Children of Paradise by Vincent Virga The third volume of the Gaywyck Trilogy. This electronic copy of the complete and unedited final version of the book is a gift by the author to the William & Mary Special Collections Research Center, Earl Gregg Swem Library, Williamsburg, VA. It is available only online to students and faculty. This gift is in memory of Julia Costello (1916-2016) © 2016 by Vincent VirgaCHILDREN OF PARADISE! 1 CHILDREN OF PARADISE PROLOGUE "Lo thar, pardners, mio dolce vinci! Sweet sprites! Robbie and Vadriel, Donough and Armand, aussi! You believe in Evil? IF mot, guys, my story ain't no serial for you. Or far our mensch Deronda, on at the pictures if 1 keep mum as the visiting moon, E vero, Muzzled like Tamino, mewed I throne in Pluto's Paradise--Yoshiwara t jo! Me, a Horatio Alger hero in a fanzine dream-seape. Me, adored like Christ Himself. (Another hot property I hear on the grapevine.) Numi, pieta! Shameless is Fate! Anaxagoras sells Life as a journey but the way I live now a desirutiori de vite press agent peddling tripe has me lackeying the varying tide. He fools my popolan’ black and blue and shits on my soul Luck and pluck (and sex) (and talent, 100) have all to do with me, Me and Horatio long for flights of angels. Not to sing you to your rest but to wing you to Gaywyek West! I feelingly speak now. Lam in no holiday humor. I can only dream of Gaywyck East, ameno ragazzi! The ogling world has no keyhole shot! With bolts of limelight, the word-smith grifters halo or torch us Star Players. Us spawns of light, Us phenomenons of irradiation. Us key-lit stand-ins for Venus on our transit across the silvery screen aglow like her blazing sun, no? Capiche? No god me for sure. In this 100, too (in my history) sullied flesh, a light-weight pal awaits you, not the magic-lantem show touted as deflowering America! Oimé! Born I was in the velvet glance of Fortune where I will die, Yet okhrana Naumky, king of us shadows, devotee of sheaga and central to our play, armed with weapons worse than Death follows me cheek by jow! living jealousy's forgeries in his grove. No mauais honte for him, becco forauto! | desine we may be better strangers, | avouched it to his head and was translated into-an ass, My remembering, will not be erased by the River of Time! Give my regards to Broadway! Out Here on the Other Coast in endless goodly weather every on-the-take Joc knows who summoned Death with that 38, A coupde ‘foudre, yes? Si? The Truth bankrolls printed Lies by tuming mail black. But I see them through. They are erystal clear. They make my blood change to snow-broth, I speak in sober meanings. Oh! MerryCHILDREN OF PARADISE! 2 Xmas 1918 from fluorescent Hollywood, Dream Dump, USA, Overhead is the real Milky Way? The address of the has-been gods released from morals clauses they would have flunked? Oris it a Rose Studio cloud of steam lit by mercury vapor lamps? All will be well, no? Happy endings and hasty kisses all around, no? Fred and Hamlet say murder will out. [say only in my Hollywood versions of Life these days. No whirligig of time Out Here to bring in his revenges, Gustav's creator spirias need not apply. This is how the world wags. Oy! [am boiled to death with melancholy. Imprisoned like Richard IL. Ever, my self-being is a pasior friso and an Epicuran like Jefferson, and marry, 1am still love-shaked. Oggi, sempre, amore. ‘Your Carmine, valen/hiomo, a comrade Soul in Paradise. I dream of being cast in Correggio's buttery Assumption a3 the ascending one throwing the world a furty, cratered moon in Parma's Duomo! Fred is weiting the photoplay special for me, We are like Juno's swans, coupled and inseparabl CHAPTER ONE Much to the tearful Stefano Gruppo’s relief, the blowtorch effect of Sicily’s midsummer dusty breeze Finally gagged his fa of grousing theatricals. A major part of their job deseription—traveling like gypsies--was no fonger fun. It was a curse for two enervating days now, ever since the sun started behaving like the lit end ofa cigarette burning through a sheet of azure-painted backdrop in pursuit of them, Their crawling shadows appeared scorched into the surface of the rutted, yellow, dirt road, crossing an endless, white-granite, mountainous terrain cluttered with ravine-searred slopes. In thirty-year-old Steffano’s chronic optimism, the sizzling earth suddenly resembled a dolce df ‘farina giatla, his favorite Sicilian cornmeal cake. It was baking with him in God's oven. Immense, chipped white almonds had replaced the delectable honcy-colored walnuts. Almonds and walnuts convened pistachios and Gelato Siciliano made in sea-breezed Palermo with the icy crystals of the year-round snow on the peak of Mt, Etna, Craving the favorite ice eream, his: mouth watered. It made aCHILDREN OF PARADISE 3 nice change from the parched desperation accompanying him on this pitiless desert set. “For such a ti hing on the maps," he thought, "Sicily sure takes up a lot of space! In spite of their communal misery, all were unwilling to overburden their beloved, unflappable mule Baltasaro, looking jaunty in a yellow straw hat. He was a handsome, brawny, black fellow with a high-gloss rump, bunchy muscles, a bristling mane, and brown eyes bright with cognition buried deep in the sleepy-watehful gaze of'a bank guard. Plastered with golden dust, all five disgruntled players trudged in wellerchcarsed attitudes of despair beside their large, newly restored, brightly colored caravan, which he pulled effortlessly. It housed the scene drops and costumes for the Teatro Gruppo, its musical instruments, its professional and personal necessities, and its makeshift stage, In fact, Baltasaro could stroll along without complaint carrying 30D pounds, seven hours a day, twenty days straight, as iF his charge were a bag of wis He seemed oblivious to the dull, deadly rays of the Sicilian sun, In silence the actors projected a shattered condition scrunching-across drought-dry, feudal Sicily with its interminable undulations overheated as thei sighs. Squinting, they loathed the landscape reduced by glare to the two-dimensions of a sad and lifeless, repetitious and monochromatic stage cyclorama bought on the cheap; a barren sketch with never a tree to shade them, never a drop of water to reftesh them, always and forever a place where identical hillocks mixed with upstart rocky heaps of sharp, flinty peaks inhabited by cave dwellers, Some windows in thase lofty, eoo! homes had panes of glittering glass recalling flickering overhead stage lamps warning of electrical shorts capable of frizzing the actors into handfuls of yet more suffocating dust. On and on, along the billowy track, the physically-fit players slogued oblivious to Sicily's radiant, navural beauty wishing only to see the einder-red setting sun, The illiterate, suspicious occupants of the last village they grumbled through with its foul open drains and pigs walking the sireets had begrudgingly pointed the actors straight ahead fo the summer palazzo of the Prince of Rusuttano somewhere beyond the horizon where the overeager, unwelcome sun would accompanyCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 4 them for several hours more, Exact distance could not be ascertained from the naturally seeretive peasants; and the local dialect added an additional barrier though Stefano reckoned they were nearly there. He was convinced by cursive nods and jerked thumbs: this was the route the royal family had recently used in a convoy of carriages for its yearly three-month sajourn in the Villa Belice outside Rusuttano, Their permanent home, the Villa Rusuttano, was just outside the city of Palermo, and their town pafazzo was on the Piazza Marina among the other members of the Palermitan aristocracy living in thrall of the cosca, the Mafia's basic unit composed of blood relatives. There were three other residences abandoned on the island due to financial constraints. Paleema, Stefano recalled gratefully, with its ex semi-oriental character, still appealed to the royal families and industrial dynasties of nonthem Europe. They lived on palatial yachts even though a mere 20 of the 200 baroque pafazzi were occupied, a dozen by impoverished Sicilian aristocrats of the ariciew regime, including Don Pieteo Salina, the current Prince of Rusuttano. The others were inhabited by wealthy foreigners or bourgeais Sicilians recently titled for monetary service to their king or sell itled by claiming genealogical links with aristocrats long dead, The most respected. of the former ilk was the shipping magnate and coscw Don--"I'm in charge ofall new Sicilian construction! "-"Count” Giuseppe Florio of Palermo; he financed the town’s fashionable events, such as the drama festival, as well as Don Pietro's circumscribed life. ‘The vacant palazef were crumbling. The port city went downhill after the 198 Messina earthquake killed 77,000 people and planted fear of the legendary vengeful Sicilian deities even in the profane, But happily for the Teatro Gruppo, Palermo's annual theater festival was still a big draw among the moneyed classes always drawn to titled people with or without their bills paid. Don Pietro’s majordomo had given basic directions to the Prince’s summer residence, and though Stefano thought only in Upstage and Down, Stage Right, Stage Left—north, south, east, westCHILDREN OF PARADISE! 