“That’s you, isn’t it, on the notice board?”
Behind her back, Gala pinches Maxim, who is already having difficulty restraining a shriek of delight, on the bum.
“Yes, that’s right,” he says, “that’s us.”
She opens a door—and there they are between lots of others: character actors, carnies, laborers, washerwomen …
“He’ll be right with you,” the receptionist says before leaving them alone.
“He’ll be right with you,” repeats Gala, shaking her head. She tries to take it all in: the office, the windows overlooking the pines, the sketches on the wall. Maxim reads the production schedules in the hope of learning something about the chapter they’re about to write in cinematic history, but the scene and location numbers mean nothing to him.
The wait is remarkably long. At first they’re upset, worried they’ve been forgotten, and then they get bored and calm down. Maxim flops onto the sofa and leafs through the latest Variety. Gala drapes herself over the desk like a Pirelli pinup on the hood of a car. She leafs through the in and out trays, moving the photo of an overripe Dane from one to the other.
The man who finally arrives pricks their dreams like a finger pushed into a soap bubble. Not only is he not Snaporaz, he doesn’t have anything at all to do with the artistic side, and his job is to discourage, not help. And he’s merely the lowest official in the outer circle of a long series of offices and waiting rooms around the inner sanctum.
To film their disappointment, you’d have to dolly in on Maxim and Gala quick enough to zoom out at the same time, so their dismayed faces would get closer while their surroundings recede, so alienating is their abrupt realization that months, not minutes, separate them from their goal.
If they’d acted on their feelings, stumbling over the shards of their ambitions on their way to the exit and the metro, slowly resuming their true proportions as they disappeared down the tunnel, the whole adventure could have ended here.
Instead, they wander numbly over the grounds behind the studio, arms linked and leaning on each other. They walk a few times around the pool where Ben-Hur’s trireme was sunk, scene also of the naval battles of Lepanto, the Nile, and Chatham. They wander among the saloons of a town in the Wild West, down Viennese boulevards that lead past Brooklyn fire escapes to narrow Roman alleys that end at a forum with a temple like an iced cake. They sit down and stare out at the ancient arches of the Sette Bassi aqueduct and the blocks of flats on the Via Tuscolana.
“When Filippo was little …,” Maxim says after a while.
“Which Filippo?”
“Sangallo.”
“The viscount. Why haven’t I ever met that guy? Does he have something against women?”
“Why should he, when he’s got so much in common with them? When he was little, he lived somewhere on an estate in the hills. In the early twenties. They didn’t have a radio or a gramophone. His mother gave him scores. He read them the way we read books. He heard the parts in his head. Separate at first, then with another one, until in the hush of nature he could fill his thoughts with the complete symphony.”
A small Fiat is approaching along the track beside the fence, throwing up an enormous cloud of dust.
“When there was a concert in town, Filippo’s mother would take him. There, he would finally hear the melodies and harmonies. It was always a disappointment. The musicians were excellent, the conditions perfect. Yet it was never as beautiful as he’d imagined.”
The car stops at the back gate and beeps impatiently until a guard appears, summoned from his afternoon nap. The coat of his uniform is unbuttoned.
“How long can we hold out?” asks Gala.
“Until New Year’s, a few weeks longer if we only eat at the market. No more coffee at outdoor cafés, only standing at the bar, and definitely no more stracciatella at the Pantheon.”
The car goes past. The driver is a small woman in a crocheted hat who can barely see over the wheel. She has to straighten up a little to cast a glance at the young people by the side of the road. Their eyes meet briefly before she disappears into the cloud of dust she’s throwing up.
The realization hits them both at the same time.
“It’s her.”
“Gelsomina!”
“On her way to …”
“… who else?”
They watch the car disappear behind the palisade of the fake forum.
