‘I want you to come and work with me. Full stop. And sometimes, only when it’s necessary, to be the final point of call in these disputes. You understand them, understand these people’s language.’
‘And you think I can be co-opted for the company’s needs that easily. That’s insulting. How do you know I won’t move to the other side?’
Giangiacomo had looked at him for a long time. ‘I think you’ll be fair. You have, it’s become clear to me, a sense of justice. I think you know that I am not a mad dictator. I believe that what is good for the work force is, on the whole, good for the company.
‘And what if I think the power structure should be turned topsy turvy? That profits should be shared?’ Alexei teased him, egged him on.
‘Bah! Student claptrap. Anarchist fantasies. You don’t believe a word of it. Just think of your film. Did you work on the principle of a naive collective? Did you allow the sound man to make decisions about cuts? Did the person who made up your actress determine her lines? Would you have gotten a lead actor if you paid him as much as an extra? Codswallop, all of it.’
‘No, of course not. Now you’re being deliberately naive. But I listened to the sound man if he had a point to make or said his accommodation was terrible. And we all ate together,’ Alexei added, a little lamely. ‘Anyhow, it’s not a useful analogy. We weren’t a vast enterprise.’
Giangiacomo chuckled. ‘And will you all share in the proceeds?’
‘Hardly. It’s not my decision. A production company invested in the film, not me.’
‘And if it were you, dare I suggest to you that you wouldn’t? Because if you did, there would be no money to invest in the next film. It follows for Gismondi Enterprises. No profits, no company, no jobs.’
Alexei smiled. He had rehearsed the arguments to himself many times. He knew that on this level, at least, on the level of the total transformation of capitalism, he had for the past years had few illusions. But that still left a vast area for improvement. ‘I’ll think about what you propose,’ he said to his uncle. ‘But I have my own proposition to make, as well.’
He brought out a sheaf of papers, neatly bound, presented them to his uncle. ‘I’ve been thinking of forming a film production company within Gismondi Enterprises. A high risk business. But with some advantages. This is the business plan. Since you won’t let me go, we might as well try and combine our interests. Will you have a look?’
Giangiacomo’s laugh boomed across the room, ‘I always knew you were a shrewd negotiator, Alexei. I always suspected it. Tit for tat, eh my son?’ He laughed again. ‘I will study your proposal carefully.’
And so Alexei had moved into the office at the top of the Gismondi building. Occasionally troubleshooting for Giangiacomo, gradually putting the machinery and projects in place for the production company.
His secretary buzzed, ‘The women have arrived, Signor Gismondi. Shall I send them through?’
‘Give me another minute, Daniella.’ he glanced quickly at the list of demands again. A curious case this one, a new development.
Alexei rose as three women filed into his office. One a middle-aged matron with a round pleasant face; the second a neatly dressed young woman, her hair pinned demurely into a bun; the third… Alexei looked again. A blaze of red hair overtook the muted colours of his office. A vibrant, electric blaze floating above a delicate, lightly freckled face, a slight, supple, blue-suited form. She looked all of eighteen.
The red-head spoke first. ‘Maria Buora, Bianca Morelli,’ she pointed to the other two women, ‘And I am Rosa Venturi.’ The voice that came from her was bigger than she was - certain, bold.
‘Please, signore,’ Alexei gestured them toward chairs.
He noticed that Rosa Venturi perched at the very edge of hers.
‘You know why we are here,’ she said evenly. Green flecked hazel eyes pinioned him. The voice didn’t give him time to respond. ‘We, the women at Conti’s, want equal pay with the men, the description of our jobs upgraded so that there is no question of that equal pay. We want access to more highly skilled jobs. We want a women’s representative on the Factory Council. We want a negotiable maternity leave with a minimum of three months with full pay and jobs held until we return.’ All this she barked out in a staccato voice.
‘Is that all you want, Miss Venturi?’ Alexei cocked an eyebrow.
