100 Days of Happiness (9 page)

“I
was thinking about whether or not to do chemo. Just one round, to see. What do you think?” I ask Paola point-blank, as she's draining the spaghetti.

“What made you change your mind?”

“I don't know. I can't just do nothing.”

“Do you remember Gigi's father?”

Gigi, short for Gianluigi, is a close friend of Paola's, a well-known enologist, whose father died of colon cancer a couple of years ago. Gigi's dad was a renowned television anchorman, though toward the end he was reduced to doing shows for a local home shopping network. An energetic man with a sense of humor, a tornado of enthusiasm. We watched him flicker and dwindle before our eyes, as if the chemo were sucking the power out of his batteries. When he died, he looked nothing like the smiling television personality who won over the housewives of Italy in the seventies.

“That's not the right example,” I argue with determination, “Gigi's dad was over seventy, he was a drinker, a smoker, and his body was already sorely tested by years of bad living. I'm an athlete. Or close to it. Crap, that's completely different, isn't it?”

“Don't swear when the kids are home.”

“They know more curse words than I do. Lorenzo could teach a master class on profanity.”

“Of course, he learned them all from you,” she accuses me.

“Darling, he hears them everywhere, even on television; trying to
avoid curse words is like trying to dodge raindrops during a thunderstorm. Come on, give me a break.”

“You always have an excuse for everything.”

Our arguments have no real objective. Suddenly the topic of discussion focuses on a marginal detail and the fire blazes out of control, unstoppable.

Luckily, Paola has also invented the antidote that blocks the sequence of angry retorts. She suddenly places both hands on her head, as if they were ears, and says: “I'm a cat, I don't speak your language.” It always makes me laugh. A brilliant technique that undercuts all and any bellicose feelings. Too bad that, ever since she found out about what happened with Signora Moroni, she's stopped using it. Our disagreements have regularly turned into outright quarrels and even shouting matches; a couple of times there was even the crash of breaking plates. We're setting a fine example for the kids. Each of us, lately, has had his or her own reasons to be tense, and the outcome has been inevitable.

This time, I'm the one to break off the argument. I go outside and call my oncologist.

“I've made up my mind. I'll start the chemo.”

M
y own dog doesn't like me. At all.

I don't how such a thing could be, but Shepherd has never been able to stand me. When Paola, Lorenzo, and Eva come home, he's just one big ball of wagging tail and wriggling, prancing joy. When I get home from work, he doesn't even look up from the sofa where he's sleeping. And to think that I was the one who saved him from the pound; I'm the one who always walks him for the least appealing bathroom runs, the ones in the early morning and late at night. Even when I fill his dog bowl (with, among other things, super-chic, free-range chicken with vegetables purchased from a trusted local farmer), he ignores me; he never gratifies me with a raised paw, a happy bark, a wet nose. Nothing. For Shepherd I'm a perfect stranger who lives in his home and performs services for him. A butler, no, really a human slave. If you ask me, he also believes that if you go down to city hall, you'll find him registered as the legitimate owner of this apartment. The master of the house, Paola's official husband, and the biological father of the two children. I'm nothing but a miserable servant, tolerated because I'm useful, but held at arm's length.

But ever since I've fallen sick, Shepherd has a changed attitude toward me. Every so often he comes over and cuddles next to me on the couch, rubbing against me like a cat, waking me up in bed with a well placed slap of the tongue. It's as if a doggy sixth sense told him that my “slavery” was about to come to an end. And only then did he realize how fundamental I am to his day-to-day existence. This
morning he looked up at me, his eyes fixed straight at me. He looked me in the eye as if he were trying to communicate.

“I understand that you're about to leave, and after all is said and done, I'm kind of sorry about that. You're not the best slave in the world—you tend to yank on the leash too much when I'm trying to hook up with those cute Fifis in the park; you put too much oil in the rice; you don't wash my blanket often enough; and you never buy me those squeaky rubber balls that I love so much—but still, you're not all that bad. You make me laugh, especially when you pretend that you're the alpha dog in our home—that would actually be me—and when you play with my little ones or try to come on to my woman, Paola. In the five years we've lived together, I've thought more than once about abandoning you by the highway, but then I realized that Lorenzo and Eva would miss you, so I decided they could keep you. Now I can see that you're sick. Do you want me to have you put down, the way a guy I know once did with his horse?”

The telepathic phrase hits me like a fist to the face.

“Do you want me to have you put down?”

“Put down” is a nice euphemism. We seem to feel shy about saying “Mario killed his sick horse,” and prefer something like “He had to have the horse put down.”

I look at Shepherd, who never takes his eyes off me, and I smile at him. He ignores me and walks off, as if to say: “Now don't start overstepping your bounds, human slave!”

His discreet affection and his thoughts have both done me a world of good.

If I were a horse, they'd already have had me put down.

That's what I call seeing the glass half full.

I
went to the airport to give Corrado a ride home. He showed up with a spectacular flight attendant who must have spent the nights in Japan with him. He returns from every trip with a different victim. But he's not happy. I can see it in his eyes.

