The Sweet, Salty Smell of the Sea

By Pietro Corsi

Pietro Corsi isthe author of the Bressani Literary Award novel "Winter in Montreal"(Guernica, Toronto-New York-Lancaster/UK, 2000). In this new book he reminiscesabout his adventures in the world of movies while living in Rome, and in theworld of Canadian immigration while working in Montreal as a newspaperman.
An all-togetherdifferent and unknown world was awaiting him. It had the sweet, salty smell ofthe sea: ships and cruises, first to the Mexican Riviera, then all over theworld. He relates the pioneering days of the cruise industry, and the birth ofthe TV serial "The love boat", born after the publication of the bookby the same title written by Jeraldine Saunders, who had been a hostess on theships under his supervision.
He retired fromthe cruise industry in 1992, having covered the position of Executive VP forPrincess Cruises, to get back to writing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329003224

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The Sweet, Salty Smell of the Sea

the sweet, salty smell

of the sea

Pietro Corsi

Copyright © 2015, Pietro Corsi

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-329-00322-4

1st Italian edition, 2006.

L’odore del mare. Il Grappolo Ed.

1st English edition. 2015.

The sweet, salty smell of the sea.

Dedication

for Diego

for Gianna

... so you may know

someday

how and where

it all started.

the sweet, salty smell

of the sea

Pietro Corsi

1.

On the mysterious wings

of destiny

What I see today, from this balcony of my childhood, is a long, endless green valley. Like the tail of a snake, it glides through the gorges of mountains that, with incomparable harmony, disappear on the faraway horizon. Here and there, in the brown thick woods, old farmhouses blackened by the patina of time look like dirty moustaches on the canvas of an absent-minded painter stunned by the serenity of the landscape.

On the lower plains, the valley is cut in two by a stream known with the improbable name of Cigno, swan. Bending at the foot of the mountains, and cheered by the chirping of birds, where irrigating cane fields and where caressing the thick vegetation, its waters run with lazy and reassuring slackness. They disappear, then reappear. They disappear again and again reappear before disappearing forever somewhere faraway, where they converge with the waters of the river Biferno; together, they continue their brief course before merging, light and vaporous, with those of the Adriatic Sea.

Between the mountains that separate this land from the rest of the world, there is a natural opening. Through this window, you can see a strip of the sea corridor that, departing from Trieste, brings us the gentle bora to tickle the summer sweat, having lost its proverbial destructive strength on the way. Beyond that cleft, on a clear day it was always possible to make out the silvery sea. The sight of those waters never failed to treat me to a dream that had the power to transport me in faraway lands. By magic, in those unknown lands the unreal became real and the impossible a palpable thing: like an object, a jewel or a relic, right here, in the palm of my hands.

It is a luminous day, as they are, here, each of the days of the month of May. A rich, springtime fragrance is in the air. On the slopes, beyond the stream, and scattered between fields and woods, the vineyards that have survived the inclemency of time now shine with a verdigris ready to announce a good harvest. To the far right, there once was my father’s own vineyard. It is now a bare field through which a landslide descends all the way down to the stream, long and deep as an abyss. It is an old landslide that renews itself now and then spitting ancient, indelible mud. High up, behind the artesian well, there is a white and anonymous two storey house. The lonely window of the upper floor, with its broken glass, is a black hole. It contrasts with the white of the walls like the lifeless eye of Cyclops. The faded and solitary building is the silent witness to a serene past, to a happiness that, like precious fruit of nature, can mature only in the motherly womb.

On the plain, below, there once was my grandfather’s vineyard. Beyond the gate, hidden behind a thicket, there is a straw barn that used to be my refuge from the evil spirits of youth. It had been built by grandpa Titto with his bare, callous hands when, still young, he had strength to spare and shuttled between New Jersey and Massachusetts and Ohio and this land of Molise. Grandpa Titto was proud of his straw barn. When it rained, not a drop poured in and the wind respectfully skimmed over its roof with a hiss, a prolonged whistle that announced itself and gradually got lost in the distance. That barn is a silent and innocent witness to a serene past. Neither the vineyard nor the thickets are there any longer; nor are there any of the fruit trees that, lined up like sentinels one behind the other, marked the dividing line with the vineyard of don Vincenzo Corsi, the notary.

