100 Days of Happiness

by Fausto Brizzi

  −8

  Breakfast by the water. Paola is doing a crossword puzzle, I’m reading reports on an upcoming soccer championship season I’ll never live to see, while Eva and Lorenzo have undertaken the construction of an outsized, overambitious sand castle that is unlikely to be there when the sun comes up tomorrow. We could be taken for any ordinary vacationing family. All we lack is an inflatable dinghy or a rubber mattress in the shape of a crocodile. Today is my birthday. We’ve decided to celebrate it with lunch at the best restaurant in the area. I never expected my fortieth birthday to be like this. I stand up from my beach chair and drop the newspaper.

  “Lorenzo! Eva! Shall we play a game together?”

  I don’t have to ask twice.

  A marble race.

  First we build the track. Eva sits on the ground and Lorenzo and I drag her by the legs to shape the sand, making a track of parabolic curves, tunnels, ditches, and booby traps.

  “Let me explain the rules to you. There are three qualification laps in which we count how many times you have to flick the marble to get around the course. The one with the fewest finger flicks wins the privilege of starting. Then we do five race laps, one flick per turn.”

  I pull out a bag of marbles. I’ve guarded them jealously over the years, the same ones I’ve always had, scratched and worn. I’m a champion at this game, as I am at all games requiring a precise finger flick, but I reel myself in to give the kids a chance to compete. In the end, Lorenzo wins, Eva comes in second, and I’m third. When we go eat in a seaside trattoria, we’re sweaty and excited. I ask for a rematch soon, and my kids agree.

  At the end of the meal a cake is brought to the table with two candles in the shape of numbers on top: a 4 and a 0. I hurry to blow them out and I pretend to be delighted while the rest of the family applauds and sings a chorus of “Happy Birthday to You.”

  When we get back to the room, while Paola’s taking a shower, I rummage through her suitcase in search of a phone charger because mine seems to have disappeared.

  Under a pile of blouses and a pair of high heels in a carry bag, what I find isn’t the phone charger. What I find is a letter. A yellowed piece of paper with a few moisture spots, torn out of a lined notebook. A letter I wrote to Paola. Twelve years ago. Possibly the last letter I wrote before getting sucked into the arid and obscene dictatorship of e-mail.

  I step out onto the balcony and reread it. I can barely remember what I wrote.

  Caro amore mio,

  Well, the day is almost upon us. Tomorrow we’re getting married. Don’t be late—I’m always sorry for those husbands-to-be who have to wait outside the church and have to put up with the unfailing razzing of their so-so-funny friends: “If you ask me, she’s changed her mind!” I’m sure to be emotional, possibly tired, and I won’t be able to tell you everything I’d like to, so I’m going to write it to you instead. To know you and (I hope) marry you is the greatest gift that life has given me. The other day a very likable gentleman called me from the office of Fate and filled me in on a few fragments of our future life together: we’re going to have four children (I know, I told him that was a lot, but Fate does as it pleases); every year we’re going to spend fifteen days in Fregene with your father and mother (I bargained for a week, tops); someday our oldest daughter will tell us that she’s pregnant by the man she loves and we’ll all weep tears of joy; when we’re sixty years old and our children have left home, we’ll sell everything and go live on a sailboat, to finally sail around the world as we’d always said we would but never got around to; then we’ll retire and live in a house on the beach, which everybody talks about, but we’ll actually do it; and we’ll grow old side by side, contemplating the sun as it sets over the sea and our lives together (that’s not original, I copied it, but I can’t remember from whom); then one day we’ll fall asleep arm in arm and never wake up again. I’ve always loved you, I love you, and I’ll love you always.

  Yours, Lucio

  I fold the letter up. I’m crying.

  It’s funny . . . almost all my predictions were wrong. None of what I hoped for is going to come true.

  Only now do I realize that Paola is standing behind me. She’s crying too.

  “Did you remember it?” she asks me with a half smile.

  “Yes, of course . . . ,” I say, even if it isn’t true. Like all men, I forget fundamental things.

