The Temptation to Be Happy

by Lorenzo Marone

  Chapter Eleven

  Emma

  Like all old people, I have my little obsessions; nothing particularly mad, excuse me, just a few rules to follow to feel a bit more at my ease. For example, I wipe the toilet seat with lavatory paper before sitting down. No harm if it’s a public toilet – the problem is that I use the same technique in my house. I’m protecting myself against my own germs. It’s a habit that goes back to my youth, when I worked at Partenope Services, an agency on Via dei Tribunali, in the middle of the old town. A lowly job, I admit, but at the time I was a boy full of hope, who believed in the fairy tale that life is a ladder to be approached step by step and which, in the end, will bring you to Paradise. That everything had to be conquered a bit at a time, and with major sacrifices along the way. But the years have taught me that the climb is not so simple, because often the stairs are wet and the rungs yield under your weight.

  In the end, I worked out that the tale of the initial sacrifice for which, one far-off day, I will be repaid, is an idiocy invented by adults to harness the enthusiasm of the very young. There is no one up there to measure your commitment and pay you back for the energies you have expended. In fact, the years when everyone invites you to grit your teeth to build a future for yourself are the best, and shouldn’t be thrown away on thinking of the years to come – which are not, in any case, worth a fraction of the ones you’ve had already.

  Partenope Services had three employees apart from myself, two men in their late fifties and a secretary my age. It isn’t hard to imagine who was to blame for the lavatory seat always being splashed. I put up with it for a while, and then one afternoon the secretary revealed the trick to me, and since then I have never been able to rest my buttocks on cold plastic. After a few months, however, I jacked it in. I took away three things from that experience: an obsession with covering the lavatory seat; the awareness that I wasn’t planning on throwing away the best years of my life to take care of the worst; and Luisa, the secretary who gave me the momentous advice. Of the three, only the first two accompanied me throughout my whole life. I lost Luisa at the first bend.

  In any case, as I said, the obsessions which fill a doddering old man’s day are few in number. Apart from lavatory paper, for example, there is the absolute inability to accept knots. Put like that, it sounds as crazy as anything; in reality, not so much. The truth is that I find them disagreeable; I hate having to untie them. And I’m not talking about the knots of life – I mean more material things. The telephone line that twists itself into a tangle, so that lifting the receiver is impossible. But also the knots in plastic bags, or the wires behind the television, which tangle themselves up all by themselves. Or shoelaces, when they refuse to untie. That’s why, over the years, I’ve organized myself and only wear moccasins and use cordless phones. I tell other people that it’s because of my fingers, which no longer have the strength to perform small and repetitive gestures, but in fact I just get annoyed; I haven’t the patience or the time to waste to untie wires and strings that will only become entangled again anyway.

  And then there’s Naples, the most consistent knot of all. The problem is that I’ve chosen the worst city to be born in. Here you can’t enjoy relations with your neighbour; here everyone wants to know your business. So I’ve developed survival techniques to control my sociopathic urges. If I notice someone who lives in the flats waiting for the lift, I stop and open the postbox and examine it until the invader of my privacy decides to go upstairs without waiting for me. Or else I avoid standing in queues. Neapolitans can’t stand and wait nicely and quietly; they feel obliged to home in on their neighbours, to chat about this and that while they wait their turn. Whether it’s at the post office or the bank, the supermarket or the cinema, queues in Naples are a medium for chattering and getting free information about other people’s lives. Even the barber’s below my house is a natural meeting place for citizens in need of gossip. So when it’s time to have my hair cut I call a taxi and have myself taken to another part of town.

  Shopping, on the other hand, is much more complicated. Beside the entrance to my building there’s a deli, a butcher’s and a greengrocer’s – a firing squad looking you up and down to guess, even if it’s only from your movements, some new indiscretion that might bring a little interest into their empty lives. For years I haven’t crossed the threshold of their shops and, in fact, I even avoid walking in front of them; I cross the road, walk a short distance on the opposite pavement and come back on the other side. All three will have noticed, but I don’t care. The important thing is to escape their trap. I’ve nicknamed them ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’. The ugly one is the greengrocer: old, dirty and scruffy, with just three teeth in his mouth and fingernails that are always black; he only ever speaks in strong local dialect and you can’t make out a word that he says. Many times in the past I found myself staring into the void after his observations about apricots or peaches. The good one is the deli owner: a nice person, always smiling, who distracts himself among the tins, the sliced meats and the pointless chatter of all his customers. The bad one, last of all, is the butcher. In fact, he’s a regular chap; he’s nice too. The problem is his wife. She’s the one who controls the conversation; she’s the one who fires questions at you while you’re waiting for your pork loin. She’s a harbinger of chatter, the local gang leader from which all the others take their lead.

