Sword and Sandal Read online

  “Oh, I’m intruding,” I said. “I’ll come back later—”

  “No, Roland,” Gino said. “Not at all. Come on in. We’re finished. This is my lawyer, Mr. Perkins.”

  Mr. Perkins and I shook hands.

  “Mr. Perkins and I were just taking care of some routine legal documents,” Gino said—cheerfully, as though he’d been hosting some sort of a party there in his room. “And we needed two witnesses for my signature. That’s all.”

  The lawyer and I exchanged a few more pleasantries, after which he and the two hospital employees excused themselves, and they left.

  “Thank God that’s done,” Gino remarked, with audible satisfaction. “Now I can entertain you. Sit down, Roland. Tell me about your day.”

  I did so. We had a nice visit, as usual.

  Gino’s hospital stay dragged on for a full week. I began to feel worried. I wanted to ask him exactly what was wrong. But something held me back. He seemed nonchalant. And so I took my cue from him. During my visits, we talked about everything except his medical condition.

  I visited him on a Friday night.

  “You look tired, kiddo,” he told me. “Have you been working too hard?”

  “It’s been a long week,” I admitted. “But thank God, it’s over now.”

  I was tempted to say that he looked tired, too; but of course I restrained myself. The harsh fluorescent lighting in a typical hospital room isn’t very flattering, in the best of circumstances. Gino, I couldn’t help thinking, looked unusually pale and drawn—although his blue eyes had their usual twinkle, and his lips had their usual smile.

  “Well, it’s Friday night,” Gino reminded me. “Instead of wasting your time here with me, you should be out on the town. Go out, pick up some hot number, take him back to your place, and fuck the shit out of him. That’s what I’d do, if I were your age.”

  “I suppose that’s still a possibility,” I conceded. “Although, at this point, going home, crawling into bed, and going to sleep—alone—is starting to look good, to me.”

  “It’ll look even better to you, when you get to be my age. Previews of coming attractions! How you disappoint me, Roland,” Gino complained. “If you young studs aren’t getting laid—then what hope is there for old fogies like me?”

  “Sex isn’t everything.”

  “Says you!”

  “I won’t argue with you, because I know I won’t win. Anyway, Gino, I have a surprise for you,” I told him.

  “Do tell.”

  I’d brought a brown paper bag with me, and now I extracted from it a DVD box.

  “Does this look at all familiar?” I asked Gino, handing him the DVD.

  He saw the title—Il Prode Gladiatore di Roma.

  Instantly, Gino seemed energized. He sat up in his bed. He stared at the DVD, as though in disbelief. He laughed.

  “Wherever did you find this?” he asked.

  “On the Internet, of course. Most of your movies can be found on the Internet, in one format or another. I ordered it. It came in the mail, today.”

  “Isn’t technology amazing? God, the last time I saw this movie was years ago—on a lousy, faded print, on late-night TV. With one commercial interruption after another.”

  “Well, now, as you see, it’s just been reissued, on a print struck from the original negative. You even have the choice of listening to the original Italian soundtrack, or the dubbed-in English version.”

  “Oh, the Italian originals are always better. They had real actors dub in our lines for us.”

  “Stop it with the false modesty,” I told him, firmly. “You were a ‘real’ actor.”

  “I was real good at faking it,” Gino retorted. “Have you seen this?”

  “No. I thought I’d watch it with you, tonight, if you want to. After dinner,” I said, because I knew the orderlies would soon be coming around with the patients’ trays.

  “Yes, let’s. It might be a hoot. Have I told you about this flick?” He was off and running; without waiting for me to answer him, he pressed on, excitedly. “This is the one in which Ludovico Morelli and Alain Camargue and I were all reunited. Oh, and Ettore Pasero, the fencing master and fight director, too. First, we’d made Tito Manlio, with my buddy Eric Streiff. I’ve told you all about that. And then, what? Three years later? We all got together again, to make this one. Not Eric, of course. He’d lost interest in having a film career. He wanted to be a famous pro bodybuilder, back home in the States; and that’s exactly what he was, of course. But the other guys—Vico, and Alain, and Ettore, and all the men on the crew. It was like old home week. Oh, we had such a good time. And I wasn’t just a kid anymore. Now I was the ‘star.’ The studio built the whole picture around me. Me, the big movie star. What a joke! It’s true, though. Do you remember me telling you all this?”

