100 Days of Happiness (7 page)

M
y biological clock wakes me up at four in the morning.

Paola's asleep. She's let me back into the big bed, but no physical contact.

A hundred days.

It's the first thing to come into my head.

A hundred days.

A couple days more, a couple days less. A statistical detail.

That's quite a few days. It's 2,400 hours, and I'm going to waste about 800 of those hours sleeping.

It's 8,640,000 seconds. Eight million. If you put it in seconds, it seems like a long, long time.

But a hundred days sounds a lot more cheerful. Sounds sort of easygoing and adolescent.

“A hundred days until your final exams at high school.”

What a great time that was. I went around town dressed up for Carnevale (it goes without saying that I was always dressed as one of the three musketeers) carrying a shoe box with a slot cut into it, begging for spare change. Then the whole class would enjoy a pizza buffet, paid for by generous passersby moved to pity by their memories of the old days when the tables were turned.

Back then, it was a hundred days until the beginning of my future.

A hundred days.

I go to my desk, I dig all the way to the back of a drawer, and I find
an old lined school notebook. On the cover is Dino Zoff, captain of the Italian national soccer team, lifting the World Cup trophy above his head. A crude color drawing—not even a photograph. I got that notebook in 1982—I traded it for an album of soccer cards, almost complete with all the players. I think I made a not-very-smart bargain. I was nine years old. I never had the nerve to write in it. It always seemed to me like a collectible that, with the passing years, would become rare and invaluable.

I open the cover and number the pages by hand.

From a hundred to zero.

I can't remember the last time I wrote with a pen. I realize that the only thing I know how to write by now is my own signature. Nobody jots down numbers anymore, they punch them into their phones. I've regressed to the point of becoming an illiterate once again. I try to write phrases chosen at random, picked out of a newspaper lying on the desk. My handwriting is embarrassing, resembling the cuneiform-like chicken scratches of a doctor.

Maybe I'll keep a diary.

Or maybe I won't.

What good does it do to keep a diary?

Aside from Anne Frank and Bridget Jones, I can't think of a single memorable diary. Who knows how many literary masterpieces lie concealed in the notebooks and Lisa Frank desk diaries filled with ink by fifteen-year-old girls who, statistically speaking, are the most “diaryish” demographic category. Women are more interested in diaries than men. I have no idea why.

I've never kept a diary.

I put the tip of my pen down on the paper.

I stop and think.

All right—the things I'd like to do in the hundred days remaining to me.

Suddenly, I can't write.

A classic case of writer's block, or blank-page syndrome.

I look at the ballpoint pen in my hand. A dark blue Bic. One of the new model pens, with a grip.

I can't resist.

So I Google it.

“Who invented the ballpoint pen?”

The ballpoint pen, also known in many countries as a Biro, is named after its inventor, the Hungarian editor and journalist László Bíró, who came up with the idea in 1938. The story has it that he first saw how it might work while watching a crowd of kids playing boccie ball in a street dotted with puddles. The balls left wet trails as they rolled along the dry sections of road surface. In just a few years, given the reliability of the product, simplicity of use, and affordability, the Biro, or ballpoint pen, replaced fountain pens. Today it's safe to say that it's the most widespread invention of all time, after the wheel. There's at least one in every home around the world. Too bad that poor Bíró, who was penurious at best, decided to sell the patent to the American Parker company, which as you know definitely spent that money wisely.

But who
really
invented the ballpoint pen?

Who was the first person to design one, nearly five hundred years before Bíró's flash of invention?

The answer is obvious. Unsurprising. Taken for granted.

Leonardo da Vinci.

Do you think for a second that the Gyro Gearloose of Renaissance Tuscany would miss out on one of the most important inventions of all time? Please.

It was definitely the egghead born in Vinci who created the first design for a ballpoint pen. The plan, found in one of his codices, consisted of a simple tube that narrowed toward the tip with a series of grooves that allowed the ink to flow to the ball that closed off the end of the little pipe, making it possible to write.

I'm sorry to tell you, Bíró, my good man, but you came in second.

 * * * 

I figure out the first thing I want to do in the next hundred days.

I want to ignore my buddy Fritz.

I get dressed and head for the gym as if this were any ordinary day. I don't even wait for Paola to wake up. I wouldn't know what to say to her. I hate seeing that disoriented, slightly frightened look on her face. I pass by my father-in-law's pastry shop. I'm a couple of hours ahead of schedule. My morning doughnut is still warm. I sit down at the café table and watch the shops opening for business. I've never been here this early. Life at six o'clock in the morning is a different one from eight o'clock. Aside from my friend the sparrow, who lands next to my plate. He looks at me. If the bird could speak Italian, he'd ask me: “What are you doing here so early? Everything okay?”

