Bradley Chu, Investor, strides purposefully into his sleeping quarters with Book in one hand and suitcase in the other. He sets the suitcase on the bed, sits down immediately at the redwood desk and opens the Book. The sound of a ringing bell alerts him that a message has arrived from an anonymous sender; it's entitled "Real Renaissance Revealed."
'Bradley waves a hand and murmurs a password. Vague bursts of light shoot up from his bookscreen, and begin to take shape. Cursing in guttural Chinese, he waves his hand again and the images hovering in the air dissolve and re-appear. He glares at the screen, folds his arms, and watches, cursing and muttering to himself all the while.
*****
Welcome, Truth Tellers of the World! It's June 15, 2049, and you are watching BEFORE THE RECORD, where we catch the news before it breaks. I'm Captain Truth, reporting from Agello, Italy. We're just a stone's throw from the beautiful medieval city of Perugia, where you can climb the cobblestone hillsides, learn Italian in the sidewalk cafes and purchase world-famous Perugina chocolates at a deep discount if you click on the ad to my right.
We continue now with the second episode of Real Renaissance Revealed, our investigation of the biggest international scandal of the 21st century.
Our first interview today is with the irresistible, and irresistibly beautiful, Countess Giulia Antonini Zuckerman, of Perugia, Italy. We're visiting her in Agello, her ancestral homestead in the hills above town.
Countess Giulia may or may not be guilty of misappropriating vast sums of government money -- or of hawking poisonous medications that claim to lengthen lives -- but this I know: she has one son, Count Raffaello, who lives in the United States. That's right, Count Raffaello Antonini Zuckerman. Does he sound like a vampire to you? He does to me too. You'll never hear him use that name, it might make too many people suspicious of his real motives. He's last scion of the Antonini family. He's also an American businessman and scientist, known to the United States public as Ralph "Zuck" Zuckerman. Count Raffaello is none other than the Founder himself, the Doctor Faustus of Beverly Hills, the CEO of that now infamous corporation, Renaissance Pharmaceuticals, the man whose haughty negligence and overweening ambition may have cheated you and millions of your fellow citizens of billions of taxpayer dollars over the last thirty years.
Don't worry, Mom didn't hear this introduction; I'm doing a voiceover. In fact, she doesn't know who I am or why I'm putting her on my show. But you do, because I'll tell you. We're here to find out how the sins of the Mothers are visited upon the Sons!
(The voice of Captain Truth changes audibly to a much dirtier, less engineered sound.)
"Good morning, Countess!"
"Good morning, my friend. I believe this is my first interview with a cartoon character."
"Countess! Never judge a character by his cartoon! Ladies and gentlemen, Countess Antonini is, unlike me, made of flesh and blood, and she turns eighty this year with nary a blemish or wrinkle on her cheeks nor a strand of white hair. No surprise to any of you, I imagine, that she jogs two miles every day and has just taken the helm of her 500-million-dollar family business, the Antonini Wineries, in the wake of her father's retirement at the tender age of 115! I came looking for the Countess at this 18th century villa here in the hills of Tuscany.."
"Umbria, darling."
"Umbria, yes. Countess Giulia shares the ancestral family home with her three sisters, Sara, Elena and Raffaella, all in their nineties. There they are, sitting at a wooden table on their terrace with glasses of wine in their hands. If you look carefully behind us, you'll see the rolling green hills in the distance, and the vineyards in the valleys down below. What a view! Right before we got started, Lady Giulia offered me and my crew a couple of bottles of these prize wines here (close-up on the label of the wine bottle; "Antonini, Pinot Grigio 2049") and a plate of local goat cheeses, all available for round-the world overnight shipments, at bargain prices, through a link on the right side of this page. You can also reach the Antonini Vineyards and obtain our TruthTellers Rebate simply by saying the following coupon code: Tomba Di Nerone. That's Tomba Di Nerone. More on that strange name later. Now, as you'll see in a moment, the Countess was clearly delighted at the opportunity to take us with her on her long, strange trip down memory lane!"
"Delighted? It depends which route we take, my dear. There are certain dark corners where I would prefer not to get lost."
"So, Countess. How did you meet your husband?"
"I was his English student at the American School down in Rome."
"He taught you well, I see. Your English is flawless. And how did you fall in love?"
"Oh dear... If you could have seen him when he was a young man, prancing in front of a classroom, you would understand."
"Well then, Countess, let's take a look! Is this a fair resemblance?" (Closeup on the face of a handsome but stern-looking man in his mid-thirties, dark-haired and even-featured, unsmiling, thin-lipped, with a mustache and a scraggly goatee)
"He was not so thin and -- pointed, darling. There was... a certain sweetness..."
The husband's face dissolves and reconstitutes itself to look decidedly younger and more full-lipped. The face breaks out into a winning, confident grin, every white tooth showing."
"That's more like it!"
"And was it just his handsome face, Countess, or did he seduce you by other means?"
"Well, you need to hear my story to answer that question..."
"All right folks, I give you Countess Antonini, who will share with us the story of how all the madness started. Believe it or not, every story has a beginning, even if it never ends."
Since the 1560s the Antoninis of Central Italy had farmed acres of chestnuts and garbanzo beans, hillsides full of vineyards and olive groves. They’d harvested barrels upon barrels of juicy, sweet red grapes and carefully ripened olives, pounded and squeezed them into oils and wines so flavorful and rich that the finest restaurants in Paris and London would clamor for them. The names of Antoninis were attached to a dozen marble and stone palaces in Rome and Frascati, Viterbo and Orvieto, Perugia and Florence.
Countess Giulia Antonini, born in 1969, was the last of the four daughters of Count Raffaello Antonini de Novellis, the last heiress of the Antonini family, and the first in her family to be sent to the New World -- although in the beginning she only went there in spirit, not in body.
Giulia grew up with her father and three sisters in the family homestead outside Perugia. Her mother died early on, felled by breast cancer when Giulia was only three. She had private tutors for much of her childhood. But her father, Count Raffaello, was a practical man, indeed perhaps the cleverest businessman the family had seen in 250 years since his ancestor, Ercole, had opened a high-end wineshop in a fashionable area of London.
As Giulia matured, and it became clear to Count Raffaello that he would not remarry or bear any male heirs, he began thinking ahead to the future of the family winery and decided two things; his daughters needed to learn how to run the business, and it was time for Antonini to expand its United States market.
Sara, Elena and Raffaella were old enough to work; the Count could train them to manage the winery. The three of them together might just have the brains to keep the business going another generation, although it was a source of endless frustration to him that not one of his girls seemed in any hurry to marry or have children.
Giulia, at least, had an independent streak in her, a drive to conquer, that Count Raffaello hadn't seen in his three older daughters. She also had the looks -- the slenderness, the dark hair, the soulful black eyes that Americans liked to see in an Italian woman -- all of which could only the winery succeed. And so, the youngest of the Countesses was slated to take charge of the booming American market.
When Giulia turned fourteen in the summer of 1983, Count Raffaello decided to set her up with an apartment and a nanny-governess-housekeeper in an Antonini-owned building in downtown Rome. She would be living by herself, a three-hour drive away from home; it was an unconventional arrangement. But if any of the Antonini girls could handle it, Giulia could. Raffaello also enrolled her at the expensive, exclusive American School Of Rome. In that setting, he hoped, his daughter would gain some mastery of the English spoken by the nouveau riche families of California and New York, who were rapidly becoming the most extravagant and faithful customers of Antonini Wineries. And even better, she might meet a suitable husband, perhaps even a young man with a good command of English and of the American way of doing business. That would be the ideal outcome.
