Contempt (18 page)

BATTISTA’S VILLA, AS we learned on our arrival in Capri, was a long way from the main
piazza
, at a lonely point on the coast in the direction of the Sorrento peninsula. After we had accompanied Rheingold to his hotel, Battista, Emilia and I went off towards the villa along a narrow lane.

At first our road took us along the sheltered walk that runs around the island, halfway up the mountain-side. It was almost sunset, and only a few people passed, slowly and in silence, along the brick paved walk in the shadow of the flowering oleanders or between the walls of the luxuriant gardens. Now and again, through the foliage of pines and carobtrees, one caught a glimpse of the distant sea, a sea of a hard and peerless blue, shot with the glittering, cold rays of the declining sun. I was walking behind Battista and Emilia, stopping from time to time to observe the beauties of the place, and, almost to my surprise, for the first time after a long period, I felt, if not exactly joyful, at least calm and composed. We traversed the whole length of the walk; then we turned off along another, narrower path. Suddenly, at a bend, the Faraglioni became visible, and I was pleased to hear Emilia utter a cry of astonishment and admiration; it was the first time she had been to Capri and so far she had not opened her mouth. From that height the two great, red rocks were surprising in their strangeness, lying on the surface of the sea like two meteorites fallen from heaven on to a mirror. Elated at the sight, I told Emilia that there was a race of lizards on the Faraglioni that existed nowhere else in the world—bright blue because they lived between the blue sky and the blue sea. She listened to my explanation with curiosity, as though for a moment she had forgotten her hostility towards me; so that I could not but conceive a fresh hope of reconciliation, and in my mind the blue lizard, which I described nestling in the cavities of the two rocks, suddenly became the symbol of what we ourselves might become, if we stayed a long time on the island. We too should be of a pure blue within our hearts, from which the clear calm of our sojourn by the sea would gradually wash away the sooty blackness of gloomy town thoughts—blue and with a blue light within us, like the lizards, like the sea, like the sky, like everything that is bright and gay and pure.

After we had passed the Faraglioni, the path started to wind amongst rocky precipices, and there were no more villas or gardens. At last, on a lonely point, there appeared a long, low, white building with a big terrace jutting out above the sea; this was Battista’s villa.

It was not a large villa: apart from a living-room that opened on to the terrace, there were only three other rooms. Battista, who walked in front of us as though to display his pride of ownership, explained that he had never lived in it, and that it was scarcely a year since he had come into possession of it as part payment of a debt. He drew our attention to the way in which he had had all preparations made for our arrival: there were vases of flowers in the living-room; the glossy floor emitted a pungent smell of wax polish; when we looked into the kitchen, we saw the caretaker’s wife busy in front of the cooking-stove, preparing our dinner. Battista, who made a special point of displaying all the conveniences of the villa to us, insisted on our examining every nook and corner of it; he carried his politeness even to the extent of opening the cupboards and asking Emilia if there were enough coat-hangers. Then we went back into the living-room. Emilia said she was going to change her clothes, and went out. I should have liked to follow her example; but Battista sat down in an armchair and invited me to do the same, thus preventing me. He lit a cigarette and then, without any preamble, asked, in a wholly unexpected manner: “Well, Molteni, what d’you think of Rheingold?”

I answered, in some astonishment: “Really I don’t know. I’ve seen too little of him to be able to judge. He seems to me a very serious sort of person. He’s said to be an extremely good director.”

Battista reflected for a moment and then went on: “You see, Molteni, I don’t know him at all well either, but I know, more or less, what he thinks and what he wants...In the first place, he’s a German, isn’t he?—whereas you and I are Italians. Two worlds, two conceptions of life, two different sensibilities.”

I said nothing. As usual Battista was taking a roundabout course and keeping away from all material concerns: so I waited to see what he was getting at. “You see, Molteni,” he resumed, “I wanted to put you, an Italian, to work beside Rheingold, just because I feel him to be so different from us. I trust you, Molteni, and before I go away—and I ought to leave here as soon as possible—I want to give you a few words of advice.”

“Go on,” I remarked coldly.

“I’ve been watching Rheingold,” said Battista, “during our discussions about the film; either he agrees with me or he says nothing...but I know too much about people, by this time, to believe in that kind of attitude. You intellectuals, Molteni, all of you, all of you without exception, you think, more or less, that producers are simply business men, and that’s all there is to it. Don’t deny it, Molteni; that’s what you think, and of course Rheingold thinks just the same. Now, up to a point, it’s true. Rheingold perhaps thinks that he can fool me by this passive attitude of his, but I’m wide awake, very wide awake, Molteni!”