  “Yes, Gino. I remember everything you’ve ever told me. Everything. I love to hear your stories. You know I do.”

  “I spent weeks in the gym, there in Rome, in the freaking summer heat, getting all pumped up and ripped, so I’d look good in front of the cameras in this goddamn sword and sandal epic,” Gino said, with relish. “I practicably killed myself. I guess it was worth it, though. I remember I didn’t look too shabby, in this fucking flick.”

  He was very excited, almost agitated. I was beginning to think that my good intentions had backfired, and that I’d gotten him too revved up. Maybe it wasn’t good for him to be overexcited. I was grateful when the orderly did arrive, with the tray.

  “Hospital food,” Gino said, dismissively. “So bland. So tasteless. God—there’s only so much you can do with jello, isn’t there?”

  “When you come home, I’ll cook a nice dinner for you,” I promised. “All the things you like. We’ll celebrate your homecoming.”

  “Yes, we’ll have to. That’ll reconcile me to eating this tasteless shit, in the meantime.”

  Nevertheless, he had a good appetite, and he ate everything on his tray. I found this encouraging.

  “Now, let’s take a look at this piece of crap you’ve brought along,” he said, when he had finished eating. “It ought to be good for a laugh.”

  “I refuse to hear you say a bad word about it,” I warned him, as I loaded the DVD into his laptop. “I know you, Gino. You’re always putting down your movie performances. Well, you’re wrong. You always delivered a performance. You were good.”

  “Sometimes I am my own worst critic,” he conceded.

  I chose the Italian soundtrack option. We watched the DVD together.

  As so often, Gino played a gladiator.

  His voice was, of course, dubbed by an Italian actor, which was disconcerting to me, especially because I was so familiar with his own voice.

  But he looked incredible. Like a young god. What a body, and what a handsome face!

  “Look at you,” I exclaimed. “So sexy.”

  “I was so young, back then. Still so naïve. Not at all jaded. God, was I ever naïve!”

  Gino didn’t hesitate to criticize, or to mock, his younger self.

  “Ooh, get a load of that blank, glassy-eyed stare. I look stoned,” he declared, at one point. “But I swear to God, Roland, I was not on drugs. Everyone else was, back then in Rome in the late Sixties; but not me. I think I’d even gone off the steroids at that point, and gone back to being a natural bodybuilder. No, that numb, bemused look on my face is all natural, too.”

  “Nice pecs, though,” I suggested.

  “Yeah, and the ab muscles aren’t bad, either. I was ahead of my time, maybe. Really well-defined six packs didn’t become fashionable until a few years afterward.”

  I was interested to see Alain’s performance. As he often did in these sword and sandal film, the handsome Frenchman played the bad guy. He did it very well.

  “Now that’s acting,” Gino insisted, during one of Alain’s scenes.

  There was a quite exciting episode of gladiators fighting in pairs, in the arena.

  “I did my own stunt wor
k, in that scene,” Gino pointed out, proudly. “Ettore wanted to bring my stunt double in, for the really intense swordplay, but I said no. I did it all myself. You see, I wasn’t afraid of anything, in those days. I wasn’t afraid, not at all, not of anything. I just went ahead and did it.”

  “That was wonderful,” I said, during the closing credits.

  “Oh, don’t exaggerate. Well, all right—for what it was, it wasn’t too bad,” Gino conceded. “We didn’t set out to do ‘art,’ remember. We were entertainers.”

  He was lying back, on the raised upper section of the hospital bed. He looked comfortable and relaxed—but, for the first time in my experience, he also seemed almost fragile, a quality which I had never associated with him until that moment.

  “Thank you, Roland. Thank you for bringing this to me, tonight. I’ve really gotten a kick out of seeing it again.”

  “You’re welcome, Gino. I enjoyed seeing it, too.”

