Director's Cut (37 page)

“Can we cut it out?”

How can she explain that the skinnier she feels, the better she can face life?

“Let's not talk about it any more. I'll cut down.”

“Why didn't you tell me at the beginning?”

“You? You're the last person I'd tell,” she says, astonished, as it were obvious. “You love me too much.”

When I was four years old, I went to the nursery school of the nuns of San Vincenzo. I was used to my mother's low neckline and big bare arms, but the sisters were covered from head to toe. I'd never seen anything like it. As soon as they lifted me up onto their laps, I started searching for skin between the folds of their robes, only to get tangled in their habits like a stage comic who can't find the opening in the curtain. I was astonished to see how all their delight in life gathered in their faces. Bound between collars and borders, their full lips and flushed cheeks all but exploded with femininity. I imagined the life bulging out of them, like air trying to escape a squeezed balloon. They wore wide
wimples that bounced up and down with each step, like storks testing their wings in the nest, awaiting a favorable wind that would let them choose freedom.

A procession was held on the eve of the feast of San Vincenzo. They put me in the middle of a long row, gave me a candle, and lit it.

“Make sure you don't let it go out,” they said. “If you do, you'll make the Mother of God cry!”

I'd once made my own mother cry by falling in the water. If I'd upset her so much by doing something I couldn't possibly help, how much grief would I cause the Holy Virgin Mother of God by messing up something I was carrying in my own hands? There was a brisk wind on the church square. We'd soon be out of town and cross the bridge along the Marrechia, where nothing could check the sea breeze. I grew dizzy with fear. The responsibility weighed so heavily on my shoulders that I was sure I couldn't possibly move. I looked imploringly at my mother, who was standing off to one side, but she just grinned and gave me the thumbs-up to tell me how good I looked in my new suit. All the while, the wind was tugging at the flame as if wanting to wrench it from the wick.

At last the statue of the saint was raised and the procession began to move, dragging its feet like a caterpillar, inching forward, then marching on the spot, then moving forward a bit more. Unable to think of anything except my candle, I kept bumping into the girl in front of me. The wax ran down my fingers. They were cold and the hot wax cut into them like a knife, but I didn't care: my scalding tears were undoubtedly less anguished than those of the Mother of God, who had already suffered so much, and I felt the pain as proof that I had at least managed to keep my flame burning for her.

By the time we reached the Tiberius Bridge, I had almost no feeling left in my hands. One of the nuns walked by, encouraging us. If she had seen the state I was in, she certainly would have intervened, but I held my candle away from her because her flapping cape could only make things worse. The farther we left the city behind us and moved toward the silent gloom of the valley, the more obsessed I became by my task. I had been asked to do something impossible but, almost miraculously, I was managing to do it. I believed in myself as never before. Everything else, especially the pain, was of secondary importance. Somehow, the
rocking saint above our heads, the rhythmic hymns, and the flaring lights hypnotized me.

I rose above myself. I couldn't think of anything but my candle. The shorter it grew, the more important it became to let it burn all the way down. It didn't matter how long it had been burning, only how much farther it had to go. The less I had left, the more it mattered—just as an old man takes more care with his life and health than he did when he was younger, even though he has considerably less to lose. Strangely enough, I began to dread the end of the march, even though it meant the end of my ordeal. The longer my trial lasted, the more important it became.

Never in my life had I done anything as weighty as preventing the Madonna's tears. There was nothing I wanted more than to see it through, though at the same time, I could no longer imagine a purpose for my life afterward. Most of the other children's lights had already gone out. Mine was still burning. Or rather: I was still burning, completely identified with that candle. The wax melted. The flame floated in my cupped hands. The fire burned my skin. I could smell it. Black blisters appeared on my fingers. I could see clearly that I was carrying on like the idiot Pazzotto, yet I believed that I would cease to exist when the light went out. The meaning of life seemed to be contained within my suffering. I was ready to offer myself up to the Madonna for her helping me to surpass myself. My blisters burst open. I embraced the pain and the exhaustion because they proved what I could do. The strength that I felt at that moment was enough to last me the rest of my life, though I have never felt it since.