“The fact of the matter is,” I said abruptly, “you don’t trust Rheingold?”

“I trust him and I don’t trust him. I trust him as a technician, as a professional. I don’t trust him as a German, as a man of another world, different from our world. Now—” and Battista put down his cigarette in the ashtray and looked me straight in the eyes—“now, Molteni, let it be quite clear that what I want is a film as much like Homer’s
Odyssey
as possible. And what was Homer’s intention, with the
Odyssey
? He intended to tell an adventure story which would keep the reader in suspense the whole time...a story which would be, so to speak, spectacular. That’s what Homer wanted to do. And I want you two to stick faithfully to Homer. Homer put giants, prodigies, storms, witches, monsters into the
Odyssey
—and I want you to put giants, prodigies, storms, witches and monsters into the film...”

“But of course we shall put them in!” I said, somewhat surprised.

“Yes, you’ll put them in, you’ll put them in...” cried Battista in sudden, unexpected anger; “perhaps you think I’m a fool, Molteni? I’m not a fool.” He had raised his voice and was staring at me with a furious look in his eyes. I was astonished at this sudden rage; and, even more, by the vitality of Battista who, after driving a car all day long and crossing from Naples to Capri, instead of resting when he arrived, as I should have done in his place, still had a desire to discuss Rheingold’s intentions. I said, softly: “But what makes you imagine that I think you’re a...a fool?”

“Your attitude, the attitude of both of you, Molteni.”

“Please explain.”

Slightly calmer now, Battista took up his cigarette again and went on: “You remember—that day when you met Rheingold for the first time in my office—you said then that you didn’t feel you were cut out for a spectacular film, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I think I did.”

“And what did Rheingold say to you, to reassure you?”

“I don’t quite remember...”

“I will refresh your memory. Rheingold told you not to worry...he intended to make a psychological film—a film about the conjugal relations of Ulysses and Penelope. Isn’t that so?”

Again I was astonished: Battista, under that coarse, animal-like mask, was sharper than I had believed. “Yes,” I admitted, “I think he did say something of the kind.”

“Now, seeing that the script hasn’t yet been started and that nothing has yet been done, it is just as well that I should inform you with the utmost seriousness that, for me, the
Odyssey
is not a matter of the conjugal relations of Ulysses and Penelope.”

I said nothing, and Battista, after a pause, went on: “If I wanted to make a film about relations between husband and wife, I should take a modern novel, I should stay in Rome, and I should shoot the film in the bedrooms and drawing-rooms of the Parioli quarter...I shouldn’t bother about Homer and the
Odyssey
. Do you see, Molteni?”

“Yes, yes, I see.”

“Relations between husbands and wives don’t interest me—do you see, Molteni? The
Odyssey
is the story of the adventures of Ulysses on his journey back to Ithaca, and what I want is a film of the adventures of Ulysses...and in order that there should be no more doubts on the matter, I want a spectacular film, Molteni—spec-tac-ular—do you see, Molteni?”

“You need have no doubts about it,” I said, rather irritated, “you shall have a spectacular film.”

Battista threw away his cigarette and, in his normal voice, endorsed what I had said. “I don’t doubt it,” he said, “seeing that, after all, it’s I who pay for it. You must understand that I have said all this to you, Molteni, so as to avoid unpleasant misunderstandings. You begin work tomorrow morning, and I wanted to warn you in time, in your own interest too. I trust you, Molteni, and I want you to be my mouthpiece, so to speak, with Rheingold. You must remind Rheingold, whenever it may become necessary, that the
Odyssey
gave pleasure, and has always given pleasure, because it is a work of poetry... and I want that poetry to get over, complete, into the film, exactly as it is!”

I realized that Battista was now really calm again: he was, in fact, no longer talking about the spectacular film that he insisted upon our producing, but rather poetry. After a brief incursion into the earthy depths of box office success, we had now returned to the airy regions of art and the spirit. With a painful grimace which was meant to be a smile, I said: “Have no doubts about it, Battista. You shall have all Homer’s poetry...or anyhow all the poetry we’re capable of finding in him.”

“Splendid, splendid, let’s not talk of it any more.” Battista rose from his armchair, stretching himself, looked at his wrist-watch, said abruptly that he was going to wash before dinner, and went out. I was left alone.

