He takes after Caterina; Sveva takes after me. It wouldn’t take a genius to work out which of us would have been the better bet.
‘Why didn’t Caterina tell me at least?’ I ask.
He seems calm and contented. ‘Because I asked her not to.’
Simple. Too simple, even. If it’s a choice between a son and a husband, you protect the son. Always. If I go on living much longer, God knows what truths I’m going to find out about Caterina.
I close the door and sit down to pee. The bathroom is full of strange creams and lotions, and the air smells slightly of vanilla. Perhaps it’s the candles; there are candles of all sizes resting on every free space. How I envy people who take care of the places they live in. Rossana is right, this place is like a five-star hotel; I feel more as if I’m in a lobby than a loo. Luckily one of the wiser decisions I’ve made over the past few years is sitting down to pee, otherwise poor Perotti would have had a heart attack at the sight of his lover’s beautiful toilet splashed with pee.
When I get back, I find Sveva sitting alone at the table with her arms crossed over her chest, staring with great concentration at her glass of wine. I think she’s waiting for me. Dante and his companion are in the kitchen with Rossana. Incredible, but some kind of energetic alchemy seems to have set in between them. I think it’s time to leave before my daughter starts spilling her unhappiness over me.
Instead she says, ‘Sorry about before.’
‘Forget it,’ I say curtly.
Sveva looks at me for a few moments and says, ‘I would never have expected to hear you say something like that, and in front of strangers too. You surprised me!’
‘You’re overestimating me.’
‘Could be,’ she says with a half-smile.
There are kitchen noises in the background.
I sit down beside her. With my elbow on the back of the chair next to me, I say, ‘To come back to what we were saying, it seems to me that the choice of your Enrico is a bit weird too. That’s why I haven’t probed any further, because I worked out that you too are at that point in your life when you need a bit of extravagance. And perhaps you’re just scared of taking a good hard look at the way you’ve changed.’
She lowers her head and says nothing.
Then I go on: ‘I know fear is a nuisance – that insistent, irritating voice that keeps coming back the more you chase it away. And yet you know what I’ve worked out? That, in fact, that little voice is just doing its job. It’s trying to save you from yourself. It’s trying to warn you that if you don’t move, pretty soon things inside you are going to start to rot.’
Sveva replies without looking up. ‘The truth is that I feel confused. I don’t know what decision to make…’
‘You know the greatest extravagance of all?’
She shakes her head.
‘Living by your instincts.’
My daughter gives me a puzzled look.
‘Stop imposing pointless mental restrictions. If you follow your instincts you’ll never make a mistake. Birds migrate every year without wondering why. So, we should do exactly the same: constantly move and not ask too many questions. I’ve asked myself why many times over the years and ended up stuck. Now I’ve got to recover. I want to migrate a little every day.’
‘With Rossana?’
‘Sure, why not?’
‘So what should I do with Enrico? Should I migrate as well?’
‘I should tell you to think very hard, but I don’t feel like it.’
She sighs and nods her head, then comments at last: ‘At least you’re amusing me with your crazy theories.’
‘Not bad for an old man…’
‘Are you together?’ she asks.
‘She’s just a friend, nothing more.’
‘A shame. It might have been better.’
‘In what sense?’
‘Well, I’d be happier if I knew you had someone to look after you.’
My daughter worries about my health, about keeping me from drinking and smoking so that she can nag me for as long as possible.
‘I can take care of myself, you know.’
‘Yes, but you get worse if you’re on your own too much.’
‘You think I’m getting worse?’
‘Well, if I’d asked myself that question before this evening, I’d have said yes.’
I snort with amusement. In the end, it isn’t too difficult to hit it off with other people. You just have to get the words out, even if they don’t want to come spilling out of their own accord.
At the door Leo shakes my hand as warmly as he did when I arrived. This time I return the compliment – after all, he’s managed to hit it off with me, something not everyone can do, and then he loves my son, and maybe gives him the attention that I didn’t give him. Dante hugs me. I let him do it, even though his sweet perfume makes me feel like throwing up. It’s actually the gesture that’s hard for me to deal with, but I prefer to think it’s the perfume.
‘I should go now,’ I say.
I’m old, and old people don’t feel strong emotions. They’re already losing control of their bowels; if they started bawling as well it would be like spending your time with a baby.
Sveva comes down with us. ‘Do you want a lift?’
‘No, thanks. We’ll find a taxi in the street, and it means we can have a bit of a stroll as well,’ I tell her.
She gives Rossana a warm goodbye and a business card, then she hugs me, as her brother did a few minutes ago. So it’s true that at a certain point in your life you make peace with your parents. I think it’s what happens when brooding about your rage is more trouble than putting it behind you.
‘Don’t worry about us. We’re happier than you think,’ she whispers in my ear before pulling away.
I look at her carefully. She’s always been elegant, like her mother, but this evening I find her beautiful as well, more sinuous. Perhaps even a bit less harsh.
‘Kiss Federico from me,’ is all I say.
On the way back, Rossana seems cheerful.
‘That was a really lovely evening,’ she says all of a sudden.
The crunch of dry leaves accompanies our conversation.