5 ‘meant nothing to him-his ¥ isual memory seemed in high gear during the briefing. However, his memory stalled when the troupe found itself unexpectedly alone outside Palermo's Porta Maqueda staring at the open road. All he remembered was they were due in Santa Margherita di Belice, seventy five miles (or s0) soutiwess of Palermo-a three day trip for Baltasaro. This was day five. Thanks to wrong directions from the police guard at the city gate, the first tivo days were spent on a "detour." They passed as days on the road usually did: without incident. The weather was warm and balmy. The players camped by streams and bathed under a waterfall. They caught fresh fis , ate heaps of local vegetables and drank delicious local red wines bought far pennies. ‘They gave an impromptu show in a crossroads town on market day, both earning enough money to continue feeding themselves until their joumey’s end, and uncovering the ignorance of the guard. The fun ended with the onset of withering weather and the surprising expanse of that planetary dolce di farina giaita. "This bitch of a sun is hotter than a hostile audience,” was the consensus until “hotter than a monkey wanking” replaced it as tempers flared and maledictions flourished. Stefano's tendency to malfunction was equated with malfeasance and veered toward malice unt his tears brought them to their senses and they settled into the role of brooding martyrs in a near-comatase state, Long “intermissions* between mimed aggrieved performances became the order of the days, For Don Pietro and his entourage the trip took twelve hours, half by dilapidated train covering 40 miles at enormous expense and half by horse-drawn carriage. (Being controlled by the Mafiosi-- each caxea absolute in its local power--the government in Rome left Sicily alone, entirely alone, which meant no public investment in the railroads to end the eosea's fabulous profits-on regional fares without upgrading of service.) Under the roasting star overhead, the players groaned through primitive stone villages, accompanied many dry river beds~dams would have lowered the cosca's profits on water--crossed crumbling bridges of stone, rotting wood, and pocked concrete, and skirted sheer précipices on collapsed roads causing Baltasaro to bray in dismay and excitement,CHILDREN OF PARADISE! 6 Being unpopular was the least of Stefano’s current worries, They were broke, flat broke, If he thought about this familiar worry, it was not really a problem—Real life is not tragic, Tragedies are plays written by great poets.” They were engaged for three months with full room and board; the Prince ‘was famous for his hospitality and among the throngs lurked incomparable opportunity. Real life was full of shadows, however, The Prince was also famous for an untitled, financially drained, domineering (French) wife, Maria Stella, who fortified herself against attacks fiom disdainful, penurious (titled) relationsand protected the secret of her adulterous affair with Count Florio-by living sanctimoniously with a confessor in tow, Father Bramante, and by proclaiming an abhorrence of the "indelicate" in all things, including licentious theatricals on stage and screen, also one of the current pope's hobbyhorses, Now skis was truly a problem for Stefano Gruppo’s Italian Comedians of five players. Theit best pieces, their most elegant commedia del! arte pieces, their most edifying commedia evudiver pieces, required the usual six. Stefano had tried hastily to complete their group in Palermo, but playing with the legendary Teatro Gruppo demanded extraordinary and diverse talent. (The defl arte vequired miming, dancing, singing, acrobatics, improvising, a flawless ear for Italian dialects; the erudita added literacy and interpretive acting technique in classical roles to dell arte skills.) Among the glut of available actors, he found ne young (handsome) mate fully equipped to deliver the goods and none intriguing enough to risk bringing up to his standards for the current (possibly) life-changing giz, Though not at all religious, Stefano often conversed with Saint Genesius, patron saint of actors who was above and beyond organized religion, The great man was a fact of theater history. With everyone in his purview stunned into relative silence by the ghastly heat, Stefano prayed hard, He did nat have to be speciti ; Saint Genesius knew what was needed and would supply itin his own way. Look at their sainted and supematurally strong and indispensable Baltasaro. Afier the horse Meppo unceremoniously dropped dead of old age on a road similar to this endless Sicilian nightmare somewhere in northern Italy, out of the mists (literally) had come Baltasaro, Young, battered andCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 7 bruised, only too obviously abused, he was eager to join theie troupe for the remaining serviceable twenty-five years of his life, Itturmed out, he ate Less than Meppe who gorged until he floundered while Baltasaro snacked when hungry; he had no sense of vertiginous heights while hills made Meppo skittish; and he had a genius for survival--Meppo would have gone over a cliff if distracted by a fly. Baltasaro also took instructions quickly, effortlessly, always in good humor when he wasn't reading their minds or finding solutions to dilemmas on his own, He was uncanny and very mule-like, endlessly entertaining and enchantingly lovable. Following their recent major success in Palermo, Stefano knew Saint Genesius would not abandon him now. “I should have stolen a map,” he thought, not worrying about the saint’s response to this venial sin, “If had the energy to swing our parasol, Mama, | would kill him!” the zoflig Mrs, Gruppo— billed as Bella Maria, Leading Female Player-muttered in her perfectly placed contralto voice easily projected over Baltasaro’s head to her husband's petite mother-billed as Donna Lucia, Lead Character Player-who nadded and sighed unable to form words with her plastered lips, Donna Lucia was smiling as she walked beside Baltasaro, both of them under the wide yellow umbrella shakily hoisted by her brazen Neopolitan beauty of a daughter-in-law whose out-sized passion and galvanic femininity gripped any audience's heart, She was hugely amused by both the comedic basse growling emanating from Bella Maria as a vocal exercise and by her own husband of thirty years who was making his opinion quite clear from the far side of the wagon im a less than subtle musical manner. The diminutive Paolo Gruppo, Stefano’s famous father and former third-generation manager of the troupe-billed as himself-broke off his humming of the final duet from Manon Lescaut to announce, “God has certainly divided the land from the water to our disadvantage! I questioned why He would cast us into this comfortless and irrational landscape, bury us beneath a scummy crust when it occurred to me that if ever Man casts me as a personage in Dante’s funnel-shaped pit [am now prepared! | willCHILDREN OF PARADISE 8 demonstrate my reduced soul struggling in boiling smother at our next rest stop, Mama.” ind I will happily be your forked devil, Papa,” his wife merrily replied, “I wonder if those new-fangled electric stage lamps could reproduce this sorcery of hazy illumination? I am not very good with directions either, son,” Paolo continued in a more serious tone, “but our internationally acclaimed Bella Maria is very good with them, among other things, Clean and stundy lower notes, my dear! Keep up the good work and you will soon be singing Azucena at Scala.” “Thank you, Papa, Being in abominable sand may inspire you but it is not conducive to vocal beauty. With all this dust we look like a walking fresco!” And she emitted her large, loud guffaw. “Was it not our laughing diva, your beloved wife, son, who apart from drawing our prop maps and carte de tendre, begged us to be wary of that villain Donatello? You alse could have stolen a map in the grand traditions both of Harlequin and Palermo, the City of Thieves, no?” ‘The mention of Donatello Doratti—formerly billed as Leading Youth-broke the brief jacular mood. The umbrella swayed, the shouting resumed, hand gestures proliferated, the Evil Eye was summoned, spit flew between forked fingers, and Baltasaro brayed happily at the flurry of activity and flicked his ears through the holes in his bonnet, The player Doratti was responsible for their not having traveled with the Prince's entourage. When he had not shown up in time for the toupe to depart Palermo in grand style with their caravan secured among the royal luggage, Stefane assumed he was drunk in some bordello and sent the other members of the troupe in search of him. ‘Their triumph in Palermo's international theater festival had been supreme. Their performance of the classic commedia dell arte piece, The Stone Guest, combined with Bella Maria's Santuzza in the erudita piece, Cavallerfa Rusticana, performed with four pick-up character players and the festival orchestra, was an unbeatable