EXCERPTS FROM THE SUGGESTIONS BOX
VALERIO ZURLINI, THE EMINENT FILMMAKER, had been ill for a long time before he died in 1982, but what shocked him half to death was being president of the jury at the Venice Film Festival that year. He could not bear the idea that Fassbinder had won the prize for a film Zurlini considered incomprehensible, so remote from the lightness of his own spiritual being.
I don’t know where to begin to describe him. He was an extremely talented director. A man of letters. A poet. And he loved Venice meltingly. But if I had to choose a single word that fit him best, it would be sensitive. He was a delicate, clean, fragile, and strong man. One of those whose loss you really feel after they are gone.
He rented an apartment in Venice and was often at Harry’s Bar. It was like home to him.
One day Zurlini came as usual before noon for a martini and handed me a letter on his way out.
“Read it, Cipriani,” he said, “and then do what you like with it.”
As soon as I finished reading his letter, I took pen in hand and replied at once. But I wanted to enjoy his reaction firsthand, so, instead of mailing it, I handed it to him a few days later at Harry’s Bar. It was early evening and the place was full. He opened the letter at once and began to read it before sitting down.
I watched in curiosity from behind the bar counter, where I all but hid to have a leisurely view. I was deliberately stern in the first part of the letter, so that it would take a while before he realized it was all a joke. As soon as he began reading, his face turned serious and concerned. He really believed that I had been offended by his letter. Tears actually seemed to well up in his eyes. It seemed incredible to him that I had failed to understand that his letter was a joke. By the time he reached the part about Count Temistocle’s spaghetti, however, he understood. At that point he raised his head and looked around for me. He rushed over and embraced me. Then he laughed. “Arrigo,” he said, “you are going to be very sorry you wrote this!”
Two days later he opened the door to Harry’s Bar and tossed another letter on the bar counter. I decided to publish the exchange of letters that ensued, to the immense delight of both of us. Then came the Venice Film Festival, and then he fell badly ill. He sent his son to deliver his last short poem, and I replied in kind.
Wednesday, March 10, 1982
Dear Arrigo Cipriani,
This short letter is totally platonic, because, anticipating the “nefarious” response you threatened, I might as well tell you at once that I will never stop coming to Harry’s Bar, even if you were to double your already exorbitant prices just for me. I consider it my true home in Venice, and I regret only that I do not enjoy the income of Signor Bagnasco, whom you like even less than me, or the wealth that was Paul Getty’s. Otherwise I would simply move in permanently, from morning coffee to the last nightcap.
Indeed, you open too late in the morning for my taste.
Yet I am obliged to come around ever less frequently: I order three glasses of wine and a sandwich. I do all I can to avoid the place, except when irrepressible fondness for the way I am treated forces me to say, especially this year: “So what, I’ll just go deeper into debt.”
I have not collected the signatures of people who make this honorable offer, but when I have I swear there won’t be more than six (or seven).
But we are all people who — one way or another, in poverty or in days of splendor — have each added a brick to your (our) house. Which is why I ask you to meet us halfway, in part to avoid having to provide for me in depressing old age. Moreover, my friends and I have always paid our tabs, and you can testify to that — except for the last bill, and that for reasons of superstition.
Well then, I do not care how nefarious your response is, I will still be at Harry’s Bar tomorrow morning.
Your old and devoted friend,
Valerio Zurlini
Friday, March 12
Dear Mr. Zurlini,
Today I received your letter of March 10, and although you kindly warned me in advance of its contents, I confess it has left me feeling very grieved. I have always thought that our work needed constant feedback through the criticism of our customers, but at the same time I believe that the great constancy of the efforts we all make should be given fair consideration, even when our work — which, I assure you, is always aimed at continuous improvement — does not seem to some people to achieve the desired result.
Which is exactly what seems to have happened on the present occasion.
It grieves me all the more when I think of so many other events in the fifty years we have been in business, events that have prompted altogether different judgments.
I can quote, just as an example, the exemplary behavior, the gentlemanly neglect, and the courteous remark of a devoted customer, Count Temistocle, who in 1953 had the misfortune of being the protagonist of the great taglierini al pomodoro disaster. To make a long story short, his white dinner jacket was ruined by the seventy pounds of taglierini al pomodoro a distracted waiter spilled on him as he was dining with the great actress Tatiana. Despite everything, he continued to sing the praises of our service.
Instead I read between the lines of your letter, which I certainly cannot call courteous, remarks that constantly refer to prices as “terribly exorbitant” and complaints about when we open, which you say is “too late.” Also between the lines, it is not hard to perceive implicit criticism of the quality of our wine and our superb sandwiches, as if they were the last remains of leftover food!
An of this sugared by a “Harry’s is my home,” when, instead, it is common knowledge in the Salute quarter that you are becoming an increasingly assiduous habitué of the Cantinone Storico! And yet you ask for benevolent consideration so that we will not have to look after your depressing old age. Allow me to say that you haven’t the least consideration for all we do every day, racking body and mind, and just to please you. Indeed! We import scampi from distant Dalmatia, and I remember full well what happened the day there were no scampi! You have to admit that I am right about this too. We grow rice in the paddies that were dear to Virgil, and butter is creamed off the milk of impetuous cows of Swiss descent.
