The Temptation to Be Happy Read online

  THE TEMPTATION TO BE HAPPY

  A darkly comic tale of a septuagenarian rediscovering love and life in Naples

  Cesare is a seventy-seven-year-old widower and cynical troublemaker. He has lived his whole life by his own rules and has no intention of changing now. Aside from an intermittent fling with a nurse called Rossana, he spends his days avoiding the old cat lady next door and screening calls from his children.

  But when the enigmatic Emma moves in next door with her strange and sinister husband, Cesare suspects there is more to their relationship than meets the eye. He sets about enlisting the other residents to help him investigate and soon discovers a new and unexpected sense of purpose that leads him to risk everything for a future he had never thought possible.

  Laced with humour and pathos in equal measure, this is a delightful book to savour, for young and old alike.

  THE TEMPTATION

  TO BE HAPPY

  Lorenzo Marone

  Translated by Shaun Whiteside

  To those frail souls who love without loving themselves

  Contents

  Chapter One: Cesare Annunziata

  Chapter Two: What You Need to Know

  Chapter Three: Only One Thing Divides us

  Chapter Four: The Cat Lady

  Chapter Five: Two Circus Performers

  Chapter Six: Soya Burgers

  Chapter Seven: I was Born Sweet and I will Die Grumpy

  Chapter Eight: The Things Not Done

  Chapter Nine: No One can be Saved If they Don’t Want to Be

  Chapter Ten: The First of Three Unattainable Women

  Chapter Eleven: Emma

  Chapter Twelve: Superman in a Skirt

  Chapter Thirteen: I have Failed

  Chapter Fourteen: The Mind

  Chapter Fifteen: Hamburger with Provolone

  Chapter Sixteen: There are Two of Us

  Chapter Seventeen: I’d Like to be an Orc

  Chapter Eighteen: The Second of Three Unattainable Women

  Chapter Nineteen: A Box Room Full of Memories

  Chapter Twenty: A Little Bell Ringing beside Your Ear

  Chapter Twenty-One: In Vino Veritas

  Chapter Twenty-Two: In My Own Way

  Chapter Twenty-Three: An Unstoppable Flow

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Like Clouds

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Glass Bowl

  Chapter Twenty-Six: ‘The Fifth of May’ from Memory

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Third of Three Unattainable Women

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Unforeseen Hypothesis

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: I Like

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Cesare Annunziata

  The ticking of the alarm clock is the only sound that keeps me company. At this time of night people are asleep. They say that the first few hours of the morning are the best time for sleep – the brain is in its REM phase, the one during which you dream, your breathing becomes irregular and your eyes move quickly from side to side. A spectacle that’s anything but amusing to witness – in short, it’s like finding yourself in the presence of someone possessed.

  I never dream. Or rather, I have no particular memories of my dreams. Perhaps because I don’t sleep much and wake up early. Or because I drink too much. Or only because I’m old and when you’re old your dreams are used up. Your brain has had a whole life to come up with the strangest fantasies, and it’s perfectly normal that it should lose its flair. The creative vein peaks during the life of each and every one of us and then, at a certain point, the descent inexorably arrives, and at the end of your days you’re no longer even capable of imagining a sex scene. In your youth, however, that is the starting point: imagining incredible nights of passion with the showgirl of the day, your classmate or even your teacher, who had for some reason taken it into her head to fall into the arms of a callow youth with spots and bumfluff. Of course, the capacity for invention begins earlier than that, in childhood, but I believe that adolescent masturbation has a great influence on the formation of creativity.

  I was very creative.

  I decide to open my eyes. Sleeping is out of the question in these conditions anyway. In bed the brain goes on such strange journeys. For example, I sometimes think about my grandparents’ house. I can still see it, walk round it, move from one room to the other, smell the smells coming from the kitchen, hear the creak of the door of the dresser in the dining room, or the little birds chirping on the balcony. I linger especially on the furniture, remembering each tiny detail, even the ornaments. If I close my eyelids tightly I can actually look at myself in my grandmother’s mirror and see myself as a child. I know I said I don’t dream any more, but I was talking about sleep. When I’m awake, on the other hand, I can still have my say.

  I glance at the clock and mutter a curse beneath the sheets. I thought it was five o’clock, and in fact it’s only a quarter past four in the morning. It’s dark outside. In the distance a burglar alarm sounds at regular intervals, the humidity blurs the outlines of things and cats crouch under cars.

  The neighbourhood is asleep; I’m ruminating.

  I turn on to the other side and force myself to close my eyelids again. The truth is that in bed I can’t be still for a minute; I release the energy accumulated during the day, a bit like the summer sea absorbing the heat of the day to give it back to the night. My grandmother used to say that when the body can’t find rest you have to stay motionless; after a while your anatomy understands that there’s no point kicking up a racket and calms down. Except that to put a plan like that into action you need self-control and patience, and I ran out of both some time ago.

