The Temptation to Be Happy

by Lorenzo Marone

  One fifty-six.

  I roll up my shirtsleeves and notice that my hands are still trembling. I stop and stare at them and they seem so fragile, with all those liver spots and all that wrinkled skin. Often, when I look at myself in the mirror, I don’t recognize myself. Who knows why we always keep the best possible memory of ourselves? Every time I see my body reflected, I almost feel as if I’m looking at a bedraggled pair of pyjamas hanging in the wind.

  My phone rings: it’s Marino’s number. I should reply, but I don’t. What would I tell him? That I still don’t know anything and I’ve just had a beer?

  After I’d been here for a while, two policemen came. One of them, wearing a sickly sweet aftershave, came over to talk to me.

  ‘It was the husband,’ I heard myself saying in a toneless voice, ‘but for now I’m waiting for Emma. I’ll tell you everything afterwards.’

  He looked at me. Perhaps he wanted to speak, perhaps he could have forced me to give a statement, but instead he nodded and walked away, letting the wake of aftershave dissolve in a few seconds, drowned by the smell of alcohol.

  The door at the end of the corridor is opening.

  We’re there. The moment has come to know the answer.

  I jump to my feet and feel dizzy as my heartbeat quickens. The doctor stares at me; I stare back and walk uncertainly towards him. At my age I still haven’t learned to manage my anxiety. In fact, there are lots of things that I haven’t learned, and which no one has ever explained to me. They teach us equations, that poem by Manzoni, ‘The Fifth of May’, from memory, the names of the seven kings of Rome, but no one tells us how to confront our fears, how to accept our disappointments, where to find the courage to endure grief.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The Third of Three Unattainable Women

  There’s a big difference between the love for a woman you will never be able to have and the love for one you have. The first will shine for all eternity; the second will tend to go out, as the sun will in a few billion years. Both extinctions bring a lot of problems along with them. But we’re talking about women, not stars, even if I think it would be easier to talk about the latter.

  Emma is my wife’s sister, a few years her junior. When I met Caterina, she was about twenty. At first I didn’t notice her; as a boy you try to flirt with older women, to feel important. And at the end of the day that isn’t so much of a mistake, because in fact you have your whole life to flirt with the younger ones.

  So I fell in love with Emma gradually, one step at a time. When my passion for my wife began to diminish, I felt rage and disappointment. Rage towards myself, because I couldn’t guard love; disappointment because the woman who no longer stirred my emotions was in my bed every night. So I decided to give her two children; at least they would lend a meaning to my loveless story of love. I know, it wasn’t a fine gesture, but I’m sure many people know what I’m talking about.

  Anyway, eventually the unexpected happened: Emma separated from her husband and Caterina invited her to move in with us for a while, to help her with her baby. She was twenty-six, I was nearly forty, and yet at that time I felt as if I were a boy again. My wife had already set her jaw to parry the blows of life, while Emma was still running along with her mouth open. Her expression and her body emanated life and lightness, sensations that had been alien to me for some time, and I was enraptured by so much radiance. The desire for youth is contagious; if it’s all around you, you can’t do without it. Some men change family, wardrobe and house just in exchange for a drop of vitality and a few years of thoughtless adolescence. I didn’t change family, house or wife. My love for Emma was platonic, and yet it remains one of the most intense relationships in my life – confirmation that the more unrealizable a desire is, the more ceaselessly it burns.

  Emma and I allowed ourselves to be dragged into a sinful vortex made of stolen glances, brushing hands and hugs that were never too intense. It takes a lot of patience and little courage to spend a life beside a woman that you don’t love, particularly if the one you desire is in the next room. In any case, Emma left after a few months and the house was suddenly empty and silent. I tried to forget her and that time in our lives, but Caterina was always there to talk to me about her. One evening – I remember Caterina was rubbing cream on her hands – she told me her sister had fallen for her son’s skiing instructor, and that she was going to spend the summer with him in Trentino. That night I didn’t sleep a wink; I imagined Emma in the arms of a muscular man with a tanned and wrinkled face, whose breath smelled of grappa. It was a cliché, I admit, but in truth the very fact of going out with the skiing instructor is a prime cliché in itself. And yet she really did go to the mountains and she stayed there for two months. By the time she came back, however, her intense love affair was over: the skiing instructor had worked out that a young mother is more dangerous than a black-ice ski run, and chose to take another route.

