100 Days of Happiness

by Fausto Brizzi

  The noise is deafening but all four of us lie there listening to it as if it were a concert of symphonic music. When the downpour ends, we emerge to evaluate the aftermath: the tent remains untouched, thanks to the drainage gutters that I dug with the kids, and even the camp kitchen, covered by a waterproof tarp, has emerged intact.

  “That was an adventure!” Eva exclaims.

  I turn and smile at her. I ask all three of them to pose in front of the tent, and I set up my Polaroid for a self-timed shot. Then I hurry over to stand beside them and force a smile onto my face.

  Click!

  Just then, although I didn’t know it, we were taking our last group picture.

  −5

  My favorite attraction at Gardaland is called Space Vertigo. It’s a tower that stands 130 feet high, and your car plummets down from the top at supersonic velocity, coming to a halt just before it hits the ground. Each side seats just four people. Us.

  We stand in line surrounded by a large group of young Austrians, vacationing on the lake. I get into an argument with the ticket taker because Eva isn’t tall enough, and so, for safety considerations, she’s not allowed to board the ride. We entrust her to Parsley, the dragon who’s the park’s mascot—a dragon containing a young man with a strong Calabrian accent.

  Lorenzo, Paola, and I wind up sharing a seat with a high school‒age girl from Bergamo who’s so terrified that her reasons for boarding this ride are hard to imagine. She sobs and protests the whole way up while the three of us laugh euphorically. Up, up, up, up . . . Instead of looking down, I look up. The sky, and heaven, seem to be coming closer. Who knows why the paradise of the afterlife has always been identified with the sky. In fact, in Italian it’s the same word: cielo. I’d actually prefer to spend my eternity by the beach.

  Suddenly the ride plunges downward, my heart pops into my throat, and I feel an electric charge go surging up my spine. A four-second drop that seems to last a month. When we reach the ground we’re all laughing like lunatics, caught up in the typical fun-park frenzy. The girl beside us is still crying. We wave to Parsley, who’s playing with Eva, and we immediately get back into line for another ride. We have to do it again. As we ride up, this time accompanied by a taciturn young Japanese guy, I cough the whole way. Maybe they should have put a sign at the entrance saying: prohibited to children under forty-eight inches, people with heart problems, and morituri. My stomach hurts. I feel a pressure on my chest as if I’d been working out on a weights machine and the bar had dropped and pinned me. A sense of nausea comes over me and my heart beats like an out-of-control metronome. The descent is a pure liberation. I get out, I walk away from Paola and the kids, saying that something I ate must have disagreed with me. I signal to my wife not to worry as I lie down in a little park area, on my back on the grass. And I breathe slowly, trying to slow my heartbeat like you do in yoga.

  Only an idiot would take a trip to Gardaland four days before the end. But I love amusement parks. In fact, if I had to choose my own personal idea of paradise, I wouldn’t ask for the sky, and actually I wouldn’t want the beach either. I’d want Gardaland, I’d want the Land of Toys.

  I go back to Paola fifteen minutes later. The three of them are sitting in a restaurant chomping on cheeseburgers and French fries.

  “How are you feeling?” my wife asks me, with concern in her voice.

  “Better. Practically okay.” I smile at the kids.

  I always have to remember to smile. I imagine they find it reassuring.

  Eva offers me a chewed-over piece of sandwich. I thank her and say no. I’m not hungry. But I’m terribly thirsty and I gulp down a bottle of water. I know it’s a bad sign when hunger vanishes from the appointments calendar of your ordinary day.

  I get up from the table and I persuade everyone to go on the pirate ship ride. I even start singing the old chantey from Treasure Island: “Fifteen men, fifteen men on a dead man’s chest!”

  We haven’t even reached the pirate ship when I realize that I’m having a hard time breathing, that my head is spinning, that I’m about to fall down on the ground. I sit on a bench and tell Paola to go ahead with the kids.

  “I’ve already seen the pirate ship a thousand times . . .”

