A Lotus Grows in the Mud (22 page)

“Nurse!” I cry. “Doctor Pasternak! Come! Look!”

They gather round as I stand next to my child, my hand covering his heart. Afraid to take it away, I am prepared to leave it there for as long as they’ll let me. Bill places his hand next to mine, and we revert to being the kids we were, giddy with excitement.

“I prayed so hard.”

“You see, Goldie,” Dr. Pasternak says, smiling. “If only mothers would understand the power they have to heal their children. We see this kind of thing happen time and again. Your baby feels you. He smells you and hears you. I mean, after all, he was in your belly for nine months. He needs to feel your closeness and the comfort of his mother.”

When Oliver is stable and showing sure signs of improvement, Dr. Pasternak places his hand on my shoulder and says, “He’s going to be okay. It’s time for you to get some rest, young lady.”

It is so hard to leave. No one else could have persuaded me to leave my son. Nodding my reluctant assent, I lean over once more and whisper in Oliver’s ear, “I’ll be back soon, my darling. I just need to sleep. We both need our rest.”

Down I go, sinking back into the chair, impossibly tired. As Bill wheels me back to my room, I feel as if the umbilical cord is being stretched all the way from Oliver’s crib, along the corridor and into my room.

I had no idea then just how sick I was. I learned much later that for several days after the birth I had toxemia. I was being monitored as closely as my son.

S
omething remarkable happened the day that Oliver was born. I learned that day that miracles can happen. That prayer is powerful. That faith in something is extremely important.

It was one of the first times in my life that I realized that by focusing on something and willing it with all my might, I could actually change or rearrange the course of events. This experience started me on a journey. It led me to a lifelong interest in these sorts of phenomena and in the theory of small things, which is called “the new physics” or “quantum physics”—investigating and exploring the new frontiers of consciousness.

We are all made up of waves of energy. The neurons that are constantly firing in our brains have small tentacles called “dendrites.” Attached to the end of these little guys is a receptor like a radio. Scientists have now learned that these little radios can pick up information—even other people’s thoughts. The brain is awesome. It has amazing potential; it is far more advanced than any computer that man could make. We have resources that we are only now beginning to tap into.

We are all miracle workers, and we can all heal others. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Ultimately, I couldn’t save others I loved from dying. They have had their time. In the end, we’re all going through the same door in heaven. I continue to pray every day, not for miracles but for a peaceful and compassionate world. Maybe that will take a miracle. Who knows?

One truth we can be sure of: praying for someone’s well-being while they are still on this earth, by reaching out and trying to help them in any way we can, by developing more compassion in our hearts and in our lives and in our spirits, will help make a better world.

Looking back on Oliver’s birth now, I know that through prayer and love we both were healed. All these years later I can say that everything I promised Oliver that he would be he has become: a mirror of the heart of God.

I call him my “little man on the hill.”

“O
liver’s not sleeping, Mom. He still has jet lag, and it’s already been two weeks. Mom, this is so hard!” I sob across the telephone’s long distances.

“I know, honey,” Mom soothes, “but you’re a working mother. You can’t have it both ways.”

“I know, Mom. I’m just so tired.”

I am in Italy making a film called
Viaggio con Anita,
or
Trip with Anita,
with Giancarlo Giannini. It is back to back with my last film,
Foul Play,
with Chevy Chase, which came out of the blue just when I thought my career was over. I’ve brought Oliver with me since his daddy is in London making his music. I never sleep, and I feel like a walking zombie.

I have a nanny with me, but my Ollie wants only me. So I’m up all hours of the night, trying to find him pasta and bits of ham. Gosh, he is a picky eater. It is a scary time in Italy. The Red Brigade is terrorizing and bombing Europe, so I have been assigned twenty-four-hour bodyguards. It is great, I must admit. I like having someone sitting outside my door every night. They take Oliver, throw him on their shoulders and carry him around alongside me, all the while teaching him Italian.
“Ciao, Mamma!”
he says as I run off to the set. “
Ciao,
my bambino.” Yes, my Italian is getting better too.

I look out the balcony of my room at the Hotel Palazzo in Livorno and down onto the busy Viale Italia and the Grand Quay. Ordinary
Italian life hustles and bustles below me, and yet here I am, trapped with a headache I could sell to science.

The Palazzo is a residential hotel with long corridors and high ceilings, like something out of
Sunset Boulevard.
It is furnished sparsely—a chair here, a vase there—and just a thought can create an echo. Rendered in pink plaster on the outside, it has big windows and small balconies with huge arches and colonnades, and
PALAZZO
in big letters across the front.