combination. The first prize not only brought them the offer of three months under the Prince’s patronage as his resident company to include a performance for his uncle, the King of Sicily, but it had filled their purses with enough gold from the monarchist Count Florio'sCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 9 huge eonstruetion contracts to Inst them several years. (‘The Florio legendary generosity was also replacing the destitute aristocrat's meager rents: unpaid or stolen by his land agents, as well as his wife's dowry: depleted through mismanagement, laziness, theft by his accountant, disdain for “low” money matters, and baroque extravagance on the part of the not-ungrateful Prince.) Luckily, Baltasaro had been groomed to the max, teeth and gars cleaned, feet re-shod, their ‘wagon refurbished, their sets and costumes completely overhauled, new props acquired, new wigs, new masks, new makeup added to their stores, and presents bought for the women before Donatello Doratti bolied with all the remaining cash. In fact, it was he who was being killed off by Paolo Gruppo iin the final scene of Manon Lescaut set in steamy marshes near New Orleans under a heat-misted sky, similar to the one currently above the revered, former actor-manager’s head. “Tell me we are almost there, please!” the petite, blond Leading Youth, Pier Agnelli pleaded in her most tragical manner. She had recently played a slutty Columbine to the beauteaus Doratti’s homy Pierrot; now flushed from the sui’s ardor, she looked ready to play a gilded princess sitting om a pink satin pillow receiving Apollo, Bella Maria, always looking rumpled when not in character, snorted, rolled her dark eyes, and buried a foul curse in a loud kiss she bestowed on Baltasaro’s warm nose, Pier Agnelli screeched prettily, “Lie to me, please, raia familia, tie, lie, LIE!” “We are almost there, darling puss," Bella Maria lied, “I can ses it on our map, The Prince's patazzo is just beyond that erupting volcano ahead, Oh!” she exclaimed unfeigned astonishment. “Do you see what I see? Mama, mia! Suddenly my heart and will are wheeled by lovel”” The entire troupe stopped dead to stare at the twisted configuration of rocks tall as a cathedral and dotted with cave dwellings to which she pointed and over which a near-naked human male gracefully bounded as if held aloft by stage wires. “Have I exited Hell and entered Paradise directly Donna Lucia wondered aloud: “Are angels cave dwellers now’ “IL must be a mirage!” Pier Agnelli insisted elasping her hands to her mouth in awe of theCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 10 wonderful world of the earth. “He is even more beautiful than Donatello Doratti, the Beast!” “Can this pretty goat boy sing?" Stefano asked Saint Genesius as gratitude brightened his ever- positive, boundlessly enthusiastic artist's soul. The 1911 Winter Solstice coincided with the year's heaviest snowfall over St. Petersburg, the epicenter of ezarist society and a ravishingly faneiful city celebrated as the Paris of the North. Imagined in 1703 as a window open to Europe by Peter the Great~"On ihe shore of empty waves He stoodt, filled with great thoughts, and stared out...,"according to Pushkin--it was planned, designed, and organized entirely by foreign architects and engineers imported from England, France, Holland, and Italy. Like Amsterdam and Venice it was a rectangular and geometrical complex on islands and canals with classic perspective and symmetry, Baroque monumentality, Rococo extravagance and playfulness. Peter made it his country’s new capital scrapping Moscow with its centuries of tradition and its religious aura With gilded palaces boasting Western facades~"Not an onion dome in sight!"-park-sized squares, impractically wide avenues, this gigantic metropolis was (paradoxically? the ultra-conservative court of the czar ane the home of Europe's most sensational Modernism in thought and art. This recent development was not cheered by “official” Russia watching its "subversive" elements eagerly aped in the fashionable faubourgs of Paris and exported as “cultural exchange" to cheering London and New ‘York. The modemists agreed with Peter: Russ n history needed a new beginning. But, for them, when the sunsets reflected on the windows of the great palaces gave the impression ofan unquenchable conflagration, they coined cheap metaphors about the coming revolution The solstice dated Naum Rozenberg's annual masked ball. A cultured Jewish merchant-pt ince with limitless resources descended from generations of affluent, cultured Jewish menchant-princes since the days of Peter the Great, he was also the distributor of foreign motion pictures. Listed for decades in Velikosvetsky echegodnik, the annual social register, the Rozenberg lived among the 700CHILDREN OF PARADISE / 11 considered the créme de la créme of Petersburg society ina substantial pink-marble manse on chic Furshtatskya Street overlooking the River Neva's granite-dressed banks, The previous year, his fe became legendary when condemned by the Church. It was a fund raiser for the entrepreneur and avatar Sergei Diaghilev's iconoclastic journal of the visual arts, Satiricon, Naum was a financial backer of his best friend and a contributor of film criticism, The avant- garde director Vsevolod Meyerhold danced Pierrot in the internationally acclaimed Ballet Russes ballet Carnival, choreographed by the company's most consequential and innovative choreographer Fokine. Columbine was danced by Karsavina; Floristan by Diaghilev's lover, the idolized Nijinski: half-cat, half-snake. (As the first erotically-charged androgynous ballet star, his audacity got him expelled from the Maryinsky Theatre for dancing Gisedfe’s Prince Albert in a short, belted tunic over white tights instead of the traditional long jacket extending to his thighs. Displaying his eliff-like buttocks and massive thighs, with a Jeté, grand he introduced Eros into the chaste Eden of classical ballet where an aristocratic, virginal Eve reigned aloofly poised oa her toes.) Annually winning a double-page spread in the Perersbureskaya Gazeta, Naum's events were orehestrated by the scandalous and scholarly Diaghilev, a descendant of landed gentry gone bust, He single-handedly resurrected the idea of Petersburg as the cultural center of Russia by instigating the West's absorption of its creative output, Virtually every field of Wester art was inspired by his genius. Unhappily, his country's establishment reviled him for his Nlamboyance, his irreverence, and for his spotlighting its raznockintsy: intellectuals of various origins and classes who merged libertarian politics with art, and who believed they were free spirits, fee lovers living in an Age of Genius, He was also a flagrant homosexual whose ballet company celebrated, in fact flaunted and adored @ beauty of men. For Naum, Sergei's Ballets Russes, an improvised organization with no official headquarters, achieved the Wagnerian ideal of the Gesamékunsfwerk, the synthesis of all the arts, henee it wasCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 12 rapturously spiritual, and Diaghilev, as its driving foree, the undisputed arbiter and articulate chronicler of Modemism, as well as Naum’s hero and role model, Even though there was no "decadent" spectacle on the agenda this year, Czar Nicolas forbade members of his military to attend Naum's ball in uniform, The confidential order was revealed to Naum between kisses by Mikhail Vassily Krillov, his furtive lover in the upper echelon of the Czar's Political Police, the aldirana, controlied by a secret Third Section. Shocking spectacles aside, Naum mingled with the habitués of Europe's best-known bohemian nightclub, The Stray Dog Café, where Mikhail Kuzmin, the first writer to introduce homosexual themes into his poetry and prose, performed with his cohort, the majestic poet Anna Akhmatova. They flaunted their tangle of amorous relations" A veritable commedia imbrogiio!" which was enough to warrant censure from what Rozenberg had christened The Art Police. And then there was his own well-earned reputation as a lover of men. Much to Krillov’s appropriate distress, Naum publicly mocked the Czar for forhidding anyone to discuss his ball because Russia was officially in a "state of emergency” and under wraps since the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881. Nonetheless, crowned royals, high-ranking bureaucrats, and military commanders were sending their servants to collect invitations at Naum’s office in order to circumvent the postal service's subservience to the Czar’s list-making, punitive Political Police, with its contempt for the existing social hierarchies and its penchant for blackmail. No one but the Czar was safe: the okhree was milar to a caste of ruling samurai testing their swords on casual passers-by, While Naum Rozenberg’s wife, the boundlessly dreamy Sofya Osipovna--"Naum's Jewish? So what? | love him!"