  I sit there, surrounded by a thousand childish voices, the smell of cotton candy, the sounds of happy ditties and distant screams of joyous fear. I half close my eyes. No one is paying the slightest attention to me. An old man, forty years old, sprawled on a bench in the Land of Toys, without so much as a pigeon to keep him company.

  −4

  We pull into Imbersago, on the banks of the river Adda, while the sun is already straight overhead. We’re just four roasted chestnuts steaming in a cast-iron pot that happens to be shaped like a car. Even the air-conditioning is powerless to do much good.

  We get out and stroll down the pier.

  We pay for our tickets and board the ferryboat that links Imbersago to Villa d’Adda. It’s the only working hand-operated ferryboat in the world. There’s a steel cable connecting both banks, and the boat is hooked to the cable. It only takes one man to push it from one shore to the other. Brilliant.

  In this case, there’s no doubt about the name of the inventor: this intriguing means of transportation is called the Traghetto di Leonardo.. Even though it’s been modernized many times over the years, it still maintains an old-fashioned appearance that the kids love. I jump at the chance to tell them the story of this particular invention.

  “Leonardo was in love with a princess named Isabella. She lived in a castle not far from the building where the young inventor lived. The two young people had met only once, but it had been love at first sight. Isabella’s father, however, had already promised her hand in marriage to the son of another king he was friends with. Poor Leonardo had therefore never had a chance to so much as see her again. But he cleverly devised a way of staying in touch with her. He stealthily strung a thin dark cord from the roof of his apartment building to the little window of the princess’s bedroom. Because the cord was thin and dark, it was perfectly invisible from below. He used that cord to send the princess love letters and drawings in the still of the night, in hopes of winning her heart. One unlucky day, however, her father the king discovered the cord and went to call on his daughter’s courageous wooer. He threatened Leonardo with death, and the young inventor was forced to desist—this love story didn’t end happily. But a few years later, he remembered how he had used the cord and applied the same idea to the engineering of a ferryboat.”

  “But why didn’t they build a bridge?” demands the ever-skeptical Eva.

  “Maybe it cost too much, or else maybe the two shores weren’t solid enough for the foundations of the bridgeheads.”

  “You mean, you don’t know,” concludes my little one.

  “But you haven’t heard the whole story. Many years later, Leonardo, in honor of his beloved Isabella, painted his most famous painting: the Mona Isa.”

  This time, the objection comes from Lorenzo: “It’s not called the Mona Isa; it’s called the Mona Lisa.”

  “But only because of a typo in the first art history book to mention that painting.”

  They’re dubious about that explanation but they pretend to believe me. I hurry along to the next point, to keep from giving them time to reflect.

  “Do you know who invented printing?”

  “Gutenberg!” cries Lorenzo like a quiz contestant hitting his buzzer.

  “That’s right, but who was the first person to invent a printing press equipped with an automatic paper feed just like a modern-day printer? Leonardo da Vinci.”

  “I’m not sure I like this Leonardo very much,” Eva decrees. “He invents too many things.”

  We go for lunch in a little osteria that’s actually called Da Leonardo. The menu features seafood and in particular a heavenly but murderous fritto di paranza—a fresh-catch fry. I
wish this journey could go on forever. It’s slowly turned into exactly the kind of real vacation I had hoped for.

  −3

  It’s nightfall. The banks of Lake Garda are lit up by a regular succession of torches. There’s a great hustle and bustle in the campground’s big meadow, which runs down to the water’s edge. Dozens of people, young and old, families with little kids, are all getting settled and taking small white objects out of their backpacks. Every year, at the beginning of July, the festival of the local patron saint is held, culminating in a special ceremony. Our little campground has made sure it takes part.

  Eva and Lorenzo are at my side, curiously observing the scene. Paola is slightly up ahead, taking pictures of us. She’s rediscovered her old love of photography during this journey.

  “What are those?” Eva asks.

  “Chinese lanterns. When you light the wick, the lantern flies up into the sky and sails away.”

