by Arthur Japin
Their wings beat against the palms of your hands.
This phase is now over.
From now on, choices must be made, if only because the producer insists and the people in the workplaces are waiting impatiently to start work on your dreams. Now I can no longer remain aloof. I get involved with my own material. I alter. Stop. Limit. Adjust. Limit again, more rigorously this time. Cutting back more, until the story, which could have been any story, becomes mine. The things I love most have to die, again and again. Until it tells my story, just as everything I have captured in pictures, in a different way every time, always tells of me.
“Forget it.”
With these two words, I separated Gala from Maxim. The moment I spoke them was like the first blow of the clapper board announcing the first take of the first shot on the first day of shooting. With this line, the screenwriting phase irrevocably becomes the first step toward the story’s materialization.
Air from the fantasy got mixed into reality. Two separate worlds, the invented story and its concrete filming, were mingled. In that single breath, I took responsibility for my characters. I walked into my own story. The dream dissolved in the day.
PART THREE
Nüftes, Tüftes, and Grüftes
Now that we’ve made it this far, I have to tell you about my earliest memory. It’s as important as it is odd, simple yet virtually incomprehensible, trivial, yet an apparent answer to essential questions. I understand what it was, but I can’t explain it. It is highly improbable, but I experienced it myself.
It was like this. In the first years of my life, maybe even every night, just before I fell asleep, I regularly saw a bombardment of color. From the bombardment, a colorless core emerged, transparent and changeable as an air bubble in water. It was as far away as the moon in the sky, but when I stretched out my hand, I could grasp that strange planet between thumb and index finger. It had no mass, yet I could feel it. It resisted the pressure of my fingers in a way I recognized only much later, when I tried to push two magnets against each other. I succeeded at the same time I failed, an invisible tension both powerful and gently pleasant. The sensual feeling added to my joy in those moments, but the real pleasure was the sudden and fleeting realization, the knowledge, the absolute certainty, that, as long as I held this distant object “caught” between my fingers, I simultaneously had everything and nothing in my grasp.
This daily apparition became rarer once I started to talk and think more or less logically. I might have forgotten it completely if it hadn’t suddenly returned twice in my midtwenties, before it disappeared forever.
• • •
Much to my mother’s sorrow, I have a bad memory. I’ve forgotten most of my childhood. Toward the end of her life, when she said, “Remember when you did this or that?” I could never rise to the challenge. She brushed my doubts aside—“Oh, of course you remember”—before proving herself wrong by dredging up all the details. In the end, I’d lay a hand on her arm and pretend that it had all come back, and we’d smile at the fun we had together. Then she’d shake her head and start rummaging through her bag.
In fact, virtually all I remember from my childhood are moments that were captured in photos. I don’t really remember them; I just know I experienced them. The pictures lead a life of their own. I think I recall something of that summer’s day in the park, but I can’t actually summon up a single feeling about it. From all those occasions, all I remember is the instant the shutter opened, freezing the light passing through the diaphragm.
Photography has changed our memory. The past used to be alive, and as people grew older, further removed from the facts, they were free to tone them down, to change them, forget them, embellish them, or fantasize them. Fact and fiction were equals, and neither had a monopoly on truth. The camera has deprived memory of this freedom. Our actions are captured. Pictures in a kid-leather album give the lie to the life we thought we led. All we can do is reconstruct a life from this evidence. The past has been pinned down forever; fantasy is confined to the future.
As indisputably as I remember a donkey ride on the beach, black and white with a zigzag edge, I remember the extraordinary apparition from my earliest childhood. I know that there was a clear perception and that it made me happy, but I can no longer call up the sensation and my understanding of it. All I know is that every night I held all of creation between my fingers.