--soaked in her French-perfumed bath preparing for the evening's stellar happening, her big, strapping, patriarchal husband busied himself ransacking the jewel safe inside her cavernous dressing room to augment his sizable European cashestash. Standing in insulated underwear wom over asilk body suit, he chose with great care the pieces most easily transporied on his hirsute, well-toned bady. Hence, a twenty-five caret diamond ring daizeling as the Sicilian sun was left in its velvet caseCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 13 while its matehing pendant set in platinum was placed around his neck. The six-foot-long string of glistening baby pearls studded with glittering tiny diamonds was quickly wound around his waist, The pendant was joined by what he, a Wagner fanatic, jokingly referred to as "Brunhilde’s breastplate off fire!"~an elaborate lace-work of Titian-red rubies set in a spun-gold net. Turning toward a mirror, he admired the theatries of the jeweled creation; in candlelight it sparked like a section of Brunhilde's ring of fire. Sofily he sang her father Woran"s confession: “Age old custom is af you can grasp; but my thoughts seek so encompass what's never yet come to pass.” Gace again, Naum saw in Brunhilde's sacrifice of her fe the hope for a new world: a bohemian utopia where desire made its own laws and where there was compete sexual liberation, Wotan! Irresistible to Naum, Wotan! He sighed. How could he not adore a swaggering autocrat who saw the errors of his. ways? Did he not engender hope that all the arrogant, saul-destroying potentates of church and state who subjugated humanity through a system of laws and ediets might come to their senses? Well, Naum could no longer live in hope. With the current danger his dreams of a vita activa were kaput. For the first time in his life, he was happy about his wife's obsession with what she referred to as her “trinkets,” the bigger, the bolder, the better, "These will take care of me for years,” he thought, chuckling again in spite of his growing anxiety over bis impending flight. For twenty years he was pitied by his haute-bourgeois cronies for his wife's mania while bein, envied for his ability to supply Sofya Osipovna with her heart's delight as if they were French bonbons. Now her most envied (and expensive) bracelets were clasped from his hairy right wrist to his pointy elbow; her incomparable collection of Cartier watches covered his muscular left arm, In one last haul, he pinned enough jeweled brooches to his chest to keep the walf from his door for several more years “Bastal” he said aloud, closing the safe, twirling its combination lock, and donning his maroon satin dressing gown to make his way through her vast bed room to his own neighboring chamber where his evening wear was meticulously laid out on his bed by Lyakhov, his valet of twenty years.CHILDREN OF PARADISE / 14 The room was empty. Lyakhov was helping his two grown sons dress; the two youngest were attending the Karl von May Academy on Vasilevsky Island, « liberal, boys! grammar school where Naum and Sergei had met. The boys would be unhappy with his decision but, with a non-Jewish, socially prominent mother and the dropping of their patronymic, life would be safer as their individual fortunes increased tenfold by inheriting his- many corporations along with his inconeeivably lucrative film distribution business. He had forced them to work for him, They were prepared for this change ‘Though technically not Jewish, they would never be safe in Russia, The next pogrom was always on a czar's mind, Witness the slaughter of the Jews in 1903 by the current antisemitic Czar Nicholas who believed nine-tenths of the trouble-makers were Jewish. He spared few Jews, not even a royal favorite like Naum’s friend Max Faktor, the genius of make-up now fled to America; or his other friend the artist Bakst (nee Rosenberg), exiled because he was tao famous from his Ballet Russes work to be murdered. Since the revent assassination of the Russian Prime Minister Pyotor Stolypino by a Jewish anarchist on the payroll of the nihilistic okhrana—they successflly created a need for even more draconian repression, Wealth no longer guaranteed safety. Money, bags of it, sti! bought Jews out of the discriminatory laws limiting their movements and the professions they were allowed to follow. Naum Rozenberg survived thanks to Sofya Osnipovna's non-Jewish high-ranking family members in the Imperial Army and the Imperial bureaucracy. They all lived in the Imperial Palace complex Peterhof, and had devoted their lives for generations to the czar and to-winning his honors. Additionally, Naum could afford the special taxes imposed upon a Jewish family: the Rozenbergs had never been despised sihidy--"impoverished yids" or “little men," those 100,000 Jewish tadesmen in Petersburg who adled so much to the city's economy, warmth, and vibrancy. Tonight, money and Krillov had saved Naum Rozenberg fiom a fate worse than death: probably exile to Siberia because of his big mouth. “Every word reaches them,” he thought as he dressed quicklyCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 15 in English-tweed traveling clothes, the “them” being okhrana, From his college days at the great Petersburg Institute of Technology, where he learned about film, to the present, he was classified by his friends and by his enemies as a “Westerner,” one favoring the progressive intellectual and social views of the West, as opposed to a “Slavophils,” one standing for the native traditions of czar, the Orthadox Church, and Old Russian Culture. Being Jewish, he could never qualify as a true Slavophils, Like Diaghilev, he was a paradox: an iconoclast who worshiped the creative legaey of his country. Then there was that big mouth of his. Like Jacques in As You Like 1s, a play he saw in London, he praised the power of uncensored satire: "Give me leave/ To speak my mind, and 1 wil! ibrough and through! Cleanse the fout body of th' infected world." Diaghilev, who detested the "hugger-mugger" of a secret life, of censorship, had never married, He lived his love for Nijinsky openly, dangerously’ Naum never resisted making political jokes when among the city’s artistic elite in his hangout, The Stray Dog Café, even if those invoking the Car's sacred name was like banging.an a tube of nitroglycerin with a hammer--“Did you know Nicky invented motion pictures while he was discovering gravity?” He spoke his mind so freely some of his friends in the cellar cabaret feared he was a spy working for the a&hrana—-“Nicky cannot possibly be more than 1/128th Russian and if ramors are true that Catherine the Great--another German!-had her son Paul by a French count, Nieky is not Russian at all! Them, blue bloods? Nu? A sexually mature Velvet Monkey has a blue serotum! Thas’s class!" Having, been indoctrinated into discussing the arts at meetings of the Mayevtsy, a club he joined with Sergei for graduates of the May Academy, he often waxed poetie at high-society functions. Lately he was most aggressively gripped by the polyphonic, transgressive works of Dostoevsky in spite of the weiter’ rabid antisemitism: "To love Dostoevsky is to love Russian literature!" He gave them as gifts, Each profaned Christian values and reviled hierarchical relationships reminding readers of the first Russian revolution; it occurred in Petersburg in 1905 when the army turned on the people in the sireets led by his hero Father George Gapon. Not even the horrors depicted in The House af the Dead couldCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 16 silence Naum--"If Fyodor survived the prison fortress at Omsk in Westem Siberia for four years, so can I! Like him, I must have ‘necessary egotism,” and a sense of my personal dignity." He kverched on: "Marx's Das Capital was authorized because the censors thought no one would read so dull a book! Three years ago 30,000 impoverished worker-slaves died of cholera because the public wells are poisoned by industrial and human schmutz. How ean Gorky be wrong: 'The storm! Soon will break the storm!" And, he swore, when the storm broke and the Bolsheviks took control, they would blow up the world as he knew it with the dolphin sleckness of a torpedo.and they would give flesh and blood to the woman question and homosexual rights! "All forms of sexual intercourse ane private matters to them and to the Anarchists in America! As Seryozha says, 'Forget the words "I can't!” When people want t0, they can do anything!" Oh, and there was Kuzmin, He lived as a lover of men without sexual deceit or camouflage. Naum quoted deliriously from his1906 novel Wings to support total decriminalization af homosexuality in both the secular and the overbearing religious realm. He proclaimed Gogol and Tehaikovsky homosexual martyrs murdered by the church's state, He wauld sing out Kuzmin’s prose as a harbinger Of Paradise: “" Somewhere lies our ancient kingdom, full of suntight and freedom, of beautifiel and courageous people, and thither we sail, my Argonauts, over many a sea through mists andl darkness.” Naum knew he had the energy of his era and the intensity of its feelings coupled with an obtuse optimism from having been spoiled rotten as a child, an only child of now-dead, wealthy parents. Oh, and there was that mishuganah encyclical by Pope "Platonist” Pius X condemning both Modemism and