The Italian Lover
“I’ll find a rabbi tomorrow, okay, who’ll make up the papers. Maybe we should have done it earlier.”
“Thanks, Harry. Let me give you the fax number at the production office. You can send it there.”
She gave him the number and then she said good-bye. If she could just make it through the rest of the day, she thought, she’d be okay, and she started going over in her mind the shot list for the coming week.
Frisbee
The sentenza was handed down not by the examining magistrate who had originally heard the case but by the Sostituto Procuratore del Tribunale di Firenze. It was handed down in record time. No one had expected a decision for at least nine months. But the judge had determined that there was no reason not to regard Biscotti as a cosa, a thing, a piece of property, and had ordered Woody to return her to Rinaldo Romero. Woody was at the American Academy when he got the call from his lawyer. He had one week to surrender the dog.
Woody was furious, full of lyssa, the wolf rage that Homer invokes when he wants to describe the anger of Achilles. Margot had trouble keeping him from going up to Settignano and attacking Rinaldo and his father in their villa, which was located just below the town, on a narrow road that slopes down to the railroad tracks and the river. Woody’s anger was shared by the country at large. There was a public outcry. Articles appeared in La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera, in all the national papers.
RESTITUITO IL CANE
MALTRATTATO AL TORTURATORE
CONDANNATO
How had the Italian legal system moved so nimbly? Everyone agreed that money had changed hands, but no one knew what to do about it except to file an appeal, which Woody did, once he’d calmed down. The president of the Ente Nazionale Protezione Animali was interviewed on Rai Due. New impetus was given to the movement to change article 727.
Every night that week Woody and Margot sat up late drinking wine and trying to make a plan. They could rent a car and drive to Calabria or Switzerland, but then they’d be in Calabria or Switzerland. Woody could fly back to the States with the dog. But not without the necessary papers—not without a certificate of ownership, not without a certificate from a veterinarian confirming that she’d been vaccinated for rabies and parvo.
Woody proposed to Margot for the fourth or fifth time, and she accepted for the fourth or fifth time. But she didn’t want to live in a small town in the Midwest, and he didn’t want to live in Italy. They addressed the problem rationally, rehearsing once more all the pros and cons, and a rational solution always seemed just around the corner. But Woody was too angry to be rational. How could anyone choose to stay in such a country, he wanted to know. Margot pointed out that Woody was a member of an important political organization, that he had more friends in Italy—in Rome, in Bologna, in Florence—than he had in the States, that he had a good job, that he had regular gigs as a bluesman. And Woody pointed out that she’d admitted that she was homesick, that she kept circling around and around her desire to go home, wondering if her real life was waiting for her back in the States.
You’d think that when two people love each other—and there was no question about that—they’d be able to work through their differences. But by the end of the week, it became clear that there was no solution. An irresistible force had encountered an immovable object. Woody was shaken, depressed. And he thought that Margot was shaken too. He didn’t need to go to the Archeological Museum and stand on the stone altar to see into the future. Suddenly everything had become clear.
He was supposed to surrender the dog on Friday, but he did nothing. The commissario he’d met at the Questura called to warn him that if he didn’t surrender the dog voluntarily, the police would come for her, but still he did nothing.
On Saturday morning he did what he did every morning. He got up early and took Biscotti out to play Frisbee while the piazza was more or less deserted. Two street cleaners stopped to watch and share a cigarette, as they did every morning, and a pair of Franciscan nuns also watched as they crossed the piazza on their way to prepare for the early Mass at Santa Croce, and that was it.
It seemed to Woody that Biscotti was running faster than ever and leaping higher than ever, and that he was sailing the Frisbee higher and farther and faster than ever. He had a large rubber ball too, which for the most part he held in his hand. When Biscotti returned with the Frisbee, she would bang the ball with her snout and drop the Frisbee. If Woody wasn’t holding the ball, she wouldn’t drop the Frisbee, and Woody would have to grab her collar and shout at her. Sometimes Woody threw the ball too, and she’d race after it, batting it with her paws till it banged up against the statue of Dante or the steps of the church. If she already had the Frisbee in her mouth, she could pick up the ball with no trouble; but if she had the ball in her mouth first, it took her a while to pick up the Frisbee because she couldn’t get her lower jaw under it.
