Think about what? Lou doesn’t understand. Obviously he’s been thinking about something, but what? Has he acted like an asshole? But he just got here!
“Piacere, I’m Rosamunda,” the girl says with an offended air, and walks away in the direction of Nick and Aunt Carmela.
Lou watches her as she’s moving away. He doesn’t understand, but he likes that offended air.
* * *
“Nicky, this is Mindy,” Aunt Carmela says, giving Mindy’s dress a final once-over.
“Piacere, I’m Rosamunda,” Mindy says with a forced smile.
“Piacere, I’m Nick,” Nick says, and thinks, Fuck, they’ve already got this one decked out like a bride! But where does she come from? One of Tony’s TV series?
Nick looks around in confusion and meets Valentina’s eyes. She’s still sitting with Rosy on the wicker couch. Nick smiles. Valentina gets up indignantly and walks away with an offended air. Nick doesn’t understand, but he likes that offended air.
Champagne! Let’s toast this meeting … Tony’s voice, raised over the high-pitched sounds of the band, echoes around the garden, and even beyond the garden, as far as the other side of the street, between the sun-yellowed tufts of grass and the dark masses of volcanic rock.
IN ROME, CECCAROLI HAS DONE HIS JOB WELL
In Rome, Ceccaroli has done his job well. At the party after the premiere, at the Hotel Hassler Villa Medici above the Spanish Steps, the elite of Italian cinema—De Angelis, Lombardo, Bernabei, the top brass from Titanus, Medusa, Lux, socially conscious actresses, actors, and starlets, writers, committed critics, and paparazzi—really are there. If Sean hadn’t canceled his suite at the Hassler only yesterday, it would have been a triumph for Ceccaroli, a scene out of La Dolce Vita rewritten by him, and him alone. Ceccaroli even managed to find, on the net, a photograph of Greta and Cameron, bare-breasted, whipping a bodybuilder, which he sent to the Roman magazines. The result is an impressive crowd of paparazzi outside the Hassler, who go wild when Frank and Greta arrive.
“Are you ashamed like Cameron, Greta?”
“Tell us about Cameron!”
“Everything bene,” Greta says, radiant. “Rome is bellissima!”
Frank, who’s wearing a white jacket and black tie, grips her arm tightly, to stop her talking bullshit. But then the whore goes, “Ooooww!” and Frank thinks, Cazzarola, the bitch has delicate skin, before he realizes she’s stumbled. He bends over to look at Greta’s ankle, massages it slowly, and, trying to keep his paunch inside his white double-breasted tuxedo, says, “Did you hurt yourself, honey?”
“It’s nothing, Frank,” Greta says, ever more radiant.
What the fuck’s the whore laughing about? Frank wonders while the paparazzi pop their flashes for all they’re worth.
The fact is, Greta has a whole lot of reasons to be radiant, all these flashes mean fame and fortune, but right now fame and fortune are far down the list of things on her mind. This afternoon, inviting her to the party, Frank stroked her cheek and said … Could it be? It’s unbelievable … Is Frank really … falling in love with her?
Frank feels Greta’s arm tightening around his. What are you doing squeezing my arm, you whore? But you’ve got to put a brave face on things. He squeezes her arm, too, and looks at her.
Greta’s eyes are shining. And just then, a thought comes into her little head, a thought that, at least once in her life, comes into the little head of every Greta in the world. But is this what I really want? To be like Cameron and Charlize? Do I really want a villa in Beverly Hills and a penthouse on Fifth Avenue? Or do I want nothing but to have this little man take me away with him to a cottage in the country, with me watching from the kitchen window while he cuts firewood, him maybe stroking my belly when I’m pregnant?
As all inveterate seducers, pimps, and users of every species know, there’s nothing in the world easier than making a woman like Greta—or any woman—believe you love her.
When they enter the lobby of the Hassler, Ceccaroli comes up to them. He’s looking nervous.
“For the seating, Frank, my idea was—”
“Ceccarò, I’m sure your idea’s fine,” Frank says. “Did you put Greta on my right or on my left?”
After years of dinners and parties of every kind, Ceccaroli knows a thing or two about etiquette, and was thinking of putting Greta next to the famous left-wing critic, opposite Frank. Now he immediately says, “Of course, Frank, Greta’s on your right.”