  The issue is that things don’t go much better at the supermarket. Until I actually find myself wandering around the shelves, I can still hope that I’m going to manage; I just have to ignore the pensioner who’s trying to buttonhole me by talking about the rudeness of an assistant or the girl who bumped him with her trolley. But the problem arises at the sausage counter. There’s always a lady there who, while she’s waiting, talks to the employee on duty and, usually, with the lady beside her as well. A gang of three which, depending on the slowness of the shop assistant, can grow out of all proportion until it encompasses several others within earshot. Luckily, after careful study, I have managed to work out which of the assistants is the fastest, and if he isn’t there I carry straight on. Once I’ve reached the tills, I aim for the quickest one, manna for phobics like me, and slip furtively outside. Once I’m close to home, I walk back and forth for a while before finally putting the key in the lock of the front door. Only then can I say that I’m almost safe. At any rate I never turn back; I know already that the good, the bad and the ugly have their eyes fixed on my shoulders, weary from the weight of my obsessions.

  When I close the door to the building, I am welcomed by a miaow. Perched on the stairs is Beelzebub, who looks at me seraphically as he tries to decipher the contents of the bag that I’m carrying. The cat has superior intelligence – every time I go to the supermarket he waits for me in the hall to miaow charmingly and rub sycophantically as soon as he notices the shopping bag.

  There are a few envelopes in the postbox. I leave them there and reach the lift. Thirty years ago I stopped believing that anything good could come out of a postbox. As we know, good news doesn’t come to find you at home. I don’t understand how my former colleagues can still maintain their unshakeable faith in a stroke of luck. They spend their pensions on scratch cards or the lottery in the hope of changing their lives. And yet they should have worked out that if the goddess of fortune didn’t kiss them when they were attractive and in good shape, she certainly isn’t about to now that they have hairs coming out of their noses, no teeth in their mouth and cataracts in their eyes. Amongst other things, after a certain age what are you going to do with a win of millions? You just risk your children falling out over your legacy.

  I open the lift door.

  ‘Come on then, lovely,’ I say, turning to Beelzebub, who stares at me for a moment and then weaves quickly between my legs.

  I press the button and glance admiringly at the puss, a rebellious animal that refuses to moulder away in Signora Vitagliano’s house, but wants to explore, to snatch something from every
body and exploit his neighbour. He’s a villainous cat, is Beelzebub, and I like villains. In this block, in any case, he has found his harem – there are lots of flats that he can slip into, some of them filled with food, others only with memories. The flats aren’t all the same – some of them open and close several times a day, while others remain closed all the time. Some smell of clean laundry and tomato juice, others of cardboard and damp. And the second of these, generally speaking, are more trustworthy – they’ve stayed standing in spite of everything, waiting for someone to come back and take care of them.

  Reaching my floor, I set down the bag of shopping and take my keys from my coat. At that moment, the neighbours’ door opens and Emma appears again, the woman I fought for in vain. We look at one another briefly, then I try to turn the keys in the lock, not an easy manoeuvre if your hands are trembling like a trampoline after someone’s just jumped on it.

  ‘Here, let me help you,’ she says.

  I let her come outside, even though my self-esteem takes a knock as unexpected as it is ill-timed. But I don’t want to have anything to do with this woman – the sooner I get rid of her, the better. She concludes the operation and smiles at me. I think she’s trying to apologize.

  ‘Thanks!’ I say brightly and pick up my bag.

  Beelzebub runs into the flat.

  I wait in the doorway for my neighbour to decide on her next move. She stares at me steadily so that I notice she has a swollen cheekbone. There’s something in her that attracts me, apart from her beauty. Perhaps because she reminds me a bit of Sveva when she was a teenager, even if this one’s teenage years are long ago.

  I don’t know what to do. Emma doesn’t move. Perhaps she wants to come in, perhaps she wants to talk, and yet she doesn’t do either. She stands there as if frozen, staring at me. Then I take charge of the situation. I may be a poor old man who can’t get a key in a lock, but I’m still not comfortable in the role of being an idiot when there’s a woman present.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ I ask.

  She nods.

  ‘Be my guest,’ I say, and accompany the word with a movement of my arm.

  Emma immerses herself gently, quietly in my world, rather as Beelzebub did that first time. She’s trying to work out if it’s friendly territory, or if there’s some danger hidden in the corner of the kitchen.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ I ask.

  She nods again, as if she’s lost her tongue.

  I slip off my coat and walk to the stove. The girl follows me and sits down at the kitchen table, piled up with underpants and socks. If you live alone for too long, you start thinking that your intimacy is inviolable. I apologize and pick up the garments to take them to the bedroom, but a rebellious sock slips from the group and hurls itself to the floor, so that when I come back it’s still there, at the feet of my unexpected guest.

  ‘I wanted to say sorry for my behaviour the other evening,’ she begins.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I answer straight away. ‘Water under the bridge.’

  In fact, I haven’t forgotten the snub, but rancour is a major shortcoming of old people, and I don’t want to be like an old person.

  I open the fridge. I have nothing to offer her but the usual bottle of red wine that keeps me company in the evening. I pick it up by the neck and put it on the table along with two glasses. Then I sit down facing her. I don’t understand what this wonderful girl wants of me, and I’m not used to having guests these days. Apart from Beelzebub, obviously.

  ‘My husband is going to kill me sooner or later,’ Emma says at last, looking me so straight in the eyes that I find it hard to hold her gaze. Her toneless, lifeless voice contrasts with her youthful appearance, which she maintains in spite of everything.

