100 Days of Happiness (26 page)

N
ighttime. Our hotel room is swathed in darkness. The windows are open. Paola's asleep. I'm not. I breathe slowly. The pain in my stomach no longer lets me have any peace. I'm coughing hard, I can't seem to stop, I'm practically emitting a death rattle. I get up, I go into the bathroom. My body contorts with every hack. I feel the urge to vomit. So I do, some goes on the floor, some in the toilet, and some on my T-shirt. Then I slump back, my shoulders against the wall, exhausted, ravaged, helpless. I can't go on like this much longer.

Paola sticks her head into the bathroom. I've woken her up.

“How are you?”

“Sick, very very sick.”

My wife flushes the toilet, grabs a handful of toilet paper, cleans the floor, and comes over next to me.

“Careful, I think a whiff of my breath could kill you on the spot.”

“You still feel like kidding around, so things must be okay,” she says with a half smile, or possibly a little more than half.

She starts cleaning the vomit off my face and lips. Then she pulls my stained T-shirt off. She turns on the water in the bidet next to me, wets a bath sponge, and delicately cleans my neck and chest.

I let her work. I adore it when she takes care of me. I hope that she's doing it out of love and not from that odd candy-striper instinct.

She sits down on the floor and takes me in her arms. I relax into her. There's such sweetness in it. I want more. I nuzzle her neck.

“We look like Michelangelo's
Pietà,
” Paola says, in an attempt to cut the drama.

I laugh. And then I start coughing again.

A few minutes later she helps me into bed and tucks me in, the way we used to tuck our children in until just a short time ago.

“We need to go home,” she says, instead of giving me the expected kiss good night.

“It's just a momentary attack. I'm actually feeling much better since we got to the beach. I'm breathing much easier.”

“I saw that, or rather, I heard it. Come on, Lucio, please, let's be done with this farce of a journey—it was a terrible idea. I'm not going to beat around the bush: you need medical care, especially now that the tumor is about to enter its most violent and aggressive phase.”

“
Amore,
please, these are the last days of my life. I want to live them to the fullest. We still have lots of stops to make.”

“I'm taking the children and going home.”

“You can't do that. You can't all leave me now. If you go home, I'm not coming with you. It's just a few more days. Please.”

Silent assent. She's given in. She won't regret it.

I
've burned a few CDs with compilations of my favorite songs. I don't want to listen to songs chosen at random by a radio network on this journey. I love the English word
compilation
, it evokes my first high school crushes and my summers at the beach all at once. My generation was the last one to be able to make compilations on tape cassettes, and to have the thrill of watching them demagnetize the first time you leave them on the car dashboard.

My compilations are completely anarchic, with no other criterion than my own personal taste. Here's what we have today:

“Romeo and Juliet”
D
IRE
S
TRAITS

“Through the Barricades”
S
PANDAU
B
ALLET

“Meraviglioso”
D
OMENICO
M
ODUGNO

“Yesterday”
T
HE
B
EATLES

“Rain and Tears”
A
PHRODITE'S
C
HILD

“Un giorno credi”
E
DOARDO
B
ENNATO

“Can't Smile Without You”
B
ARRY
M
ANILOW

“In My Room”
B
EACH
B
OYS

“Father and Son”
C
AT
S
TEVENS

“Good-bye My Lover”
J
AMES
B
LUNT

I realize midway through listening to the playlist that they're all pretty gloomy hits. I eject the CD and tune in to a local radio station
doing prank calls. We're heading for Molise, which is more or less Italy's Liechtenstein, a beautiful region that is overlooked by the tourist guidebooks. There are no famous monuments and no one famous was born there, unless you count Robert De Niro's grandparents. Just one statistic to give you an idea of how much better life is around here: there are 72 inhabitants per square kilometer here, while in Latium there are 330; in Lombardy, 412; and in Campania, 429. There's elbow room, a value we've forgotten we ever had.

The hotel we choose is a family-run place with just five rooms, only one of which looks out over the beach. I gladly give the kids that room. Paola and I take the “Gardenia Suite” with a view of the largely deserted beachfront promenade. The proprietors are a couple in their seventies, Sabino and Alba, who run the place with the assistance of their three children and a couple of grandchildren. Sabino tells us that he inherited the place from his father and he's managed to talk his descendants into coming to work and live together. A lucky man in this age when family ties and emotions are scattered to the four winds.