On the seventh floor, in the Rooftop Restaurant, Frank, who’d like to hurry things along, is forced to shake hundreds of sweaty hands. A real bullshit artist, with a face as red as a beet, perfectly groomed white hair, and a shiny blue tie, starts busting his balls about the view, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, St. Peter’s, Eisenhower, the Queen of England. Then Frank has a brilliant idea. “Thank you,” he says, “but I already know all about the Hassler, my friend John Gotti told me about it ten years ago, he was here for two weeks.” It takes just three seconds, cazzarola, for the bullshit artist to disappear.
All the important Italians—de Angelis, Bernabei, the people from Titanus, Medusa, and Lux—are at the table, along with Leonard, who’s sitting opposite Frank, an Italian woman writer with a pissed-off face, her actor-director husband, the famous critic, an unwashed guy with dirty glasses, the woman president of the jury for a literary prize, an old lady who keeps asking Greta, “Would you like some water, dear? Are you tired, dear?” and the dear herself, who’s radiant, eating a plate of pasta in front of Frank for the first time: scialatelli from Sorrento with seafood sauce and zucchini flowers.
Looking at his crystal glass, covered in oily fingerprints, Frank realizes he’s getting nervous. The macaronis, the whore, the old woman, the unwashed critic, and all this bullshit about getting Greta to ask him to take her to Catania: everything’s starting to get on his nerves!
“Do you know why I like your work?” He’s distracted from his somber thoughts by the unwashed critic’s thin little voice. The critic has decided the moment has come to say a few banalities to Leonard Trent, just to show they did the right thing inviting him. “Because you have no professional anxieties. It’s obvious after seeing Plastic Love that you’re driven by a single fixed idea: that the cinema exists and is therefore something that can simply be possessed, grabbed hold of, something you can enter, something that can and must be learned … But that’s what genuine cinema always is, in every era … a revolt against the privileges of cinematic dynasties. Take De Sica. What do you think drove De Sica? Ideological concerns? No, simply the desire to see the birth and death of a few images and ideas worthy of birth and death.”
I’d like to see your birth and death, Leonard thinks, forcing himself to smile like he’s grateful for the praise.
Pleased with himself, the unwashed critic then decides to fulfill the evening’s other obligation: to say a few words to the Jayne Mansfield type on his left.
“Do you like De Sica?” he asks Greta, smiling and showing her his yellow teeth with pieces of zucchini flower still stuck in them.
Greta, who’s thinking about the steamed king prawns with Sicilian couscous, the mozzarella, and the buffalo ricotta she’s finally going to eat with Frank at Babbo in the West Village, where Frank is sure to take her now, answers without hesitation, “Delicious. I went to Da Sica’s in Tribeca with Drew and Quentin. A really hip restaurant.”
The unwashed critic is puzzled for a moment, then casually takes off his dirty glasses and polishes them on a corner of the tablecloth. Frank swallows with difficulty. He’d like to slap Greta: it wouldn’t be the first time he slapped a woman in public. But instead, he decides to laugh, softly at first, then in that loud, vulgar way Italians expect from Italian-Americans at table and in public. They all laugh, of course, especially the old lady from the prize jury, who says, “You know, dear, when I was your age I often went to a trattoria called Da Sica’s. But that was in Naples…”
Frank can feel himself getting mor
e and more nervous. He hates the old lady, the unwashed critic and the whore, hates the writer, too, and her dickhead husband, hates those cheapskate Italian producers, hates that asshole Leonard who’s smiling like a faggot. Reacting to a really painful spasm in his colon, he decides he might as well destroy himself with wine, then at the last moment changes his mind and decides to destroy the whore instead, and fills her glass to the brim. Delicious, huh? Here: drink, bitch, drink!
Then he has a sudden flash, an illumination.
“In my opinion,” he says, turning to the unwashed critic, “one of the greatest Italian directors is Franco Zeffirelli. Have you seen Sparrow? Images worthy of birth and … you know, like you said.”
“Aesthetic kitsch…” the pissed-off woman writer says.
“What?” Frank says.
“Well…” the unwashed critic says, “I don’t know if Zeffirelli is exempt from the privileges of cinematic dynasties … He owes everything to Visconti, and—”
“Zeffirelli is one of our greatest geniuses,” Bernabei says and, to save the situation, raises his glass of wine.
“Bravo Zeffirella!” Greta says, raising her glass, which is full to the brim, and almost emptying it on the snow-white tablecloth.
“Long live Zeffirella!” Leonard says, also raising high his glass, with an amused look on his face.