  I realize I’m staring at a book on the little chest of drawers beside me. I’ve often looked at the cover of this book, and yet now I notice details that had previously escaped me. I am overcome by a feeling of amazement, then I realize what it is: I’m reading from close up. No one in the world can do that at my age. Technology has made huge strides over the last century, and yet presbyopia remains one of the ungraspable mysteries of science. I bring my hands to my face and understand the reason for my sudden and miraculous cure: I have put on my glasses, a movement that I now perform instinctively, without thinking.

  The time has come to get up. I go to the bathroom. I shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m old and I do what I like. In brief, I urinate sitting down, as women do. And not because my legs won’t hold me up, but because otherwise my hydrant would also water the tiles in front. There’s little to be done – after a certain age that particular thingummy starts to have a life of its own. Like me (and like more or less all old people), it doesn’t give a hoot about anyone who wants to explain the meaning of life to it, and does as it sees fit.

  Anyone who complains about old age is a lunatic. Or rather, no: blind strikes me as more apt. Someone who can’t see a few inches in front of his own nose. Because there’s only one alternative and it doesn’t seem desirable to me. Because having got even this far is a huge stroke of luck. But the most interesting thing is, as I was saying, that you can afford to do what you want. We old people get away with everything. An old man who steals from a supermarket is viewed with candour and compassion. If, on the other hand, it is a youth, he is treated at best as a ‘rogue’. In short, at a certain point in life a world hitherto inaccessible opens up, a magical place populated by nice, thoughtful, affable people. And yet the most precious thing gained thanks to old age is respect. Moral integrity, solidarity, culture and talent are nothing compared to wrinkled skin, liver spots on the head and trembling hands. In every way I am today a respected man and, please note, that isn’t to be sneezed at. Respect is a weapon that allows a man t
o reach a goal unattainable to many, and make of his life what he will.

  My name is Cesare Annunziata. I am seventy-seven, and for seventy-two years and one hundred and eleven days I threw my life down the toilet. Then I worked out that the time had come to use the esteem I have acquired in the field to have some serious fun with it.

  Chapter Two

  What You Need to Know

  My son is homosexual.

  He knows it. I know it. And yet he’s never admitted it to me.

  No harm done – lots of people wait until their parents die before letting themselves go and experiencing their own sexuality to the full. Except that isn’t going to work with me because I plan to go on living for a long time yet, at least ten years or so. So if Dante wants to emancipate himself, he’s going to have to stop caring about yours truly. I really don’t plan to die for his sexual tastes.

  Chapter Three

  Only One Thing Divides Us

  This morning my daughter Sveva, my eldest, called me.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Listen, I’ve got a favour to ask you…’

  I shouldn’t have picked up the phone. Experience teaches you precisely not to commit the same idiotic mistakes for a whole life. I have learned nothing from the past, and I carry on undaunted, acting out of instinct.

  ‘Would you go and pick up Federico from school? I’ve got a hearing and I’ll be running late.’

  ‘Couldn’t Diego do it?’

  ‘No, he’s busy.’

  ‘I get it…’

  ‘You know I wouldn’t ask you if I had an alternative.’

  I have brought up my children well – I can’t complain. But I’m not the kind of grandfather who goes and picks up his grandchildren. The sight of those poor little old men outside school stopping cars so the children can cross the road, for example, makes me shiver. Yes, I know, they’re making themselves useful rather than rotting on a sofa, and yet there’s nothing I can do about it – for me a ‘civic-minded grandad’ is like a roll of film, a telephone box, a phone token, a video cassette, objects from a time gone by which no longer have a real function.

  ‘And then where do I take him to?’

  ‘To yours, or you could come to the studio. Yes, do that – please bring him here.’

  Now I find myself outside school waiting for my grandson. I push back the brim of my hat and slip my hands into my pockets. I’ve arrived early, one of the things I’ve learned how to do with the advancing years. How to plan your day. Not that I’ve got much planning to do, God knows, but I prefer to put those few things in order.

  Sveva’s phone call has thrown my plans into confusion. I was supposed to be going to the barber, and this evening I have a romantic assignation with Rossana. She is a prostitute. Yes, I visit tarts, and…? I still have my desires which need to be satisfied and no one by my side to give explanations to. In any case, I’ve exaggerated. I don’t go to prostitutes exactly, not least because it would be rather difficult trying to pick up girls by bus: my driving licence expired and I haven’t renewed it. Rossana is an old friend that I met some time ago, when she was going from house to house giving medical injections. So she found herself in my sitting room as well. She came early every morning, pricked my buttocks and left without saying a word. Then she started staying for a coffee, and at last I managed to persuade her to slip under my covers. Thinking about it today, it wasn’t very difficult. It was only a bit later that I worked out that the fake nurse was not thrown into ecstasies by my smile, when she exclaimed with a serious expression, ‘You’re a nice guy, and you’re handsome too, but I’ve got a son to help…’

  I’ve always liked people who are direct, and since then we’ve become friends. She’s now just under sixty, but she still has a pair of enormous bosoms and a fine, harmonious backside. And at my age that’s all you need. You mostly fall in love with defects, which make the scene more believable.

  Federico appears. If people around here knew that this old man dragging his grandson around was thinking about a prostitute’s breasts a moment ago, they would be scandalized and would alert the child’s parents. Perhaps because an old man can’t possibly want a fuck.