  Paola comes over to me. She wraps her arms around me.

  I nuzzle her neck. Her appley scent envelops me. She smells like home.

  An endless embrace. If that’s not forgiveness, it’s close enough.

  * * *

  Two hours later, I phone Umberto. While I was nuzzling Paola, I had an idea that strikes me as hard to implement but absolutely wonderful.

  “Hey, friend. Happy birthday! I texted you.”

  “Thanks, I read it.”

  “How’s everything?”

  “It’s all good, we’re at the beach . . .”

  “How’s the weather? Is it sunny?”

  “What do you care? Shut up for a minute, I have a big favor to ask you . . . I swear it’ll be the last.”

  I entrust him with a practically impossible mission and he has less than a week’s time to accomplish it. But I know my old Athos well. I know he’ll pull it off.

  −7

  The Ligurian Sea at dawn is always in the mood for a chat. I look down on it from the window of our two-star little hotel at Arma di Taggia and I listen to its stories while Paola and the kids, behind me, are still fully immersed in high-quality REM sleep.

  The wind tosses my head of graying spaghetti and whispers in my ear the unbelievable tales of the adventures of an Ottoman corsair who actually lived, a certain Turgut Reis, known in this part of the world as Dragut. I remember his story very well; my grandpa told me all about him when I was Lorenzo’s age. I even remember what Grandpa was wearing that night, where I was sitting, what Grandma was cooking. I remember everything, suddenly. It was a Sunday. My favorite concierges had given me, for no reason or special occasion, a deluxe copy of Treasure Island. I still remember the emerald-green cover, with a drawing of Jim Hawkins hiding from the cruel Long John Silver behind a barrel in the inn. It was a hardcover book, with heavy pages, full of color illustrations, and I read it that afternoon at a single sitting. It’s the only book I’ve brought with me on this journey. Even though I know already that I won’t read it. Ever since that Sunday afternoon so many years ago, stories about pirates, corsairs, and buccaneers have become my preferred form of reading. If I could be reincarnated, I’d come back as a pirate, one even more mendacious and pitiless than the valiant Dragut my grandpa told me about all those years ago.

  I turn around. Paola is still in bed. The kids are camped out on a little trundle bed and didn’t hear the cannon fire.

  It seems like a vacation. And maybe it is.

  I curl up next to my wife. I wrap my arms around her and nuzzle her. I need to fill up on this.

  * * *

  The day begins a few hours later, with a visit to the lookout towers of Civezza, built by the townsfolk half a millennium ago to warn of the arrival of the pirate Dragut, so I take advantage of the fact to start my story. Lorenzo and Eva, the former strangely well behaved, the latter strangely interested in a war story, sit between pairs of battlements of the fortress and listen to me with bated breath. Paola is a short distance away, taking pictures and perhaps listening to me in the background.

  “The corsair Dragut was the most terrifying freebooter that ever infested Italian seas.”

  “What kind of a name is Dragut?” Lorenzo interrupts immediately.

  “An Ottoman name. Which means Turkish. He came to Italy in search of cities and ships to loot.”

  “And did he find them?” asks Eva with her usual precision.

  “Yes. The cities and the islands that he put to the sword and th
e torch still stand: Olbia, Portoferraio, Rapallo, Vieste, as well as the isle of Elba. Dragut was a big fan of the Italian seas, Italian food, and even Italian women. In fact, he had a dozen wives.”

  “And how did he support them?” Eva asks.

  “He worked as a pirate, so he was very rich.”

  I put on a serious, sober voice to try to rivet their attention and keep them from interrupting me again. I decide to insert a series of imaginary variants on the true story of the Ottoman pirate.

  “You should know that my great-grandfather’s great-grandfather’s great-grandfather’s great-grandfather, et cetera, et cetera, a certain Igor “One Eye” Battistini, a fat man who was exceedingly handy with the sword and the saber, was actually Dragut’s lieutenant.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Eva says immediately.

