100 Days of Happiness (8 page)

I
don't believe in God.

Any God, of any religion.

I hate religions. They're useless; in fact, they're counterproductive. No evolved society can allow itself to be held in slavery to ancient superstitions.

I've been baptized, I've received both communion and confirmation, but out of convention, certainly not conviction. A few years ago, I even looked into having myself unbaptized. I found out it was simple enough: all you need to do is have a notation of your decision put on the register of the parish church where your first Catholic sacrament was officiated. And once you've been unbaptized, you automatically nullify all the subsequent sacraments. But I never did get around to it, out of laziness.

Religion never counted for much in my life. At least until now. Right now any faith of any kind, even some secondary religion, however subordinate and ramshackle it might be, would certainly come in handy. Faith really helps to keep a person company. In that way, it's even better than a Labrador retriever. But fate didn't give me that gift. I'm not a believer. But I'm not an atheist either: I'm an agnostic, and as the dictionary tells us, that means I don't ask questions that I know cannot be answered in any reasonable way. It would be like trying to solve an equation with too many unknown factors. My old friend Leonardo da Vinci was an agnostic too, but back then the terminology ran more toward words like
misbeliever
or
heretic
. He mostly kept
his opinions to himself to avoid winding up tied to one of those uncomfortable stakes surrounded by roaring flames and an angry mob, or seeing all his commissions for sacred art vanish, which would leave him without a livelihood. Throughout his writings, he had little good to say about the Catholic Church, priests, or religions in general. I'm in excellent company.

 * * * 

Lorenzo and Eva are still going to school every day—it's still a month and a half until summer vacation. Paola is likewise very busy with her classes, the way she always is at the end of April, which marks the start of that finals rush, which will culminate in being either held back or promoted to the next year's class.

I still haven't told her that I quit my job. We don't talk much. This is a bad time—there's no point in trying to pretend otherwise. Sleeping with us in our big bed is a complicated mixture of regret, resentment, affection, irritation, and awkwardness. We're never together alone. I really don't know what I can do to achieve my first and, for now, sole objective.

T
here's nothing special about losing a game against the top-ranked team. Nothing special and nothing surprising. But there are times when you can even celebrate a loss. Today my Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight was beaten 8 to 6 by the best team in the league, the terrifying Real Tufello, a sort of underwater death squad. Right up until two minutes before the final whistle, we were holding steady at 6-all, going head to head with the unquestioned dominating team of the championship games. Just seven days from the final, the opposition remains undefeated as they sail smoothly toward their automatic promotion to the next series up. In contrast, we're just fighting to make it into the postseason playoffs, games that will take a few teams into the quarterfinals. Right now we're ranked twelfth, so there's still a whisper of hope in the air. We need to keep playing the way we did today and fight like there's no tomorrow.

Fight like there's no tomorrow. That's what my first coach, an ex–center defender who resembled the actor Bud Spencer but without a beard and an endearing Lucanian accent, always used to say.

“Remember, guys, it's not over till it's over.”

Simple but true. God how I hate it when you are five goals behind just a minute from the end and it would take a miracle to turn the tables. Still, miracles do happen in sports. But they don't in real life. In spite of all the promotional efforts of the Catholic Church and the unbridled proliferation of blessed saints, there has never been a single scientifically recognized miracle. I'm going to be the exception that
proves the rule. And they'll have to reference me in all the textbooks on medicine, religion, and magic: “Miracles don't happen, with the sole exception of a certain Lucio Battistini, who actually recovered from a hepatocellular carcinoma with extensive advanced-stage pulmonary metastasis.”

In the Dino Zoff notebook, I scratch out “Get Paola to forgive me.” I'm still going to do that. But I'll do it later. Right now, there's something more important I need to do.

The most important thing a person in my situation needs to do.

I write:

Don't give up.

T
he only doctor I'm comfortable talking to is Umberto. The location is our favorite little café. The prevailing mood is black. The subject of conversation is chemotherapy. I've read extensively on the controversial topic and I can't seem to come to an opinion that would allow me to make an informed choice.

“By now it's pretty much accepted wisdom,” Umberto begins, “that the benefits of chemo are insufficient to outweigh the contraindications. Chemo is devastating and debilitating in physical terms and to the immune system of the organism being treated, in my opinion. It's as if, in order to remove a hangnail from your big toe, we decided to blast it with a shotgun. The hangnail would be gone. But so would the whole foot. I never advise my patients, or I guess I should say their owners, to undertake chemo. The only sure thing is that the animal they know and love, whether it's a dog, a cat, or a rabbit, will never be the same, it'll just lie there listless on the sofa, uninterested in eating or running around. Alive, but already dead.”

