100 Days of Happiness (23 page)

M
y stomach hurts, I have a hard time breathing, and there's a rock concert going on in my head. I feel like Ringo Starr is pounding with his drumsticks inside my head, to the tune of
“
Ticket to Ride.”

I wake up before anyone else. In the twin bed next to mine, Umberto snores like a warthog with adenoids.

In the bed-and-breakfast's tiny dining room I'm greeted by a tray piled high with a pyramid of
Krapfen
and doughnuts. I taste one, but it doesn't come even remotely close to Oscar's. I leave it on my plate after the first bite. Only now do I realize that my little morning habit is one of the most treasured moments of my life.

 * * * 

The hyperactive Andrea has tracked down the riding stables outside of the city where we went on our first trip. A sensation of déjà vu accompanies me for the rest of the morning. And a word rattles around in my head, shoving Ringo aside:
remake
.

Actually, remakes make no sense. You might be able to go back to the same city, but to go back and do the same things is a rare and peculiar occurrence.
Demented
may be the word I'm looking for.

 * * * 

The riding stables are just as I remembered them. Wood, iron, and that distinctive scent you can imagine perfectly well. Leading our heroic little squadron is none other than Thomas's son, Thomas Jr.,
every bit as much of a Neanderthal as his father, but much less likable. He gives us thousands of tips on what to do and not to do while on horseback in the interests of our personal safety. We spot a trail and set off at a gallop to the horror of my sorely tested spinal cord, strained by the unnatural posture. After a hundred feet or so, my horse, the disquietingly named Attila, decides to throw me with a sudden halt. I go head over heels and fly straight off. My fall lasts no more than a couple of seconds, but it's enough time for me to realize what an idiotic death I'm about to die. Waiting for me as a landing pad is—not a murderously rocky crag or a picket fence—but a stinging nettle bush. It saves my life but ruins the rest of my afternoon.

The result of our outing: skin rashes all over my body, sunstroke for Andrea, lumbago for Umberto, and a sprained ankle for Corrado, whose foot got caught in the stirrups as he was dismounting. We're four slightly rusty musketeers.

 * * * 

All males have a shared trait: when they're twenty years old, they admire and court twenty-year-old women; and when they're forty years old, they do the same thing. It's a scientific law. But I believe that there's a nostalgic factor at work deep down. We continue to love the same movies, books, and places we loved when we were kids. The same thing applies to twenty-year-old women. Have I talked you into it?

We immediately discover that the infamous Bier und Liebe has been replaced by an aggressive little pub, the Tot oder Lebendig, which literally means “dead or alive.” Inside are hundreds of German youths between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, juggling beers, sweat, and pills of all kinds. I swear that I've never once felt so out of place. The music is too loud, preventing any form of verbal interaction, the lighting is too dim, keeping anyone with shortsightedness from reading the menu, and the air is short on oxygen, which
prevents the brain from attaining adequate mental lucidity. In spite of this we do our best to enjoy ourselves. I'm immediately branded a “ball and chain” because I have no interest in getting drunk or trying to pick up a German woman young enough to be my daughter. I decide to drink a couple of fruit cocktails and allow myself to be hypnotized by the music videos that stream across a transparent wall.

Corrado takes care of livening up the evening's entertainment by getting into a fight with the boyfriend of the young woman he's chosen as the object of his desire. The guy in question is a muscleless ninety-eight-pound. weakling, but he also has lots of friends who are already several drinks in. We escape before a brawl breaks out in the beer hall and find ourselves wandering aimlessly around Munich like four classic Italian
vitelloni
. We talk until four in the morning.

I've forgotten to call home. So far away from them, I hear their voices all the time—Paola's strong, decisive one; Lorenzo's thoughtful one, with its pauses, and its “ums”; Eva's sweet girly one turning prosecutorial as she tries to convince, making me wonder what she'll sound like when the girliness goes. Hearing their voices in my head, I miss Paola and my kids so much it's killing me.

It's a sleepless night. A dreamless night.

A
t breakfast, Umberto describes the next leg of the trip: Vaduz, capital of Liechtenstein. Twenty years ago we won a hundred dollars or so at the casino in that picturesque little city, and we felt like wizards of the roulette wheel. I suddenly interrupt the reminiscing with a thought that's been keeping me company all night long: “What am I doing here?”