  “But it’s true.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that we have a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather who was a pirate?” asks Lorenzo, piling on.

  “Well, he wasn’t actually a pirate; at first he ran a tavern, but then one day a giant crow plucked out his eye and flapped off toward the sea. Igor took ship on the first passing vessel, in pursuit of the crow. That first ship was Dragut’s. Little by little, he came to be the perfidious Ottoman’s right-hand man. But he never did find the crow, or his eye.”

  “Now you’re just making things up,” says Eva brusquely.

  “Go on,” Lorenzo says, conceding his interest.

  They don’t actually believe it, but still the story has caught their fancy and now they want to know how it ends. My self-respect as a narrator swells.

  Paola smiles from a distance. And I continue enthusiastically.

  “His bitterest enemy (every pirate has an official enemy) was Andrea Doria, a name we normally assign to an ocean liner that sank. Actually, though, Andrea Doria was a valiant admiral who was born just a few miles away from here, in Oneglia. The two rivals battled fiercely for years.”

  “So Andrea Doria was as cruel as Lord Brooke, Sandokan’s sworn enemy?” Lorenzo asks.

  “No, technically Admiral Doria was the good guy and Dragut was the bad guy.”

  “I’m rooting for Dragut,” Lorenzo decrees.

  “So am I,” I explain. “Sometimes we root for the bad guys. One morning in late autumn, after a pursuit that crisscrossed a thousand seas, Dragut is captured by none other than Doria and taken prisoner after a sea battle that lasted ten days.”

  “Anyway, he probably escapes,” my firstborn speculates.

  “Dragut is sent to row as a galley slave in the admiral’s fleet. But a pirate of his stature certainly couldn’t end his brilliant career like that.”

  “So he escapes,” Lorenzo insists.

  “No. A few years later Barbarossa—”

  “Frederick Barbarossa?” asks Paola, who’s finally taken interest.

  “Not Frederick, but a fellow Barbary corsair named Barbarossa—or Redbeard—for the color of his beard. In any case, this pirate Barbarossa pays Andrea Doria a huge ransom for Dragut’s release.”

  Murmurs of disappointment. My minuscule audience would clearly have preferred a daring and ingenious escape.

  “By no means repentant, the unsinkable Dragut goes back to his old maritime pursuits. He attacks numerous Italian towns and ships, and finally works his way to here, in 1564, close to Arma di Taggia, in a mountain hamlet still called Civezza. Which is where we are now. The bold corsair in fact loved to roam widely, and he never limited his raids to galleons or ports. He was a creative practitioner of the art of piracy. But in this case, he hadn’t taken into account the heroic resistance of the people of Civezza.”

  “Do they kill him?” Lorenzo asks with a note of concern in his voice.

  “No. In spite of his repeated looting and sacking, the people of the little town defend themselves. They build this fortress and they oblige the corsair to suffer great losses. At the end of this raid, the Ottoman pirate decides that Italy has become a dangerous place for evildoers and he moves to Malta, which strikes him as less perilous. In 1565, along with the Turkish fleet, he takes part in the siege of Fort St. Elmo.”

  “What kind of name is Elmo? They all have terrible names in this story.”

  “It’s an ancient name. Anyway, Elmo is just the name of the saint they named the fort after. In mid-June, just when Dragut is getting ready to enjoy a well-deserved summer vacation, he’s wounded in the head by a piece of flying rock, shattered by a large iron musket ball fired by an enemy sniper.”

  “And does he die?” This time, the question is asked by both children in unison.

  “Hold on. Our favorite corsair doesn’t retreat, he courageously continues to lead his men to the attack, but he’s bleeding badly from both ears and his mouth. So they carry him back from the front lines and put him to bed in a tent, where he dies two days later.”

  “And is he reborn, like Jesus?” Lorenzo asks hopefully.

  “He is not reborn. His body is taken to Tripoli, and there he is buried with full military honors in a mosque. Legend has it that his archenemy Andrea Doria felt such respect for him that he named his own cat Dragut, after learning of the death of the Ottoman corsair.”

