100 Days of Happiness

by Fausto Brizzi

  18. A used smart car. Women, who are smarter than men in everything, mysteriously, don’t seem to know how to parallel park.

  * * *

  He stops reading and looks up at me.

  “I’ve never seen such a . . . a strange list of gifts.”

  “One last thing,” I add. “When they’re thirteen or fourteen years old . . . would you talk to them both about sex, and all that?”

  “Me?”

  “Better you than Corrado, no?”

  “That’s for sure. But I don’t know if—”

  “Also, talk Paola into sending them to the U.S. for study abroad, to improve their English.”

  “All right. I’ll try. But you know it’s no easy matter to change her mind about things.”

  “She’ll listen to you. I’ll wire money to your account for what all this will cost you. I’ve already purchased a couple of these gifts because they never go bad, for instance the tool kit, and I’ll put an asterisk by it in the list. You’ll have to get the others when the time comes, like the plant or the bike. If you have to spend more—”

  “If I have to spend more, don’t worry about it,” he says, interrupting me.

  Then I say, “And there is one other thing.”

  He looks up from the list. “You’re determined to keep me really busy after you’re gone, right?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Busy in the best way.”

  “Spill it,” he says.

  “I want you to step into my shoes.”

  He’s not sure he’s heard me right. “Of course I’ll be there for the kids, and Paola will always have me in her life—”

  I cut him short. “Marry her, Umberto. That’s what I’m asking. Be a husband to her. You’re already so close, she respects you and has such deep affection for you.”

  The expression on Umberto’s face is something I’ve never seen before: proud, kind, caring—love, I suppose. Of the best kind. I realize with some astonishment that he is truly in love with her. In deep, as they say. He is relieved I’ve brought it up. Perhaps it’s something that would have happened anyway, their coupling, but it means a lot to him to know I am in accord, that I give him my wholehearted approval. He nods silently. “Grazie, dear friend,” he says finally.

  I’ve run out of words to thank him. I’m about to hug him when he adds with a laugh: “What about Christmas?”

  He brings a smile to my face.

  “Santa Claus can take care of Christmas, right? What, do I have to do everything around here?”

  At last I can hug him. Some great sage said you need only two or three of these in life—such friends. Sometimes I think I could settle for one. If Umberto were that one.

  −46

  Today the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight is playing to qualify for the playoffs. If we win with at least a five-goal advantage against the second-place team, the Flaminia Warriors, then we qualify in tenth place. The last place that gets us in.

  As I mentioned previously, only Giacomo, my taciturn assistant coach, is aware of my health problems. When I told him about it, he said nothing. But he grabbed me and gave me a five-minute hug. It meant a lot to me.

  I’ve decided not to tell the team anything yet. I don’t want anything to distract them. This is the first time, in our brief history, that we’ve had a shot at qualifying to step up to the next series.

  The match is an away game, in a horrible pool on the Via Flaminia, the locker room walls covered with blistered, peeling plaster, and the tiles untended for at least a quarter century. Seated in the bleachers are the parents of our opponents, fifty or so men and women with angry expressions on their faces. We’ve brought six fans with us, including Corrado, who dislikes water polo and is here only because we’re going out for a beer together afterward.

  In the locker room I do my best to motivate the team adequately. In particular, I devote myself to the psychological recovery of our cross-eyed center defender, Martino, who screwed up two penalty shots during the last match. It’s hard to mess up a penalty shot in water polo, it takes real determination and a bit of bad luck to pull it off. All you really have to do is pound the ball hard into the water and your goal is practically guaranteed. The goalie never has the reaction time to block a shot from five yards away. All the same, last Tuesday Martino sent one crashing into the crossbar and another straight into the audience. We finished even, 8 to 8, and if we’d won, we wouldn’t be forced today to run up this necessary and highly unlikely string of goals.

  A whistle starts the game.

  The parents of the opposing team cheer deafeningly, accompanying themselves on whistles and horns. It sounds like the World Cup finals at Maracanã Stadium.

  In the first quarter, we slump almost immediately, trailing by three goals. Eight minutes in which we never make a single goal attempt worth mentioning. We’ll never win at this rate.

  In the second quarter, we rack up 2 points to their 1 with a good offensive push. Now we’re down 2 to 4.

  I attack the team, heaping insults upon them. It’s an old trick that almost always works.

  In the third quarter, the Warriors are a little tired and distracted. We take advantage of that. Martino scores a triple and I can see the joy in the crossed eyes of my favorite striker. We score four goals and allow none in this quarter. So we’re ahead, 6 to 5.

  I ask the guys to make one last effort. The whole season is on the line in these next eight minutes. We need to score a goal every two minutes. In water polo that’s possible.

  As I’ve told you, I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in miracles, and I don’t believe we’re going to make it.

  But I stand corrected. After seven minutes of play, we lead, 4 to 0. At the end of the game, the total score stands in our favor, 10 to 5. A perfect result to qualify. Just thirty seconds from the end comes the dramatic twist. One of the Warriors’ strikers launches a surprise counterattack. One of my players, and I’m not going to name names because that would only make him feel worse, grabs him from behind in an attempt to block him when he’s within legitimate reach of the net. A very serious foul. Our player’s out of the game, and the other team has an unquestioned penalty shot.