Every time she brought the Frisbee back to him, she’d toss it into the air for Woody to catch, and Woody would bend over to kiss her head and to caress her well-muscled shoulders.
He didn’t know what he was going to do when the police came, which they did, at six thirty, so he knew that someone had been observing his routine. They parked at the taxi stand on Via Verdi at the far end of the piazza. He’d been expecting poliziotti, not carabinieri in their smart uniforms.
Biscotti seemed especially full of joy this morning. She had no idea what was about to happen, and Woody hadn’t been able to explain, though he’d tried. Lyssa. Wolf rage. That’s what he felt. But then he saw that they were boys, two boys, like the boys that Agamemnon sends to Achilles’ tent to take away the girl Briseis, and he could see that they were more afraid of him than he was of them.
He looked up and saw Margot watching from the window.
He threw the Frisbee into a crowd of pigeons. The pigeons scattered, but not quickly enough. Biscotti caught one in her strong jaws and brought it to Woody, wagging her strong black tail happily. “Drop it,” he said, holding up the blue ball. He took the pigeon from her mouth and tossed it into the air.
The two carabinieri were embarrassed, apologetic. One of them held a leash.
“You’re just following orders,” Woody said. “Take good care of her.”
The one with the leash snapped it onto Biscotti’s collar. The other one said, “We will; don’t worry.”
Biscotti looked at Woody and then at the carabiniero, and then, as she was being led across the piazza to the waiting Alfa 75, back over her shoulder at Woody, who was picking up the Frisbee.
PART III
Postproduction
What Would Margot Do?
Principal photography was completed late Wednesday. The wrap party, on Thursday, was held outside in the piazza. Miranda and Guido were drinking Prosecco in front of the convent. Esther hadn’t cooked, but she’d outdone herself, ordering food and wine from all the different shops and restaurants in the piazza, and inviting all the people who worked in these little shops and restaurants—Natalino, Maistro Ciliego, the Grana Market, the pizzicheria, the ortolano, the latteria. At eight o’clock the shops were just closing, the restaurants just opening. Shopkeepers and waiters mingled with the cast and crew and helped themselves to the food, which was set out on tables that had been brought from the convent. Each person there had come to the end of a chapter in his or her life, to the end of a journey, to the end of a story. At least a dozen love affairs were coming to an end. But everyone was happy and shouting and hugging and kissing. Miranda had tried to persuade Margot to come, but Margot was still angry at Esther.
Miranda had gotten everything she’d wanted. She’d starred in a feature film; she’d played the heroine of her favorite book; and there were more roles on the horizon: Gordon Talbot wanted to cast her in a sex comedy/thriller called The Babysitter, based on a short story by Robert Coover. She wouldn’t have to send out new head shots every three months. But as is often the case, getting what you want doesn’t necessarily make you happy. At least not perfe
ctly happy. She’d betrayed the real Margot. And she didn’t really ever want to see Gordon Talbot again, not if she lived to be a hundred, and she didn’t want to sit in a bathtub and inspire outrageous sexual fantasies in the boy she was babysitting and his father.
She’d had a more or less successful affair with an Italian too—not the star but the dolly grip. Someone below the line, though “below the line” wasn’t what rankled. What rankled was not that Guido was below the line but that he’d dumped her. Well, not dumped, but refused to sleep with her during the rest of the shoot. It was against his philosophy of life, he explained. It was okay for the Italian crew members to be in and out of the dorm rooms of the American PAs all night long, up on the second floor of the convent, but it was not okay for the female lead to fuck the dolly grip. Guido didn’t say “fuck,” but Miranda thought fuck. It was too disruptive, Guido said. It was unprofessional. It created jealousy and suspicion of favoritism. What Guido wanted her to do was wait till after the shoot and go to Rome with him.
