Scene 7

Having a set of grandiose, fairly preserved Roman ruins for background, Al is seen leaning against a tree, under its shade. Dressed in a silk white tunic and wearing an exuberant laurel crown, he is partially hidden behind the twisted trunk.  We only see him from the chest up. The crucifix he always wears gleams -- a curious, dissonant touch to his Roman outfit. He looks bored, and impatient.

"You have to do better than that, if you really want those shoes." Al says, in a coarse voice, to someone we can't see.

Outside the Roman Gardens, Ruggero, in his all black driver's uniform, is parking a grand car just at its main entrance. He steps out straightening his jacket,  as he swiftly encircles the vehicle to open the front and back doors to let Signore Audace and his two older daughters out of the shiny, impeccably clean car.

The mayor of Ferraza, formally dressed in his best suit, wearing a hat to match and even the ceremonial sash,  approaches to solemnly greet the family. Their arrival causes a certain commotion in the crowd, waiting behind the lines at the entrance. Everybody wants to deferentially shake hands with Signore Audace. Ladies draw closer, too, willing to check how the two Audace sisters are dressed. Their clothes, the make up, the accessories -- the Audace women are the only ones in Ferraza to always (or ever, really) wear the latest fashion, coming from Rome, from Paris -- otherwise, only seen in magazines. "It's Saint-Laurent, dear..." We hear one of the sisters whisper to a woman standing in the crowd.

"Now. Why are our guests still waiting outside?" Signore Audace's tone is one that doesn't simply poses a question -- it demands an answer. He wears a full oufit in the lightest linen, very suitable for the hot, sunny day -- in an off-white tone that makes him stand out between the two other men near him, the mayor and Ruggero, who both wear black. Even between his daughters, who also seem to prefer darker colours, his is the only effortless elegance. Signore Audace's poise and good deportment have long conquered hearts -- but also work as good shields, making him the unattainable ideal of Ferraza, a man to be not just respected or envied -- feared, too.

"There... has been a minor..." The mayor pauses, in search of the best word. "...setback, Signore Audace. And we wouldn't like our people to see it." 

"I thought you said everything was set, when I phoned you last afternoon." Signore Audace retorts, a tone of controlled contempt in his voice.

"And things were perfectly fine, Signore Audace." The mayor swiftly justifies. "It happened overnight. It's... nothing, really. Father Alberico and Officer Pullito are inside and right now taking care of her. The girl will come to her senses. She has no other option, in fact."

"The Lubentini girl." Signore Audace hisses. He is not asking, this time.

"I bet she is wearing something inappropriate." Annamaria Audace -- who is a fit looking woman in her late thirties -- comments, for they all know it is Venus the mayor is referring to, Lubentini being her mother's family name. What other girl is there as inconvenient as her? Annamaria has always anticipated the play would involve some form of scandal. "Is she topless?" She asks, and laughs dryly. She is not amused to be standing under the sun, and fans herself to indicate her discomfort -- but doesn't take a single step, not when her father has remained still.

"She has been... a little more creative than that this time, madam." The mayor, whose face is covered in sweat, uses the words carefully. He stretches his neck and peruses behind the car. "Hasn't Signorino Alcibiade arrived with you?"

"His make-up wasn't ready when we left... " It is FabiAnna Audace -- a fake blonde like her elder sister, but much taller and thinner -- who speaks this time. She laughs stridently at her own wicked comment, but chokes on it upon receiving a reproachful look from her father.

Back to Al and, from a distance, we get to see the whole scene. 

His red Lambretta is parked near the abandoned ruins of what would have once been a Roman Basilica -- now resembling a wild garden, taken by vines and wild bushes and weeds. The young man is still leaning against the trunk of a tree, under its shade, partially hidden by grass growing tall and a colorful profusion of bushes blooming with flowers. It's a glorious sunny day. We hear birds chirping and singing. A light breeze blows and agitates the grass and smaller flowers, and then stops.

A boy kneels before Al. He lifts the fine tunic above Al's waist, and keeps holding it up. The boy's head, hidden in Al's lap, is bobbing back and forth. 

"Now. You want those sneakers, don't you? Then work that tongue. Earn them." 

If there is any doubt -- for the main action remains hidden from the camera behind the trunk --, upon hearing these lines the audience guesses Al is receiving a blowjob. 

"Now." Al takes the boy's head in both hands. "Oh yes! That's it. Open that mouth, man. Throat it. Come on. We've got to be quick." 

Al moans, as he pushes deeper into the boy's mouth. As the camera fixes on Al, now filming him from the waist up, we don't get to see the other boy's face. Just his curly brown hair -- and if we still remember the Roman Thermae scene, it unmistakably belongs to Al's watchdog, as Venus has named him -- Giuliano.

Feeling the pressure of Al's hands, Giuliano stops bobbing his head, allowing Al to do all the movements. Al clearly enjoys being in control, dominating. He sets the pace of his own pleasure, shoving as hard and deep as he can, holding Giuliano's head tightly. His face buried under the cloth of Al's tunic, Giuliano gags and coughs, but he doesn't seem to try to escape. It mustn't be the first time that this happens. At some point, Giuliano must have learned, like Venus, that taking it Al's way, no matter how rough or humiliating, just helps to abbreviate the action.

