Cinema

     I remember only the title of the film: The Great Caruso. I remember the actor’s name, Mario Lanza. I can’t recall if I was six or seven at the time. I just remember that one day my father said, “Tomorrow we’re going to the movies together. It’s the story of Enrico Caruso, the greatest tenor who ever lived.”
     My father loved opera. He had inherited his passionate love of music from my grandfather, who played the clarinet in his hometown band. My father also loved the cinema: this was his true passion, a genuine obsession. Every Sunday we went to the movies. For him, films were more than recreation. He would go on about the most recent film for days, talking about it  as if it were real, as if it played a part in our family life. He seemed to have no other topics of conversation.
     One day I happened to overhear my mother talking about my father with one of her girlfriends.
      “You know, that’s the way he is, he gets carried away by what he’s just seen and then he bores the life out of me for days on end. He won’t talk about anything else.”
     “He’s kind of a weird guy, Cosimo.” (This from her friend.) “He strikes me as a bit naïve, fixated on the movies like that."
     “He’s got such a fixation he’s made me hate all movies!”
     “Well, I never go…people smoking, they give you lung disease…and anyway I really don’t like to go to the movies. It’s  entertainment for gullible, simple minded people. 
     My mother hastened to agree. “Precisely! You’re so right, entertainment for the gullible and simple!
     “But Cosimo is neither.”
     “Oh, in his own way, Cosimo is a babe in the woods. He’d do better to pay more attention to his work.”
     Papa was anything but a simple man. Even I could tell that he didn’t love his work. I understood that because he never talked about the construction company [or just: the firm?] where he worked as a draftsman. He loathed pencils, erasers, tracing paper, graph paper with its little square boxes; at home he had turned his draftsman’s table into a writing desk, covered with art magazines, a pile of special sections from the left-wing newspaper Rinascita, a few books, envelopes full of newspaper clippings.  I have no idea what he found to cut out of the daily papers, but I could see that he kept the articles in large yellow envelopes on which he would occasionally pencil something in an illegible scrawl. I was consumed with curiosity, but I didn’t dare ask him what he was doing with all those magazines and newspaper clippings.
     My mother, on the other hand, had no such scruples. She complained about the dust that settled on all that paper. Once I asked her why Papa cut articles out of newspapers. Her answer was vehement, sharp as a razor’s edge, and she delivered it with a grimace of disgust:
     “Your father is an idealist”
     I didn’t understand, but I felt the blow had been aimed at me as well, perhaps because for the first time I could hear in my mother’s words a note of detachment and annoyance.  I spent the next few hours forcing myself to forget her words, trying to find some explanation for her behavior, which seemed to me a form of betrayal. Indirect betrayal, but betrayal nonetheless.
     There were quite a few things I couldn’t understand. Like the time when I asked my father why he liked movies so much. To be fair, he was the one who provoked the question by harping on an Italian film about a typist in love with a good-for-nothing bum. We were strolling along the beach, and my father began to narrate the plot. His analysis and his reflections were more for himself than for my benefit. I could tell because he never once glanced in my direction. He kept talking, reflecting on the film, which he called a masterpiece.
     “Papa, why do you like to go to the movies so much?”
     “Why? I don’t really know…” All of a sudden, he stopped and looked straight ahead at the horizon, where gulls were swooping and gliding in a kind of celebratory dance. It was sunset on an August day and the long shadows of the folded beach umbrellas looked like warriors’ lances.
     When he spoke again, he looked happy. With a gesture of ineffable tenderness he took my hand,  and gently stroked my hair.
     “You know, Gabriele, I don’t know how to answer your question. I could give you an answer, but it wouldn’t be the truth. I’ll think about it, and sooner or later I’ll be able to give you an answer.” 
     He was smiling as he spoke. He smiled and never stopped looking into my eyes. “Sooner or later, Gabriele, I’ll be able to give you an answer. While I’m watching a film, I never think of anything—and I’m happy to be far away from this world, oh yes…”And he went on smiling. He was smiling at himself, and perhaps also at the world. He picked up a handful of sand and let it slip through his fingers in a thin stream, like an hourglass.  “This is how time slips by, this is how the world slips by…better not to think about it, no, better not to…”
     In the end I was smiling too. We were smiling together, but not because anything was funny, not at an amusing anecdote. We smiled as the beach grew ever darker and the last crescents of light between the brightly-colored beach umbrellas were devoured by spreading, deepening shadow.