“Absolutely!” Frank says, his round eyes fixed on Greta’s laughing blue eyes. “They ought to show Sparrow in film schools … it’s a moving love story against the magnificent … magnificent … backdrop of the Catanese baroque. An emotional epic, a hymn to passion set in that splendid Sicilian city! In that street … What the hell’s the name of that street?”
“The one with the convent?” the old lady says.
“Exactly,” Frank says, “that street full of churches and works of art, with that gallery thing joining the two wings of the convent…” Frank mimes the two wings with a flapping motion of his arms.
“The Bridge of the Sparrow,” the old lady says, looking into Greta’s blue eyes with her own dull gray eyes. “A rendezvous for lovers even today.”
“Exactly,” Frank says, exhausted.
Greta places her hand on Frank’s forearm, sighs, weakens, thinks, Why is the world so unfair and yet so beautiful sometimes, so full of … longing? and says, “Will you take me there, Frank?”
“Where?” Frank asks, with the same radiant expression he had on that long-ago day when, as a child, he beat up Carmine Cacace’s son, who was three years older than him and was always tormenting him.
“The Bridge of the Sparrow,” Greta whispers.
“Of course, sweetheart!” Frank says.
ON THE BEACH AT MARZAMEMI TWO TOURISTS ARE READING
On the beach at Marzamemi two tourists are reading, lying on chaise longues. It’s obvious they’re tourists, because they’re reading. It’s obvious Don Lou Sciortino has just finished eating, because he’s drinking Brancamenta. He’s sitting under a canopy where there are four tables with red checkered paper tablecloths. His table is still a mess. But Don Mimmo arrives quickly to clear it, rolling the tablecloth into a ball along with all the crumbs. Don Lou Sciortino nods. He’s looking at a reinforced concrete scaffolding, an ominous sign. They’ve started to build even here. The earth movers and the bricklayers have already moved in. In New York, these things were the basis of Don Lou Sciortino’s fortune. But here in Marzamemi he wouldn’t even build a doll’s house for Don Mimmo’s little granddaughter. There’s a small island opposite the beach of Marzamemi, with a beautiful villa on it. Whenever Don Lou thought about Marzamemi in America, he thought about Don Mimmo’s little restaurant, La Tonnara, and about the villa on the island. In his mind they were the only buildings that existed. The smallest change, and Marzamemi would become like any other place.
“Who?” Pippino asks. He’s known as ’U Ciantru, the Oleander, because he’s as poisonous as an oleander, a plant it’s best to keep away from donkeys and horses. A real expert with a knife, Pippino. In Catania, forty years ago, everybody called him ’U Nivuro, the black man, because they said he had a black heart, nobody trusted him anymore, he didn’t lick anybody’s ass. People said the only thing Pippino licked was the blade of his knife, but what he actually did was rub soap onto it to help it slide in easier and make the wounds burn more. One day about forty years ago, Don Lou Sciortino took Pippino aside, bought him a Fernet, down in Turi Cricuocu’s bar, and said, “They tell me you’re black, but to me you’re like an oleander. Poisonous, sure. But my grandfather taught me you can plant oleanders in a garden, tend them, and water them.” Don Lou Sciortino’s grandfather was right. Result: forty years later Pippino is still at Don Lou Sciortino’s side, and everybody, in Sicily and America, calls him Don Lou’s ciantru.
“The guy who lived on that island,” Don Lou says, jutting his chin in the direction of the little island.
Pippino is dressed in a brown suit from a department store, but he looks neater than a lot of people who have their clothes made to measure. He’s got a bald skull, a round face, and an aquiline nose. He isn’t tall. To look at him, you’d take him for a French choreographer, one of the few who aren’t gay. Under his jacket, he’s wearing a black polo shirt buttoned to the neck.
“Vitaliano Brancati,” Pippino says.
“Right,” Don Lou says.
Don Lou Sciortino retired Pippino ten years ago. Pippino lives alone in a very clean apartment, and goes on self-improving vacations, spending whole weeks in the most exclusive apartment hotels in the world, reading books.
“What’s Brancati like?”
“Good,” Pippino says.
“Shall we go?” Don Lou says, looking at his watch.
Pippino leaps to his feet and looks along the boardwalk. “Whenever you like, sir.”