And I'd answer, though I'd be lying: “Everything's fine. How about you?”

“I have some trouble at home, my girlfriend lost her job and we have four little mouths to feed still in the nest. Do you mind if I take a piece of doughnut?”

“Be my guest.”

With his beak, the bird breaks off a slightly darker chunk and swallows it.

“What kind of work did your girlfriend do?” I ask, my curiosity piqued.

“She kept a retired widowed dentist company, in Prati. They had a standing date on the banks of the Tiber, where the guy used to go for a walk every morning. They'd share breakfast, more or less like you and me.”

“And then what happened?”

“The old man got himself a nineteen-year-old Ukrainian girlfriend, and now they eat breakfast at home. My wife was out of work, from one day to the next.”

“I'm sorry to hear that—”

“That's life. Can I have another piece? I'll take it to the little ones.”

“Go right ahead.”

The bird breaks off a bigger piece than usual, gives me a grateful look, and flies off, flitting elegantly around the corner.

I finish the doughnut. I lick the sugar off my lips. I shout a farewell to Oscar, who's busy at his work, and I head off to the gym.

In my pocket is my Dino Zoff notebook.

It's still blank.

I
've already wasted one day.

I don't know why but having a precise countdown helps to keep me from slipping into complete apathy. Actually, it's only a statistical sentence and today I can't quite picture what will happen after day zero. No one can ever imagine his or her own death. In fact, we refuse even to accept the possibility of it. We're all positive that an exception will be made for us.

I go out and get into my station wagon. I don't like my car.

Your cars tend to match the seasons of your life in a fairly symbolic way: first you use your father's car to learn to drive in (in my case, Grandpa's Renault 4, the most wonderful automobile ever made); then you buy a slightly sporty used car, if possible with all-wheel drive; then you get a girlfriend and you buy a comfortable compact car with a slightly bigger trunk for romantic weekend trips; then when you get married and have children, you switch to a station wagon, the absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of automotive morale. I've reached that phase, but I'm afraid I won't live to see the last two: when you're in your fifties and you buy a used Porsche to fool yourself into thinking you're a pampered twenty-year-old playboy, and then, when you're in your late sixties, you buy the same car you learned to drive in, only now it's a costly vintage model, so you get behind the wheel with your heart in your throat, and you discover that it lacks power steering, that it accelerates like a cow running a mountain Grand Prix, that it has no car radio, no GPS, no air-
conditioning, no power windows, that it gets the mileage of a semitrailer, that smoke pours out the tailpipe like a steam locomotive, and that the springs in the seats do their best to shatter your spinal cord with every pothole you hit. You take it for a spin and then you garage it for good. Luckily, I'm going to avoid this automotive disaster. I realize that I can't seem to think about anything but the past and the future. It's as if the present has lost all meaning to me. But actually it's the past and the future that don't exist, and the present really is the only thing I have left. Still, there's nothing I can do about it—my neurons go back and forth in time, navigating memories and imagination like silver balls in an out-of-control pinball machine. I let them have their way, without trying to shake or jolt the machine too much: if my brain gets a ”tilt” warning, it's all over for me. I let my thoughts bob in the swimming pool of my life, free to drift where they will. I'm not especially lucid these days. I don't have brain cancer, but my mind is crashing like an old computer. If you look closely, you can actually see the old blinking bomb symbol:
SYSTEM ERROR.

Every day I think I'm going to wake up and discover that this has all been nothing but a long, well-made, and very detailed nightmare caused by green peppers (which is why it is a very dangerous food to eat at dinner), but once again, that's not what happens.

I park my station wagon with care. They've already written me three parking tickets here in Trastevere; I think the traffic cop must have it in for me. I make my usual stopover in the pastry shop; I chat for a while with my father-in-law, though I make no mention of my buddy Fritz; I eat my beloved doughnut; my friend the sparrow is in a particularly good mood today; and then I proceed along the familiar route to the gym.

I know every crack and pothole in the sidewalk and every flowerbed along the way. I already know where a dog will bark at me and through which open windows I'll hear shouting voices. I try to think of the things I want to do in the next ninety-nine days. There's only
one that comes to mind, but it's a very important one: make peace with Paola.