Democracy. "Is it any wonder motion pictures have replaced religion?" As Russia's film distributor, he often went to Moscow for Pathé Russe. The Khanzhankow Film Company was founded in 1908 when the successful Pathé France film people first visited Russia from Paris. The novelty of anything in motion having worn off, and to reinvigorate their audience, the French were making pictures in the American narrative style created by editing different types ofCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 17 photographic images together. Mysteriously embedded in this engineering process, there was music's peculiarly unique ability to generate emotions in am audience, "Naum, it's the damndest thing! We know what organized sounds do to us. We've lived with the mystery of it for millennia and take it for granted. This response to moving images is brand new! Griffith can program the emotions of his audience! He's discovered there is a logic to sentiment easily tapped in his editing room. When Mozart transformed the formulas of classical music, he changed the world's musical taste. Then his audiences influenced his compositions. Art is 2 kind of dance? Well, Griffith is transforming cinema, And we are dancing right behind him." Rozenberg unsuccessfully tried his hand at writing photoplays. He could never train his imagination to create stories in a sequence of images with few explanatory title cards. "You think like a playwright, Naumky," Khanzhankoy told him: "They use words the way musicians use sounds. We film makers tell our stories silently, visually. You must think in pictures not words, I's about visual cognition, visual literacy." The year after Rozenberg failed to become a writer for motion pictures, Diaghilev created the Ballet Russes, a silent, visual sensation abetted by music, as was the cinema, ‘The exhilarating, fulfilling lives led by Diaghilev and by Rozenberg's: friends in the various artistic communities he frequented drove him wild with envy and stengthened his resolve to join them, aware as he was that everything he did he did because of his Seryozha, who, like himself, had always believed life was tolerable only to the extent he could summon up marvels. The two had consecrated their lives to the cult of Beauty. Rozenberg became determined not to be trapped like Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, but to live the rest of his too-short life happily and free as Aimsetf "I lack what we Russians call ‘resignation of the soul,’ Mikhail Vassily, dahfink, U havea discordant personality. Me and Saint Augustine." “Isn't he that horny guy who prayed, ‘Make me gond but not just yet"?CHILDREN OF PARADISE / 18 “Not a good role model for you, blabber mouth.” Naum could identify his moment of enlightenment precisely, He was in his early twenties traveling with his father in Italy when he collided with Sergei on the Grand Tour with male cousin- lover in Venice at La Vendramini, the palace where Wagner died. Naum had expressed concem about hig future. "Only Germans worry about their careers, Naumky," Sergei exclaimed exhaling a huge cloud of cigarette smoke, Hadn't he wanted to be a composer’? Hadn't he worked like a demon on his, music? Had he not been disabused of this fantasy by the just criticism of Rimsky-Korsakov? Leaning, into a confidence, he confessed: "I will not be an artist but a presenter of artists! With my energy, my determination, and my administrative skills, how can I fail?" Then he had confirmed his decision with his boisterous laugh and invited his friend to join his Society for Sell “How wi II live if not as an artist? What are my altematives, Seryozha?” "One cannot ‘live,’ Naumky. One can only be, All that is real, all that can be sensed is in constant contact with the magic and mystery of ari. [t will make us a bogafyr, a Hercules!" ‘Years later, after a near-crippling bout of lovemaking, a still-panting and suddenly furious Krillov cursed the only jay in his life: his eurly-haired Semitic lover who looked like Abraham in his prime. “You think you live in Europe, Naumky! You are more provocative than a professional provocateur, [could not have trained you better! You must start bad-mouthing Wagner and you must restrain yourself over Mabiler and that weird Ballet Russes! Stick to swaoning over motion pictures and explaining how shey are saturated with the spirit of invention, not those modemist-faggot creeps!" “Ws true, I know, | ean come off like Gogol's comic creation Piragey, a monument to crude coneeits and vanities. And Akhmatova could be writing about me~'Who does not weep jor the ead with me/ Who does not know what conscience means! And why it exists..." "You don't get it, Naumky! Your satanic pride and lack of conscience is endangering your naive wife and your entire Jewish family! | will not be able to protect you much longer.”CHILDREN OF PARADISE / 19 ~Vaysmere! | cannot live in a city where souls are shaped to fit cages, ‘and the dead erystal vault of heaven loughing withowt end!” Lloathe Wagner's conilating love and desire with renunciation and death, yet cannov reject him! The Ring is an assault-an plutocratic capitalism! It's a sweeping critique of the urge to dominate others! His music is one of the portals to Paradise, the melodies of the Muse's playing on their lyres. Like my soul it's marked by a constant tension between a will to power and a willingness tw surrender." “It’s best when you surrender your portal to Paradise, Naumky, and let me dominate yor, By “Butt? Eros spelled backwards is "sore.' "What?" "Pictures have replaced the epic sweep of his operas," Naum continued, a babbling brook of hopes and questions and bits of information. "The sole function of art is sanscendence. Like you, its only instrument is beauty, or in your case, ¢ beauty! | piss on Tolstoy's Christian maralism! have my own notes from the underground. Diaghilev and Nijinsky are gods! And Meyerhold! And Bakst, nee Rosenberg! We may not be acceptable in this burg but we are triumphant in the rest of the civilized world! They adore us! We throne! Fuck the Czar! His days are numbered. The people will flood the streets the way the Neva has done three times in our history, Long live the beauty of men! Long live the Sth-century Arabic poet Abu Nuwas, « mmidhakkarar like us and the ‘father of eurls' “Aways J have and will! scatter god and gold to the four winds/ When we meet I delight in what the Book forbids/ And ‘flee what is allowed." “Oh, shut up and embrassé-moi before they kill you dead, you Fan eomique!™ “hold the busybody gods to blame. They are the ones who brought this war upon me. They gave me desires. Man gave me laws! I have the maggot of freedom in my brain.” “The gods are to blame? You sound like that ald man King Priam in Troy we read in school!" "Well, he was damn right! Oh, that conniving, busybody Athena! Patron of human ingenuityCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 20 and resourcefulness, Where is she now when I need her support in the thick of battle? Nicky invented the motion pictures, you know, with her in the guise of Alexandra," "Didn't you tell me Apollo was patron of the arts?" "Mostly music and poetry, He was lord of the silver bow. Not a patch on yours, 'll bet! He was also a prophet with an oracular shrine at Delphi. Like you, he was never the bearer of good news..." Was it any wonder Naum Rozenberg was denounced? All his political enemies and those envious of his wealth or of his success bedding men of all ages and (most pemniciously) all classes=-a talent lately trussed by the ragged Krillov’s constant demands~and those secking revenge for some slight were ever ready to snitch on him. His response was a shrug~"Like herring gulls, we are an antagonistic species.” The Russian nobility was quite tolerant of pardyfv? homosexual dallianees; but as “a Jewish moral subversi catering to his “deformed! desires,” he was guilty of an anti-ezarist spirit. After one of the routine private sereenings for the picture-mad royal family of a Max Linder French comedy and an American Biograplh picture, their favorites, which he accompanied an the piano, Naum could have been taken before a firing squad and shot dead for real, like Maria in Puceini’s Tasca, not pretend-shot like Dostoevsky t be taught a lesson; or he could have been beaten to death during a police interrogation by Krillov's best friends...pethaps even by Krilloy himself, foreed to do his duty by his Chief! (This latter scenario had been offered by Krillov as an inducement for Naum to "straighten up and fly hi," a phrase culled from an American movie's title card.) He had suffered savage verbal abuse and electric prodding on all his body parts during his first interrogation. He had survived by promising to hold his tongue and to domesticate his genitalia, Atter a week in his dacha reloading his ballast, a respite on all fronts was achieved for several years until frequent trips abroad for his film distribution company and the witnessing of Diaghilev's life with Nijinsky exposed him to the freedoms he could not live without in his day-to-day existence. The recidivism occurred gradually but steadily. "Life will cause ne commotion