  Gino closed his eyes. “Vico,” he murmured, barely audibly.

  “What did you say? Who?”

  “Ludovico Morelli, the director. We had a nickname for him, you know. We used to call him ‘Vico the volcano,’ because he was so volatile. Oh, what a character he was! But he was good at his job. He told me—he told me what to do. And Alain, he worked with me, too, of course. Alain always helped me. He looked out for me. He loved me. Alain … God, how I loved that man!”

  “Did you, Gino?”

  “I did. I loved him so much it hurt. He was older than me, you know. And married. Fuck! If only he hadn’t had a wife, and children … I’d have been with him, all of the time, if I could. I’d have given up all my other tricks, for him. But I wasn’t a goddamn home wrecker. I don’t have that on my conscience, at least. Too bad you never had a chance to meet him. Oh, he’d have liked you, Roland,” he added, with relish. “The three of us could’ve had some good times—you and the two horny old men. We’d have taken turns fucking your hot little stud ass. Count on it!”

  “I’m sorry I missed out on that.”

  “When Alain died, a few years ago—part of me died, too. But I have my memories. It’s so strange … whenever I look back, whenever I think about Alain, he’s not an old man. He’s young. So young! So virile. And so am I. We’re young, together. With our whole lives still ahead of us. It’s so strange,” Gino repeated, in a drowsy, dazed tone of voice. “Ah, it’s all so very strange—” His eyes were still closed, as though the lids were too heavy for him to lift comfortably.

  “You’re tired,” I told him. “I’d better go.” I wasn’t sure he heard me.

  “I still love him,” he murmured. “But I love you, too. The one thing—it doesn’t prevent the other. If anything, it enhances it.” He opened his eyes, looked at me, and blinked. “Do you understand?”

  “Of course I do. But you’re getting sleepy, Gino. And visiting time’s almost over. I’ll go, and let you get some rest.”

  “Yes, I do feel tired. Although this has been such fun. The most fun I’ve had in a long time. I always have a good time when I’m with you, Roland, my boy.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  “Please do. You will, won’t you?” he asked, with an odd insistence in his tone of voice.

  “Of course I will, without fail.”

  I kissed him goodbye, on his cheek. I left him. I went home. That evening, I went about my business, as usual. On my laptop, I checked my e-mails, and I did some work on my current manuscript in progress. I half-watched some nonsense, on cable TV. I listened to some music, on my stereo system. I went to bed, and I slept.

  The next day was a Saturday. I went to the hospital in the morning.

  The nurse at the reception desk looked at me with a rather odd expression on her face, when I told her I was there to see Mr. D’Agostino.

  “I’ve seen you here before,” she said.

  “Sure. Every day,” I pointed out.

  “Are you a relative?”

  “Ah—yes,” I lied. “I’m his nephew. His great-nephew, actually,” I added, because it occurred to me that I probably looked awfully young, to be Gino’s nephew. I wasn’t a fiction writer for nothing.

  “No one called you?”

  “Called me? No. Why should they?”

  “Because—” The nurse hesitated. “Let me have the doctor come out and talk to you. Why don’t you have a seat, over there?”

  I sat. After a few minutes, the doctor appeared. We exchanged a few banal words, but then he got right to the point.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Mr. Graeme. I’m sorry to have to tell you that Mr. D’Agostino is deceased.”

  I was stunned. I couldn’t have heard him correctly. “What? No.”

  “He died last night, in his sleep.”

  “No. Not Gino. That isn’t possible,” I insisted, stubbornly. “There must be some mistake.”

  “The nurse discovered that he’d passed, when she made the morning rounds. It was probably very peaceful. He didn’t suffer. He probably wasn’t even aware. In all probability, he never regained consciousness.”

  “No,” I repeated, like a broken record. “What you’re telling me—it’s impossible. I was here with him last night. He was fine.”

  “I’m afraid—”

  “He was just here in the hospital in the first place so you could run some tests, for Christ’s sake,” I said.

  “He didn’t confide in you?”

  “About what?”

