Wu Ming - 54

Once again he was a mature actor, nostalgic for himself, but even more nostalgic for other people, keen to be put to the test again, to demonstrate that the public, that boundless expanse of anonymous eyes, still wanted him.

Once again he was Archie Leach, a little boy receiving his first applause, and running to old Pender with a face that said, ‘I did it, you see? And they’re clapping for me!’

Archie needed that, it was his nature. Showing himself that he was still capable of getting excited, and of getting other people excited. Coming out of his shell and challenging the world to tell him to his face, if it was brave enough, that he no longer knew how to walk on his hands or throw skittles. He wanted to confront them with the grim countenance of a man who has conquered life at considerable expense, and doesn’t want to let it go.

Cary would follow him. For him, too, it was a question of narcissism.

Clusters of houses at the edge of the city emerged between the gaps in the clouds. The young pilot assigned to them told them they would be landing in a few minutes.

Cary fastened his belt and relaxed into his seat. He could concentrate on the years that had passed, without rancour. Clearly, the age of Cary Grant was coming to an end. Marlon Brando and James Dean were conquering eyes and hearts. Handsome and introverted, problematic, a little boastful and a little insecure. Cary knew that the old-style fascination of his generation of actors would make way for the new army of male stars, with their pose of tender-hearted rebels. But that meant nothing. He was still there, his shoulders weighed down with experience and grooming. He would never wear a singlet or a leather jacket, he still had something to teach. Yes, they still needed him. They needed the reassuring smile of a man holding a door open for a woman to let her into the bedroom. They needed the ready quip and the double entendre. The secure, relaxed expression, for every man who wanted to see himself mirrored in Cary Grant, and imagine that his fascination was perhaps not something out of reach. That ideal friend and lover, whom anyone would have been happy to meet in a train, reading a good book and willing to chat amiably about any topic under the sun.

He nodded to himself. He still wanted female conquests. He certainly wouldn’t have said that to Betsy. But when he had phoned Hitch to tell him he was there, and that he had been reassured by the fact that Grace Kelly was going to be his screen partner, he had realised that this was yet another challenge. Old Hitch knew how to tease him; he was better at it than anyone else. They had understood one another from the very first: Englishmen on American soil, in love with Hollywood, but capable of changing it, attached to the cinema, as one with the movies, and in some ways inseparable for almost fifteen years.

Grace Kelly was the most beautiful woman of the moment. With sex deep inside, not on the surface, as Hitch liked it. Sex had to be part of the mystery, not spoken, implicit in a look, in the right line in the script, in a detail. Sex was a subtle allusion somewhere between romanticism and irony. Something made to measure for Cary Grant.

Working with Hitchcock again was what it would take for him to start again. He was the only person capable of understanding his passion for details, capable of talking for hours about the level of liquid in a glass, and who could at the same time size him up with a glance.

The pilot leaned back from behind the curtain, displaying his best smile. ‘Mr Kaplan, we’re there. We’re about to land.’

That ludicrous pseudonym again. As though the pilots hadn’t recognised him. Military protocol was truly idiotic.

He started thinking once again about the fifty years of his life, and wondered how many active years he still had ahead of him. Five, ten?

He smiled at his reflection in the window.

What did it matter? He would play the game until he was breathless. Without overdoing it, without claiming to be able to keep up with the young guys, but also without being left in the shadows. He would walk rather than run, he would stroll down the same street with impeccable style, as he always did. People would have to wait with bated breath for the day when he said ‘enough’. He would leave them yearning for more, and how!

The plane came down quickly and landed with a slight bump that gave Cary a jolt to the stomach. Finally it stopped and its engines came to a standstill.

When the door of the military aircraft opened up on the bright daylight, Cary narrowed his eyes and hunched his shoulders. Then a smile known to millions of people settled on his lips. He put on his sunglasses, picked up his bag and walked towards the light.

The words echoed in his heart: ‘Hey, I’m back!’

Il Resto del Carlino, 19.4.1954

Easter Day in Rome

Condemnation of atomic weapons in Pontiff ’s message

Il Resto del Carlino, 26.4.1954

Communist pressure mounts in Dien Bien Phu

Giap’s proclamation to the Viet Minh troops: ‘The hour of victory has sounded’

Asian conference opens today in Geneva

Uncertain fate for Korea and Indochina

Il Resto del Carlino, 27.04.1954

The fate of Indochina dominates negotiations at the Geneva conference

Il Resto del Carlino, 28.04.1954

Tito’s intransigence obstructs a solution for Trieste

L’Unità, 29.4.1954

Exhumation of Wilma Montesi’s corpse

L’Unità, 3.5.1954

Asiatic Premiers call for peace in Indochina

Recognition of China and abolition of atomic weapons

L’Unità, 5.5.1954

Ho Chi Minh’s delegates come to Geneva to open negotiations for peace in Vietnam

Il Resto del Carlino, 5.5.1954

Dien Bien Phu falls after twenty-hour battle

home

Chapter 1

Naples, Agnano racetrack, 3 May

Life’s a pile of shit. So is death. Dying with your face in horseshit. I’m bricking it. What can I do what can I do what can I do? I start shouting, I’m bricking it, I implore St Anne who’s abandoned me, all the Madonnas I caused to weep and now they’re taking their revenge, I implore their forgiveness, yes, I’m pissing myself, forgive me forgive me forgive me Holy Mother and Steven Cement.

They’re going to hurt me, mamma mia why? They’re going to make me long for this shitty, icy cell. What can I do now that my luck’s run out, what did I do?

He just slapped me once and now I can’t hear out of my left ear, my eye hurts and my cheek stings like St Anthony’s fire. He’s tied me to this chair, he’s walking back and forth, an animal, snorting like the nearby horses, Jesus, he’s thinking about how to finish me off.

What lousy luck, what a bloody awful way to go! Salvatore Pagano known as Kociss, who hasn’t said a word, I swear on my mother’s life and all the saints, who knows what he’s been told, some grass or other, not a word, what did I know, it was that pig of a police commissioner Cinquegrana dumped me in it, he was the one, cursed be his children to the seventh generation! Those questions about Don Luciano, Cement, everyone will have heard them, he dumped right on me, the disgusting swine. But I never said a word! Everyone knows that Kociss doesn’t speak to guards or grasses or gravediggers.

I’d really like to tell Sister Titina, right now, because she always told me that I would live for a hundred years at least, because ‘Christ doesn’t want sad flesh’, isn’t that right, Sister Titina, so what do you say to this? Go and tell that to Steve Cement, or bring Jesus Christ down here, right now, Sister Titina, right now this minute.