fo remind you af itsCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 21 swifiness, but glide on quietly," he quoted Seneca on the shortness of life as he unbuttoned Krillov's (and other) trousers and reopened his big mouth, A second interrogation was now on the cards. His bank accounts in Paris, London, and Rome were frozen-="The sefimucks!" ‘Thanks to a considerable bribe arranged by Krilloy, his account in Berlin was still active; and with the help of his devoted valet Lyakhow, who was soon to join him in Paris, trunks of clothes were shipped secretly to Berlin's Hotel Adlon. For the moment, his passport and travel visa remained viable--"The cfumbkofi" Not that Paris was a picnic for the Jewish! The hatred evinced by the Dreyfus Affair was a scald on Naum’s heart~"But pogroms there are made-to-measure." ‘Tonight, still vibrating emotionally and physically from the extended farewell enjoyed that afternoon with his distraught comrade at his dacha, Nauin Rozenberg planned to travel to Paris via Berlin with only the clothing on his broad back and a small suitcase of necessities stashed in his toika sled, His foreign bank accounts would eventually be bribed back into liquidity; it could take years. He longed to go kiss his baby Irina goodbye but he could hear his wife scolding her maid in the next room and she would soon be banging on his door to make certain he was behaving on schedule, Donning his beaver coat with tears streaming down his fice, he slipped out the servants entrance to his room and down the steep, back staircase, Outside, his shoes serunched on the fresh, dry snow, The air was scented by the smell of burning peat culled from his estate; it was his final act of defiance toward the fast mable world where only trees were burned for heat in spite of Chekhov's environmental concerns about denuding Russia The thieving wind whirled away the delicate snow in gusts as blithely, he thought, as death takes us fiail creatures waiting for it so impassively=-"Life es by on the wings of Azrael, the Jewish Angel of Death, Why be hard on any happiness it offers?" He quickened his pace. Life was a mystery stuffed with surprises like a fat Christmas goose. Doesn't Stendhal make that plain when his Fabrice falls in love for the first time with his jailer's daughter in Parma and finds himself in bliss? And unlikeCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 22 Chekhov's three sisters, but very like Fabrice, Naum was escaping from his supposedly inescapable prison tower, And wasn't Aeschylus killed by a tortoise dropped by a passing eagle? Naum Rozenberg was sick of the sanctity of surfaces. The value of veneer made him want to vomit. "Like Oscar Wilde," he admitted, "I am only interested in being with those who know what beauty is, but I've no intention of becoming beauty's toy. What is art for but to show its perpetrators a new way forward? Am I nuts? The village idiot’? A holy foola yurodi The troika sled was stashed exactly ax planned. He had just enough time to reach the train. [n his heart he knew he would do well. He believed he was facing a stranger metamorphosis than any dreamed by Ovid. He knew his separation from Russia was the greatest sorraw of his life, much greater than the loss of his family since families could be duplicated. With eyes clouded by tears, he recalled Voltaire’s bel “Le paradis terrestre est oii je suis." (And he did believe Paradise was wherever he was.) Naum Rozenberg was ready to begin a new lif in France as-a European in badly as well as in spirit~"Behind the whee! of the Destiny automobile!" he joked, using a title eard from a favorite Max Linder comedy. He was sick unto death of soulful autocratic Russia dedicated to suffering, He knew that a man may be led by Fate but even in Russia he could refluse to Follow if he played his eards right, was graced with courage, and was rich both in cash and in moxy, like Prospero, the ultimate alchemist. “Lose your free will and you lose your humanity," he muttered aloud into the wind as his horses raced him to freedom under the canopy ofa starry night ablaze with a full moan focused as a pin spot The Winter Solstice in Rome brought no sign of snow. The air was brisk; many Romans wore fur coats as they hurtied to d final performances by the Gruppo Troupe of Italian Comedians before the company left for Berlin and Paris, Its blazingly celebrated Young Leading Gentleman, Gatino, like Leonardo's fully-ereet Bacchus, was so audaciously bodacious to behold that hatred, betrayal, and old age seemed impossible in his presence. Nothing could exist there but love and happiness...or so theCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 23 touts successfully proclaimed. Mortgages were taken for black-market tickets to his final performances because it was incorrectly believed that once an artist of his caliber left the peninsula it wauld be years before he returned now that America was on everyone’s dance card. He would be older then and the magic of his youthful moment will have passed, a moment also imagined incorrectly to be like their own brief season of romance, that divine interval between the bareness of their e ads and the stuffiness of their middle age. People of both sexes and from all classes were speaking in whispers of how Gatino had come to inhabit their dreams. Some were shamelessly specific in their diaries or among like souls. No one wanted to believe his peasant background before he dazzled the titular King of Sicily at the summer palazzo of the Prince of Rusuttano, and no one asked him directly preferring the penny- press fantasies. (One version insisted he was the illegitimate son of the Prince.) Thinking of Gepetto's Pinocchio, however, everyone believed Maestra Paolo Gruppo, as he was now called, could teach a stick how to sing and how to act if the stick were pliable and had a modicum of talent. At the same time, the cognoscenti knew no-one could teach a person how to glaw on stage with Apollo's mystery of the inner fire, or how to resonate to the thoughts, ideals, and passions of an audience, ar how to be an archetypal aphrodisiac, Some erities deseribed him as ingezno or “genius” and others scoffed at the current tendency to abuse the word, Even the mast cynical, nihilistic seribblers sat spellbound in front of him, lips and legs parted, feeling the heat of their own aging bodies melting the elaborate defense ‘mechanisms imprisoning their spirits. "Ah," they sighed: "The Theater!" Gatino’s fame was huge and sudden and made possible by the newly-evolved eyelani farce of popular journalism. What took Bernhardt.a decade to achieve, he won in six months by having rotogravures of his quintessentially Italianate beauty decorating hundreds of mass-circulation tabloids and their Sunday supplements and fashionable illustrated journals all over Europe Rome's most influential eritie noted: "Casually observed, Gatino’s body is a taut and vivid workCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 24 in the mode of antiquity, Yes, his beauty is absolute, a ne plus wltra, He personifies a virile force only the ancient Greeks acknowledged, a force reasserted by Michaelangelo who, like Gatino, makes the blatant splendor of male flesh the means of expressing noble sentiments, life-giving energy, and God- like perfection. The gigantic and the heroic spirit of the High Renaissance belongs to Rome as does our Italian Adonis Gatino, the living David--vast, defiant, and nude!" (The most reproduced image and the best-selling porcelain figurine showed him as Georges Sands Saint Francis kneeling sans loineloth experiencing cestatic union with God--his hands clasped in prayer in his lap and his head thrown back akin to Michaelangelo’ The Dying Slave--or, as many preferred, sharing an orgasm with them.) The holiness of the heart’s imagination quickly classified the physical fact of him a numinous spirit essential to the survival of the species—"There isn't anybody looks like me without clothes on!" Then there were the attending masses who canonized him causing the theater to buzz-at his first entrance mimicking a swatted bee's nest, They thrilled like a lion lighting on some toothsome carcass, feeling blessed to find an antlered stag just as hunger struck. Added to his charismatic presence was his fiercely disciplined physical grace appearing to erase his dependence on gravity, his mellifluous voice, his mastery of mimiery. These were all glossed with a sovereign sense of sprezzarura, He riveted them, He artfully dissolved the distracting nimbus of celebrity often the bane of a famous player's ability to win the audience's willing suspension of disbelief, wn and Once greatness was thrust upon him, his simplest utterances evoked love and adn daily print coverage. Like David, he joined the ranks of those who embodied the national ¢lan of Italy. Assisting this public romance with him was his kindness and frankness; they disarmed and eharmed the people who came into contact with him, His disregard for his fame-"poco curante"--made him an easy prey for talentless rogues accredited as serious journalists until he learned how the more moronic the interviewer the more