Galleon
But that’s the worst thing of all with my Rosita. Loving someone but not being able to feel her body; weeping yet not knowing who for; longing for someone you know isn’t worth it; an open wound, bleeding incessantly, without a soul to bring you wool or bandages, or a handful of cooling snow.
—Federico García Lorca
“You know what?” Gala says. “Let’s go swimming!”
She is standing close to me in a cave. Behind her, the light is shining through a curtain of rain. I think she’s got to be kidding, but then she actually starts stripping down! She snatches my hat off my head and throws it in a corner. I try to make out the expression on her face, but all I can see is a silhouette in front of a wall of pearls.
“It’s raining. No one will see us. Let’s go swimming!”
In a flash, I recognize the abandon of long ago. The thunderbolt strikes in Tivoli. I called her with a bit part in mind shortly after I got back to Rome. There was no glory in it and I could have asked anyone, but she had simply taken shape in my thoughts.
In Japan, she had appeared in my dreams again, more recognizable this time: wearing the same leopard-skin jacket but now carrying two buckets of milk on a yoke. “Gala!” I called. “Wait for me!” She turned. Fresh milk splashed out of the buckets and ran down her legs. It was steaming. And she said something. Probably in Dutch. I couldn’t make it out. Then she walked on.
I’m well aware that people put their lives on hold for the privilege of filling out my pictures, yet for the first time in years I felt like I had to persuade someone to act in one of my films. Don’t ask me why. I felt I had to convince Gala to do me a favor, instead of the other way round.
I had arranged a meeting in the osteria next to the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli. I told her about the project’s progress, and her role. After lunch, we wandered into the valley to see the waterfalls. A spring shower took us by surprise, and we took shelter under the cliff. I thought she wanted to stay dry, forgetting that the Dutch are born in the rain.
“Yes,” Gala decides, “I have an irresistible urge to swim. And right now.” She kicks off her shoes and beckons.
And at that moment, nothing seems more sensible: come on, it’s cold and wet, let’s take our clothes off! No magic spell could have so utterly robbed me of my will. Suddenly they appear, all at once. As Gala walks through the veil of cold water, they leap out from the cavernous depths, the countless delicious fruits I have plucked throughout my impetuous life: Gelsomina on the frozen pond in Véviers, Gelsomina among the poppies on Testaccio and wading through the warm stream of Saturnia, Gelsomina on the train to Cannes, making love and not even stopping to show the conductor the ticket. And Gelsomina at yet another pond, frozen again, not far from Borgo Pace—together so much stronger than the rest of the world because we have no rational thinking to hold us back. We had the nerve to act without thinking about it. Of course every sentient being is anxiously sheltering from the storm, so let’s run into the water buck naked: but of course! How could I forget that recklessness is one of our basic necessities?
She doesn’t wait for me. Gala does her own thing. She’s already forgotten me. While I stumble out of my shoes like an old fool and tug, cursing, at my garters, she’s already frolicking around at the bottom of the waterfall. When I come running out barefoot, she waves to me as she kicks her feet. The movement sets off ripples and lifts her out of the water, slim and proud as a figurehead, her hair wet and clinging to her shoulders.
The years have made me suspicious. Actresses have thought up stranger ploys. But I know this is different. Those same years have taught me to see through their tricks. Gala is different from all those others, I can see: she’s doing it for herself.
I remember this! Heedlessly, immediately plunging into everything that comes my way, just because. Meanwhile, she’s not giving me a second thought, doing exactly what I want by thinking only of herself, not putting on a show for my benefit. Her only desire is to see herself swimming in the rain.
“Gala, wait, wait for me, Galeone!” I call, suddenly anxious that the naval review is over and she’s about to sail. “Wait, Galeone, wait for me!”
And I don’t fall in love with her, but I feel once again the possibility of falling in love with my own life.