‘No, that is not all we want, Signor Gismondi,’ she met his eyes, immune to their irony. ‘That is merely a beginning. And if we do not get it, we will withdraw our labour. There will be no canteen. The factory will not be cleaned. The entire small parts division will walk out. And so will a portion of the design team.’
Alexei looked at her. All that fire emanating from that small frame. ‘May I ask why you haven’t gone through the proper channels, worked through your union representatives? None of this, as I understand it, came up in the last round of negotiations.’
Rosa Venturi flashed him a contemptuous glance. ‘Signor Gismondi, if we have come to you directly, it is because our unions have no interest in our just demands. Ask my colleagues here.’
Alexei glanced at the other two women whose eyes were cast down. They looked fearful. Finally one of them nodded.
‘Our male union representatives,’ Rosa Venturi’s tone dripped acid, ‘see women as an unpaid service industry. Women wash their dirty underwear, take care of their screaming children, dish up the pasta. And are there to be screwed.’
The word fell into the still air of the elegant office with a clatter. Rosa’s colleagues flushed. Alexei wasn’t sure of the colour of his own face. But her eyes were on him.
He chuckled, ‘I dare say, Miss Venturi…’
‘This is not a laughing matter,’ she pulled him up short.
‘And since our union representatives are male to a man, they cannot begin to see us as fellow workers with a set of grievances as important as their own.
Indeed,’ he looked at her seriously. ‘But you are asking for rather a lot, all in one go. It will take us time to consider this.’ He paused, ‘I shall send someone down from head office to have a look into affairs at Conti’s.’
‘Send a woman,’ Rosa Venturi said abruptly. ‘Oh, but no, of course, you probably don’t have a woman on your senior staff. How silly of me to suggest it,’ she looked at him benignly, masquerading innocence.
‘I’ll come myself,’ Alexei said.
‘And, you, as the maker of La Donna del Sud, imagine that you think like a woman?’ she laughed, her small nose turning up in derision.
Alexei looked at her in open surprise.
Her face suddenly fixed itself in politeness, as if she had gone too far. ‘We can hope for no better,’ she said tersely, stood.
He held the door open for them, only to be taken up short. ‘We can open our own doors, Signor Gismondi. We hardly need the veneer of polite tributes to remind us of our supposed helplessness.’
Alexei stood back. ‘I can hardly imagine you as ever being helpless, Miss Venturi,’ he murmured under his breath.
As soon as they had gone, Alexei buzzed his secretary. ‘Find out about this Rosa Venturi for me, will you. A detailed CV.’
He was irritated. And intrigued. He had realised as soon as Rosa Venturi had opened her mouth that she was not the usual member of the workforce. Her choice of words, her accent, betrayed other origins. But he had never met her like before. In the circles in which he moved, discussion of feminism, of women’s rights, of male machismo, had in the last year hardly been rare. But in his office, across a negotiating table, and with the forceful ardour which Rosa Venturi had brought to it… never.
As soon as he could in the following week, Alexei drove down to the Conti plant. He had only been there once before and he didn’t know it well. But he did now know something more about Rosa Venturi. She was twenty-four, the daughter of a school teacher from Bergamo. She had studied law for three years and then dropped out. The legal studies explained something of her ability to argue. I
t didn’t explain the fierceness, the fire she brought to the task.
Alexei, at the age of twenty-seven, was still in something of a quandary about women. His youthful encounter with Francesca had left a deep residue, the texture of an identification, an understanding. But with that exception, he tended to float in and out of relationships, never quite sure how they had begun, never desperately needing for them to go on once they seemed over. His affairs had the aura of a dream, deeply present, and yet not quite substantial. Women liked him, liked his hesitancy, presented themselves to him. He was sensitive to their desires, tended to idealize them, was always a little breathlessly aware of what he thought of as their fragility.
He had never lived in close proximity with a woman, not even, effectively, a mother.
If he had been asked to put into words what it was about Rosa that intrigued him after that first meeting, he might have said it was the sense he had of her being substantial. A fierce compact mass of resistance. He could reconstruct everything she had said, every flicker of her eyes, every electric shake of that ruddy head.