Though the blowjob is more suggested than shown, and Giuliano's face never shows, it was a much commented scene. Unlike Adrian Çellon, who has an insistent reputation of being bisexual, much like his character Al reveals to be, Gianlucca Tringtan, who was a soccer player before becoming an actor, has only played straight characters. His sexuality off the screens has never been questioned. He is the modern version of the Latin Lover, an accomplished macho man -- so that his performing a blowjob on another guy is a first -- to be the only -- time in his career. Gianlucca only agreed to shoot the scene if his face remained hidden, and always declined commenting it in interviews. Just once he affirmed to bitterly regretting it. He thought it "gratuitous". Some say Thaysa dared him, and might even have made the outrageous scene a condition for bedding him. Others say Mr. Skandaloukos, the ever manipulating director, dared Thaysa to convince Gianlucca -- and she absolutely loved the idea of helping to demolish one of the starkest masculine images of European movies.

Convulsing, his lips moist and open, nostrils dilated, eyelids and several facial muscles trembling, the leaves in his crown equally agitated by the breeze, Al gives a long, guttural moan, opening his mouth wide and displaying his perfectly white teeth to let the audience know of his intense -- intensely faked by Adrian Çellon -- orgasm. Giuliano's head is buried in Al's crotch, who keeps it there in a firm grip, not willing to release the other boy as he floods his mouth. 

His mouth unbearably full, Giuliano finally tries to escape Al's last trusts. When Al let go of him, we catch a glimpse of Giuliano turning his head to the side, and we hear him vomit.

"Hurry. We've got to go." Al says, straightening his tunic, checking it is not by any means stained, while with disdain he observes the other boy throwing up.

Escorted by the solicit mayor, the Audace family enters the Roman Gardens. There is hardly time to marvel at the event's decoration, or at the statues cleaned to look as white as the fine fabrics that arch from column to column, all across the yard. Sheltered from the sun in one of the side galleries, where ancient frescoes are displayed, Signore Audace and his daughters silently observe Venus chained to the boy's statue and its pedestal. She does look marmoreal herself, and if her Renaissancist beauty suits and even tops the classical statues, the rusty chains and locks wrapped like snakes in tight arches around her body, connecting it to the statue, make it a rather grotesque spectacle.

"This is outrageous!" FabiAnna breaks the uncomfortable silence.

"Only the daughter of the Lubentini bitch..." Annamaria stops her sentence when she sees Father Alberico approaching. "...of the witch can be such a witch herself."

"What has happened, Alberico?" Signore Audace is perhaps the only person in Ferraza to call the priest by his first name only. "You were responsible for censoring the play."

"And I have, Signore Audace. Haven't I read and corrected that child's poor text a thousand times, suggesting improvements to keep it mildly entertaining, while always keeping it appropriate for the families of Ferraza..." The priest is sweating, both from being nervous and the hot sun -- but he dares not climb to the gallery. "This comes as a surprise..."

"Surprise is a rather mild form of naming this." Signore Audace retorts.

"Tragedy! It is a tragedy!" Annamaria exclaims. "It is..." She falls silent to a brisk gesture from her father.

"The Bishop is on his way, isn't it, Alberico?"

"I believe so, Signore Audace. If you allow me to abandon the war front..." He points at Venus chained. "I shall meet His Excellency outside and make him wait until..." Father Alberico won't look Signore straight in the eyes -- but then, behind the lenses of his glasses that reflect the Gardens, and under the shade of his white Panama hat, Signore's eyes are hardly distinguishable.

"A teenage girl staging a protest against me!" Signore Audace laughs, to the surprise of all around him. He doesn't seem to take it as earnestly as everyone else. "So inconsequential she is. Like her mother." He frowns. "Now. Go, Alberico. I suppose you can at least handle the Bishop." Signore Audace pauses, reflecting. "Now. Send your best looking altar boy to the town's gate to intercept his car. Make them go to your church. Have him wait on the Bishop. With refreshments, sweets. Get him whatever... whomever he needs to be entertained. And then you come back here, Alberico. To handle this."

Signore Audace pauses again and, for the first time, the priest lifts his gaze from under his hat, in expectancy. 

"I hold you pretty much responsible for this, Alberico."

"As you wish, Signore Audace. I am terribly sorry, Signore." The priest bows courteously,  cautiously adding before he leaves, "There is one more thing, though. Where is Signorino Alcibiade? I believe he has the keys to the chains. He could easily put an end to this."

"Send your Nazi chauffeur after Al, father." Annamaria suggests. Her eyes glued to the scene at the center of the Gardens, she amends, "She is despicable!"

"You go, and tell him to get Alcibiade." Signore Audace refuses to call his son by the nickname. "Now." He dismisses his eldest daughter, then turning to the mayor, whom he clearly has chosen for informant. "And who is the outsider arguing with Officer Pullito? He doesn't seem to be on our side..."

"I'm afraid he isn't, indeed. He is a journalist... from Rome."