I also had previously thought of retiring to my room and getting ready for dinner. But the discussion with Battista had distracted and excited me, and I started walking up and down the room, almost without knowing what I was doing. The truth was that the things Battista had said to me had, for the first time, given me a glimpse of the difficulty of a task which I had undertaken rather light-heartedly and thinking only of material advantage: and now I felt that I was succumbing in advance to the fatigue from which I should be suffering by the time the script was finished. “Why all this?” I said to myself; “why should I subject myself to this disagreeable effort, to the discussions that will doubtless take place between ourselves and Battista, to say nothing of those that will crop up between me and Rheingold, to the compromises that are bound to follow, to the bitterness of putting my name to a production that is false and commercial? Why all this?” My visit to Capri, which had seemed to me so attractive when I looked down upon the Faraglioni from the high path a short time before, now appeared as it were discolored by the dreariness of a thankless and questionable undertaking—that of reconciling the demands of an honest man of letters such as myself with the wholly different demands of a producer. I was once again conscious, in a painful manner, that Battista was the master and I the servant, and that a servant must do anything rather than disobey his master; that any methods of cunning or flattery by which he may seek to evade his master’s authority are in themselves more humiliating than complete obedience; that, in brief, by appending my signature to the contract, I had sold my soul to a devil who, like all devils, was at the same time both exacting and mean. Battista had said quite clearly, in a burst of sincerity: “It’s I who pay!” I, certainly, had no need of all that amount of sincerity to say to myself: “And it’s I who am paid!” This phrase sounded continually in my ears, every time I turned my mind to the film-script. Suddenly these thoughts gave me a feeling of suffocation. I felt a strong desire to escape from the very air that Battista breathed. I went over to the french window, opened it and stepped out on to the terrace.

NIGHT HAD FALLEN, by now; and the terrace was gently illuminated by the indirect, but already intense, brilliance which a still invisible moon spread across the sky. A flight of steps led from the terrace to the path that ran round the island. I hesitated a moment, wondering whether to descend these steps and go for a walk, but it was late and the path was too dark. I decided to stay on the terrace. I stood looking over the balustrade and lit a cigarette.

Above me, black and sharp against the clear, starry sky, rose the rocks of the island. Other rocks could be dimly discerned on the precipice below. The silence was profound: if I listened, I could just hear the brief rustling sound of a wave breaking, from time to time, on the pebbly beach in the inlet far below, and then retreating again. Or perhaps I was wrong, and there was no rustling sound but only the breathing of the calm sea swelling and spreading with the movement of the tide. The air was still and windless; raising my eyes toward the horizon I could see, in the distance, the little white light of the Punta Camapanella lighthouse on the mainland, ceaselessly turning, now flashing, now extinguished again, and this light, scarcely perceptible and lost in the vastness of the night, was the only sign of life I could see all around me.

I felt myself growing quickly calmer under the influence of this calm night; and yet I was aware, with complete lucidity, that all the beauty in the world could produce only a fleeting interruption in the sequence of my troubles. And indeed, after I had stood for some time motionless and thinking of nothing, staring in the darkness, my mind, almost against my will, came back to the thought that dominated it, the thought of Emilia; but this time, perhaps as a result of my conversations with Battista and Rheingold and of the place I was in, so similar to places described in Homer’s poem, it was strangely mingled and bound up with the thought of the
Odyssey
script. Suddenly, from some unknown spring of memory, there rose into my mind a passage from the last canto of the
Odyssey
, in which Ulysses, in order to prove his true identity, gives a minute description of his marriage bed; and so, at last, Penelope recognizes her husband and turns pale and almost faints, and then, weeping, throws her arms around his neck and speaks words which I had learned by heart from having so very often re-read and repeated them to myself: “Ah, Ulysses, be not angry, thou who in every event didst always show thyself the wisest of men. The gods condemned us to misfortune, being unwilling that we should enjoy the green and flourishing years side by side, and then see, each of us, the other’s hair grow white.” Alas, I did not know Greek; but I was aware that the translation could not be a truly faithful one, if only because it failed to reproduce the beautiful naturalness of the Homeric original. Nevertheless I had always taken a singular pleasure in these lines, because of the feeling that shone through them, even in so formal an expression; and, as I read them, it had so happened that I had compared them with Petrarch’s lines in the sonnet that begins: