100 Days of Happiness (18 page)

A
night out with Umberto and Corrado in the San Lorenzo district, and at the last minute Oscar decided to join us. Since he got himself a girlfriend, it's like he's one of us, even if he's thirty years older and weighs sixty pounds more. Tonight he took advantage of a chance to go out because Martina is filling in for her niece for a guided tour of Rome by night.

We've reserved a table at a romantic and pseudo-organic restaurant. The warm night allows us to sit outside, where we're surrounded by college students. Between a raw vegetable
pinzimonio
and a green lasagna, Oscar sets forth his latest scheme for improving the quality of life in Italy. His reasoning starts with the criterion applied to driver's licenses, that is, the system for a renewal every ten years. The discerning pastry chef suggests a similar renewal for anything, as a guarantee of quality for clients or consumers. The examples he offers are perfectly logical.

“For instance, would you let a doctor who finished medical school in 1962 treat you? Would you let a mechanic who learned on a Fiat 1100 fix your car? Or would you let a lawyer who passed the bar in the middle of the last century defend you?”

The answer is certainly not, and yet all three of us have to agree that it's something we do all the time.

Oscar goes on: “Guys, experience isn't enough. Medicine, science, art, and society itself have all made enormous progress. So I'm in favor of obligatory review courses and updated studies, for
everyone, every ten years, otherwise cancellation of your professional licensing.”

“It's true,” Corrado points out, “we pilots have to do it.”

“I should certainly hope so!” Oscar says indignantly; then he turns to Umberto. “What about you veterinarians?”

“We . . . well, we take refresher courses, but we don't actually have to take an exam.”

“You see? I'd apply the rule to everything, even to high school final exams. Every ten years, we ought to have to retake the exams to see if we've forgotten everything or if we're still ‘graduate material.'”

I'd flunk them. Every year, when I see the subjects of the high school final exams that are going to be administered over the next few weeks, I realize that I'd have no chance. I couldn't possibly sit through a Latin composition or a math test.

Oscar decides to offer an empirical demonstration of his theory. He stands up and addresses all the customers in the restaurant in a booming voice.

“Any of you who remembers why World War One broke out, raise your hand.”

No one does except for a thirteen-year-old who's just taken a class in the subject.

“Because of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie. Or at least, that was the official excuse.”

“And what's a derivative? What's the future perfect tense?”

The evening ends in a collective variant of
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
driven by a healthy competitive impulse to show off our general knowledge. At a certain point, we become the center of attention in the place. We don't get home until two in the morning, like a group of fifteen-year-old good-for-nothings.

M
adonna, my naturopath, stares at me with an inquisitorial eye.

“It's been a while since you were last in to see me . . .”

“I know,” I reply, my tail already tucked between my legs. I feel as if I'm talking to a priest in a confessional.

“How is the diet going?”

“Well, so-so . . . I've definitely eaten some things I shouldn't have, but I've already lost more than ten pounds.”

“Breaking the diet helps you to stick to it. I always recommend that my dieters fall off the wagon at least one day a month.”

I confess that we'd be talking about more than one day a month, a lot more, and that a couple of times I went back to my father-in-law's pastry shop for some doughnuts.

Dr. Zanella asks me why I've come to see her. I try to explain that though I feel healthier and I'm sleeping a little better, I wasn't encouraged by the rapid progress of my disease.

“It's not easy to become a vegan at age forty,” I sum up.

“That's true,” she agrees. Then she urges me to try a little harder to stick to a fruit-based diet, at least.

“Fruitarians tend to be very long-lived. And it's no coincidence.”

The word “fruitarian” makes me smile.

I explain to her that actually I've come in for another reason, which has nothing to do with me directly.

“I have two children, one's six and the other's nine. I want you to help me come up with a diet plan that's suitable for their growth. A
nutritional regimen that will help them to avoid the same mistakes I made and, most important of all, to live longer than I'm going to. Unfortunately, they have my same very imperfect DNA.”

The doctor gives me a warm smile. Under Fräulein Rottenmeier's icy shell beats a human heart.

We spend the next two hours chatting about diet. I take plenty of notes. Lorenzo and Eva mean my life to me. And I don't want what's happening to me to happen to them. Ever.

M
idway.

It's time to celebrate.

After dinner, I persuade Paola and the kids to go out. I also invite Oscar and Martina, now a wonderful steady couple. We've done this before, and it was marvelous.

A single word, summery and appetizing.
Cremolato
. A delicious Italian ice.

No figs this time, but lemon and strawberry, and melon. The kids lap it up. I watch them swap spoons, critique with the first spoonful, retract with the second, and just enjoy it all. They aren't covetous, these two. They like what they have. They don't particularly want what the other has. That makes me happy.

Later, Paola brings it up again. By “it” I mean the one thing she and I can never agree on. “You have to tell them,” she says.

“I thought we had settled that.”

“You settled it. It's far from settled in my mind.”

“What do you want, Paola? Misery, for my last few days on earth?”

“It's not all about you!” she says, with a flash in her eyes. “You think it's just about you.”

“You're better off not knowing some things, specially when you're a kid. Trust me on that one.”

“You can't judge that!” she says. “You're leaving. People who leave can't tell what's best for the people who are left behind.”

Ouch. That hurts. She's hurting really badly. I look at her closely,
searching her face for the forgiveness I hope to see there. But she is angry.

“You tell them then!” I say. “I can't.”

Now she's furious. “
I
tell them? You're crazy, Lucio. This can never come from me.”

So that's that. We face each other like rival armies across a distant battlefield.

S
unday morning.

I'm lying belly down, my face buried in my pillow.

Bells are ringing.

The Basilica Papale di San Lorenzo fuori le Mura is just a hundred yards away from my home, and it's summoning the faithful. I haven't attended Mass since the day I was married, ten years ago. I agreed to have a church wedding for Paola's sake. After confirmation, I never went back to my parish church. I'm agnostic, as I said before. And sleepy.

I open one eye, without moving. Paola, beside me, hears the rustle of my eyelids.

“You coughed all night,” she tells me without turning around.

“Sorry, if you prefer I can sleep on the sofa tonight.”

“No, but I'd ask you to take the doctors' advice, start doing some sports . . . it oxygenates your lungs, it forces them to breathe.”

“I can't swim very well, and you know it. It hurts too much to move my arms.”

“Swimming's not the only kind of sport there is. Why don't you get your bicycle out of the garage and take a ride?”

If there's one thing I hate, it's riding a bike.

A bicycle in Rome, which is all uphill and downhill, is a useless conveyance. And a very dangerous one. As a sport, on the other hand, it makes no sense at all: you can't score goals or baskets.

To me, a sport isn't a sport if it doesn't involve a ball, whatever the
size. All the same, later that day I pull open the garage door. Inside is my old Bianchi bicycle. It must be twenty years old. It's hanging on the back wall, and I haven't ridden it in at least four or five years.

Who invented this machine? My research takes me to Leonardo da Vinci's Atlantic Codex, where, on folio 33, there is a noteworthy sketch of a two-wheeled vehicle that it's hard not to identify as a modern bicycle.

It turns out that the Tuscan multitasker par excellence also invented the Schwinn Cruiser.

I go back to the thankless task of unearthing my personal velocipede, buried behind years and years of junk. Stacked in front of my bike is the detritus of my life, a sort of cemetery that we call a garage, where I store all the useless things I lack the courage to dispose of. I make a sudden decision. I sort everything into the appropriate receptacle: the issues of
Quattroruote
and my schoolbooks go into paper, the chandeliers go into glass, the remote controls and the flat tire go into mixed refuse. For the rest of it, I order a large-item trash pickup. I'm emptying this place out. I want an empty garage. Garages full of objects are useless. Just like cycling.

I finally work my way back to my old Bianchi. It's still in fine condition. All it needs is a little oil on the chain, a buff and a polish, some air in the tires, and it's ready to take me around Rome. I choose a route without hills or cobblestones. The EUR district will be perfect. I'll head for the beach, down Via Cristoforo Colombo. I pop in my headphones. I carefully set up the playlist. All seventies dance tunes. I zip away to the nostalgic notes of Donna Summer.

I abandon myself to the rhythm of pedaling, as monotonous as my thoughts. I pass by a little church where four young pallbearers load a mahogany casket into a Mercedes hearse, as if putting a loaf of dough into an oven to bake. Around them stand twenty or so old people, a few with tears running down their cheeks. There's nothing on earth sadder than a funeral with a small crowd. It's like a concert
by an aging rock star, attended only by nostalgic fans. If you want to avoid that dreary outcome, there's only one reliable solution: schedule your funeral early. It's always a sold-out crowd for early funerals. That's a pretty grim consolation.

I've never thought about my own funeral. And yet it's the last act, the one in which you're the guest of honor. So it's worth giving it some thought.

The first thing to do is decide what kind of ceremony to choose.

The first kind is the Italian-style funeral: held in a church with a bored priest officiating, tears and emotional phrases from our closest friends, then everyone is off to the cemetery for the burial (unless the site you had in mind has been overbooked), and finally everyone retires to the home of the closest relatives of the loved one to weep and moan until the wee hours of the night, eating cold food from a nearby roast shop.

The second kind is the American-style funeral I've seen in movies: a nondenominational ceremony in a handsome cemetery with the lawn you'd find on a golf course, with lots of music and poetry readings, then everyone troops off to the funeral party at the loved one's house, with a lavish buffet and a band playing all the loved one's favorite songs. Usually, the widow cuts loose with some acrobatic rock 'n' roll dancing with an uncle who's a professional choreographer.

You may find it blasphemous, but I would definitely opt for the second type.

I want my funeral to be a big party. Too bad I'll be attending flat on my back.

L
orenzo's birthday. The party's scheduled in a local recreation center with all his young friends, a typical blowout for the under-ten crowd. The only grown-ups present are Paola and me, accompanied by a few apprehensive mothers. It's an inferno of laughter and shouting, barely kept under control by the two young men who run the place. They're dressed as clowns and they're the butts of mockery and pranks of all kinds. They do their best to win the kids over, without success.

I stand off to one side, munching popcorn and salty snacks. I suggested some games, but they were all rejected scornfully. I understand that nine-year-olds see me as nothing more than a poor pathetic old man.

I watch Lorenzo as he roams recklessly through the big room, leading his group of friends. I gave him a giant finger-painting set and the smile he flashed me in exchange healed me completely for just a second. Only now does it dawn on me that there's something I won't be able to do myself in the future and that I absolutely have to arrange for.

 * * * 

“What?” Umberto asks me.

“Birthday presents. I need to buy birthday presents for Lorenzo and Eva for the coming years. There's no way I'm leaving them without birthday presents from their Papà.”

“But how . . . ?”

I don't give him a chance to argue. Before I go any further, I should point out several things. One is that my wife seriously likes Umberto. She has always considered him a good friend of hers, though he's one of my best friends, and while this has sometimes made things a little prickly between Umberto and me—how much can I tell him?—I've never felt I couldn't trust him. In fact, he has proven himself to be a maestro in the difficult situation between Paola and me, continuing to be my best friend, while giving her the solace and comfort she needs from someone she considers to be a close friend of hers. Lately, when he's been over to dinner, I've seen her take him aside, enter into a conversation with him that so demands privacy, I turn up the water faucet in the kitchen and do the dishes, eager to show them both I'm not envious of their growing closeness. For it has grown. Paola leans on him now, for advice, I imagine, and for solace. How he picks his way through this difficult minefield, I do not know. But I have never felt a withdrawal from him, never a hesitation when I have asked him questions of a searching nature. He has always been available, the same good friend I have relied on all these years. So now I entrust him with the most difficult task of all—buying gifts for the children for their birthdays to come, and presenting them.

“How?” he asks again.

“Easy. I pick them out, you buy them and wrap them.”

“Ah!”

“Don't try to tell me no.”

“All I said was ‘Ah!'”

“I'll make up a detailed list, year by year. Then, if you see that something's gone out of style or doesn't work in the meanwhile, you can choose an alternate gift. We've got to be prepared at least up to age eighteen.”

“Can I tell you my opinion about this?”

I nod. All around us the buzz of voices in the café seems to fall away as if everyone else were waiting for his answer.

“It strikes me as a wonderful idea,” says Umberto.

I smile at him and relax. I realize that I've been a little impetuous, but there's not much time left to me, and every so often, my enthusiasm runs away with me.

“
Grazie,
” I reply. Then I place a hand on his shoulder. Today my stomach is hurting worse than usual. I've gone back to see the oncologist and together we've gone over the latest test results. My markers just keep rising. My body, in spite of the fact that I've improved my diet and my personal habits, can't keep up, like an engine that's just been run too hard over the years. Pain, I realize, will be a constant companion from now on. I will have to bear it, with analgesics and courage.