Dearest Marja
Many thanks for your amusing letter. Father doesn’t change, does he? Talk about Mt Sluszic! Your story of the policemen reminds me of that night we were sent to bed early & Mili was ordered to close our shutters, remember? Heavy engines, a burst of shooting & that horrid screaming. Then next morning a landscape innocent as dawn. The estate clean as a pin, not a tyre mark anywhere, looking as though nothing had changed for 200 years. The only way you could tell something had happened was by Father’s black rage that they should have behaved like that on our ancestral property. Well, by all accounts they paid for it later in Marseilles & Trieste, although I definitely do not wish to know the details.
But darling Marja, for heaven’s sake don’t imagine that just because I’ve gone away for a bit & am trying to make my own life I’m forgetting my own sister or else repudiating the family. You’re constantly in my thoughts, my love, especially now Father’s sounding so heavy handed about you & Timi. We’ve known Timi since we were all kids. Remember what the huntsmen say about wild piglets not growing up into stags? Once a boar, always a boar. Yes, we know his attractions – God knows he showed us them often enough up at Bolk – but we’ve grown up since then & your feelings about him tally exactly with mine, I assure you. Go along with Father’s plan & marry the man & you’ll be waking up with a snout & bristles on the pillow beside you. You worry me when you say you think Father’s holding you hostage there against my return. Surely not? I’m certain his reason for not wanting you to go abroad yet is partly because you’re so young (by his old-fashioned standards, I mean. In some ways 22 is young… although it’s sure as hell old enough not to get hitched to Timi). This new boy you met in Voynograd, Mekmek, sounds fun. Let’s see how things go in the next few weeks. Maybe with our baby brother’s help we can smuggle you out of purdah, assuming Ljuka hasn’t lost his independence too. He’s becoming awfully like Father in some ways.
Things are moving along excitingly here. A few days ago I had a call from the boy racer, Filippo Pacini, to say he wanted to come up & see me. An hour later with a sudden roaring there was his exotic car with him at the wheel & … his father climbing out! The great Piero Pacini himself had come to see how his little Voyde composer was getting on. We drank iced slivovitz in the kitchen while he reminisced at length about cutting his filmic teeth on location in Spain with Sergio Leone in the sixties. I hadn’t realized what shoestring budgets those first spaghetti westerns were made on. Peanuts, really. Pacini was very lowly then, of course, just starting out, but working on A Fistful of Dollars was a pretty good way to learn the trade because everything was improvised & you might find yourself having to play an extra in the morning & in the afternoon looking for a suitable tree in the desert from which to hang someone. Pacini periodically broke off to pay me small compliments with that Italian male gallantry that to us often looks a bit smarmy but in his case really isn’t. They’d brought me all sorts of little gifts including, curiously enough, a bottle of Fernet Branca & kilos of the most fabulous florentines that must have cost – but what the hell does it matter what they cost? I’m now moving in circles where people fly to New York for a haircut & drive De Tomaso Panteras.
‘I love the way you live, Marta,’ Piero said loyally, looking around at the cobwebs & laundry (well, I’m not about to clean the house & mend my sluttish ways just because a world-famous film director might drop in). ‘I really like it that you foreigners come here & rescue our old houses by leaving them as they are. Well, sometimes you do. But an Italian would have ripped out everything & put in marble bathrooms with gold taps. That’s the way we are. Bella figura. But this is exactly how I remember my grandparents’ house. They were just peasants, you know. I love it: the same smell, the shallow sink hacked out of a block of stone, that rough old chest to keep the bread in. And I notice you’ve kept the original stone roof too. Almost nobody these days knows how to repair them so they get replaced with conventional tiles. And – you must excuse a film director talking – dare I guess at one of those old iron matrimoniale bedsteads upstairs with a painted tin headboard probably figuring the Virgin?’
He was so enthusiastic – how could I have not led the way upstairs to show them my delightfully natural unmade bed strewn with the usual books & hairbrushes & knickers which has exactly the tin headboard he meant except mine has hearts & roses all over it, which I suppose stand in for the Virgin iconographically.
‘Perfect,’ he said as we all trooped downstairs again. ‘It would cost a fortune to build a set as faithful as this. Faithful to the old Italy, I mean. It’s hard these days to find a casa colonica up here in the north that isn’t a shell or hasn’t been tarted up. The first thing they always do is enlarge the windows because peasants didn’t need a view or fresh air. They were out working in those all day. Nor did they read at night, so interior gloom was traded for making the place warmer in winter. What I’m wondering is whether we mightn’t write in a scene set in this house – with your permission, of course. It’s a crime to waste the place & it would certainly contrast well with the ghosts of all those telefoni bianchi … Perfect for the scene with Franco the fisherman and his wife. Make a note of that would you, Filo?’
We talked in that mixture of English & Italian I’m beginning to get the hang of – those lessons in Voynograd with Signora Santoliquido were really useful. Then Pacini asked me to play what music I’d written so far for the film, which was mostly the atmospheric stuff inspired by my visit to Pisorno Studios. So I obliged on the piano & I must say he was very flattering, said it was absolutely right for what he’d got in mind, & could I think about inventing a suitable ‘sound’for each of the main characters? It’s the Peter & the Wolf approach to film scoring. Apparently Italian directors of his generation are famous for doing everything post-production. They shoot a zillion metres of film & then spend months in editing suites & dubbing sessions because they don’t like doing voices live. That’s when the music usually gets written, to fit the cuts. But Pacini’s different. He’s like Leone: he likes to get the music written upfront & recorded so he can play it while they’re shooting to establish the mood of each scene for the actors. I think it’s a brilliant approach & I wish Vasily had done that with Vauli M. & made an even better film.