In any case, that is always the saloonkeeper’s bitter fate, as my father used to say.
I have forwarded your letter for consideration by the board of directors, which will be meeting in the next few days. I make no promises. In spite of everything I shall try to defend your wishes in all their venality.
Yours,
Arrigo Cipriani
Sunday, March 14
Mr. Cipriani,
Never, for any reason, could I have expected a reply to my courteous letter that was as arrogant, malicious, and overbearing as yours. Mind you, I refrain from saying “outrageous.” And the matter of Count Temistocle is none of my affair. You failed to give his surname, but I am quite familiar with it, and subsequent to the notorious misfortune, which I would never have mentioned, he had sixty-seven new dinner jackets in different shades of white custom-made by Ciro Giuliano, the tailor (81 Corso Italia, Rome; telephone: 871–3927), which he made a point of never paying for. But that is none of my business. Nor am I acquainted with Tatiana the actress (could it be Pavlova?).
Your prices — despite your dignified management and a thoroughly respectable, or at least respectful, past — are terribly exorbitant, and people never cease to complain about them throughout the lagoon. But I invite you totally to ignore the letter I mistakenly wrote you, perhaps in a moment of depression due to my current poverty, and I do not blame you even for my advanced state of cirrhosis due to the martinis that you have been mixing for thirty years without an ounce of pity.
You tendentiously refer to my veiled complaints about the quality of your food and carafe wine, which I have never ever deplored. The Cantinone Storico has become a benevolent and fragile harbor for me because of our nation’s well-known difficulty with the current exchange rate of the dollar. You, not I, are the one who spoke of the last remains of leftovers in the sandwiches (perhaps a guilty conscience? I do not know), and henceforth you can set them out on the last beach-head for American sailors, your summer habitués who, marked for disaster, will soon be landing in Cuba and Nicaragua.
The unnamed fans to whom you make perfidious allusions may have ducal maces in their bedside tables, while the present writer is a patrician of Parma, a nobleman of the Holy Roman Empire (see the Golden Book of Italian Noblemen, last edition 1947, published by Poligrafico dello Stato, 2 Piazza Verdi, Rome), who — out of gentlemanly modesty and democratic reserve — only displays his academic titles (in which regard, professor, not merely doctor).
Your scampi may well come from Dalmatia, I insinuate nothing, but you might look for them closer to home, to Chioggia or San Benedetto del Tronto, not to mention the Lofoten islands. Your fish is fresh, that I will grant. Moreover, on principle and by natural inclination, I eschew denigration, I never referred to your place as a saloon, though you refer to yourself as a saloonkeeper. The rice paddies are not farmed by you, as you would suggest, but by the Curti Company, a dignified and prosperous business that has never been known to export cat excrement in the form of Modena mortadella. And as for those Swiss cows, who can tell?
Valerio Zurlini
P.S. I am sending this letter to your home address to spare you the embarrassment of blushing in front of your staff for the shameful way you have treated me.
Tuesday, March 16
Dear Professor,
Thank you for writing again and giving me the opportunity to confirm that my judgment of you was not erroneous. I do not think I owe you any reply, but I noted between your lines a host of inexactitudes misinformation that demand some correction on my part.
First: the dinner jackets that the tailor Giuliano made for Count Temistocle were regularly paid for by Lloyd’s of London, with whom we are insured. It is common knowledge (which seems to have escaped your notice), because the bell in the City of London that usually tolls news of shipwrecks rang out that day.
And another thing. Let me direct your attention to page 47 of the same edition of the Golden Book that you so pompously quote to remind me of your noble descent. There you will find that Cangrande della Scala was able to sate his unbridled thirst for conquest only thanks to loans from an obscure Veronese banker named Cipriani, who earned no honor from that, nor was he even repaid, for which reason he went bankrupt, and all of us Ciprianis are still suffering the consequences.
Some years later, my maternal grandfather, a Socialist switchman for the Italian state railway in the days before Craxi (responsible for switching the rapido trains at the Porta Vescovo station in Verona; and in forty years of service, he had only one train derailed with thirty-five injured), a grandfather from whom I inherited some social conscience as well as a troublesome prostate; and my paternal grandfather, a small manufacturer of toothpicks (he made them by hand, lined them up neatly in the band of his broad hat, and sold them outside restaurants) — as I was saying, some years later, one of these grandfathers conceived my mother and the other my father, and those two, together, brought me into this world, as they say, for the following reason, among others: to demand repayment from the noble houses of Italy of that debt incurred by the Veronese conqueror.
You see how it is, it is better not to mention things that are not common knowledge. In any event, you do not realize that I had taken a liking to you and tried to do everything possible to make you spend all the money you had, so that you could in time become a customer of the famous tavern where I intend to spend the last ten years of my business life. Keep your money, because you will never set foot in my tavern! The food will be very good in that tavern, and, what is more, the prices will be very low!
Unless you decide to write me not just an apology but an act of total submission, I see no future for you.
