I was the shore and reality came like a wave to call HIM back.
Ok, here I am, waiting for HIM to come. The hours pass very slowly. Doesn’t matter. They said HE will be late, HE will arrive at 1.30 in the morning. No matter. Everything was late, today. I am here. I saw HIM in the afternoon, HE was late, I waited. I can wait a little more now. On my left three ladies are talking about this and that in their Venetian accent I don’t understand sometimes. They are waiting too. On my right a young girl from Sicily is waiting with me. We never met before and now we have tons of things to say, because we are talking about HIM. We chose a convenient place and we are determinate to defend it against everyone.
When did it all start? Did it start in December 1997, when I fell in love with don Juan de Marco? Or in 1999, when I met Edelweiss in such a serious occasion as a teachers lecture? Or was it in 2000, when first I came in Venice with her hoping to see HIM and carrying a camera Lilly had lent to me? In 2001, when I came again with Lilly and finally saw HIM, but HE was so far that HE looked like a vision to me? Or it was two months ago, when I found that book on a bookstall near my office and I bought it? Did it start three weeks ago, when I was in a bar in Rome with my colleagues and I saw that guy?? He was drinking his coffee, he looked like an Indian, he wore sunglasses and I knew he was there for me, he was an epiphany to me. None of my colleagues noticed him. He was silent. He finished his coffee and left the bar. But I knew he was the answer I was waiting for. None of my colleagues could hear it, it was just meant to me: go! And I came. Alone. My friends couldn’t come with me.
Yesterday in the morning – it was September 3 – I came to the Venice’s Lido, an island facing the open sea where Venetian people usually go bathing and where every year the Venice Film Festival takes place. Finding Neverland’s premiere was planned for today night, but maybe HE would already come, I thought. I waited for HIM out of the Excelsior, the hotel called in these days the Movie Village, because all the stars stay here to be interviewed. I saw Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep and Jonathan Demme going ashore from they taxi-boats. Not HIM. People was waiting for Tom Cruise, but he didn’t show himself. The day was drawing to his end, I had been talking with a lot of people in order to get some information about HIM: will HE come, will HE not? I decided to go to my hotel. I needed to rest a little for the next day. My hotel is in Venice, I had to take a steamboat to reach it. And then a little walk through this magical city, through its narrow streets called “calli” and its bridges.
This morning I had some problems, I couldn’t arrive at Lido before 10. What if HE’s already there? I missed HIS arrival, didn’t I? I asked around. None saw HIM come. Well. I must just wait. Just wait. So I see Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep and Al Pacino and Joseph Fiennes going ashore. Not HIM. People tell me that Tom Cruise came yesterday just a little before Collateral’s press conference and that he has been signing a lot of autographs on the red carpet at night. I keep waiting. Finding Neverland’s press conference is planned at 14.00. At 13.49 HE wasn’t come, I decided to go where all the conferences take place, at the Casino. The Merchant of Venice press conference hasn’t finished jet. It began late. Finding Neverland’s one will begin late too. HE will be late. No matter. I wait together with photographers and other fans. They are so young, the fans? some of them are her with their moms. Some of them are so young I could be their mom? I’m a little ashamed. Two police boats are controlling the channel’s water and the shores. Two frogmen peep out. People say they are looking for a bomb. A photographer makes some fun of it. He cries out Johnny is peeping out from the water with Kate [Winslet]. Al Pacino and Joseph Fiennes and Jeremy Irons come out and leave in their boats. We know what it means. Nothing else to wait. HE’s going to arrive. One boat comes with a cameraman. Silence. A second boat and a make-up artist, I suppose by the case he’s carrying, with some other guys gets ashore. Then a third boat approaches. I don’t know how HE will look like, I think it depends on the character HE’s playing or has just finished playing at that time. Silence. Time stops. Here HE is. I am surprised how young HE looks like. Short black hair, perfectly uncombed. HE is here! Everyone is calling HIS name, everyone wants to take a photograph of HIM, to catch one of HIS glances, the youngest girls are screaming for an autograph, HE kindly signs, although HE’s late. I’m not to far. I never thought a meter was such a big distance. I look at HIM and I’m not sure HE’s real. HE seems to me like a vision or one of HIS epiphanies. Then I see a little bead of perspiration falling from HIS wonderful cheekbone along HIS cheek. I see it and I love it, it’s saying to me HE’s really here, so near I can see a bead of perspiration falling along HIS cheek. HE goes in. When HE comes out I’m here again. Just a while, HE goes on board the taxi-boat. I go to the Excelsior. A lady I meet on the road says she saw HIM at the Hotel Des Bains. HE will spend the whole afternoon there, for the interviews, and then HE will have dinner. I go to have dinner too. I can’t think of anything else but that little bead on HIS cheek.
