Little Misunderstandings of No Importance

  “What’s the title?” he asked, smiling.

  “Cinema Cinema.”

  “Sounds promising.”

  “It’s a disaster,” she said earnestly. “The choreography is by Savinio, just imagine that, and I play Francesca Bertini, dancing in a dress so long that I trip on it.”

  “Watch out!” he exclaimed jokingly. “Great tragic actresses simply mustn’t fall.”

  Again she hid her face in her arms and started to cry. She was prettier than ever with tear marks on her face.

  “Come away, Eddie, please, come away,” she murmured.

  He wiped her tears away gently enough, but his voice hardened, as if in an effort to disguise his feelings.

  “Don’t, Elsa,” he said. “Try to understand.” And, in a playful tone, he added: “How should I get through? Dressed like a dancer, perhaps, with a blond wig?”

  The bell had stopped ringing and the incoming train could be heard in the distance. The man got up and put his hands in his pockets.

  “I’ll put you aboard,” he said.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head resolutely. “You mustn’t do that; it’s dangerous.”

  “I’m doing it anyhow.”

  “Please!”

  “One last thing,” he said; “I know the major’s a ladies’ man. Don’t smile at him too much.”

  She looked at him supplicatingly. “Oh, Eddie!” she exclaimed with emotion, offering him her lips.

  He seemed nonplussed for a moment, as if in embarrassment or because he didn’t have the courage to kiss her. Finally he deposited a fatherly kiss on her cheek.

  “Stop!” called out the clapperboy. “A break!”

  “Not like that!” The director’s voice roared through the megaphone. “The last bit has to be done again.” He was a bearded young man with a long scarf wound around his neck. Now he got down from the seat on the boom next to the camera and came to meet them. “Not like that,” he repeated disappointedly. “It must be a passionate kiss, old-fashioned style, the way it was in the original film.” He threw an arm around the actress’s waist, bending her backwards. “Lean over her and put some passion into it,” he said to the actor.

  Then looking around him, he added, “Take a break!”

  — 2 —

  The actors invaded the station’s shabby café, jostling one another in the direction of the bar. She lingered at the door, uncertain what to do, while he disappeared in the crowd. Soon he came back, precariously carrying two cups of coffee, and beckoned to her with his head to join him outside. Behind the café there was a rocky courtyard, under a vine-covered arbour, which served also for storage. Besides cases of empty bottles, there were some misshapen chairs, and on two of these they sat down, using a third one as a table.

  “We’re winding up,” he observed.

  “He insisted on doing the last scene last,” she answered. “I don’t know why.”

  “That’s modern,” he said emphatically. “Straight out of the Cahiers du Cinema …. look out, that coffee’s boiling hot.”

  “I still don’t know why.”

  “Do they do things differently in America?” he asked.

  “They certainly do!” she said with assurance. “They’re less pretentious, less … intellectual.”

  “This fellow’s good, though.”

  “It’s only that, once upon a time, things weren’t handled this way.”

  They were silent, enjoying their coffee. It was eleven in the morning, and the sea was sparkling, visible through a privet hedge around the courtyard. The vine leaves of the pergola were flaming red and the sun made shifting puddles of light on the gravel.

  “A gorgeous autumn,” he said, looking up at the leaves. And he added, half to himself. “‘Once upon a time’ … Hearing you say those words had an effect on me.”

  She did not answer, but hugged her knees, which she had drawn up against her chest. She, too, seemed distracted, as if she had only just thought about the meaning of what she had said.

  “Why did you agree to play in this film?” she asked.

  “Why did you?”

  “I don’t know, but I asked you first.”

  “Because of an illusion,” he said; “the idea of re-living … something like that, I suppose. I don’t really know. And you?”

  “I don’t really know, either; with the same idea, I suppose.”

  The director emerged from the path which ran around the café, in good spirits and carrying a tankard of beer.

