Cinecittà

On the stove the water was boiling, the kettle was whistling. The typical sound of coffee when it is almost ready was dominating the silence of the apartment and the aroma was creeping in the rooms asleep, knocking into the dreaming minds to interrupt their vision.
As usual the mother had to wake up the kids by yelling, but it didn’t bother her, she always thought the more the kids slept the stronger they would get and the more energies they would have.
That day she prepared a lemon cake that was standing on the table waiting to be eaten. She cooked it especially for Maurizio, because she was sure it would be a lucky day, he was going to find a job. It was already a month and a half since he had finished his school and still he didn’t find anything. He was now a grown up and it was time for him to bring dough to the house. Again she started to yell, this time a bit exasperated, nobody still showed up. After a little while she saw the first face, it was Maria, her youngest daughter. “Go wash your face quickly or breakfast will get cold.” Then all the others came out from their dens, with faces swollen from the sleep and with their eyes not still completely open.
They all seated themselves around the table, three children, a young man and their mother. They were all silent looking first at each other and then down at their plates.
Their father wasn’t there, they didn’t hear from him since he went on a trip three weeks ago; after a while, when they sensed he wasn’t coming back at all, the subject never came up again due to their silent agreement. He was now dead as far as they were concerned.
The three younger kids were eating very fast because they risked to lose the only bus that would take them to school.
The mother started to speak to Maurizio about jobs. She hoped that he would get one in a bar or in a shop as a clerk. “Here in Rome it is easy to get tips thanks to all these tourists full of money. Usually their tips are even higher than the pay itself Maurizio.” She said. “Or what about working at an auto mechanic shop? You know that they always need help. Everybody has a car these days.” She smiled and hugged him.
He didn’t care. He wasn’t interested in getting a job at all. Even though his father wasn’t there and it would be more and more difficult for the family to continue paying bills and the help of their grandparents wasn’t going to last forever.
“Don’t worry mother, today I will go to the centre with Ettore and together we will ask around, alright? I am going to eat out so don’t prepare anything for me” he answered.
She nodded approving his idea of going from one place to the other simply asking everyone. But she reminded him that he should be careful not to get an offer mugged by his friend. He should stop being so nice to his friends!
“Yes, yes mother don’t worry”.
Very slowly he got up, he went to the bathroom to prepare himself. He put cologne on his face. Then he went back to his room to dress. It took him at least an hour to get out of the small apartment. But finally out he was. He went down the stairs and he heard the splash of the mops soaked in the buckets from the open doors of apartments. The women were now cleaning unanimously, with rhythmical strokes, now and then brushing back the hair that was in front of their foreheads. They were all dressed in dark clothes despite the heat outside. One after the other they raised their heads when Maurizio passed their apartments, they looked at him and said “Buon giorno”.
Everybody knew each other but above all everybody knew about each other.
Rome was a big city but it didn’t mean that nosy people didn’t exist; on the contrary in those blocks of buildings they were more curious then ever.
He was out of the house now and he went straight to the tabacchi to buy cigarettes, he knew that he would go to the centre in two hours or so, maybe when he was finished talking about soccer with his friends at the bar, with his small cup of coffee. Finally Attire arrived smiling and together they decided that it was time to go.
In the centre they just lazily asked around.
The owner of a bar suggested that it was dumb to disturb working people; they should rather buy a newspaper with all the jobs listed. Indeed they followed the suggestion, they bought a paper, but not a job listing paper, instead a tabloid so they could appreciate the pictures of famous female stars that were in Rome for that week. They were shooting Fellini’s new movie. Maurizio loved Fellini because he used good-looking actresses, the ones he thought about while being in bet.
It was a beautiful September day, with immense sky and with a deep sun.
The centre was a real concert thanks to the clicks of the tourist. They called Rome the eternal city probably because it was completely immortalized, Maurizio thought.
Then they went to villa Borghese looking for their other friends. They went up to via Gabriele D’Annunzio and then they were in front of one of Rome’s most beautiful panoramic views, the Cupola, piazza del Popolo and the entire white landscape of the monuments were in front of their eyes.
Their friends were waiting for them with their scooters running. The girls in the back seat were calling for Maurizio and Ettore.
One of them started to talk: “Hey Maurizio, I heard you father left you mother. I bet he is now fucking another woman, you know I would do the same thing keeping in mind your mother with those sagging breasts and her fat stomach”.
“Fuck you Stefano. Did you see your mother?! Actually you probably didn’t since you are in bed at night and when you get up in the morning she is sleeping because her job was hard. Actually not very hard for her considering her talent, hard was something else let’s hope. I bet that’s how your father met her!”
Everybody started to laugh. Then Stefano changed completely the subject while the girls were talking to Maurizio still giggling.
They wanted to go to that old lady in via Cavour who sold fruit and vegetables he said. It was Maurizio’s turn to rob the money, but he wasn’t in the mood to do it, he felt a little bit guilty thinking about his mother who was convinced that he was looking for a new job. But the pressure was greater.
Scooters rumbling with their acid shrill, after ten minutes they arrived at the shop. The group was waiting outside for him.
They looked inside the window where Maurizio was going to create a commotion. Ettore whispered in his friend’s hear that he shouldn’t do it if he was scared, but on the other hand this simply added to Maurizio’s will. They gave him a knife, Stefano then told him “to do it as fast as possible and don’t make a big mess.”
Maurizio started to walk toward the store with a whole in his stomach.
He went in, at the beginning just looking at the stuff the old lady had and then he yelled straight in her face: “Or your money or your life!”
He wasn’t thinking, his head was hot, his heart bumping fast the adrenalin through his whole body.
In an instant he heard laughter. He turned around and there was an old man with a big smile.