‘Yes,’ I say, wedging Perotti’s painting under my arm.
In the end I couldn’t say no. I’ll hang it in the sitting room, so at least there’ll be someone with a smile to keep me company during my sleepless nights.
‘Your children are really lovely. And they’re very fond of you.’
‘Oh, sometimes I convince myself to the contrary, particularly where Sveva is concerned.’
‘What are you on about? She’s obviously in love with you, like all daughters.’
I pull an uncertain face, and she bursts out laughing and plants a big kiss on my lips. By way of reply, I lower my head and pretend to look at my watch so as not to let her see my red cheeks.
We walk along Via dei Mille in silence and dive into an ice-cream parlour that’s still open, where, in defiance of Perotti’s macrobiotic strudel, we buy two cones of apple-flavour ice cream. Then Rossana stops outside a darkened shop window, and I take advantage of this to look around and allow myself to be swept away by memories; the street corners are full of them, you just have to have a good eye and a vivid memory. There ahead of me, for example, there was once a bookshop with bright white walls and honey-coloured shelves. I used to stop every day and admire that blond wood which was held together as if by magic, without screws or nails, and made the shop look like a big sailing boat. Nowadays there are no shops as beautiful as that, at least not here in the city. At the time I was seeing a girl from the Umberto high school, just around the corner from here. In fact, ‘seeing’ doesn’t really capture it – I was properly in love with her. I always fell in love with the girls I went out with. Falling in love and I got on just fine, but as for the next feeling, the one that people call actual love, we never quite clicked. But that’s another story, and I was talking about the bookshop, where I took refuge on
e day when it was bucketing down and my girl couldn’t bring herself to come out of school. I remained bewitched by that magical place, and by books in general, and began to think that one day I might have a bookshop all of my own as well. Instead something happened that altered my life, one of those little invisible crossroads that make you change direction. To cut a long story short, among my many youthful amorous adventures there was the baker’s girl downstairs from where we lived. For her I swiftly abandoned the schoolgirl from Chiaia and the old bookshop. With the baker’s girl, however, things didn’t work out: she worked impossible hours and brought me hot panini every time we met. I imagined the future and saw myself enormously fat and bored, so I left her too and dedicated myself to my studies. Shortly after that came the coveted accountant’s degree which made me walk along the path that has led me here. If only I hadn’t met the baker’s girl at that point, I might have married the schoolgirl and gone on visiting the old bookshop. Perhaps I would have been given a job at the shop and risen through the ranks there rather than at Partenope Services.
However, one day, when I already had Sveva, I was in that part of town and I noticed that my beloved bookshop wasn’t there any more, and that it had been replaced by a women’s shoe shop, yet another one. It was at that precise moment that I realized what I had lost, how life had deceived me with the curvy figure of a baker’s girl. I don’t know if I would have been any good as a bookseller, but I do know that sometimes in life you become aware of a little bell ringing beside your ear. It can happen when you’re with a woman, or in a specific place, or when you’re busy with something you like doing. There, if I had to give a piece of advice to my grandson Federico, just one piece of advice, it would be this. When you hear that little bell, look up, and look straight ahead – you have reached one of those invisible crossroads, and I assure you that it takes only a moment to make a terrible mistake.
Once I arrive home I pick up a hammer and two nails and go straight into the sitting room. It’s late, but who cares? Just this once I can wake the neighbourhood.
I put Superman in the middle of the sitting room wall, just above the sofa, and look at it, enchanted.
‘Yes, I like you!’ I exclaim.
Just as I like Leo Perotti. I like Dante and Sveva, Rossana, Emma, Marino and the cat lady. Perhaps this evening the old fellow who’s groping my daughter wouldn’t seem so bad. The truth is that you can’t always be grumpy and hateful, or people start believing you.
I go into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine. When I close the fridge door I see Beelzebub looking at me drowsily. I offer him my last slice of cheese, then pick him up by the scruff of the neck and carry him into the bedroom. Before undressing, I stroke his head and his purring makes me smile. Yes, it’s as I thought: I really am getting too old.
Chapter Twenty-one
In Vino Veritas
The doorbell rings. I curse. It will be Signora Vitagliano wanting further information about Emma’s life. It’s the right time to tell her to get lost.
I press my iris to the spyhole and study the landing: the form of Marino occupies the whole of the visible space. I am startled – I don’t know how many years it is since he’s left his house. I open the door. He looks at me and smiles; I do the same. Then we stand there like that, incapable of hugging.
‘You managed to extricate yourself from that filthy armchair!’ I say euphorically.
‘Yes,’ he admits. ‘There was something I wanted to tell you. I was about to pick up the phone, then I thought: what the hell, go up there and tell him in person!’
‘I’m proud of you. Come on, let me offer you a glass of wine.’
‘Thanks, Cesare, but you know I can’t drink wine.’
I invite him to sit down and fill up a glass for him as if he hadn’t said a word.
‘Marino, how much longer do you think you have to live? I want to be frank: you haven’t got long. People die when they’re eighty. That’s just how it is – there’s nothing you can do. In fact, you’ve been lucky to get this far! So, if you have a glass of watery wine right now, who’s going to tell you off?’