The two Corsis, my grandpa Titto and don Vincenzo the notary, the first from Terravecchia, the other from Borgo Nuovo, were not related. The notary liked to point out, whenever he had a chance, that their stock had been imported to Casacalenda around ‘600 by a Florentine merchant who could claim a direct link to Jacopo Corsi, musician and patron of the arts. The Corsi from Terravecchia, my grandpa Titto, smiled and allowed the Corsi from Borgo Nuovo to talk about this but refused to be seduced by blandishments of remote and rather improbable family ties. He was who he was, the non-rich of the Corsis; the other, the notary, was simply the other, the rich of the Corsis. That’s how things stood, and that was all. And no, they were not related. He took comfort in the thought that, precisely because they were not related, they could idle away their days in the inalienable happiness of a friendship that flourished in their respective fields, washed down daily with a mug of the good wine from their vineyard; even when it withered with the arrival of fall, unfailingly their friendship took on a new life at the beginning of spring.

What I see today, from this balcony of my youth, is an enchanting and rather mysterious landscape. It seduces, secretly inviting you to be a part of it forever: the green leaf of a tree, the slender branch of a shrub shaken by the wind, a wild flower, a hermaphrodite or uni-sexed flower, a clod of the parched land as ancient as the fleeting, yet eternal time. This landscape hides, and when required reveals, the simplest and most elemental secrets of the world: you only need be able to think about them and, in so doing, from time to time, invent them.

Way down, the valley is covered by a sort of grey blanket that would like to be transparent but isn’t; not sufficiently to fully reveal the faraway sea. I know it’s there, barely hidden in the distance. I can smell the pungent yet pleasant odors of its salinity, mixed with the perfume of the never forgotten Mediterranean poetry: the sage and the mint, the rocket salad that grows, strong and generous, along the dry railroad tracks, the oregano and the rosemary, the basil with its aromatic leaves and the flowers gathered in the ear, clear and transparent like thoughts. Coming up from the sea, the odors creep throughout the Biferno valley to enter the bed of the Cigno and inundate the streets and the houses of villages that, from up high, smile down at the valleys below.

In this dawn that could signal the beginning of the decline of a life, I am here to admire this scenery just as it was admired by my father Giovannino before me, and by grandpa Titto even before me and before him, before life took, for them, the painfully awaited turning point that is there to remind us that life is nothing but a voyage, a long voyage in a dream. It comes as a dream does, it lasts just as long, then inexorably it fades away and is no longer because it gets lost, forever, in the sublime enchantment of mother nature. This has also been said, in a different way and with spare use of words, by a Spanish old sage, Calderón de la Barca, who goes on living in the marvelous world of the poets of all times. One day, suddenly awakened by a thought that had been tormenting him between sleep and wake, the great man got up, straight in his tall, quixotic figure, and with astonishment and conviction he exclaimed: la vida es sueño, life is a dream.

As if a thought had been crossing his mind at that precise moment, often my grandpa Titto would look at the empty space in front of him, emit a deep sigh, then wait as if for something to happen by the force of magic. With the consciousness of a curious child, or perhaps of a child curious no more, I would know then that he had an urgent need to communicate something that couldn’t and shouldn’t fall into oblivion. I would take his hand and encourage him with my silence.

Across from where we stand, in those woods, he would tell me, not remembering that he had already told me the same thing the day or the week before, "there once was a village known as Gerione. Its ruins, now inhabited by snakes and wolves, are hidden beneath a dense growth of bushes. One day, more than two thousand years ago, the village was besieged by a Carthaginian known as Hannibal. With a fearful army and a hoard of African elephants, he terrorized the territory. The Roman troop leader Fabius Maximus took camp on the high hills of this that is today our village. For months, day and night he followed the movements of the enemy, waiting for the most propitious moment to confront him. He finally descended to the valley and started climbing the hill to surround the enemy encampment, taking him by surprise. It was thus that Fabius Maximus was able to defeat the Carthaginian. His tactic has entered the dictionary of martial arts as Fabian tactics."

This is what my grandpa Titto used to tell me. While concluding the story, his chest would swell with pride as if he himself had been one of those two intrepid leaders, the Roman Fabius Maximus or Hannibal the Carthaginian. He would hold my hand tight as if in mutual entente, and my chest also swelled with pride.

Years later, after grandpa’s death, those rare times when my father felt like talking he would take me to this balcony. Pointing out to the landscape, he would say that on summer nights, with a full moon and the stars shining like precious stones high up in the sky, in the woods of Gerione you could see threads of light soar up into the sky, ever so slowly, then vanish into nothingness, like the little flames of innocent departed souls.

They are the souls of the warriors who lost their lives fighting a useless battle. My father used to tell me this when I was a child, like you are now. Perhaps he believed in these things. I don’t.

