Director's Cut (38 page)

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I call Gala first thing the next morning to discuss the film. We start seeing each other every day. She comes to my office or I pick her up. We have lunch. We laugh. Mostly that: we laugh for hours on end and then kiss like children who've been playing together and have to go home for dinner.
“Ciao, Gala Galla! Gallalina, ciao!”
I call after her, because she has made my life so light, waving both arms above my head, and when she's almost out of sight, I jump into the air a couple more times to see her that little bit longer.

We don't make love during those first weeks. We both want to, but I don't have the nerve. How often has my interest in a woman started to wane after doing the deed? Almost always. Giving in is the surest cure for adultery. Of course, every minute I'm with her I'm on the verge, but fear restrains me. Everything will be over if I stumble. I shall never have another new love. And so we kiss, innocently, granting our love the time to gather strength. If I lose Gala, then I'll have lost everything.

Every adulterous episode in my life was followed by profound calm and intense desire to be faithful to Gelsomina. My old love would flare up, burning like a wound desperate to heal as quickly as possible. I used to think that guilt was the reason for this increased intimacy. Or was it gratitude for the memories I retrieved? It may even have been relief, like that of a tearful schoolboy coming down from the mountains after his first mission with the partisans and making out his village in the first light of dawn. But it's none of these. It's not even faithfulness. It's simply weariness, temporarily sated by adultery. Surrendering to something sure. Part of me, secretly, longs to return to that certainty at once, just as in the night before battle a recruit in the trenches considers fleeing homeward. He doesn't do it, because he considers courage more important than survival. In the end, in my life, that's how I've pursued all my adulterous encounters.

Our restraint becomes unsustainable by springtime. Unnoticed, love has besieged us, and Gala and I feel it edging closer with each passing hour.

I pick her up one day at the end of May. The moment she gets into the car, we burst into laughter, because it can only be a matter of hours
before the mounting pressure forces us to rip the clothes off each other's bodies. I drive straight to the Appia and park at Cecilia Metella's tomb. We keep up the charade a little longer, walking at least a kilometer hand in hand, me lugging the picnic basket, her wobbling down the ancient cobblestones on high heels. Finally, between the tombs of Marcus Servilius and Seneca, we head into the field. For the first time in my life, I love someone because there really is no other option left. Then we eat and drink and start over again from the beginning. At last I take the napkin she's used to dry her lips and draw a caricature of the two of us: me pursuing her, aroused to priapic proportions, she already casting off clothes in preparation. “Phew, finally!” she shouts.

If I could only be like Marcello! He follows his heart. If I ask him about his conscience, he shrugs, answering that each of us is responsible for his own life. Unfortunately, I don't believe this. Quite the opposite. In love, each is responsible for the life of the other.

Throughout the spring and summer, Maxim seldom crosses my path. He holds back and I wait in the car to avoid bumping into him. But when I pick up Gala and she opens the door of the villa, I sense him waiting in the shadowy hallway. I imagine him before our meetings: picking out her clothes, ironing them, laying them out for her. She is nervous about seeing me and he says something to reassure her right before I arrive. On two separate occasions, I even see his hand give her bottom an encouraging slap, as if spurring a horse on before a hurdle.

He loves her too, but he can't be a man for her in the Italian sense of the word. In this country, a man who doesn't want to possess his woman fully can't count on much sympathy. Every once in a while, I bring the conversation around to their friendship, usually because I'm jealous and want her to bend over backward to assure me that it can't compare to her feelings for me, but sometimes because I really do want to understand how people can become so completely one that they let each other go.

The second weekend of July, I decide to take Gala to Rimini. I feel the need for her to see where I come from. She needs to know where I played and loved, and I want to introduce her to those of my childhood friends who are still alive. I only wanted my previous mistresses to love the man I've become, but it's important for me that Gala love the boy I
was as well. It's too hot to travel in the daytime, so we arrange to eat at Mario's on Friday afternoon before taking advantage of the cool evening to drive to Pennabilli, where we can spend the night at my friend Tonino's.