Count Raffaello met with the entire staff of his estate and handpicked the appropriate lady to look after his young daughter. Her name was Norisa Minucci Romero; thirty-five or so, a thin, pale bundle of energy, organized and methodical and eager to better herself; she had studied up to the eighth grade, and she was married with a son just Giulia's age. Her husband Ferdinando Romero was a negretto, a little blacky from the Philippines. God knew how he had ended up in Agello, but it had something to do with the foreigners' school over in Perugia. He might have come to learn Italian, snagged some under-the-table handyman work, and found a way to hide from the authorities, never bothering to go back home. He was an earnest little churchgoer, and seemed to want to make an honest living; and between his religious devotion and Norisa's watchful eye, Count Raffaello was sure they wouldn't let their son get into trouble or become a bad influence on young and comely Giulia.
And so, shortly after wrapping up their family vacation on the beach at Anzio, where they always spent August sunning themselves with all the good families from Rome and Umbria, the Count, his four daughters, Norisa, Ferdinando and their son Beppo packed up two cars with the essentials -- family portraits, fine linens, porcelain plates from the potters' town of Mugnano just down the road from the family homestead. Ferdinando borrowed one of the Antonini Winery trucks and loaded onto it everything else that Giulia might need, the bed and couches, the Moroccan rugs and glass table, and a new bidet for the bathroom. Norisa gave a last-minute tour of the Agello estate to the cousins who could take over the jobs she and her husband were doing -- cooking and cleaning and home repairs, oil-pressing and olive-tree pruning. And then the caravan left -- the Count's Mercedes Benz, the Romeros' ten-year old Fiat clunker, a smoke-belching truck, and the two families, and one directly behind the other, the three vehicles trundled along country roads, and, for the last few miles, an unavoidable divided highway, until they reached the Villa Antonini di Trastevere.
A rough-and-tumble 18th century building, three storeys tall and laced with suggestive graffiti that needed to be removed == Norisa put it on her mental list -- , the Villa clung to the edge of a narrow, hilly, cobblestone street called Salita di San'Onofrio. It was among the dingiest of the family properties, and the only one that they'd been willing to convert into condominium apartments. There were few murals or statues to speak of, and only one tiny courtyard with a stone fountain, but it was perfect for the rental market because of its location on a picturesque alleyway that snaked down hill from the cypress and pine walkways of Gianicolo Park, where English and American artists came to spend a year at the Academy of Rome, to the warren of cobblestone streets southwest of the Tiber River, known as Trastevere, that had become so favored by tourists and foreign sojourners. Indeed, the Palazzo Antonini was a cash cow; renters came and went every year without ever staying long enough to benefit from the absurdities of Roman rent control laws. Giulia's neighbors were a revolving-door crowd of professors on sabbatical and college students on their junior year abroad, mostly from the United States. Some tenants enrolled their children at the American School and asked young Giulia to babysit. She didn't need the money, but she did it anyway because she liked the English practice and loved to play with little children.
Norisa managed the building finances and paid Giulia's American School tuition, but young Giulia collected all the leftover profit from the rentals after bills, taxes and salaries had been paid, and she could buy her fill of designer clothes and jewelry, weekend excursions to European capitals with her sisters, summers at the beach in Anzio; when Giulia's classmates at the American School realized the extent of her money and freedom, she quickly became one of the most popular girls and got invited to parties every weekend.
In the years that Giulia lived at Salita San Onofrio, Norisa managed the property. She also ironed and repaired the clothes, cooked the food, washed the dishes and cleaned the apartment, and even checked to see that Giulia had done her homework. Although Norisa lived, technically, with her husband and son in the basement apartment reserved for doormen and groundskeepers, she spent more time at Giulia's place than at her own.
Norisa's husband Ferdinando was a quiet man; he took care of the plumbing and electrical problems and spent a lot of time at church on Sundays. Norisa's son Beppo, on the other hand, was friendly and talkative, exactly Giulia's age, and safely, oddly immune to the charm of Giulia's perfumes and leather purses and designer high heels. When the two youngsters were together, studying English or Latin or math, travelling to and from school field trips, going out to beer halls on the weekend evenings with their friends, Giulia forgot she was an Antonini, and Beppo appeared to forget he was a poor mixed-race farmboy from the Umbrian countryside.
This was not entirely by accident, of course. Norisa had attended school only to the eighth grade, but she knew how to take care of business-- that's why Count Raffaello had trusted her with his daughter. She had convinced the Count to pay a portion of Beppo's tuition at the American School. The Count, whose business instincts rarely failed him, took care of the rest of Beppo's tuition with a bit of clever politicking. His opening gambit with the Admissions Director, who also moonlighted as the school's chief fundraiser, was to make vague promises of future donations A week before Beppo's case appeared before the largely American Board of Trustees of the school, the Count presented them with a few discreet gifts -- cases of the highest-quality Antonini wines and olive oil, worth hundreds of dollars (but not even a tenth of the tuition.) He then pointed out in a private meeting with the Headmaster that Beppo Romero showed great promise, although his father was a simple plumber-electrician and his mother a housekeeper. With the right kind of cultivation, Beppo might make an interesting candidate for a top-ranked American university, hence boosting the Stateside reputation of the American School! Furthermore, as Count Raffaello pointed out to the Headmaster, Beppo's English was already decent -- in part because his Filipino father had learned it in Filipino schools before emigrating to Italy. And finally, Beppo and Giulia would help one another survive the rigorous academic climate of the American School, with its Advanced Placement courses and International Bacculareate Exams, because they would study together and learn quickly-- indeed, they might help to make each other virtually bilingual. The Count wrapped up his sales pitch by returning to the possibility (in unspecified later years) of an Antonini Scholarship Fund, and by meeting's end he'd cajoled the headmaster into offering Beppo a generous scholarship that covered the balance of his tuition, the cost of all books, and even his soccer uniform.
And so it was that Countess Giulia Antonini and Beppo Romero started the ninth grade together at the American School of Rome, then landed together in "English as a Second Language" class in tenth grade, and passed into honors English and then finally into Advanced Placement, thus remaining his two most dedicated students until graduation. They grew up together, discovering America under the bemused eye of their English teacher, Mr. Robert Zuckerman.
Mr Z arrived a year after Beppo and Giulia, like them a newcomer to Rome and to the American School, and he arrived in style. Neither Beppo nor Giulia ever forgot their first glimpse of him. In the early morning of the first day of classes in 1984, the year they began tenth grade, the kids took the bus to school together. They watched from the windows as a speeding motorcyclist careened around the corner of the Via Cassia in a jet-black helmet and sunglasses , and sped noisily past them. In the midst of the rush hour traffic jam, he weaved his noisy way in and out of car lanes, rumbled across the street, and sped through the gates of school and halfway across the parking lot until he'd slowed down enough to stop. The motorcyclist turned out to be Mr. Z --the only teacher they'd ever met who wasn't afraid to own the roads with his bike. Soon after Beppo and Giulia found their way to first period ESL, he entered with a flourish, still wearing his sunglasses, and made two announcements that forever sealed his reputation among students.
First of all, Mr. Z. was not a professional teacher but rather a writer from Los Angeles, author of a dozen movie scripts, who wanted a break from “show biz.”
Second of all, the new teacher from Hollywood CA was a fan of none other than Nero -- that vicious Ancient Roman Emperor who had persecuted Christians for refusing to bow down to him; murdered family members before they could steal the throne; wasted the untold riches of the Roman Empire to build a cluster of glamorous palaces in the center of the Imperial capital, a complex that only the Emperor himself had been allowed to enter.
"Look, I know Nero was no saint," Mr. Z said, forgetting that his students could barely understand English. "He was a gangster. But boy, oh boy -- did he leave fingerprints!"
Beppo raised his hand.
"What is it, kid?"
"Fingerprints?" asked Beppo. "Excuse me, what are fingerprints?"