“ You little boys today play in a strange way. When I was young we would play with a ball and certainly not with old women like this one here. We thought that old women were boring. I guess you don’t think the same way. But if you aren’t playing and you are doing it seriously well then I think you are quite stupid. With a knife? Don’t you know that almost every store, even this old woman’s, has a gun in their cash register? Do you want to get killed or what?”
Then looking toward the old woman he asked her: “Iole leave him to me, ok? Don’t call the police please, do it as a favor to me”.
The old woman nodded she was an old friend of his.
In the meantime outside the boys saw this scene, then they heard: “We’ve got him, now we will call the police”. They left. They turned on their scooters and flew away.
Then the man turned back and he noticed Maurizio’s terrorized eyes. He started asking him with a grin: “How old are you?” He learned the boy was 18. “Oh then you are already able to vote. What were they thinking when they legalized the vote at 18 years old!? My god they should put into prison those fucking politicians.” Then he asked the boy if he wanted to take a ride with him. They would go where he was working, to Cinecittà. He assumed that he looked like a boy needing a job.
They were driving fast in the new flaming cinquecento, passing the policemen who were giving road orders to millions and millions of people who trying to get into the city in order to do something. All together they seemed an octopus to Maurizio, a never sleeping octopus, always with the same number of enormous tentacles that released a disturbing force. The octopus was nameless, was anonymous and it crystallized Rome since years and years, always with the same noise.
Now they were running along the Tevere; the sun was playing with the tree leaves, mixing its shining rays with the shadows of the leaves causing a fascinating late summer light. Yet Maurizio never noticed these vanities of the city, he just saw the dirt.
The man then opened his small window. A fresh breeze flowed in the car bringing about the salty gold scent of the Dolce vita. The perfume of Rome always gave a sensation of continual holiday.
Maurizio wondered where they were going, he was scared of the man, he knew that something was going to happen but at least he wanted to be paid for it, like so many other times it happened with men that were working in Cinecittà. “They promise gold and honey but the only thing they’ve got is a little bit of money and a lot of stink,” he thought.
Then he complained: “When are we going to do it? I have to be home at a certain hour and I want to do many other things in the meantime.”
The man understood and again he laughed. “Look I dint even ask your name. It doesn’t even matter actually, with this attitude you would give me a fake one. I know you people are scared to dishonor the name of your family, maybe I’ll ask you when you trust me more.”
“Anyway I don’t want sex,” he continued “I have a wife and even though she isn’t the best woman in bed...”
The man looked at the boy to see if he had loosened up a bit. On the contrary, the boy just thought the joke was dull and sad for a married man. Strangely enough Maurizio had some bourgeois values inculcated by his mother, other than that he didn’t have much.
“I work in Cinecittà” the man repeated “and I do movies”. “Do you like movies?”
Maurizio looked the other way, not being interested anymore in what the man had to say, since clearly he wasn’t going to receive any sort of money.
“Well I’ll get to the point, boy. I need an assistant and since I saw you were giving problems I thought you would be perfect on my set.”
The boy was surprised by his proposal, but ignored it and simply answered his question; “ I like the movies that have nice babes, but only those ones. I love to look at boobs that juggle, like in those American musicals where the women, and their breasts, dance, dance and dance. Alas the Americane! Here the women are just good to stay in the kitchen, cooking and churning out babies”
The man laughed and agreed and then said: “Not bad for a start, I like your taste!”
“But there is much more.
They say cinema is the seventh art, an art that include all the others. But people don’t realize that the result is completely different, different for example from the one of theater, even from the great tragedies of the ancient Greek. Cinema is not just an adding, it is real alchemy!
The Greeks wanted a universal euphoria among its people, they craved to become an only thing together, to get lost in the multitude. That is why the theater was compulsory to the entire population, from the free men to the slaves, from the poor to the rich. By all means the state paid who didn’t have the money to go there, so for three days, the Dionysus’s days, everybody had to assist at the plays after which they weren’t anymore able to distinguish reality from invention, because of the thin border between the two. The viewers were mesmerized. They were at the same time in the play, singing in the chorus, losing their reason, leaving all the logical means behind. Every one of them felt like a raindrop in the rain.
Cinema also speaks with a universal language to everyone, but the viewer is detached, he is in a dark room away from the world, silent, thinking. Cinema is also religious, but a silent religion, an own private one. All this is thanks to the syntax of cinema, the montage of the scenes, of the photos, therefore the juxtaposition of emotions. Every viewer senses something completely different from another, and that is the secret. It’s an art in which you cal be lyrical or epical, you just have to decide it yourself. It is you and the art. It is the art of the individual par exellance!
Cinema donates you a new condition for at least two hours, a new personal atmosphere thanks to which you can escape reality and be newly inspired”.
The man was fervent, intense and passionate when he said this, and created a whole thinking process in Maurizio’s mind.
The boy could just understand part of the speech, but at the same time he felt full, he felt energy. He, himself, was going to experience what cinema was, what something was if that is the case, since he never had passions in his life and this was the first time he caught it in another man. The man had opened an entire new universe in front of his eyes, not for cinema per se, rather for the vision of a new life.
Meanwhile the man was so immersed deeply in his speech that he didn’t realize he was going 100 miles per hour. He didn’t realize both that he was in the wrong lane and a car was coming at them. He regained consciousness, he tried to swerve, but it was late.
Not very far from the side of the road a farmer hear a terrible noise, a crash, he turned around and he saw two destroyed cars.
Maurizio looked at the director, his face completely red, then he stared outside with blank eyes and he saw the golden cupola of a church reflecting the sun.
At home the mother was preparing the dough for the fresh pasta. She looked down, pored some water in the flour and then decided to take off her wedding ring.