Cooking With Fernet Branca (6 page)

Next day I clear a space on the kitchen table (I can’t quite get used to doing my own washing up. It feels far stranger than preparing one’s own food. I wish dear Mili were here) and lay out my new 16-stave score paper. Also lots of different coloured pens. My task is to renounce my songs temporarily and concentrate on this film score. I realize this is premature since I still know nothing about exactly what Pacini wants. But I’m determined at least to get down the germs of what I began to hear yesterday while crunching through those empty cement rooms at Pisorno Studios. Get it down, that’s the thing, otherwise it goes. Anyway, Pacini’s sure to need some atmospheric passages. What I have to do is invent the film’s characteristic
sound.
I want to do what Ennio Morricone did for Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. One can’t even see Clint Eastwood’s face without hearing a single bell in the orchestra, that portentous funereal sound as from a sunblasted and crumbling Mexican church. And as for whistling …

I’m thinking vaguely of tangos (very white-telephone, those!) and am beginning to put notes on paper when my neighbour sets up his dreadful howling. True, the sound is muffled by distance – our houses are quite fifty metres apart and screened by trees – but his voice has a plangent, intrusive quality. It insists on being heard. I suppose it doesn’t help that it’s almost July and all his doors and windows are open,
as are mine. I’m about to reach for the phone and speak my mind to that silky little house agent when I suddenly realize that what I’m hearing is
the
sound for the film. Always, somewhere in the distance, some
dudi
massacring Italian opera, or else making it up as he goes along. It’s incompetent, unconscious, egotistical, yearning. Perfect ironic backing for the idealism of a failing Green commune in Italy. There’s one particular florid phrase Gerry keeps repeating that somehow manages to encapsulate the essential saccharine vapidity of Puccini without being identifiably by anyone. I can’t make out the words but the rhythm uncannily suggests the phrase ‘Telecom Italia’. Maybe I’m too influenced by the frustrations of phoning home recently. Come to that, maybe Gerry is too influenced by being able to stand on his terrace (next to that object which in Voynovia would be a peasant’s privy) and see, far away down the coast, the very lake beside which Puccini once lived. Oh dear, I wish I were fonder of Italian opera. My favourite of all Verdi’s works is his string quartet. I know that’s perverse. I
know.

In any case the florid phrase goes well with some wry tango rhythms behind it and I’m getting on like a house on fire (as we Voyde picturesquely say) when there is a knock at the open door and Gerry is outlined against the brightness.

‘Not disturbing, I hope, am I?’ he asks, advancing and peering. I realize he probably can’t see much after the sunlight outside, and of course his eyes won’t be adjusting as readily as they would have even ten years ago. ‘Thought I’d drop by with a little something … Ooh! You’re busy,’ for he can now make out the MS paper on the table. ‘I say, that looks awfully … Your songs, I suppose? Anyway, seeing as how you’re so fond of this stuff I just thought I’d run across and drop you off a bott.’

It is, of course, Fernet Branca he has brought. Bemused by this sudden intrusion, I gaze dumbly at its yellowish label with the picture of an eagle clutching a bottle in its claws while teetering atop a blue globe.

‘I know just how you feel,’ he goes on sympathetically. ‘Sort of edging towards lunch-time and wondering whether a little snorterino mightn’t hit the spot.’

I don’t believe I shall ever master English. I’m still trying to work out his meaning while dragging myself back from an inner soundscape. Obviously I’m too slow for he takes the initiative, finding a couple of glasses by the sink and pouring slugs of liquor that would gag a Bunki huntsman. ‘There,’ he says, downing his at a draught with only the smallest shudder. ‘Grows on you, this stuff, don’t you think? Anyway, I didn’t want to disturb you.’

‘But you have, all the same.’