I have no other explanation for Gala's lack of appetite for food. Almost casually, the thought took root that she could control the uncontrollable. She began to deny her body food. The whole process was gradually set in motion, a few steps forward, sometimes grinding to a halt, then creeping forward again. The result mattered less than the deprivation she had to undergo for its sake. The more she persevered, the greater the challenge. Each fainting fit, every bodily weakness, buttressed her spirit, activating an inner strength she never called on at any other time. By burning herself up, she increased her own value to herself.

People with a limited understanding of women explain this as an
attempt at self-punishment. All they are trying to do is reward themselves.

I only know this: in the procession of the nuns of San Vincenzo, my happiness was nothing more than a guttering flame in a storm. As long as I kept it going, I was in charge of the whole world and, more importantly, of myself.

No one knows better than Gelsomina how badly truth and I get on. When I come home that afternoon, she just looks at me. That is enough for both of us. She doesn't talk to me about her illness. Why should I worry her with Gala?

On the way home I bought a big present. It's wrapped in shiny cellophane. It's for Gelsomina. It's her birthday tomorrow. I love her. I want nothing more than to hear how she's doing—Is she in pain? Does she have hope?—but I still can't bring myself to ask. She's sitting by the window reading. I look at her. I think of how little time we have left together. We'll grow a bit older. Then immeasurable sorrow will come; the days will ebb a little longer for one of us. A surge of affection washes over me.

But while I am filled with one thing, the other is there too. Behind my love, in the distance, Gala lights up like a dazzling beacon, making all shapes disappear. I hear myself fantasizing like an old fool about a possibility of giving my life a new direction.

“Last year, I celebrated my birthday in Berlin,” says Gelsomina, looking up from her book. “This year here. Where will I be for my next birthday?”

I don't know, but I'll do everything in my power to be with her. I don't tell her that. No one knows better than Gelsomina how much love it takes to keep your mouth shut.

The world of Gala and Maxim's youth most resembled the final scene of a fairy tale. Evil was vanquished. Nothing was impossible. The harness of rules their parents had grown up inside was like a suit of armor cracked and dented by war. Their children stretched, shucked off the pieces, and an entire generation left the nest with more hope than humanity had ever known. Youngsters meeting in the streets of Amsterdam flew into each other's arms, regardless of whether they'd ever
met, and celebrated their freedom by throwing off their clothes. They rolled naked over the lawns of the municipal park, smoking, dancing, and drinking, overseen by police officers with colorful tulips in their caps. Young people embraced free love with the partners of their choice and without any risk of the snare of parenthood, thanks to new discoveries; and when, toward evening, they grew tired of enjoying themselves, they leapt into the canal and swam to the city square. Astonished people saw this new generation on television screens all over the world, sleeping unembarrassed at the base of a phallic marble monument, heads resting on each other's stomachs, flanked by two stone lions who watched over their dreams. In their songs, they praised freedom and love as if the two were inseparable. They tossed roses to soldiers and kissed their enemies, as if love had never caused a war.

When Maxim and Gala reached adulthood, this idyll was at its peak. For years, they had observed freedom weaving around them, fantasizing about the party that was going on everywhere, like children lying in bed listening to the music and laughter downstairs. When each of them, separately, was finally big enough to join the conga line, it turned out that it came easier to Gala than to Maxim. She shot out of her father's embrace like a piece of soap from a wet fist. His strict upbringing produced exactly the effect he had intended when, to her astonishment, she discovered that her contemporaries saw the provocative attitude and impregnable erudition that had always been her defense against him as overwhelming and charming. She slipped effortlessly into student life and breathed deeply of the recognition and freedom she had so long lacked, two qualities that, for her, would always remain irretrievably linked.

Maxim had never really missed freedom. He was born in a big house, the only child of frightened parents whose lives had been laid waste by the war.

