100 Days of Happiness

by Fausto Brizzi

  I don’t push. I know that she means it—it’s not an excuse.

  “If you prefer, we can skip it.”

  “No, don’t worry. This is your journey. I’ll wait for you here. I’m happy to read a book on the beach. I haven’t done that in forever.”

  “This is your journey” isn’t a particularly well-chosen phrase. How I wish that it could soon be changed into “This is our journey.” I fall asleep and dream that I’m on Captain Ahab’s boat, helping him to capture the white whale.

  −18

  The thing my grandpa Michele loved best was fishing. Every August he’d lock up the concierge’s booth and we’d go to the beach. Many mornings he’d wake me up before dawn and take me out onto the waters off the exotic Lido di Ostia in his wooden motorboat to fish for tattlers, which are romantic fish that choose to come into shore with the rising and setting sun. Sometimes we’d even catch a small tuna or a palamita, which Grandma Alfonsina would cook for dinner. Grandpa was a veritable ace when it came to lure fishing and I didn’t do too bad myself.

  I rent all the equipment a budding fisherman might need, two rods complete with all kinds of bait, a bottle of SPF 50, and a dinghy with a ten-horsepower outboard motor. Paola comes to wave us off from the pier. I think that having a day to herself will do her good. What with school, her children, and a sick, cheating husband, it’s been an intense period for her too.

  “Mamma, don’t have too big a lunch because we’re going to have a huge platter of grilled fish for dinner,” Lorenzo boldly declares.

  I back him up.

  “We’re going to bring back so much fish we’ll be able to sell some to the hotel restaurant.”

  I’m pretty confident—I’ve never come back empty-handed from a day of fishing.

  The Ionian Sea is flat as a mirror. We head out about a mile and cast our lines. The children are excited. They listen to what I have to say and pepper me with questions.

  “What should we do if we catch a shark?”

  “With a lure this size there’s no chance of that. It’s too small. Sharks are practically blind. They wouldn’t see it.”

  “What if we catch a killer whale?”

  “They’re very rare in the Mediterranean. I wouldn’t worry about it. This stretch of water is full of tuna.”

  “If we catch a dolphin, I’m throwing it back,” Eva concludes.

  * * *

  Two hours later, the only bites we’ve gotten are from a stunned red mullet passing through. We don’t give up, we double the bait, and we move to a new area. We pass by a buoy marking a scuba diver and we stay at a safe distance. When I see him surface, over near his support vessel, I shout, “Are there a lot of fish around here?”

  “Mamma mia, yes, the water is teeming with fish. There are enormous schools of tuna down under. It’s spectacular.”

  I’m reassured. We won’t be coming home empty-handed tonight—it’s just a matter of being patient, which is any fisherman’s chief virtue.

  My little helpers redouble their efforts. We’re a well-oiled team. The hours fly by and the sun drops toward the horizon.

  So the results of our fishing trip?

  We had a lot of fun, and we caught the red mullet mentioned above, three sad little octopuses, and a plastic bottle. We’ve also lost one rod, which slipped through Lorenzo’s fingers. In other words, a complete disaster.

  “And now how are we going to tell Mamma?” Lorenzo asks.

  “Don’t worry. There’s an incredible place where we’re certain to find some fish. It’s a magical place.”

  “Where is it?” Eva asks. “What’s it called?”

  “It’s in town, and it’s called Fresh Fish Sold Here.”

  “But that’s cheating!” blurts my judgmental daughter.

  “Exactly,” I reply without hesitation.

  Lorenzo is thrilled at the idea of tricking Mamma, but Eva has her doubts: she still has a well-developed sense of justice. Perhaps too well developed.

  We buy an assortment of fish and two giant cuttlefish. An overflowing basket of seafood that we present triumphantly to Paola, at the very tail end of the afternoon. We proudly show her the results of our day’s fishing, and she stares in astonishment.

  “That’s just incredible. Look at all these fish!”

  “Papà is a great fisherman!” Lorenzo exclaims.

  “And the water off the coast is just teeming with fish,” Eva adds.

  “Did Papà catch all of them?” Paola asks.

  “No, the biggest fish is the one I caught and that cuttlefish is the one Lorenzo caught.” Eva lies with an exceptional precision and nonchalance. A couple of certified liars. I’m proud of them both. Especially of my daughter, who’s learned how to fish and how to tell lies. Not a bad result, all things considered.

  We carry our loot into the hotel kitchen, and the children, overjoyed and triumphant, linger behind to play on the hotel beach. I’m left alone with Paola, and she trips me up with a single phrase.

  “I didn’t know that pike lived in salt water.”

  “What pike?”

  “That one big fish you caught is a pike—you can tell from the duckbill snout.”

  “Ah, that’s a pike?”

  “Yes. And pike are freshwater fish.”

  “It must have gotten lost; . . . sometimes pike get disoriented. Everyone knows that,” I say, climbing onto a very slippery slope.

  “Eh, of course they do . . .”

  Deep in Paola’s gaze I glimpse a smile. Or at least the shadow of a smile.

  “How much did you pay for them?”

  I give up.

  “Not much. The shop was about to close. It was my idea. The kids had nothing to do with it.”

  Now she’s definitely smiling at me, as if I were an urchin caught with my hand in the cookie jar.

  “That wasn’t a pike. Where on earth would they find a pike around here?”

  She’d laid a trap for me and I fell straight into it. Without waiting for me to answer, she catches up with the kids on the beach, slips out of her beach wrap, and waves them into the water for one last sunset swim.

  Today I don’t have the energy to keep up with them. The day out fishing really wore me out. I stretch out on a lounge chair and watch my little aquatic family as they chase each other around in the shallows, splashing and squealing. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else on earth.

  −17

  Nighttime. 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 i
t. 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.

  −16

  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”

  DIRE STRAITS

  “Through the Barricades”

  SPANDAU BALLET

  “Meraviglioso”

  DOMENICO MODUGNO

  “Yesterday”

  THE BEATLES

  “Rain and Tears”

  APHRODITE’S CHILD

  “Un giorno credi”

  EDOARDO BENNATO

  “Can’t Smile Without You”

  BARRY MANILOW

  “In My Room”

  BEACH BOYS

  “Father and Son”

  CAT STEVENS

  “Good-bye My Lover”

  JAMES BLUNT

  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.

  −15