Then, unexpectedly something miraculous happened.
Only a week earlier, while she was stuck in traffic in Via Nazionale on the 64 bus, Pascal had rung her.
“Cate, you are there! I am looking at your name right now in the paper! No joke!”
She couldn’t scream or jump up, firmly lodged as she was between a large West African woman with a complicated hairdo and a man in a shabby jacket who was exhaling garlic fumes into her nostrils. She managed to wiggle out and get off at the next stop, bought the paper and, standing right in front of the newsstand, flipped through the pages. She skipped the earthquake, the war, the fall of the government, the catastrophic financial page and went straight to Entertainment.
There it was. Her name. She had been nominated.
She had played with the word for a few days. It felt like such a prodigious thing—to be no-mi-na-ta!—something akin to King Arthur touching her forehead with his sword and turning her instantly into a knight. Actually she had been nominated along with another four directors for a minor category—best short film—for the David Awards, the Italian version of the Oscars—like the Césars in France, the BAFTAs in England and whatever it’s called in Spain, all Cinderella versions of the real thing. But, because she’d never been nominated for anything before in her life, this felt like her greatest achievement so far.
Her short was a documentary about a team of synchronized swimmers training for the Olympics. Young girls who composed amazingly intricate patterns in the pool—six-pointed stars, budding flowers, comets and rainbows—but who, once in the locker room, became savagely antagonistic toward one another. The concept was harmony versus disruption, discipline versus unleashed emotions—a sensual, stark portrait of female competition. The short had hardly any dialogue: Caterina had concentrated mostly on the composition of the shots, lighting, angles and a carefully engineered editing. The film was only thirteen minutes long, its budget just fifteen thousand euros, a surprisingly low amount that had been painstakingly put together by herself and her producer, Marco Guattari, a thirty-something energetic film buff and Ritalin addict with amazing focus and determination. Caterina had sold her vintage Beetle for four thousand euros and Marco had managed to borrow the rest from his cousin—an obsessive comics collector—who’d just won quite a crazily vast sum on a TV quiz show, answering a tricky question involving a lesser known Tintin adventure. The idea was to pay the cousin back once they sold the film to a network, but at the moment they didn’t feel pressed to oblige, as the cousin had vanished somewhere in Brazil, where he was apparently spending money left and right without a care in the world.
According to a few seminal bloggers, Caterina’s short had an uncanny quality. Her filming had been described as “stark and illuminating.” Another brief account was nestled in Corriere della Sera, within an article about upcoming filmakers. “The manner by which Caterina De Maria exhibits the female body in water—in a flowing ballet that alternates between gracefulness and herculean exertion, elegance and cruelty—has an almost Wagnerian quality. Are we meant to think of her swimmers merely as athletes, or as marine monsters? De Maria’s subtle and unusual work here marks a promising debut. Next time we hope to see her name linked to a full-length feature.”
To celebrate the sudden turn their lives had taken, Caterina and Pascal had decided to spend a long weekend in Venice, for a full cultural immersion, combining the Art Biennale and the Venice Film Festival on the Lido, two events that coincided that September and attracted voracious international crowds. They shared a large double bed in a tiny pensione near Le Zattere that, despite its funereal lighting, the musty walls and the yellowing curtains, was outrageously expensive. Just as expensive as the stale prepackaged sandwiches they were forced to live on, sold at every corner to desperate tourists, and as the tickets for the Biennale and for the vaporettos that shuttled them back and forth between Venice and the Lido. But they’d decided to ignore the money issue, since this was a time of celebration. Although they hadn’t succeeded in eliciting a single invitation to any of the star-studded parties held nightly in glamorous and often secret venues, not even for a mere Bellini offered by a film distributor or for one free lunch, they still felt entitled to be there. Caterina’s nomination had upgraded both of them from outsiders to quasi celebrities.
