The Temptation to Be Happy

by Lorenzo Marone

  I press the back of my neck against the headrest and half close my eyes. I start getting a headache at the very thought of engaging in a conversation with my daughter. She, luckily, looks at the road and doesn’t open her mouth, even if the rage pulsing through her is apparent in the sudden movements with which she indicates or changes gear. I have many shortcomings, but I think I’m a peaceful man; I don’t anger easily, or lose my temper at the drop of a hat. With Sveva, it’s as if she’s furious with the whole world. I think it’s because of the discussion about sincerity that I just began with that nice, gay artist. Yes, he’s gay too, like many of the people at the exhibition. At any rate, as I was saying, Sveva isn’t very sincere with herself, so she accumulates repression and rage. And there’s not much to be done about it. For the body, rage is like excrement: a useless residue that needs to be expelled. I’m an excellent laxative for my daughter.

  ‘Why don’t you change your job?’ I ask after a while.

  She turns round, her face more tense than before. ‘Why should I change my job?’

  ‘To be happier.’

  I expect another explosion of rage, but Sveva smiles. At least she still knows how to surprise an old man who no longer knows how to surprise himself.

  ‘Dad, you’ve always found everything easy. You’re unhappy? Change your job, your husband, your children. But things aren’t as easy as you suggest.’

  ‘You’re young. When you get old and work out how little time you have left, you want it to be easy to change things!’

  She doesn’t reply.

  I focus on the road and think about Dante and how wretched I feel after I’ve seen him. For me, Dante is like the mirror in Rossana’s bedroom, ruthlessly reflecting my imperfections.

  ‘And your brother,’ I say after a while. ‘Do you think he’s happy?’

  ‘What are all these questions about happiness?’

  ‘I’d like to see you contented.’

  ‘No, that’s not true. You’re feeling guilty.’

  Yes, she’s right. Sveva is a hard nut. She isn’t afraid of me as her brother is. And she’s a lawyer – unmasking lies is part of her job.

  ‘Anyway, don’t worry. In spite of your defects we made it through,’ she goes on and taps me on the leg.

  ‘You’re always kind.’

  ‘If you don’t want people to tell you things, don’t ask questions. You’ve always been silent and contented. Try and keep it that way…’

  We’re there. It’s time for me to get out.

  ‘And yet I think he’s contented with life,’ she adds at last.

  ‘Why won’t he tell me he’s gay?’

  ‘Not that old thing again? Don’t draw me into affairs that don’t concern me!’

  Then she plants a kiss on my cheek. It’s her way of saying that I’ve got to get out of the car. I’ve already closed the door when I knock on the window with my knuckles. I wait for her to wind down the window and lean into the car.

  ‘Tell me the truth: is that friendly artist who paints Superman in a miniskirt his partner?’

  ‘Bye, Dad,’ she says and winds up the window. Then she leaves.

  Yes, he’s his partner.

  I open the front door and call the lift. If nothing else, Leo Perotti is nice and good-humoured. Those qualities would have been enough to make Caterina happy. I imagined a very different kind of daughter-in-law. But I’m not complaining – at least he’s not bald and hairy.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I Have Failed

  Some lives are linear, and others have twists and turns. Mine certainly falls under the latter category. Only a few times have I really known what I wanted and how to get it, and the rest I’ve always played by ear. Even in my youth I worked out that to fulfil a dream you have to be prepared to sacrifice something, even if it’s only free time, and I’ve never wanted to deprive myself of anything – certainly not free time.