That grandpa Titto used to tell me, and this my father told me. In turn, to continue the tradition by them unconsciously cultivated and by me innocently inherited, I try to pass it onto my sons Giampiero and Giancarlo. However, raised in faraway America where they have, for me, planted my roots, and though they drank Roman milk since the first days of their lives, I am afraid they cannot feel these things the way I do. And if they do, surely they cannot see them with their own eyes nor feel them with their heart, weathered by the hot winds of Arizona and Colorado that often visit their golden California. I must confess that I myself, always around the world on business, always in flight from what I had just conquered, I had perhaps ended up forgetting too.

To observe this extraordinary display of nature, on a fine spring day that delivers the unforgettable perfumes of youth, for me it’s like remembering. I was curious to find out what lay beyond the mountains that glide away from the Matese, leaving behind green undulating valleys before coming to rest on the sandy beaches of the Adriatic Sea. Those mountains, and that sea, divide Molise from the rest of the world isolating it in a microcosm that many still consider, today, an oasis of peace and serenity.

Alone, under the burden of years happily spent around the world, in this splendid of the last days of May I observe and remember. And I finally know that beyond those undulating green valleys, beyond those mountains, beyond that sea, there was nothing else but destiny, my own destiny, even if I have always considered myself one of those rare individuals who love to say that they do not believe in destiny.

You and I: we are our own destiny. Destiny is what you and I do for ourselves.

This I used to tell myself. And this was also my resolute reply to those who insisted in talking to me about destiny. Until just recently, I have never been able to accept the fact that there is or there could be, in the life of each human being, a mysterious hand - often curious, sometimes cruel, other times charitable - that guides us where we want to go: where it is written that each of us should go.

It was while perusing the archives of memory to prepare myself for the writing of Halifax: the other door to America and The Ambassador of don Bosco that I have come to the realization that I didn’t want to believe in destiny only because, in the common credence, it is considered predetermined and immutable, independent from the human will and for this same reason, insofar as I was concerned, nonexistent. I had to finally ask myself whether it had not been destiny itself to determine my departure from Molise.

Standing here today, I know that I have lived my life flying on the mysterious wings of destiny: predetermined, for each one of us, and immutable, independent from the human will, sure, but that becomes true and palpable, live, when the heart’s eyes finally open to accept the unacceptable.

After losing faith in the school system, I lived the first years of my adolescence without skills, good for nothing, just writing on the regional pages of the daily newspapers Paese Sera, Il Tempo and Il Messaggero small village things that dealt with an emarginated province. At the same time, I worked as a typist for lawyers. In moments of reflection, always dreaming about a faraway world, I used to ask myself whether typing was a man’s trade. I refused to believe it was. I did not accept to believe it even when, one day, the representative for Olivetti in Campobasso, signor Piacentino, presented himself in the law offices of Mario D’Onofrio, where I was working at the time, to invite me to participate in a European typing championship in Switzerland.

That charming man, not too tall and rather plump, rosy-cheeked face from which two small eyes seemed forever intent at expressing love, goodness and respect, usually presented himself without notice in my employer’s office followed by professionals and merchants curious to see how the first electronic typing machine made by Olivetti worked. I wouldn’t hear them come in. They came in on tiptoe, stopped behind me and observed me at work. Standing still like plaster statues, they looked, mesmerized, at my ten fingers gliding with agility on the keyboard and nodded while hearing the ticking of that marvel of technology. That ticking became, for them, rhythm and cadence, an unknown but fascinating song, maybe the song of a mermaid. I never knew who was more fascinated: signor Piacentino who, through me, was giving a demonstration of the efficiency, the rapidity, the perfection of his typewriters, or the other spectators, the potential buyers.

When I noticed their presence, I turned around, blushed and stopped working. I resumed my typing with anger, rapidly, always more rapidly as if, arriving at the end of the page, I would be able to end the forced demonstration of my qualities, which were the qualities of the Olivetti typewriter.

One day, signor Piacentino came to see me alone. He took a chair, placed it close to my typewriting desk and patiently waited until I finished my work. I had noticed his presence, but I continued to type as if he weren’t there. Having waited a few minutes, he timidly touched me on the shoulder. Then, most seriously, in his name and in the name of his company he invited me to participate in the championship.

You would represent Olivetti, signor Piacentino informed me, with a wide smile, but, what is more important, you would represent Italy.

Suspicious, I asked:

And who, may I ask, will be the participants?

He took his time before answering my question with a smile.

As for the other participants, he said, still smiling but a bit timorous, I thought, only women.