Venice, of course, was playing its subliminal part, its time-honored postcard soul contributing to lift Pascal and Caterina beyond the realm of reality. The minute they stepped off the train onto the vaporetto at Piazzale Roma, they agreed—as absolutely everyone else does the minute they step off the train—that Venice was incredible, so incredible that one forgot it did exist and had a life of its own outside films and novels. The transition from the train ride in a stuffy second-class compartment to Venice sliding past in its algaeish green and gilded glory was so fast that all the clichés inevitably crystallized within that first nautical ride: there it was, a dissolute and dissolving city built on water, impervious to passing centuries, moldy and decaying, its canals strewn with gondolas and paddling gondoliers, where slow barges carried loads of wood, boxes of fruit and vegetables or stacks of furniture piled up high as they had for centuries, its skyline of palazzi and bridges identical to Canaletto’s and Turner’s paintings. A place where nobody could escape the cheap fantasy of one day renting an attic overlooking the Grand Canal to do something artistic, like writing a novel or beginning to paint at last.
Pascal and Caterina had spent the first day strolling through the Art Biennale in the Giardini. They went from pavilion to pavilion following an orderly geographical sequence: France, Italy, England, then Germany and Scandinavia (Pascal had method, nothing was random under his direction). He was in a state of overexcitement, determined to gorge himself on as much art as he could in one go. He believed in expanding his knowledge with the hunger of a connoisseur constantly searching for yet another enriching item to add to his collection. Pascal believed in knowledge per se, as if the sheer act of recognizing an artist, his or her particular style, and therefore being able to cast him or her in the correct mental file, would contribute to bringing more order to the universe. He flew through the large pavilions in a state of ecstasy, naming different artists Caterina had never heard of, pointing out the differences between their old works and the new ones (derivative! fresh!), rushing her to see abstruse videos she didn’t really understand (staggering! so modern!), avoiding some installations like the plague (jejune! pathetic!), forcing her to sit for fifteen minutes in silence in front of an inexplicable sculpture (breathtaking!).
After a few hours Caterina began to experience a sense of overload, the first symptoms of art fatigue. The works started blurring together and her receptors weakened, like batteries dying out. She was jealous of the way Pascal seemed to be impressed by each work like photographic paper in a bath of acid. For long minutes at a time, she studied the elusive installations, longing to be fed the same nutrient, but she felt nothing other than a sense of being excluded. All she could think of was resting her aching feet and having a slice of pizza. Pascal gestured for her to follow through a small door and they entered a cubicle. The space was bathed in a lavender light. It wasn’t clear what the medium was: swaths of color that weren’t a painting as in a Rothko or Flavin’s fluorescent tubes, but pure diffused light coming from above, as if the artist had managed to take a portion of the desert sky at dawn, and pour it into the cubicle through the ceiling. There were two other visitors sitting on the bench right in the middle of the room, completely silent and inebriated. They had clearly been in there having their own mystical experience for some time and they looked at Caterina and Pascal with scarcely repressed resentment, as squatters trespassing on their land. Caterina whispered an apology and sat quietly on the floor. She let herself drown in the pale blue mist that filled the room like a vapor. Soon she felt mesmerized by its nothingness, its lack of complication. A cloud of peace—that was maybe the idea. Pascal stood behind her, silent and impenetrable, but Caterina could
tell he too was moved. Moved by what? she then asked herself. Was it the absence of structure, of subject; was it just its mystery? She knew better not to say anything. Nothing annoyed Pascal more than other people compelled to ask the meaning of contemporary artworks.
The next day Caterina and Pascal were patiently waiting in line at the cashier in a crowded café outside the Palazzo del Cinema after the midmorning screening. This was the busiest time of the day, when everyone’s blood sugar level was at its lowest and people were ready to pay up to nine euros for the crappy panini with congealed cheese that looked like melted plastic. They’d just seen a three-and-a-half-hour-long documentary about an aging rock star from the seventies, who had retired from the stage at the peak of his career, vanishing somewhere at the feet of the Himalayas searching for answers and then retreating to an island off the coast of Spain.