At this stage, I wasn’t officially aware of the poor state of Gelsomina’s health. But I’m not blind. My poor clown! She keeps it to herself, of course. She never mentions her condition, not even now—she doesn’t want to worry me. But her silence makes it obvious. Young filmmakers sometimes think they should announce the last act with trumpets and drums, but an end that approaches in silence is far more menacing.
I’m convinced it was the raw fish. You can call it coincidence, but I noticed a sudden deterioration after ten days in Osaka. If God wanted us to wrap everything in seaweed, surely He wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of inventing olive oil?
During our trip, Gelsomina wore out faster than she did at home. I noticed because she kept jumping around, trying to look sprightly. Now and then, she would bend over suddenly, pretending to be looking for something she’d dropped, but I saw through her. She was trying to hide a stab of pain that might distract me from my discussions with the financiers.
When I asked her about it, she denied everything, but with eyes that big there was no point in lying. One morning, to prove that there was nothing wrong with her, she suggested climbing Mount Hotaka to see a monastery. I pretended I wasn’t feeling well, but she ignored me. Once Gelsomina has set her mind to something, not even dengue fever or beriberi can dissuade her.
We drove to Matsumoto, but we had to walk at least an hour and a half from there. She became ill several times. I was afraid it was going to be too much for her, but I knew she would suffer more if I confronted her. She knew that I knew, but neither of us spoke about it.
“We shouldn’t do too much,” I said.
“A mountain is not too much,” she replied.
Finally, we saw a monk working on the beehives by the roadside. He helped her for the last hundred meters and showed us into the vestibule to rest, opening the shutters of the dark room so we could see the courtyard where several old cherry trees were in full blossom. We sat there for a time to regain our strength, impressed by the breathtaking spectacle of the bright colors framed by the dark shutters and the walnut window frame.
Finally, she stood up. She had gotten a second wind and opened the courtyard doors to walk over to one of the trees. She stood like a child beneath the ancient giant with her head back, soaking up the miracle.
Suddenly, we felt God breathing.
A sigh of wind passed through the room. A draft entered the shutters and exited through the open doors to swirl around the tree. It tugged at the branches, just for a moment, rustling through the blossoms and making all the flowers let go at once. They were so light that they flew up for a second before fluttering down around Gelsomina. She spread her arms to pluck as many as she could from the air, standing astonished as a sea of color gathered around her ankles.
She stayed beneath the bare branches. In that instant we knew the truth. And she looked at me with a smile that was both radiant and lost; I hadn’t seen anything like it since the death of our daughter.
“A mountain can never be too much,” she said, “but a breath of wind …”
And less than a week later, I take to the water with another woman. At least, my big toe does. I stand at the edge. I was born to watch. The water is too cold for me. The moss on the stones feels funny under my feet. I am afraid I’ll catch pneumonia. Big drops soak my shirt and singlet and water trickles down my chest, but I’m too happy to move. Grateful as a fern when a drought breaks, I bathe in my own folly.
• • •
“Good Lord, what’s he done to you?” exclaims Maxim. Gala is standing in the doorway, trembling like a dog that’s been thrown out of a moving car. My hat, which I put on her, has slid onto the back of her head. For a moment, Maxim
is afraid that the event she avoided in Sicily has taken place in Tivoli after all, and he curses the carelessness with which he failed to see it coming. But then he sees how cheerful she is behind her running mascara.
“Snaporaz wants to use me.”
“This is Italy. Every man wants to use you.”
She rubs her hair dry.
“You’re a man and you’re in Italy,” he hears from under the towel.
He fills the bath and washes her face.
“He can use me in two scenes. It’s not much, but I’ll be in them with Gelsomina and Marcello.”
When she comes out of the bathroom, Maxim is ready to go. It’s only the sight of his brand-new skis that reminds her that they’re supposed to travel to Cortina d’Ampezzo this weekend. She’s used the money she earned with her last Sicilian business trip to buy Maxim skiing lessons to prepare him for his American debut.
“I can’t go,” she sputters. “Snaporaz might call.”
“Give him the number of the hotel.”
