One of the guests, jumping out of the dragon’s way, asked in a loud voice: ‘When is Picasso coming?’
‘Relax! He’ll be here any moment.’
A siren was heard and a door was flung open: from the far end of the hall, a policeman on his motor-bicycle made his entrance and asked for silence: ‘What is this madhouse? Have we all gone off our heads? Do you have permission for this show? Who is the director, the producer? Can you tell me what you’re doing here?’
‘We’re waiting for Pablo Picasso.’
‘Pablo’s coming here?’ whinnied the motorcycle policeman. He let out a scream, revved up his bike, then sped off at top speed, nearly knocking over the dancing girls, who leapt into the arms of the firemen-clowns.
* * *
The orchestra was getting more and more frenzied. Five painters and decorators entered and made out that they were there to get on with the work. I was one of these clown-painters. We dragged in an enormous canvas, the kind used to throw over furniture to protect it from dripping paint, and forced the audience to file under it. Two elderly ladies asked loudly: ‘But when is Picasso due?’
‘He’s coming, he’s coming.’
Meantime, the decorators had taken to throwing buckets at each other, soaking themselves with lashings of paint (of course, it was the usual coloured soap). A large part of the audience now got the joke and joined in: many girls grabbed hold of the canvas covering and started shaking it about. No one paid any heed to the splashes of the painted soap any longer, apart from some ladies who lamented: ‘Oh no! That’s enough of this paint. When’s Picasso going to arrive?’
‘He’s coming, he’s coming.’
The orchestra struck up a triumphal march, the trumpets blared out a thunderous entrance tune worthy of a circus, and fireworks went off.
‘Right, Picasso’s finally arrived!’
And there he was. Through the smoke and bangs, the profile of Otello, still in his white trench coat, could be made out.
Applause.
‘It really is him!’
Otello was about to speak: ‘Mes amis, je suis ravi d’être ici…’
One of the firemen-clowns was holding on to a large water pipe, which split apart. Disaster! A jet of water of apocalyptic proportions poured down on us. We were all soaked.
Picasso yelled out: Ah no, fuck it!’
Rush for the exits … some oaths, but much laughter. A splendid, very wet lady, who seemed to be emerging from the waves after a shipwreck, appeared contented enough but was heard to make the comment: ‘I’ll remember this occasion as long as I live. But was that really Picasso?’
CHAPTER 27. In Paris
Each one of us in the Brera dreamed of making his own journey to Paris, the capital of modern art. Paris was for us what the Holy Land had been for Christians in the Middle Ages. It was the Mecca of every apprentice artist, painter, writer or poet. I, too, dreamed of making that journey, and it was ironic how it happened. It all began with a commission which was, to put it mildly, unusual, not least in the workplace itself: the Monumental Cemetery in Milan. The job was to do a fresco on the inner and outer walls of a grave … yes, a grave, a tomb of imposing aspect. An architect friend had designed and built a chapel with octagonal base, copper dome and red porphyry columns, a kind of mausoleum for the members of a wealthy family from the Brianza … Brustello or Brustelli, I can’t quite remember. The patrons were very pleased with their final residence, but they found the inside too bare: it was all white, a bit too sepulchral. ‘I’m for something a bit more cheerful!’ the most likely first guest of the mausoleum, the octogenarian pater familias, had insisted.
And so we, the band of the ‘Painting of Cheerful Death with mosaic tesserae’, were brought in. In a few weeks, we prepared the sketches for the fresco which was to take in all seven walls (the eighth was the entrance). The tombs themselves were to be under the floor. We took our inspiration from the mosaics of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, with its tracery of stylised vine shoots and labyrinths of geometrical shapes twined round each other. The dome was to be painted in light blue with a scattering of cirri and wispy clouds.
I have to be truthfuclass="underline" it got you down to be living for almost a month among graves. Above all, just as you were beginning to get engrossed in the work, you would hear outside chants and litanies from priests, clerics and nuns processing with that day’s newly deceased. Since we were behind with the commission, we had to work late into the evening. When the custodian came along to get us out, it was already night. Walking back through votive lamps by the hundred, rows of praying angels, distraught female figures, male and female saints with outstretched arms induced us, as Italian superstition requires, to cheerfully touch the bobbly, decorative parts of the male reproductive system. Within three weeks, the job was done. Our clients were highly satisfied. ‘Look, what a lovely little space it’s turned out to be,’ said the family’s grande dame, ‘I might get another one built exactly the same instead of the bower in the park, then I could sit there gossipping with my friends as we sip our tea.’
Now I had a fair sum of money, enough for my travel.
Emilio Tadini, who at that stage had not yet started painting but who was writing subtle, intense poetry, decided to come with me.
Travel by train, obviously. When we reached our destination, we scarcely took the time to drop off our bags at the hotel before we were out on the streets in search of the museums. By the end of the week, we were like two punch-drunk boxers: out of one gallery, into another!
* * *
In the evening, to draw breath, we went to the theatre, avant-garde comic theatre, such as La Pomme Rouge or L’ane en Chaines, a cabaret of dangerously osé satire. I remember one scene in which six splendid girls appeared and with great elegance began to strip until they were completely naked, or nearly so. They were about to remove their G-strings when — whoops! — six dicks complete with decorative little balls! As the spectators guffawed in somewhat dismayed, indeed disappointed, laughter, the striptease girls peered in astonishment at those little appendages which had so unexpectedly protruded, and squealed in falsetto tones as they fled from the stage.
I swear that neither Emilio nor I ever understood if those penises were fake, and if we were confronted with enchanting transvestites or even with a sextet of carefully selected hermaphrodites!
In the following number, another nude girl appeared, totally intent on removing body hair with wax and tweezers … each time she plucked hair off, she uttered groans and incomprehensible oaths. Then she started squeezing imperceptible blackheads, while at the same time confiding in us, as though we were in her room backstage, about intimate problems to do with her profession as a striptease artist. She complained of a wicked headache and was really annoyed at having to make a living by exciting dirty-minded spectators, especially those who could not even take the trouble to conceal their nasty hand manoeuvres during her number. As she spoke, she was rubbing cream over her belly and buttocks, checking the result in a mirror. She continued to give vent to her irritation over her emotional life: she had a fairly well-to-do lover, but he bored her. Another rub of the cream, this time on her breasts, with a special touch of bright red for her nipples. Then she confided in us about the great love of her life: a right bastard, currently in jail, who exploited her, beat her, then kissed her gently, so that they ended up making love. As she described to us, with the aid of mime, their love-making, she filed the hard skin on her heels.