‘Neither can I,’ I reply, and it’s true. I can’t reassure him. Instead he’s just aggravating my own anxiety. He knows perfectly well, as do I, that the problem is just those ten minutes before you go on stage, and that once you’re in front of the audience the lines will come naturally, as though we’d invented them that very moment. We’ve been working towards this for months.
But dammit, it’s a full house out there. Five hundred seats filled with people from the outside, not only our own families, but also newspapers and television reporters. It’s crammed full of VIPs. I’m nervous. My mental blank is worse than usual, and I’m trying to think about my lines but not one of them is coming to me. Help. This time I really can’t remember. It’s all gone. I know that looking at the script is not the solution. In fact it would only make me panic more, because suddenly the words would look strange, unfamiliar. I can only detach myself from the others, step inside myself and find silence, order. Find a space for Ariel.
Then it is time to go on stage and I’m a whirlwind.
The applause that breaks out reaches the heavens. It thrills me and it gives me strength. I dance, I leap, I climb up on to the bunk beds, I clutch on to the sheets, leaning out perilously.
°
The words flow through my mind and my lips like music:
All hail, great master; grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure be’t to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curled clouds.
And I leap in front of Cosimo and glance furtively at him with Ariel’s mix of impudence and hope, as he sternly gives his orders. But it’s still Cosimo glaring at me, not Prospero. The others told me he celebrated when I left to move in with the regulars. I hadn’t realised he had such an issue with me, that he was so annoyed by everybody’s affection towards me, and especially their habit of coming to me for advice. But deep down I shouldn’t be surprised: for Cosimo, theatre’s only about the spectacle: a handful of Camorristi trained like monkeys. For me, for the rest of us…it has become our lives.
‘Thou did promise to bate me a full year,’ I remind him. The words almost stick in my throat, as they always do.
‘Dost thou forget from what a torment I did free thee?’ Cosimo roars, more forceful than is necessary. But that’s the only way he knows how to play Cosimo: inflexible and angry. He’s the same with Caliban, who is the next one to fall victim to his rage, shortly afterwards, as I watch from the wings.
‘Thou most lying slave, whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have used thee, filth as thou art, with human care, and lodged thee in mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate the honour of my child.’
I wonder if the audience is aware that we’re talking about ourselves here, that nothing is more real than the human dynamics this play depicts. From Naples down, Shakespeare’s on home territory. In the north of Italy, maybe things are different. Maybe families and social networks there don’t get as caught up in crime. Sure, in the north there are intrigues among the powerful, but it’s permissible not to greet your neighbour. You don’t even have to know your neighbour. But in Naples, you must know your neighbour, be it as friend or enemy, and you must find a way to enter that person’s life and keep them under control. Surveillance and punishment, like Prospero with Caliban. One or the other, or both at once. In Calabria, there are still shops where, if a policeman comes in, they’ll spit on the ground and snarl, ‘You’re not welcome in here.’ What is that if not Shakespearean theatre in its purest form? What sort of a tragedy is it, where a uniformed officer, a man who serves the state, can’t come in and buy a bottle of water or ask the owner if everything’s all right? Is it life, or theatre?
It’s both. And we inmates are like Caliban: deformed, violent, capable only of dark, twisted thoughts. But we can’t be kept here, on this island, just to serve our sentence. We’re here to learn the power of language, and to learn forgiveness.
‘Do so, and after two days I will discharge thee.’ The first time Prospero promises me freedom is always the most painful, because I know all too well that almost the entire play has to run before he actually comes good on his word. It’s the only moment when I wish it would all be over. I focus on my first task as Ariel: I must save the lives of Alonso and Gonzalo when Sebastian and Antonio plot to kill them.
‘Draw together, and when I rear my hand, do you the like to fall it on Gonzalo,’ says Antonio maliciously. These guys are proud to be playing the nastiest characters in the whole play: they’re slowly coming to terms with everything they’ve done in their lives.