idiotic he appeared to be. So, he stopped talking to the press. "Tn a kidl! What the hell do T know? [ can't waste precious time talking crap. I've got too muchCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 25 work to dot Fempus fugit! I'm no philosopher, I prefer the smalt certainties to the big lies. Like Orlando in As You Like it, I nced to leam about love! And 'm ne-here! We Ltalians look skeptically upon heroes hoping they won't get anybody into too much trouble." This demonstration of humility and smarts from such a beilisimo famciulo was intolerably thrilling, more than if he indulged, as most publieity-born celebrities did, in confessando fotte Unlike other luminaries, however, he cultivated a vanishing act when aut and about="Sempre in giro, Gatino is a veil | wear over Camillo, one easily discarded,” and he escaped those sensation hounds wasting their lives, he reckoned, immersing themselves in the manufactured glitz of his limelight~"Most people act like humans in all they fear, gods in all they desire." He did not resent them, He shrugged them off without lessening their grip. Suddenly, he felt grown into manhood with, all of a man’s grave weight and responsibilities on him-- "I can-no longer be a child and do my work as itis meant to be done.” ‘Maestro Gruppo had immediately spied the boy's natural gifts. He knew he need only bring them forth the way the sculptor Michaelangelo freed David from that famous block of marble, Certain gifts were evident on first sighting, Before the Halian Comedians reached him on the road to Rusuttano, they named him Gatino in honor of his feline grace. (Actually, it was Betla Maria who christened him.) Dressed in a periwinkle-blue loin cloth, he seemed to float to earth from on high before disappearing she into a cave with a house facade built of stones to don a sleeveless, knee-length white sk reappeared to squat on the road awaiting their approach, a still, golden figure surrounded by a dozen playful and affectionate goats and a black and white sheep dog silently scurrying about keeping the: goats in some order of its own devising. For the players, it wasa pastoral presentation often recounted to future biographers who compared it to an Eclogue by Virgil. Wasn't Adonis a shepherd? A few yards from Gatino’s sun-bedazzled, heat-wave shimmering tawny presence, the theatricals halted under the unblinking intensity of his amber, Pompeian eyes, With their thick web ofCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 26 gold lashes, they served his shyness by becoming a protective weapon putting those in his optical cross-hairs on the defensive, His hawk-like attention was made even more alarming by his undisguised child-like curiosity, as if each person was the first of its species he had ever encountered. "Suddenly I was a sparrow sized-up by a hungry cat!" Bella Maria later confessed to her mother-in-law, a passionate lover of eats, Both agreed "Gatino" was a perfect stage-name for the unusual, hypersalert boy with mirada fuerte, the strong gaze grasping like fingers holding and probing. The gaze was hypnotic. It quickly became part of the experience of him, while its raison d'etre: myopia, was kept under wraps. Though he occasionally wore corrective glasses in private, they did not diminish his feline impulse to scrutinize with the objectivity of a camera whatever came into view, either directly or via his beoad peripheral vision. People confessed feeling vaporized by his uncompromising, erotically charged stare, A tender smile prevented his attentions from being rude, When he slowly stood, the Teatro Gruppo Players all took a step backwards. He was a big boy for a cave dwellet-over 5'11"--and he had the muscular tension and the honey-pale sheen of a young ‘mountain lion with that animal's sympathetic symmetry of large features and lavish mane, Though full ofunruly quiffs at the moment, his hair was neatly trimmed at shoulder length where it curled upwards, (It reminded Bella Maria of Verrocehio's Tobias whose end-curls were petals comprised of slightly tamished gold threads having been finessed by the lustrous brush of the master's young assistant, Leonardo da Vinei.) Gatino's plump lips were strongly molded; the upper peaked: a set of acute angles, and both were infinitely mobile, capable of every variety of expression, Gn seeing their exquisite definition the women felt their impress, When he smiled, he eclipsed himself and his eyes became timid and tender, those of a playful adolescent, while at the same time his air of tense, concentra quictness betrayed an animal that could be dangerous, "Be careful of the billy goat, He butts,” he said sofily but firmly in a smooth, baritone vaice people in this region were often taut, alert creatures of singular heauty, which was structuralCHILDREN OF PARADISE 27 like a tree, not a quality of mind or heart. They were renowned hunters and gatherers who never starved in the wild even before their liaisons with the large local estates became part of their way of life, Most of them made a decent living working as day laborers where their agility and strength and loyalty were prized and where they often grew fat, losing their ability to live comfortably in the caves and race skillfully like mountain goats up the facades of steep cliffs in their lightly-shod feet, Like Gatino, some became prized shepherds and goat herders. None had his relationship tha palazzo allowing him to come and go as he pleased, except when a calcio tournament was underway; then he was at the command of the Prince, an avid football fan who coached his non-professional champion team comprised of his sons, nephews, local laborers, and Gatino-or Camillo, his star player and team captain by unanimous consent, his master of the game, his Magivter Lua: Y's all that strenuous exercise,” Paolo Gruppo said to his wife who nodded in understanding. “Perfecto!” Bella Maria sighed as she handed the umbrella to Donna Lucia and closed the distance between herself and Gatino. She extended her hand and said softly, “Well met by sunlight!” ‘Yes, this creature was more beffo than Donatello Doratti, the swine; in fact Donatelko-the actual Donatello, the seulptor-with his Florent ¢ tributes 1 the antique concept of physical beauty could: have eonjured this boy from the marble rocks from which he sprang the way Athena sprang from the head of Whomever, Zeus was it? Yes, Zeus. It was Venus who was bom of the sea and sails today and. forever on that Botticelli half-shell, And Donatello worked in bronze but she knew what she meant, Having recently been in Agrigento, Bella Maria had antiquity on her still-startled-by-him mind. ‘Yes, he, “reir Gatino, was more a Michaelangelo event when the most profound theught of the time was expressed in visual imagery, such as those canonical features and those life-enhancing bare legs created (in press-release lingo} to give "galvanic thrills of delight" hugged by tights. She apprised him as one of those males whose uncovered legs were hare, one whese muscular and shapely, hairy limbs when exposed were conspicuously bare! No paddling in the costumes of this gargan JavailCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 28 That adorable, mischievous grin, those glitteringly excited eyes revealed an absolute, a perfect, a pure and noble sense of freedom, There was a soupgon of willful boy remaining in the set of the jaw announcing he was no more than, say, sixteen’? (He was just sixteen.) "Its all in the eyes,” she thought, “always and forever in the eyes: the windows of the soul, and alll that nifty poetic stuff.” The feet would be a mess, of course: heavy calluses, misshapen toes from breaks and many bruises. However, she spied a miraculously high arch and an abnormally long Achilles’ tendon, «As she was told, many sky-leaping Russian dancers had them, along with some African men whe were peculiarly fast runners, Wasn’t that what shoes were for anyway? He would never play a barefoat peasant in their company. Stefano did the rustics brilliantly. Most interestingly, unlike most Sicilian men whose exaggerated virility in relation to the sex business she found comic, there was nothing silly about Gatino’s opulent display of testosterone with its paradisaical promise—"Over hill, over dale, indeed!” This entire reckoning took two-and-a-half seconds. “Are you expected at the Villa Belice?” Gatine asked with his sly gein in his Palermitano dialect knowing full-well they were, having seen them perform in Palermo as part of the Prince’s party, The earthy Bella Maria’s brusque appraisal techniques were amusingly transparent, akin to thase he received over the years at the palazzo from all types of people including the Prince and one of his sons and the priest, Donna Lucia was beaming a loving warmth at him while the lovsly young blond gil, Pier Agnelli, was hiding behind the caravan actually gawping as if performing her sly Columbine. It didn’t faze him anymore when people stared at him, He was not blind. He knew what God and his handsome parents had created and he was pragmatically delighted by the variety of pleasures his good looks delivered whenever he wished at the