I did not hesitate in giving him my answer. I simply said:

I will not do it!

Too bad, Piacentino exclaimed, with a hint of well-concealed sadness. The company and I counted on you to win this championship.

That was that. And no, I did not participate in the championship, in spite of the renewed insistence of the mortified Olivetti representative. He went as far as to plead with my employer, he himself mortified by my refusal. To him, to my employer, as if to excuse myself I said:

Typing is for women, I said, something I wouldn’t say today. There are female typists, but no male typists.

At the conclusion of the championship, signor Piacentino came to see me again. He had a sorry expression on his face when he told me:

The new European champion has scored 487 spaces per minute. A pittance, for someone like you who can score up to six hundred. You would have been the absolute champion!

I answered:

Just the same...

That incident, apparently insignificant, was to turn out rich in presage. It would encourage me to take a first step, that is, a step longer than the one between Casacalenda, the village of my birth, and Campobasso, the capital of my province. That step would take me to Rome with the hope that typing, for one who knew how to do it well, man or woman, could be a profession.

It was not easy to leave Mr. D’Onofrio, whom I used to call don Mario. He was about fifty years old, with a round face, swarthy, priestly hands, small, inquisitive, searching eyes. He never married and lived alone in his big house. Some woman did the cleaning and cooking for him. He never went out except on those rare occasions when he had to be personally in the criminal court. He had learned to rely on me, and introduced me in court as a law student, therefore an articled clerk, or junior barrister. Judges and magistrates’ clerks, out of respect to him, accepted me as such and allowed me to represent him in matters of civil procedures.

He had gotten used to me, to my work. I knew that he was bound not to like the separation. I was sorry, of course, but my decision had been made. One day, I announced it to him.

If it has to do with money, he said, looking at me with his inquisitive eyes, if it has to do with money, I can give you a raise.

My decision had nothing to do with money. He used to pay me well: indeed, beyond expectation for those days.

No, don Mario. It has nothing to do with money, I replied, with certain sadness in my heart that I wasn’t yet ready to disclose.

Some girl waiting for you in Rome? he asked me, he who, having always been interested only in his work, inconsolable for the loss of a brother who died under the bombings of Isernia during the war, had no time to think about women.

No, don Mario, I answered again. Then, after a brief pause: Life is expecting me! I explained, with a tone of finality.

He understood, then, and didn’t say anything else. A few days later, when the moment of separation arrived, he had a small packet on his desk. He handed it to me and said:

Here, this is for you. I hope it will only measure the best of hours for you.

I took the packet and opened it. It contained a watch. The hours and minute’s hands were already ticking. They had started measuring the hours of the rest of my life. Only, and always, good hours.

2.

Rome

and the Maestro

In Rome, typing became my trade. First, in a typing agency of Via del Tritone; three months later, in an apartment of Via del Viminale, across from the Teatro dell’Opera, leased with the little money I had managed to save. In one of the rooms, at the far end of the corridor, I placed a couple of twin beds; in another, the middle one where there was also a bathroom, I improvised a cooking area; in the room off of the entry, I placed a desk and a table with an electronic typewriter; in the adjacent one, a table with a duplicating machine and two others with two typewriters, all given to me on consignment and unconditional credit by the same Olivetti agent, signor Piacentino, who continued to see in me the undisputed European typing champion. On the main door, street-side, I arranged for a bright bronze doorplate, similar to the one that for three years, every day of the week, including Sundays, I had admired on the door of the dear and good lawyer Mario D’Onofrio in Campobasso. It read, on three lines: "Viminale typing and translation agency."

The first who came to know about it was Giose Rimanelli. I was a snotty kid of little more than ten years of age when I started frequenting him along the Corso Roma of my hometown, which was the social circle of the young and the no-longer-young, la gare des pas perdu, the station of the lost steps and, at the same time, of the steps that are never totally wasted: because it was the gathering place where life shined at its best. He had left the native village in September of ’43 hidden in a truck of retreating German troops, which for his unconscious fate catapulted him in the civil war 1943-45.

At the end of the war, he traveled as a reporter throughout Europe from Paris to Lapland, before taking up residence in Rome. Every now and then he returned to the village. His returns were always epic, and he delighted in unending walks from one end of the village to the other with the older Giovanni Cerri, teacher and poet. I followed in their steps because what was ahead of me was a mirage: Giose, who had traveled half the world to write about it in the pages of the most important weekly magazines of Italy; Giose who, with total self-assurance, smoked a pipe that gave him the aspect of one who has gone places and is already someone; Giose who had just published a book, Tiro al piccione, of which all newspapers wrote.

