This idea comes from a dream I had on the morning of 12th September, 20-. The date itself is not significant other than the fact I wrote it down on a piece of paper that subsequently ended up in my diary. I woke up thinking of a sketch involving the said title. The idea was that a sofa would feature in a number of interlinking stories. I then thought of those Italian films of the seventies invariably themed La Domenica in Vacanza (Sunday on Holiday), or La Vita Solita Romana (Same Old Rome) featuring vignettes or scenes of rivalry and sarcasm from several famous stellar couplings. (For some reason in my mind the actors appear indefatigably middle-aged and world weary, while the actresses remain eternally juvenile and divine.)
I have no idea if it will lead anywhere other than the fact that my subconscious mind was telling my groggily conscious mind that this was the title of a film.
At the moment I had nothing to follow it up other than a rather comfortable looking sofa and two lovers deliberating over whether they were going to buy it, or not. The lovers in question are an older man and a younger woman. The older man is clearly a man of the world, but he is smitten by the younger woman in a way that presages disaster and jealousy. The younger woman is joyful, flirtatious and not remotely knowing in the way of contemporary heroines. Of course, this could be no more than an image appropriated from the seventies, or rather my idea of the seventies, as seen through rose-tinted spectacles.
I quote first some notes I made on the inside cover of an old IKEA Catalogue.
Now that I am thinking of the seventies, it may be that we have a situation involving a terrorist group. Could it be that within the sofa is a document, or object pertaining to some outrageous plan? i.e. to kidnap a major industrialist and/or to bomb a train or hijack a plane?
Why would a document of this type have ended up in the sofa?
I quote again the notes I made on a scrap of toilet roll:
The sofa itself is a second-hand sofa. Perhaps it has come from a house or flat that has been raided by the police. The said document or object has remained secreted in the sofa. Italian police are notoriously lax and conniving.
The sofa has a bed on which the lovers are going to sleep. Soon they will take the sofa back to the young woman’s “apartment” (since we are in Rome). The young woman, for convenience Sofia acts as though nothing is going to happen. She will never betray her knowledge of what is going to happen. She may joke with the old goat, for convenience Marcello, and he may well joke with her, but he disguises his real desires behind a veneer of charm.
Marcello has purchased a bottle of wine, either to celebrate the acquisition of the sofa, or to get them in the mood. He puts the bottle of champagne down on the side. He searches around in the kitchen drawer for a corkscrew… Sofia has gone off into the bedroom to change. Whilst rummaging in the drawer for the corkscrew, he finds a vibrator. Why has she left the vibrator in the kitchen drawer? The fact embarrasses him. Immediately he closes the drawer. When he opens it again, the vibrator is still there. He picks up the corkscrew and closes the drawer.
When Sofia re-enters, Marcello is still struggling with the bottle between his legs.
He pops the cork.
Sofia kisses him on the cheek and produces two crystal glasses. Come on, she says. Let’s go and try the sofa.
Sofia is wearing one of those loose fitting chiffon dresses that are all the rage, Marcello is not charmed, but discomforted as they settle down on the sofa.
Monica has her legs on Marcello’s lap… He does not move, but sits there sniffing the wine.
Hmm, he says. It has a nice bouquet.
Fruity, says Sofia.
Flinty, he re-joins.
It reminds me of Paris.
Paris, Marcello scoffs. This is not just Paris, my dear. It is Saint Germain, rive gauche.
Sofia laughs uproariously. As she does, she throws out a foot. The foot catches Marcello’s wine glass. The wine goes flying over Marcello’s cream trousers. Marcello stands up. As he stands up, he knocks the bottle that was on the side. The bottle that was on the side falls over and spills all over the newly acquired as opposed to first hand sofa bed.
Oh, no darling! Squeals Sofia.
Look, it is all over your cream trousers. Oh, darling, I am so sorry!
What about the sofa? Quel dommage!
Oh, darling! Thank God it was white but not Chablis!
Sofia insists that Marcello divests himself of his cream trousers. Marcello insists that he has no need to change his cream trousers.
After a tussle in which Marcello is divested of his cream trousers, he is standing in the middle of the room in his shirt and underwear.
Darling, exclaims Sofia. You are wearing pink silk boxers. How lovely!
Marcello divested of his boxers and by now in dire need of drinks returns to the kitchen for the second bottle. Most fortunately, there is a second bottle; it was on offer with the first from a bottega in the Campo de Fiori. He returns to the sofa. When he returns to the sofa, he cannot locate the corkscrew which he recalls for some reason he brought with him when they came through into the living room…
Here we come to the crux of the story. Marcello, whilst rummaging for the corkscrew among the cushions of the sofa bed; Marcello finds the pistol.
How did the pistol end up in the sofa between the cushions and the mattress of the sofa bed?
By way of explanation, let me take you back to three days before. A certain individual by the name of Ramirez was visiting an “apartment” since this is Rome – the Rome remember of the nineteen seventies. The said “apartment” which was known to the police, and various members of SisDi, the Italian secret service, belonged to Ramirez’s girlfriend, Barbara.
Here we should describe in a few brief strokes Ramirez and his girlfriend, Barbara. Ramirez was a type much in vogue in that epoch. With his beard, moustache and a sheep skin coat he would have been comfortable in the company of Frank Serpico. Ramirez, however, was not Serpico. Ramirez was a member of a minor revolutionary cell known as Azione Revoluzionaria, or Revolutionary Action. Revolutionary Action’s affiliations, like most revolutionary cells of that epoch, were complex. In years to come research would suggest that their leanings were to the left of right, or right of left. No one could honestly say which, although considered – even for those feverish times – left of field. Ramirez himself had an excellent remit. Not only had he grown up in the hands of Jesuits but he was also handy with a gun. Ramirez had been a corporal in the Argentine army; after which he had led a ragbag, dissolute life until he had met one of the guardians of Revolutionary Action and taken on board a kind of Deleuzian conversion. If his hopes were bound up in revolution and action, his horizons had recently shifted upon meeting Barbara. Barbara had lived in a commune in California; she had been through eight phases of the moon to get to where she was, which was like that patchworky kind of wholesome living that was being touted at that moment (The year was – unless I am mistaken – nineteen seventy-seven). So here we might see them in media res; all ready to jump. When the police raided, Ramirez had with him his pistol; which he just had time to stuff down the said sofa.
Darling, I do hope you are not pointing that thing at me.
Relax, says Marcello, the safety catch is on.
Then, just to prove it, he pops it.
But the cursed thing was not on.