Every night after filming, I walk the long, empty hallway back to my room, to take over for the nanny and try to recover from another frustrating day on the set. To tell you the truth, I am getting a little tired of Italians patting me on the head and telling me everything is going to be okay.

“I find myself crying for no reason,” I tell my mother unhappily. “I can’t always be there for Oliver when he cries, and he hates it when I leave. Plus, the work is so hard. My director doesn’t even speak English. To top it off, I was in the car today with Giancarlo Giannini, trying to discuss a scene, and, you know, he’s just learning English. So I said to him, ‘I think that this would be funnier if I reworked this line.’ And do you know what he said, Mom?”

“No, what the hell did he say?” she growls.

“He said that this movie wasn’t meant to be funny. I laughed and told him, ‘No, honey, this is definitely meant to be a comedy.’ And he said, ‘No, this is a tragedy.’ And you know, Mom, I’m beginning to think he’s right.”

My mom laughs. “Honey, you need some help right now. Why don’t you send Oliver to Bill in London? He’s there for a while, isn’t he, making his TV show?”

“You know what, I’m going to do that, Mom. That’s a great idea. He’d be better off there with his daddy. Although, it’s gonna be so hard to be away from him.”

W
ith Oliver in Bill’s care in London, I am left alone in Livorno to finish the movie, commuting to Bill’s beautiful house in Regent’s Park every weekend. This is working much better. However,
there are still so many difficulties working in a foreign tongue, speaking a foreign language in a foreign land, and each day is filled with new frustrations. Not least that we are way over schedule.

So, here I am, facing new challenges daily, unable to express myself properly. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Italians. They love your children; they love your dogs; they’re always ready to feed you, house you and would give you the clothes off their back.

But the sexual politics are quite different there. For instance, in a scene where I fall into a fountain the director positions the camera so low that he is filming straight up my skirt. Then he attaches my sodden underpants and bra to the antenna of the hero’s car. Or he takes my microphone away and gives it to Giancarlo Giannini.

“But who can hear me?” I complain. “You have to have sound.”

“It’s no problem,” they say,
“mi amore,”
patting me on the head and hoping I’ll just shut up. “
Domani.
Tomorrow. We fix it tomorrow. It is
non importante.
”

Lunch goes on for hours. Wine, pasta, wine, meat, wine, dessert—and more wine. One day, I return to the set, but no one is there.

“Where is everybody?” I ask the only person I can find.

“Everyone have siesta,” he tells me with a shrug.

Oh boy, I’m going to be stuck here for another year.

The siesta must have been good because the next day the director suddenly springs a sex scene on me, in which I am supposed to be naked.

“No!” I tell him vehemently. “I’m a new mother, and it was never in the original script.”

“But you were naked before, in
Girl in My Soup
!” he exclaims, through an interpreter. “I saw you.”

“That was different,” I protest. “I was all alone, and it was shot very tastefully, through a gauze curtain. This is me and Giancarlo copulating openly in a hammock!”

With a frenetic waving of his hands and a look like thunder, the director cusses me in Italian. The only word I can understand is
“Madonna,”
which he now calls me for being too much of a prude. I am as stressed out as I have ever been, I miss Oliver terribly, and I am be
ginning to suffer the first major anxieties about my relationship, not helped by the long distances between us. Madonna wants to go home.

C
oming back to my hotel every night, exhaustion drags at my feet as I cross that echoing marble lobby and climb the staircase to my room. Lifting my head against the weight of the day, I peep into the hotel bar to see if any of the crew are having a drink. I could use a good belt tonight.

Up at the counter, several young Italians are standing around a television set, screaming at a soccer match. I notice a man, sitting with his back to them, quite apart, in the corner of the bar. He is looking out onto the veranda. He seems to be staring at the flowers dancing in the breeze. The soft evening light illuminates his face.

Stopping in the doorway, I stare at him for a long time. There is something about him that I am drawn to, and it is not just the brilliant shaft of sunlight that seems to be pointing an ethereal finger at him from the window. He has an interesting face, deep with lines of experience and wisdom; his fingers are long like my father’s and look as if they could play an instrument. I feel instinctively that this is someone I would like to know.

Impulsively, I, who has never been known to leave anyone a stranger, walk up and introduce myself.
“Buonasera.”
I extend my hand.
“Il mio nome è Goldie.”

He places his hand on mine and says his name: “Aldo.”

I look deeply into his face and realize that he must be at least ninety years old. For me, it is love at first sight.