"Come up here, kid --- Beppo, right? Mind if I call you Joe? Joseph, it's English for Giuseppe, right? Helps me remember you better. Put your finger here, Joe, in this bowl of black ink. I brought it to class especially for you."
Beppo obediently stuck his finger into the ink.
"Now make a mark on the whiteboard with your finger, right there. Good. OK, young lady, the princess there in the leather shoes. Julie Antonini. If it's OK with you, I'll just call you Jules. Come up here, do the same thing that other kid just did."
Two fingerprints, one bigger and more smudged than the other, now sat on the whiteboard.
"You see? They seem the same until you look carefully -- and boom -- you suddenly notice different curves, different shades of black. No two are the same. That's why the police use them to catch thieves. Nero made his mark. No other Emperor, saint or devil, was quite like him. The guy founded Armenia, for crying out loud. The Christians thought he was the Antichrist!"
The students nodded, smiling and uncomprehending. The Italians started whispering to each other, because they'd heard Nero's story before.
"If that doesn't impress you, then look around you when you leave campus. This whole neighborhood -- these streets and homes right outside the gates of our school --- all named after him. No, better than that. His tomb. Imagine a guy so powerful that 2000 years after he dies, there are still stories circulating about how he poisoned all his enemies. And 30,000 people are here, today, living right here in our part of town, named after a stone and a hole in the ground where the soldiers dumped his corpse. You want to know why I love Emperor Nero? -- just walk down the street from here. Down the Via Cassia. You'll find his tombstone, inscribed top to bottom in Latin. Right in the middle of a hundred stucco apartment buildings. In 2000 years, nobody ever knocked it down, or chipped at it. When the poor man was thirty-one years old, younger than me, he killed himself by plunging a sword into his own heart so he wouldn't be hacked to death in front of thousands of Roman subjects...he got the last laugh. And then, 1800 years after his death, he managed to make a fool out of General Napoleon. It was the season of Napoleon's coronation as Emperor of France. And he had this pet project, a travelling hot air balloon that could travel long distance. He tried to make it float all the way from Paris to Rome. Then it reached the home stretch, a few miles from town, and sailed over the wrong tomb. Nero's ghost was there waiting... and he was so nasty, so strong, that he reached his ghostly hands out from underground and dragged that sucker down down and popped it. And it came crashing down over the tomb."
After class, Beppo and Giulia waited until all the other students had left, and then went up to Mr. Z.
"Hello there," he said. "You want me to change your grade already? I haven't assigned any work!"
"Mr. Z," Beppo said. "We are so glad to have you as our teacher. You know very much about Italy and Rome history!"
"I try," he answered. "What can I do for you?"
"There is maybe one small correction to your lesson that we would like to suggest," said Giulia.
Mr. Z smiled. "Oh really? I'm listening."
"The tomb...is not after all of Emperor Nero," Beppo said. "That is an old little joke."
"An old wives' tale," Giulia added.
"It is in reality not the tomb of the Emperor Nero, but of another Roman officer," explained Beppo. "Publio Vibio Mariano."
"Who the hell was he?" asked Mr. Z.
"It is not exactly sure, but it is said that he was a very responsible good man who completed his duties..." Giulia said. "And his wife arranged herself so that it would be builded -- after his passing away. He is said to having lived a very long good life."
Mr. Z looked sternly at his new students, hands on hips. "Tell me one interesting fact about Poobli Vibo, or whatever his name was. Besides that he was an ancient Roman."
Giulia and Beppo smiled helplessly.
"I rest my case," said Mr. Z. The students looked at him, still smiling but puzzled. "That's exactly my point," he added, hoping to clarify. "Whom would you rather be? The Emperor every one was scared of, and invented legends about? Or the forgotten bureaucrat? Most people don't even know that he had a tombstone, let alone that Nero's ghost stole it from him."
"Excuse me, Mr. Z?" said Giulia.
"What?"
"Will you perhaps ask on the exam for the right answer about the provenance of this tomb?"
"I don't know," Mr. Z replied. "I haven't written the test yet. Maybe I'll have a special question just for you."
******
Mr. Z was single, but he wouldn’t reveal his age. Instead, he coyly quoted Dante, in Italian – “nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita , mi ritrovai in una selva oscura.” Giulia was charmed – by the incongruity of his carefully rolled r’s and broad American vowels, by the reference to a great Italian poet. She calculated his age before any one else in the class. He had to be thirty-five -- Dante’s age when he wrote the Divine Comedy, and halfway through the 70-year lifespan the Bible had assigned to humans.
Giulia again stayed in class a couple of minutes after the bell rang, and Mr. Z welcomed her with his hand, broad and tanned and confident, clasping her narrow shoulder. "So, Jules, how can you drive me crazy today?"
“Mr. Z,” she murmured, “I know your secret.”
“Already?”
“You are thirty-five.”
“Yes. Well, that’s not really a secret.”
“There’s another... matter it would please me to discuss.”
“Hurry up!"
“Are you perhaps like Dante in another way? Do you find yourself in a “dark forest?”
“A midlife crisis, you mean?”
“A place full of fear and mystery?”
Mr. Zuckerman laughed – a brassy, deep bellow of a laugh. “You’re a funny girl! We’ll have to talk more.” He walked her to her next class as he was fumbling for a cigarette and a lighter.
Another day, he announced his love for Rome. “You Romans live well,” he said. “Smoke’s no sin in this town. You light up in the light of day, and strike up matches with your conversations.”
Indeed, the romance never ended with Mr. Z. He drove to school on a motorcycle and started the day by lifting weights in the high school gym. He wrote screenplays in his spare time, and sang Broadway tunes, and played jazz violin at the bars in Trastevere. He commanded an impressive vocabulary of local Roman curses– never referring to a place as “far away,” but only as “up the Madonna’s butt.” – When a rough draft of an essay came in more than a paragraph too long, he would return it ungraded, and write in red block letters, “Redo. No ‘vita morte e miracoli,” (life, death and miracles).” His humor was effortless, his rebelliousness finely tuned.
Beppo and Giulia studied with Mr. Z for three years. Giulia worshipped him quietly at first. She had always been a responsible student, but Mr. Zuckerman made her brilliant. English Language and Literature became her labor of love.
Her reward came at the end of her senior year, when Mr. Z finally chose her. Among all the equally besotted girls in AP English class, she was his favorite. He dubbed her “Girl Genius” for her cumulative achievements in English. “What stands out most about Ms. Antonini,” he announced at the school awards ceremony, “is her poise and confidence.”
Their courtship began with a flourish during the AP English class on May 20, 1987, the day she turned eighteen and a week or so after the AP exam. The pace of work had slowed, so Beppo and Giulia's girlfriends organized a surprise birthday party for her. They didn’t ask Mr. Zuckerman’s permission, because they knew he would agree.
During the party, he took her aside and paid her his first direct compliment. “Ms. Antonini,” he mentioned , “Your passport says you’re eighteen. You have the beauty and freshness of an girl, but the maturity and wisdom of a young woman twice your age.”
“Why?” she asked, breathless with joy.
“I see your work, your writing. I notice the good taste you show in your dress. I watch you take charge during group projects.”
“So do you think that I am pretty and intelligent?” she responded, giggling.
AP English was the last class before lunch, and Mr. Z let every one go early. Giulia motioned to Beppo a silent "go, go!" even though he usually waited for her. Mr Z. handed her a scrap of paper with his home phone number, which he never gave out to students. “You are something special, Giulia. a young lady. Not a lightweight schoolgirl. You deserve the best.”
“And you, Mr. Z?” she asked. “Do you deserve the best?”
“Well, I like to learn about the world,” he replied. “I’m what Americans call a “diamond in the rough. I like to savor the best.”
