistic competence. In English she didn’t suffer fools gladly, but in Italian she couldn’t tell a fool from a font of wisdom, and so she talked to everyone who was willing to talk to her and was on a first-name basis with the butcher and the baker and the woman from whom she bought her vegetables at Mercato Sant’Ambrogio, and the checkout clerks at the Standa. She liked this new person, and she tried to be this person with Michael: open, vulnerable, interested in everything. But as soon as she started speaking English, this new self disappeared. In English she was fully formed, congealed. In Italian she was still malleable. In English she thought of marriage as a fruitful collaboration, adultery as an irrational heat. She and Michael had been joined together in English for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. In English she did not see marriage as a prison and adultery as an act of rebellion. But in Italian . . . In Italian she could still be hopelessly in love, and so with Zanni she spoke only Italian, because she was afraid that one word of English would destroy everything, like the prohibitions in fairy tales: Don’t look back; don’t peek in the box; open any door but that one; eat from any tree but that one.
But now that the thing that all secret lovers long for, a romantic holiday all to themselves, was in Beryl’s grasp, why was she risking everything—ecstasy, heaven on earth—by asking Michael to come with her to Venice, as they had originally planned? Was she sure he wouldn’t change his mind and go with her, as he’d promised back in New York, back at the beginning? If he said yes, the affair would be over. She’d tell Zanni that she was going with Michael instead, and that would be that.
Did Michael know what was going on? He had to know. Everyone else knew. Then why didn’t he say something? Why didn’t he show more spunk?
“You remember the hotel,” she said. “Hotel Buon Pesce, out on the Lido. I’ve already reserved a room. You remember how tiny our room was? But nice. We could look out and see the canal, and the top of the campanile, and at night we could see the lights along the other shore. We could eat in that little fish place if it’s still there. What did they call those things? Not a regular meal, not antipasti. Cicchetti, that was what they were. Polpo and calamari and all those little fish we didn’t recognize, so we just pointed at them. They probably take credit cards now. We thought the wine prices were for a bottle, but they were for a glass, remember? And we barely had enough money to pay the bill.
“We could go to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum and sit in front of the Jackson Pollock. That’s when I realized that modern art is, well, art. And you could see the reflection of the canal in the glass over the painting—the palazzi on the other side of the canal—and then the museum guard came and closed the blinds.”
Michael was at the kitchen table that served as his desk doing some storyboard revisions for the strappo scene in the Badia. It was the biggest challenge that remained. “It’s going to be spectacular,” he said.
Poor Michael, she thought. He worked so hard because it was all he knew how to do at this point. All he could do. All he could talk about. How to shape this scene or set up that shot. He was always willing to start over with every film. He was dependable and always had work. He never gave up. He was always confident that the film he was working on would be his masterpiece. He was dedicated to his craft. But she knew—and it broke her heart—that he was never going to have a huge success, never going to fulfill the promise of his first film. Such a lovely story it had been too. A story about older people falling in love.
“You’ve got a doctor’s appointment on Friday. At the clinic at Santa Maria Nuova. It’s only half a block away. Turn right at the end of Borgo Pinti; don’t go under the arch. Just stay to your right.”
He nodded.
“You won’t forget? You’ve got to get another leuprolide shot.”
It was hard to get him to keep his appointments, to take his medicine. Was it an affectation? No. It was the only way he knew how to be.
“You’re sure you won’t go? To Venice, I mean.”
“I’m sure,” he said, sketching. “You have a good time.”
She looked at his drawing. He’d gotten carried away and was sketching not the shot but the fresco itself, the one that Sandro restores—Saint Francis dancing before the Pope. He’d made a lovely drawing.
She knew that he knew, and that this trip was his gift to her. He was being magnanimous. She hated magnanimity, but what could she do?
Michael needed a vacation. From Beryl. Beryl was the only woman he’d ever loved, but he needed some quiet time, needed to be out of the spotlight of her attention. She wanted to keep his spirits up by entertaining interesting people. Last week she’d invited all the students in her Italian class to dinner—Germans, Argentines, Japanese, a couple of Americans—and the instructors too. Twenty-five people. The week before it had been the search committee from the American Church. That was on Tuesday, and then after the wrap on Wednesday, she’d prepared an osso buco for the principal actors, Esther, the Italian assistant director, and an American nun she’d met at the Badia Fiorentina. She’d furnished their little kitchen with a complete batterie de cuisine. She wanted to nourish him. She cooked something special every night. Every night she served him something better than the baked baby lamb he’d eaten at Enoteca Pinchiorri. She wanted him to have a certain kind of space. She’d bought a book on feng shui and rearranged the furniture so that the apartment—large but nondescript—seemed more Italian, and she had a way of adjusting the lights to highlight the strips of fifteenth-century fresco that had been left on the walls when the apartment was remodeled, which gave the room a warm glow. She threw herself into her language class so she could look after him out on the street, could make restaurant reservations, make special arrangements at the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace, so he wouldn’t have to wait in line, not that he had time to go to these places. She’d taken charge of his health from the beginning, had researched everything: different treatments—radiation, chemotherapy, radical prostatectomy—and finally, when his PSA went off the charts, the leuprolide, the only alternative to castration. Except death. The drug suppressed testosterone and would eventually do permanent damage to his testicles. He couldn’t maintain an erection, but Beryl was happy just to cuddle. At least that’s what he’d thought.
He’d known about the affair ever since the crane shot in Piazza Signoria, and he knew that she was going to Venice with Zanni. He’d stepped outside himself a second time, just as he’d stepped outside himself up on the turret of the crane. Just as if he were now looking down with the same Godlike perspective, as if he were watching a genre film that had taken on a life of its own and become unpredictable, like The Godfather or Singin’ in the Rain. He told himself that this was Italy, where things like this happened. He told himself that he’d had affairs and that Beryl had ta
ken them in stride. His plan had been to be a heroic martyr, a saint, magnanimous. He’d thought he’d be able to gut it out, but alone in the empty apartment, it wasn’t so easy. What if she left him? What if he had to face his death all alone?
The dominant sound in the apartment was the sound of the accordion player on the street below, Via Pietrapiana. Michael looked out the window. It was cold, but the street was busy. It was always busy. All night long you could hear people talking. The accordion player wasn’t very good. He knew only three or four songs, which he played over and over, but the music was comforting. On his way to buy bread and salami for lunch, Michael ignored the accordion player, but on his way back from the Grana Market, he gave him a ten-thousand lire note. In the apartment, he made coffee in Beryl’s special caffettiera. He waited for the little explosion that aerated the coffee so that it would have the same crema that you got in a bar.
Michael had figured out early on that the way to become a director was to write something first, so he wrote a screenplay for Chekhov’s The Lady with the Pet Dog. He had liked the expression “tutored by bitter experience,” which he repeated endlessly, and he liked the way the second ending snuck up behind the first and took you by surprise, like the second mountain appearing behind the first in Wordsworth when he steals the boat: just when you thought you’d come to the end and understood what was going on, real love cut through Gurov’s cynicism and Anna’s conventional romantic illusions.