Director's Cut (43 page)

And now she hears them in the distance: the insane, hallway after hallway of them, jiggling the steel handles of their cell doors. Their disappointment redoubles inside the building. It's deafening. The sound of their fumbling at all those locks is like a murmuring sea. The noise builds like a wave.

Gala jumps away from the door. She prefers not to know so she can hold on to her hope.

“I need my medicine!” she screeches. “Who's got my medicine?”

But it's too late. The wave is approaching from behind. She feels a presence. Her head is drawn to the left. There, she sees the bloodred lining of the cape being wrapped around her.

“Yes!” she calls out blissfully. “Yes!” As if there salvation lies.

•  •  •

They save me till the last, like cream in a
cornetto
. In the auditorium, they show a compilation of my most famous scenes, which, from behind the screen, I see as ghosts. Marcello gives a speech, listing the others who have been granted this rare honor: Chaplin, King Vidor, Hitchcock, all men I admire deeply. I feel very clearly that they are with me. Not only with me: they take me by the arm, they push me forward. When I stroll onto the stage, a standing ovation erupts. It feels like it's never going to end.

“Sit down, please!” I shout at the audience when I've had enough. “Make yourselves comfortable. The only one who needs to be uncomfortable here is me.”

“For you, Snaporaz,” says Sophia Loren, who is holding the Oscar. I have always found her breasts less astonishing than her muscles, which are also exposed this evening. “In appreciation of one of the silver screen's greatest storytellers. Congratulations. May I give you a kiss?”

“Yes, please!” I exclaim eagerly, making the audience laugh. Then I turn to face them. I have a speech prepared, but I can't be bothered. I curse myself because I'm afraid of being overcome by emotion. For people of my generation, in my country, “America” and “cinema” were virtually synonymous. Standing here now … My silence sets off a second ovation. I cut it short and do what everyone always does in this situation. I start thanking people.

“I cannot thank everyone,” I say. My eyes seek out Gelsomina. “But one name, the name of both a great actress and my wife …” She beams just as I expected, but she's crying as well. The cameras seize on her. She appears in close-up on the enormous screen behind me. She bites her lip. Big fat tears roll down her cheeks. The director keeps her in the shot, so that I appear all over the world as a tiny little man at the chin of a weeping giantess. Two rivers stream out of her eyes and threaten to wash me away.

“Thank you, darling Gelsomina,” I manage to gasp, then add, “and for God's sake stop crying.”

Then I take my Oscar from Sophia and walk away.

Meanwhile, in Rome, the next morning is dawning. The door to the Sistine Chapel is unbolted. Sangallo and his young friend are admitted.
The viscount can't stop grinning about his exceptional surprise. It's Sunday. The museum is closed to the public and it's the Japanese team's day off. They are midway through their project. Their scaffolding bisects Michelangelo's masterpiece. On one side, the colors are bright and warm; on the other, somber and sooty. The elderly viscount ascends in the freight elevator; the young man climbs the scaffolding with short, supple movements. The guard stays below and opens the latest issue of
Oggi
. At the top, both men need to pause, less to recover than to realize where they are.

High up, near the ceiling of the immense space, atop the scaffolding, a plank floor has been laid. The planks bounce with every step, reinforcing the sense of floating in space.

They have a good view of the more distant paintings. The nudes and the prophets are gigantic. Between them, the sibyls. Sangallo squints to study the one from Cumae.

“She wrote the future of the world in nine books. Then, disguised as an old woman, she took them to Rome, where she offered them to King Tarquin for three hundred gold coins. He thought that was a bit steep, even for the fate of humanity, and sent her away. Every few weeks she came back, each time with one book less, but always for the same price. Not until Rome was plagued by disease and mysterious omens, when a newborn babe screamed ‘Victory!' and ships sailed through the clouds, did Tarquin relent. For three hundred gold coins, he bought the three remaining books, which contained all the foreknowledge that would make Rome great. Everything predicted in those books, from the death of Caesar on the steps of the Curia to the birth of Christ, has happened exactly as foretold. Imagine,” sighed Sangallo, “what mankind could have achieved if the sibyl hadn't burned the other six.”