“Gelsomina!” they scream together. They leap up. “Gelsomina. Gelsomina!” Gala kicks off her stilettos and starts running. Maxim scoops them up and follows. They take a shortcut over the cobblestones of medieval Paris and are just in time to see Snaporaz’s wife get out of her car close to Studio 5. The film star opens the trunk and takes out a picnic basket, so old that the cane has forgotten it was once woven. The neck of a bottle of wine is sticking out, along with a leg of ham and a loaf of bread. While the woman rearranges it all, she looks up, accustomed to being pursued by paparazzi. Gala and Maxim, who have ducked behind the Sphinx of Giza, which has been put out in the sun to dry, can see her clearly. Gelsomina has grown old since her heyday, but she still has the features of a cartoon character: the big eyes and the stubby nose above that tiny body, the little clown from the film in which her husband made her a star. Carrying his lunch, she scuttles around the corner of the studio and enters through a fire escape hidden behind the garbage cans. Someone at a window on the top floor recognizes the sound of her steps on the concrete. He peers out through the Venetian blinds.
“Gotcha!” says Gala. She waves, but the man at the window steps back.
The blinds close with a clack.
Just then, they feel the security guard’s hands on their shoulders.
• • •
Anything is permissible with the harbor in sight. The red-shirted Mazzini went to Pius IX seeking support for the revolution, and now the Dutch actors shed their final reservations. They apply for roles they would have turned their noses up at a week earlier, all in the hope of earning enough to stay in the city until casting starts for Snaporaz’s film. The movie business may be in hibernation, but it’s still peak season for advertising. There’s plenty of modeling work, but there’s also an enormous amount of competition. From high in the snow-covered Alps to the boot’s dusty sole, Italy’s most beautiful children come to Rome to capitalize on the New Year promotions and the sales that follow. Maxim and Gala go from one end of the city to another on their way to cattle calls, where the human livestock get numbers hung around their necks and are summoned in lots of fifty to be judged by the meat commission. Like shop-window dummies, they let impatient hands arrange them in all kinds of positions. The gleanings are meager, but enough to feed them. Gala poses as Mother Christmas for the post office, wearing a bag full of greeting cards and little else. Maxim shaves his upper legs and lower belly for the privilege of modeling a line of discount G-strings. Day after day they are appraised, discussed with bored gestures, and brushed aside. Gala takes it all in her stride until Christmas Eve, when things finally go wrong. The city is threatened by a shortage of male hands: sturdy wrists for watches and cuff links, strong fingers for pointing out prizes, sensual palms to offer engagement rings or boxes of chocolates. Gala, who loves Maxim’s hands, takes him to a go-between, herself a former model. She has an office in a back room in the Via di Ripetta, but the woman has scarcely touched his fingers when she cries in disgust, “No, oh my God, Lord, no. No, no, no!” and drops them as if she’s been offered two bloody stumps.
The insult cuts Gala to the quick. She vehemently defends the hands that caress her, but the witch insists that they are absolutely useless for promotional purposes.
“The knuckles are too broad.”
“Too broad?” Gala jumps up. “How can a man’s hands be too broad?”
The woman, used to keeping the desk between her and dissatisfied customers, rings a bell for the next hands to come in.
“Well, darling,” she says, “I’ve learned to see things a
s they are. It was that or starve.”
Maxim puts his arm around Gala’s shoulders. They’re already in the doorway as the woman, without looking up from her papers, quietly pursues her train of thought.
“Not that it wasn’t wonderful, letting yourself be so blind,” she muses, before energetically tearing herself away from her memories. “Ah, you’re still so young, look at each other however you like, but don’t come crying to me about how disappointing it is.”
That night, they wander late through a city that seems to be theirs alone. As always, they have no need of other people. Lying languidly on the Piazza Navona, Gala decides to wet her face and neck with the water in the basin by the Moor’s feet. She notices a man staring at them. With both hands, she scoops up some water and throws it at him to chase him away, but this only encourages him. Elated, as if reminded of a childhood game, he runs up, shouting that he wants to join in the fun. Gala and Maxim tolerate him. They pity his loneliness in a city overflowing with love. The man plunges his hands into the fountain, then thinks better of it. He lingers, hesitant, his cuffs in the water. He looks so sorry and misplaced that Gala and Maxim can’t hold it in for a second longer and burst out laughing. Without a word, the stranger slinks off, whereupon they fall into each other’s arms, grateful that they themselves are so alive.