“You need a good loving woman to smooth you out, make you safe for children. An educated woman who understands how to tame a man.”
“I don’t know if I want kids, though.”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Z, you do. I am sure that you will be good with kids.”
“And I’ll be even better when I get my lucky break. When I have money to buy kids a house and pay for their school. And their karate, and ballet lessons, and all that.”
“Or you need a rich wife.”
“Well, yes…”
“Oh I understand,” she continued. “You want to provide for her. But her money is just insurance, if you become passe’ or out of style. Our great directors here in Italy, Fellini, De Sica -- your countryfolk watched them for five minutes and lost interest. They could do the same to you.”
“Ms. Antonini. Hollywood doesn’t work like that! There’s always a new job, maybe for a cable TV station. It’s like anything else. You need to have experience and connections, a “raccomandazione.” She replied, with coy fluttering eyes, “Your great country, the land of freedom? They need “raccomandazioni?” I am shocked!” Then Giulia's pager buzzed. She was the first student at the American School to get her own pager.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I must call back immediately. Please do not leave!" She ran to a payphone in the hallway. Her father, Count Raffaello, was in town for the day from Perugia, and wanted to take her to a late lunch. She told him she was finishing up important schoolwork; could he wait until late afternoon? She wanted to tease Mr. Z and keep the conversation going. She ran back to Mr. Z's classroom, where he was busying himself rearranging books on a shelf, and she said to him: “Hollywood just called. I have connections in high places. They want me to find a talented writer. I asked them, ‘should he be handsome too?”
“OK, Ms Antonini, that’s enough.” She’d made him blush. “Get out of here."
"I thought perhaps we could enjoy a pleasant meal together, Mr. Z? When the school day has ended? I know a little Bistro, a place for a tasty bowl of spaghetti all' arrabbiata. It is the beest restaurant I know that is open all day, and it is near the most beautiful park in Rome... And I have my car!"
"Arrabbiata? Angry pasta?" Mr. Z said. "I hope that doesn't mean that you are angry at me!"
"Oh no. It's spicy, red-hot tomato sauce. It means only that I love whatever is spicy and exciting! Like you."
After the 4:00 spicy lunch, Giulia and Mr. Z. strolled over to Villa Borghese and cuddled on a bench in front of the duck lake. A distant uncle of Giulia's had willed his entire estate to the city of Rome in the years after World War II, and she made sure that Mr. Z. understood this. Her uncle’s generosity, she whispered in his ear, had made it possible for the two of them to fondle each other in a public park. She gave him a present, a worn-out margin-noted copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy that her mother had used a generation earlier when she was in school. “I know how you like old books, Mr. Z,” she’d said softly. “And this is special, because it is part of our family history. My mother died when I was young... but she left Dante behind...” He took the present, set it down on the bench, and began kissing her full in the mouth. When his hands reached inside her jeans, bought specially for the occasion, she kissed him harder. No memory of their marriage ever came close to the unbridled, savage joy she felt in that moment, when Mr Z’s hands made her into a woman.
*******
In August of 1987, Giulia's period was late. She was consumed by hunger, even though she was vomiting every day. Mystified, she visited the family physician and discovered she was pregnant. Her father was traveling, and her sisters were scolds, so she only told Mr. Z. He was cheerful that summer, and in the mood for love, and not just because he had a young Italian heiress strolling down the Via del Corso with him. He had finally gotten his first call from Hollywood; a cable television station was interested in purchasing three of his scripts. "Whoops," he said to Giulia. "That's OK, we'll figure it out. But you need to stop calling me Mr. Z. I'm Bob. I'm your boyfriend Bob."
They eloped to Los Angeles, and spent their first nights together in a hotel while he negotiated his contract. Then the deal stalled, and Bob grew dark and moody. “You better get yourself an abortion and go home.” Giulia was jetlagged, nauseous, lonely. She lay in the hotel bed crying, cursing his name, begging him to reconsider. She told Bob she hated him, that she’d lost her virginity to a foul mouthed boor who had mounted her like a horse, impregnated her and abandoned her in a roadside motel. Then it was his turn. “You spoiled, selfish, whining little princess,” he had said, “I am paying for you to sleep at the Beverly Hills Hilton! And you said you were on the pill.”
Finally the contract came through. By then she was into her thirteenth week and it was too late to abort. Bob had gotten used to the idea of a baby, and he asked her to marry him. “Hey, I can afford fatherhood now.” He wanted to buy a house and throw parties where he meet stars, producers. A family could be useful. They exchanged vows at the Superior Court in downtown LA and he bought her a cheap ring. “Trade it in later,” he told her, “when I sign my next contract.”
They got the house and the parties, and the second contract. And Bob got his pound of flesh. Every day of their marriage, in private and in public when no one was looking, he fondled her breasts like beach balls, his gesture of ownership. He didn’t stop when Raffaello was born and the nursing made them ache. The one time she complained, Bob was silent for three days and wouldn’t sleep in their bed. She finally gave in and crept into the guest room, bare breasts exposed, and after he’d fondled her to his heart’s content she let him come at her from behind. She hurt for three days.
The man’s bedroom violations would have been tolerable to her if he had acted like a gentleman outside, but no. He passed gas in public, and gobbled his dinner faster than she could carry it to the table. His language was more littered with “fuck” and “shit” and “bitch” than the most illiterate peasant on her father’s estate. Perhaps English was simply a less elegant language, but then why did he never try to learn proper Italian? The Roman curses were as far as he would go.
Bob was fat, boorish and out of control. And yet, he had one redeeming quality – his puppy love. For the 22 years of their marriage, he was completely faithful, more than Giulia would have expected. He never stopped admiring her body; she would accompany him to late night parties where every woman guest under thirty was dressed like a two-coin whore, and he would never give them a passing glance. "I'll take your ass over theirs any day, baby." And then he would grab it. He was that way until the end, until his heart suddenly stopped beating and his worn out body gave up the ghost in their Beverly Hills backyard, twenty-two years later in the summer of 2009.
*****
(Close up on the cartoon face of Captain Truth)
"And Countess, was that child..."
"Count Raffaello Antonini Zuckerman. Yes he was."
"Sounds like an inauspicious beginning to your marriage."
"And how do you feel about your son now?"
"He is certainly successful at business; his grandfather would have been proud of his savoire-faire."
"And what are your thoughts about his line of work?"
"This is your last question, darling?"
"If it has to be..."
"My son is talented, I am sure you will agree. The medicine he has invented -- I am a satisfied customer. So are my sisters. I wish only that my father could have lived to take it. The new town he and his business partner have built, up there in orbit-- I have booked reservations on the Space Elevator and rented a condominium for the month of August, when it is too hot for any one to stay in Rome. Instead of the beach where I usually go, I shall gladly pay a visit to the new settlement. You may ask me again then -- and I will tell you what I think. Until then, dear, I think you had better press on with your interviews until you get the story you want."
"Well-said, Countess."
"Come visit me again soon. Perhaps without asking so many questions..."
(Dissolve to Black)
Well, friends and fellow rebels against The Man, that's it for today. We continue with the next episode of "Real Renaissance Revealed" tomorrow, same time, same place, on Before the Record. The only place on the Web where we report the news before it breaks. Have a good day, and remember -- don't let them fool you! The evil urge is no less necessary than the good, indeed even more necessary, for without it man would woo no woman and beget no children, build no house and engage in no economic activity… it is called “the yeast in the dough,” the ferment placed in the soul by God, without which the human dough does not rise. (Martin Buber, “Good and Evil”)
Prologue
Bradley Chu, Investor, strides purposefully into his sleeping quarters with Book in one hand and suitcase in the other. He sets the suitcase on the bed, sits down immediately at the redwood desk and opens the Book. The sound of a ringing bell alerts him that a message has arrived from an anonymous sender; it's entitled "Real Renaissance Revealed."
