Director's Cut (28 page)

Less than a week has passed when Gala, who was reading in the Villa Borghese, comes back to find Geppi in front of her room, ear to the door.

“The signor has gone mad,” she shouts. “Nowadays everyone's teetering on the edge, but your boyfriend finally toppled over just half an hour ago. Screaming, cursing, weeping, breaking things, ah, for a few happy minutes I felt like I still had kids at home!”

“But you told us you didn't have children,” says Gala, searching for her key.

“So?” Geppi scurries off indignantly. “A woman's allowed to dream, isn't she?”

Inside is utter chaos. The cupboards have been emptied. Maxim has tried to shove their contents into the bags and suitcases that are heaped on the bed. Sitting in a chair with his back to her, he stares through the high window at the sky.

“We're going home,” he says, without turning around. “I called your father …”

“You did what?”

“I called Jan. He's paying for our tickets. We can pick them up at the check-in desk.”

“What did he say?”

“He loves you and would do anything for you.”

(Old Vandemberg had actually jeered and exclaimed triumphantly that he'd always known this girl would cost society more than she was worth, which for him amounted to the same thing.)

Maxim holds up a letter. It's notification that his public assistance has been suspended pending a fraud investigation, and that he may have
to refund the last three payments. It doesn't explain how they discovered that he was abroad. Maybe the friend who forges his signature each week got careless, or maybe someone jealous of their living the high life in Rome snitched. Either way, the cash flow has been cut and Gala's benefit check won't cover the rent.

“It's just money,” Gala says to calm him down. “We'll think of something. What would Snaporaz say if I turned tail now?”

“Plenty of fish in the sea!”

“That's why I have to wait for him to start shooting again,” she says without batting an eye. “If it's just that … I thought you'd had bad news from America.”

“That too.” He sounds so gloomy that she wraps her arms around him to cheer him up, just as she does after every rejection.

“I got the part.” Irritated, he breaks free of her embrace. “A lead, with Martin Sheen. It could be my international breakthrough. So fucking typical: I get a lead on American TV, but I don't have enough money to survive till the first day of shooting.”

“You've grabbed the ledge,” says Geppi, who has stood waiting in the hall for Gala to come out. “Beautiful. Now you're hanging on. You're weeks behind with the rent. Should I stand here watching until your strength fails? I tell you: now is the time to call Signor Gianni, that's what I say.”

As usual, Gala whisks by without paying any attention to the woman, but halfway down the hall she slows.

“He is the one who can lift you out of this pit,” the concierge says emphatically, feeling a tug on her line. “Sooner or later, they all let Gianni help them up onto their feet. You'll see, the man's a saint!”

She picks up the receiver and dials. Gala wants to consult Maxim, but with her hand on the door handle she reconsiders. “A saint! One day pilgrims from all over the world will crawl to the city on their knees for the privilege of praying at his shrine.”

Someone answers. Geppi holds the phone out. Gianni's voice blares impatiently. He couldn't possibly guess that it's Gala, standing there at a loss for words, scared to death that he might think she's deliberately making him wait. She accepts the receiver, but has no idea what she's
supposed to say; she covers it with a hand. She feels tears rising, but pushes them back. She wants to yell for Maxim but gets a grip on herself. She feels helpless, as if for a moment she's small and shivering, back at the fair: her father whizzes past on a merry-go-round horse, urging her to trust him, to take the leap. She doesn't want to, but at the same time there is nothing she'd rather do.

If only I were braver, she tells herself. If just once I dared to jump, then nothing could stop me.

She looks plaintively at Geppi, who shrugs. “What can I say? There isn't enough room on all the walls of the Vatican to hang up the exvotos from the foreigners Signor Gianni has helped out.”

Gala only begins to sense the danger she's exposed herself to when she sees the smoke rising from Etna. During the flight to Sicily, first class, with champagne, she played the part of the international call girl. Now, in the train circling the base of the volcano, the moment she'll really become one is fast approaching. Gianni, who always delivers his best products personally, drops the mask of friendship, giving her final instructions like a company director talking to an errand boy.