“Why didn't the king have her rewrite the lost volumes?”

“What do you think? He asked her, of course, but she refused. ‘This has taught you,' she said, ‘that whenever something is of real importance, the smallest fraction is as valuable as the whole.'”

Despite the impression it gives from below, the ceiling is anything but flat and smooth. The plaster has been dolloped on so roughly that it sags in places, so much so that the two men, much taller than the Japanese, often need to bend to avoid hitting their heads. They move cautiously
toward the middle of the scaffold, trying to make out the figures above them, but that's impossible. They are so close to the paintings that their perspective is completely distorted. Maxim realizes he's looking at a face, but only because he can make out the color of skin against the blue of the sky and God's purple robe. Then he spots an eye. And a mouth, which looks twisted, stretched out like an anamorphosis.

Maxim and Sangallo walk to the center of the chapel, where, at the moment of Creation, God and Adam are floating opposite one another. Not far away are two of the high, wheeled platforms where the restorers lie as they work. Maxim and Sangallo hoist themselves up to see the work of art just as Michelangelo saw it while he painted, no more than an arm's length away. Maxim lies there, being solemnly impressed. For minutes on end, awestruck, he studies the brushstrokes in the plaster. He discovers a hair caught in the paint. It's sticking out a little. He wonders whether to pull it out and keep it as a relic. He imagines the emotions of the old viscount, who has spent a lifetime looking forward to this windfall, and lies as motionless as possible to avoid disturbing him. He's enjoying a few pink strokes in the purple, but when he finally dares to look to the side, Sangallo is already on his way back to the lift.

“What are you lying there for?” he says impatiently. “There's nothing to see.”

“But what about the hand of the master?” Maxim splutters.

“Sometimes a miracle is so great you can only see it from a distance.”

“And the power of his strokes? The sureness of the touch of …”

Sangallo clambers into the elevator. He presses a button and slowly descends out of sight.

“If Michelangelo wanted us to lie around with our noses pressed up against it, he'd have painted the whole thing on the floor.”

Now Maxim is alone. He wonders whether he should go back down immediately or stick it out a little longer. He'll never be this close again. Procrastinating, he recognizes God's finger. It's as big as a man, but unmistakable. Here is the fingertip, a fold of skin around the knuckle, the nail. It's bent and looks relaxed. Maxim looks to see where it's pointing. There's Adam's finger. It is more forceful and extended, longing for that touch. From this distance, it's impossible to see who is
giving life and who is receiving it. Is man born of God or does God come into being because man needs Him? Does the Almighty create the insignificant or vice versa? Contrary to what Maxim always thought, the two fingers do not touch. They strain to reach each other with all their might, but fail. There is a strip of sky between them. Their enormous fingers press against it in vain. Maxim measures the gap with his hands. It's nothing. A bit of air—as unbridgeable as the invisible magnetic field between two like poles.

“That's what happens when you relax after a stressful period,” Pontorax explains. His face has come so close to Gala's that their noses brush. “That's still the best recipe for a grand mal.” She feels his breath on her eyeballs. She wants to blink but can't. Her upper and lower eyelids are held back with little clamps. Leather straps hold her head down on the examination table. When she tries to feel where she is, she can't move her arms, either. Her wrists and ankles are attached to some medical apparatus, and a tight belt is chafing around her hips.

As soon as she opens her mouth to scream, he inserts a hardwood bit to stop her from biting herself.

“Take it easy, now,” the doctor says solicitously. He mixes a liquid at a tall granite counter. “Fortunately, you're in the best of hands.”

She rolls her eyes in every direction to try to make out the obsolete devices she is at the mercy of. There are wires going to her head. Now she can also feel the moist paste that attaches the electrodes to her scalp.

“You understand,” whispers Dr. Pontorax, who is approaching with a pipette. “Above all, I blame myself. I don't know who caused you so much stress, but I'm the one you dared to relax with. There you have it, even a man with the best of intentions can unleash something awful.”

He presses his lips against her forehead.

“Yes,” he sighs, “a man who loves has a lot to answer for.”

He drips the local anesthetic, which he has prepared lovingly, into one eye and then the other. Gala is shocked by the cold drops rolling over her dry eyeballs. Now Pontorax positions her directly before a battery of lamps and pulls a lever. She tries to look away, but her muscles have already stopped responding.

“Take it easy now, my little darling, it won't be long now.”

The flashes begin at unpredictable intervals, slowly at first, here, then there, but soon, from every direction, there comes a barrage of light.

I break off the obligatory post-Oscar photo session because all that flashing is making me sick. As the tension fades, I start to feel my body again. I don't have a headache, but my head feels like an overinflated balloon. I feel like returning to our hotel immediately, but Gelsomina looks beautiful and, more than anything else, I want this to be her night. I realize it's not quite responsible, but we plunge into the festivities anyway, along with Marcello and the mother of his daughter, a great French actress who needs cheering up because she was nominated but didn't win. People come up to Gelsomina all evening. They compliment her for having such a wonderful husband and claim they could feel our love when I addressed her in my thank-you speech. They are invariably Americans, but it doesn't occur to Gelsomina to doubt them, and I know how important it is to her to show our love once again, indisputably, before the eyes of the world.

It's already morning by the time we get to bed.

“Ah, my Snaporaz, what a life we've had!”

I take her in my arms. Too happy to make love, we listen to our breathing. It's been synchronized for half a century.

“Can't you believe in God now,” she asks, “after all this?” She soon falls asleep. I kiss her once again without waking her, but almost in the same instant Gala springs to my mind. I can't compare them, but she too will be proud. I send her a kiss and have no doubt that it will reach her. Even this far away, she will feel my love. I feel it myself, surging through my veins, as if trying to burst free. Love is pounding in my temples. The excitement keeps me awake. What can it mean? I jump out of bed, once again too quickly, and have to stand still for a moment until the room stops spinning. Then I pull open the curtain. A whole battery of lamps flash. When I can see again, I make out a crowd of paparazzi. I was the one who came up with them. I put those people on the Via Veneto. I hung cameras around their necks and used them in my film. They have pursued me ever since. Can there be any better proof that reality is no more than an imitation of the imagination? The journalists must be standing on a cherry picker, because our suite is on the top floor of the
Beverly Hilton. Someone is holding up a sign reading
CONGRATULATIONS, SNAPORAZ!
I wave, somewhat muddled, glad that, despite the heat, I'd put on my pajama coat. I pull it down as low as possible. My besiegers slide open the window and bombard me with questions. I try to close it again, but they're too strong for me. Someone steps into the room. It's Philastus Hurlbut. I tell him to leave, but he refuses and insists that I come for a ride on his Snaporama right now, in the middle of the night. I grab him by the collar and drag him to the door. When I open it, I see a red scooter waiting in the corridor. It's not a real one, but a carnival wagon, part of the attraction he envisages. There are another twenty identical wagons behind me, and all kinds of people, adults and children, are climbing into them with the paparazzi, shouting impatiently for me to hurry because they are curious and want to get started.

“Tiruli, tirula,”
they sing.

Their nervous excitement is infectious. Danger really
is
seductive; otherwise nobody would ever get on a roller coaster. I hesitate. In my entire life, I have never resisted temptation, so why would I start now, right at the very end?

“Pitipo, pitipa!”

I climb onto the Vespa in my pajama coat. The vinyl seat is cold on my bare bottom. I glimpse myself in the mirror. My head is a balloon. It's about to burst. I want to untie the knot and fly away, but the scooter is already moving. My life's work reduced to a couple of minutes. The paparazzi's cameras flash off the chrome. Pins prick my stretched skin. Blinded, I ride away from the room where Gelsomina lies sleeping and, with horrifying speed, disappear forever down the black hole of the hallway.