  Moving up to the penalty spot is Ivan Gualazzi, a sniper who can score from any position. In the whole league, he’s the third highest goal scorer. An aquatic fury.

  Facing him, the bewildered eyes of Soap-on-a-Rope grow bigger. The game and our qualification for the finals both rest in his slippery hands.

  His father cheers him on from the bleachers, using his real name: “Go, Alessio!”

  Soap-on-a-Rope takes his position on the goal line and waits for the firing squad.

  I turn away. I don’t want to see this. My assistant films it all, as usual. His videos are useful for studying our mistakes and preparing for upcoming games. But if Soap-on-a-Rope fails to block this shot, there won’t be any upcoming games. In fact, it occurs to me only now, this could very well be the end of my less than brilliant career as a coach.

  I turn back. I decide to challenge fate and watch the most important penalty shot of my life.

  Gualazzi has the ball in one hand. He’s left-handed and bad tempered.

  Soap-on-a-Rope kicks his feet, doing his best to stay high in the water in front of his goal.

  Soap-on-a-Rope’s father is standing, silent. He shoots his son a glance.

  The fans of the opposing team are as silent. They know that for us this goal spells defeat.

  The referee is about to whistle.

  I’ve said it before: in water polo it’s almost impossible to miss a penalty shot.

  Gualazzi fires off a textbook shot: he aims straight down into the water, a cross-shot aimed with accuracy worthy of William Tell straight at the corner of the upright and the crossbar. No room for improvement, an impeccable penalty shot.

  But little doe
s the infallible striker suspect that the valiant Alessio, nicknamed Soap-on-a-Rope, has chosen that exact penalty shot to execute the finest blocking of his entire career. Like a hawk, he dives to his left and intercepts the ball just as it’s about to sail into the net. An almost superhuman leap out of the water, as if a mysterious spring had just launched him into the air at precisely the right moment. The ball bounces in the opposite direction and the referee whistles an end to hostilities. We’ve won, 10 to 5. Soap-on-a-Rope has an overjoyed hysterical fit, swimming up and down the pool, shouting incomprehensible phrases. Everyone hugs him, cheering his name. His father in the bleachers makes rude gestures at the opposing fans, coming close to being lynched. Even Corrado, who doesn’t even know the rules, screams: “Soap-on-a-Rope! Soap-on-a-Rope!”

  We’ve qualified.

  I still can’t believe it.

  I go a little crazy and jump into the pool fully dressed. Thereby submerging my cell phone and my wallet. Whatever.

  We qualified.

  My assistant coach films the whole unseemly spectacle from poolside. We celebrate in the water until one of the pool attendants comes to tell us that in just five minutes swim classes will be starting, and they still have to break down the nets.

  We go on singing obscene choruses in the locker room.

  I’m a happy man.

  Happy as I was when I discovered I hadn’t flunked out of sophomore year in high school. It’s the same sensation. I can still remember it clearly. Pure happiness, practically solid to the touch, uncontaminated by any rational thought.

  * * *

  I return home and tell the news to Paola and the kids, who were too busy with the last few weeks of school to attend the game. They fail to grasp the historic significance of our qualification. My wife looks at me as if I were an idiot rejoicing over a goal scored in the courtyard downstairs. All she manages to get out is a lukewarm, murmured: “Eh, bravi.”

  The adrenaline keeps me awake until two in the morning.

  It’s just forty-six days till the day I die, but today I’m immensely happy.

  −45

  I’ve taken the whole team to celebrate our qualifying to a seafood restaurant in Fregene. I love seafood, whether cooked or raw, and my pop star naturopath may hate me for that. Still, one thing I can’t stand is the barbaric custom of having you personally choose the lobster that is to be boiled alive. I refuse to take part in the slaughter and I order a spaghetti with tomatoes and basil. My players, however, take turns clustering around the big lobster tank, sentencing them to death one after the other, forgetful of their shared passion for aquatics.

  * * *

  These days, I feel like a bit of a lobster myself. But with much less dignity. I leave the restaurant where the kids are singing in chorus as if they were in a bar and I head out to the beach. It’s dark. There’s no one around. I can cry in peace.

  −44

  The main thing that a moriturus definitely shouldn’t do is go out with someone who’s chronically depressed. But here I am, in a grim little pizzeria with Giannandrea. By now, I like the guy, and I could hardly have turned down a dinner invitation from him. He wants to tell me the details of his unfortunate love story. I know that his wife ran away with a guy who runs a gas station in Udine, but now I find out that that’s only the official version. What really happened would have thrown anyone into a state of depression.

  “Marta and I worked together in a fine tailoring and alterations shop, a business I inherited from my father. We had two kids about to turn eighteen, steady hours, a normal, if somewhat unremarkable life. We had four employees. We certainly weren’t rich but we weren’t badly off. One day by chance I read some of Marta’s e-mails and happened to discover an old chat session with her cousin in which she mentioned in passing the fact that neither of our kids is actually mine, and that they belong to two different fathers.”

  I don’t know what to say to him. I let him talk.