I come to the partition of the red carpet very soon. I’m looking for the best place for waiting HIM. To soon maybe. I can see Javier Bardem coming. His movie, Mar adentro, will be shown before Finding Neverland. He had to be there more than one hour ago. I’m saying to myself I’m just here to take some photographs. I don’t ask for anything more. Some good photos, I’m saying to myself. And then? why have I got that book in my bag? Just because I wanted to read something during my trip? I don’t dare to confess even to myself what my deepest desire is? I keep waiting, one minute after the other, while the hours pass slowly, talking with Greta, the girl from Sicily who is come with her mom and dad and a little brother, listening to the three ladies and their Venetian accent on my left. Time seems to be motionless. Slowly the sixty gold lions, which look so disquieting on the top of their sixty white pillars when the lights are out and the photographers are lying on their platform or talking to each other, begin to lighten. Something is going to happen. It seems like everything happens all of a sudden, everything takes place so quick, time of waiting is over, it’s forgot, it’s miles away, another life. A car is coming. Doors open. Quentin Tarantino gets off. None is breathing. Or at least silence is so strong as if none is breathing. Another car. People we look at without really seeing them because just want to see HIM are getting off. A third car. HE gets off with Kate Winslet. It seems as if something bursts somewhere, everyone is screaming HIS name. Or it’s just me, I can’t hear anything else but HIS name. Maybe it’s just inside me. They part and begin to sign autographs to the people waiting along the partition. Kate comes toward me, HE goes to the left. I don’t really know who and where I am. Something inside me is crying out voiceless: Come to us, come to us? I can’t silence it, nevertheless I call Kate in a whisper while she’s passing before us. Greta gets her autograph, I thank Kate and she thanks me. It crosses my mind she’s as pale as a moonbeam. Actually she has the grace of a moonbeam tonight. And then they cross. HE’s coming toward us? And HE looks at the three ladies on my left, HE says something like: “Oh!” and HE kisses the one in the middle. God! I don’t know how it happened, suddenly I have got my book in one hand, the camera in the other. HE’s getting near. I hand the book to HIM, I hold it so that HE can read the title on the cover. It’s in Italian, but I’m sure HE will understand. HIS look falls on it and HE says: “Oh! – HE read the Italian title in such a perfect accent – I love it?” And HE writes down HIS signature on it with a red felt-tip pen, an indelible one HE has in the hand. I could say everything. I think something like “I know”, but time is flying so quick? I really don’t think over when I say: “I love YOU”. Maybe it’s because of that word HE said, “love”, it touched the deepest strings of my soul. Maybe it’s because I thought that so many times. I say the silliest think I could say. And now HE’s signing other autographs, kissing someone else and maybe talking again. Then HE goes on the red carpet, someone interviews HIM. My camera stalls right now? HE enters the cinema. HE’s gone.
When I was home and imagined how it could be to see HIM closer, if even I could get near HIM, I thought I would look at HIS hands in order to recognize HIM, to be sure it’s really HE and not a vision. I would see this little “3” on HIS hand and I would be sure. But I just looked at HIS face bent on my book and I thought it was a dream. And then HE said that thing about love and books. HIS voice? I was empty and HIS voice went through my body and I felt as if I could recognize HIM only now. By HIS voice, that voice so rare to hear for me because of the dubbing. But I recognized it. It came from HIS soul and spoke to my soul. Maybe each of us was just speaking to himself. Indeed we said something the other already knew: I knew how much HE loves books and HE knew the reason why I had been waiting here till 1.30 in the morning. Maybe we were just saying the same thing, both of us were just speaking about a work of art, because I really think HIS life and HIS career are works of art: HE became what HIS talent and HIS will made of HIM. We said something very personal, something we don’t think over before saying it, words came by themselves. And now everything is over, the moment went by.
I’m not going to see the movie, not now. You can’t be inside and outside the cinema at the same time. I come back to Venice with Greta’s family. She’s speechless. I talk with her mom and dad an the steamboat. Her little brother is sleeping with Pacino’s autograph in one hand. Tomorrow? no, not tomorrow, it will be just in a few hours, I’ll go to a cinema in Venice and see HIS movie. Well, at 9,30 p.m. I go. I am crying the most time: it’s the movie I was waiting for years from HIM. It takes up where Don Juan or Gilbert or Axel or Ed Wood stopped. It’s about how important art, freedom and imagination are in everyone’s life, more of that about how important is to accept reality in life, to accept pain and sorrow and go on living. You must change everything you can change in your life and what you can’t change accept it: that’s wisdom! Just like Barrie HE is a dreamer who accepts reality in HIS life, a boy who dreamed to become a musician and accepted to be an actor and to be loved by people that’s unlike HE would ever talk with in HIS life. And just for a while I found my Neverland on that strange island in Venice called “Lido”, where I was in HIS glance for a while and HE talked to me about books and love. Just for a while. Reality calls me back to my everyday life. I just have to accept dreams may come true sometimes although we must wake up again in the morning.
Bab