  “So here are my stars!” he exclaimed, sinking into one of the misshapen chairs, with a sigh of satisfaction.

  “Please spare us your speech on the beauties of direct takes,” she said. “You’ve lectured us quite enough.”

  The director did not take offense at this remark and fell into casual conversation. He spoke of the film, of the importance of this new version, of why he had taken on the same actors so many years later and why he was underlining the fact that it was a remake. Things he had said many times before, as was clear from his hearers’ indifference. But he enjoyed the repetition, it was almost as if he were talking to himself. He finished his beer and got up.

  “Here’s hoping it rains,” he said as he left. “It would be too bad to shoot the last scenes with pumps.” And, before turning the corner, he threw back: “Half an hour before we start shooting again.”

  She looked questioningly at her companion, who shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

  “It did pour during the last scene,” he said, “and I was left standing in the rain.”

  She laughed and laid a hand on his shoulder as if to signify that she remembered.

  “Do they still show it in America?” he asked with a stolid expression on his face.

  “Hasn’t the director projected it for our benefit exactly eleven times?” she countered, laughing. “Anyhow, in America it’s shown to film clubs and other groups from time to time.”

  “It’s the same thing here,” he said. And then, abruptly: “How’s the major?”

  She looked at him questioningly.

  “I mean Howard,” he specified. “I told you not to smile at him too much, but obviously you didn’t follow my advice, even if the scene isn’t included in the film.” And, after a moment of reflection: “I still don’t understand why you married him.”

  “Neither do I,” she said in a childlike manner. “I was very young.” Her expression relaxed, as if she had put mistrust aside and given up lying. “I wanted to get even with you,” she said calmly. “That was the real reason, although perhaps I wasn’t aware of it. And then I wanted to go to America.”

  “What about Howard?” he insisted.

  “Our marriage didn’t last long. He wasn’t right for me, really, and I wasn’t cut out to be an actress.”

  “You disappeared completely. Why did you give up acting?”

  “I couldn’t get anywhere with it. After all, I’d been in just one hit, and that because of winning an audition. In America they’re real pros. Once I made a series of films for television, but they were a disaster. They cast me as a disagreeable rich woman, not exactly my type, was it?”

  “I think not. You look like a happy woman. Are you happy?”

  “No,” she said, smiling. “But I’ve a lot going for me.”

  “For instance?”

  “For instance a daughter. A delightful creature, in her third university year, and we’re very close.”

  He stared at her incredulously.

  “Twenty years have gone by,” she reminded him. “Nearly a lifetime.”

  “You’re still beautiful.”

  “That’s make-up. I have wrinkles. And I could be a grandmother.”

  For some time they were silent. Voices from the café drifted out to them, and someone started up the jukebox. He looked as if he were going to speak, but stared at the ground, seemingly at a loss for words.

  “I want you to tell me about your life,” he said at last. “All through the filming I’ve wa
nted to ask you, but I’ve got around to it only now.”

  “Certainly,” she said, spiritedly. “And I’d like to hear you talk about yours.”

  At this juncture the production secretary appeared in the doorway, a thin, homely, plaintive young woman with her hair in a ponytail and a pair of glasses on her nose.

  “Make-up time!” she called out. “We start shooting in ten minutes.”

  — 3 —

  The bell stopped ringing and the incoming train could be heard in the distance. The man got up and put his hands in his pockets.

  “I’ll put you aboard,” he said.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head resolutely. “You mustn’t do that, it’s dangerous.”

  “I’m doing it anyhow.”

  “Please!”

  “One last thing,” he said, “I know the major’s a ladies’ man. Don’t smile at him too much.”

  She looked at him supplicatingly. “Oh, Eddie!” she exclaimed with emotion, offering him her lips.

  He put his arm around her waist, bending her backwards. Looking into her eyes, he slowly advanced his mouth towards her and gave her a passionate kiss, a long, intense kiss, which aroused an approving murmur and some catcalls.