From the moment I could capture the world between thumb and index finger, I understood that everything is limited. Indeed, this sense of limitation later became the determining fact of my life. Another child, exploring the world, might be surprised to find so many things he’s never seen before, but I discovered the same thing everywhere—an edge, a border, a narrowing, an end—and if this surprised me, it was only because others seemed not to notice how limited were all the things around them. As long as I can remember, I’ve suffered from these limits. Well, suffering’s not the word.
I’d wanted to discuss this with my friend Alberto in Sabaudia. He claims, in one of his books, that he’s felt something similar with boredom, which made him suffer but also offered oblivion, alienated him yet placed reality in a new light. The limitations have the same effect on me.
For many people, they are simply the opposite of freedom; and for such people freedom means free choice, being carefree, unlimited progress. I don’t see limits as the opposite of progress. I’d even say they resemble one another, since limits also take away worries, bring progress. I see it like this: infinite freedom offers infinite possibility. You rack your brains, worrying what to do next. It’s impossible to choose, so you wait and see; ultimately, you do nothing at all. Limitations define a range for our possibilities. The more limits, the simpler the choice. Bold steps become easier the more we are closed in and confined, a constant contraction that helps us move ahead. Our true motivation is to avoid suffocation.
The development of civilization is like the route the water follows through the Acqua Felice, the aqueduct I see from my studio. Water from a placid lake in the Alban Hills is stored in a reservoir, from which only a single opening offers escape, into a stone chamber with converging walls. The pressure increases, forcing the water to seek a new exit and bringing it to the next stone chamber, from which it is pressed into yet another. Mile after mile, pushed through a system of tapering vessels, the confined water flows faster, always in the same direction, toward the center of Rome, filling pumps, pools, and horses’ drinking troughs, turning mills, irrigating fields, and supplying fountains and bathhouses without ever losing its strength, until finally, through smaller and smaller pipes, it empties into the Moses Fountain. There, the sun glitters on the clear water flowing over the marble statues. It is part of a work of art, offering pleasure, beauty, and, on stifling days, cooling, to the people passing by.
That’s what limits offer me: the possibility of channeling my reservoir of babbling thoughts until they begin to foam, gaining direction, speed, and power until, far from their source, they burst out in clear jets in the sun.
1
Gala and Maxim leave my office in silence. I could have watched them heading toward the bar, disappearing now and then behind the pines. She looks up at him, concerned, feeling his despondency more keenly than her own triumph. She takes his hand, but immediately lets go when she feels it stiffen. Her pity brings the full intensity of his humiliation home to him. Suddenly, he bursts into tears, as uninhibited as a child.
“I’m so happy for you.” His shoulders heave as he gives in to months of tension. “Really, so happy,” he manages to add. He waves Gala away. “The bar. Just go and wait for me. If you want to. At the bar. I’m … I need … just for a moment …” And then he turns away from her.
For the first time.
She stays there, standing in the middle of the road, watching him go. She calls out, but he doesn’t answer. She’s never seen him like this before. She shuffles from one foot to the other, nervous, wringing her hands, unsure whether to go a
fter him. He’s usually the one who supports her.
If I’d bothered to come out from behind my desk and walk over to the window, I could have seen all this. But a few minutes have passed and I’ve already forgotten the two Dutch kids. What’s more, I’ve received a call from a Banco Ambrosiano office boy. He tries to bowl me over with compliments before offering me an incredible fee to make a commercial. For television, of all things!
It’s not the strongest who survive, but the most foolish. There’s no doubt Darwin got it wrong. Only people who delude themselves and then dare to believe their own delusion stand a chance in life.
And another secret: anyone can create art, but important art is only born from radical decisions, and those require a heavy dose of stupidity. Only a master can make essential decisions without a second thought—a master, or an idiot. So it is in all creative arts, and even more in the art of life.
It’s not the strongest who comes off best, but the biggest fool. Self-deception keeps the human species going.
Gala watches Maxim until he walks into a saloon in the Western set at the rear of the grounds. With a flourish, she turns on her heel before the doors stop swinging.