  “About his condition. He was very ill. Gravely ill. He knew that his time was limited. He accepted the fact. I’ve known very few patients who were so … resigned. So stoic. He never complained.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” I heard myself saying, numbly.

  The doctor kept on talking, offering condolences, but I’d tuned him out. When I started listening to him again, he was saying something about the hospital already having contacted Gino’s relatives, to make the arrangements.

  “Can I see him?” I asked.

  “Of course. Come with me.”

  We went down in an elevator. We walked along a corridor. We passed through a doorway, and entered a room. I felt as though I was sleepwalking, or moving about during a dream.

  When the doctor uncovered Gino’s face, Gino looked utterly calm and relaxed, truly as though he was just asleep. I expected him to open his eyes at any moment, look at me, and say, “Hello, kiddo,” in that droll way he had.

  My feelings can be imagined. But, as I’ve said, this story isn’t about me.

  Numb, I went home. I broke the news to the manager of our apartment building.

  In the following days, two things happened. Gino, as it turned out, really did have a great-nephew, named Carlo, who came to our city as the representative of the family, to arrange to have Gino’s body sent home to New Jersey, and to close up his apartment. I got to know Carlo rather well. At first, I was disconcerted by his strong family facial resemblance to Gino—Carlo really did look like a younger version of my friend. I helped Carlo to sort through and start to pack up some of Gino’s possessions.

  I can’t be certain, of course, but I suspect that Gino would have been amused by the obituaries of him which appeared in the press. The write-ups dutifully focused on how he’d made the transition from bodybuilder to movie actor. Some of the writers adopted a slightly apologetic and even disparaging tone, as though Gino’s acting career had been a fluke. (In all probability, he would’ve been the first person to agree with that assessment.) But a few of the more perceptive press notices acknowledged his role, not only in pop culture, but as a gay icon.

  His fans hadn’t forgotten him. There was an outpouring of tributes, reminiscences, affection, and grief—mostly via the Internet.

  Carlo and I met with Mr. Perkins, Gino’s lawyer, whom I’d met on that one previous occasion in the hospital. I accompanied Carlo at his insistence.

  “You were Uncle Gino’s friend,” Carlo said. “You’re practically family
.”

  “Mr. D’Agostino didn’t leave a great deal of money,” Mr. Perkins told us, frankly.

  “No,” Carlo agreed. “We didn’t expect him to. He stopped making movies more than thirty years ago, after all. I’m just glad that he had enough of an income to enable him to live comfortably, and to be independent.”

  Mr. Perkins had a copy of Gino’s will in front of him, to refer to, during this discussion. “With the exception of a few personal items, which he bequeathed to old friends … he left everything to be divided among his family. His survivors. And—on that day in the hospital, Mr. Graeme, when you and I first met, Mr. D’Agostino had added a codicil to his will. He had those two hospital employees witness it. In the codicil, he left you a few items.”

  This took me by surprise. “Oh?”

  Mr. Perkins went on to explain that Gino had left me the large framed and autographed movie poster of Il Prode Gladiatore di Roma, which his will described in detail. And his collection of vintage Murano glass, also itemized, piece by piece.

  I was stunned. The poster no doubt had a certain value, as an artifact from Gino’s career; but to me it was priceless. (Hanging on the wall of my apartment, it is now among my most prized possessions.) As for the glass figurines, I have kept and treasured them, too.

  But there was more. Gino had also bequeathed to me “the contents of the boxes labeled 10A and 10B,” which, the lawyer informed me, were in a storage space Gino had rented.

  The three of us arranged to go to the storage facility together. When the door was unlocked and rolled upward, I saw that the space contained some old furniture and, to put in bluntly, a lot of miscellaneous junk. But there among the other dusty items were the two large cardboard shipping boxes labeled 10A and 10B. I signed for them, we loaded them into my car—they were packed full, and very heavy—and Carlo and I took them back to my apartment.

  I invited Carlo to come inside with me, to witness the grand opening.

  With the boxes set on my living room floor, I felt strange—and sentimental.

  I poured out glasses of wine for Carlo and myself.

  “Here’s to you, Gino,” I said, and we toasted him before we drank.