After their meeting, his father and mother agreed that happiness and Holland were incompatible. They swapped the country where war had devastated their lives for Italy, and married in St. Peter's. The cities of their dreams were pale green, watery blue, pink; in the photo album, Maxim's mother colored in the black-and-white life of Naples, Locarno, Rome, and Florence with Ecoline ink. Things couldn't have been more beautiful. One photo shows her beaming, leaning out the
window of Pensione Gasser in the Via San Nicolò da Tolentino, just behind the Piazza Barberini. Triumphant, she holds up a hand. In the setting sun, it casts a long shadow on the Roman wall, visible as a gigantic thumbs-up.

“That,” she always told Maxim, “was the moment we knew you were on your way.”

Soon after, winter won out over the wall heater. The parents had to think of their child. They went home and learned they were right.

Back in Holland, they shut themselves up in the house. In the hope of sparing Maxim their pain, they seldom took him out and only rarely invited people in, though other children almost never appeared. His father died young; his mother went out in the daytime, to earn a living; and Maxim had the house to himself. Isolated in the enormous attic, he constructed his own image of others and the world in which they lived. For a long time, this satisfied him. The possibilities of his own inner world seemed boundless, and that was why he took this for freedom. It was only much later that he realized that the real party was outside. When he threw open the shutters, he was so shocked by how violently real freedom attacked his imagined freedom that he recoiled and tried after all to creep away into his fantasies.

Despite all the students' claims, they still valued the collective above the individual, in a way you otherwise find only in isolated mountain villages. Among them, Maxim's behavior stood out as much as Gala's, though he encountered incomprehension where she reaped admiration. If the others had been less self-obsessed, they could have easily coaxed him into their world. But they shrugged him off, announcing loudly that it was each individual's duty to develop as an individual, regardless of how much lonely despondency might result.

Just when Maxim was about to commit himself permanently to this peculiar path, his eyes met Gala's. She had always been kept on a tight rein, so she seemed free of all constraint; he, who had never been held back, despaired as to whether he'd ever dare to make a move.

“To flit from place to place! What a joy it is to move,” she said at that moment. “I would give my life for a night like this. To move!” And in these words, the two extremes recognized each other.

•  •  •

On the bed in their room in Parioli, Gala confides to Maxim the details of how she gave herself to Snaporaz: from the emotions that overwhelmed her when she felt the old man's desire to the contractions of her lower body around his fingers. She laughs like a naughty child, shaking her head, blushing and gasping for breath, when she realizes that something she'd thought was impossible really has happened. A moment later, she shrugs off the realization, giggling at her own shamelessness. And all the while, she seeks reassurance in Maxim's eyes, always wanting to know exactly what was right or wrong.

Maxim tells her everything is fine, though he can hardly take it all in. He struggles against a sorrow he can't explain as his jealousy wrestles with his awe. This recklessness is precisely what he's always admired in her, the thing he's tried to emulate, which gave him the courage to face the world. How can he reproach her now for the very thing he's always encouraged? Isn't this what he's always aspired to? He is so preoccupied with himself that he can't hear what she's really asking.

“See?” he says after a while. “We can't keep secrets from each other.”

“No,” Gala says, and decides not to upset him by recounting her meeting with Gianni.

People think that a man who loves more than one woman must divide his love between them. As if it's a bottle that can fill only a certain number of glasses. The opposite is true. Love simply doubles itself. And again. And yet again. And every time there turns out to be enough for everyone. It's a miraculous multiplication. But that's the way it is with miracles: you don't believe it unless you see it yourself.

One of the plans I peddled for years without interesting a single producer was for a film about a polygamist. Gérard Philipe in the lead. He's constantly running back and forth between the families he has to support. Eleven, twelve, thirteen … He tries to cut back, but he can't escape it. The more love he gives, the more he receives. Because that's just the way life is. And the more love he receives, the more he can return. And sure enough, soon there's enough for yet another family. So why not start a new one? He loves them all equally, and there's still enough love to go around. He drinks of love as the sea consumes water, from all sides, all the while pouring it back into the rivers. Finally, his confessor officially declares that it is a miracle of charity. The whole thing comes out when it's reported in the
Osservatore Romano
, but the women forgive him, because none of them has any cause for complaint. In the final scene, the poor man ascends to heaven before the assembled ecumenical council, lifted upon the hot air from the kisses blown to him by his lovers.