When he went to the Conti factory that rainy morning, he had the sense that he was embarking on a new kind of adventure. He talked first with the Manager.
The man threw his hands up in the air. ‘It’s that woman. Everything was fine until she came here. We should never have hired her. And I’ve thought of sacking her, but she does her job adequately, fulfills regulations to a T. And now the women see her as a leader. She started having these informal meetings with them, before I realised what was going on. Twice a week, little gossip sessions, we thought. In the canteen, where she works. And now!’ he struck his head with his fist.
Alexei went to see the one of the union representatives. Here the reaction was rather more aggressive. ‘That one. That Venturi. All the problems started with her. We thought everyone would be happy when the Factory Council was set up last year. But no, she started to petition. Make demands. Barged in once and harangued us with a long speech. Joan of Arc. And she’s turned the women against us. They all seethe with suspicion now.’
‘You know what she needs,’ the man made an obscene gestur with his arm. ‘Eh, a few bambini. That would sort her out.’
‘And did you try?’ Alexei asked with pretended naïveté.
‘That one,’ the man grumbled. ‘She’s an ice box.’
Alexei spent some time in the various workplaces, watched, listened. During the lunch break he went to the canteen. Rosa was behind the counter, her uniform bristling blue and white, her hair bright. He helped himself to a glass of wine, asked for a plate of pasta. Her eyes challenged him. ‘Spying?’ she mumbled. ‘We need some action soon, next week.’ She turned to the next person in the queue.
At the end of the afternoon, he waited for her to emerge from the building. She was with a group of women, talking volubly. He signalled to her. ‘Can I give you a lift home?’
‘I’m not going home,’ she said blandly.
He shrugged, ‘A lift elsewhere then. It might be useful if we talked.’
She followed him to the car park. ‘Cavorting with the enemy won’t do you any good,’ she said, defying him with every inch of her presence.
He looked at her for a moment and then unlocked the door of the car. He didn’t speak again until they had left the factory grounds. Then he said, his tone a little grim, ‘We are trying to run a company here, Miss Venturi, not a sex war. This used to be a relatively happy firm. Now…’
She cut him off, ‘Happy? What do you know about it? The women weren’t happy. They were just cowed, docile. Used to being exploited.’
Alexei’s eyes flickered. He braked too hard at a red light. It was raining, the ground sodden. The car squealed. He switched the position of the windshield wipers. ‘What are your interests here, Miss Venturi? You’re hardly our usual canteen worker.’
Her voice too was even. ‘You know my interests. I imagine they were put quite succinctly in that fat brief you had on your desk. And if that was too difficult for you to read, we stated them when we came to your office.’
‘We?’ Alexei murmured. ‘Would the other women in the company be quite so adamant if you weren’t there?’
‘Are you threatening me with the sack?’
‘Hardly,’ Alexei laughed. ‘That wouldn’t be my job.’
‘Good. Because we’d all be out tomorrow on a case of unjust dismissal. I do my job well.’
‘I’m sure.’ Alexei muttered. ‘But it seems to me you do have an unusual interest in calling strikes. Strikes without the unions’ sanction. Have you thought what would happen to your friends if they were all dismissed? I imagine they need their jobs.’
He could feel her compact body growing taut. Stiff with emotion. ‘You can drop me here,’ she said abruptly.
‘Here?’ Alexei queried. They were in a tawdry area of high rise workers’ flats.
‘Here,’ she ordered. She turned to him as he pulled up short, her face fierce. ‘Mr. Gismondi, it won’t come to that,’ her voice was low carrying a hint of menace. ‘I have friends, journalists. It wouldn’t look good for the supposedly benevolent head of Gismondi Enterprises, your father, to be seen sacking a bunch of helpless women. It might tarnish his image.’ Suddenly, she laughed with girlish glee.
He had an overwhelming desire to shake her. ‘And you think a little publicity would trouble Giangiacomo. Shake Gismondi Enterprises?’ he derided her.
Their eyes locked.