I take out my Zoff notebook. It's blank. I open it, smooth the page. Then I write my first words: Make peace with Paola.

Make peace with Paola.

Then I cross it out and rewrite it:

Get Paola to forgive me.

That's more accurate.

I get to the gym and am greeted by the sight of my morning “class,” six fatching women in their early forties. That's not a typo, they truly are fat-ching, and I think I've conveyed the idea. They are a half-dozen office workers, prosperous physically if not financially, poured into hot-pink workout garb, and before they start their working day they come by the gym for my renowned legs-abs-ass class. They've long since resigned themselves to the fact that they can't have a personal trainer like the ones they see on TV, and have to settle for a chubby but amiable ex-athlete. I think they even find me sort of sexy. I admire them for the determination they show in fighting their own personal war against the passage of time. They sweat and they never give up. The results are never astounding, but their commitment is praiseworthy. Some of them even make it clear that, if I were interested . . . , but I think I've caused enough trouble with that. I focus with Michelangelo-esque concentration on sculpting their butts. This morning it dawns on me, practically in the blink of an eye, that the work I do is perhaps even less attractive than my station wagon. The only gratification I get from my work is the 1,600 euros I earn each month, but aside from that, I shove sweaty backs as they struggle against the rust in their joints and the general force of gravity; I fill out exercise plans that will never be implemented; I talk and talk about carb-free diets and inside gymnasium gossip. A classic variety of socially useful productive work.

I go to the office of the gym's manager, Ernesto Berruti, a
sunlamped, steroid-pumped former bodybuilder who does nothing but uselessly take up space and oxygen here on earth, and I tell him that, at the end of the month, I'm going to end my working relationship with the glorious Rainbow Gym. He does his best to persuade me to change my mind, offering me a raise of thirty-eight euros a month (before taxes). He's a fine observer of psychological subtleties. I look at the faux-Maori tattoos on his biceps, his long gray hair (I would suggest a law prohibiting long hair if you're over forty and you have a devastating bald spot), and the tight-fitting Iron Maiden T-shirt that was already out of fashion twenty years ago. I've always detested him. Now I see him clearly. Two hundred and thirty pounds of classic Roman thug. He sells soft drugs in the neighborhood; he's the two-bit boss of a square of urban territory that runs from Porta Portese to the banks of the Tiber. Until today I've pretended to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. But today I can't hold it in.

“So do you like working in this cellar office?”

He doesn't understand.

“What I mean is, when you were a little boy, did you write class compositions that read, in part: ‘When I grow up I want to be the tawdry manager of a dingy gym in Monteverde?'”

He starts to suspect I might be trying to insult him. I redouble my efforts.

“Don't you see you're a stock character straight out of a small-time Roman version of the commedia dell'arte?”

At this point, I've lost him; I've overdone it with the learned references. So I lower my sights.

“You always wear the same T-shirts a size too small; you wear a ponytail, which is forbidden by EU regulations as an assault on the common sense of aesthetics; you speak an Italian that we might charitably call creative, riddled as it is with grammatical errors that defy imagination; you stuff yourself with pharmaceuticals that are bound to make you impotent in the course of a few years; and when someone
asks you a question, you take so long to reply that people usually have to ask you twice!”

“What are you saying, that I'm impotent?” my employer blurts out. “What the hell are you thinking?”

The only word he understood was “impotent.” I overestimated his capacity to appreciate insults.

“No,” I say, “I just wanted to let you know that I've changed my mind. I'm not going to wait for the end of the month. So long, best to everyone, and thanks very much.”

I head for my locker with the stride of someone who's knocked out his opponent in the last round, just when he was about to lose on points.

He shouts after me: “You loser! Get your things, get out of here, and go fuck yourself!”

An elegantly refined way of telling me that I'm fired. It's a question of how you look at it: as far as I'm concerned, I'm the one who quit. I just can't take this odor of sweat, chlorine, and Lysol anymore.

Sometimes real troubles give you a strength you never had before. When I walk out with my gym bag thrown over my shoulder, the receptionist looks at me with something like respect for the very first time. Today I'm her personal hero. I get to leave, and she has to stay behind bars. Sooner or later, I hope she'll find a way to break out.

I go back to get my car. She's surprised to see me back so soon. I smile at her and take her to the car wash. She, too, should get some enjoyment out of the day. As I wait for the rotating brushes to do their work, I reread the phrase I wrote in my notebook.

Get Paola to forgive me.