'Bradley waves a hand and murmurs a password. Vague bursts of light shoot up from his bookscreen, and begin to take shape. Cursing in guttural Chinese, he waves his hand again and the images hovering in the air dissolve and re-appear. He glares at the screen, folds his arms, and watches, cursing and muttering to himself all the while.
*****
Welcome, Truth Tellers of the World! It's June 15, 2049, and you are watching BEFORE THE RECORD, where we catch the news before it breaks. I'm Captain Truth, reporting from Agello, Italy. We're just a stone's throw from the beautiful medieval city of Perugia, where you can climb the cobblestone hillsides, learn Italian in the sidewalk cafes and purchase world-famous Perugina chocolates at a deep discount if you click on the ad to my right.
We continue now with the second episode of Real Renaissance Revealed, our investigation of the biggest international scandal of the 21st century.
Our first interview today is with the irresistible, and irresistibly beautiful, Countess Giulia Antonini Zuckerman, of Perugia, Italy. We're visiting her in Agello, her ancestral homestead in the hills above town.
Countess Giulia may or may not be guilty of misappropriating vast sums of government money -- or of hawking poisonous medications that claim to lengthen lives -- but this I know: she has one son, Count Raffaello, who lives in the United States. That's right, Count Raffaello Antonini Zuckerman. Does he sound like a vampire to you? He does to me too. You'll never hear him use that name, it might make too many people suspicious of his real motives. He's last scion of the Antonini family. He's also an American businessman and scientist, known to the United States public as Ralph "Zuck" Zuckerman. Count Raffaello is none other than the Founder himself, the Doctor Faustus of Beverly Hills, the CEO of that now infamous corporation, Renaissance Pharmaceuticals, the man whose haughty negligence and overweening ambition may have cheated you and millions of your fellow citizens of billions of taxpayer dollars over the last thirty years.
Don't worry, Mom didn't hear this introduction; I'm doing a voiceover. In fact, she doesn't know who I am or why I'm putting her on my show. But you do, because I'll tell you. We're here to find out how the sins of the Mothers are visited upon the Sons!
(The voice of Captain Truth changes audibly to a much dirtier, less engineered sound.)
"Good morning, Countess!"
"Good morning, my friend. I believe this is my first interview with a cartoon character."
"Countess! Never judge a character by his cartoon! Ladies and gentlemen, Countess Antonini is, unlike me, made of flesh and blood, and she turns eighty this year with nary a blemish or wrinkle on her cheeks nor a strand of white hair. No surprise to any of you, I imagine, that she jogs two miles every day and has just taken the helm of her 500-million-dollar family business, the Antonini Wineries, in the wake of her father's retirement at the tender age of 115! I came looking for the Countess at this 18th century villa here in the hills of Tuscany.."
"Umbria, darling."
"Umbria, yes. Countess Giulia shares the ancestral family home with her three sisters, Sara, Elena and Raffaella, all in their nineties. There they are, sitting at a wooden table on their terrace with glasses of wine in their hands. If you look carefully behind us, you'll see the rolling green hills in the distance, and the vineyards in the valleys down below. What a view! Right before we got started, Lady Giulia offered me and my crew a couple of bottles of these prize wines here (close-up on the label of the wine bottle; "Antonini, Pinot Grigio 2049") and a plate of local goat cheeses, all available for round-the world overnight shipments, at bargain prices, through a link on the right side of this page. You can also reach the Antonini Vineyards and obtain our TruthTellers Rebate simply by saying the following coupon code: Tomba Di Nerone. That's Tomba Di Nerone. More on that strange name later. Now, as you'll see in a moment, the Countess was clearly delighted at the opportunity to take us with her on her long, strange trip down memory lane!"
"Delighted? It depends which route we take, my dear. There are certain dark corners where I would prefer not to get lost."
"So, Countess. How did you meet your husband?"
"I was his English student at the American School down in Rome."
"He taught you well, I see. Your English is flawless. And how did you fall in love?"
"Oh dear... If you could have seen him when he was a young man, prancing in front of a classroom, you would understand."
"Well then, Countess, let's take a look! Is this a fair resemblance?" (Closeup on the face of a handsome but stern-looking man in his mid-thirties, dark-haired and even-featured, unsmiling, thin-lipped, with a mustache and a scraggly goatee)
"He was not so thin and -- pointed, darling. There was... a certain sweetness..."
The husband's face dissolves and reconstitutes itself to look decidedly younger and more full-lipped. The face breaks out into a winning, confident grin, every white tooth showing."
"That's more like it!"
"And was it just his handsome face, Countess, or did he seduce you by other means?"
"Well, you need to hear my story to answer that question..."
"All right folks, I give you Countess Antonini, who will share with us the story of how all the madness started. Believe it or not, every story has a beginning, even if it never ends."
Chapter 1: Nero's Tomb (Tomba Di Nerone), Rome, Italy, the mid 1980s
Since the 1560s the Antoninis of Central Italy had farmed acres of chestnuts and garbanzo beans, hillsides full of vineyards and olive groves. They’d harvested barrels upon barrels of juicy, sweet red grapes and carefully ripened olives, pounded and squeezed them into oils and wines so flavorful and rich that the finest restaurants in Paris and London would clamor for them. The names of Antoninis were attached to a dozen marble and stone palaces in Rome and Frascati, Viterbo and Orvieto, Perugia and Florence.
Countess Giulia Antonini, born in 1969, was the last of the four daughters of Count Raffaello Antonini de Novellis, the last heiress of the Antonini family, and the first in her family to be sent to the New World -- although in the beginning she only went there in spirit, not in body.
Giulia grew up with her father and three sisters in the family homestead outside Perugia. Her mother died early on, felled by breast cancer when Giulia was only three. She had private tutors for much of her childhood. But her father, Count Raffaello, was a practical man, indeed perhaps the cleverest businessman the family had seen in 250 years since his ancestor, Ercole, had opened a high-end wineshop in a fashionable area of London.
As Giulia matured, and it became clear to Count Raffaello that he would not remarry or bear any male heirs, he began thinking ahead to the future of the family winery and decided two things; his daughters needed to learn how to run the business, and it was time for Antonini to expand its United States market.
Sara, Elena and Raffaella were old enough to work; the Count could train them to manage the winery. The three of them together might just have the brains to keep the business going another generation, although it was a source of endless frustration to him that not one of his girls seemed in any hurry to marry or have children.
Giulia, at least, had an independent streak in her, a drive to conquer, that Count Raffaello hadn't seen in his three older daughters. She also had the looks -- the slenderness, the dark hair, the soulful black eyes that Americans liked to see in an Italian woman -- all of which could only the winery succeed. And so, the youngest of the Countesses was slated to take charge of the booming American market.
When Giulia turned fourteen in the summer of 1983, Count Raffaello decided to set her up with an apartment and a nanny-governess-housekeeper in an Antonini-owned building in downtown Rome. She would be living by herself, a three-hour drive away from home; it was an unconventional arrangement. But if any of the Antonini girls could handle it, Giulia could. Raffaello also enrolled her at the expensive, exclusive American School Of Rome. In that setting, he hoped, his daughter would gain some mastery of the English spoken by the nouveau riche families of California and New York, who were rapidly becoming the most extravagant and faithful customers of Antonini Wineries. And even better, she might meet a suitable husband, perhaps even a young man with a good command of English and of the American way of doing business. That would be the ideal outcome.