“I can’t bother him with something like that. He’ll think I’m stalking him.”
“He’s used to people stalking him. I’ll call him for you.”
“Are you crazy! I don’t want him to …”
“Think we’re a couple?”
“I don’t want to put him off.”
“Why should I put him off?” asks Maxim, annoyed. “Does he want to cast you or fuck you?”
“He wants to cast me, but you know what men are like.”
Maxim knows.
“Then tell him you’re going by yourself,” he grumbles.
“But what if he wants me today or tomorrow?”
“Then you’re not here.”
“That’s what I mean. I have to be here in case he calls.”
Maxim understands. Maxim always understands everything.
“It’s the last snow,” Gala says, “and you have to learn to ski.” She takes him to the door, kisses him, and tries to make him smile by popping Snaporaz’s hat on his head. It’s much too small for him and sits on that Viking head like a miniature bowler atop a clown’s wig.
That weekend, I get a call myself. It’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. They’ve decided to give me another Oscar, not for a film—they’re afraid no one will ever dare to invest in my undependability again—but for my entire oeuvre. They want me to collect it in person. I have no intention of doing so, but they think up all kinds of enticements to lure Gelsomina and me over the ocean. We can bring anyone we like. The first person I think of is Gala, but I immediately realize that’s impossible. The press will be swarming. All kinds of festivities are planned. Some lunatic has even cooked up a plan for a theme park based on my films somewhere in the foothills of Santa Monica. Americans! I can’t be bothered.
That night, I dream that they run a spit through a buffalo in my honor. The next morning, singing cowgirls serve me a plate piled high with its meat for breakfast. When I turn it down, explaining that I’m only used to eating a dolce in the morning, they pull out their lassos and chase me across an endless prairie. I don’t look back, but I hear the swish of the ropes as they drive me on. In the barren, overgrazed landscape I can only find one place to take cover. It’s a tall structure made of pipes. I climb it. At the top, I discover that I am standing atop a gigantic letter. It’s a Y. In the distance I now see other letters, all just as big. Together they spell HOLLYWOOD. Around them there’s a fence, the gate of which the cowgirls now slam shut.
Who would dare assert that it’s only coincidence that Freud wrote his Interpretation of Dreams shortly after the birth of cinema?
Once Maxim departs for Cortina, Gala sits staring into space. She’d insisted, but she’s still surprised that he actually went. This is her first night alone since they arrived in Rome. At first, she only feels emptiness, but then she discovers space inside it. Now, finally, she takes the time to think about her situation.
In her mind, she rewinds the scenes she acted out in the daytime in Tivoli with Snaporaz, replaying them from the beginning. She does it several times. With each showing, she concentrates less on their words and interaction, discovering instead new details in the environment: how bright the sandy color of the Temple of Sibyl and how dark the slime on the underwater stones; the frightened fish that shoots off as she swims toward it; how her slip clings to her body when she gets out of the water and how the old man reverts to his age in that moment—and here she rewinds a little to see Snaporaz forgetting himself for minutes on end, mouth open and relaxed, beaming like a child watching a procession. He even claps! This time, she notices that the handkerchief he uses to dab her dry shows an imprint of her face. Smudges of lipstick and mascara. The funeral shroud of a clown. He holds it to the light for a moment and then folds it up. Before putting it into his pocket, he presses the material to his nose, sniffing it. Then, suddenly, the severe look returns to his eyes and she’s an actress auditioning once again. All candor disappears behind his eyelids. Reality slams down between her and the film director like a safety curtain.
The crashing sound rudely interrupts her musings, as if the auditorium doors have been opened too early. Alone in her room in Parioli, she is overcome by a great sadness. She still thinks it’s because she misses Maxim. She stands up, paces. The streetlights shine through the small window, round and high in the wall like a porthole in a below-deck cabin. For the first time, she feels the oppressiveness of the basement, the weight of the house above it.