  “Like a hot-air balloon!” says Lorenzo, getting the point instantly.

  “That’s right, it’s the same principle—heat rises and the lantern with it.”

  “I want one,” says my firstborn, immediately followed by his little sister.

  I open my backpack and pull out four.

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  I hand them out. Paola comes over and grabs hers. I pull a lighter out of my pocket.

  In the meanwhile, the evening’s program proceeds, and a speaker invites all those present to get ready for the “launch.” A very evocative piece of music starts playing.

  Eva has a legitimate question: “But what are they for, Papà?”

  “You make a wish, and the lanterns grant it. As soon as the lanterns start their journey into the sky, we all make our deepest wishes . . . you have to ask for what you want most, and then the lanterns will carry your message up to the stars.”

  I turn to look at Paola.

  “Are you ready, amore mio?”

  I see that Paola’s eyes are glistening.

  “Ready.”

  The music swells. The announcer shouts “Go!”

  I light the lanterns, one after another.

  Lorenzo’s takes off . . .

  “Remember to make a wish!”

  Then Eva’s . . .

  “But don’t tell anyone what it is, or it won’t come true!”

  Then Paola’s . . .

  “Good work, Mamma!”

  As she releases her wish-laden lantern, Paola stares at me, intently. I don’t know if I’ll be able to grant your wish, amore mio, if it’s what I think it is.

  Last of all is mine.

  My wish is simple. I wish for Eva, Lorenzo, and Paola to be happy. Long, untroubled lives. I have nothing more than that to ask of the stars.

  My lantern joins the other three, and together they merge with the hundred tiny flames released by those around us. Our torch-lit parade continues climbing into the sky. A milky way climbing skyward like a swarm of fireflies.

  We stand there, heads tilted back, watching as they shrink into the distance. All four of us hug. Maybe Paola and I haven’t become a couple again, but at least we’re a family. My family.

  −2

  Lake Garda goes whizzing past to the right of our car. It’s almost noon. We overslept. As I drive, I do my best to conceal the stabbing pains to my abdomen and the increasingly insistent hacking cough.

  “The air-conditioning must have been bad for me,” I explain to the children with a convincing tone.

  Paola shoots me a conspiratorial glance, while Eva spouts out a lengthy dissertation on why we shouldn’t use air-conditioning, which is bad for the environment.

  I smile at my petulant daughter.

  “Do you know who invented air-conditioning?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head.

  “An engineer from New York, a certain Willis Haviland Carrier, in 1902. Unlike so many other unfortunate inventors, however, the clever Willis started a company that’s still around today, and he became a millionaire in the process. But who actually came up with the first design for an air conditioner?”

  “Leonardo,” Lorenzo replies.

  That was an easy one.

  The inexhaustible Tuscan came up with a machine to compress air and, after chilling, forcing it through a conduit to ventilate the rooms of a building. In other words, modern air-conditioning.

  At this point, let me unveil my own personal theory about Leonardo. When you study his work, one thing becomes clear: there was only one thing he really knew how to do better than anyone else: draw. All the rest is an accumulation of hypotheses, inventions, plans for machines and buildings, only the simplest projects actually built, most of them only sketched and dreamed because they were too challenging to complete with the technology of the time. So who was Leonardo, really? A brilliant inventor or something more?

  Here’s the answer: Leonardo was a first-class illustrator from the present day who somehow went back in time for some mysterious reason. He knew everything about our era: helicopters, airplanes, mechanical and electronic devices of every sort, but all he knew how to do was sketch them. He couldn’t actually make them. Like any of us, for that matter. Who would be capable of building out of whole cloth even such a simple piece of equipment as a bicycle with the resources of the fifteenth century? Not me. Nor would most of you reading, for that matter. But I could definitely draw one, with a certain degree of accuracy. In short, good old Leonardo is the greatest faker of all times. A simple, logical solution to the mystery. And as Lieutenant Columbo tells us, the simplest and most logical solution is always the right one.