Count Raffaello met with the entire staff of his estate and handpicked the appropriate lady to look after his young daughter. Her name was Norisa Minucci Romero; thirty-five or so, a thin, pale bundle of energy, organized and methodical and eager to better herself; she had studied up to the eighth grade, and she was married with a son just Giulia's age. Her husband Ferdinando Romero was a negretto, a little blacky from the Philippines. God knew how he had ended up in Agello, but it had something to do with the foreigners' school over in Perugia. He might have come to learn Italian, snagged some under-the-table handyman work, and found a way to hide from the authorities, never bothering to go back home. He was an earnest little churchgoer, and seemed to want to make an honest living; and between his religious devotion and Norisa's watchful eye, Count Raffaello was sure they wouldn't let their son get into trouble or become a bad influence on young and comely Giulia.
And so, shortly after wrapping up their family vacation on the beach at Anzio, where they always spent August sunning themselves with all the good families from Rome and Umbria, the Count, his four daughters, Norisa, Ferdinando and their son Beppo packed up two cars with the essentials -- family portraits, fine linens, porcelain plates from the potters' town of Mugnano just down the road from the family homestead. Ferdinando borrowed one of the Antonini Winery trucks and loaded onto it everything else that Giulia might need, the bed and couches, the Moroccan rugs and glass table, and a new bidet for the bathroom. Norisa gave a last-minute tour of the Agello estate to the cousins who could take over the jobs she and her husband were doing -- cooking and cleaning and home repairs, oil-pressing and olive-tree pruning. And then the caravan left -- the Count's Mercedes Benz, the Romeros' ten-year old Fiat clunker, a smoke-belching truck, and the two families, and one directly behind the other, the three vehicles trundled along country roads, and, for the last few miles, an unavoidable divided highway, until they reached the Villa Antonini di Trastevere.
A rough-and-tumble 18th century building, three storeys tall and laced with suggestive graffiti that needed to be removed == Norisa put it on her mental list -- , the Villa clung to the edge of a narrow, hilly, cobblestone street called Salita di San'Onofrio. It was among the dingiest of the family properties, and the only one that they'd been willing to convert into condominium apartments. There were few murals or statues to speak of, and only one tiny courtyard with a stone fountain, but it was perfect for the rental market because of its location on a picturesque alleyway that snaked down hill from the cypress and pine walkways of Gianicolo Park, where English and American artists came to spend a year at the Academy of Rome, to the warren of cobblestone streets southwest of the Tiber River, known as Trastevere, that had become so favored by tourists and foreign sojourners. Indeed, the Palazzo Antonini was a cash cow; renters came and went every year without ever staying long enough to benefit from the absurdities of Roman rent control laws. Giulia's neighbors were a revolving-door crowd of professors on sabbatical and college students on their junior year abroad, mostly from the United States. Some tenants enrolled their children at the American School and asked young Giulia to babysit. She didn't need the money, but she did it anyway because she liked the English practice and loved to play with little children.
Norisa managed the building finances and paid Giulia's American School tuition, but young Giulia collected all the leftover profit from the rentals after bills, taxes and salaries had been paid, and she could buy her fill of designer clothes and jewelry, weekend excursions to European capitals with her sisters, summers at the beach in Anzio; when Giulia's classmates at the American School realized the extent of her money and freedom, she quickly became one of the most popular girls and got invited to parties every weekend.
In the years that Giulia lived at Salita San Onofrio, Norisa managed the property. She also ironed and repaired the clothes, cooked the food, washed the dishes and cleaned the apartment, and even checked to see that Giulia had done her homework. Although Norisa lived, technically, with her husband and son in the basement apartment reserved for doormen and groundskeepers, she spent more time at Giulia's place than at her own.
Norisa's husband Ferdinando was a quiet man; he took care of the plumbing and electrical problems and spent a lot of time at church on Sundays. Norisa's son Beppo, on the other hand, was friendly and talkative, exactly Giulia's age, and safely, oddly immune to the charm of Giulia's perfumes and leather purses and designer high heels. When the two youngsters were together, studying English or Latin or math, travelling to and from school field trips, going out to beer halls on the weekend evenings with their friends, Giulia forgot she was an Antonini, and Beppo appeared to forget he was a poor mixed-race farmboy from the Umbrian countryside.
This was not entirely by accident, of course. Norisa had attended school only to the eighth grade, but she knew how to take care of business-- that's why Count Raffaello had trusted her with his daughter. She had convinced the Count to pay a portion of Beppo's tuition at the American School. The Count, whose business instincts rarely failed him, took care of the rest of Beppo's tuition with a bit of clever politicking. His opening gambit with the Admissions Director, who also moonlighted as the school's chief fundraiser, was to make vague promises of future donations A week before Beppo's case appeared before the largely American Board of Trustees of the school, the Count presented them with a few discreet gifts -- cases of the highest-quality Antonini wines and olive oil, worth hundreds of dollars (but not even a tenth of the tuition.) He then pointed out in a private meeting with the Headmaster that Beppo Romero showed great promise, although his father was a simple plumber-electrician and his mother a housekeeper. With the right kind of cultivation, Beppo might make an interesting candidate for a top-ranked American university, hence boosting the Stateside reputation of the American School! Furthermore, as Count Raffaello pointed out to the Headmaster, Beppo's English was already decent -- in part because his Filipino father had learned it in Filipino schools before emigrating to Italy. And finally, Beppo and Giulia would help one another survive the rigorous academic climate of the American School, with its Advanced Placement courses and International Bacculareate Exams, because they would study together and learn quickly-- indeed, they might help to make each other virtually bilingual. The Count wrapped up his sales pitch by returning to the possibility (in unspecified later years) of an Antonini Scholarship Fund, and by meeting's end he'd cajoled the headmaster into offering Beppo a generous scholarship that covered the balance of his tuition, the cost of all books, and even his soccer uniform.
And so it was that Countess Giulia Antonini and Beppo Romero started the ninth grade together at the American School of Rome, then landed together in "English as a Second Language" class in tenth grade, and passed into honors English and then finally into Advanced Placement, thus remaining his two most dedicated students until graduation. They grew up together, discovering America under the bemused eye of their English teacher, Mr. Robert Zuckerman.
Mr Z arrived a year after Beppo and Giulia, like them a newcomer to Rome and to the American School, and he arrived in style. Neither Beppo nor Giulia ever forgot their first glimpse of him. In the early morning of the first day of classes in 1984, the year they began tenth grade, the kids took the bus to school together. They watched from the windows as a speeding motorcyclist careened around the corner of the Via Cassia in a jet-black helmet and sunglasses , and sped noisily past them. In the midst of the rush hour traffic jam, he weaved his noisy way in and out of car lanes, rumbled across the street, and sped through the gates of school and halfway across the parking lot until he'd slowed down enough to stop. The motorcyclist turned out to be Mr. Z --the only teacher they'd ever met who wasn't afraid to own the roads with his bike. Soon after Beppo and Giulia found their way to first period ESL, he entered with a flourish, still wearing his sunglasses, and made two announcements that forever sealed his reputation among students.
First of all, Mr. Z. was not a professional teacher but rather a writer from Los Angeles, author of a dozen movie scripts, who wanted a break from “show biz.”
Second of all, the new teacher from Hollywood CA was a fan of none other than Nero -- that vicious Ancient Roman Emperor who had persecuted Christians for refusing to bow down to him; murdered family members before they could steal the throne; wasted the untold riches of the Roman Empire to build a cluster of glamorous palaces in the center of the Imperial capital, a complex that only the Emperor himself had been allowed to enter.
"Look, I know Nero was no saint," Mr. Z said, forgetting that his students could barely understand English. "He was a gangster. But boy, oh boy -- did he leave fingerprints!"
Beppo raised his hand.
"What is it, kid?"
"Fingerprints?" asked Beppo. "Excuse me, what are fingerprints?"