“Don't be subservient, but don't get overconfident, either. Never be too cheeky, but don't be too childish, either. No unnecessary objections, but under no circumstances do anything you don't want to. If you remember that, you'll enjoy it more. If the client sees you enjoying yourself, he'll be satisfied.”

He stops to glance at Gala, who removes an imaginary pencil from behind her ear and mocks his instructions by writing them down in shorthand on a nonexistent pad, the tip of her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth.

“Sparkle, the way you do so well, but be careful not to overshadow him. Never take the initiative, but don't be too compliant. Don't be scared. Relax. Set your pride aside and be yourself.”

“What if my pride is part of myself?”

“Impossible. Pride is a refuge for people whose self-image clashes with the truth. A rickety bridge between dream and reality, unanchored on either side. Pride's the first thing you've got to get rid of if you want to learn to enjoy yourself.”

Disliking his tone, Gala looks out over the Strait of Messina. Silently, she tries to list all the things she's proud of, but she's so insulted that even the most obvious elude her.

“Don't put on airs,” says Gianni. “You're too self-confident to be proud.”

The train arrives at the bathing resort.

“And from now on, stay away from me,” he orders. “We can't give the impression that we're together.” He dawdles behind on the platform, shaking his head in admiration at the sight of his protégée's swinging hips. Unaware of the structural defect behind this provocative miracle, the pimp says a quick prayer of thanks to Our Lady of Perpetual Help for sending him a personal retirement scheme, who is now disappearing slowly between the palms on the boulevard, the insides of her thighs gliding past one another.

At the appointed time, Gala stands atop the steps of San Leone. Down by the beach, a seated man is waiting under a parasol on the deck in front of a room hacked out of the rock on one side of the hotel. As soon as he sees her, he stands up to greet her.

Holding the railing, Gala's hand trembles. This surprises her, since she feels nothing but icy calm.

The man is wearing an expensive tailor-made linen suit, perhaps a bit much for a first meeting, but a hint, nonetheless, of how dashing he was in his youth. He thinks he sees the girl's eyes gliding over him approvingly. Gala is actually squinting, to force the glare of the sun on the waves into her black patch, so she can see more of his face. It is dark and manly, slightly troubled. She guesses he's around sixty. When he smiles, she sees clearly that he is nervous.

“That's a load off my mind!” she says, and means it, but he takes it as a compliment he must return. Afterward, they sit down. His butler opens the champagne and serves the first course.

Just before the
bomba bianca
is dished up in flaming maraschino, the man abandons his caution. He introduces himself as Pontorax, though that sounds more like a drug than a real name. He tells her that he is a neurologist, the head of a private psychiatric clinic in Catania.

“That's funny,” laughs Gala. “Besides my parents, no one knows
me better than neurologists.” At that, she lays bare her medical history for him.

“Ah!” he cries in admiration, “the blessing of the sibyls!” And he tells her how the oracles of Apollo were chosen for their epileptic sensitivity. “They looked at the sun and provoked their trances by moving their hands back and forth in front of their eyes.”

He shows her how. She imitates him, but he immediately grabs her hand and stops her, concerned. The touch lasts a fraction of a second longer than normal. To her surprise, Gala does not mind. The man is gentle and seems genuinely sympathetic.

“The flashing rays,” he continues, “disrupted the temporal lobe of the brain, the center of creativity. The women fell to the ground in a convulsion and spoke in incomprehensible riddles. Now we treat it; in those days, kings traveled months to hear their prophecies.”

After lunch, they board a small yacht anchored just off the beach, where she finds several brand-new swimsuits hung up, waiting for her. While they sunbathe, Pontorax's acquaintances come by in yachts, and when they sail on again, the
dottore
entertains her with anecdotes about his eccentric friends.