  “What about One Eye?” Eva wonders.

  Maybe, just a little, she believes me. I pile on and season the finale with an array of wholly invented details.

  “One Eye moved to Malaysia, where he met Sandokan and Yanez and formed an alliance with the two of them. He also changed his nom de guerre: in fact, in Salgari’s novels, he’s called Tremal-Naik.”

  “Tremal-Naik had both eyes and was Indian,” Lorenzo points out, catching me red-handed.

  I’ve put my foot in it. I try to find my way out of this narrative maze by explaining that in reality there were two Tremal-Naiks, but I get more and more tangled up in the knots of my second-rate creativity. I’m saved by a zealous watchman who announces that the fortress will be closing soon for the lunchtime break.

  There’s no question about one thing: my grandpa was a much better storyteller than I am.

  * * *

  That afternoon, after a massive snack made up of a bowl heaped high with trofie al pesto, we’re struck and sent to the bottom by a classic seaside enemy, a summer thunderstorm. It catches us while we’re still half a mile from the car, just the right amount of time to drench us to the bone. Once we’re finally in the car, we all giggle helplessly. We can’t seem to stop laughing for a good solid ten minutes. Paola looks over at me, and for the first time on this journey, gives me her real smile.

  And so the ramshackle pensione Gina, where we take shelter that night, seems like a deluxe Four Seasons hotel.

  −6

  I chose to stay off the highway so we could keep the windows open and enjoy the countryside. We’re having an on-the-road morning, to the tunes of one of my favorite Italian pop compilations: singer-songwriters from the seventies. We reach our destination before lunch.

  “Well, here we are.”

  “Where’s the hotel?” asks Paola.

  “There’s no hotel here. We’re camping!”

  The overjoyed cries of the kids drown out Paola’s “No-o-o!” She closes her eyes with resignation. I went on camping trips for years in Boy Scouts and with my other musketeers. I only stopped when I met Paola. If there’s one thing she hates, it’s camping. When we got engaged, she promised me that one day she’d go tent camping with me. That was a wild card that I could have played at any moment. So I decide to play it today.

  Our station wagon rolls triumphantly into the campgrounds.

  I reserved a camping site right on the lakeshore. We park the car and start assembling the supertent that I bought at the Via Sannio street market. I’m a whiz when it comes to pitching tents, a born prodigy. There are people who play tennis, or paint, or play the piano, or cook: well,
what I know how to do is pitch tents, of all and any kind. The one we have is a giant pop-up super Igloo that basically pitches itself when you throw it into the air. I show my young assistants how to dig a trench around the tent to keep it from flooding in case of sudden showers, how to drive the stakes without slamming the mallet down on their thumbs, how to blow up the air mattresses. I’ve secretly brought everything we’re going to need.

  Paola allows herself to be sucked into the fun and assembles a very efficient camp kitchen.

  “Shall we try lighting it with a couple of rocks again?” asks Lorenzo, with the irony that he’s by now mastered far too well.

  “No. I bought a fire starter. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

  We canvas the grounds for branches and twigs, and in just five minutes, we have our campfire crackling merrily, safely corralled in a circle of stones. We bake potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil, we roast sausages, and we make a bean-and-egg stew. Even Roy Rogers and his friends would have been staggered by the sheer mass of food. But we eat greedily, accompanying it with bread. Just a few days from the end, I’ve cast aside all of my naturopath’s advice. I apply one single criterion: I eat everything I feel like eating. We’re almost done when the sky starts to drizzle. For the past few years, the climate in Italy has been turning tropical, but no one dares to make it official: it rains in the summer.

  A minute later, the downpour is raging, accompanied by flashes of lightning and claps of thunder. We barely have time to break down our improvised camp kitchen and take shelter in the Igloo.

  To be safe and dry inside a tent when it’s raining is always magical. The power of the elements comes pounding down to within an inch of you, but you’re protected by a bubble that really does seem like the work of some passing wizard.