“If you're interested, there's a dance contest tonight in town,” Sabino says, with the tone of someone offering me a ticket to the World Cup finals.

“What kind of dance?” I inquire.

“All kinds. It's an overall contest. The mayor's on the jury, and so is a guy whose name I can't remember, but he danced with Carla Fracci.”

“How do you sign up?”

Paola breaks in: “I don't think that dancing is a very—”

I don't let her finish, and I repeat the question: “How do you sign up?”

“Directly in the piazza, my brother-in-law is there taking names and issuing numbers. Three euros, plus you get a beer. If the signora doesn't want to dance, there's also a market with stalls: it's the festival of the town's patron saint. My wife doesn't dance either because three
months ago she slipped on a rock and broke her thigh. She's still doing physical therapy.”

“Thanks, but I don't think we'll go,” my spouse says brusquely, definitely sour toned today. “The trip was a long one, my husband listens to terrible music, and the children are exhausted.”

“In any case, it starts at nine-thirty,” says Sabino with a smile that reveals he doesn't see the dentist very often.

 * * * 

Two hours later, I'm with Lorenzo and Eva at the table, signing all four of us up for the contest. We voted democratically, 3 to 1, and Paola was forced to come with us. Among other things, the hotel kitchen is closed because the whole happy family that normally runs it will be competing, aside from Alba, who, now that I notice, does limp slightly. Sabino is thrilled we came.

“Which are the couples? You have to sign up by couples.”

“I think I'll dance with my wife, and the kids will dance together.”

“No, I'm not dancing,” Paola breaks in, “I came but I won't dance. Anyway, Lorenzo doesn't seem particularly interested.”

My young firstborn heir is already standing by a foosball table where the local kids are having a tournament.

I turn to Eva: “Shall we dance, just you and I?”

“But I don't know how to dance, Papà.”

My sage young daughter doesn't have dance skills among her many gifts, though it would only do her good to learn of folly and lack of inhibition that's an intrinsic part of dancing.

“I'll teach you,” I venture as if I were Nureyev and not Baloo the Bear.

We're the only couple with a two-foot height difference. We don't pass unobserved. I understand that in this town the contest is taken seriously. At the end of each dance, the jury casts its votes, in a brief and mysterious conclave.

At first Eva is a little cautious: we improvise a shy version of the twist. I look around and there are a few couples who look as if they came straight out of
Dirty Dancing
.

When it's time to do the mazurka I'm already sweating to an embarrassing extent. Paola wanders through the market stalls, shooting us a glance every now and then. Lorenzo cheerfully ignores us, by now completely absorbed in the challenge of a furious foosball match.

Ten minutes later Eva and I abandon the piazza entirely. Speaking metaphorically, let it be clear. My little girl and I are dancing alone on a mountaintop, and all around is nothing but snow and silence. We dance wildly, effortlessly, almost breathlessly. A state of euphoria unlike anything I've experienced in years and that I imagine my daughter's never felt before in her life. I've never seen her as happy as she was during the rock 'n' roll sequence, as I slid her through my arms, remembering the old moves from my high school dances. She's light, and that's a good thing. We go on dancing, paying no attention to the world around us. It's just the two of us. Me and my small, out-of-control princess.

Before I can have a complete cardiocirculatory collapse, a voice over a megaphone comes to my rescue.

“Stop dancing! The winners will be announced in five minutes!”

I let myself flop down onto a bench, next to my partner.

“Were we good, Papà?”

“We were outstanding.”

“Do you think we'll win?”

“I don't think so—they wouldn't let an outsider win,” I say, cushioning the blow, sensing in advance a less than stellar ranking.

Paola and Lorenzo catch up with us. I discover that they were cheering us on during the last few dances. My wife hands us two slices of cool watermelon. I love her for that too.

With our faces plunged into the fiery red pulp we listen as the
jury proclaims the winning couple. It's the mayor himself who does the announcing, to a chorus of whistles and applause.

“The couple of Sabino and Gabriella Antinori wins with one hundred twenty-eight points.”

The winner is Sabino with his daughter. Seeing that the woman's husband is one of the contest organizers, my suspicion of an Italian-style con job is more than legitimate. The two of them celebrate as if they'd just won an Oscar.

“Here's the chart with the overall rankings,” concludes the mayor.

Eva immediately runs to see. I don't have the strength to go with her. She comes back thirty seconds later, all dejected.