     I remember only the film’s title, The Great Caruso. I remember the actor’s name, Mario Lanza. I can’t recall what time of year it was: perhaps October or November. Or more likely it was spring, perhaps April or even May. I do remember it was a gray Sunday, and a light, lazy drizzle made it feel sad. When I think about it, I remember that the house martins were racing through the sky, their myriad paths criss-crossing. My mother claimed she had a terrible headache, she’d rather stay at home because she had a lot of ironing to do and laundry to put away. My father tried to convince her to come with us, but she was adamant.
      “Come on, come along with us! We’ll be home by five-thirty at the the latest, you can do whatever you need to do when you get back. I don’t see why you should make a martyr of yourself on a Sunday.”
     “I’ve got a headache, and anyway what do you know about what I have to do?”
     “Well, if that’s how you put it…”
     “Please don’t insist! Why don’t the two of you go. I’d rather be home alone. Just go ahead, have a good time.”
     The Modern Cinema was a couple of hundred yards away, all we had to do was cross Piazza Bruno Buozzi and the entrance to the movie house was on a little side street. The balcony seats cost more, so my father always bought tickets for the orchestra pit. Whenever we could, we would sit in the first row of the second section so he could stretch his legs and be less likely to be distressed by the feeling of claustrophobia that occasionally came over him.  We managed to find two seats exactly in our favorite row. Before the show began, a boy walked by selling different kinds of seeds, peanuts and drinks. My father knew I was crazy about peanuts so he bought me a little bag. I started pouring the nuts one by one out of the little red transparent bag (it was really a sort of cone) into my hand. My father asked me for just a couple, just to have a taste. The nuts gave me a prodigious thirst, but I never thought of asking him to buy me a soda as well. I always tried to endure my thirst, waiting until I got home to chug a few glasses of water without pausing for breath.

     All of a sudden I noticed a strange glitter in my father’s gray eyes. The movie was starting, and he was settling in to savor every frame. This is how it always was: for him every film was a love affair. This time, the music and the film combined to make a heady brew, and I realized he had forgotten his unhappiness over my mother’s absence. (I wasn’t worrying about my mother either, any more. I knew she always had things to do, and when she didn’t she would spend hours in the garden lavishing loving care on her hortensia bushes and the innumerable pots of geraniums. She said she preferred hortensias and geraniums to other flowers because she enoyed selecting nuanced shades of color. My father, on the other hand, did not care much for flowers, and during the hottest days of August he preferred to sit under the huge fig tree and read his indispensable daily papers.
     My father’s happiness was immediately apparent to me: his eyes glued to the screen as the story unfolded, scene after scene, song after song. [I suoi sussulti] He shuddered when Verdi’s arias rang out, “Celeste Aida” or “La donna è mobile.” The first half was over before I even noticed: I liked the film because my senses were flooded by the music and the colors. (It’s in Technicolor, my father had told me repeatedly.) When the lights came on during the intermission, someone clapped. My father leaned over and whispered in my ear,  “I’m going to run home for a minute. I’ll be back in no time. I forgot something. Save my seat, make sure no one takes it.”
     Now he seemed a bit down at the mouth. His eyes were sadder than usual and his voice shook.
     “But Papa, why are you leaving me by myself?”
     “I told you I’ll be right back. Here’s some change, buy yourself a soda.”
     “Okay, but come back right away,” I said, knowing that the soda would not make up for his absence or for the silent pain I felt because of his strange behavior.
     I was thirsty and the drink made me feel better right away: it was fizzy and had a lemony aftertaste. I was counting the minutes; I knew that there were about ten minutes between the first half and the second, and certain of my father’s interest in the film, and thanks to the lemon soda too, I thought I could endure the wait with dignity. And indeed he came back just before the second part started. He had been running, because I noticed right away that he was out of breath.
     “Papa, did you find what you were looking for?”
     “No.” His voice was cold and his tone brusque. “Your mother wasn’t at home. I rang the bell, then I went in. There was no one there. She was not ironing her blessèd laundry.”
     “Maybe she went over to aunt Eliza’s.”
     “I don’t know where she went; she wasn’t there, and that’s that. Now let’s enjoy the film.”