We've just taken our seats when Mario comes to tell us that a young man wishes to speak to Gala. It's Maxim. Out of politeness, I invite him to join us, but he refuses to sit down. He talks to Gala in their own language, but I understand that the small package he gives her contains the pills she needs and has once again forgotten. Is it any wonder I can't stand him? I don't like dogs or missionaries who work with lepers either. Why don't they ever think about other people? I'm only human. That much dedication makes me feel small but aggressive. Something about martyrs arouses my contempt. Maybe Maxim annoys me because he's so horribly reminiscent of Gelsomina. Is he religious as well? I wonder. I wouldn't have felt more uncomfortable if she herself had appeared at our table. Thank God, the saint of the pillboxes retreats again without further ado.

“Do you know what it is, more than anything else?” Gala sighs, watching him with eyes overflowing with love. “Maxim and I are too alike to be a good couple.”

I can't compare my love for Gala to any of my previous infatuations, except with the first, the love of my life, Gelsomina. Each gesture, each touch of the one recalls the caress of the other. I don't think this has anything to do with Gala. I don't believe that her love for me is any different from the love the others felt. It has to do with me. Each whispered word resonates with fate, as dramatically as it did that very first time. Then, because I knew that everything was about to begin; now, because I know that this is the end.

“You know what?” she said after that first lunch in Tivoli. “It's raining. No one's under the waterfalls. Let's go swimming.”

This will be my last unbridled passion. There cannot possibly be any doubt about that. My last chance to experience the tempestuousness of youth. It exhausts me, this passion of hers, but I do my best, I put on a bold face. And when I finally lay my hand on hers, as subtly as I can, trying to restrain it when I feel its caress beginning its descent from the gray hair on my chest, I do so with a sorrow that tears me apart, and the
thought always flits through my mind: Ah, shall I let her have her way with me, because who could ask for a more beautiful death? But I stop her and tell her she's wearing me out. She smiles, kisses one of my nipples, and lays her head against mine.

“Of course!” I exclaim. “Galla, come on, it's cold, wet autumn weather, let's take off our clothes!” It's astounding to do what you want without a second thought, surrendering completely. That's what I want. No shame. Together you're so much stronger than anyone else, because no amount of reasoning can hold you back. That is what I am granted one last time.

That's my only excuse.

One day, as we lie beside each other after making love, she suddenly bends over to kiss me on the forehead.

“You've always been a little boy!” she whispers.

I bury my face between her breasts, hanging full and heavy. I kiss them, bite them, put my lips on them and blow as if I've got hold of a tuba. Like an idiot, I make all those mad noises so that she won't see that I can't hold back my tears. My immaturity is my joy and my curse. My pride and my downfall. The treasure I draw on, my daily source of the will to live. I stride forth like a child, with the idea that the really important things are just about to begin. But it's also the reason I could never be completely one with Gelsomina. She was like me, irresponsibly maladjusted to life. We saw that in one another and played together until the day she realized that the thing we'd always expected would never come. From then on, she didn't need a playmate. She needed a man. Especially after the loss of our daughter. I couldn't be that man for her. Since then, we still play the game, but she plays it like a parent with a child: Gelsomina puts on a show of false naïveté, seeing through my every move and letting me win. I accept my victory, but it gives me no pleasure because I feel that her love is so much greater. For her, winning is not as important as seeing me happy.

I would take it as a reproach from Gelsomina, but when Gala calls me a little boy, I think she means it as a compliment.

It's not for nothing that so many women compare their husbands to worms. Each new love splits a man in two. Both halves live on separately.
Again and again they strengthen and grow to their full length. Love revitalizes by dividing. For me, this is the most important temptation, the most honest justification, perhaps even the only reason, for adultery.

I may well be as insignificant as a worm, but despite the Church and public morality, I feel very clearly that I am not failing either of my loves. To the contrary, the one animates the other. It must be human nature, because why should I be different from anyone else in this regard? I only know that I can lead different lives and keep them separate, easily, and with genuine and complete commitment.