  * * *

  I can’t seem to focus on the road.

  Why didn’t we take this journey last year?

  Or two years ago?

  Every year of our lives as a family?

  Why didn’t we spend more time together?

  Why did I ever miss even a few days of Lorenzo’s and Eva’s growing up?

  These are questions that don’t have answers.

  “We’re almost there . . . ,” I tell everyone.

  “Where?” asks Paola.

  Then she looks around, and her sleep-numbed synapses suddenly recognize the surrounding countryside. She’s figured out where I’m taking her. Actually, where I’m taking her back to.

  “San Rocco?”

  “Flogged and Martyred,” I confirm.

  The little Gothic church where we were married more than ten years ago. We haven’t been back once since then. It’s a fundamental stage of our journey.

  Paola says nothing. I can’t tell if she’s happy about this surprise visit.

  By the time we get there, it’s almost noon. We follow a road curving around a number of hills to reach our destination, and at last San Rocco appears before us in all its minuscule majesty. It looks like a small model of Paris’s Notre-Dame. A bonsai version of its better- known French counterpart. But nobody’s ever heard of San Rocco. It’s just a small church outside of town, surrounded by greenery, the most classic kind of cathedral in the desert.

  I park the car in the unpaved area in front of the entrance. All around us an unreal silence reigns, broken only by the sound of a few tireless cicadas. We get out of the car. I remember every detail of that day. Where I stood while I was nervously waiting for Paola to get there, which cars were parked out here, the face, sharp as a pencil tip, of Don Walter, the Calabrian priest who performed our wedding ceremony.

  “This church, kids, is where Papà and Mamma got married,” I say, but my two young heirs don’t seem especially interested in the tour.

  “It’s small,” is Lorenzo’s laconic comment.

  “It’s a copy of that other one in Paris,” is Eva’s astute observation.

  “Would you care to see the inside?” I ask. I don’t get much of a response.

 
“Maybe Don Walter’s still here . . . ,” I add.

  We head for the portal.

  We’re about to go in when Eva calls her mother.

  “Mamma, my shoelace is untied, can you help me?”

  Good old Eva, she’s following my plan to the letter.

  Paola falls behind for a few seconds to tie her daughter’s shoelace. I stride on and go in, followed by Lorenzo. I push aside the heavy red curtain and step inside.

  The little church is exactly the way I remember it, stark but charming. I have only a few seconds left to take up my position. I hurry while Lorenzo takes a seat on a bench on the left.

  A few seconds later Paola and Eva come in. My wife freezes in place at the door, while the church organ plays a thunderous rendition of the wedding march.

  The church is packed with people, all our friends. They clap and beam happily at the bride, all of them dressed to the nines. Umberto really has done an outstanding job. I never doubted he would. No one is missing—they’re all here: Corrado standing next to Umberto himself, my two best men (and of course, exactly where they were twelve years ago); Paola’s colleagues from work, including the teacher who asks too many questions; a few older couples and family friends; the unfailingly boring Gigi; Massimiliano from the Chitchat shop and the no longer depressed Giannandrea; Roberto, my fantastic bookseller; Oscar and Martina; and a number of our neighbors from home. To my surprise, even D’Artagnan is there, smiling at me. The only one absent is my assistant coach, Giacomo, and he hardly needs a doctor’s note because this afternoon the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight is playing in the semifinals.

  Standing by the entrance is Oscar, smiling at his daughter, squeezed into his navy blue three-piece suit, still reeking of mothballs.

  Eva was outstanding in the way she intentionally unlaced her shoe following my explanation that we were going to play a funny trick on Mamma. Lorenzo, on the other hand, had been warned in advance, to keep him from exclaiming in astonishment when he walked in and somehow ruining the surprise. Umberto had brought everyone out there with a couple of buses from town. The logistics were seamlessly executed, worthy of a military campaign. Everything went perfectly. I’m at the altar, standing across from the wiry thin Don Walter, who looks exactly the way I remember him.