For me, they are the two hardest characters to forgive. They’re not just wicked, they’re also arrogant in their wickedness. I compare them to the politicians I see tearing each other to bits on television. I’d like to ask those politicians: aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? Where do you get all this brazenness? For you, words have no value, and that means you have no real power. You’ll only stay on your throne as long as the people are listening to you. And if tomorrow we’re not, we can get rid of you in two minutes flat. All it takes is a little revolution, an uprising. It’s the citizens who make a country great, if they observe the laws and value the land. But if you lot think you can change things on your own, if you think that you alone with your words can summon up a tempest, then you’re nuts.
‘You fools! I and my fellows are ministers of fate.’ I’m more solemn than usual when I begin my speech to the dumbfounded bad guys, the ‘men of sin’ of the play; I’m telling them that their swords can do nothing to us, because we’re spirits of the air, protected by Prospero who, unlike them, has true power: the power to forgive.
The play is coming to an end and it’s as though my mind has split in half. I’m entirely Ariel in one part, but when Ariel’s not on stage I’m Sasà, following breathlessly, worrying when someone’s on the verge of forgetting a line, prompting him under my breath, giving congratulatory slaps on the back. We haven’t forgotten that we’re prisoners on a journey, not real actors who’ve been through drama school. Our faces can’t help but flush with colour, and our eyes can’t help but well up with tears, when we relate so closely to the lines we’re saying. Perhaps this is why, when I asked Prospero for my freedom in Act One, and I paused, the audience applauded. They’re on my side.
This guy wants freedom. He’s asking you for it with all his heart. Give it to him, they’re thinking. They’re on my team. From the depths of prison I invoke freedom, and there’s not a single person in the room who doesn’t know how cruel that is; how necessary.
Soon they’re applauding every time I come on stage and at the end of each of my lines, meaning I have to keep pausing until they fall quiet again. A connection has formed between the audience and me. I can feel them. I’m gazing beyond them, at the tempest, at the island and all its perils, but I can feel their eyes on me, their breath, their positive energy bouncing off mine and pushing me onwards.
They know me and appreciate me in a way I’ve never experienced before. Back when I was on the outside, people would recognise that I had certain qualities. But I didn’t like those people. I didn’t even like winning a turf war—it was just a victory that brought with it more trouble. Don’t dress me up in this poison, this bitterness—I used to think when people would greet me in the Quartieri—because I did what I did to stop the war, not gain glory from it. And don’t think I did it because I’m the good guy, the handsome, honourable one, the Robin Hood of the back alleys as my mother would have it, the man who can’t stand by and tolerate injustice, the abuse of power, bullying—that’s not who I am. I’m a criminal.
But even I can be forgiven.
‘For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother would even infect my mouth, I do forgive thy rankest fault—all of them.’ The forgiveness Prospero grants his brother is like a slap in the face, because the greatest revenge is forgiveness. This kind of forgiveness can offend. Prospero doesn’t tell him he forgives him, that everything’s fine
and all has been forgotten, because that would be hypocrisy at its purest. But presenting him with the bill, and then treating him with indifference, is how to make an enemy pay the highest price. You rob him of the honour of a knifing, the satisfaction of a duel. You render him insignificant and you exclude him from your life.
That line always sends shivers down my spine, because it’s the high point of Prospero’s greatness. But more than that, because I know what comes next.
‘Come hither, spirit. Set Caliban and his companions free; untie the spell,’ the sorcerer commands me. He generously bestows freedom on all his island’s reluctant guests.
My heart is thumping. I’m obsessed with this moment that comes at the end of the play. I know it’s not healthy, but I can’t help myself. When do I get my freedom? In every rehearsal, for months, I’ve been asking that of Prospero the way I’d ask a judge, a prison official, a guard. When you are in prison, that word is so cruel. You can’t ask a prisoner to keep saying it again, and again, and again. It’s not only me who feels this—when I used to practise my lines in the common areas, the sound of those two syllables used to irritate others, too. I remember once a Neapolitan guy asking me to shut up, his eyes full of pain, saying, ‘Mate, I’ve got twenty years. Can you give it a rest?’
‘Yeah, yeah, sorry.’ How could I explain to him that freedom is not on the outside, freedom is right in here, if you have it inside of you. How could I explain that in treading these boards I am already free, and yet, it is now even more painful to not be entirely free.
