“O Dei, che smania è questa,” she proudly sings, “che tumulto nel cor.” She plants a foot on a stool and, like a childhood friend, puts an arm around Maxim’s shoulders. “A leader, I thought, belongs with his men.”
On the morning of the premiere of La Clemenza, Gala fishes her last anticonvulsant pill out of a traveling bag. The tablet is so battered that it could hardly be more than half a dose. The expiration date has long since elapsed, but she has no choice. That night, she watches the spectacle with her eyes half-closed. Erected from gleaming marble to Sangallo’s design, the Forum Romanum is awash in light that hurts her eyes. Gala does her best to follow Maxim whenever he’s on, but a piercing headache is coming over her. Maxim’s outline blurs. She can just see him holding his hand out to the soprano dressed as a man and leading her up the stairs of the Capitol, two radiant figures who slowly disappear behind the black patch in the corner of her left eye. Gala breathes deeply with relief and lets everything go black.
“E chi tradisci? Il più grande, il più giusto, il più clemente!”
She listens to Silberstrand with her eyes closed.
The two women meet afterward in the limousine Sangallo has ordered to drive them and the young men through the winter storm to Ostia.
Waves wash over the boulevard and break against the terrace of the seaside hotel. Salty drops run down the glass wall of the dining-room extension. Inside it is warm and sticky. In the middle of the glass room stands an outsized torso of white marble, a fragment from a gigantic Hermes that once towered over the ancient breakwater. Robbed of its limbs, the muscular body is now surrounded by palms and orchids, and in its shadow, a table has been set for the group. Sangallo chooses a chair. The young men gather round him.
“You are the most beautiful reward for all my hard work,” he tells them, though he generously shares their attention with the two women.
“I feel honored,” Gala says, “to be allowed into your men’s club,” and she lets them flirt with her, languid and benevolent as a panther allowing itself to be provoked to a swipe, sure that no one could stand up to it in the ring.
Silberstrand is watching the circus with a smile of recognition and places her hand on the small of Maxim’s back.
“Why do you think that men who would never really desire a woman are so keen to be surrounded by the most extreme specimens of the opposite sex?”
“How should I know?” Maxim asks indignantly. “That’s just the way it is.”
She appraises him with amusement.
“So you think I should accept it?”
“Either I love someone or I don’t. All I’m interested in is whether they’re exceptional. One of a kind. If someone wants to arouse my desire, they have to convince me there’s no one else even remotely like them.”
A little later: corks popping, Silberstrand and Gala surveying the group. Some of the young men roll up their sleeves to test their strength. Others cheer them on, passionately, as if something important were at stake.
“You’ve got it wrong,” the singer whispers. “We haven’t been invited to this men’s club as women.”
“No?”
“You and I are here to confirm their idea of women.”
“And that is?”
“Exaggerated.”
Gala shares her laughter.
“Real women, the ones you see everywhere, in the street, on the bus, even the kind that shake their thing on the TV here, everyday women … men might marry them, but they will never admit them to their fraternity. They fuck them, but they don’t want them around in their free time.”
“I can’t believe anyone could be that primitive, not even a man.”
“But their reaction to you and me is the opposite. You and I, we’re larger than life. Not bigger than others, just more grotesque. Provocative, unattainable extremes: that’s what men like.”
“Are you talking about our tits and asses?”
“I’m talking about characteristics that are exaggerated like the characters in an opera, where you’re either seduction or vengeance incarnate, passion or the heroine—never a complete person. That’s why we’re allowed here tonight—the more we make a show of our femininity, the more masculine they feel. They’ll horse around and wrestle, but they’ll think ten times before they lay a finger on us, before they’d actually touch us, really notice us.”
They hear disco music: the hotel manager’s attempt to drown out the rising storm. Some of the extras start dancing to dispel their boredom, and Silberstrand swings her arms around to show she’s up for anything.