And then suddenly this: early in August, Gelsomina has to fly to Taormina to open a retrospective of her films. I drop her off at Fiumicino and am standing on Gala's doorstep before my wife has left the ground. I throw open the door, race down the stairs two at a time, and we're in bed before I feel an unexpected pang and start to cry. The thought of lying in someone else's arms while Gelsomina is hanging in midair is too much. I can't take it. What if she came crashing down?

“If the heavens open for God's wrath to descend upon someone,” Gala laughs to reassure me, “it'll be you, not her. She's innocent.”

Gala's young. How much has she loved? How could she realize that even for Him, it would be exceptionally merciful to singe me with a divine thunderbolt? It would be much more devastating to take Gelsomina and leave me to live on without her.

You can only be sure you really love someone when the death of your lover is more terrifying than your own.

But the moments you realize how precious such unconditional love is are remarkably rare. Perhaps it would be too much of a burden for the soul to be reminded, day in, day out, of how fragile the thing is that has been entrusted to it. It forgets its value. It starts to appropriate the happiness it's been granted. Like a boy who has bought his first
motorino
on borrowed money and forgets, after just a couple of rides, that it's not really his. He does a wheelie in the schoolyard to impress the convent-school girls. As soon as it's reached the peak, the heart gets used to it, and starts to look around for new challenges.

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Soon after Gelsomina's return from Sicily, I receive news from my producer that not a single insurer is prepared to accept her for the duration of the film. They all consider it too great a risk that my wife won't make it to the last day of shooting. I make an enormous scene in vain, ranting and raving into twenty phones, but when they offer to show me the conclusions of the medical experts, I refuse. I have absolutely no desire to know what life has in store. I just want to live it to the full.

I don't say a word to Gelsomina, but the first chance I get I pour my heart out to Gala. Before I've said a word, she's already guessed, as if miraculously, what it's about. Her sensitivity moves me so much that I make up an excuse, run off without any further explanation, and don't get back in touch with her for days. I can't. If I spoke the truth in her presence, I might catch a few snatches of it myself.

Instead, I don't let Gelsomina out of my sight. We flee to Venice for a few days and make love all night as if we're twenty. I give her gifts and fuss over her as if there's something to celebrate. One night, I invite all kinds of old friends I know she likes. I watch her laughing all evening and dance with her every time the band plays. It's to the rhythm of a rumba that she says, very sweetly, “That's enough now. I've got the idea.”

She dances away and when we come back together I don't dare ask what she meant, and she's relieved not to have to explain. The next morning, we pack our bags.

My producer suggests giving Gelsomina's part to another actress. I refuse, even though it means that our film will almost certainly never be made. That day, I call the Banco Ambrosiano and agree to make a commercial for them. In search of ideas, I open the book where I record my dreams. I can't help but notice how light and cheerful they've been recently.

My love for Gala makes me feel so much younger—sometimes we spend hours sitting on the sand between the deck chairs from which my mother and her friends discussed the lifeguard's thighs and the price of purslane—at the same time it makes me feel older, about 123.

For years now, I've been overcome by immense sorrow every time I see a beautiful young woman. For two reasons. One: I want her, followed immediately by two: what for, actually?

In itself, there's something depressing about the unbridled male attraction to any woman who walks by. The deed must be done, you feel, and preferably as soon as possible, but you don't actually know why. It's an animal compulsion, a strategy to ensure the survival of the species. The instinct's most melancholy form is an old man's forced reaction to the full breasts and broad hips of a woman like Gala. Why? Surely it's no longer the urge to propagate his creaking bones? Heaven forbid. In the elderly far more than in the young, this desire is simply atavistic. His time has passed, yet he still wants to plant his seed in those hips, no matter how much his mind groans. This sorrow now accompanies my every desire for a woman. Just for a moment. The next instant fills me with idiotic abandon.