  Many of my school friends ended up doing what they believe in, and what their families wanted too. My parents had no big dreams for me, not least because I don’t think they had many dreams left themselves: they had all been realized by my two big brothers. So that now I regret not having had a professional life worthy of the name, but I mustn’t pick arguments with the ghosts of people who aren’t around any more. Even if it would be easier. On the contrary, my failed career is entirely down to my lack of staying power. My father had been a manual worker all his life, and the day I graduated he turned up in a black jacket a size too big for him, which fell from his thin shoulders like a shawl on an old grandmother. After I got my degree he never asked anything of me, content with the little that I had given him. Then I was satisfied with the accountant’s diploma that I had in my pocket and went off in search of a job, which wasn’t too difficult in the mid 1950s. An uncle of my mother’s had a trading office in Mergellina: it was there that I served my apprenticeship, there that I worked out that accounting wasn’t the job for me, so I said goodbye to my uncle and left.

  Even then my parents didn’t say anything. Just as they raised no objections when I was taken on by a shoemaking business, where at first I had the job of moving the shoes from the warehouse to the shop and vice versa. Then, at a certain point, the owner, who had somehow – I never knew how – found out about my degree, asked me to keep the company’s accounts in order. I resisted for ten months, and then one evening – it was Christmas – I suddenly felt short of breath and turned as red as a chilli pepper. Sitting next to me was the owner’s daughter, who had recently come to help her father and at whom I had set my cap. I don’t know if the panic attack (which was at the time simply called ‘an indisposition’) was down to my return to the world of numbers and sums, or the presence of the young woman who seemed to want to trap me in a life in which everything was preordained. I got up and fled without a word.

  For a short while I also worked as a private investigator. It was funny, part of my job involved tailing unfaithful wives. Except that job didn’t last long either. After spying on women, I fell in love with one of them. Our passion was as short-lived as it was intense, like the ravings of my boss when he fired me. At the end of our relationship I had, in fact, confessed my true identity to my lover.

  In short, for years I wandered from one job to another just to keep from putting down roots and being enslaved to the idea of a mediocre but secure future. Then I met Caterina. She was a secretary at Volpe, the trading company where I had ended up through the intercession of one of my brothers. He was so happy to have helped me that I didn’t have the courage to refuse the offer, even though from the first day I knew that the company wasn’t going to be my future. In fact, I stayed there for the rest of my life – long enough to conquer Caterina, marry her, give her two children and then direct my attention at other women.

  I fell in love straight away, the first time I saw her. She was pretty, shy but resolute, elegant, always available and welcoming. That’s the exact term: Caterina knew how to welcome people, at least at first. And I have always been attracted to people who allowed me to absorb their love without laying claim to anything else.

  During those years I returned to accountancy, I spent my days doing the accounts, looking for the house where we would live, the furniture we would put in it. Then, eventually, I decided to stop. I couldn’t go on, I hated that job, I hated maths, I hated numbers and I hated rotting away behind a desk. I hated my life, which, once more, I hadn’t chosen.

  For a whole lifetime I tried to flee a sedentary job and I failed. For a whole life I kicked out, thinking I might be able to escape a fate that seemed to want to trip me up. I failed. For a whole lifetime I changed tack several times to avoid ending up as an accountant. I failed.

  Anyway, during that time Caterina was very close to me. She understood my state of mind and encouraged me to find the right path. I convinced myself that I loved her a lot, even though I knew already that I no longer felt anything for her, and I threw myself into the search for a job more in harmony w
ith my way of being. Then came the news: Caterina was pregnant. So she had to leave the company, and I had to go back. Accountancy had grabbed me once again with its long tentacles. Obviously it wasn’t Caterina’s fault, except that unconsciously I blamed her and her belly. Because of her pregnancy I was forced to abandon for ever my rebellious impulse – it was my wife’s fault that I would lead a life I didn’t want. That was when I began to hate her. Sveva was still in her womb and I was a bad husband.

  I was an accountant for forty years. Work for me was something secondary, like background music. My real life was elsewhere: my children, my lovers, impossible loves, friends and dreams that always stayed as dreams and turned over the years to regret. And yet now I know that you can’t treat work like something you leave to one side, because work doesn’t stay on one side. I wouldn’t have done many of the stupid things with which I tried to give a meaning to life if I had had an involving job.