I sit down and we begin our fumbling dance of words, a duet of Italian and French with a little German thrown in for the pas de deux. We mix and match the languages we know and listen in open wonder to the lyrical beauty of those we don’t. In our faltering, fragmented sentences, we embark on a great love affair. Soon, he makes me completely forget the need for words.

Aldo is, without a doubt, the most romantic-looking man I have ever met. He is tall, lean, with a straight back and a shock of long white hair.
His face is craggy and crumpled, but he has high cheekbones, a Roman nose, a full mouth and a chiseled jaw. His blue eyes are droopy now and a little watery with age, but they still hold a sparkle that hints at the inner wonder of his great spirit.

Through our strange mix of languages, we gradually come to know each other. My Italian improves, and so does his German. Our French helps us when we’re stuck. More and more, we are able to communicate. More and more, I am able to understand his incredible history. Having lived through two world wars and fought in the Resistance, he now lives in this hotel, waiting for the end.

“I met a girl in nineteen forty-two. She sold magazines at a stand in Paris,” he tells me, his tongue curling deftly around his German. “Her name was Rosa. I bought a newspaper and I fell in love. After that, I see her almost every day. But Rosa was Jewish, and when the Nazis came she was very afraid.”

“What happened?”

“The Nazis came for her, but I managed to get her away, into the network, where she could find safe passage out. I held her in my arms, just once, and kissed her. On my way back, I was nearly caught. A bullet nicked me.”

“Did you ever see Rosa again?” I ask, hopefully.

“No,” he says, sucking in a gulp of air that tells me the wound in his heart is still fresh. “I lost her forever.”

Leaning forward in his chair, his eyes moist, he squeezes my hand. “We were like Romeo and Juliet.” He pauses for a moment to compose himself. “I always hoped I would see my Rosa again, but I never did. A few years later, I met Fiorine, my beloved wife, who is now dying. But a little piece of my heart will never stop loving Rosa.”

Aldo reminds me so much of my father. He is a dreamer and a born storyteller. Listening to him, I wonder if my father ever had a secret love, if Mom was his first and only sweetheart, or if, on his travels as a musician, he ever fell for anyone else, as Aldo did with Rosa.

Like Daddy, my new friend is also a great lover of music. He persuades the bartender, who stands drying glasses in front of a mirror pit
ted with time, just like Aldo’s hands, to switch off the television when nobody is around and play his 78s. Side by side in this cavernous bar, with its elegant columns and ornate moldings, we listen to his favorite Italian opera—Puccini and Verdi, Rossini and Bellini—music that is both strange and wonderful to me, and very different from the Bruch and Bach and Tchaikovsky that Daddy always played at home.

Sipping a cappuccino, I sit in reverential silence while the amazing voice of the Italian diva Renata Tebaldi fills the room with an aria from
Tosca.
I stare and stare at Aldo’s exquisite hands as they sway in time to the music, his eyes closed. Beautiful, gentle, expressive, they are so like my father’s.

His physical fragility belies his inner strength. Hidden beneath a body that is crumbling and causing him pain beats a heart that has seen so much, has borne so much and knows so much.

K
nowing Aldo is at my hotel in Livorno waiting for my return each night lifts my heart. I feel like a married woman scurrying away from her demanding husband to meet her grateful lover. He is my guru and my spirit guide on this earth. He is the one who, for the moment, seems to make sense of my life.

I can tell how much he also looks forward to our nightly chats. His whole being lights up when I come into the room after a hard day’s filming. It fills me with such joy to see him so happy; it erases the frustrations of my day.

Aldo and I develop a fascinating relationship, incredibly deep despite the language barrier. I grow to love him more and more. He knows I am an actress who goes to work every day, and who flies to London each weekend, but he doesn’t want to know any more than that. It’s not
importante.

What is
importante
is how much we have come to mean to each other. When filming in Livorno finally comes to an end after four months, I am stricken by the thought that I may never see Aldo again. Relieved as I am that the movie is over and that I can now spend a glorious summer in
London with Oliver and Bill (where our beautiful daughter will be conceived), it is still one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

“Here, I bought you something,” I tell him, unable to hide my tears as I hand him a large red geranium to remind him of us. “You have to water it regularly.”

“Like our friendship, my darling,” he whispers, “or it will die.”

Knowing his time on this earth is running out, I write to Aldo soon afterward. He writes straight back. In his long, sloping handwriting he tells me of the sad deterioration of his wife, his own failing health and his sorrow to be old and dying. I keep every single letter he sends me, to remind me of his gentility.