He soon became a frequent visitor of my agency. He used to leave some small work to be done, an article for a magazine, a letter for his publishers, and on the following day I would bring it to his house. Occasionally I stayed to dine with him and his wife, Liliana Chiurazzi. He talked about his writings, his books; I talked about my work and the movie scripts that rained on my desk, mostly Westerns but also mythological films that were to be dubbed at Euro International Films, one of my most important clients. And I talked about Michele Galdieri, author of some of the most famous Neapolitan plays and songs, who in those days was engaged in the creation of radio programs.

I had started a nocturnal collaboration with Galdieri, out of which came programs that were broadcast throughout Italy: Orfeo al juke-box, Sorella radio, and a pleasant Sunday transmission dedicated to drivers. One day, without telling Giose, I took a couple of his short stories, Un contratto di matrimonio and Il padre della patria, and adapted them to television. I liked them very much: the first, because it brought back the flavors of home, of the farmers and of the lands of Molise; the second, because it portended those of a world yet unknown to me. I gave them to Galdieri, and he liked them both. He told me he would sponsor Il padre della patria first.

So it was. Il padre della patria, from a short story by Giose Rimanelli, scripted by Pietro Corsi, was accepted and allocated, as it was said in jargon to indicate that funds had been set aside and plans made for the filming. The main protagonist, the father of the fatherland, was to be none other than Aldo Fabrizi. Shortly before the filming began, however, Giose published Il mestiere del furbo, a book that didn’t please the patron of the Roman literary circles, Goffredo Bellonci: it talked of things that were true, things that stung in the literary circle of those days. Bellonci put a freeze on the filming, or, rather, he thoroughly censored it. Of his decision he informed Galdieri, who in turn called me, mortified.

My son, he told me, since he could be a grandfather and I was barely twenty-one years old. This Rimanelli, this Giose Rimanelli, who is he, and why is he not liked by someone at RAI-TV?

Short and cold, even if I did not wish to appear so, I replied:

He is someone I like, Maestro. I know that you would like him too.

The story, that story, ended there. Or did it not? It was certainly the end of a story. Without Giose or me being aware of it at the time, it was the beginning of a new and long-lasting story, an adventure of art and life that continues today, around the world, and continues to enrich precisely with art and life.

Il mestiere del furbo, unavailable in bookstores but not forgotten by the lovers of culture of those days, was flunked. With it, the man who had written that historic document of the cultural postwar Italian panorama was also immediately flunked. And without being a burden to anyone, except perhaps to Galdieri who had believed in the success of the script, even Aldo Fabrizi was flunked as the improbablefather of the fatherland!

In those days, Canadian Pacific Airline was inaugurating its first nonstop transoceanic flight from Montreal to Rome. On that flight there was Nick Ciamarra, the director of an Italian weekly newspaper from Montreal, Il Cittadino Canadese. He was a very fine young man: thick, black curly hair, sharp but good-natured and friendly look, full and fleshy lips. What distinguished him even more, making him look rather businesslike, was his big and curved nose, between Greek and Moorish. He had inherited Il Cittadino Canadese from Giose, who had been its director for a few months in ’54. The two met again (or, should I say, we all met since I was there too) at the Bar Viminale, across the street from my agency. Somewhat jokingly, Nick Ciamarra asked Giose whether he would wish to take the flight back and return to Canada for a visit: there were empty seats on the plane. To my utmost surprise, Giose replied:

I was just thinking about it.

He left on the following day. He left Liliana, his wife; he left his sons Marco and Michele; and he left Rome. He left Italy and went away because Italy, his Italy, had just betrayed him. I remained in Rome, but didn’t go back to the Parioli. During the day, I dedicated myself to typing and translating, mostly movie scripts. Upon receiving them, I needed to make contact with the translators, transient foreigners who arrived, fell in love with the Eternal City and did not wish to leave, did not wish to go back home and were eager to work. They didn’t speak Italian well, so the translation was always the job of two people.

This was also the case of a German language movie script by the legendary Fritz Lang, Die tausend augen des Dr. Mabuse, or The thousand eyes of Dr. Mabuse. The translator I selected for this very important job was Franco Zenchi. He liked to be called Dr. Zenchi, although he did not have a doctorate in anything, except, perhaps, in his perfect knowledge of the language. Born in Germany by an Italian father and a German mother, he moved to Rome in his late years after divorcing from his German wife. To make ends meet, he became a translator. I preferred him, for translations from German