  Passion doesn’t make you love your wife, it doesn’t teach you to enjoy parenthood to the full, it doesn’t even help you shake off the dust that has built up behind you since childhood, that’s true, but at least it helps you to close your eyes in the evening and not to flounder in torment. I have spent my life lamenting Caterina, my job, my lack of freedom, the wrong choices I’ve made, the children who robbed me of my energy, passing time, to avoid looking in the face the one true fact: I wasn’t able to change anything.

  Perhaps I’m not as strong as I want to make people think.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Mind

  Every time I knock on Marino’s door I wait for ten minutes for him to come and open up. By now he struggles even to get out of his damned armchair. He slithers like a snail to the door and at last he confronts the double-locked door. Because Marino, among other things, is paranoid about thieves slipping into his flat. To steal what, God alone knows. But the stubborn old git won’t hear a word on the subject, so I wait for the key to make a complete turn in the lock and allow it to open. A few more precious seconds wasted because of someone else’s obsessions. One of these days I should try and tell him that living in constant fear of danger doesn’t make it go away – it just means throwing away another day of your own life. But I think that, alas, it would be a waste of time and breath.

  ‘Marino, you can’t go on locking yourself away as if you lived in a bank vault.’ I guess from the expression on his face that he doesn’t see the joke. But anyway, after a certain age you can’t be fussy – you have to make do with the few people left by your side. I walk ahead of him into the sitting room and sit down on the sofa. Marino joins me, dragging his feet, and sinks into the armchair; the scene makes me think of a frightened snail withdrawing into its shell.

  ‘So?’ he asks. ‘How’s it going? Anything new?’

  I can’t erase from my mind the image of the enormous snail talking to me and asking questions. I’m forced to close my eyes and open them again.

  ‘Lots,’ I say. ‘I’ve met Emma.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Eleonora keeps me up to date.’

  ‘The cat lady?’

  ‘The cat lady.’

  ‘Nosy old bag,’ I reply irritably.

  He smiles, amused. There’s a great gap between Marino’s body and his mind. He’s a bit deaf, it’s true, but he’s still intelligent. Often his body doesn’t go the same way as his brain, so much so that one day he’ll find himself in front of the mirror and won’t recognize himself.

  ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘That we need to do something for the girl and that you’re an old grump and you wouldn’t hear of it.’

  ‘She said that? That I’m an old grump?’

  ‘Verbatim,’ he replies. ‘But what has happened?’

  I can’t tell whether he was happier because Eleonora called me grumpy or old. I opt for the second hypothesis; uncomfortable truths are less frightening if they also apply to other people.

  ‘Emma’s row is in the past. She slept at mine the other night.’

  Marino opens his eyes wide, grips the arms of the armchair and pulls himself to his feet.

  ‘What did you think I meant?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  I don’t know whether to get angry about the obscene thought that’s whirling around in his brain, or be proud because he thinks I’m still capable of seducing a girl in her thirties.

  ‘She knocked on my door and told me everything. She told me that the bastard has been abusing her for three years and she doesn’t have the courage to get away. And she has no one here in the city. Her husband wasn’t coming home, so she asked me if she could stay. She needs attention and a bit of humanity.’

  Marino lets go of the arm of the chair and sinks back among the cushions.

  ‘And what did you say to her?’

  ‘What did I say to her? That if she doesn’t report him, I will. But she begged me not to.’

  ‘So? Aren’t we going to write that threatening letter?’

  I’m glad that Marino feels like an integral part of the investigation; the problem is that I don’t think I’m enjoying myself as much as I was at the start. When other people’s pain gets too close, you start noticing a pang of your own.

  ‘We’ll write it – why not? Even if it doesn’t save her, at least we won’t just be sitting on our hands. Maybe next time the bastard will think twice before hitting her.’

  ‘Then I need to show you something,’ he says with an odd little smile on his face.

  I wait for him to leave his shell and follow him into the next room, where the computer is waiting for us.