“Snaporaz looked at me,” she celebrates in her mind. “Snaporaz likes me. What a great man. What a monumental figure. True, he’s blunt, and he didn’t have to be so mean to Maxim, but that’s only because he knows what he wants. What a man. What an artist. To think that I caught his eye. So likable, such sparkling eyes. And his mind! It’s been tough, but it was all worthwhile!”
In the canteen, she orders a double espresso, boldly planting a red pump on the footrest of a stool and leaning an elbow on the cool marble bar.
For someone whose future has just been whipped out from under him, Maxim recovers with remarkable speed. He listens to the swish of the saloon doors closing behind him. He knew there wouldn’t be anything behind the facade as he stepped from the outside to the outside. It was only a gesture, familiar from so many movies, but from a dramatic point of view it fitted his mood. He wanted to know what it felt like. But he’s still sad to find things unchanged on the other side. There too raw emotion smarts in the pit of his stomach. Of course, he’s disappointed, even indignant, at his treatment by the man he’d pinned all his hopes on, but that’s not all. There’s a reason his tears won’t stop. Even now that he’s caught his breath and stopped shaking, big round childish tears are still welling up in his eyes. This surprises him, and bothers him. He worries that he might be jealous, and the idea of being jealous of Gala repulses him, literally nauseates him, and suddenly, with two intense contractions, he empties his stomach. But while he’s still bent over the vomit soaking into the red soil, he feels happy for Gala once again. She’s been noticed. She’s been chosen. She might get a role, make her mark, become a star, showing the whole world what Maxim’s known for years: how different she is, how exceptional. His love returns as his hatred gathers strength, his hatred for the other side of the equation: Snaporaz, the nasty creep who, with the few mischievous words he spoke to Gala, has fallen from his pedestal forever.
Anger dries his tears. He squares his shoulders. He screws up his eyes like a spaghetti Western hero waiting for a shootout and studies the back of the set through his lashes, seeing it all in sharp focus: the nails in the canvas, the warped boards, the torn plastic over the windows. Moisture has crept beneath the tape holding down the roof. Things aren’t the same on this side after all. Above one of the ponds, the former Sea of Galilee, seagulls are fighting over a toasted sandwich.
Calmer now, Maxim walks back. Being alone has done him good. It’s starting to get dark. The neon lights in the bar flick on. The light shines through the windows. Between the sharp-edged shadows of the studios, the small building looks like a star that has crashed into the middle of the complex. At its center, Gala is standing at the bar, tossing her head back, shaking her hair, smiling at the men who have gathered around her hopefully, though they’ve got even less hope today than ever. And he suddenly realizes: before, he and Gala had been alone together in this city. Now each is alone separately. They’ve entered the set it’s taken them so much trouble to build.
Relaxation after emotion. Maxim is sure that Gala will have an attack tonight. As soon as they get home, he tosses the pizzette and wine they picked up on the way onto the bed and heads into the bathroom to get her tablets. If she takes her dose right now, the convulsions will be less intense.
There is a box of her medication next to the sink, but it’s empty. After a thorough search, he finds a new one in the bottom of her suitcase. Inside are three strips, enough for three weeks. As he’s removing that night’s dosage, the unknown Italian jar catches his eye again.
“Baby, what’s this?” he calls, emerging from the bathroom with her pills in one hand and a glass of water and the jar in the other.
“Oh, that!” laughs Gala. She takes it from him nonchalantly, a bit too flippantly to reassure him. “I thought I’d need it with all the white bread here, but I haven’t taken a single one.” As if to prove it, she shakes the contents out onto the table. “Stupid. A waste of money. The olive oil does the job by itself.” She takes her pills, then finds a station with Italian oldies on the transistor, pours herself a glass of wine, and dances across the room, hips swinging.
When the time comes, Maxim restrains her without much exertion.
“Sei un bravo ragazzo,” sings Gigliola Cinquetti.
Maxim rocks Gala back and forth to the melody while wiping the dribble away from the corner of her mouth with his fingers.