“Of course,” she continues, “I put on airs. ‘Crazy lady,’ they say, just check her out, all independent. She’s got no shame and she’s free.’ I’ve learned to give them what they want. They want more every year. In this game, it’s not about what you look like, it’s about how you’re seen. Not the way you are, but how they’d like you to be. A goddess is a goddess because there’s someone to worship her, so she conforms to the idea her worshippers have of her, because what would be left of her if they turned away?”
She catches the eyes of her troops. She flirts with a youth who soon seems to forget everything around them and dance just for her.
“In exchange for my efforts,” Silberstrand continues, never taking her eyes off him, “I reap those glances one last time—though they’re actually yours now. I used to get them without even noticing, and only when they disappeared did I start missing them. It’s harder and harder for me to win them back.”
She stands, pulling Gala behind her. For a while, ignoring the men completely, the women dance.
“It’s only when you lose things,” Silberstrand shouts in Gala’s ear, “when life starts to contract, that you feel how vast it was, how spectacular it could be, one last time.” She lets go and dances over to Maxim, who is talking to Sangallo.
“Fall in, centurion!” she commands. Without stopping the motion of her hips for an instant, the singer wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him onto the dance floor and stealing the show with swirling pirouettes and tango poses. Chest to chest, they catch their breath in what looks like an embrace.
“You’ve got a nice body, soldier!” she says in praise of her subordinate, pretending to inspect him. “Yes, I wouldn’t mind celebrating the Lupercalia with you.”
“Why not?” Maxim bluffs, elated by his success. He feels her breath on his neck as she nuzzles his earlobe. “You and I will celebrate the Lupercalia together. Except”—he reconsiders—“first you’ll have to teach me what that is.”
“That’s not all I can teach you,” she says, like a dirty old man talking to his secretary, planting her hands on his buttocks and pulling his groin against hers. “It’s the feast where all the sexually mature young men of Rome are taken to the racecourse, stripped naked, set running, and pursued.”
“By girls?”
“By women,” says Silberstrand portentously, “and by their army officers, of course.”
“You think you could catch me?”
“You think you’d run so fast?”
“That depends,” he says as coolly and as brusquely as possible, but his answer is already throbbing against Silberstrand’s belly. He can’t help but admire her bearing, which remains just as superior, indeed almost regal, no matter how uncouth she acts. But he is most moved by her shameless exhibition.
“Young men like that were richly rewarded in ancient Rome,” she pants. “When they lived up to their promise, their fortune was made.”
“Those were the days.”
“I’m mad about tradition.”
Just then, Gala interrupts. She still has a headache and wants Maxim to take her home. Before he can leave, Silberstrand grabs his arm.
“Keep your promise, and I’ll make the effort worth your while.”
Back home, Maxim vainly rummages through cupboards and bags. There is no medicine left. He puts Gala to bed and sits beside her until she falls asleep. Then he leaves. He takes the tram to the Pyrami
d near Ostiense and from there jumps on the last train to the seaside, where he rushes through the storm along the lido toward Castel Fusano. The hotel’s big lights have been turned off, and from a distance the winter garden looks dark as well. The tall windows of the conservatory reflect the rhythmic flashes from the lighthouse, but Maxim can see candlelight flickering behind the steamed-over glass. Sangallo and Silberstrand are sitting at the round table. And on the sofa at the foot of the ancient torso, the friends Griso and Gervaso are lying asleep, one with his head on the other’s stomach.
When Maxim, drenched from the storm, steps into the oppressive warmth of the conservatory, Sangallo does not immediately notice him. Only when a delighted Silberstrand greets the young man does the director leap up like a worried father, taking off his jacket, wrapping it around Maxim’s chilled shoulders, and drying his face with a napkin. He rings room service for a bathrobe and towels and dries Maxim’s hair himself.
All this time, Maxim has scarcely dared to look at Silberstrand, but he peers at her from under the towel as the viscount rubs his head. Proud and tall as a queen on a throne, she observes him shamelessly, smiling slightly, with no doubt as to why he has returned.