"Come up here, kid --- Beppo, right? Mind if I call you Joe? Joseph, it's English for Giuseppe, right? Helps me remember you better. Put your finger here, Joe, in this bowl of black ink. I brought it to class especially for you."
Beppo obediently stuck his finger into the ink.
"Now make a mark on the whiteboard with your finger, right there. Good. OK, young lady, the princess there in the leather shoes. Julie Antonini. If it's OK with you, I'll just call you Jules. Come up here, do the same thing that other kid just did."
Two fingerprints, one bigger and more smudged than the other, now sat on the whiteboard.
"You see? They seem the same until you look carefully -- and boom -- you suddenly notice different curves, different shades of black. No two are the same. That's why the police use them to catch thieves. Nero made his mark. No other Emperor, saint or devil, was quite like him. The guy founded Armenia, for crying out loud. The Christians thought he was the Antichrist!"
The students nodded, smiling and uncomprehending. The Italians started whispering to each other, because they'd heard Nero's story before.
"If that doesn't impress you, then look around you when you leave campus. This whole neighborhood -- these streets and homes right outside the gates of our school --- all named after him. No, better than that. His tomb. Imagine a guy so powerful that 2000 years after he dies, there are still stories circulating about how he poisoned all his enemies. And 30,000 people are here, today, living right here in our part of town, named after a stone and a hole in the ground where the soldiers dumped his corpse. You want to know why I love Emperor Nero? -- just walk down the street from here. Down the Via Cassia. You'll find his tombstone, inscribed top to bottom in Latin. Right in the middle of a hundred stucco apartment buildings. In 2000 years, nobody ever knocked it down, or chipped at it. When the poor man was thirty-one years old, younger than me, he killed himself by plunging a sword into his own heart so he wouldn't be hacked to death in front of thousands of Roman subjects...he got the last laugh. And then, 1800 years after his death, he managed to make a fool out of General Napoleon. It was the season of Napoleon's coronation as Emperor of France. And he had this pet project, a travelling hot air balloon that could travel long distance. He tried to make it float all the way from Paris to Rome. Then it reached the home stretch, a few miles from town, and sailed over the wrong tomb. Nero's ghost was there waiting... and he was so nasty, so strong, that he reached his ghostly hands out from underground and dragged that sucker down down and popped it. And it came crashing down over the tomb."
After class, Beppo and Giulia waited until all the other students had left, and then went up to Mr. Z.
"Hello there," he said. "You want me to change your grade already? I haven't assigned any work!"
"Mr. Z," Beppo said. "We are so glad to have you as our teacher. You know very much about Italy and Rome history!"
"I try," he answered. "What can I do for you?"
"There is maybe one small correction to your lesson that we would like to suggest," said Giulia.
Mr. Z smiled. "Oh really? I'm listening."
"The tomb...is not after all of Emperor Nero," Beppo said. "That is an old little joke."
"An old wives' tale," Giulia added.
"It is in reality not the tomb of the Emperor Nero, but of another Roman officer," explained Beppo. "Publio Vibio Mariano."
"Who the hell was he?" asked Mr. Z.
"It is not exactly sure, but it is said that he was a very responsible good man who completed his duties..." Giulia said. "And his wife arranged herself so that it would be builded -- after his passing away. He is said to having lived a very long good life."
Mr. Z looked sternly at his new students, hands on hips. "Tell me one interesting fact about Poobli Vibo, or whatever his name was. Besides that he was an ancient Roman."
Giulia and Beppo smiled helplessly.
"I rest my case," said Mr. Z. The students looked at him, still smiling but puzzled. "That's exactly my point," he added, hoping to clarify. "Whom would you rather be? The Emperor every one was scared of, and invented legends about? Or the forgotten bureaucrat? Most people don't even know that he had a tombstone, let alone that Nero's ghost stole it from him."
"Excuse me, Mr. Z?" said Giulia.
"What?"
"Will you perhaps ask on the exam for the right answer about the provenance of this tomb?"
"I don't know," Mr. Z replied. "I haven't written the test yet. Maybe I'll have a special question just for you."
******
Mr. Z was single, but he wouldn’t reveal his age. Instead, he coyly quoted Dante, in Italian – “nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita , mi ritrovai in una selva oscura.” Giulia was charmed – by the incongruity of his carefully rolled r’s and broad American vowels, by the reference to a great Italian poet. She calculated his age before any one else in the class. He had to be thirty-five -- Dante’s age when he wrote the Divine Comedy, and halfway through the 70-year lifespan the Bible had assigned to humans.
Giulia again stayed in class a couple of minutes after the bell rang, and Mr. Z welcomed her with his hand, broad and tanned and confident, clasping her narrow shoulder. "So, Jules, how can you drive me crazy today?"
“Mr. Z,” she murmured, “I know your secret.”
“Already?”
“You are thirty-five.”
“Yes. Well, that’s not really a secret.”
“There’s another... matter it would please me to discuss.”
“Hurry up!"
“Are you perhaps like Dante in another way? Do you find yourself in a “dark forest?”
“A midlife crisis, you mean?”
“A place full of fear and mystery?”
Mr. Zuckerman laughed – a brassy, deep bellow of a laugh. “You’re a funny girl! We’ll have to talk more.” He walked her to her next class as he was fumbling for a cigarette and a lighter.
Another day, he announced his love for Rome. “You Romans live well,” he said. “Smoke’s no sin in this town. You light up in the light of day, and strike up matches with your conversations.”
Indeed, the romance never ended with Mr. Z. He drove to school on a motorcycle and started the day by lifting weights in the high school gym. He wrote screenplays in his spare time, and sang Broadway tunes, and played jazz violin at the bars in Trastevere. He commanded an impressive vocabulary of local Roman curses– never referring to a place as “far away,” but only as “up the Madonna’s butt.” – When a rough draft of an essay came in more than a paragraph too long, he would return it ungraded, and write in red block letters, “Redo. No ‘vita morte e miracoli,” (life, death and miracles).” His humor was effortless, his rebelliousness finely tuned.
Beppo and Giulia studied with Mr. Z for three years. Giulia worshipped him quietly at first. She had always been a responsible student, but Mr. Zuckerman made her brilliant. English Language and Literature became her labor of love.
Her reward came at the end of her senior year, when Mr. Z finally chose her. Among all the equally besotted girls in AP English class, she was his favorite. He dubbed her “Girl Genius” for her cumulative achievements in English. “What stands out most about Ms. Antonini,” he announced at the school awards ceremony, “is her poise and confidence.”
Their courtship began with a flourish during the AP English class on May 20, 1987, the day she turned eighteen and a week or so after the AP exam. The pace of work had slowed, so Beppo and Giulia's girlfriends organized a surprise birthday party for her. They didn’t ask Mr. Zuckerman’s permission, because they knew he would agree.
During the party, he took her aside and paid her his first direct compliment. “Ms. Antonini,” he mentioned , “Your passport says you’re eighteen. You have the beauty and freshness of an girl, but the maturity and wisdom of a young woman twice your age.”
“Why?” she asked, breathless with joy.
“I see your work, your writing. I notice the good taste you show in your dress. I watch you take charge during group projects.”
“So do you think that I am pretty and intelligent?” she responded, giggling.
AP English was the last class before lunch, and Mr. Z let every one go early. Giulia motioned to Beppo a silent "go, go!" even though he usually waited for her. Mr Z. handed her a scrap of paper with his home phone number, which he never gave out to students. “You are something special, Giulia. a young lady. Not a lightweight schoolgirl. You deserve the best.”
“And you, Mr. Z?” she asked. “Do you deserve the best?”
“Well, I like to learn about the world,” he replied. “I’m what Americans call a “diamond in the rough. I like to savor the best.”
