“We’ll ask,” says Gala. “In an hour we’re having lunch with Gianni at the tennis club.”
“Tennis club?” Maxim feels his resistance wobbling. “We’re having lunch at a tennis club?”
Only Gala can talk about completely unknown places as if she’s frequented them for years with the rest of the jet set. God, how he loves the unexpected. How he loves her for attracting it.
“Thank God you’re here,” says the man, introducing himself to Maxim as Gianni Castronuovo. He’s just showered and his hair is plastered wet against his skull. Small droplets are dripping down onto the shoulders of his elegant suit. “I was so worried that I might have offended you by offering you such a shabby room, but it’s all I have, everything else is taken.”
The tennis courts are wedged in between the ancient Muro Torto and the road through the park. In the outdoor café their voices mingle with the traffic noise echoing off the high wall. As food and wine are served, Gianni puts a thick book down in front of the Dutch couple. The names, biographies, and addresses of everyone in Rome who has anything at all to do with the film industry.
“It’s a beautiful city, but you can’t keep wandering around until you’re old and gray. You want to live here, don’t you? Then we’ll have to get those careers of yours off the ground as soon as possible.”
“Do you work in cinema as well?” Maxim leafs through the book.
“Ah, if only. But I’ve done my bit. Yes, when I was your age I put on a miniskirt and stood there behind Ben-Hur with the lions. Who didn’t in those days? But later …” Gianni lowers his eyes, not out of modesty, but to look up again with more effect while revealing his triumph. “Yes, later I worked with Snaporaz.”
“With Snaporaz?” A passing waiter looks up at the sound of the name. A woman at the next table turns around in the hope of catching the rest of the conversation.
“With Snaporaz. Twice.” The dapper gentleman searches the air with his hands as if to recapture the shape of a memory. It’s touching how he’s forgotten himself. His eyes gleam.
“His classic scene on the forecastle of a ship. Right next to the lifeboat, the man in the bathing tights, that was me.”
The woman at the next table can’t resist. “The blue-striped bathing tights?”
“The same.”
“How amazing, meeting like this!” She slides over her chair. “Did you have any lines?”
“Lines? No, I didn’t have any lines. I didn’t have any action either. But I had my personality.”
“And your bathing tights,” says the waiter, coming over to stand by their table. “We shouldn’t underestimate that. Those blue-striped bathing tights are etched in everyone’s memory.”
“Nonsense,” the woman snaps, “this gentleman would have stood out even without the tights.”
“It might not have been a big role,” says Gianni, “but it was the crux of the whole film.”
Gala, who has been looking through the film almanac, now finds, to her astonishment, Snaporaz’s address.
“That a man like him is simply listed …,” she says. “Telephone number and all!”
None of the Romans bats an eye.
“Via Margutta,” they exclaim together. The waiter disagrees with the woman about the house number. According to a ball boy who runs past collecting strays between the tables, they’re both right: one door leads to Snaporaz’s office; the other to his home.
“Closed doors, yes,” Gianni adds triumphantly. “Anyone can stand in front of them, but to be asked inside … Well, that’s a different story.”
The conversation falls silent. Gianni bites his lips like a child, beaming as if a secret he can’t tell is burning the tip of his tongue. Gala catches Maxim’s eye and gives him a quizzical look. He has to admit that Gianni seems pleasantly naive rather than cunning, as expected.
“Why are you helping us?” he asks, going straight to the point.
“I have my house. I live off it. Plenty of actresses live there. And actors. You’ll meet them. Americans, French, a model from Hungary. One month they have work, the next they live on credit. It’s in my own interest for you to start earning as soon as possible, because come the end of the month, I want to see the rent. If I were a developer, I’d discuss building projects with you. As it happens, I know some film people. Not the real big shots, but it’s a start.” From his inside pocket, he pulls out a list with names. Some have two stars after the telephone number, others, less important, just one. “Maybe my name will help you to get a foot in the door. That’s all. The rest is up to you. Every day I kiss the hem of the Madonna’s robe in the hope that she will send me youngsters with talent, so that I won’t go hungry.”
“May I have a look at that list as well?” asks the woman at the next table.
“Out of the question,” snaps Gianni.
“Maybe I could do something in the movies too.”
“Not until the day blandness comes into fashion, madam.”
After lunch he escorts Maxim and Gala to the exit. While shaking their hands, he looks them over again from head to toe.
“Very serviceable,” he says contentedly. “The kind of thing people here are looking out for. I’d bet my motorino on that. What an adventure is in store for you two, what a world of possibilities!”
Maxim and Gala walk into the park. When they glance back, Gianni salutes them briefly before plunging recklessly into the stream of traffic, bolt upright on his red scooter.
• • •
By evening, Maxim and Gala have settled into the house in Parioli. They are sitting on a big bed surrounded with hundreds of pictures of themselves. There is a glossy portfolio with an extensive selection of both of them. It starts with photos of the two of them together: embracing, fighting, entangled. Then a series of each alone. Neither had considered making a separate portfolio. This adventure is theirs together. They also make folders for all the agents and directors who seem in any way important. Gala slips two portraits into each, one with glamour and one with character. Maxim has borrowed a typewriter from the concierge. He has it balanced on his lap and is busy putting together their curriculum vitae. One by one, they tally up their film and television roles and their achievements in Dutch theater. It’s quite a list. There’s not enough space to mention everything. That’s convenient, because the less there is, the more impressive it sounds.