“People used to let me know what they were up to, but now it’s every man for himself.”
The next morning, Geppi’s grumbling wrenches them out of their deepest dreams. Sliding open the windows, she turns back the blankets, letting the cold air wash over their bodies, picks some clothes off the floor, and throws them in a bag.
“A trip, I predicted that, but not on Christmas morning itself. I always say blessed be those who deserve it and the rest will find out soon enough, but nevertheless he’s waiting down there, a gentleman with a chauffeur who asked if he might try a sliver of my panforte. I took him some. And why not? Why the hell not? I like to see people enjoy themselves and I make my panforte from a recipe I got from the hermitesses of Basilicata, just so you know, though the rest of it’s none of my business. That baron out there is here for you.”
She zips up the bag and puts it on the bed. When Maxim sits up, he has a piercing headache.
“Just one thing, signora, signor”—the concierge sounds unexpectedly humble—“as for renting out the room to … you know, third parties, how long do you think you’ll be gone?”
“We’re not going anywhere.”
“But you will. They all do, sooner or later. How could it be any other way?” La Bimba Atomica casts a glance at their shamelessly young bodies and, for the length of a nostalgic sigh, imagines herself between them.
“Fine.” She gets a grip and leaves. “Then I won’t count on any more than this one Holy Day. I’ll tell the gentleman you’re up. Buon natale.”
Sangallo is waiting on the garden bench, his gentle smile a balm to eyes having trouble adjusting to the daylight.
“I thought I’d take my children for a ride. It’s extraordinary. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” He introduces himself to Gala. He hadn’t counted on her, but doesn’t let on. He bows his large frame and kisses her hand. Then he takes Maxim’s and, wavering between awkwardness and charm, mischief and embarrassment, presses his lips against it. Finally, seeking refuge in Charlie Chaplin’s apologetic expression, and not wanting them to feel neglected, he shrugs and kisses his own hands.
On their way to the car, Gala offers him an arm and leans against him, trusting him immediately.
“Onward, in the interest of science!”
They leave the city and take the autostrada south. By the time they’re approaching Castelgandolfo, Sangallo has realized that his guests are hungover, observing the sun-drenched landscape through squinted eyes.
“We mustn’t allow our view of the ancients to be troubled by the vices of youth,” he says, ordering his chauffeur to drive into the mountains. He gets out in the woods around Lake Albano. Snuffling like a dog looking for a spoor, he shuffles through the brushwood. He pulls an herb out of the ground, roots and all. First he puts some leaves in Gala’s mouth, and then in Maxim’s: minty but sour and bitter as aspirin. He crushes another herb between thumb and middle finger, then rubs the white sap on their temples, first hers and then his. Their neck muscles relax almost immediately, while the pounding in their heads diminishes. At a nearby farmhouse, Sangallo asks the farmer’s wife to make an omelet with ham and porcini, which they shovel down at the kitchen table. Beaming, Sangallo pours fresh goat’s milk from a jug.
“To party and see the world,” sighs Sangallo, “at your age! Your possibilities seem endless.”
“Didn’t you do the same?” asks Maxim.
“It wasn’t the right time.”
“But you were rich.”
The old man looks at the goats grazing in the field.
“My mother wouldn’t have permitted it. She wouldn’t have trusted me with that much freedom. She would have cut off my allowance. Even given my circumstances … I wouldn’t have had a penny.”
You can hear the question hanging in the air, but Sangallo is too polite to ask it.
“We worked a bit,” explains Gala, “but that extra money is gone. Now we’re earning a little here and there.”
“Our rent is next to nothing.”
“Even so, Rome is expensive,” says the viscount.
“Thank God for our allowance,” laughs Maxim. “The Dutch state is a more bountiful mother than Countess Sangallo.”