“Sei diverso da tutti, e per questo ti a-ha-mo.”
“You and every other beautiful young thing in Rome,” says Sangallo.
Four days have passed without a word from Snaporaz, but Gala is still every bit as excited about their encounter. She realizes she’s not in love, but the feeling of triumph is something very close. A voice inside her won’t stop singing.
“They’re all waiting for a call from Cinecittà.” Sangallo is sitting between Gala and Maxim on the bench near the Temple of Venus on the Celio to see the sunset. “It doesn’t come and it won’t ever come, but they all sit in their rooms waiting for the phone. They forget to eat, they forget to live, and finally they die without a foot of film ever being shot of them.”
He takes some prosecco from the antique traveling case he has lugged around all afternoon and passes around glasses to toast the moment he’s been waiting for. In the distance, the sky above the old city glows an orange gold. The light ignites behind the clouds at sea, flares up over the suburbs, and spreads across the firmament until it reflects scarlet in the Tiber.
“Here, taste!” Sangallo opens a jar of lemon preserve and uses two fingers to spread a daub out over a slice of raw ham.
“How were you planning on surviving your success? You need to eat. Open wide!”
Gala snaps at the bait.
“You’re no wiser than the rest, so I presume you’ll be staying in Rome?”
“Of course!” says Gala, astonished. “Only a fool would leave right before the show.”
Sangallo glances at Maxim.
“Definitely,” he backs her up, “we’re staying.” The bittersweet preserve makes the pulpy meat the old man has prepared for him taste even more sickly. “Yes,” he touches glasses, determinedly, “as long as we can, we’ll stay.”
“Then consider yourself hired, Maxim,” Sangallo sighs. “I’m doing La Clemenza di Tito. There’s a run-through Wednesday morning. First rehearsal’s Friday. Extras. You and seven elegant youths are replacing the choir. They’re too coarse and ugly to be permitted onstage. Let them sing from the wings. Appearances count for something too. There’s no glory in it, my boy, and precious little money, but you can use it.”
“Fine,” says Maxim, “as long as there’s time for everything else.” No one asks him what else, but he explains anyway. “Auditions, screen tests, possible jobs …” But he hears the breath draining out of that last remnant of co
nviction.
Sangallo doesn’t dare look at him. Their eyes are fixed on the horizon. Gala lays a hand on Maxim’s shoulder and massages it gently while the last glow dies away behind the city.
All the while, she’s thinking, Snaporaz, Snaporaz, Snaporaz. The old man pinched my cheek like I was still in diapers, but have I ever felt so clearly what a woman can do? He spoke to me like a father, but he looked at me like a lover. Do what you can, Snaporaz: I’ll eat you up and spit you out. Just you try to humiliate me!
She feels Maxim’s muscles under her hands and runs her fingers over them. He sighs and lays his head on her shoulder. Touching each other relaxes them both, makes both feel safe, but each in a different way. He is comforted by the complete lack of danger, but it makes her feel melancholy. He is returning to something familiar; she is glancing back at it one last time. Slowly, the evening glides over them.
“Ma chi è?” The woman who answers Snaporaz’s telephone is as breathless as she was the first time. Gala found it very difficult to muster the courage to call, and now she persists, explaining that she met the maestro and that he was interested in her.
“I’m sorry, Signor Snaporaz non c’è,” the shrew snarls, and hangs up in the middle of Gala’s next sentence.
Between Christmas and New Year’s, the cold takes Rome by surprise. I haven’t felt the warmth drain from my body so quickly since the day my school friends and I went to spy on Malena, the harbor whore, and ended up locked in the cold store by a tuna fisherman’s jealous wife. Day after day, a freezing Russian wind pushed icy clouds over the Alpe della Luna and sent them rolling up the valley of the Tiber. There is ice in the Fountain of the Four Rivers and people fear for the lives of the palms on the Piazza di Spagna.