“The Mannequins’ Ball,” says Maxim. “I don’t need to say that it was a student production, do I?”
“Of course not, that doesn’t mean a thing to people here. What have you got now?”
“That we had the lead parts.”
“We did.”
“Yes, honesty is the best policy.”
“And mentioning that it was in the University Theater,” says Gala, “information like that just confuses things.”
“Is ‘theater, Amsterdam’ enough?”
“Or maybe Amsterdam Theater’?”
“Wouldn’t ‘National Theater’ sound better?”
“National?”
“It definitely wasn’t international.”
“True, that’s no exaggeration.”
“Fine. Make it ‘Teatro Nazionale,’ for the sake of clarity. And the number of performances?”
“Ten? How many were there, maybe twelve?”
“Ah, it doesn’t make that much difference, does it?”
“None at all. A role is a role.”
“Just the year then?”
“I’d just put the season.”
“That covers two years.”
“Exactly.”
Every new environment casts a new light on things. It gives the past another chance. What better reason could people have for moving?
In the hours that follow, the cheap wine in the Coke bottle they filled themselves in the Via di Ripetta adds to their euphoria. As soon as they’ve put together the list of directors, agents, and casting agencies that can look forward to a visit in the coming days, they fall backward. Lying
close to each other, they draw their campaign plan in the air with grand gestures, excited as fresh troops embarking on an expedition.
“It’s weird,” says Gala suddenly, “there’s something sad about it as well.”
“As if we have to put something behind us, that’s what it feels like.”
“Although we’ve been looking forward to it for so long.”
“It’s weird how people hope their dreams will come true.”
“Really very strange, and incomprehensible.”
They’ve just fallen asleep when Maxim wakes with a start. In the bathroom he searches through her makeup and his shaving gear for Gala’s epilepsy medication, tablets she has to take twice a day. He counts them. There are two too many, the two she should have taken that evening. He presses them out of the silver strip, runs the tap until the water’s cool, and fills a glass. The night is warm. Before waking her with a gentle caress, he watches the beads of sweat well up between her shoulder blades.
2
The big house stays dark late into the morning. Still, some people are up. The sun forces its way through the chinks in the shutters. Gala turns over to make the real window emerge from behind the black window in her field of vision. Yesterday everything seemed possible, but from now on everything that happens to them will have to press its way through this room.
Whenever she’d had to spend a long time waiting on the set of some Dutch film or other—because even as a student she sometimes caught the eye of a young film director—Gala killed time by watching the lighting technicians. She loved how shadows slipped by. Most fascinating of all was the increasing intensity of the big lights. With all four metal shutters open, you hardly notice the effect of one of those spotlights. It lights the whole scene, but leaves little impression. Only when the light is adjusted, the shutters closed, the rays narrowed and directed, does the beam become powerful. Suddenly, it gives things depth. Everything becomes sharper. Black and white.
In the dark rooms of the house in Parioli, Rome slips through a few slats of wood. The city becomes even more radiant.
“Tiruli, tirula,” someone sings.
“That’s him,” says Gala. She’s standing with Maxim in the middle of the Via Margutta in front of Snaporaz’s house. One of the first-floor windows is open. Through it, they see a bit of wall and the corner of a painting. That’s all. Maxim shrugs. He can’t believe anyone this famous could be so easy to find.
“Pitipo, pitipa.”
Gala doesn’t dare to say another word, afraid to disturb the great man in song, but she squeezes Maxim’s arm.
The bar on the corner of the Via del Babuino and the Piazza del Popolo has a telephone on the wall. Maxim’s bought some gettoni and underlined Snaporaz’s number in the thick book. He’s almost done it three times now and can’t wait any longer. He dials.
“Ma chi è?” A breathless, female voice, maybe a secretary.
Gala presses her ear to the side of the receiver. Her forehead is resting against his. When he talks, his voice reverberates in her bones. Half in Italian and half in French, Maxim explains who and what they are, actors.
“Yes, yes. And what do you want?” It’s a good question. Maxim doesn’t have a quick answer.
“I’m sorry, il signor Snaporaz non c’è.” She hangs up. Gala’s head moves away from his.
The same bar, hours later: there are no outside tables, but the owner has put two kitchen chairs out on the sidewalk for them. The carrier of a parked scooter makes a serviceable table. On it are empty cups, the big casting book, and assorted paperwork. Maxim and Gala take turns watching the Via Margutta while the other hogs the telephone, calling one casting agency after another. They pour handfuls of tokens into the phone. There is an amazing demand for foreigners. Tall? Blond? In the next few days the two attori olandesi can come introduce themselves everywhere. Then they pluck up the courage to call the directors whose numbers are listed in the book: Pasquale Squitieri, Castaldi, Celentano, Marco Bellocchio, Dario Argento, Franco Brusati … They take a personal approach, opening with an admiring remark about each director’s latest masterpiece: a bluff, because Dutch distributors seldom take risks and Gala and Maxim have seen hardly any of their films. A few are crazy enough to let themselves be talked into an appointment.