  We get into a taxi. It’s only the third time that I’ve picked up my grandson from school, yet Federico has told his mum that he’s happy to come back with me. He says his other grandpa forces him to walk, and he gets home covered with sweat. With me, on the other hand, he comes home in a taxi. And I should hope so too! I’ve got a decent pension, no wedding anniversaries to celebrate and two grown-up children. I can spend my money on taxis and various Rossanas. And yet the driver is rude. It happens, unfortunately. He curses, he sounds his horn for no reason, he races and brakes at the last moment, he picks fights with pedestrians and doesn’t stop at the lights. As I’ve said before, one of the great things about old age is that you can do what you like. So I decide to punish the man who’s trying to ruin my day.

  ‘You should drive more slowly,’ I exclaim.

  He doesn’t even reply.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  Silence.

  ‘OK, pull over and give me your licence.’

  The taxi driver turns round and gives me a puzzled look.

  ‘I’m a retired police inspector. You’re driving in an inappropriate and dangerous manner, and putting your passengers’ lives at risk.’

  ‘Inspector, sorry. Today’s been a bad day. Problems at home. Forgive me. I’ll slow down now.’

  Federico raises his head and stares at me, and is about to open his mouth. I clutch his arm and wink.

  ‘What problems?’ I ask.

  My interlocutor tilts his head for just a moment, and then gives free rein to his powerful imagination: ‘My daughter was about to get married, but her husband lost his job.’

  ‘I understand.’

  As excuses go, it’s a good one; nothing wrong with it at all, no illness or death of a spouse. It’s more credible. When we pull up in front of Sveva’s office, the man won’t accept any money. Another free journey from a rude Neapolitan. Federico looks at me and laughs, and I reply with another wink of the eye. He’s used to my sallies by now; last time I pretended to be a financier. I’m amusing myself – I don’t do it to save money. And I have nothing against taxi drivers as a profession.

  Sveva hasn’t come back yet. We slip into her room, Federico lying on a little sofa, me sitting behind the desk on which the photograph of her with her husband and son is the centrepiece. I’m not very keen on Diego. He’s a good man, don’t get me wrong, but men who are too good are irritating – that’s a simple fact. And, in fact, I think Sveva is fed up too; always frowning, always in a hurry and with her mind on her job. The opposite of me today, but perhaps very similar to the former me. I think she’s an unhappy woman, but she won’t talk to yours truly. Perhaps she talked to her mother. I’m not very good at listening to other people.

  They say that to be a good companion you don’t need to give any kind of advice. You just have to be careful to be understanding – that’s all women want. I’m not capable of that. After a while I get worked up, I speak my mind and turn into a wild animal if my interlocutor of the moment doesn’t listen to me and continues along his own path. It was one of the reasons for my constant arguments with Caterina, my poor wife. She just wanted someone to pour her heart out to, while after two minutes I was already full to the brim with the solution she needed. Luckily old age has come to my aid: I have worked out that for the sake of my health it’s better not to listen to family problems. After all, you never solve them.

  The room has a beautiful, wide window that looks out on the street, crowded with passers-by, and if there were a skyscraper opposite rather than a down-at-heel building made of volcanic stone, I could almost imagine I was in New York. Except that in American cities they don’t have Spanish Quarters with alleyways that slip down from the top of the hill, crumbling buildings exchanging secrets along lines hung with drying clothes,
potholed streets and cars climbing half-way across some wretched pavement between a street sign and the entrance to a church. In New York side streets don’t conceal a world that loses itself in its own shadows; mildew hasn’t settled on people’s faces.

  As I reflect on the difference between the Big Apple and Naples, I notice Sveva getting out of a black SUV and heading towards the front door. As she reaches it she stops, takes the keys out of her bag, then turns round and gets back into the car. From up here all I can see are her legs, veiled by black stockings. She leans towards the driver, perhaps saying goodbye to him, and he rests his hand on her thigh. I bring the chair to the window and bump my head against the glass. Federico stops playing with his robot friend and stares at me. I smile at him and return to the scene that is playing out in front of my eyes. Sveva gets out and slips into the building. The car sets off again.

  I’m looking at the room without looking at it. Perhaps I’ve had a hallucination. Perhaps it was Diego, who, however – small detail – doesn’t have an off-road vehicle. Maybe it was a colleague who’d given her a lift. But a colleague resting a hand on her thigh?

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Here’s my love!’ she shrieks and grips Federico under the arms before covering him with kisses.

  The scene brings her mother back before my eyes. She behaved exactly the same with her children. She was too affectionate, too present, solicitous, invasive. Maybe that’s why Dante’s gay. I wonder if his sister knows.

  ‘Is Dante gay?’ I ask.

  Sveva spins round, still holding Federico. Then she sets him down on the sofa and replies icily, ‘I haven’t a clue, sorry. Why don’t you ask him?’

  He’s homosexual. And she knows.

  ‘And anyway, what makes you think of that right now?’

  Just…How was the hearing?’

  She gets even more defensive.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Can’t I ask you?’