She stands when Sangallo is finished. Using her fingers, she carefully combs Maxim’s hair back as she studies his face. He feels his heart pounding the same way it does when he’s standing in front of an audience, but he knows the techniques an actor uses to conceal it. He inhales deeply to slow the breathing that’s making him light in the head. He even suppresses the blinking of his eyes as if for a close-up, because he knows the effort will moisten them and catch the light. He removes his cuff links before the singer unbuttons his wet shirt and takes it off. She wipes the drops from his chest with the palm of her hand, scraping her nails over a nipple in the process. Taking pleasure in his shiver, she slides the tip of her tongue across her teeth.
The director throws him a bathrobe and the singer helps him into it, turning up the collar and pressing a kiss onto his chest before closing the lapels. When she sits on the sofa beside the ancient Hermes’ muscular flank, it seems only natural for Maxim to sit next to her, slumping down and placing his head on her bare shoulder. In the muggy conservatory, his breath feels cool on her skin. They listen to the wind as if a melody were hidden in the rattling windows.
“I think it was when we were casting Ludwig, Luchino and I,” says Sangallo. He tops up their glasses from a new bottle he has ordered to celebrate Maxim’s return. “At any rate, it was shortly after Helmut Berger strolled in and ripped open our lives, yes, that must have been when we discovered that, when you get down to it, there are only three kinds of people. We christened them the Nüftes, the Tüftes, and the Grüftes. Presumably in honor of Helmut. Silly names to lighten up the whole suffocating situation. Nüftes, that’s who I surround myself with, people like you: gorgeous, young, at the peak of their sexual power and beauty, almost unaware of their divinity, they light up the world for us, the others. The consolation …”
On the sofa, a groan goes up from one of the sleeping youths. He turns on his side, almost falling, but regains his balance without really waking, like a puppy nuzzling back into the rest of the litter. Sangallo smiles as if to dispel a melancholy memory and sips his wine.
“Then you have the Tüftes. Tüftes were once Nüftes. I’m one of them. You see: once a Nüfte, now a Tüfte. The Nüftes have grown old in style, happy that they have their memories, just a bit sad that they’ve lost so much.”
“And the Grüftes?” asks Maxim, amused.
“You don’t want to know.” Sangallo shudders. “The Grüftes are ugly and unattractive. Always have been, always will be.”
“And how do you become a Grüfte?”
“Ah, if only we knew … They are repulsive because they’ve declared war on everything good and beautiful. One day, perhaps in earliest childhood, they turned their backs on beauty. Luchino said they do it out of pure malice, but I think it’s disappointment, some great sorrow, the fear of going your own way, which is the path that is essential to beauty.”
“How awful.”
Sangallo sits beside the sleepers on the sofa, dips two fingers in his glass, and sprinkles the wine on their faces. The young men wrinkle their noses and lick the moisture from their lips.
“Grüftes don’t belong in our world, they’re out there in the cold on the other side of the glass, and they are consumed by jealousy when they look in on the Nüftes and the Tüftes.”
With great emotion, he stares at the misty conservatory windows, as if he could see their noses pressed against the glass. Then he stands up, calls to rouse his chauffeur, and orders him to take him home immediately. He has the youths taken to a hotel room, where they can sleep it off together. Wrapping his coat around his shoulders, he bids goodnight and opens the conservatory door. The wind gusts in, tugging at the palms. Sangallo pauses in the doorway without turning back to Silberstrand and Maxim.
“The Grüftes take every chance they can to harm us, but we mustn’t fear them. They can destroy our world, rob us of everything, but they can’t touch us. Not really. They can’t touch our souls.”
While the old man walks away and the cold air spreads through the winter garden, Silberstrand bends over Maxim and kisses him. First his eyes, then his nose, then his cheek and mouth. She tastes of steel, her tongue and teeth sticky with wine. She pulls open the bathrobe, licks him on the throat, covers his chest with nipping kisses. She hardens his nipples between her teeth. Then she sucks them while impatiently squeezing his erection.