  ‘Have you talked to Orazio? Is he coming to help us?’

  ‘Help us? We don’t need any help! Shut up and look, doubting Thomas!’

  Having said that, he walks over to the computer and, with slow but certain movements, he turns it on. Then he sits down at the screen and waits. When the computer is ready, I see him moving the mouse around for a few seconds, and as if by magic a white sheet appears in front of us, ready to be soiled by our precarious threats.

  ‘Hey, how did you manage that?’

  ‘I repeated the operation with my grandson for a whole afternoon,’ he answers proudly.

  ‘Brilliant!’ I say and clap him on his shoulder.

  ‘Hey, Cesare, gently, now!’

  Sometimes I forget that I’m surrounding myself with people who are closer to that side than this. But I’m proud of him: in his own small way he has committed himself and wasted hours on a woman he doesn’t even know. A little gesture that no one will ever see, and which acquires even greater value precisely because of that.

  ‘So,’ he begins, ‘dictate. I’m ready!’

  ‘You’re writing?’ I ask, alarmed.

  ‘Why? Do you want to do it?’

  ‘No. It’s more that I haven’t yet thought about what to say.’

  ‘You’re the brains,’ Marino hurries to reply, shifting all the responsibility for the operation on to my shoulders.

  ‘So…write…’

  The old man already has his hands ready to fall on the keyboard, like a pianist who’s just about to launch into a piece, when the bell rings. We freeze and exchange a worried glance.

  ‘They’ve found us!’ he whispers.

  ‘Are you mad? We haven’t even started yet!’

  ‘So who is it?’ he asks faintly.

  ‘What do I know? Go and open the door – it’s your house!’

  Marino obeys and walks fearfully away. It’s just as well he was a boy during the war – he’d have been a rotten soldier. It’s hard to imagine him in a unit of storm troopers.

  As soon as he opens the door, I hear the unmistakable voice of Signora Vitagliano. A few seconds later, the stench arrives in the little room. It’s as if the cat lady always walked around with a collection of dead cats in her coat pocket. I hear her chatting with Marino down the corridor.

  ‘Eleonora has come to check how things are go
ing,’ Marino tells me when they come into the room.

  Perfect, now we’re really a fine group of desperate people. The old man takes a chair and invites his guest to sit down, then goes back to the computer.

  ‘So…’ I say, trying to pick up the thread. ‘Write: We wan-ted to warn you that we are a-ware of the fact that you are a-bus-ing your wife. If this be-hav-iour con-tin-ues, we will be forced in spite of our-selves to a-lert the rel-e-vant au-thor-it-ies.’

  A quarter of an hour and a couple of pints of sweat later, we place the full stop. I have no more ideas, but I think it could go well.

  ‘Have you finished already?’ Eleonora shrieks.

  ‘Well, yes, I think so,’ I reply uncertainly.

  ‘It’s not right!’ she exclaims vigorously.

  ‘What’s not right about it?’

  ‘It’s too soft – we need something else! Marino, write this: You arsehole, we know you’re hitting your wife. If it happens one more time, we’re coming to break both your legs. You’ve been warned!’

  I look at the cat lady in disbelief.

  Marino laughs behind his moustache as he finishes tapping out the threat.

  ‘Gentlemen, we need serious intimidation. We want the bastard to be shitting himself. Forget the relevant authorities!’

  Marino looks at me.

  I reply with a nod, meaning that he is to talk and say what he thinks.

  ‘I actually think Eleonora might have a point.’

  I turn and study the old woman whose chin now rests on the back of her hands, which are clutching her trusty walking stick. The years have turned her into a witch, but one who knows what she’s doing. I like her. Like Rossana and all the women who don’t submit to life.

  ‘OK, you’re in the majority. Let’s leave the text like that.’

  ‘And now?’ Marino asks. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Print it, then slip the letter in the mailbox and let’s see what happens.’

  Marino is looking at me, perplexed.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘No one’s taught me how to do it…’