  I fill the glasses without even asking her permission and she doesn’t stop me.

  Beelzebub appears in the kitchen, his stomach already protesting.

  ‘Have you told anyone? Your parents, a friend?’

  ‘No, I’ve got no one here, and anyway I would never admit it. People judge.’

  I sip the red liquid and study the young woman. If I were half the age I am, I would resolve the situation in my own way, but instead I find myself choking back my rage. For some reason she thinks that I don’t judge. Perhaps she doesn’t care about the opinion of an old neighbour who stands to share the information with the building’s cat at most.

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  She lowers her head and starts tapping her fingers on her glass, then she whispers, ‘Three years.’

  I look at her, startled.

  ‘The first time it was because I dropped a painting. He hit me on the neck with a wooden spoon. I can still hear the dull thud in my ears. I went out wearing a scarf for a month.’

  I put my glass in the sink and pick up my cigarettes from the shelf, the first thing that comes to mind when I feel anxious.

  ‘No, please…’ she says.

  I freeze and give her a look half-way between curiosity and annoyance.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  I close my eyes and slump on the arm of the chair. Why can’t I mind my own business? This is too much even for a Methuselah like me.

  ‘How many weeks?’

  ‘Two months.’

  ‘Does he know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want to have an abortion?’

  ‘No.’

  I sit there in silence. Perhaps she’s come to ask me for some financial help, perhaps just a bit of understanding and affection. Perhaps she needs a father. Sorry, my dear, I struggle to play that part even with my own children.

  ‘You should tell him.’

  ‘I’d like to leave, but I don’t know how. He would come looking for me.’

  ‘Why are you telling me?’

  ‘Because you wanted to see. Most people, even if they have their suspicions, give you a compassionate look and turn the other way. People still think these are private matters that need to be resolved in the family.’

  ‘Have you approached any kind of charity?’

  ‘No, I’d be ashamed.’

  With me, though, she isn’t ashamed. And yet I’m not the kind of person that people like to open up to. Sveva, for example, never has done, and even Dante hides his sexual tastes from me. This stranger has confided more to me in ten minutes than my children have in their whole lives.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Out of town. He comes back tomorrow.’

  Silence falls between us again, and the ticking of the clock on the wall occupies the space for a few seconds, before a miaow from Beelzebub reminds me that the poor creature is still waiting to be fed. Now I decide to offer my neighbour the only thing in my possession: a bit of bonhomie.

  ‘OK, the cat is starving and I’m beginning to flag myself. Why don’t we stop here? I propose some spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce.’

  ‘I’d love some,’ she says.

  I get to my feet, pick up the pan, fill it with water and put it on the flame. Then I take the tomatoes from the shopping bag, which is still on the table, and start chopping them.

  She gets up as well and comes and stands beside me. ‘Let me do it. You lay the table.’

  I look at her in confusion before passing her the knife. For five years no woman has used my kitchen; for five years I’ve had supper without laying the table. I start rummaging among the drawers in search of an old tablecloth, while Emma starts talking again, as if she can’t help it. If you lift a weight off your shoulders you have to go the whole way. A bit like when you go for a pee, you can’t stop half-way and get back to your business.

  ‘I underestimated the signs. I didn’t pay attention to the alarm bells. At first he didn’t hit me, but he flew off the handle over nothing. I told myself he was just very stressed, that it would pass, that basically nothing had happened. So I decided to put up with it. I tried to convince myself that with my support he would calm down.’

  I can’t find
the tablecloth. And yet I’m sure there was one. I miss Caterina more than ever.

  ‘One evening I managed to escape and took refuge in a bar. But when it closed he came and brought me home. And he gave me a kicking and broke a rib. Then there were more blows and rows. In the end I was almost convinced that it was my fault, that I was making his life impossible.’

  I’m struggling for breath, and not because I’m bending down under the furniture in the kitchen in search of some phantom tablecloth, but because I can’t go on listening to this terrible story. It’s as if someone were clinging to my back and demanding to be carried. I’ve never done that, even with Sveva. Once I tried to do it with Federico, but as soon as he was on my shoulders he felt a crack along my spine and had to stop. After that I vowed never to play with my grandson again. Sorry, but playing reminds me that I’m old and, as I’ve said, I don’t like to be fooled on the subject.

  ‘You should report him,’ is all I manage to say.

  ‘No, he’d kill me before the trial started. And even if I left, he’d come after me.’

  I give up: there isn’t a single tablecloth. I must have given them to Sveva as a souvenir of her mother.

  ‘So what do you plan to do?’

  She turns and stares at me. In the meantime, she stirs the tomato sauce with the wooden spoon.

  ‘I don’t know. I just want a bit of peace.’

  Peace is very overrated. We think it’s a natural state from which we part company every now and again, when in fact it’s precisely the opposite. In life, peace comes and pays us a visit only very rarely, and often we aren’t even aware of it.

  ‘I haven’t got a tablecloth…’ I admit.

  She looks at me and smiles, then brings her hand to her painful cheekbone and becomes serious again. ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ll eat without it,’ she says.