“But I feel all right, I can take it. The rest of my body is healthy,” I retort with a decisiveness that's not like me.

“You think you feel all right, my friend, but the truth is that your blood tests are all over the place. The cancer is progressing vigorously.”

“Tomorrow afternoon I've got another CAT scan scheduled.”

“But you just got one two weeks ago!”

“Maybe it was wrong.”

“You can't just go on getting CAT scans, those are X-rays. They're not particularly good for you.”

I refuse to listen to advice. My stubborn, overconfident brain is hoping to show that it's all been a mistake, a spectacular oversight. “Signor Battistini, we hope you'll accept my apologies and those of the lab. For the past two months we've repeatedly gotten your tests completely wrong. You're actually healthy as a horse. Please accept this briefcase which contains one million euros in cash as our way of saying how sorry we are.”

Umberto keeps after me: “Do you want to start the chemo, or try some other form of treatment—what do you want to do?”

“I don't know . . . ,” I reply, sounding like a boxer who's just been stunned by a sudden right hook.

The first side effect of cancer, as I understand it, is a dimming of the brain function. I want to react but I can't seem to organize a logical defense.

“What would you do?” I ask Umberto, hopefully.

“I'm a friend of yours, and a doctor shouldn't be his patient's friend.”

“I understand, and that's fine, but what would you do?” I insist. I need someone else to decide for me.

“Let's wait for the results of the new CAT scan, then let's check in with an oncologist.”

“I hate oncologists.”

“I'll bet you do, but all I can do is offer my advice; I can't be your primary consulting physician. Remember, I'm a veterinarian and I specialize in exotic animals.”

“What are you doing tonight?” I ask, ignoring every point he's trying to make.

“I'm going out with a woman dentist from Prati. Second date.”

“Have you taken her to bed yet?”

“No. I was hoping that might happen tonight.”

“Cancel. Dentists are boring in bed. Let's go get a pizza with Corrado.”

When I fire off these dictatorial commands, Umberto invariably folds.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but tonight Corrado is in Tokyo; he'll be back the day after tomorrow. If you can do without him, we could go, just the two of us.”

I've already changed my mind. We terminally ill patients can afford to be unpredictable.

“Oh well, that doesn't matter, enjoy your dentist, I'm going to the movies to see the latest from Woody Allen.”

“It hasn't come out yet.”

I'm batting zero today.

“Then I'll go home instead.”

“Speaking of which, how are things with Paola?”

“Not well. She speaks to me in monosyllables.”

“Well, in a way, that's what you deserve.”

“No, please, no lectures tonight. Come on, thanks for seeing me. What do I owe you, Doctor?”

“The usual fee for large animals is a hundred euros.”

“Idiot.”

“Speak for yourself.”

When we argue, we regress to elementary school in a flash.

I slap him on the back and say good-bye, then head for the door. He stops me to ask a question, and I know that it's been on the tip of his tongue for the past few minutes: “Why did you say that dentists are boring in bed? Have you slept with one? Maybe it was just her; maybe dentists aren't all boring.”

“I've never taken a dentist to bed. It's just a figure of speech. You must have heard it: ‘as boring as a dentist in bed.' People say it all the time.”

“Who says it? Which people? I've never heard anyone say it.”

“All the people who've ever taken a dentist to bed! They all say it.”

I leave the café, abandoning him to his doubts and sticking him with the check.

I go back home and play with the kids for a couple of hours, under the watchful gaze of Shepherd. It's the only therapy that really does me any good.

“I
quit my job.”

I can't see Paola's face because she's in the shower, but I can imagine it perfectly.

I lie on the bed in silence for three minutes. Then my wife, wrapped in a bathrobe, appears in the bathroom door. With the light behind her, I can't see the look on her face. But I can imagine it, too perfectly.

“Which job?”

“The only one that gives me a paycheck, if that's the subtext,” I reply.

“That is, you're going to go on coaching for free, but you decided to give up your salary from the gym?”

“Precisely.”

“If you don't mind my asking, why would you do that when you know perfectly well that we barely make it to the end of each month?”

I could deliver a lecture on “the invalid's psychology,” but I know I'd bore even myself to tears.