‘I’m afraid I couldn’t resist a discreet celebration. Fact is, I’ve just heard that my new book is going down uncommonly well with the publishers. Even its anti-hero, the appalling Mr Snoilsson, apparently thinks it’s “ace”. They foolishly sent him a copy of the typescript but it turns out he can read after all. It’s going to be previewed simply everywhere, as far as I can gather. International paperback rights about to be snapped up like hot – Good God! How could I have forgotten? Got a cake in the oven. Be right back.’

Now that I can see him from the inside out, as it were, instead of as a black blob outlined against the glare, I notice as he trots away that he’s wearing a horizontally-striped matelot T-shirt, white shorts that beautifully emphasize the bum he doesn’t have, with a pair of those Deckers or Dockers or Dickers on his sockless feet. I reach resignedly for my glass. If there’s anything more enraging than having one’s work interrupted by news of how well a neighbour’s work is going, I can’t offhand think what it might be. Who
is
this importunate fellow, anyway? No doubt it will be painful but it’s high time to bring this burgeoning mateyness to a halt. Very likely he’s quite sweet really but he more and more strikes me as one of those lonely bachelors who, before you know it, start dropping in for a cup of sugar or rice on a regular basis and then stay until you can’t avoid inviting them for lunch, and there’s
another day’s work down the drain. Just like poor Pavel at Moscow Conservatory. Another
dudi,
of course. Why do I attract them, dammit? But here he is, back again.

‘Saved by the bell,’ he announces, fanning himself with one hand. ‘Phew – just in time. Another minute and that skewer would have been emerging cleanly from a cinder. Ooh, our glasses are empty, look. Can’t have that on a torrid summer’s day in Toscana.’ The sound of much Fernet fills the room. ‘By and by, when it’s cooled, I’ll bring it over and we can have a naughty tea. Terribly decadent, cake and fizz in the afternoon, don’t you think? Sorry to be babbling but I can’t tell you what a relief it is when people approve of what you’ve done. Books are hellish. You can spend a year fiddling away and then at the end they say you struck the wrong note, meaning that in their view you’ve wasted twelve months of your life. Really, I envy you, Marta. At least you can dash off one of your little songs and if it turns out a dud, well, that’s only an hour or two down the drain, chalk it up to experience sort of thing. Whereas a
biography
…’

Here Gerald downs another glass of Fernet with a man-of-the-world gesture. ‘Trouble is, I simply can’t make up my mind what to do next. My editor and my agent just want more of the same, of course. But I’m fed up with these sports personalities. Can you believe they’re now trying to team me up with some zonked-out South American footballer with a paunch and a cocaine habit? I suppose since he’s older he might be marginally more interesting. I’ll tell you a secret: I feel like branching out. I’m sick of people setting themselves challenges and bursting through pain barriers. I want a subject worthy of my talents.’

‘Someone like Luciano Pavarotti?’ I ask mischievously. ‘Your voice is remarkably similar.’

‘You’re joking, of course,’ he says unconvincingly. ‘Besides, Marta, he’s been done already. Dozens of times, probably. No, I was thinking more of a film director. Take Piero Pacini, for example. All those wonderful decadent films.
Nero’s
Birthday 
–
 
I mean, anyone who could dream up some of the scenes in that film gets my vote. And did you see
Mille
Piselli
? I shouldn’t mind investigating an imagination like that, would you?’

I am momentarily speechless with horror. What atrocious piece of fate is this? How can this absurd creature be encroaching on my life in this way?

‘No!’ I hear myself say firmly. ‘Really not, Gerry. I don’t think this Pacini fellow is you at all. I don’t know you that well, of course, and it’s certainly none of my business, but I’d say it’s obvious that your talents lie more in the musical field. Not necessarily with a singer, though. Perhaps a conductor or an instrumentalist? Someone like Pavel Taneyev, maybe. Have you heard of him?’

He looks at me pityingly. ‘Of course I have, Marta. Everyone’s heard of Pavel Taneyev. He’s world-famous. Won the Tchaikovsky Prize.’