Finally Gala and Maxim reward themselves with a bottle of spumante. Maxim neatly writes out their list of appointments. On the torn map, he plans out routes past all the places where their careers could take off at any moment. They’re all over the city. Now they just have to decide where to begin.
“Skylight,” he says after puzzling it out, “Via Angelo Brunetti. That’s just on the other side of the square.”
The elevator to the top floor, where the casting agency is located, is a small brass cage. Maxim and Gala stand close together. The old apparatus creeps its way up the elevator shaft. The travertine steps of a wide staircase wind around it.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have had so much to drink,” says Maxim.
“Fortuna demanded a libation.”
He wipes a hair away from the corner of Gala’s mouth and gives her a kiss of encouragement. With her thumb she wipes a smudge of lipstick from his chin. They both look up. Stomach to stomach they approach a milk-white skylight through which the fierce daylight is shining.
“Impressive,” says the casting agent. He has their CVs and the portfolio on his lap. “Yes, indeed, this is really something.” He leafs through the photos without looking at them. Instead he keeps his eyes fixed on the young actors. “This really is something we can work with. I’ve been in the business for years, and you develop an eye for it. Great material. A very productive conversation.”
He just wants to see how the light catches their cheekbones. He wants to see them one by one in the next room. He opens the door to an adjoining office and asks a secretary to hold his calls. He’ll be busy for a while.
“Bit of a weirdo,” whispers Gala.
“No one ever reacted to us like this in Holland.”
“That’s why we would have suffocated if we’d stayed there.”
“Yes,” says Maxim, “suffocated and dried out.”
Fulvani, that’s the man’s name, sticks his head around the door. All the charm has fled from his face.
“What are you saying?” he asks suspiciously. A second later, he’s smiling again. “I’m going to do for you what I did for myself.” He tosses a photo onto the table. In it he’s a young man with his arm around Charlton Heston. “Ben-Hur. My first role. An instant success. Seen it? I was one of the lepers.”
He takes Maxim into the side room first. It’s a terrace, closed off with glass to form an annex to the office. Fulvani presses a button. Automatic blinds descend on all sides. He flicks on a lamp and aims it so that the light hits Maxim’s face from the side. He studies his eye sockets from near and from far. His nose and the line of his jaw. Then he adjusts the lamp and checks the shadows on the other side of his face the same way.
“Your eyes are deep set. Always keep your chin down, otherwise you’ll look like a skull. But those cheekbones will make your fortune. High cheekbones are a lifelong gift.”
He opens the blinds with a snap, grabs a camera, and takes a few shots.
“Now a few without your shirt.”
Maxim displays his chest. The other man squeezes his arms and looks at his back muscles.
“Are you a gymnast?”
“No,” answers Maxim. “I have a big heart. It presses the lungs apart. That’s why my ribs are so spread out.”
“Some people get it all on a silver platter.” Fulvani takes a few more photos.
“You fuck her?”
Maxim thinks he’s misunderstood him.
“Is she your girlfriend,” Fulvani explains, “that girl in there? Fate l’amore?”
“Does that make a difference to the roles we get?” asks Maxim curtly. He puts his shirt back on. Fulvani shakes his hand.
“Welcome to Italian cinema.”
“Whatever happens, you’re not going in there alone,” Maxim tells Gala in Dutch as he comes back into the office.
She doesn’t react.
“I believe I’m about to do something I’ve never done before,” says Fulvani. He paces back and forth in his office. Weighing the pros and cons. Sighing, he runs his fingers through his hair. “But since everyone knows me, they know I’d never bother them without good reason and they’ll have to take it seriously.” Without another word he disappears into the adjoining room. He consults the secretaries.
“Careful not to rub him the wrong way,” says Gala. “He’s going to do something for us.”
Fulvani comes back, picks up the telephone, and dials.
“Nobody gets straight through to Snaporaz. They have to get past Fiamella first.” He covers the receiver with his hand. “Once she was his lover, now she’s his Cerbera.”
“You’re calling Snaporaz?” asks Gala.
Fulvani shakes his head, slightly annoyed. “To reach Fiamella, first you have to get past Salvini.”
Just look how reliable and well informed he is, says the glance Gala tosses at Maxim.
Someone answers.
“Salvini? Salvini, good afternoon! I’ve got something here. Fiamella must see it. What do you mean, who from? From Fulvani, of course! Look, I’m doing you a favor. Sollima and Bertolucci are casting as well, shall I call them? Yeah, I think I will. First one, then the other. Fiamella will be furious … Call back? Why should I give you the pleasure? Make trouble now, and later take all the credit! Five o’clock then. At five thirty I’m offering these gifts to Bertolucci. Seven, and woe betide you if you don’t tell everyone where you get your stars from. At Skylight we pluck them straight out of the sky!”
They’re back at seven o’clock sharp.
“He still hasn’t called.” The rasping voice coming through the intercom is Fulvani’s own. The secretaries have gone home. “What do you want, come upstairs and wait a little or try again tomorrow?”