  “Stop!” called the clapperboy. “End of scene.”

  “Lunchtime,” the director announced through the megaphone. “Back at four o’clock.”

  The actors dispersed in various directions, some to the café, others to trailers parked in front of the station. He took off his trenchcoat and hung it over his arm. They were the last to arrive on the street, where they set out towards the sea. A blade of sunlight struck the row of pink houses along the harbour, and the sea was of a celestial, almost diaphanous blue. A woman with a tub under her arm appeared on a balcony and began to hang up clothes to dry. Then she grasped a pulley and the clothes slid along a line from one house to another, fluttering like flags. The houses formed the arches of a portico and underneath there were stalls, covered during the midday break with oilcloth. Some bore painted blue anchors and a sign saying Fresh Fish.

  “There used to be a pizzeria here,” he said, “I remember it perfectly, it was called Da Pezzi.”

  She looked at the paving-stones and did not speak.

  “You must remember,” he continued. “There was a sign ‘Pizza to take out,’ and I said to you: ‘Let’s purchase a pizza from Pezzi,’ and you laughed.”

  They went down the steps of a narrow alley with windows joined by an arch above them. The echo of their footsteps on the shiny paving-stones conveyed a feeling of winter, with the crackling tone that sounds acquire in cold air. Actually there was a warm breeze and the fragrance of mock-orange. The shops on the waterfront were closed and café chairs were stacked up around empty tables.

  “We’re out of season,” she observed.

  He shot her a surreptitious look, wondering if the remark had a double meaning, then let it go.

  “There’s a restaurant that’s open,” he said, gesturing with his head. “What do you say?”

  The restaurant was called L’Arsella; it was a wood and glass construction resting on piles set into the beach next to the blue bathhouses. Two gently rocking boats were tied to the piles. Some windows had blinds drawn over them; lamps were lit on the tables in spite of the bright daylight. There were few customers: a couple of silent, middle-aged Germans, two intellectual-looking young men, a woman with a dog, the last summer vacationers. They sat down at a corner table, far from the others. Perhaps the waiter recognized them; he came quickly but with an embarrassed and would-be confidential air. They ordered broiled sole and champagne and looked out at the horizon, which changed colour as wind pushed the clouds around. Now there was a hint of indigo on the line separating sea and sky, and the promontory that closed the bay was silvery green like a block of ice.

  “Incredible,” she said after a minute or two, “only three weeks to shoot a film, ridiculous, I call it. We’ve done some scenes only once.”

  “That’s avant-garde,” he said, smiling. “Fake realism, cinéma-vérité, they call it. Today’s production costs are high, so they do everything in a hurry.” He was making bread crumbs into little balls and lining them up in front of his plate. “Anghelopoulos,” he said ironically. “He’d like to do a film like O Thiassos, a play within a play, with us acting ourselves. Period songs and accessories and transitional sequences, all very well, but what’s to take the place of myth and tragedy?”

  The waiter brought on the champagne and uncorked the bottle. She raised her glass as if in a toast. Her eyes were malicious and shiny, full of reflections.

  “Melodrama,” she said, “Melodrama, that’s what.” She took short sips and broke into a smile. “That’s why he wanted the acting overdone. We had to be caricatures of ourselves.”

  He raised his glass in return. “Then hurrah for melodrama!” he said. “Sophocles, Shakespeare, Racine, they all go in for it. That’s what I’ve been up to myself all these years.”

  “Talk to me about yourself,” she said.

  “Do you mean it?”

  “I do.”

  “I have a farm in Provence, and I go there when I can. The countryside is just hilly enough, people are welcoming, and I like horses.”

  He made more bread-crumb balls, two circles of them around a glass, and then he moved one behind the other as if he were playing patience.

  “That’s not what I meant,” she said.

  He called the waiter and ordered another bottle of champagne.