While Pascal was waiting to order their sandwiches, Caterina felt an undertow of despair envelop her for no apparent reason. She tried to shake it off, but the feeling clung to her like a spiderweb. It definitely had something to do with the documentary they’d just seen. She kept thinking of the mega rocker’s last interview. It was a time when he already knew he had cancer and only a few months to live. He was speaking directly into the camera, staring straight at the audience with a bold expression, seated on a stool in the middle of his vast, beautiful Spanish garden under the shade of a tall walnut tree. Right behind him soft clumps of different grasses lay beneath a bamboo grove, their silvery and purple plumes dangling in the breeze. Here and there dots of bright color—anemones, daffodils, alliums—glinted among the flickering grasses so that the wild, open feeling of the garden suggested it had grown spontaneously, as if designed by nature itself. The man called it “my last and everlasting oeuvre,” which he had created in the last twenty years of his life. He had explained how looking after it had made him as deliriously happy as all the music he’d written over thirty years. It was a continuation of the same creative impulse, the only difference being that it hadn’t made him any richer. Here he had laughed.
“If anything, the money only kept pouring out. I guess that is karmically fair, isn’t it?” he asked, staring into the camera with his deep-set eyes.
One could see why just by looking at the magnificent landscape behind him: his garden brimmed with life just as his music had. Caterina felt a terrible sorrow for the man’s death, for his absence—the world needed more enlightened people like him—and sorry for herself, for getting older, for being mortal, for all the music she still wanted to hear, the books she intended to read, the places she had meant to visit, the things she had promised herself she’d learn one day (the history of Egypt, French, raku pottery, sign language, violin) and probably never would because time was beginning to feel like a fast express train that no longer stopped at all the stations.
The rock star, his beautiful garden, his lovely songs, the pale blue room at the Biennale and the stark, pristine feeling it inspired, the Turner brume over the Venetian canals in the evening—it all came tumbling back like an ache. Caterina was surprised to realize that all the beauty she’d been exposed to in the last forty-eight hours had piled up inside her and had turned itself into a burden that now was weighing on her chest. Something began to give deep inside, like a building crumbling in slow motion, folding gently onto itself. Pascal had almost reached the cashier.
“Do you want prosciutto and Brie or tomatoes and mozzarella?” he asked her.
“Prosciutto and Brie, thank you. Oh, and a Diet Coke.”
True beauty eluded her and made her feel lonelier because she knew she would never be able to access it or grasp its fabric. It wasn’t something one could either pull apart like a doll, or study its components and reproduce. You couldn’t just learn it. The dying man had always had this gift and he had been able to pass it on to others, in different forms, throughout his life. This was probably why—though he had only a few months left to live—he was able to stare straight into the camera. He had given all that he had taken, his accounts were even.
Pascal placed the rubbery sandwich in front of her, tightly sealed in its plastic wrap.
“My gluten-free regime has gone out the window.” He sighed as he bit into his sandwich. “I feel so bloated already.”
Her short film was a laughable attempt at creating something poetic. She had been nominated, but what did it mean? Wasn’t it all a farce? A mediocre, worthless farce?
Right there and then, as her heart sank even deeper, her gaze landed on a handsome face. A young man holding a glass of Champagne standing at the counter next to a couple of interesting-looking women who spoke Italian with a heavy French accent smiled at her. Thick dark hair tied in a short ponytail, impeccable gray suit over a black T-shirt, round glasses with a thick frame. A studied Johnny Depp look. He excused himself, moved away from the women and maneuvered through the crowd toward her.
“Caterina!”
“Hey!” she waved joyfully. She had no idea who he was, though she had a feeling she ought to.
“Congratulations. I’m really happy you made it with the nominees.”
“Thank you, thank you so much. Yeah, that was a big surprise …,” she said shyly, her brain still in a blank.
“I just wanted to say that I loved your short and that I voted for you.”