My question seems to tear into my friends like a burst of machine-gun fire.

“How do you mean?” asks Corrado.

I don't know the words to use to avoid offending them.

“I mean that I want to go home. Forgive me, but this isn't the trip I want to take. Or what I mean is, it's not the trip that I need to take.”

D'Artagnan smiles at me: he's the only one who's understood.

“Your wife will never agree to it, after the mess you made,” he warns.

“I'll try anyway.”

“I don't understand what you two are talking about,” Umberto says.

“I want to take a trip with my kids. And with Paola. I want to spend all the days that are left to me with them. Not with you.”

I try to soften the blow.

“Don't get me wrong; you're my best friends in the world—we're the four musketeers. I know everything there is to know about you, your best and worst qualities, and you know the same about me. This
time left to me now? That's my kids'. Right now what I need is them. And they may not know it, but what they need is me.”

Silence.

“I don't have even a minute to waste.”

I look them in the eyes one by one.

“Forgive me. If you want, you're welcome to finish the tour.”

Corrado is the first to speak. He's always been the fastest decision maker of the group.

“There's a flight for Rome at 10:30 a.m. The pilot's a friend; he'll get all three of us on board.”

Umberto checks the time: “We have ten minutes to pack our bags, guys. Let's get moving.”

Andy, who really has no desire to go back to Denmark and his failure of a life, is the most obviously disappointed.

“Will I see you again?” he asks.

“Of course we'll see each other again,” I reply, knowing perfectly well that it's a lie.

Then I give him a bear hug, for the very last time.

T
he best part of any trip is returning home. You open the door and you catch a whiff of that specific, unique scent, a mix of furniture, books, and the people you love, a fragrance unlike any other. The smell of home. There, I just thought of another one-hit wonder: Patrick Süskind, the author of
Perfume,
one of the finest novels ever written. I wish he were here right now to suggest the best words to use in proposing to my wife that we take a family trip together.

“You've just taken the shortest Eurail trip in the history of mankind,” is what Paola welcomes me home with when she finds me there after coming back from work.

“My fault. I just didn't feel like it anymore.”

“I told you that in your condition going on a trip was a stupid idea.”

“No no, on the contrary, it did me good—I got a few good days of distraction.”

“So?”

“So I want to take another trip.”

“Are you sure you're okay?”

“A trip together, the four of us. You, me, Lorenzo, and Eva. We could leave right after school ends. A vacation—no, better, an adventure.”

“I don't feel like taking a vacation. Much less an adventure, I assure you,” Paola cuts short the discussion.

“This isn't just any ordinary vacation.”

“I understand what you're saying, but I really don't feel like it. You go ahead and take a trip with the kids if you want to. Go to the beach for a week, or wherever you want.”

“I was thinking of something more, you know, on the road.”

“In fact, it's a classic for someone with cancer to go on the road. Listen, why don't you start taking care of yourself and stop doing things that are dangerous or pointless, or both.”

“It's not pointless. I want to spend my last days on earth with my kids. And with you.”

“That's what you're doing now.”

“But here I never see you, and you know that perfectly well. I need to be with them.”

“I've already said I have no objection to your leaving for a week. Or two weeks if you want. I'm happy right here. I'm not in the right mood—I'd only ruin the trip.”

Paola, Paola, Paola. Why are you so unyielding? Massimiliano's right—the cancer has traumatized you more than it has me.

I wait for Süskind to suggest telepathically a series of intelligent supplementary arguments, but perhaps the German author is on vacation, enjoying the no doubt lavish royalties from his novel. I give up. I pull the bike out of the garage and I go for a ride.

I do a longer ride than usual, I push all the way up the coast and I take the Via Aurelia. I pedal and pedal and pedal. I pace myself like a touring cyclist. For once, I enjoy the view. I breathe in the scent of the pines, the salt air, and the exhaust from the cars that shoot past me like guided missiles. I take in the sunset from a lookout, and far below I can make out a few diehard surfers riding waves that are too lazy to carry them.