     I have never been able to erase the image of my father from my mind, frozen, paralyzed in the dark, all through the second half of the film. I kept looking over at him to check on his expression, by the light from the screen. I didn’t like the look of his pale lips and his stony gaze. I kept asking myself what was happening, what it all meant. What had happened, or what was going on that was so seriously wrong? I couldn’t understand why he was so upset over not finding Mama at home. The truth is, he wasn’t enjoying the film. I wasn’t either, in fact. When Caruso hit the first note of “Vesti la giubba” my father’s eyes were flooded with unspilled tears that he struggled to wipe away. Now his eyes looked like wax to me.
     He didn’t notice that I was watching him or that I was clutching my lemonade bottle as if it were the last hold I had on life. I knew that Rigoletto was his favorite opera: when Lanza’s voice resounded through the theater with La donna è mobile, my father’s face lit up, he squeezed my hand and whispered in my ear, “This is art! Verdi is truly great, don’t you agree?”
     For me, it was as if a tragic spell had been broken. I was happy to hear him speak.
     “Yes, Papa. I like it a lot.” My answer was barely audible. He squeezed me hand even harder, almost as if to let me know he really counted on me, that I was his one consolation, and that I was important to him. I would never be a musician, but perhaps he imagined a son capable of composing music like Verdi, or something that would somehow suggest a greatness of spirit that in that moment made up for his sadness.
     The credits began to scroll down the screen while the words of Pagliacci bounced around confusedly in my mind.
      He wanted to wait for the yellowish lights of the theater to come on, one at a time, before getting up out of his seat. He wanted to read all the credits, paying attention to the operas and the composers the director had selected for the musical soundtrack. On our way out, we stopped to look at the poster outside the cinema. THE GREAT CARUSO, and underneath, an enormous picture of Mario Lanza as Caruso singing, emerging from a fiery-red background, his hands gripping the lapels  of a splendidly elegant, handsome tuxedo, as if with this gesture he were trying to affirm his origins, his Italianness. Below, another scene: a large number of singers in a chorus, ranged around the tenor like so many adoring Lilliputians, while a reduplicated Lanza sings Cavalleria rusticana. Anyway, that’s what my father said.
     “I really liked it!” I said, in an attempt to show my gratitude to my father who, however, now seemed to be engrossed in thoughts of an altogether different sort.
     “Yes, Gabriele, I liked it a lot too. To be sure, Lanza’s voice is not Caruso’s, no doubt about it, but he’s a great artist.” My father was turning his hat in his hands, tormenting the wide brim as he talked in a distracted way: he was agitated, and I wished I could do something for him.
     “I thought the film was very well done, the musical soundtrack too. When he performed the lyrical arias of Francesco Paolo Tosti,  Lanza’s voice was up to the challenge, in other spots it seemed a little insubstantial to me. I thought it didn’t have quite enough body. But the director did a really excellent job.”
     “Too bad Mama didn’t come with us!”
     “Yes, too bad,” my father said. In the meantime, he had put on his hat. A faint smile played on his lips; it didn’t look to me like a happy smile. Rather it revealed a bitterness that made me think of the expression on his face every time he talked about the political situation in Italy, often while commenting on the newspaper he happened to be reading at the moment.
     We crossed the square in silence.
     The sky was clear now. The swallows were flying lower, diving headlong among the branches of the linden trees that surrounded the square; it was entertaining to watch their acrobatic  feats.
     In a few minutes we were home.
     I didn’t know and I didn’t want to know what would happen once my father crossed the threshold. I had a lingering feeling of unfinished business. The film was something else, I thought.
     “How was the movie?” My mother asked, putting away the ironing board.
     “Beautiful, very well done. What did you do, did you stay at home?”
     “Can’t you see?”
     “Ah yes. I see.”
     “I stayed home to put away the laundry and iron your shirts. Otherwise you’d have nothing to wear tomorrow.”
     “Your headache’s all gone, I imagine…”
     “You could say so, thanks to a couple of aspirins.”
     “Okay. That’s nice. I’m going out to the garden.”

     He took off his jacket and hat. Slowly and deliberately, he hung them up on the coat-tree. My father was giving my mother a blank look. He was nearly fifteen years older than she was, and as she bustled around the house in her housedress she looked like a young girl. Light-stepping and silent, with her dark eyes and a look on her face that proclaimed she was happy to be alive. My father, in contrast, did not wear his forty years well: hunching over the drawing table had given him a stooped back and he often complained that he was no longer agile and resilient the way he used to be, when he could swim for long distances, mingling with the frisky mullets and the needlefish between the two jetties. That’s what he used to tell me, and I believed him, because he wasn’t the type to boast. On the contrary, he talked as if he were the most insignificant man on earth, with an extreme modesty I didn’t much care for because I was convinced that he knew a lot more than the fathers of my playmates.
     I followed him into the garden. 
     Watching the swallows gave me a pleasant feeling.
     In the meantime, Mama was busy watering the hortensia plants. She was in the garden too. They were so close to each other, but so far apart, my father and my mother. Seated in a wicker armchair, my father lit a cigarette and began to smoke. He wasn’t a smoker, he smoked three or four cigarettes a day at most. When he smoked, it was a sign that something was wrong. My mother knew that too. On a round table, wicker like the chair, was a plastic ashtray that my father grasped with his left hand until he had taken his last drag.
     It was beginning to get dark; my father stared at the sea, about half a mile away as the crow flies. A few fat gray clouds were coming down over the horizon line, like a gloomy curtain. With the excuse that I was drawing a picture, I had sat down next to my father. I made some scribbles; the glass table top was cold and hard.  He was sad, and I would have liked things to be different, between my parents. It has always seemed absurd to me when people don’t care for each other anymore. My mother started humming; after a bit she said she was going in to make supper. My father said nothing but he let out something like a moan I didn’t know how to interpret.
     I couldn’t understand any of what was happening. Their silence made me suffer, but  there was nothing I could say.
     I went to my room, determined not to think any more about my parents. Instead I thought about the film I had just seen. I thought of Mario Lanza and his performance. The Great Caruso was for me the only real thing that seemed real to me in a day I would have liked to forget.