We stop for seafood at the restaurant Incannucciata, in the town of Fiumicino. It's our little tradition—we have lunch there at least once a year. Just the two of us, without Umberto. I tell him about my impending appointment for the round of chemotherapy; he tells me about the moment when the seductive stewardess I saw earlier at the airport revealed the fact that she was pregnant.

“Who's the father?”

“What's that supposed to mean? I'm the father. We were having dinner at the hotel from
Lost in Translation
. Do you remember it?”

“Sure, the world's most boring movie, but a great ending. Go on.”

“The best sushi I've ever eaten in my life. And forget about the tempura: it melts in your mouth.”

“Enough gratuitous description, get to the point.”

“We were almost done eating when she says to me, without any particular emphasis: ‘I'm pregnant.'”

“What did you do?”

“I choked on the tempura and took a good ten years off my life expectancy. Then I asked her the same question you asked me: ‘Who's the father?' And she said: ‘What's that supposed to mean? You're the father!' At that point, my heart goes into fibrillation and I
ask for the check, which was expensive enough to give me another heart attack.”

“So, you're about to become a father?”

“Let me finish. So we talk for two hours about where to have the baby, where we're going to live, the idea of her asking to be transferred to ground duty so she won't have to travel. I say practically nothing the whole time, I'm practically in a coma from the news.”

“But do you like this stewardess, yes or no?”

“You've seen her yourself. She's Miss Mondo Alitalia, the dream of every Alitalia pilot, and she's smart as a whip. The only problem is she's out of her mind.”

“So you're kindred spirits.”

“I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. The next morning, at breakfast, she tells me it was all just a joke and she wanted to see how I'd react to the possibility of becoming a father.”

“Funny girl.”

“Sort of. Luckily I didn't call my mother and tell her she was going to be a grandmother. When I told her it was a false alarm, she would have thrown herself off the balcony. Let's order a double
fritto misto
. The sky's the limit today.”

“And you want to know the funny thing?” he goes on. “I was stunned by the news, true, but not sorry about it. Just a year ago I would have hightailed it to the airport and caught the first flight for Australia.”

“That strikes me as very good news. It means that Aramis is growing up.”

He smiles.

“Don't let word get out,” he whispers, “or you'll ruin my reputation. You want to know something I've never told you before? I don't envy you at all, except for Lorenzo and Eva. When I see you with them, I always think that you were smarter than me.”

I smile back.

“Soon you'll find a Paola for you too.”

One of my fondest wishes is to see my friends settle down. No, settle down is an old-fashioned, inaccurate term. The words I want are
at peace
. That's right, I've never seen them at peace. Umberto is always the victim of his introverted and sometimes excessively polite personality, while Corrado is always hurrying off in pursuit of his next amorous conquest. So different and yet so similar in their disquiet. I realize that right here, right now, our friendship has just been given an upgrade. Corrado let the mask slip a little. He let me in. We're no longer just friends. We're brothers.

I
hate needles. Not all needles, I like pine needles just fine, but I hate needles when someone sticks them into me. Vaccinations, that's what Grandma used to call them. I have never enjoyed having blood drawn, or getting shots, or even the minor intramuscular injections with antibiotics.

The chemotherapy prescribed for me by my odious oncologist is administered through an IV. Ten minutes, no more, sitting in a small room, hooked up to a bottle and a tube. A cocktail of chemical substances that bursts into my veins and lays waste to all forms of life, wanted and unwanted. I imagine what's happening to me like that old movie by Joe Dante,
Innerspace,
in which a miniaturized undersea vehicle is injected into Martin Short by mistake. The vehicle navigating through my veins makes no noise and doesn't communicate with the outside world. I lay my head back on the armchair in the little room and close my eyes.

Ten minutes with a needle in your vein is an endless amount of time. Thoughts tend to wander. I disconnect from the real world. And I wind up in a dream world that I know very well.

 * * * 

“Who did it?”

Stromboli's voice thundered throughout the wagon, echoing off the dozens of puppets that dangled, silent and motionless, from hooks along both walls.

Stromboli strode forward, bumping against them as he went, knocking Harlequin against the wall. The big man planted himself arrogantly at the center of his puppet kingdom.

“Come on, who was it?” he said, rolling his glinting fiery eyes around the wagon.

Harlequin slowly swung to a halt and held his breath. All the other puppets exchanged quizzical glances, doing their best not to attract attention.

Stromboli angrily waved one hand in the air, clutching an enormous leg of roast mutton.

“Who took a bite of this? If the guilty party willingly confesses . . . I won't do nothing to 'im . . .”

“Sure, sure . . . ,” Pulcinella thought silently, “as if we didn't know you better than that . . .”

“Ain't you figured out that your thoughts are my thoughts, after all I made you . . . you're just sticks of wood fitted together . . . you ain't got thoughts of your own . . . you get it, Pulcinella?”

With those words he leaned down toward Harlequin's face until his beard brushed it, while with his left hand he wiped away an oily, greasy stain from the corner of the painted mouth.

“I hadn't even tasted that leg of mutton yet!” he said, staring the puppet right in its brown painted eyes.