“I've decided that for the next little while I'm only going to do what I feel like doing. It strikes me as the only decision that has any meaning.”

“That has any meaning for you.”

“Are you looking for a fight? Let me warn you that I come preirritated, so I'd recommend against trying to set me off.”

“Who's trying to set you off? You just told me how it was. Period.”

“It wasn't done intentionally. It just came out that way.”

“Okay, okay, don't get angry. . . . How do you feel today?”

“Thank you for asking. Aside from the fact that there's a constant pain in my gut, that I'm having a hard time breathing, and that I'm in a lousy mood, I'd say pretty good.”

“Shall we go get a second opinion, see another oncologist?”

I knew she'd say it sooner or later. It's called the medical spiral, that is, consulting a series of doctors, each of whom gives you diametrically opposing diagnoses and treatments. It's a spiral you can't escape, like one of those M. C. Escher staircases.

Almost every family on earth has dealt with the pointlessness and humiliation of the medical spiral. It's a round robin of treatments that puts money in the pockets of private clinics and leads the patient by the hand into the afterlife, but only after emptying his pockets. I'm not falling for that. I promise.

“This afternoon I'm having another CAT scan. Then we can decide,” I say, in the plural to make it clear to her that the importance of acting as a couple is still fundamental to me. Paola says nothing. I don't know how to make her feel better when I'm feeling so miserable myself. So I say nothing.

I take out the Dino Zoff notebook and I write in red ink:

Get Paola to forgive me.

I'm going to have two chief objectives. If I manage to beat the cancer but Paola won't forgive me, I'm a dead man anyway.

I
've just received the results from the new CAT scan.

I don't have the nerve to open them.

I go out.

I decide to go see my friend Roberto, a bookseller. Well, maybe friend is too strong a word. Acquaintance. A close acquaintance. I haven't been to see him in months, because I've been too busy with the countless troubles you've been hearing about.

Roberto, looking good at age fifty-five, has a little shop selling books and graphic novels in a small street around the corner from Campo de' Fiori. A hole in the wall, a dusty picture window where you can see the latest bestsellers on display, from Giorgio Faletti to Dan Brown, side by side with classics in dated, yellowed versions. Over the years, with his help, I've managed to complete my collection of Diabolik comic books, my favorite. He sells everything at cover price. Even if the books were printed fifty years ago, and the cover price is 150 lire, Roberto converts the price to euros—say, 25 cents—and gives you exact change, down to the last penny. Best of all, in a corner there's a shelf with a few very special books. These are novels that Roberto has written over the past thirty years, between one customer and the next. There are dozens of them. Every one of them spiral-bound, each individually typewritten. Every book is a unique copy. Fixed price: 20 euros. If he sells one, the contents are gone forever. The first time he told me, I was positive he was just kidding me.

“Wait, really? You write novels and give them away without even photocopying them?”

“Why on earth should I copy them?”

“Well, I don't know . . . so you don't lose them for good? To make a little more money on them?”

“Who cares! I was happy while I wrote them. I was elsewhere. The twenty euros is just to cover costs, to pay for paper and typewriter ribbon.”

It struck me as an incredibly poetic folly. Writing for the pleasure of writing, without dreams of glory, hopes of bestsellers or literary prizes.

Today I leaf through one with a blue cover, an adventure story in the style of Jules Verne. Then I look at another one, a bodice ripper set against the background of the First World War, like something the Italian romance novelist Liala might have written. In his career, Roberto has worked in every style, depending on his mood and his whims. Books that no one's every heard of, books that will never become classics. They've only been perused by a select group of his personal customers who've been lucky enough to buy them. I bought a few, over the years, about a dozen, and I always enjoyed them enormously. They're nothing special—let's be clear about it—but they're enjoyable reads, and in any case, the magic of reading (and owning) the only copy of a novel is priceless.

I sit there listening to the clickety-clack of his Olivetti typewriter for several minutes, as enchanted as if I were watching Chopin performing live. Then I preorder his next bestseller. The entire print run sells out in less than a second, a spectacular success.

After the walk I go back home and finally open the results of my test, out of Paola's sight.

 * * * 

Bad news.

Very bad news.

The cancer is metastasizing giddily, slowly consuming me. I look at the little black dots inside me and an inappropriate smile appears on my face. It strikes me that my lungs resemble a connect-the-dots game. Perhaps the disease is affecting my sense of humor, making it even unfunnier than it already is.