“A state allowance? You’re not claiming that you’ve been sent here for reasons of state to enjoy the good life in Rome?”
“More or less,” says Maxim. He does his best to explain the Dutch social security system. It’s not easy. The concept of unemployment benefits isn’t the problem—of course, the government doesn’t abandon its stranded herring gutters and curdled milkmaids—but the old man twice mishears the amount they are receiving. The ease with which they’ve conquered a ship of gold like that gives rise to an array of new questions. He is most confused by the news that they never had to be employed in the first place, but became unemployed immediately, on their last day of school, when, like Maxim and Gala, they started getting paid for nothing.
“You could also call her a mother who is not terribly concerned about her offspring,” Sangallo demurred. “She throws some money at them and turns her back, washing her hands of the problem.”
It takes him a while to appreciate just how confident these youngsters are that they have a right to something they don’t earn, never have earned, and have no intention of repaying, but once it’s sunk in the astonishment on his face turns to increasing admiration. Smiling cautiously, then glancing from one to the other to make sure they’re not pulling his leg, he bursts out laughing.
“An allowance from the state to do nothing? Masterful!” He slaps his thighs. “Only in the Netherlands!”
Sleeves rolled up, the farmer’s wife comes out from behind her donkey to make sure he’s not mocking her cooking.
“Not at all, woman,” shouts Sangallo. “I’ve just been told something amazing, an unforgettable joke. You missed it. I can’t possibly repeat it. Only in Holland, up in the far north. What can you expect from a nation that chose to settle in a swamp?”
The woman washes her hands at the pump and starts to clear the table.
“Hold on, seriously.” Sangallo tries to keep a straight face but can’t help chuckling, like a child who wants to hear a story it can’t get enough of. “One more time: you get money every month and you don’t have to do anything for it at all.”
“Well, you do have to sign for it.”
“An IOU!”
“No, just a form with a few questions about how you are and so on. You have to hand it in.”
“And then there’s an interview where they ask you about your answers?”
“You put it in a mailbox outside the building, so you don’t have to go to the trouble of coming at office
hours. And if you can’t make it one time … or maybe a bit longer, a few months, or half a year …”
“… you get somebody else to do it for you and you pocket the money!” guesses Sangallo. He is so overcome by the giggles that he has to walk over to the window for a breath of fresh air. “It’s classic. This is, it’s … I tell you, this is material for an opera, a comic intermezzo: tara-rom-ti-ra, the pranks of a shameless villain fleecing his master right under his nose. Pure commedia dell’arte: behind the count’s back, the servants put on his most beautiful clothes and lord it over his riches. Pantalone in the polder. Piddelee, piddelee, piddelipom. Ah, Rossini is turning in his grave.”
He pays the peasant woman for the meal, buying her wine and a woven basket of candied orange pieces, so sweet that the bottom is already in sight before the car has started heading south again.
“Les nouveaux pauvres,” says Sangallo, his fingers touching Maxim’s and Gala’s as they try to scrape up the last crystalized droplets of fruit. “Cultural tramps, subsidized vagabonds. Traveling the world without a job and yet carefree. Beautiful, shameless people. That’s how they do it, the new poor!”
Most of Vesuvius is hidden behind the clouds gathered on its slopes. They drive past Herculaneum, but it is closed for the holidays. They park beside the deserted supervisor’s building—not out front, but around the back. Sangallo spreads a map out on the hood and decides to continue by foot over a donkey path. For a long time, it follows the fence, before turning off over extremely rough terrain. Sangallo explains that the tourist attractions are only a fraction of the archaeological treasures. On this side, where everything was buried under lava, there was more destruction than on the Pompeii side, which was buried under a rain of ash. But here too the grass grows over country houses, farms and basilicas, market squares, taverns, and theaters. The slopes they are walking over follow the roofs and terraces, galleries and domes of an ancient suburb. They leave the path for a roller-coaster route down steep declines and through unexpected pits, more and more slippery now that it has started drizzling.