  “I teach at the Academy of Dramatic Arts,” he said. “My life’s made up of Creon, Macbeth, Henry VIII.” He gave a guilty smile. “Hardhearted fellows, all.”

  She looked at him intently, with a concentrated, almost anxious air.

  “What about films?” she asked.

  “Five years ago I was in a mystery story. I played an American private detective, just three scenes, and then they bumped me off in an elevator. But in the titles they ran my name in capital letters … ‘With the participation of …’”

  “You’re a myth,” she said emphatically.

  “A leftover,” he demurred. “I’m this butt between my lips, see …” He put on a hard, desperate expression and let the smoke from the cigarette hanging between his lips cover his face.

  “Don’t play Eddie!” she said, laughing.

  “But I am Eddie,” he muttered, pulling an imaginary hat over his eyes. He refilled the glasses and raised his.

  “To films and filmmaking!”

  “If we go on like this we’ll be drunk when we go back to the set, Eddie.” She stressed the name, and there was a malicious glint in her eyes.

  He took off the imaginary hat and laid it over his heart.

  “Better that way. We’ll be more melodramatic.”

  For a sweet they had ordered ice-cream with hot chocolate sauce. The waiter arrived with a triumphal air, bearing a tray with ice-creams in one hand and the steaming chocolate sauce in the other. While serving them he asked, timidly but coyly, if they would honour him with their autographs on a menu and shot them a gratified smile when they assented.

  The ice-cream was in the shape of a flower, with deep red cherries at the centre of the corolla. He picked one of these up with his fingers and carried it to his mouth.

  “Look here,” he said. “Let’s change the ending.”

  She looked at him, seemingly perplexed, but perhaps her look signified that she knew what he was driving at and was merely awaiting confirmation.

  “Don’t go,” he said. “Stay here with me.”

  She lowered her eyes to her plate as if in embarrassment.

  “Please,” she said, “please.”

  “You’re talking the way you do in the film,” he said. “That’s the exact line.”

  “We’re not in a film now,” she said, almost resentfully. “Stop playing your part; you’re overdoing it.”

  He made a gesture that seemed to signify dropping the whole thing.

 
“But I love you,” he said in a low voice.

  She put on a teasing tone.

  “Of course,” she said, in slightly haughty fashion, “in the film.”

  “It’s the same thing,” he said. “It’s all a film.”

  “All what’s a film?”

  “Everything.” He stretched his hand across the table and squeezed hers. “Let’s run the film backwards and go back to the beginning.”

  She looked at him as if she didn’t have the courage to reply. She let him stroke her hand and stroked his in return.

  “You’ve forgotten the title of the film,” she said, trying for a quick retort. “‘Point of No Return.’”

  The waiter arrived, beaming and waving a menu for them to autograph.

  — 4 —

  “You’re mad!” she said laughing, but letting him pull her along. “They’ll be furious.”

  He pulled her onto the pier and quickened his steps.

  “Let them be furious,” he said. “Let that cock-of-the-walk wait. Waiting makes for inspiration.”

  There were no more than a dozen people on the boat, scattered on the benches in the cabin and on the iron seats, painted white, at the stern. Their dress and casual behaviour marked them as local people, used to this crossing. Three women were carrying plastic bags bearing the name of a well-known shop. Plainly they had come from villages on the perimeter of the bay to make purchases in the town. The employee who punched the tickets was wearing blue trousers and a white shirt with the company seal sewed onto it. The actor asked how long it would take to make the round trip. The ticket-collector made a sweeping gesture and enumerated the villages where they would be stopping. He was a young man with a blond moustache and a strong local accent.

  “About an hour and a half,” he said, “but if you’re in a hurry, there’s a larger boat which returns to the mainland from our first stop, just after we arrive, and will bring you back in forty minutes.”

  He pointed to the first village on the north side of the bay.

  She still seemed undecided, torn between doubt and temptation.

  “They’ll be furious,” she repeated. “They wanted to wrap it up by evening.”