‘Well, he’s had a most interesting life. His father was an aircraft designer for the Soviet air force who always kept a suitcase packed and ready in the house in case he was suddenly sent to the Gulag. If one of his aircraft crashed during testing and he had previously signed it out as airworthy he knew he should go straight home, collect the suitcase and present himself. No excuses, especially if the pilot was killed. That was the precariousness of the family in which Pavel grew up. He scarcely ever saw his father. He was always in the Gulag.’

‘His planes kept crashing?’

‘Like shot pheasants. But it was never his fault. Always some jealous engineer had made an alteration.’

‘Goodness, how melodramatic. How do you know this?’

‘Pavel told me himself.’

‘You mean you’ve actually met Pavel Taneyev?’

‘We were at Moscow Conservatory together.’

‘Moscow? But I thought you were from Volodiya or somewhere.’

‘Voynovia,’ I say with weary patience for this buffoon. ‘But in those days Voynograd Academy of Music, though excellent,
taught very little composition. So I went on to Moscow. I haven’t seen Pavel for several years but we were quite close once.’

‘Quite close, eh?’ and I swear this idiot tries a leer, although it may be that he is losing control of his facial muscles as people do with three-quarters of a bottle of Fernet Branca inside them.

‘Quite close. And now, Gerry, if you will excuse me, I simply must do a bit more work. My little songs, you know.’

‘Oh yes, of course. Frightfully sorry, taking up your time with my problems. But it’s been nice chatting to you, I must say. Pavel Taneyev? Yes, I can see distinct possibilities. Wonderful pianist, exotic – not to say dramatic – background. Er, wife and family? Would they be tricky to work with, do you think?’

‘No wife, Gerry,’ I say, looking him straight in the eye. ‘Pavel’s not married, you can be quite confident of that. You’ll have no problems there. You may even have much in common.’

‘I see. H’m.
I
see.
Something to think about, all right. Thanks for the drink. Must be getting back.’

And off he goes again through the trees, lurching a bit. Well, Pavel dear, I think grimly as I pick up my pen again, sorry to throw you to the wolves like that. But you’re a big boy now and you can easily refuse the Geralds of this world. And if you can’t, then it just serves you right for spending so much time crying on my shoulder back in Sverdlovskaya Street. The main point is, I will do anything to ensure that Gerry forgets all about Piero Pacini.

Thanks to working through lunchtime, pausing only for a cup of strong coffee to counteract that involuntary glass of Fernet, I manage to get most of my Pisorno Studios ideas down in short score. If I fall under a bus tomorrow nobody will be able to decipher my squiggles, no doubt, but then it
will no longer matter. A blessed silence has fallen from the direction of Gerry’s house and I imagine him sprawled across a double bed poleaxed by drink: eyes shut, mouth open and the matelot shirt plastered with sweat to his unmuscular chest. There is a certain pathos about this neighbour of mine but I refuse to dwell on it.

In mid-afternoon, not thirty seconds after I have put a double bar-line at the end of my sketch, Piero Pacini himself rings from Rome, newly returned from America. Filippo has told him that the proposed set meets with my approval and he hopes this is true. They are due to start shooting there in six weeks’ time and am I feeling inspired? I tell him that not only am I feeling inspired but I have already written something that I hope captures the place’s sinister, derelict atmosphere. Piero is – or affects to be – ecstatic and promises to despatch by courier a copy of the script as it stands so far with the music requirements marked and roughly timed. I ought to get it tomorrow and should begin to think in terms of an overall leitmotif, the same technique I used so effectively in
Vauli
Mitronovsk.

‘But I don’t have to tell
you,
Marta darling,’ he says. ‘You know I can’t bear those scores that make films sound like an American TV series. Those style-less bridge passages to stuff up the cracks between the scenes are anguish to me. My films never subordinate the aural to the visual. Now, when can I hear what you’ve written?’

‘Well,’ I say, a little flustered, ‘I’ve only sketched out some pages to establish the film’s characteristic sound. It’s just in short score at present.’