‘Oh no,’ she said softly after a moment. ‘I have no illusions. Only a bomb or two would shake Gismondi,’ she realised she had gone too far, opened the door, got out quickly, then turned back to him. ‘Next week. We want our answer by next week.’
‘You shall have it when everything has been duly considered.’ Alexei murmured.
He watched her walk towards the door of one of the apartment blocks. Blue jeans, booted feet, a short jacket. And that blaze of hair. He stopped the direction of his thoughts. But he waited, not quite sure why he was waiting.
She didn’t reappear.
Alexei asked management at Conti’s to do figures on salary differentials, complete with job descriptions; on the numbers of women who had left the firm because of pregnancy; on the impact of possible changes on running costs and profits. The figures troubled him. Rosa Venturi had a point.
He went to see Giangiacomo.
His uncle groaned. ‘If we give in, it will spread.’
‘It will probably spread in any event,’ Alexei said. ‘It’s in the air.’
‘Will they walk out?’
Alexei shrugged, ‘Probably. It’s their leader. She wants the publicity.’ He felt a surprising little shudder of betrayal as he said it.
‘The publicity will make it spread quicker,’ Giangiacomo muttered. ‘Hammer out a compromise. The factory’s solid enough.’
Alexei composed a letter, a cogent open letter, explaining what was possible, what not. In his mind, he had a firm picture of Rosa as she read it. Her anger, a little glimmer of self-satisfaction in those flecked eyes.
The answer came within a few days. It accepted everything Alexei had proposed gratefully. It didn’t bear Rosa’s signature. He found out she had left the firm the day after his letter had arrived. A low whistle escaped him.
A week later he was still thinking about her. At odd moments, her voice came into his ear, a voice filled with passionate outrage. He found her telephone number in a file, rang her. He was told that she no longer lived at that number. The level of his disappointment surprised him.
Alexei buried himself in work. The production company was in operation. He sifted ideas, treatments, dreamt a new film of his own.
Then one evening as he was walking through the Galleria off the Piazza del Duomo, he saw her. Trim legs in high heels, a belted black trench coat, a cloud of bright hair. He caught up to her.
‘You disappeared.’
She took in his presence, laughed. ‘My job was done. It’s up to the others now.’<
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He matched his step to hers. ‘What job?’ he asked.
She gave him a sardonic glance, ‘The job of waking them up. Women of the world unite, you know.’ Her tone was friendly, complicit.
‘Can I buy you a drink?’
She glanced at her watch. ‘Why not?’
They sat down at one of the café tables in the Galleria. ‘What are you doing now?’ he asked.
‘Oh, this and that,’ she smiled vaguely. He watched the avidity with which she drank her Campari, small quick gestures, the long curve of her throat.
She met his gaze. ‘You want to fuck me, don’t you?’
Alexei’s mouth dropped. ‘I hadn’t quite considered it yet.’ His eyes lingered on her face, the reddened lips. ‘But now that you put it so forcefully…’
Her laugh was deep, spicy, ‘Don’t look so surprised. Women aren’t asleep. They know about these things.’ She stood. ‘Thanks for the drink.’
He put out his hand to stop her. Cool skin. She flushed. Pulled her fingers away.
‘Where can I reach you?’ Alexei asked.
‘I’ll reach you. When I’m ready.’
Bag swinging over her shoulder, she strode away.
Some weeks later, he was working on his new script in the apartment he had moved into near La Scala, when he was surprised by a ring at the door.
He opened it to find Rosa standing there.
‘No, I’m not an apparition,’ she responded to the look on his face. ‘Are you going to invite me in?’
She sauntered past him. Tight blue jeans, a leather jacket, her hair half bound in a loose scarf. He could smell the night on her.
‘Nice place,’ she glanced round. ‘It’s nice to see how the rich live,’ her voice dripped sarcasm. ‘You could put a few families in here.’
‘Do I sit back while you give me a political lecture?’ he was irritated, ‘or do I play delighted host and offer you a drink?’
She laughed, ‘You offer me a drink.’
Memory and Desire Page 56