  That autumn Emma often came to our place for dinner, so that our children were together. I can’t express the sensation that assailed me every time I turned round and noticed that she was staring at me. She immediately averted her eyes, and my only option was to stare at her profile like an idiot, waiting in vain for her to find the courage to meet my eye again.

  Emma had everything that Caterina had lost along the way: the soft skin, the intoxicating smile and the seductive gaze. How could I resist them? And, in fact, one evening I lost control and went somewhere I had never gone before, under cover of a blanket. We were sitting on the sofa, Emma, Caterina and me, watching a film. The children were already asleep. To cut a long story short – it must have been because of the boring film – eventually I noticed her fingers a few inches away from mine, and I performed that most adolescent of gestures, holding her hand. It took me twenty minutes to seize hold of it, as if I were a snail struggling to drag its shell along. In the end Emma turned around and looked at me in shock. I should have stopped, but instead I exchanged her glance and didn’t withdraw my hand. We stayed there like that, like a pair of lovers giving a start as they discover each other’s body, more concentrated on the slightest movement of a thumb than on the plot of the film.

  Caterina, sitting beside me, didn’t notice a thing. Or perhaps she was kind enough to let me believe that. In any case, it was the most intimate gesture that ever bound me to Emma.

  After that evening she became evasive, she steered clear of me, and if she was obliged to address me she did it without looking me in the eye. She felt it was her fault. It was quite normal – anyone in her place would have been in a state of torment. Anyone but me. At the time I didn’t know that anomalous feeling that would pay me a visit much later. For years I piled up worries and regrets in a corner; obviously sooner or later the construction was going to come tumbling down.

  I waited a few months before resolving the situation. It was Christmas Day, and the whole family was sitting around the table. Emma was on the other side from me. The days of complicit glances seemed to be over, so much so that I started to feel awkward in her presence, uncertain about her real desire for me. Perhaps I had been deceiving myself, or I had misinterpreted some of her attitudes; perhaps my boundless self-esteem had made me take a step too far. And yet, when she got up to go to the kitchen I made an excuse to follow her. Luckily the voices that reached me from the dining room protected me against possible intrusions.

  Emma had her back to me. I put my arms around her hips and said, ‘I know it would be crazy, but you know me – I get bored of routines!’

  It certainly wasn’t what you would call a great declaration of love, and yet she laughed, perhaps because she had got to know me. But after two seconds she turned serious again, looked me in the eye and said, ‘Cesare, you’re mad, you know that? This has to stop!’

  ‘It hasn’t begun…’

  She sighed and lowered her head. I remember that, for a moment, I thought of kissing her, but a moment later she cut me short.

  ‘Why did you have two
children with her if you don’t love her?’

  A million-dollar question. I should have sat down and lit a cigarette and talked for hours about the fact that to live a life that’s really worth living you need to take important decisions every morning. Unfortunately I find making choices absolutely terrifying, and I’ve never done it. That’s why I have been incomplete as a person.

  Obviously I said something quite different: ‘We’re talking about us, not Caterina.’

  At that point she burst out: ‘Caterina is my sister, but apparently that doesn’t matter to you!’

  I put my hand over her mouth to keep her angry tone from reaching the dining room. Emma didn’t pull away, so I found the courage to stroke her neck. It was an act of pure madness, I have to admit. She could have slapped me and run from the room. And I don’t know how I would have made it back to the table. Instead I let my fingers brush her soft skin before half closing my eyes. Then I thought, Well, Cesare, you’ve got to kiss her now. And I swear I would have done if my nephew hadn’t fallen from his tricycle at that very moment, burst into tears and started calling for his mother like a mad thing. Two seconds later, Emma was back in the dining room and the moment had vanished into nothing.