Now I’ve got a script to work from & Pacini has sent all sorts of computer gear to help me record it as soon as I write it & send it off to him for his reaction. I told him I couldn’t understand the equipment so he’s promised to send me a tame geek or nerd to teach me. I can’t remember if I’ve already told you that Gerry, my dudi neighbour, has unwittingly provided me with one of the film’s defining sounds? He compulsively – & repulsively – sings as he works – sort of pastichey, bogus, all-purpose sub-Rossini ramblings with a characteristic yodelling effect that is absolutely perfect for my score. Pretentious, vapid & amateurishly earnest. Piero said it was a brilliant inspiration. Unfortunately I couldn’t tell him I’d stolen it from the Englishman next door: I want to keep Gerry very much at arm’s length & certainly well away from Pacini. I just know he’s one of those showbiz groupies who, once he gets wind of what I’m working on, will never leave me alone for a minute. Just let him learn that Piero Pacini has dropped by & he’ll be over here every other hour trying to borrow a cup of Fernet Branca (his preferred tipple) or else bringing me some inedible example of British cuisine. Story follows, incidentally, after I’ve had a shower & a break.
But to round off, the Pacinis stayed late & were excellent company. As I said, Filippo may be a bit figlio di papà but he’s growing on me. He’s certainly a very handsome creature even if the dash he cuts in that ludicrous car is over the top. He really does look like a celebrated film director’s spoiled brat, but there’s more to him than that, I think. He has nice manners & pretty ears. He & Dad roared off together in the small hours leaving a strange silence behind them in the house, although less so outside. Long after they’d gone I could hear that burping snarly noise Filippo likes to make on the corners dying away further & further below. I bet they woke everyone in Casoli as they passed through.
Later
I now smell of rosemary, having used that shower gel you gave me. It made me all nostalgic. I really do miss you & am determined you shall come here as soon as possible.
Apart from anything else you would get a big laugh from Gerry, who nearly came to grief terminally the other day. It was lucky for him I happened to catch sight of him in ‘off to work’ mode, yodelling away in the campest outfit you ever saw: yellow construction worker’s hat, thick leather toolbelt holding up his shorts & toting a crowbar he could barely lift. He could have strolled unnoticed onto the set of any gay porno movie. I happened to know he also had most of a bottle of Fernet Branca inside him. So there he is in the distance warbling & striding off to work like Disney’s eighth dwarf – call him Doody, what else? – & he disappears around the corner of his house. Stage wait. Then a wail like Callas being goosed followed by a distant crash. Well, you know me: we’re none of us exactly neighbourly by instinct but I can’t resist a laugh, so I grabbed a bottle of medicinal brandy & hurried over. At first I couldn’t see anyone but then I made out his yellow hat. He was lying right down below on an overgrown terrace in a heap of mouldy planking. He looked quite dead, actually, & I wasn’t too keen to go down, but then I saw him twitching so felt obliged. When I got there he had his hat over his face & seemed to be knocked out but when I removed the hat he came to. I knew he’d be all right then because the first thing he did was blaspheme quite inventively (I think) & reach for the bottle I’d brought – not good Voynovian slivovitz, I’m afraid, but more to his taste.
Eventually I got him back up to his house & into bed. Remind me to tell you some day about this house of his. For the moment it’s enough to say that I glimpsed a teddy bear wearing a blue waistcoat sitting on the cistern in the downstairs lavatory. That will tell you all you need to know. The next morning I called around with home-made kasha to aid recovery. You can’t say I shan’t be going to heaven. He was a bit stiff but there was nothing wrong with his appetite. He said he’d been demolishing an old lavatory that had collapsed with him inside it. ‘Of course, Gerry,’ I said soothingly. A likely tale. You don’t wear a tool belt to knock down a flimsy old hut. No, I think he was going to mess about with the fussy little balustrade he’s put up along the edge of his terrace, lost his footing in his alcoholic stupor, crashed down onto the hut & took the whole lot with him to the bottom. He’s lucky to be alive. One of his eyes was slightly black & he looked so pathetic sitting there woozily eating kasha like an obedient small boy in a nursery I suddenly couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Stranded up here in mid-life, blundering around in DIY outfits in a daze of alcohol while singing fake arias, I mean excuse me. He really is none of my business and quite awful. As a matter of fact his singing was so obtrusive the other day my lineage asserted itself & I wrote that little rodent Benedetti a good strong letter. I told him bluntly he had shamelessly lied & that the neighbour who was ‘only ever here one month of the year’ was in fact a permanent & highly irritating fixture. Still, after Gerry’s accident I’ve repented somewhat & now feel sorry I sent the letter. I think Gerry is disturbed in some way. Perhaps it’s this that manages to press a maternal button deeply hidden inside me. But it’s a very small button & only connected to some extremely basic circuitry.
On that note I shall stop. Keep me in touch, Mari darling. I want to know about Timi & how you’re going to induce Father to let you come here soonest.
Heaps of love
Marta