  “So I ask her about it and she confesses almost immediately, as if it came as a relief. The father of my older daughter is that Judas Iscariot of a younger brother of mine. In other words, it was actually my niece I had brought up as my daughter. The younger boy, on the other hand, is the son of an Austrian assistant tailor who worked with us for a season.”

  “Did you have a DNA test done?”

  “Immediately. They’re not my children.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I tried to murder her,” he replies with seraphic tranquillity.

  “You’re not saying you beat her up?”

  “No no, I took a knife and stabbed her. Just a scratch, to the belly, I almost missed her completely. She didn’t report me to the police.”

  An awkward silence ensues.

  “But it’s been a long time. We shut down the alterations shop and three months ago the divorce became final.”

  “And are you doing better now?”

  “No.”

  “No, it didn’t seem like it.”

  “Every night, I dream of murdering my brother and declaring war on Austria.”

  “Try to stop thinking about it.” It’s banal, but I can’t think of anything else to say.

  Giannandrea says nothing. It’s like someone switched him off. He stares into the middle distance. For the first time, I sense how deeply miserable he is, and at the same time, how dangerous.

  Our dinner ends with sporadic comments on the mediocre margherita pizza we’re eating and the uselessness of mosquitoes in the ecosystem.

  I offer to walk Giannandrea home. “Where do you live?”

  “In a bed-and-breakfast around the corner.”

  What he optimistically calls a bed-and-breakfast is a fleabag behind the train station with the bathroom in the hallway. I understand that the reason he lives there isn’t a matter of money, because he immediately found work in Rome in a fashion house, but because he loves to wallow in his depression or, actually, feed it. I make a resolution to call him more often. He’s in a worse place than I am.

  −43

  When Oscar invites us over to dinner, it’s always a party for the four of us. His first courses are a delight to savor, his main dishes, usually seafood, are prizewinners, and his desserts, obviously, are professional-level tours de force. But since he’s become a widower, unfortunately, it hasn’t been a frequent occurrence and this is the first time he’s had us over since he got “reengaged.” In fact, it’s Miss Marple who opens the door and lets us in. She continues to wear oversized flower-print dresses that would be unsightly even as summertime tablecloths.

  “Oscar’s in the kitchen. He’s putting the salt-crusted sea bass into the oven.”

  She shows us into the dining room and we sit down around the table. When my father-in-law is creating food, he never wants to be bothered; he’s like an actor in his dressing room, only ready to appear before his audience when the curtain goes up. The only sign of him is his voice booming from the kitchen.

  “Do you want some chili peppers on the pasta?”

  A chorus of universal approval roars back. Grandpa has even accustomed the children to strong flavors.

  “Dig into the appetizers while you wait!”

  We dive ravenously into a spectacular tray of mozzarella, surrounded by a magical eggplant caponata, a recipe that Oscar alone possesses. While Paola chats with Martina about how Italian schools have declined over the past decades, I look around. The living room has changed. The furniture has been rearranged into a more rational design. And it’s tidier too. There are even two flowerpots on the windowsill. I wouldn’t need Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple to deduce that Martina is living here now. My investigation is interrupted by the arrival of the primo, the pasta dish: a baked pasta casserole alla pugliese, that is, with meat ragù and prosciutto. I’ve given up the health diet. I don’t have much time left now.

  “Ladies and gentlema
n, behold the specialty of the house!”

  Oscar is wearing a full-length apron that emphasizes his rotundity. Ever since he got a girlfriend, his language has become more refined and courteous. That just makes me laugh, because I know his coarse and concealed Romanness all too well. As he’s serving the pasta he makes an announcement.

  “Family, I wanted to announce to you that a few days ago, Martina moved in with me and gave up her lease on her apartment in Prati.”

  Shouts of glee and a round of applause, partly for the pasta and partly for the good news. Martina is deeply moved at this official coronation, but she still manages to joke about it.

  “I told him that he’s still on probation. You’ve got to keep men on their toes.”

  “That’s the way, Grandma,” says Eva. Her spontaneous use of the term “Grandma” embarrasses everyone for a fleeting instant. Then Miss Marple finds a brilliant solution.

  “Oh, why don’t you just call me Martina. Like two old friends.”

  The suggestion strikes Eva as reasonable.

  “If you say so, Martina. Do you know how to cook?”

  “Yes, but Oscar’s a better cook than me.”

  “I can confirm that, without any false modesty,” Oscar declares. “But she has many other gifts.”

  “Like what?” asks Lorenzo, as always indiscreetly curious.

  “For instance, she’s the world’s best hide-and-seek player.”

  “Really?” Eva’s face lights up.

  “I took gold at the hide-and-seek Olympics,” Martina points out.

  “There’s no such thing as the hide-and-seek Olympics,” Lorenzo retorts.

  “Oh yes, there is,” Oscar brings him up short. “The hide-and-seek Olympics were first held in 1904, and the first gold medal was awarded to an Englishman named James Ascott.”

  I listen to him without interrupting as he invents tall tales just to amuse my little ones, backed up by Miss Marple, who proves to be an excellent accomplice. I love my father-in-law. There are so many things about him that I’ll miss.