In reality, she’s mourning the little boy she fleetingly glimpsed at the water’s edge, delightedly clapping his hands just before the old man’s features returned. That’s the moment, when she stopped being a playmate and reverted to the role of actress, that oppresses her; the fourth wall closing between them, a curtain upon which the scenery artist had painted a mask of Snaporaz, heavy lids and dead eyes on either side of an exaggeratedly severe, hooked nose.
Snaporaz doesn’t call, and still she stays up all night. The longer the silence, the more passionate her longing to hear from him. She dozes off now and then.
“Galeone, Galeone!” comes a stifled call from behind the curtain.
Even in this drowsy state, Gala knows that Snaporaz isn’t thinking, It’s the middle of the night, I think I’ll ring up that Dutch actress. But that doesn’t stop her from awaking, cheerfully hopeful, every time one of the house’s nocturnal visitors hurries down the gravel path. More than for a role in his film, she longs with every hour that goes by for another chance to lift that severe curtain, even if that means hanging on the ropes with all her weight. Even if she doesn’t yet realize it, she’s no longer auditioning for his film, but for his life.
“The dew of love getting to you?” asks Geppi. Saturday is just dawning when Gala walks into the kitchen. Geppi fills the coffeepot and puts it on the stove.
“My mother always said that men spin their webs in the twilight, cobwebs so fine that you can’t find them in the dark. But in the morning … ah! In the morning, very briefly, immediately after sunrise, just before the dew that clings to the threads has evaporated, you can catch a glimpse.”
The big table is full of copper pots and pans that need cleaning. Gala picks one up and starts to polish it.
“It was her way of warning me. ‘No matter how much you want it in the nighttime,’ said Mamma, ‘always wait until morning.’ When you see the web, it’s too late. The night has passed and you’re trapped.”
The pressure builds and the boiling water starts to press its way through the coffee.
“Ah, if only I’d listened to her!”
“I didn’t sleep well,” says Gala.
“It shows.” Geppi presses the rattling lid down to hold in the steam and pours two cups. “Here, this’ll take the rust off your edges.”
Gala assesses the damage in her hand mirror. What if Snaporaz were to suddenly call? She couldn’t let herself be seen like this, hair tangled from tossing and turning, her eyes swollen a
s if she’s been crying.
“Surely that’s not how you do it?” Geppi snatches the mirror, spits on a copper frying pan, rubs it with her sleeve, and holds it up. “A mirror can only show you who you are, just a woman, whether you’re beautiful or ugly, but that’s all. The dents in this pan show all kinds of faces. It splits you into different people like a funhouse mirror. I could be any number of women.”
She sighs with satisfaction and holds the frying pan out to Gala.
“That’s how I’ve looked at myself for years,” Geppi continues. “I used to imagine all the women I might become. Now I think about the women I could have been.”
Gala looks at the distorted faces staring at her from the dented copper.
“Why would I want a sharp image of a woman old enough to have to shave?” Geppi asks. “I’m free to put together something beautiful from this soup of distorted noses and melting chins.”
Gala’s portrait is constantly swimming through the copper.
“The less you see of yourself, the more chances you have to become something.”
Waffle
Gelsomina and I spent much of the war in her aunt’s apartment. All the men my age had been called up to fight for il Duce. To avoid this fate, I stayed off the street as much as possible. I never emerged before dark. I spent a lot of time drawing. I entertained myself by fantasizing about all the things I couldn’t experience in reality. But I was impatient. I felt that life was passing me by. One day, I decided to go for a walk to the Piazza di Spagna. And there, of all places, the army was searching for draft dodgers. I didn’t spot them in time, and when I tried to turn back I found the street behind me was blocked off. We were forced up onto the Spanish Steps, where German soldiers were interrogating everyone. It took a long time because they spoke bad Italian and everyone pretended not to understand them. I tried to think, but couldn’t come up with anything. I didn’t say a word and got packed onto the back of a truck. If I didn’t do something, I was done for. The truck started to drive. I was very calm. “If this were a screenplay,” I said to myself, “what would you have the main character do now?”