What would Margot do? That was the question she kept asking herself. She’d asked Margot too, at lunch with Woody and Margot in a little restaurant in Piazza Santa Croce, and Margot had repeated her earlier advice about doing whatever she did wholeheartedly. And Woody had said she could keep his copy of Anna Karenina, as if it had all the answers. And after lunch Margot had taken her to the Uffizi and walked her through the Renaissance, from Cimabue and Giotto to Raphael and Titian. But the Renaissance was more than these paintings, more than a period of art history. It was the discovery of reason and truth. It was the discovery of the world and of man, the discovery of this world, the wind in your hair, the rough pavement beneath your feet, a man’s hand on your breast. And then they went for a gelato at a little place on the Lungarno, near the hotel, and then, in the lobby of the hotel, Margot told her that Woody was leaving, going back to the States, and they both started to cry.
Miranda nibbled at a small piece of toasted bread that had been rubbed with garlic and a fresh tomato. Three more days in Florence, then the train to Rome and the fifteen-hour flight to L.A. She was going to take a bus up to Piazzale Michelangelo; she was going to walk from Fiesole to Settignano all by herself; she was going to climb Giotto’s tower, and on Sunday, Margot, who’d refused to come to the wrap party, was going to take her to the Bargello. And then she was going to pull herself together and take charge of her life, go back to New York, get back into the theater.
When Guido, standing beside her, touched her arm tentatively, she raised her head up and then lowered it. He was going to drive the grip truck back to Rome in the morning and asked her again if she wanted to go with him.
“What about your philosophy of life? Not mixing with people above the line?”
“That’s during the shoot. I already explained. Now the shoot is over . . .” He shrugged, putting his whole body into it, throwing his hands into the air, opening his eyes wide. Incredulous.
What would Margot do? She had no idea, but maybe what she needed was a down-and-dirty weekend in Rome with somebody below the line, somebody who wasn’t working on a screenplay or who didn’t want to act or direct, so she said yes. They’d have to leave early, he said. He wanted to stop in Montepulciano on the way to buy several cases of Vino Nobile.
The tables were loaded with traditional Florentine specialties— pane toscano, white beans, crostini with chicken liver pâté, raw vegetables, ribollita, pappa al pomodoro, tripe, sliced pork roasts, and, of course, bistecca alla fiorentina—big rare steaks cooked on a grill in the piazza. They stuffed themselves and drank San Giovese di Romagna, and later on Esther cleared a space in the middle of the piazza so they could dance, which wasn’t easy on the rough paving stones. Miranda kicked off her shoes and later had trouble finding them.
In the morning she called Margot to say she was leaving early. She had trouble explaining and started to cry, but Margot said she understood perfectly, and Guido was waiting for her in the lobby when she went down, so she felt better. They took a cab to a little street just north of Piazza Santa Croce, not far from Vivoli, and loaded Miranda’s luggage onto the back of the movie truck. Miranda didn’t see how Guido could possibly get the big truck out of the maze of little streets, but she supposed if he’d gotten the truck in there, he could get it out.
“Getting it in is always harder,” he said. “Especially when you don’t know the territory.”
Maybe it was just that things looked different from below the line, or maybe it was that Miranda had been so intent on having other people look at her that she’d forgotten to look at other people. How could she have missed so much? What she’d learned from Guido, by the time they turned off the autostrada onto the narrow road that led up to Montepulciano, was that Michael was dying of cancer and probably wouldn’t live long enough to make the director’s cut; that Beryl had become fluent in Italian in only two months and spoke with a beautiful Tuscan accent; that Woody had been the vice president of an important antiterrorist organization in Bologna; that Margot ran an internationally famous institute every summer in which some of the leading book conservators from England and the continent offered their services to pass on their skills; that Zanni had been married to a German-speaking woman who’d been killed in a climbing accident in the Dolomites, northwest of Venice; and that as far as the crew was concerned Esther was the best hands-on producer they’d ever worked for: she’d made sure the second AD had the call slips out on time; she’d learned everyone’s name, even though she didn’t speak Italian; she’d known how to stroke the department heads as well as the talent; she’d been willing to haul lights after a wrap; and she’d made sure that everybody got paid on time and that everyone ate well—real Italian food, Florentine food—with a glass or two of red wine.