  That evening I found a piece of paper in my jacket pocket. It said: We can’t.

  Even today I find myself thinking about that fateful episode. Perhaps destiny had a hand in it. I should be grateful to my nephew who, by falling, managed to steal a memory that might have made me ashamed. Instead I think he only added one more regret to my already impressive collection.

  Emma had another two serious relationships over the years. For a long time I only met her at family parties. She never even gave me one of those looks that made me shiver. Some years later, her sister persuaded her that we should all spend the summer together. What has stayed with me of that time is the house overlooking the sea, the smell of the embers at night, the incessant song of the crickets in the silence of the night, the creak of the door leading to the garden, the cries of the gulls in the early morning, Emma’s wet hair dripping on her shoulders when she came back from the sea. Ten years had passed since I had started to look at her differently, and her beauty had, if possible, evolved.

  Never did I desire her so much with my whole being as I did that summer. But she didn’t give me a way of flirting with her; whenever she noticed that I was looking at her she made some excuse to leave and ran off to hug her companion, a very nice accountant who admitted a few years later that he had been gay all along. When I found out, I wanted to run to his house and beat him up. So here I am drooling after her for a lifetime while you share her bed every night, and then you have the nerve to come out as gay? Either way, towards the end of the holiday, Emma yielded and returned my complicit glance. Then, one afternoon, when everyone in the house was asleep, I joined her in the sea. I dived in, and with a few strokes I was by her side.

  She seemed to turn pale, but she said nothing. I can still see the desire to kiss me written on her face. Instead, after a while, she said, ‘Cesare, maybe it’s all a big game to you. But you want to know one thing? It isn’t for me. I’ve always been in love with you, since the first time you looked at me. I’ve been avoiding you for ten years, and I have no intention of giving in now!’

  I froze. It’s one thing to hope that a woman who is driving you mad shares the sentiment, quite another to know for certain.

  ‘It isn’t a game to me,’ I said seriously.

  ‘Then what is it?’

  I approached her mouth, as her eyes wandered from my lips to my eyes. I would have kissed her, then confessed once and for all that I loved her, perhaps even revealed that I wanted to leave her sister. Instead I was interrupted by the arrival of Sveva, who would have been about twelve at the time. I heard her voice behind me and my heart leapt into my mouth. She was swimming with some friends, a few yards away, and looking at me with puzzlement, trying to interpret the strange scene she had just witnessed.

  Emma flushed and fell backwards, while I plunged under the water and stayed there for a few seconds, long enough to recover from the shock and invent a plausible excuse.

  ‘Darling,’ I said at last when I re-emerged.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing. Your aunt was telling me something. Nothing important,’ I said with a half-witted smile.

  Emma was quicker. She went over to her niece and whispered in her ear, ‘Your father’s a great gossip – he always wants to know what other people are up to!’

  My daughter looked at us, then decided just to giggle. From then onwards Sveva never mentioned the incident, but I know she knows, and that sooner or later she will throw it in my face. However, that was the last time I found myself an inch away from kissing Emma.

  When Caterina died many years later, Emma hugged me for a long time, as she had never done in the past, and murmured in my ear, ‘Thank me, because now you’d have had a fine regret to live with!’

  I said nothing. I should have recanted right there, by my wife’s deathbed.

  My regret, my dear Emma, is here with me and wakes me every morning. And you know what it whispers to me? You chain yourself to something or someone every time you don’t make a choice.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Unforeseen Hypothesis

  Naples at dawn looks elegant and austere. The empty streets, the parked cars lying silently with salt on their windows, the cries of gulls in the distance, the deafening noise of a shutter coming up, the smell of brioches wafting among the alleys, the clink of coffee cups from the few bars that have already opened. You don’t hear voices, chatter, laughter, and those few human beings wandering around the streets seem to respect the solemnity of the moment. Perhaps the city knows that Emma is dead and tonight this poor old tottering man has just had the umpteenth blow in his life. Naples respects other people’s pain because it knows what it’s talking about.