In the middle of one of his stories, Gala is overcome by an intense emotion she finds difficult to place. Her breathing quickens, and it's all she can do not to cry. It can't be true, she thinks. I can't be moved by a guy who pays to look at me in a swimsuit?

The
dottore
notices the change, but is tactful enough not to mention it. He pours her a cocktail and toasts her silently, just by looking at her, then resumes his story, allowing her to return to her thoughts.

What moved her was seeing the life in his eyes flare up when he looks at her. She quietly imagines the melancholy returning as soon as the old man turns back to the waves. The thought sets her mind at peace, inspiring a languid desire to give herself over to this game. She feels cheerful, and when she quickly closes her eyes, enjoying the warmth and the movement of the sea, she looks almost completely happy. Of course, it is the natural desire of age for youth that puts her at ease, though at first she doesn't realize that. She only feels that she'll never have to rattle off a poem or outdo him in cleverness in order to appeal to this man. She has won him simply by being who she is. Grateful, she rolls over to reward him with a better view.

The
dottore
is a gentleman who would never lay a finger on her uninvited, and who keeps his suit on all afternoon, though the financial nature of their encounter still makes their relationship unambiguous. She feels the inequality that obtains between master and slave, yet she couldn't say who was who. Until very recently, she would have recoiled from the situation, but rather than feeling alone, she is very much at one with him. Gala tries to remember whether she's ever been with a man in a situation like this before, with the cards so clearly on the table. It is new to her, but she can still predict all possible moves, as if she knows the game. Her role is as clear as his. This clarity makes her feel she's breathing again after a long period underwater. He's using me, she tells herself, but he needs me too; and that simple realization finally gives her the strength to reverse the roles.

The wood beneath her feet is scorching as she stands up and stretches. She walks up to her first client and kisses him on the cheek before running to the edge of the deck and diving.

The winner is not the little boy carrying the trophy, but the person who presented it.

They moor late in the afternoon, strolling down the main street, where branches of all the Via Condotti designers cater to the Mafia bosses' wives. The
dottore
suggests that she pick out a few dresses in one of the boutiques; she consents because it confirms the nature of their relationship. Afterward, they visit a jewelry store, where she points out the tiniest earrings available. After all, it's about what she is, not what she gets. Outside, he offers her his arm. That evening, they dance on the hotel terrace. Their bodies touch for the first time. She presses her stomach against his. Dr. Pontorax, who looks wooden, turns out to be surprisingly nimble to music. During the third rumba, Gala kisses him on the mouth, quickly but full of promise, and when he briefly closes his eyes with pleasure she gets an unmistakable sense that she's the one in charge.

When his chauffeur appears to take her back to the airport, Gala assumes there's been some mistake. She looks at the
dottore
, seductively at first, then pouting, but no matter how large the fish swimming around in his net, the fisherman has no intention of hauling it in.

Gianni is waiting for her in the back of the limousine. He tears open
the envelope that is handed to him and pays Gala her agreed-upon fee. He then quickly counts the rest.

“Brava!” He pats her thigh approvingly. It's so much more than he expected that he slips her a tip as well. Despite the payment, she is overcome by such an astonishingly piercing sense of disappointment that she racks her brain for an explanation. She's had an exciting day and earned her money without a hitch. She took a trip, she shone in pleasant company. All this time, she's been the master of her fate. Her only frustration is that she's been relieved of the task she'd been dreading. Dismissed, why? The
dottore
had enough. Something obviously failed to please him, but what? Where did she fall short? She'd been feeling so strong, but the direction was snatched out of her hands just before the final scene. Her insecurities come rushing back. She is as surprised as she was seeing the flamingos—who had been flying off on the dry Sahara wind, one by one, all day long—settling down as a single flock in the bay that evening. And for the first time that day, Gala feels dirty.

A new Russia-leather suitcase containing the dresses and other gifts emerges from the trunk of the car. She is in time for the last flight to Fiumicino and will be back with Maxim before midnight. She's earned a month's salary in less than a day.