“I knew you’d come,” she whispers. “You’re made of the right, shameless stuff.” Can she really be skillful enough to know exactly the words he wants to hear? The words to make him believe in his role?
He briefly imagines himself moving his hands over Gala’s body during the first rehearsal of The Mannequins’ Ball. Just like then, he’s encouraged by the idea that he is acting. He juts his pelvis forward and feels his partner react. He now knows that it doesn’t matter how you act as long as people believe you.
The singer’s breathing quickens. Wildly, she shakes her locks away from her face, but when she drops to her knees before Maxim, she loses her balance and slides off the sofa with a bump. They look at each other for a moment, almost surprised to find themselves entangled like this, but the moment passes and they slip into their own fantasies. Growling, she bites into his jeans and claws savagely at his belt. He exposes himself and feeds her, leaning back, a shameless whore at last, his head resting on the ancient sculpture.
It’s sweating. Drop after drop runs down the marble curves. Nothing holds them back on the muscular torso, but the drops all converge on the same place. Squinting, Maxim can make out the grooves from ancient chisels that lead the condensation down the abdomen to the groin and the amputated thigh. At long intervals, one tepid drop after another drips from the stone wound, straight down onto the furiously bobbing head of the woman who is fellating him.
It’s his own disengagement that excites Maxim. Nothing else. More enjoyable than the sweet glow between his thighs or the warm sucking is the realization that he can let his body be used without the intervention of his mind. The discovery that he can separate the two enraptures him.
In his youth, his flesh and his soul had been fused by a searing sense of shame that was aroused within him; but now, in the steamy winter garden, they are soaked loose, liberated one from the other. This is why shamelessness is so addictive, so triumphant: it undermines the dictatorship of small-mindedness. As long as he can separate body and mind, Maxim knows, he can do anything. This realization is the sole source of his ardor.
He pulls Silberstrand away by her hair and takes charge in just the way he thinks she wants him to. She gladly consents, fighting her way out of her evening gown, letting him position her on the plush on all fours and, with a resounding groan, leading him into her from behind. She grabs him by the balls and tugs to her desired rhythm. Businesslike, she puts his hands on her
breasts and shows him how hard to squeeze. Sex and love, thinks Maxim, cursing aloud with delight at his own hardness, how little sorrow there would be in the world if more people could separate the two. The singer tries a couple of times to look back, hoping to heighten her own excitement by seeing his pleasure in mounting her, but Maxim averts his gaze before their eyes can meet.
After they’ve come, tenderness wells up in him for the woman he’s just fucked. She lies on her back. Her breasts don’t look as firm as they felt, and flop to either side. He cups one in his hand and gently kisses a swollen nipple that still bears the imprint of his nails. He kisses her waist, rests his head on her well-trained solar plexus, and strokes her loose skin, which moves as his fingers caress it.
The difference between the two bodies could not be greater. Yet he is overcome with a trust he’s never felt with another woman. Fucking without love; friendship without admiration: an equality that reminds him of two schoolboys lending each other a hand in the showers at the gym. They both know exactly what the other needs and can give. There are no explanations. No illusions. There are no games. No conflict. They know their desires and give what they can, neither demanding anything unavailable. They touch without being bound. Friendship.
The discovery moves him, as if it had brought him closer to something great.
Between him and the singer, there are none of the things that make men and women unequal. Pragmatism has eliminated any dishonesty. Their cards are on the table. She expects nothing more than what he’s got to offer. There’s no relationship getting in the way, and all thanks to the clear agreement they made beforehand.
But how clear has he really been? Maxim briefly wonders what they’ve actually agreed. She wanted him to come, and he came. Should he have set a price in advance? A time limit? The working relationship hasn’t explicitly been discussed. But perhaps that would be too crude. And how would he describe his function? How much can you charge for something you like doing so much? And when should he raise the question? She’ll probably do that herself; a woman of the world, unquenchable, a world traveler, must be an old hand.