Signore Audace arches his eyebrows as he asks FabiAnna, who has gasped upon listening to such news, "What is a journalist from Rome doing here?"

It takes a moment for the woman to answer, for she is rendered breathless. "You wanted today's event to be in the newspapers, father." She tries to be defiant, but instead demonstrates clear concern with her responsibility in the current turn of the events. "What better way than inviting a Roman journalist?" She asks, doubting herself.

"Well, we certainly do not want any of this in the newspapers." Signore Audace hisses. He addresses the mayor again, without turning to face the man. In fact, unless it is to silence someone, Signore Audace never looks anyone in the face. "Now. Fetch him. I will handle the journalist. And you, Annamaria... Why haven't you dispatched the chauffeur, yet?"

Along a paved road sided with ancient olive trees and red poppies, Al is speeding his Lambretta, with Giuliano at his back. Both sit very stiff. They are not simply absolutely silent -- it looks as if one is trying to ignore the other's presence. As if they were not occupying the same space, sharing the same seat. 

Al is going too fast and a laurel leaf flies off his crown, so he decides to slow down. He'd rather preserve the integrity of his carefully studied looks than arrive in time. For he knows everybody will be waiting for him. The play cannot start without his presence. Nothing can. And thus has he calculated his triumphal entrance, jumping right to the center of stage. After their fight the previous evening, Al has decided to throw in many sentences to leave Venus both furious and speechless. He will raid all her scenes. He is intentionally not wearing anything under his tunic to distract, even shock the audience. He is leaving Ferraza in a few days, and couldn't care less if the whole town will once again be gossiping about him. 

"I'll leave you at the back entrance." Al breaks the silence. "Don't ever tell anyone that you were with me. Or you won't get those fucking sneakers from me, do you understand?"

Giuliano doesn't answer -- he won't even nod. He is just supposed to obey.

As they make a curve, they are met by a car coming towards them -- the most expensive in town, it is clearly a vehicle owned by the Audace family.

"Merda, ma che merda!" Al slows down, and for a moment seems about to make a turn to enter a side, dirty road leading up the hill. But he knows to have been spotted by whoever is in his family's car. "Cazzo!" He exclaims one last time, before the scene is cut.

"How can one probably be against a new hospital for this city?" Signore Audace asks, indignant.

"She isn't against the new hospital." The journalist answers, condescendingly, as if his interlocutor were unable to share the depth of his reasoning. "She just believes it should be built elsewhere, and the Roman Gardens preserved. They are 2000 years old, aren't they?"

"Which is old enough, don't you think?" Signore Audace gives a half smile that is not even half amused. "Ferraza needs hospital beds, not old roots. As you probably already know, the statues and these frescoes shall be removed and preserved. It is not practical to build the hospital away from the city center." 

"Practical or profitable?" 

"Rational. The new hospital will be connected to the existing one, across the street. The number of beds will more than double, while..."

"While profits will increase in the same scale, and costs be cut to half?" The journalist interrupts Signore Audace -- who at first expresses surprise, then shock, and then disgust. 

"It is unstoppable. The plans have been approved, contractors already hired. Today's announcement is a mere formality."

"Venus is unstoppable, too." The journalist looks at the girl with admiration. "She won't quit until you give up the plans of  bulldozing the gardens."

"Unstoppable, is she? I believe the person who can reason her is about to arrive."

Signore Audace overhears the conversation of his two daughters, who are saying that the girl looks about to faint, due to the scorching heat. Venus is now completely exposed to the sun, and has been chained for several hours already. The narcissus in her crown have perceptibly started to wither. 

"Don't you dare aid the girl. Let her be." He hisses at them.

"You are denying her due care, Signore Audace?" The journalist has overheard the older man's remark, and openly confronts him. "Is it the physician or the capitalist that is intently leaving the girl to dehydrate?"

"Don't you dare repeat that. I was talking to my daughter. Our interview is over. You can leave. Now. What was your name again?"

"Federico Levante. La Gazzetta Romana. You invited me here, Signore Audace. I was expecting a nicer host. But..." Federico shrugs, as if before a helpless case. "Values against money. Ideals against finances. I believe you don't see the enormity of what is happening here. In your feud." The journalist stresses the last word.

"But I do!" Signore Audace exclaims. Losing his patience, he raises his hands dramatically towards the sky, to let them fall back the next moment, regaining control. "This is not poetry, Mr. Levante. It's hospital beds against brambly bushes. It's much needed surgical installations against fallen bricks." Signore Audace touches his hat, as if biding the journalist goodbye. "Please forget Ferraza and what you have seen today, Mr. Levante. You don't really know the Lubentini girl, nor her past, and her motivation to be doing this. Let us resolve our own issues. As my guest, I ask you to leave. Voluntarily." Signore Audace turns towards the front entrance, the moment his eyes catch Giuliano discretely coming through a side door. "Now. I believe my son has finally arrived."

"Andromeda gets her Perseus?" Federico says. "I wonder..."

"Goodbye, Mr. Levante." Signore Audace turns to his daughters, giving his back to the journalist. "Any of you. Bring Alcibiade inside. Make sure he has the keys. If he left them at home, send the chauffeur immediately after them."