For weeks now they’ve been talking about a pardon. We watch the 6 p.m. news and follow the progress of the law through parliament. Radio Radicale has never been so popular inside Rebibbia Prison. We see the pardon approaching, but we don’t know if it’s a mirage. And I’m afraid even to hope. I can’t take it anymore. I’ve had enough of acknowledging what I did wrong, of rehabilitation—I want out.
When Prospero speaks, my heart quivers.
‘My Ariel, chick, that is thy charge. Then to the elements be free, and fare thou well!’
Tears well up in my eyes, more unstoppable than during any rehearsal. It’s the magic of the stage: all those held breaths, all those eyes fixed upon me. You’re all witnesses, I think. He’s given me back my freedom.
When Prospero takes two steps forward to do the final monologue, I discreetly dry my eyes, but it’s pointless. When the lights come up and we move downstage, the tears start to flow, one at a time at first, and then all together, faster than ever. I can see, sitting in the front row, and also crying without restraint, don Pasquale. He is clapping hard enough to flay his own hands. This man who I don’t think has ever shouted in his life is smiling widely and shouting ‘Bravo!’.
As I bow to the audience, the applause drowning me is louder than it is for anyone else, and I briefly imagine the whole theatre will fall down, and the prison will collapse with it and we’ll find ourselves standing among the rubble under the open sky, free.
To the elements be free.
Except the only place I’m going is back to my cell.
It’s over all too soon—the applause, the handshakes from so many, including the warden’s wife, who comes to the edge of the stage with her daughter to congratulate me. ‘My husband has spoken so much about you, but I didn’t expect you to be that good. Congratulations!’
I’m moved by her praise, but a second later I can no longer see or hear her. Behind her I’ve spotted Monica, a little off to the side, almost holding back, as though she can’t believe her eyes and is struggling to recognise her Sasà under the bright lights. I move into a quieter corner of the stage and gesture to her to come over. I bend down towards her. She still has tears running down her face. I dry one with my finger.
‘How is it possible that I always manage to make you cry, even when I’m being good?’ I’m trying to make a joke but my voice is trembling.
‘Sasà, you were fantastic…It didn’t seem like you.’ She, too, forces a smile.
My finger on her cheek becomes a caress.
‘Oh, so when I’m fantastic you don’t recognise me? Thanks a lot!’
She laughs, a little reassured by my usual lighthearted manner. But as I touch her, it’s as though beneath my fingers I can sense the signs of my absence. That ‘it didn’t seem like you’ has pierced me like a poison arrow. Am I still me? Is she still Monica? Our love, in the midst of all the violence, all the fear, all the mistakes, has always stayed pure, I’m convinced of that. Now, in the magic light of the theatre, which reveals things as they really are, the sentiment we share seems to me to be wounded, laboured. Will it survive separation?
‘Sasà!’
‘Don Pasquale!’ My cell neighbour has appeared alongside my wife, saving me from the intensity of a question I don’t wish to ask myself right now. ‘Did you like me in the show? I hope I did you the honour of living up to what you taught me.’
My tone is still playful. Maybe it’s just a way of putting up a wall to defend myself. But don Pasquale doesn’t want walls, and he doesn’t laugh.
‘I’ve missed you since you left for the regulars,’ he says.
‘I miss you, too, don Pasquale,’ I reply, no longer trying to joke around. ‘I have no one to talk poetry with down there.’
‘Soon you’ll have as many as you want,’ he replies.
‘Why? Do you know of a gang of criminal poets that’s about to be sent down?’
‘You’ll be the one getting out. You’ll be out soon.’ His dark eyes are fixed on me, as though he can see deep inside me, or perhaps something even well beyond me. ‘We won’t meet again. I’ll miss you.’
‘That’s not funny, don Pasquale,’ I exclaim, almost frightened. ‘It’ll be another four years before I’m free…’
‘Sasà, you’ve already gained your freedom. You’re free.’ As he speaks these words, his voice is that of Prospero, I’m sure of it. And the hand clasping mine is the hand of the sorcerer, bidding farewell to his Ariel.