“I was hungry . . . ,” murmured the brightly colored marionette, in a faint voice with a thick Venetian accent.

The other puppets exchanged stares of astonishment: Harlequin was speaking!

“I knew it . . . ,” said Stromboli, taking the marionette down and laying it on a steamer trunk. . . . “I knew it was you . . . what'd you think, that I didn't notice that when I was out you liked to go for a stroll?”

Harlequin hung motionless, folded up and tangled in his strings.

“And now what are you doing? Cat got your tongue? My friends . . .
maybe the time for puppets is over and just maybe . . . the time for puppeteers is over too. You, Harlequin, you're just the first . . . I've already figured it out . . . one by one you're all going to leave me . . .
ah-ah-chooo
 . . . damned cold . . . ever since I first sneezed with that Pinocchio I haven't stopped sneezing . . . am I getting old? What do you think, oh Harlequin my friend?”

Harlequin shook his head no.

“When I saw that bite taken out of the leg of mutton I already understood it was all over . . . maybe I should put the blame on that Blue Fairy Pinocchio talked to me about . . . the fact remains that you're all about to turn into little boys and girls . . . my beloved puppets. You've all been infected.”

Pulcinella thought he'd glimpsed a tiny tear quivering on Stromboli's cheek, but still mistrustful, decided he must have been mistaken.

“You're right, too, Pulcinella . . . ,” the big man murmured as he ran his hand over his face, “you never thought you'd see me cry too . . . but I'm not doing it on purpose . . . they just pour out on their own . . .
atchoo . . .”

Harlequin handed him a piece of colorful cloth to dry his tears. Stromboli took it, and as he did, he brushed the puppet's hand: it was warm.

He raised his eyes and saw before him, amidst the strings and fabrics, a handsome young boy with a mischievous face.

“I knew it . . . ,” he said, wiping away the tears, “there's been a sort of epidemic of humanity . . . another few days of this and my Grand Puppet Theater will no longer exist . . . and I'll be gone with it . . . no one has ever seen a puppeteer without puppets . . . that's like a wagon without wheels . . . it won't run.”

Stromboli stood up and carefully began to gather his puppets.

“People paid for their tickets again tonight and we can't disappoint them . . . as long as we can put on a show, they won't notice . . .”

Stromboli, holding all his puppets in his arms, headed toward the door. He was about to walk down the steps of the wagon when he turned back around and looked at Harlequin, who was sitting on the trunk.

“I left you a plate of mutton in the other room . . . take as much as you want, I'll just roast some more later . . . don't wander away from the wagon . . . I'll be back in an hour or so . . . if you get sleepy you can lie down over there . . . but remember to cover up with a blanket, because you're not made out of wood anymore, and you can catch your death.”

With these words, and without waiting for an answer, the big man stepped out of the wagon, making the steps creak, and vanished into the fog that shrouded the hovels all around.

Harlequin sat there a little longer.

He didn't know whether to eat a little mutton or go to sleep.

It wasn't a particularly difficult decision.

He just wasn't used to making decisions at all.

 * * * 

“Signor Battistini?

For a moment I'm afraid it's Stromboli.

“Signor Battistini? Wake up!”

It's not Stromboli. But she resembles him closely. It's the talkative nurse who greeted me at the front entrance. She's already slipped the needle out of my vein. I had a dream. A child's dream.

I haven't had a childhood dream in years.

“Just stay seated for a few minutes . . . ,” she tells me. “You might experience some dizziness.”

I nod my head and obey.

I go on fantasizing with my eyes wide open.

Pinocchio
is my favorite story. It might have been the first book I ever read, outranked in my heart only by
Treasure Island
with its
pirates. Who can say why it would come into my mind now, of all times. And who knows if Collodi would approve my dream sequel to his story.

I've always loved Collodi, the king of one-hit wonders, writers famous for just one book. Maybe they've written dozens, but one is so much more famous and successful than the others that it wipes out the rest of his production.

Dante?
The Divine Comedy
.

Swift?
Gulliver's Travels
.

Defoe?
Robinson Crusoe
.

Manzoni?
I promessi sposi
.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry?
The Little Prince
.

Collodi? Obviously
Pinocchio
.

The last in the list has the most memorable beginning of any book ever written. A masterpiece of synthesis, fun, and metaliterature.

Once upon a time there was . . .

“A king!” my little readers will say at once.

No, children, you're wrong. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood.

“Midway along the journey of our life” or “That branch of the Lake of Como, which turns toward the south”—these are amateurish first sentences in comparison, the work of Sunday poets.

Collodi beats Dante and Manzoni one-nothing. Move the pen to the center of the field.

 * * * 

An unexpected consequence of chemo: my mind tends to channel surf.

I think about useless nonsense, I dream up lost chapters of
Pinocchio,
I team up great geniuses of literature as if they were formations in fantasy soccer. Not bad, for the first day of treatment.

I leave the clinic and start walking. I don't feel better, I don't feel worse. I just wish I could wake up again and discover that this, too, is just a dream.