As I reach mile thirty-six, my energy begins to flag and I stop at a little beachfront restaurant. A wooden stilthouse built out over the sand that seats thiry diners at most. Working in the kitchen are a pair of old ladies, the young waiter's aunt and grandmother. The view is
breathtaking. The moon is gazing vainly at its reflection in the surface of the sea. I sit at a corner table and order a mixed grilled seafood and a plate of fried anchovies. At the other tables are young couples and a very noisy Roman family. I feel very much alone. Now that I think about it, this is the first time that I've gone out to eat without company.
Chi non mangia in compagnia, o è un ladro o è una spia,
as the Italians say. Anyone who eats alone is either a thief or a spy. I've always thought that going to a restaurant alone is the saddest thing in the world. I can now confirm that.

“W
ell, so are you leaving or not?” asks Giannandrea. It's just like the thing with the music, the more depressed a person is, the more he tends to hang out with other depressives.

We're sitting in the Chitchat shop and Massimiliano is cooking lunch for us, a vegetable couscous that deserves a place in the Michelin guide.

“I don't want to go without Paola.”

“You'll see, she'll change her mind,” says Massimiliano as he chops zucchini.

“I'm afraid she won't.”

“Where would you want to go?” Giannandrea asks me.

I realize I haven't considered this properly. “The only thing I know is that I don't want to do a tour of the peninsula, some sort of Giro d'Italia.”

“Would you bike?” Massimiliano's curiosity is piqued.

“Yesterday I did a hundred kilometers or so on my bike and I'm practically dead today. And I was going slow, fifteen miles per hour, tops twenty, a snail on two wheels. I thought we'd go by car—there are so many places I still want to show Lorenzo and Eva, and many I want to see for the first time with them and their mother.”

“It strikes me as a very nice plan,” our chef comments as he tosses the vegetables onto the heat to sauté. “In ten minutes, the couscous will be ready. Can you hold out, or would you like a quick bruschetta?”

A rhetorical question. Obviously, a quick bruschetta.

“But most of all,” I continue, “there are lots of things I want to tell my children and my wife. My greatest desire is for them to remember an unexpected father, funny, full of life, full of ideas.”

“Where do you get all this lust for life?” Giannandrea asks, observing me with admiration in his eyes.

“When you're about to die, it'll come to you too.”

“I tried to commit suicide three times.”

Massimiliano had already told me this. But I want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.

“Well, you don't seem to have been very thorough about it,” I reply ironically.

“The first time was just a case of bad luck. I connected a vacuum cleaner hose to the exhaust pipe on my car, I stuck it in the car window, and I got in. I fell asleep almost immediately, but a minute later the car ran out of gas. The fuel gauge was broken and I didn't know it.”

“What about the second time?”

“The second time I wound up in the hospital because I'd swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills.”

“Did they pump your stomach?”

“There was no need—they weren't very strong. I slept for two days and when I woke up I felt better than before.”

“And the third time?”

“I'm not going to tell you about the third time because I feel too stupid.”

I smile at him.

“Come on, by now I'm curious.”

“Okay, I drove my car over a cliff. But the guardrail was stronger than I expected, the air bag deployed, and I was left sitting there inside the car like an idiot. And to make things worse, I broke an arm. That was three months ago.”

“Is there going to be a fourth time?”

“No, there won't be. And the credit for that goes in part to Massimiliano.”

The manager of our favorite shop smiles.

“The credit for that goes above all to my couscous. Five more minutes, guys.”

Massimiliano sits down across from me.

“Do you mind if I suggest a tactic for your travel plans?”

“Go right ahead.”

“Get everything ready to go, as if you were just going to leave with the kids. In fact, go ahead and tell them about the trip. You'll see, Paola will change her mind. She won't let you leave without her.”

“You don't know her.”

“But it's as if I did, by now. Do you want to bet she'll come?”

“A dinner?”

“You've got it!”

We shake hands and Giannandrea breaks our grip to seal the agreement.

When I try to pay for the hours spent in the shop, Massimiliano refuses to take my money and smiles.

“You're not a customer anymore. You're a friend.”

Giannandrea pipes up: “The same goes for me.”

I have two new friends who hopped on the bus of my life near the end of the trip. I smile at them both as I put the money back into my wallet.