Marino gives me a sidelong glance and laughs.
‘You are a card, Cesare,’ he says and takes a long sip. Then he sets the glass down and looks around. ‘Your kitchen isn’t as I remembered it.’
‘Meaning?’
‘It was cleaner, tidier, more welcoming.’
‘Of course it was! The last time you came Caterina was still here. It’s the lack of her that makes you notice the absence of all those qualities.’
Marino laughs again.
I fill his glass again and invite him to raise a toast.
He looks at me as if I were mad.
‘No, Cesare. You’re trying to kill me today…’ he says hesitantly.
‘Yes, I’d like to see you popping your clogs after enjoying a good glass of wine, or between the thighs of a beautiful woman!’
‘How have I managed to remain friends with you for so long?’ he asks and drinks down his second glass.
‘In fact, you’ve been very patient. And never like my children, who have been forced to spend time with me since the day they came into the world!’
‘What a fine burden you placed on them,’ he observes, and bursts out laughing, spilling wine on the floor and on his worn flannel trousers.
‘You look like one of those old men who wet themselves!’ I say, laughing too.
‘Cesare, I am one of those old men who wet themselves!’ Marino replies, pouring himself another drop of wine.
‘Yes, you’re right!’
I’m laughing and shaking so much that I can’t bring the glass to my lips. It might be the alcohol, it might be the joy of having an old friend back in my kitchen, but I can’t help it, and I find myself helpless with laughter, like I often was in school as a little boy. Perhaps it’s the fact that we’re not supposed to laugh like that that makes us lose all restraint. Uncontrollable laughter is like weeping – we use tears to free up all that accumulated energy.
There was a time when Marino and I used to laugh a lot, before the old soul decided to withdraw from life. One day about forty years ago, a scowling, arrogant person came to the Volpe office. That person was me, taken on for a favour that Signor Volpe owed my brother. Caterina was there, as I’ve said. But not just her. There was another person too, an ordinary little chap with a pleasant smile.
‘This is Marino, my brother-in-law. He’ll explain how things work around here,’ Signor Volpe said before disappearing and leaving me with this clot, staring at me beatifically.
Marino was forty at the most at that time, and yet he already struck me as old – so much so that I found myself staring at him and wondering how old he was.
Then he held out his hand and introduced himself.
I exchanged his soft grip and said, ‘I’m Cesare, and I hate this job, so don’t expect too much, because in a few months I’m going to be out of here!’
He stood there open-mouthed and a moment later he burst out laughing. I couldn’t have known it at the time, but that laughter would bind us together for the rest of our lives. Marino soon became my most intimate confidant, the reliable friend who picked me up in the morning and walked me home again in the evening, who covered for me at work if I was busy with one of my extramarital adventures. He was like a child in the body of an old man; he was one of those people who have only half grown, their body heading straight for late middle age while their character was still anchored in the first years of life. Like a child, Marino was full of enthusiasm, generosity and life, but like a child he was also insecure, fragile and fearful. I was like a strict father to him, while he for me was the perfect friend, the kind that everyone should be lucky enough to meet sooner or later.
For a while our relationship was confined to working hours, and then one day, aware that after Dante was born we were looking for a new place to live, he came out with this: ‘The flat above mine is for sale. It’s a reasonable deal to
o. Why don’t you and Caterina come and take a look?’
We found ourselves living above him, and met his wife Paola and his children Sebastiano and Antonia. Our lives were intermingled for years: dinners, parties, graduations, Christmases, card games, sometimes at ours, sometimes at theirs. Our shared life involved constantly going up and down the stairs, and my children fell asleep next to his with the television on. Every now and again we had a visit from the cat lady (although she wasn’t yet a cat lady at the time), then married to a very sad man who loved television more than he loved her. Even though she had never had children she was full of enthusiasm, she always wore brightly coloured clothes, she smiled at life and often told us about the pupils she taught. She was a very resolute character, and a little out of the ordinary, a kind of overgrown flower girl. And yet her company made the evenings jollier.
And that was how the years passed, until the christening of Marino’s grandson, Orazio, Antonia’s firstborn. That evening I remember my friend was wearing a grey suit that made him look even more exhausted than usual.
During the ceremony he took me by the arm and whispered, ‘Sebastiano is moving to London next month. They’ve made him an offer he can’t refuse.’
I looked at him and smiled, but he didn’t smile back.
‘There are moments that mark your life for ever,’ he went on, ‘and one of those is when your children leave.’
‘Well, it means you’ll be able to start courting your wife again!’ I said, joking.
But Marino wasn’t in a joking mood. ‘Paola is ill. She has Alzheimer’s,’ he said and gripped my arm.
I looked at him open-mouthed, but he went on talking as if nothing had happened. ‘I’m happy for Sebastiano and also for Antonia. The young people need to think of their own lives.’
‘Fine,’ I said in a whisper. I would have liked to ask him something more, but he didn’t let me.
‘And yet you get used to them in the course of your life, don’t you?’ he said, as Antonia called him over for a photograph.
You don’t get used to it – you try not to change things. That’s different. That was what I would have liked to say to him, but he was already far away.
The Temptation to Be Happy Page 15