The Family - Mario Puzo [181]
After his heart attack in 1992, I asked him again. “Have you thought about the Borgia book?”
“I have to write two more Mafia books first, and then I’ll be set,” he said. “Besides, I still enjoy hanging out with those characters. I’m not sure I’m ready to let them go just yet.”
During the time we spent in Malibu while he was recovering from his heart surgery, whenever he was uncomfortable or wanted a diversion, he read books on the Italian Renaissance and scribbled Borgia pages for me to read and us to discuss.
Mario was a very funny man with a unique way of looking at things.
“Lucrezia was a good girl,” he said one day while we were working in his study. And I laughed.
“And the rest of the family?” I asked. “They were the villains?”
“Cesare was a patriot who desired to be a hero. Alexander was a doting father, a true family man,” he said. “Like most people, they did some bad things, but that didn’t make them bad people.” That day we talked and laughed about them for hours, and later that night he completed the scene of Cesare and the Pope fighting over whether he wanted to be a cardinal.
During this time he was only willing to leave his house and go out to dinner when Bert Fields was coming into town. Bert is not only a distinguished historian and lawyer, but was also one of Mario’s dearest friends. Each time we met, whether it was on the east coast or the west, the dinner conversation somehow always came back to the Borgias. Bert was as excited and amused about the power and treachery of the Renaissance as Mario. “When are you going to get the Borgia book together?” Bert always asked.
“I’m working on it,” Mario would say.
“He’s got a bunch of it done,” I told Bert.
And Bert seemed pleased.
As time went on, Mario called Bert frequently to trade stories, asking questions and sharing observations. Each time he finished a conversation with Bert, Mario and I would talk about the Borgias, and he was excited again about writing the stories of the Family.
I’ll help you finish the Borgia book,” I offered one day in 1995, after we’d spent a particularly interesting day talking about the nature of love, relationships, and betrayal.
“I don’t collaborate until after I’m dead,” he said, smiling at me.
“Okay,” I said. “But then what do I do with an unfinished book?” I sounded calmer than I felt.
He laughed at me. “Finish it,” he said.
“I can’t finish it. I don’t remember what you taught me,” I said, unable even to imagine living in a world without him.
He patted me on the shoulder and said, “You can do it. You know the story. I’ve written so much of it and we’ve talked about it for years. You can fill in the missing pieces.” Then he touched my cheek, and said, “I really have taught you all I know.”
Two weeks before he died, though his heart was failing, Mario was still completely lucid. And one day, as I was sitting in his study across from his desk, he reached down and pulled a bunch of pages, handwritten in red felt marker on yellow lined paper, from the bottom drawer of his desk. I thought it was something from Omerta, but it wasn’t. “Read it,” he said, and handed it to me.
And as I read I began to cry. It was the last chapter of the Borgia book.
“Finish it,” he said. “Promise me.”
And so I did.
About the Author
Mario Puzo was the author of the international bestseller The Godfather and cowrote the screenplays for the Academy Award-winning trio of films based on the book. Puzo’s other books include The Last Don and Omerta, both New York Times bestsellers. His companion, novelist Carol Gino, is the bestselling author of The Nurse’s Story, Rusty’s Story, and Then an Angel Came. She lives on Long Island, New York.
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OTHER BOOKS BY MARIO PUZO
The Dark Arena
The Fortunate Pilgrim
The Godfather
Fools Die
The Sicilian
The