  I need a coffee. I go into a cafe and cling to the bar. The barista gives me a curious look before serving me. I must look pale as a ghost. If Sveva knew how I spent the night she would give me one of her lectures. But, in fact, this time it isn’t my fault. I just did what anyone would have done in my position: try to save the life of an innocent young woman.

  The police told me they had collared her husband, who was wandering the streets in a confused state. It’s strange, but I can’t feel angry about him. Emma’s death has set my emotions back to zero, so much so that even weeping seems impossible.

  I knew as soon as I saw the doctor coming towards me: his face promised nothing good. And yet I still hoped there might be a small possibility, that Emma was in a coma, but perhaps they could wake her up. If you look death in the face, you understand that all the things people say about dying, like ‘I’d rather die than spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair’, are so much nonsense. When the moment comes to choose, you’re ready to barter anything just to stay alive. But for Emma there was nothing left to barter with. She passed away after fighting for a whole night, taking with her the child that she was guarding.

  The doctor told me she’d had a haemorrhage in her head and another in her abdomen, her pelvis and one arm were fractured, and the bones in her face were shattered. As if she’d been run over by a tractor. How much hatred do you need to commit such carnage? How is it possible for a man like that to live a normal life? And for no one ever to have noticed anything? Still, it isn’t enough to guess – you need to act. But action needs something that not everyone possesses: courage. So I’ve never done much for other people, or indeed for me. In fact, to change a life, whether it’s your own or the life of someone dear to you, you need a generous supply of audacity. That’s the whole problem.

  My hands are shaking more than usual, and even bringing the cup to my lips seems like a huge enterprise. The barista gives me a compassionate look. If it were an ordinary day I would give him a suitable reply. Other people’s pity makes me furious. But today isn’t an ordinary day. And yet, looking
around, you would think it was. Life goes on, heedless of the pieces it leaves along the way.

  I should have reported that bastard and really saved Emma rather than wasting time on letters that were as stupid as they were pointless. But she didn’t want me to get involved. She thought she could get by on her own; she was ashamed of her situation. Who can say what mechanism had installed itself within her? Who can say why abused women feel ashamed about themselves and their partners? There’s something absurdly perverse in the fact that one part of Emma wanted to shield her tormentor from the judgement of others.

  My head is spinning and I need to sleep. But first I decide to have the barista wrap the last two sfogliatelle, the sweet ricotta puffs, from behind the bar. Marino is mad about them. Then I hail a cab and, for once, I say nothing until I get home.

  Emma’s door is sealed with tape and the landing no longer seems familiar to me. Even my flat feels alien. Or perhaps I’m just looking at it in a different way. There isn’t even any sign of Beelzebub, perhaps because he knows there’s a bad feeling around here. He is the perfect embodiment of egoism – not like me, trying to convince myself every day that even if the world around me were collapsing I would keep going straight on along my chosen path. Well, the world really collapsed today and I don’t think I’ve carried straight on without turning around.

  I put the package of pastries on the kitchen table and slump on to the sofa. The cup Emma used is still beside me. I avert my eyes and look at Leo Perotti’s painting. How lovely to be a comic-book character, a stereotype, someone who already knows what he needs to do and how to do it. Superman knows that he will spend his whole life fighting evil. There’s some sense in that – at least he won’t waste his time trying to find his way.

  Perhaps now I should really go to bed. I have no tears to shed, just crazy thoughts like the desire, for example, to go to sleep and wake up again in three months. People confronting an obstacle take a run and jump over it, while I do the clever thing and walk past it. In a word, I don’t know how to confront the moment. I thought I’d seen everything, but I hadn’t.