Yours truly,
Arrigo Cipriani
Thursday, March 23
Dear Cipriani,
What on earth has happened? I received two other letters together with yours, which I will discuss later. One is signed “Quite unlikely employees” and the other is from your cashier. Both letters describe you as a cruel-hearted person capable of anything. I cannot believe it!
True, there was a torturer named Cipriani at Bergen-Belsen (you know I have a weakness for history), but my investigations have shown this to be a false homonym. It was a certain Cipriansky, a Bohemian of Ruthenian descent, and he ended up before a firing squad at Mazara del Vallo after six hours commanding the famous Tartar SS battalion Azimov-Sokolimovsky.
Between us, and I ask you to keep this letter secret, I admit that what I am sure is totally unfounded anxiety on the part of the cashier may have been dictated by a passing and fragile bond (granted, a senile bond) fostered by her kindness when I had to pay the bill.
This bond — I swear by my honor that there was nothing the least bit felonious — never went beyond the platonic limit of glances, of one — I repeat, one — caress on the little finger of her left hand, and perhaps some slight clandestine discount. But the fact remains that women are impetuous and passionate creatures, and if they do not or cannot give themselves, they delete service and cover charges. I ask you not to take any action against her, and I declare my readiness to repay the slight differences.
Why submission? When did I ever offend you at all? I cannot think. Or did someone misuse my name or, why not, my letterhead? (Check the filigree: Fabriano thirteenth century, the most expensive paper on the market.)
But let us turn to your latest letter, which is incomprehensible and enigmatic, albeit as polite as ever.
I have nothing to say about Cangrande della Scala, who may have cheated on some gold coins, but such was the grand custom of the time. But with the speed of lightning (see above), I looked into the matter of your Cipriani grandfather, a pre-Craxi Socialist switchman.
In the matter of your paternal grandfather, let me inform you that he was known as an unrepentant brawling drunk; that the railway disaster of February 6, 1918, caused by an excess of delirium tremens resulted not in 35 injured but in 350 dead. (Ah, those zeros, if only you removed them from your bills as you do from your family’s black book!)
I go on at length just for the pleasure of rambling: that should give you some idea of how far I am from understanding the meaning of your missive. (Have you been sipping a bit of Cartizze, my dear Cipriani?)
You speak of long periods of scanty rations to consolidate the family fortune, but that was long, long ago, come now! Your present guests (I have never had the honor of being among the privileged few) report that dishes are served at your table that would be worthy of Stalin or the Sun King, such as fried lilies, magnolia profiteroles, virgin sweat soufflé, and gigot of Kenya rhinoceros.
As to your new tavern (surely Ye Taverne), you will have to agree that if it is a public place, no one can forbid me to enter.
I pay in cash or, at worst, with an expired American Express card or rubber checks, but what does that matter, since my signature is familiar and dear to you?
So why did I bother to answer you? There has been no correspondence between us, but it was my pleasure to have a chat with you without a trace of submission.
Your devoted,
Valerio Zurlini
Monday, March 27
Dear Mr. Zurlini,
Forgive me for taking so long to reply to your letter of March 10. What I am about to tell you is quite incredible. In truth I still do not understand. The tone of the two letters you wrote after your first one and the odd way you have behaved these past days — behavior that I simply cataloged as another one of the passing oddities of some of our customers — convinced me that something very serious must have happened.
I have your letter of March 10 before me, a sweet letter, so polite and full of kind words, however undeserved, about the quality of our place, as well as touching observations, dictated not by sentimentality but by true affection. It is witty and full of humorous banter and exquisite double meanings, and it ends with a polite and gentlemanly request for “special attention,” which I will be glad to offer you always, absolutely always. Then I look at your second letter (dated March 14), which is alarming from the outset. There is a change from “Dear Arrigo Cipriani” in the first letter to “Mr. Cipriani” in the second; and still more alarming, it speaks of the arrogant, malicious, and haughty reply I am accused of making to your first letter.
Please believe me, Mr. Zurlini, it is a bolt from the blue. How could you possibly fail to understand at once that you had received a forgery! What surprises me a bit is your immediate reaction, which was so hard and so malicious. It suggests, if you will forgive me for saying so, that your cordial sentiment is something more fragile than a calm and consolidated fondness. All I can do is register the fact, even imagining the most atrocious and nefarious response on your part, that your admiration crumbled at a few words of doubtful origin. All you needed to do was telephone!
And then there is the third letter. And here I ask you urgently to send me those apocryphal documents for my edification. You leap from talk about Bergen-Belsen to Azimov Cipriansky. There are only two possible explanations: either you suddenly went mad or you did not realize, and this is the simple truth, that the person who wrote to you was demented. I notice one little, almost insignificant confession that troubles me, namely your secret liaison with the cashier, a relationship that you call platonic. I do not see how you can use that term when your secret “union” involves sleight of hand and, if you will allow me, sleight of money — money that, failing evidence to the contrary, is mine.
Let that suffice. This time I shall deliver “my” letter by hand. I cannot beg your pardon for what I have not done or written. But I can tell you that I consider you one of the few rare “masters” I have had the good fortune to meet.
Yours,
Arrigo Cipriani