I can’t stop myself. I burst into tears, jump down off the stage and hug him tightly. Gaetano, alarmed, rushes up to separate us.
‘Sasà, what are you doing? You’re not allowed down among the audience, you know that!’
‘Goodbye, don Pasquale,’ is all I can say before I have to get back up onto the stage, choking back the tears. The guards are already moving us, gently but firmly, back into the wings. We have to go back to our cells. Our little meet-and-greet only lasted a few minutes, and we’re granted no time to celebrate among ourselves. The guards lock us back up again, the rest of the cast in maximum security and me with the regulars.
I look down at the ground as I walk and after the torrent of emotions that suddenly rushes through me, my heart turns to mush and I can’t even feel it beating. After the fear, the excitement, the emotion, I’m filled with a disappointed rancour. One more we’ve let them abort our emotions. Why didn’t they let us stay? Why didn’t they let us down among the audience?
The praise from everyone is like medicine to me. At the end of the performance it wasn’t solidarity I saw on their faces, but admiration. And whereas solidarity can take the form of toxic reverence from false friends like I had in the Quartieri, admiration is something that fills a human being with positive energy. Solidarity is fine at a local level, but in here we need to be shaken up. Something needs to explode within us, killing the black wolf and allowing the white wolf to win, because otherwise we’ll never get out.
My cell is as silent as the grave.
I fling my script into the corner, enraged. The tiny window offers a square of sky that is too dark and too small. If I squint, I think I can see just one single star in that infinite depth. If I was lucky, it would be my star.
I stare at that light as though it might hypnotise me and take my mind out of here.
‘Shakespeare,’ I murmur. I feel as though only he, maybe, is listening to me tonight. ‘Shakespeare, I recited your words. I did honour to your genius. But this pe
rformance hurts too much—talking about freedom every day is a kind of torture.’ I take a deep breath and summon up my voice, like I do on stage. If they hear me in the neighbouring cells, who cares, I’ve talked with my mother, with Dante, with Macbeth, with Beckett, so now I’m going to talk to Shakespeare—I reckon that’s the least of it.
‘Shakespeare, give me my freedom. Give it to me now. If you truly give it back to me, I promise to give you ten years of my life. Ten years in which I’ll take your philosophy—of giving, doing, loving—out into the world. Ten years during which I’ll take the truest emotions of mankind and put them on stage, and in your words. Because what we need today is someone who can help people interpret the world, and artists need to go out among the people and teach life.’
I clench my fists, concentrating on the winking of that minuscule star, bright and indomitable, like my hope.
‘I promise to be there, Shakespeare. I’ll be wherever I can be of service—in prisons, in schools. In the streets and right in the midst of the evils of the earth and I’ll be afraid of nothing, ashamed of nothing, and there will be words for all, and forgiveness for all. But give me my freedom. Give me my freedom.’
INTERMEZZO
Nobody is nothing. Nothing doesn’t exist. If you’re alive, even if you’re in prison, it’s because you’re something. And you have to know who you are. You have to know what you’ve done. You have to know there’s a price to pay for evil; you certainly can’t expect applause. But you also have to know that things could have gone, and could still go, differently.
We’re the school bullies, the ones who skipped school and then stopped going altogether. We’re the leaders of unjust causes. Each of us carries his story inside him, and the hope of changing it, if not for the past at least for the future. But we need love, justice and a project.
You say the prisons are overcrowded and I reply: they’re crowded with criminals, sure, but emotionally they’re deserted. There’s no support. We need those elves and spirits that Prospero calls upon: social workers, volunteers, counsellors. That’s the kind of magic that works. And books, too. Prospero, who started out as a man of power, became a sorcerer thanks to books, and thanks to the time and freedom he had to study them and make them his own. As a governor, Prospero basically failed. When a man fails he has to leave. He must go on a pilgrimage. You have to step out of your own shoes, give up your role, to be able to understand what’s calling you, what’s missing. You have to learn that vendetta is pointless, and that going and taking back what’s yours is worthless. What’s useful is building a new kingdom, here on the island, with new different rules. What’s useful is forgiveness.
Set Me Free Page 14