“We came in last,” she reports.

“For sure they cheated,” I comment. “The next time we'll practice and it'll go better. You want another slice of watermelon?”

She replies with an enthusiastic yes, instantly forgetting the terrible contest results. I take her hand and we run to the watermelon stand, under Paola's worried gaze.

“But now you need to get some rest.”

I ignore her and I order two more super megaslices of watermelon. I'm a very satisfied father. Today Eva learned to let loose and to accept losing. Two things that will come in very handy in the future. I try to decipher from her features the woman she will become. A very beautiful woman who will turn the heads of all the men lucky enough to meet her. I'm struck by the thought that I'll never see her get married. I'll never get to walk her to the altar. That was supposed to be my job.

A tear rolls down my cheek.

“Are you crying, Papà?”

“No,” I assure her, “that's just sweat.”

Then I hand her the super megaslice. With a smile.

I
did a little Internet research before we left Rome. I found one charming text that described a place with a mysterious name: Neosapiens Village
.

This is a decidedly idiosyncratic amusement park, built to resemble an actual prehistoric village, allowing visitors to experience survival techniques of ancient times and test their skills at such activities as archery, hut building, endurance courses, and spear chucking.

I decided instantly that this would be a perfect stop on our journey. To sample for a day life in a bygone era, before the discovery of electricity or the invention of lighters or supermarkets, seems like a good idea.

When we get there, we are greeted by a good-natured guide who explains the rules: for the rest of the day, we will be forbidden to use cell phones, cigarettes, or electronic equipment of any description. He asks us to make a special effort to think and act the way primitive humans would have.

“Will there be dinosaurs too?” Lorenzo asks hopefully.

“No, there won't,” the guide replies. “And let me add, luckily for us. Even with today's weapons, there's no way we could survive an attack by a
Velociraptor
or a
Tyrannosaurus rex
.”

“When you say primitive, exactly what evolutionary stage would you be referring to?” Eva asks, in typical questioning mode.

“How do you mean?” blurts the astonished guide.

“Well, for instance, do we already have a shared language? Do we know how to write? Have we already invented the wheel?”

The young man gives me a puzzled look. I can see in his eyes that he's wondering if my daughter is actually a midget professor of anthropology disguised as a little girl in pigtails. Then he manages to put together a reasonable answer.

“Well . . . you have a shared language; you don't know how to write; you do use fire, but you haven't yet come up with the wheel.”

“Thank you,” Eva politely replies.

After an hour of striking “rock against rock” to light a fire, we give up. All around us, the other families taking part in the day of living primitively have nearly all succeeded. Lorenzo pulls a pack of matches out of his pocket and suggests we cheat. I refuse and go on clacking the rocks together, hoping to coax that long-awaited spark out of them. Paola watches me with the same sense of affection mixed with pity that is normally reserved for watching a hamster running in its wheel. After fifteen minutes, I manage to light a twig, but the flame dies out before I can get it to spread to the entire pile. I suggest we try to win back our self-respect in the next activity: archery. To shoot an arrow is a violent, instinctive act, buried deep in our DNA. An act that comes as naturally as if we'd done it every day of our lives. The best archer of us all is Paola, who seems like a latter-day Robin Hood. She hits a succession of bull's-eyes with the confidence of a multimedaled Olympic champion. I stare at her as if I were seeing her for the very first time. She looks like a Sioux woman warrior and perhaps, in a previous life, that's exactly what she was. Lorenzo and Eva work hard with their miniature bows and have more fun than I've seen them have in years.

We don't exactly excel in the javelin toss. Spear chucking requires a significant component of technique and strength that dumb luck will do nothing to help. Our spears land harmlessly just a few yards away. In the hours that follow, we watch a falconing display, I teach
the kids how to read a map, we make two terra-cotta vases, and we design a sleeping hut that we don't have time to build because the park is about to close. Eva particularly wants to show off her ecofriendly construction knowledge in the building of the hut, which quickly becomes our new imagined home, and I promise her there will be room for both Oscar and Martina in the hut, should they decide to visit us. Both Lorenzo and Eva are having such fun doing these things we've never done together, I see them reappraising me, their new hands-on dad. We leave with the vases in a tote bag and a number of souvenirs, including a couple of flints. Today, for the first time since we left, I saw Paola get involved to a certain extent. Maybe she's beginning to thaw.