palazzo. Besides, he could not he unaware of his. beauty’s power, for his mirrors had tongues: they were also the eyes of the people he met and paused with; this exclamation of reality thrummed through all their glances, often instigating an unsettling vibrating thrill inside his body, a thrill always shockingly far removed from the familiar, habitualCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 29 fun I dallied with the innogence of love and is of his body. Though far from innocent, he s occasionally, when necessary, sounded a thought upon his tongue in favor of love, However, the cold objectivity in the eyes of the two famous actors studying him as if he were for sale ata cattle auction spoke nothing of love, Ashamed of his dirty and rough appearance, he was suddenly overcome by adolescent shyness. Rubbing his cheek, he umwittingly brought all his beauty to bear by lowering his head and glancing up at them with a bashful, guilty, crushed smile and the crumpled eyebrows of a boy/man. His true, child-like vulnerability vanquished even the two men. It masked his confusion and the only reverence he ever felt towards humans, evoked by the beauty of performance on playing fields or stages. Except for sex and soccer, food and reading and animals, nothing much mattered to him, His sole prayer was one of gratitude for being alive ina world where wonderful things happened to him every day. Since Gatino’s voice was deep, smooth grained, and projected on the breath, Paolo and Stefano both had the same thought simultaneously: either he has had choir lessons of calling for the goats and sheep gave his voice proper placement, When Gatino saw their incamprehensian in respanse to his question about the palazza, he switched to Roman Italian, “Don Pietro told me to keep on the alert for a troupe of traveling players, Dimme, Tell me: you will make us playful, yes?* “You speak Italian?” Bella Maria asked dumbfounded, “Who taught you Italian?” Gatino laughed. “Many people at the palazzo have taught me many things, signora.” Sceming to lose interest in the humans, he bounded across the road with juvenile glee and the unique combination of cancentration and abandon that characterized everything he did, He put his hand gently under Baltasaro’s chin stroking the pendulous lower lip with boyish tenderness--so indefinable and so transitory in Donna Lucia’s experience, The goats and the dog followed. The mule brayed in greeting, inquisitively pointed one ear, then the other, and opened his mouth to expose his large, yellow teeth in what could easily be described as a smile. The dog barked, the goats tapped him with theirCHILDREN OF PARADISE / 30 heads. Those not busy exploring the imperturbable mule bearing them with a weary patience were busy untying the shoelaces of the theatricals, # favorite game. “We need help,” Paolo Gruppo announced. It was obvious fom the youngster’s poise and self assurance and from the focus of his attentions that this eave dweller was no innocent simpleton, “Have you ever taken part in theatricals at the palazzo? | know the Prince is partial to them, “He is pazzo for them! Mad as a shooting star for them! He once changed the date of Easter to suit his theater calendar. Plays and calcio and books are his world. Sure Ihave! Who hasn't around here? Am I not named by him for one of the four Lords of Si ilia in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale? Was I not baby Jesus in one of his Nativity plays! Last year I was Romeo and Puck; 'well-met by sunlight’ indeed, signora, Papa always worked as a gardener for hina. He could dead-head and dead wood the 18-foot hydrangeas properly. Don Pietro moved us to Caltanisetta, Mama enjoyed singing in the Church choir so she agreed to a life in town.” “Past tense?” “Both are dead now.” He shrugged one shoulder; “Doesn't seem right to me...” Everyone agreed it didn’t seem right for them both to be dead, For anyone to be eternally dead, ctemally silent, eternally gone missing, There was a deep silence. Paolo Gruppo sighed for his long-gone youth, Pier Agnelli sobbed for her dead mother. Baltasaro sensed the change in mood, the deep sadness surrounding their new recruit, and sighed loudly. Bells Maria remembered her two stillborn babies and wiped away tears. Last in thought, Gatino tilted his head, looked down t one side, and smiled; it was a hopelessly endearing tic, He broke the silence with his motto, Oggi, sempre, Today, forever: the fi | refrain said to the priest at the end af confession, “Da you sing, Gatino?” “What is *gatino’? Is it like Latin?”CHILDREN OF PARADISE / 31 The theatricals laughed and explained the meaning of the name they had given him. He grinned and shragged both shoulders, People called and whispered many names to him, “Lwas a boy-soprano in the choir but the priest is a pest, a smelly creep, a hypocrite like Moliere’s character--what’s his name’? ‘The great Zacconi played him here two years ago with his famous Hamlet. | was Walére and Laertes.” The theatricals stared in amazement. Gating gave them his sly, teasing grin again, ane of his characteristic gestures. He loved “taking the piss out of people,” a phrase an Englishman taught him a few summers gone, ax well as an American's comment, "You're not just a pretty face, bub, are you?” “Tartuffe,” Bella Maria answered knowing full well the boy knew the answer already. It was obvious to her how conscious he was of all his charms-his charisma, his brio, his shyness, his sexual allure, Yet, he knew how to employ them without giving offense. She sensed no vanity. His curiosity and ease with his body exuded the strangest lightness of being. Soon, she learned he judged himself bath on stage and on the soccer field according te his results not his intentions, unlike most people who judged themselves according to theie intentions and judged other people according te-their results. He knew her interest in him was piqued beyond the curious.and the erotic by the slight lilt in her voiee and her respectful gaze, She telegraphed intuiting he had all the makings of a first-rate Player he had said. and a very disarming lover. “Many people have taught me many things-at the pal She resolved to always take him at his word, Perfect in body, placid in mind, Donna Lucia, on the other hand, was worried about her son. Bella Maria was a good, honest, steady woman. IP her response to Gatino was any gauge, her son's career was about to be eclipsed even as the company’s history was about to be rewritten, She knew how fickle Fame could be, how discourteous and downright rude, yet she felt at the center of her world-wise self something momentous was taking place. Since his appearance, her discomfort in the Sicilian Summer had vanished. The boy's incandescence was strong enough to diminish the power of the fiery abuser averhead. He filled her with hope, with a sense of possibility, “Spring,” she thought, “his youthful ardor is all about Rebirth.”CHILDREN OF PARADISE / 32 Undaunted by the season's first snowfall on the night of the Winter Solstice, the train from St, Petersburg to Berlin left on time. In spite of being the ugliest (yet cleanest) urban environment in Europe, in spite of their shrek Kaiser Wilhelm being an art ignoramus and a political buffoon, in spite of mounting antivemitie agitation ignoring the fact of the Jews being at the center of the city’s cultural and eco ic life, in spite of being built on the sandy steppes of Prussia and plagued with blowing grit, the super-rich German capital city amused Naum Rozenberg, in spite of the brutality of the deeply provincial German people expressed in their city’s ungapatchka architecture and its vulgar displays of wealth and consumerism. It was the nean-sign capital of the world. Its citizens called it “Elektopolis.” Under the wattage, there was a lively cabaret community (literary and musical and homosexual), homosexual bars (by the dozens) undimmed by a scandal to rival the English Oscar Wilde involving the Kaiser's close confidant (Prince Phillip), an exhilarating indigenous avant-garde art scene (created mostly by Jews). an aesthetically advanced cinema industry lucrative for Naum’s distribution company, extravagant department stores, tantalizing photo galleries (mainstream and "underground", and twelve railway lines funetioning no matter the weather though one of its vicious workers’ strikes and police aetions could screw up a fugitive’s best laid plans, Best of all, he intended to stay for only a few days Asa frequent traveler and generous tipper, Naum Rozenberg was greeted affectionately by the German porters and led to his first class compartment where flowers, champagne, and an Italian leather traveling bag, complements of Mikhail Krillov, awaited him, Inside the traveling bag was a silk robe, new silk pajamas, socks and toiletries, and a much-needed silver jewelry box empty but for a taunting photograph included by Krillov of himself in a choruseline of his killer-buedies holidaying on the Baltic Sea in skimpy net bathing slings wet and overflowing with the muscled machismo of wood peckers. One of the over-sized meshugina exhibitionists was cradling his gonads in one immense paw