“You need a good loving woman to smooth you out, make you safe for children. An educated woman who understands how to tame a man.”
“I don’t know if I want kids, though.”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Z, you do. I am sure that you will be good with kids.”
“And I’ll be even better when I get my lucky break. When I have money to buy kids a house and pay for their school. And their karate, and ballet lessons, and all that.”
“Or you need a rich wife.”
“Well, yes…”
“Oh I understand,” she continued. “You want to provide for her. But her money is just insurance, if you become passe’ or out of style. Our great directors here in Italy, Fellini, De Sica -- your countryfolk watched them for five minutes and lost interest. They could do the same to you.”
“Ms. Antonini. Hollywood doesn’t work like that! There’s always a new job, maybe for a cable TV station. It’s like anything else. You need to have experience and connections, a “raccomandazione.” She replied, with coy fluttering eyes, “Your great country, the land of freedom? They need “raccomandazioni?” I am shocked!” Then Giulia's pager buzzed. She was the first student at the American School to get her own pager.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I must call back immediately. Please do not leave!" She ran to a payphone in the hallway. Her father, Count Raffaello, was in town for the day from Perugia, and wanted to take her to a late lunch. She told him she was finishing up important schoolwork; could he wait until late afternoon? She wanted to tease Mr. Z and keep the conversation going. She ran back to Mr. Z's classroom, where he was busying himself rearranging books on a shelf, and she said to him: “Hollywood just called. I have connections in high places. They want me to find a talented writer. I asked them, ‘should he be handsome too?”
“OK, Ms Antonini, that’s enough.” She’d made him blush. “Get out of here."
"I thought perhaps we could enjoy a pleasant meal together, Mr. Z? When the school day has ended? I know a little Bistro, a place for a tasty bowl of spaghetti all' arrabbiata. It is the beest restaurant I know that is open all day, and it is near the most beautiful park in Rome... And I have my car!"
"Arrabbiata? Angry pasta?" Mr. Z said. "I hope that doesn't mean that you are angry at me!"
"Oh no. It's spicy, red-hot tomato sauce. It means only that I love whatever is spicy and exciting! Like you."
After the 4:00 spicy lunch, Giulia and Mr. Z. strolled over to Villa Borghese and cuddled on a bench in front of the duck lake. A distant uncle of Giulia's had willed his entire estate to the city of Rome in the years after World War II, and she made sure that Mr. Z. understood this. Her uncle’s generosity, she whispered in his ear, had made it possible for the two of them to fondle each other in a public park. She gave him a present, a worn-out margin-noted copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy that her mother had used a generation earlier when she was in school. “I know how you like old books, Mr. Z,” she’d said softly. “And this is special, because it is part of our family history. My mother died when I was young... but she left Dante behind...” He took the present, set it down on the bench, and began kissing her full in the mouth. When his hands reached inside her jeans, bought specially for the occasion, she kissed him harder. No memory of their marriage ever came close to the unbridled, savage joy she felt in that moment, when Mr Z’s hands made her into a woman.
*******
In August of 1987, Giulia's period was late. She was consumed by hunger, even though she was vomiting every day. Mystified, she visited the family physician and discovered she was pregnant. Her father was traveling, and her sisters were scolds, so she only told Mr. Z. He was cheerful that summer, and in the mood for love, and not just because he had a young Italian heiress strolling down the Via del Corso with him. He had finally gotten his first call from Hollywood; a cable television station was interested in purchasing three of his scripts. "Whoops," he said to Giulia. "That's OK, we'll figure it out. But you need to stop calling me Mr. Z. I'm Bob. I'm your boyfriend Bob."
They eloped to Los Angeles, and spent their first nights together in a hotel while he negotiated his contract. Then the deal stalled, and Bob grew dark and moody. “You better get yourself an abortion and go home.” Giulia was jetlagged, nauseous, lonely. She lay in the hotel bed crying, cursing his name, begging him to reconsider. She told Bob she hated him, that she’d lost her virginity to a foul mouthed boor who had mounted her like a horse, impregnated her and abandoned her in a roadside motel. Then it was his turn. “You spoiled, selfish, whining little princess,” he had said, “I am paying for you to sleep at the Beverly Hills Hilton! And you said you were on the pill.”
Finally the contract came through. By then she was into her thirteenth week and it was too late to abort. Bob had gotten used to the idea of a baby, and he asked her to marry him. “Hey, I can afford fatherhood now.” He wanted to buy a house and throw parties where he meet stars, producers. A family could be useful. They exchanged vows at the Superior Court in downtown LA and he bought her a cheap ring. “Trade it in later,” he told her, “when I sign my next contract.”
They got the house and the parties, and the second contract. And Bob got his pound of flesh. Every day of their marriage, in private and in public when no one was looking, he fondled her breasts like beach balls, his gesture of ownership. He didn’t stop when Raffaello was born and the nursing made them ache. The one time she complained, Bob was silent for three days and wouldn’t sleep in their bed. She finally gave in and crept into the guest room, bare breasts exposed, and after he’d fondled her to his heart’s content she let him come at her from behind. She hurt for three days.
The man’s bedroom violations would have been tolerable to her if he had acted like a gentleman outside, but no. He passed gas in public, and gobbled his dinner faster than she could carry it to the table. His language was more littered with “fuck” and “shit” and “bitch” than the most illiterate peasant on her father’s estate. Perhaps English was simply a less elegant language, but then why did he never try to learn proper Italian? The Roman curses were as far as he would go.
Bob was fat, boorish and out of control. And yet, he had one redeeming quality – his puppy love. For the 22 years of their marriage, he was completely faithful, more than Giulia would have expected. He never stopped admiring her body; she would accompany him to late night parties where every woman guest under thirty was dressed like a two-coin whore, and he would never give them a passing glance. "I'll take your ass over theirs any day, baby." And then he would grab it. He was that way until the end, until his heart suddenly stopped beating and his worn out body gave up the ghost in their Beverly Hills backyard, twenty-two years later in the summer of 2009.
*****
(Close up on the cartoon face of Captain Truth)
"And Countess, was that child..."
"Count Raffaello Antonini Zuckerman. Yes he was."
"Sounds like an inauspicious beginning to your marriage."
"Well, darling, every love story has its highs and lows."
"Did you want that baby, Countess?"
"As I said; by the time Mr. Z had second thoughts, it was too late to abort. And in my family, it is customary to adapt to all the madness life brings us -- civil wars between princely families, a collapse in the wine market, a beloved mother murdered by her cancer cells... One adapts and adjusts. "
"How did you feel when Raffaello was born?"
"I thought that he needed to learn how to nurse. He insisted on biting my nipples until they were flaming red. Eventually he learned."
"And how do you feel about your son now?"
"He is certainly successful at business; his grandfather would have been proud of his savoire-faire."
"And what are your thoughts about his line of work?"
"This is your last question, darling?"
"If it has to be..."
"My son is talented, I am sure you will agree. The medicine he has invented -- I am a satisfied customer. So are my sisters. I wish only that my father could have lived to take it. The new town he and his business partner have built, up there in orbit-- I have booked reservations on the Space Elevator and rented a condominium for the month of August, when it is too hot for any one to stay in Rome. Instead of the beach where I usually go, I shall gladly pay a visit to the new settlement. You may ask me again then -- and I will tell you what I think. Until then, dear, I think you had better press on with your interviews until you get the story you want."
"Well-said, Countess."
"Come visit me again soon. Perhaps without asking so many questions..."
(Dissolve to Black)
Well, friends and fellow rebels against The Man, that's it for today. We continue with the next episode of "Real Renaissance Revealed" tomorrow, same time, same place, on Before the Record. The only place on the Web where we report the news before it breaks. Have a good day, and remember -- don't let them fool you!