* * *
The Jaguar bumps over the dirt road. On either side, dry walls of very white stone beneath carob trees and prickly pear. Pippino parks in a patch of open ground full of the carcasses of agricultural machinery, tractor tires, lead drums. Two dogs tied to a cart snarl at them. A shabby-looking young man is trying to repair a rototiller in front of a building made out of blocks of concrete, with slabs of fibrocement for a roof. The young man drops the rototiller and wipes his hands, first on a dishrag, and then on his pants. He says, “They told me you need prickly pear. You can get all you want around here.”
Don Lou and Pippino look at him in silence, then walk slowly toward the olive grove opposite the patch of ground, until Pippino spots the manhole. It’s open. Pippino makes a move like he’s going in, but Don Lou stops him with a look that says, No, I gotta go first. Don Lou stoops to avoid banging his head. He hesitates a moment on the narrow steps and Pippino supports him, very gently and tenderly. The air-conditioning is on full strength. Jacobbo Maretta is wearing blue Bermudas and a juice-stained undershirt.
People say Jacobbo Maretta doesn’t exist, that he’s just an invention of Lillo Virtude, who’s in Ucciardone Prison but wants people to think he’s got a man on the outside. An official FBI report a while ago said he died when a motorboat sank with some Cuban businessmen on board. The whole thing stank, though. Who the fuck has ever seen a Cuban businessman? Lots of people think Jacobbo Maretta is alive and kicking, which in fact he is.
In fact, to be more specific, here’s what happened: a few months before going into Ucciardone, Virtude made sure that Maretta disappeared, and spread a whole lot of contradictory rumors about his disappearance. “I need somebody on the outside. I need you.”
Now Maretta lives in this underground bunker in the countryside inland from Marzamemi. Whenever he has to go out, he takes a tractor as far as the village, where a yellow Fiat 127 is waiting to take him to a dealer in garden statues in Ispica. There he gets on a truck, changes inside it, and when he gets out, usually at Catania Airport, he’s all spruced up.
“Don Lou, you really must forgive me! I haven’t been out in three months, I’m turning into an animal.” Jacobbo Maretta ha
s thick hair dyed jet-black and what looks like a fake mustache. “Pippino! Still kicking?”
Pippino’s only response is to look at Don Lou. Don Lou nods to Pippino, and Pippino nods to Maretta.
“Minchia, they broke the mold when they made you,” Maretta says. “Pippino, you must do me a personal courtesy. I know you like getting laid, so do Jacobbo a favor: make some babies! We need more people like you!” Maretta sighs. “Don Lou, you did the right thing coming to Sicily. How’s your grandson? He’s a good kid, just like his grandpa … Oh, by the way, Don Lou, I wanted to ask your advice … It’ll soon be time to plant beans … But you know what happens? They dry up on me! The other year my beans dried up! So how can I be sure now? It’s expensive, you know, I gotta hire men to plant them, I gotta put in irrigation, water pipes … It’s one expense after another … One’s thing’s for sure, agriculture ain’t what it used to be … Fuck it, we got unions now! The men arrive on time and leave on time … and fuck, the money they make … So you know what I say? Even if I’ve got just one broken bean—one fava rotta, you know what I mean?—it isn’t worth the effort! I don’t like these beans, they’re small, they’re sad, they don’t ripen … I don’t trust beans anymore! Zucchini, now, they’re beautiful … You eat pasta with zucchini and ricotta salata at Don Mimmo’s? Minchia, Don Mimmo is still Don Mimmo!”
“Don Mimmo seemed fine to me,” Don Lou says. “Sure, he’s getting old, like the rest of us, but you can trust him. His hand shakes a little when he brings the food, but you can still trust him.”
“And Pippino, what did Pippino eat? Don’t tell me, I know: spaghetti alla pescatora with a whole fucking lot of red chilies. By the way, what can I offer you? Of course, you just ate … Ah, how about some amaretti? I don’t know, though … I’ve had this box here a long time … What do you think? Did they go bad? In my opinion, yes … These amaretti are stale! Forget it, let’s get rid of these amaretti … Let’s just get rid of them,” Maretta says, and throws away the box of amaretti with an angry, disgusted gesture. “But you’re going to Catania now, right? That’s good! Don Lou, please, you gotta go see Sonnino. Trust me. I’ve seen a lot of picciotti who’ve made their way in the world. But there’s nobody else I can recommend like a son. In Catania, you gotta ask after Sonnino, you gotta send for him. Because if you need somebody you can trust, I recommend this Sonnino personally.”
Who is Lou Sciortino? Page 11
