The Temptation to Be Happy Read online

  ‘You’ve never taken an interest in my work. Weren’t you the one who used to say that jurisprudence would ruin my life?’

  ‘Yes, I thought so and I still do. Have you seen yourself ?’

  ‘Listen, Dad, today really isn’t the day for your pointless sermons. I’ve got things to do!’

  The truth is that my daughter has made too many wrong choices: studies, work and, last of all, husband. With all those mistakes behind you, you can’t just smile and pretend everything’s fine. And yet I’m certainly not someone who hits the target every time; I’ve done the odd stupid thing, like marrying Caterina and giving her two children. Not because of Dante and Sveva – good heavens, no – but it’s just that you shouldn’t have children with a woman you don’t love.

  ‘How are things with Diego?’ I ask.

  ‘All fine,’ she says carelessly, taking the file out of her bag and setting it on the desk. On the front page it says: Sarnataro v. Condominium, via Roma.

  I don’t understand how you can decide on your own initiative to spend your days on pointless rows, as if there weren’t already enough arguments in life without adding a few more. And yet Sveva likes it. Or perhaps she forces herself to like it, just as her mother did. Caterina could draw the positive side out of every experience, while I have never been content merely to dig a bit of beauty out of all the ugliness.

  ‘Why so many questions today?’

  ‘It’s just that we never talk…’

  But she’s already in the corridor, her heels echoing rapidly between the rooms and her voice immersed in a hasty conversation with a colleague. They are talking about a criminal case. Yet again, what a bore!

  I watch my grandson amusing himself with some kind of dragon and I smile. Basically we’re the same, the two of us, with no responsibility and nothing to do but play. Federico plays with dragons; I play with Rossana and some other trifles. Only one thing divides us: he still has a life ahead of him, and a thousand plans; I have just a few years, and many regrets.

  Chapter Four

  The Cat Lady

  As soon as I emerge from the lift I see Eleonora holding in her arms a cat that I have never seen before. The front door is wide open, and the miasma from her flat has already spread all over the landing. I don’t know how she manages not to notice, and above all how she can spend her life enveloped in that revolting stench. Eleonora is one of those old ladies you meet in the street with their little paper plate of cat food, crouching among the parked cars, and her house is now a hospice for cats in difficulties. In reality, the few cats I know I’ve always seen in great form, but since she maintains that she’s obliged to bring them home because they’re sick or injured, I prefer not to get involved. The fact is that often one of her cats, in turn, tries to escape back to freedom, far from its jailer’s egoistic love.

  Sometimes I just have to set a foot inside the hallway of our block to know that a few floors up Eleonora has her front door open. Obviously with so many floors available to accommodate a crazed old widow in need of love, that particular honour had to go to mine.

  I still have an expression of disgust on my face as she greets me affectionately.

  ‘Hi, Eleonora,’ I reply, and try to find my keys in my coat pocket.

  I’m trying not to breathe, and my life depends on how much time it takes to get out my key ring and slip into the house. At my age I can only survive a few seconds without breathing. Unfortunately, however, the thing I was hoping wouldn’t happen happens: Eleonora talks to me, and I am obliged to inhale some air to reply.

  ‘This one is Gigio,’ she says with a smile, showing me the feline, which looks at least as disturbed as I am.

  I frown, trying to expel the fetid effluvium from my nostrils, and reply, ‘A new guest?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replies straight away, ‘the latest arrival. Poor little thing, he was attacked by a dog that was about to kill him! I’ve saved him from certain death.’

  For a moment I study the cat, which is staring placidly at the horizon, and wonder if it is already working out a plan of escape.

  The next moment, a couple in their fifties, she with dyed hair and lipstick, he bald and with thick glasses that are slipping off his nose, emerge from Eleonora’s flat and greet me before taking my neighbour’s hand and shaking it warmly. She, however, returns neither the greeting nor the handshake.

  Clearly the couple are making an effort to smile and be nice, but in fact they are horrified by the spectacle that has just etched itself on to their pupils. They sneak into the lift with one last fearful glance at the landing and at yours truly, perhaps wondering how I can be a friend of the cat lady and, more importantly, her neighbour. And yet I’m the one who is most surprised; in many years I have never seen anyone leaving Eleonora Vitagliano’s flat, except her husband, a lifetime ago. Never, above all, young or at least relatively youthful individuals. Never anyone who pulled a face at the stench. And in that respect even this couple were no different.

  ‘Who were they?’ I ask curiously once they have disappeared.