‘Fine. Send me the disc.’

‘I’m sorry …? Er, disc? It’s written on paper – you know, music manuscript. Score paper?’

‘You mean you write in
ink
?’

‘It’s the only way I know,’ I say stiffly, managing to stop myself adding that it was a method that had served both Beethoven and Stravinsky quite well. ‘What did you think?’

‘Oh my,’ says Pacini. ‘I naturally assumed you work on a
keyboard with a computer. I thought everyone did these days. You play something, it automatically notates it, and then you fiddle around with the instrumentation until you get the sounds you want. Then you put it on a disc and send it off.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve never used a system like that,’ I tell him, feeling a hick. ‘I just do it the old-fashioned way. I know the sounds I want and write them like that from the start. I don’t need to “fiddle around”.’

‘Of course you must stick to the method you know,’ says Pacini encouragingly, managing to imply that I pluck my quill pens from the nearest goose, ‘although it’s inconvenient if I can’t hear it immediately. I like to shoot with the music ready. I am not like other directors,’ he adds disdainfully, ‘who shoot a film and then bolt some music onto it. For me the aural and the visual are concurrent and influence each other at the moment the film is made.’

Clearly he has used these words hundreds of times in as many interviews. All of a sudden I’m conscious of standing in a centuries-old kitchen filled with my own private disorder, an ex-Soviet-bloc composer who was trained in a traditional way in threadbare circumstances. I feel shame at being so far behind the times. I even begin to panic lest the great Piero Pacini loses faith in me as too untechnological to work with.

‘I’m sure I could learn,’ I offer gamely.

‘Of course you could. I may courier a system up to you with the script. I’ll get my people onto it. Now I must leave you. Even this late we’re still having casting difficulties with one of the minor roles, can you imagine that?’

He rings off, leaving me obscurely chastened like a student who has unaccountably disappointed her favourite teacher. Still, I tell myself, he’s not going to change his composer at this stage, not the way the great Pacini works, not unless he reschedules the shoot and everything. And besides, my music is going to
make
his film … But now I’ve caught a little of his fretfulness and am anxious he should hear what I’m doing as soon as possible to give us both confidence. Maybe
after all I need to become computer literate. How horrid! Surely these electronic crutches are for people who don’t know what they’re about, for amateurs and the musically illiterate? They are not for proper composers who have been brought up to be able to sit in a corner like Mozart or any other professional, scribbling down the full score of the overture even as the dress rehearsal is proceeding onstage.

At that moment, right on cue, Gerry starts up again in the distance. Not so much
nessun
dorma
as
nessun
lavora,
frankly. He is repeating the same florid little passage I was notating earlier. Because his voice sounds louder I resignedly go to the door to see if I am about to be honoured with yet another visit. It seems not, however. I catch glimpses of him between the trees in full DIY mode carrying a hefty-looking crowbar. He is wearing boots and one of those thick belts that telephone linesmen wear from which dangle various steel implements. He also has on a yellow hard hat to complete the picture of construction-site chic. He neither looks nor sounds like someone who only a few hours ago drank three-quarters of a bottle rated at forty-five per cent alcohol, which is the same as the
grappa
on my mantelpiece. This is evidently the butch Gerry, the effect spoiled only by the high tenor singing which sounds like a pinched puppy. The words seem to approach the edge of decipherability but stop short, reaching my ears as a most unlikely entreaty for a despairing lover: ‘Vedi, vedi, vedi il fondo del barattolo!’
See
the
base
of
the
container
? Whatever else he set, Puccini never set those words.

But where can this jaunty workman be headed? I lose sight of him but can still track him by an upward scale ending on a high F sharp. Then there is an ominous creaking, topped by a wailing E flat in alt to which Maria Callas herself could only vainly have aspired. This fades and is followed by a far-off sound like that a wooden Potemkin suburb makes when enthusiastically flattened by many pairs of feet. Then silence. Intrigued despite myself, I hurry over.