“How do you know all these things?” Miranda asked.
“Below the line,” Guido said, “you hear everything. You pay attention.”
“How about me?” Miranda asked. “Is there anything about me that I missed?”
“Maybe so. Maybe it’s this: You don’t respect yourself enough. You don’t give yourself enough credit. You know how to take direction, for example. You listen. You give the director something new every take. Even after eight or ten takes, you don’t just go through the motions. I admire that. And you don’t act like a star. Not usually. No temper tantrums. You got a little worked up in the first nude scene, standing in front of the mirror, but if you ask me that was a good sign. Who wouldn’t get worked up? I couldn’t do it myself.”
Montepulciano was on such a steep hill that Miranda was afraid the movie truck wouldn’t make it to the top. They were passed by several racing Alfa Romeos. Then they met the Alfa Romeos coming back down again. They pulled over at a turnoff where a German film crew was shooting the Alfa Romeos. Guido stopped and talked to the film crew in German. It was for a TV commercial. It was hard to get the truck moving again.
The Vino Nobile was for Guido’s father and for his uncle. They left the truck in a parcheggio outside the city walls. Sunday. Restaurants were not open yet, so they stopped for a sandwich at a bar: the barista had some salami, but the only cheese he could offer was Kraft Singles. Miranda thought this was very funny and kept talking about it, even though she could see that it embarrassed Guido.
The woman from whom Guido bought wine was named Lavinia. She lived in a large apartment behind the main piazza and apologized profusely when Guido told her about the Kraft Singles. She wrapped up some local cheese for them and some nasty-looking, homemade blood sausages. And then she followed them in her car to the wine fattoria.
The small fattoria didn’t look very picturesque to Miranda, but Guido said the wine was exceptional. When they were leaving, Guido asked about the turns. He wanted to take the secondary road to the highway without going back to Montepulciano. Lavinia said there wouldn’t be a problem, that he should follow her because the route was a little tricky. Guido explained this to Miranda later, when it turned out there was a problem.
There wasn’t room for the big movie truck to turn from the secondary road onto the two-lane highway that would take them back to the autostrada.
The secondary road stopped at the highway, forming a T. The opposite side of the T was lined with a row of houses. Guido pulled forward as far as he could so that the front of the truck was blocking the door of one of the houses. A woman opened the door. Miranda looked down at her startled face. The woman closed the door again.
Traffic started to pile up.
A German Pullman driver soon took over the situation, barking orders at Guido, who inched the truck back and forth. People got out of their cars to watch. Traffic was soon blocked in both directions as far as Miranda could see.
The German bellowed orders—vorwärts, halt, züruch, halt— and Guido inched the truck back and forth, back and forth. It took fifteen minutes to maneuver the truck around the corner. Traffic began to move again.
“When we get to Rome tonight,” Miranda said, “I’m going to fuck your brains out.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry I said that,” she said. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I mean, I meant it, but the tone was all wrong. For a romantic comedy. That’s what this is, isn’t it? A romantic comedy?”
“It could be,” he said. “Or it could be a farce.”
They were quiet for a while, till they came to Orvieto, another hill town.
“I really am sorry,” she said again. “There are a lot of things about life I don’t understand. At least that’s what everyone keeps telling me.”
“What’s there to understand?”
“Love and marriage, for one thing. Or two things. Beryl and Zanni, for example. And Michael. You’d think Michael would have been more upset. They’ve been married forever and ever. I mean, directing Zanni and knowing . . . all the time. Beryl going off to Venice with him. They were together in Venice the night the three of us went to Vivoli after Revenge of the Pink Panther.” Miranda waited for him to say something. When he didn’t she went on: “Before that, after the cheval glass scene, I saw Beryl coming down from Zanni’s room at the hotel. We had a coffee and talked about Smith and that’s when she said there were a lot of things about life I didn’t understand. And you know what?”