Director's Cut (21 page)

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 after 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 conviction.

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.

On the very first day of this assault, the heating in Gala and Maxim's room in Parioli is switched off. Geppi is implacable. She claims that the owner—no, not Signor Gianni, but his boss, an elderly count from distant Monterotondo—came by personally to seal the locks on the heating of all tenants in arrears. That same night she did knock on the door to give them a set of blankets and the advice to hand the rent over to Gianni before he came up with his own—and here she lowered her voice to a whisper—“proposal.” Gala and Maxim cuddle up, but on the third day they awake so early, so chilled to the bone, that they have to find a hotel lobby on the Via Veneto to warm up in.

The way they stroll through the revolving door dissuades anyone from asking what they're doing there so early. They settle down in front of the fireplace with a couple of newspapers.

“At last, people with guts!”

Gala looks up.

A young woman, tall, blond, beautiful as a model, is standing at the silver dish with the warm cider that has been set out for the hotel guests. She scoops up a bowlful and blows the steam off it with pursed lips.

“I always say, if you're going to do it, then don't be ashamed of it.”

“I have no idea what we should be ashamed of,” answers Gala.

“Exactly, but if I had a dollar for all the ones who come in here staring into space and run off afterward with their heads hanging …”

“How absurd.”

“The front desk doesn't like us hanging around, but if you ask me, between the three of us, we're the big hotels' most important attraction.”

“The three of us?”

“Of course! They owe us at least one of those five stars.”

“Why?”

“Do you think a single one of those businessmen would check in if we weren't hanging around?” She flops down in an armchair and kicks off her shoes. She stretches. Her fur coat falls open wide enough to show a skirt, probably designed in the Via Condotti, but definitely too short for the weather. A bellhop whistles. She pokes her tongue out at him.

“You're mistaken,” says Maxim, trying to ascertain whether she's wearing panties. “We're only here to warm up.”

“Warmth, friendship, longing for the womb, I've heard it all and nothing surprises me anymore.”

“Just to warm up a little,” Gala explains, “not to … well, not professionally, like you.”

The young woman takes a mouthful of cider and tries to work out whether two old pros are trying to take her for a ride.

“Then you really must be mistaken.” She shakes her head in regret. “You don't look like you need to be cold in this city. Unless …” Suddenly a bitter note emerges in her voice: “Unless you think you're too good to earn your living with pleasure.”

Amid the rush of apologies that come tumbling out in response, Gala says, “I've thought about it.”

Maxim looks at her.

“Big deal,” he exclaims, not to be outdone, “we've all thought about it. That's not the point,” but he stares at her to see if she's serious.