“Oh my God! Did you? I’m so …,” she gasped, wishing his name would pop up any second, so she could relax. Was he on the jury panel for the awards? His face was vaguely familiar; she frantically scrolled an invisible contact list but nothing showed.
“God, thank you so much. Wow. Really. I mean … what can I say? That’s so generous of you.”
The handsome man smiled, leaned a tiny bit closer and Caterina was enveloped in an expensive aroma of leather, cedar, musk.
“You have an unusual eye. Your short reminded me of Jane Campion’s early films.”
“Oh my God! That’s like … Jane Campion? … She’s my favorite director ever. That’s the biggest compliment. Thank you so, so much.”
She could feel Pascal staring at her with reproach. Surely he meant to flag that something in her demeanor was bothering him. She had a feeling it must be the way she kept wriggling and squealing. She was aware of doing something funny with her feet, pointing them inward and twisting her ankles, an annoying reflex that came up whenever she was anxious.
“I’d love to talk to you about something. Which hotel are you staying at?” the man asked.
“Hmm … we are staying at the … at the …” She turned to Pascal for help but he signaled a nearly imperceptible no with his head.
An ascending cymbal ringtone floated between her and the man. He took out the phone from his pocket and glanced at the display.
“Sorry, I have to take this. I’ll tell you what, just give me a call at the office when you come back, that’ll be easier … It was really lovely to see you, Caterina.”
He turned around and walked toward the exit.
Pascal shook his head, frowning.
“Why do you start every phrase with Oh my God? You sound like a twelve-year-old. You’ve got to stop doing that. It’s really bad.”
“Who is he?” she asked.
“Are you kidding? Giovanni Balti.”
“Oh my God!”
“You see? It’s like a tic. And stop acting like you are an impostor. It’s so irritating. He voted for you because you are good at what you do.”
“I was confused, I kept thinking who the hell is this guy? I just couldn’t concentrate. Balti? I wish I had remembered. I had no idea he was so attractive.”
Balti’s aroma had made her dizzy. The reflective, elusive, desirable producer so many people she knew, including herself, dreamed of working with. Somehow, in that crowded café, among the tinkling sounds of cups and spoons and the hissing of the espresso machine, she felt a gentle shift take place under her feet. It was a physical sensation, like the harbinger of a fault running horizontally, severing her from the life she ha
d been living till then. Caterina felt a combination of panic and exhilaration.
Yes, her new life must be waiting just around the corner from that crowded café, ready for her to slip into it. There was nothing to fear, all major changes tend to come in a flash, unannounced—like floods and fires.
So there they were the following day, their last in Venice, divining their future over iced cappuccinos, basking in the tepid September sun. The waiter brought the check on a plate.
“Fifteen euros,” noted Pascal, arching an eyebrow.
“I’ll get this,” she said, feeling famous and beautiful again. She picked up the check and left a five-euro tip. She stood up, triumphant.
“What shall we do now? No more art, please. I’d say we’ve seen enough,” she said, excavating some authority over Pascal from the depths of her soul.
“Fine. Let’s go try on some clothes, then,” Pascal suggested.
Pascal loved fashion in the same way he loved art. He thought of clothes as beautiful objects to be looked at, sampled, felt, experienced. Designer shops to him were the equals of galleries. One should walk in and try on whatever one wanted, just to enjoy the tactile experience.
It was a game they’d played before and there were rules that had been established. Pascal had mastered the technique to the point of perfection. Caterina had watched him walk with a confident stride into Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton and Hermès on the Via Condotti in Rome and ask for a jacket, a pair of trousers, a coat. Salesmen flocked because of his confidence and good looks, certain he must be a celebrity. The way he went straight to the rack, testing the fabric, shaking his head—at times even grimacing—as if nothing truly convinced him, was admirable. He would then ask for something more formal, with less of this and more of that. Money clearly wasn’t the issue, he was careful never to ask the price.
The Other Language Page 6
