Dusk and Other Stories

He waited.

“I’ve never been so happy.”

“Really?”

“Not in my whole life,” she said.

He smiled. His smile was opera.

“With you I am the woman everyone believes I am,” she said.

He looked at her long and deeply. His eyes were dark, the pupils invisible. Love scenes during the day, he thought wearily, love scenes at night. People were watching them from all around the room. When they rose to go, the waiters crowded near the door.

Within three years his career would be over. He would see himself in the flickering television as if it were some curious dream. He invested in apartment houses, he owned land in Spain. He would become like a woman, jealous, unforgiving, and perhaps one day in a restaurant even see Iles with a young actor, explaining with the heat of a fanatic some very ordinary idea. Guivi was thirty-seven. He had a moment on the screen that would never be forgotten. Tinted posters of him would peel from the sides of buildings more and more remote, the resemblance fading, his name becoming stale. He would smile across alleys, into the sour darkness. Far-off dogs were barking. The streets smelled of the poor.

III.

There was a party for Anna’s birthday at a restaurant in the outskirts, the restaurant in which Farouk, falling backward from the table, had died. Not everyone was invited. It was meant to be a surprise.

She arrived with Guivi. She was not a woman, she was a minor deity, she was some beautiful animal innocent of its grace. It was February, the night was cold. The chauffeurs waited inside the cars. Later they gathered quietly in the cloakroom.

“My love,” Iles said to her, “you are going to be very, very happy.”

“Really?”

He put his arm around her without replying; he nodded. The shooting was almost over. The rushes, he said, were the best he had ever seen. Ever.

“As for this fellow…” he said, reaching for Guivi.

The producer joined them.

“I want you for my next picture, both of you,” he announced. He was wearing a suit a size too small, a velvet suit bought on Via Borgognona.

“Where did you get it?” Guivi said. “It’s fantastic. Who is supposed to be the star here anyway?”

Posener looked down at himself. He smiled like a guilty boy.

“Do you like it?” he said. “Really?”

“No, where did you get it?”

“I’ll send you one tomorrow.”

“No, no…”

“Guivi, please,” he begged, “I want to.”

He was filled with goodwill, the worst was past. The actors had not run away or refused to work, he was overcome with love for them, as for a bad child who unexpectedly does something good. He felt he must do something in return.

“Waiter!” he cried. He looked around, his gestures always seemed wasted, vanished in empty air.

“Waiter,” he called, “champagne!”

There were twenty or so people in the room, other actors, the American wife of a count. At the table Guivi told stories. He drank like a Georgian prince, he had plans for Geneva, Gstaad. There was the Italian producer, he said, who had an actress under contract, she was a second Sophia Loren. He had made a fortune with her. Her films were only shown in Italy, but everyone went to them, the money was pouring in. He always kept the journalists away, however, he never let them talk to her alone.

“Sellerio,” someone guessed.

“Yes,” said Guivi, “that’s right. Do you know the rest of the story?”

“He sold her.”

But half the contract only, Guivi said. Her popularity was fading, he wanted to get everything he could. There was a big ceremony, they invited all the press. She was going to sign. She picked up the pen and leaned forward a little for the photographers, you know, she had these enormous, eh… well, anyway, on the paper she wrote: with his finger Guivi made a large X. The newsmen all looked at each other. Then Sellerio took the pen and very grandly, just below her name: Guivi made one X and next to it, carefully, another. Illiterate. That’s the truth. They asked him, look, what is the second X for? You know what he told them? Dottore.

They laughed. He told them about shooting in Naples with a producer so cheap he threw a cable across the trolley wires to steal power. He was clever, Guivi, he was a storyteller in the tradition of the east, he could speak three languages. Later, when she finally understood what had happened, Anna remembered how happy he seemed this night.

“Shall we go on to the Hostaria?” the producer said.

“What?” Guivi asked.

“The Hostaria…” As with the waiters, it seemed no one heard him. “The Blue Bar. Come on, we’re going to the Blue Bar,” he announced.

Outside the Botanical Gardens, parked in the cold, the small windows of the car frosted, Lang sat. His clothing was open. His flesh was pale in the refracted light. He had eaten dinner with Eva. She had talked for hours in a low, uncertain voice, it was a night for stories, she had told him everything, about Coleman the head of publicity, Mirella, her brother, Sicily, life. On the road to the mountains which overlooked Palermo there were cars parked at five in the afternoon. In each one was a couple, the man with a handkerchief spread in his lap.

“I am so lonely,” she said suddenly.

She had only three friends, she saw them all the time. They went to the theater together, the ballet. One was an actress. One was married. She was silent, she seemed to wait. The cold was everywhere, it covered the glass. Her breath was in crystals, visible in the dark.

“Can I kiss it?” she said.

She began to moan then, as if it were holy. She touched it with her forehead. She was murmuring. The nape of her neck was bare.

She called the next morning. It was eight o’clock.

“I want to read something to you,” she said.

He was half-asleep, the racket was already drifting up from the street. The room was chill and unlighted. Within it, distant as an old record, her voice was playing. It entered his body, it commanded his blood.

“I found this,” she said. “Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you would like it.”

It was from an article. She began to read.

In February of 1868, in Milan, Prince Umberto had given a splendid ball. In a room which blazed with light the young bride who was one day to be Queen of Italy was introduced. It was the event of the year, crowded and gay, and while the world of fashion amused itself thus, at the same hour and in the same city a lone astronomer was discovering a new planet, the ninety-seventh on Chacornac’s chart….

Silence. A new planet.

In his mind, still warmed by the pillow, it seemed a sacred calm had descended. He lay like a saint. He was naked, his ankles, his hipbones, his throat.

He heard her call his name. He said nothing. He lay there becoming small, smaller, vanishing. The room became a window, a facade, a group of buildings, squares and sections, in the end all of Rome. His ecstasy was beyond knowing. The roofs of the great cathedrals shone in the winter air.