  To my knowledge Eleonora has no one to look after her. Certainly she has no children, her husband died some time ago, and I’ve never seen any relatives.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  Eleonora Vitagliano is even older than me and deaf as a post, so that on the few occasions when we have to speak, I am forced to reformulate my sentences and progressively increase the volume of my voice.

  ‘I wanted to know who those two people were,’ I repeat.

  ‘Ah,’ she says, letting go of the cat, which slips into the flat and disappears down the corridor. ‘They are the lady and gentleman who have come to see the house.’

  ‘Why? Are you selling it?’

  Eleonora looks at me hesitantly. Her hair is tangled, her moustache is white and her bluish hands, ridged with veins and eroded by rheumatism, look like claws.

  ‘Have you decided to leave?’ I am obliged to repeat, raising my voice once more.

  ‘No, no. And where would I go? This is my house. This is where I want to die. I have no intention of leaving.’

  I look at her curiously, and she goes on.

  ‘My niece, my brother’s daughter, do you know her?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘She’s my only remaining relative. And, to cut a long story short, she is pushing me to sell. She says she’s in difficulties, that the flat would go to her one day anyway and I would stay here even so, and that the house would be sold after my death. I didn’t understand a word, but I nodded – I have no time to waste arguing with my family, and in any case I’m not going to sign anything. In fact, when someone comes to see the house I’ll show them a complete mess.’

  I have no difficulty believing what she says. Eleonora, although very old and short of a marble or two, can still command respect.

  ‘Your niece would want to sell the empty property,’ I announce, attempting to explain more clearly what we are talking about. ‘The house might be a crazy place now, but the new owners could only live there after you died.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I think I’ve grasped that much. I’m certainly not going to be able to live here knowing that there’s someone out there waiting for me to kick the bucket, apart from my niece.’

  I smile, amused, even if the behaviour of that phantom niece isn’t terribly funny. If she were here, I would give her an earful.

  ‘And you’d rather have people wandering about in your house than tell your niece the truth?’ I ask, and regret it a moment later. Not so much because of the rather invasive question as because I am helping to extend the conversation unnecessarily, and thus the time during which her door remains open. It will take days to air the whole building. Luckily I haven’t yet opened my own door.

  ‘Hey, Cesare, what do you want me to say? You’re right, but you know how it is? I don’t want to make an enemy of her. I’ve lived on my own for so long and I don’t need much in the way of help, but you never know how things are going to chang
e from one day to the next. I might need her every now and again. You’re on your own as well – you can understand me…’ she replies and goes on staring at me.

  I just say ‘Yes’, even though part of me wants to use a more appropriate phrase, to show her that I’m on her side.

  ‘You have to make compromises in life,’ Eleonora goes on, now gripped by the discussion, ‘and old age, my dear Cesare, is one continuous compromise.’

  ‘Yes,’ I reply, as if I didn’t know any other words.

  For seventy years I have been the master of compromises, my dear cat lady, then I lost everything and found myself, paradoxically, free. The truth is that I had nothing more to barter, and that was my good luck. That is what I should reply, but God alone knows where it would take the debate, and the oxygen at my disposal is running out. So I say goodbye to Eleonora and slip the key into the lock just as the third door on the landing opens. A couple have been renting the flat for some months: she looks about thirty; he a little older. Both young, though, and childless, which makes them entirely out of place both in this condominium, mostly made up of old people and families, and in the world. I bet the poor things are constantly forced to give explanations for the lack of a baby in their lives – a question which, judging by her curious glance, the cat lady would also like to ask.

  ‘Hello,’ says the girl, immediately frowning at the stench.

  I let out a little chuckle, and the young woman glares at me irritably.

  ‘Hello,’ I hastily reply, but she has already turned her back.

  ‘Hello,’ Eleonora exclaims, adding immediately, ‘excuse me, I wonder if I might tell you that if by any chance you’ve seen a black cat it’s mine. You know what he’s like – he got used to slipping through your window via the ledge when the other tenants were living there, and I wouldn’t like him to do the same thing now.’

  ‘No. No cat. Don’t worry,’ the girl replies before hurling herself into the lift.

  ‘Strange couple,’ Eleonora observes.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, they’ve been here for a while, but never a smile. Always “good morning” and “good evening”, but they never stop to chat.’

  ‘Well, they’re kids – they’re bound to have their own friendships. The important thing is that they don’t cause any trouble. I wouldn’t mind if they didn’t even say hello to me and didn’t have a name,’ I reply and apply myself once more to my lock.

  ‘His I don’t know, but she’s called Emma.’

  ‘Emma…’ I repeat and quickly turn round.

  ‘Yes, Emma. Why?’

  ‘No. Nothing. Lovely name.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, Emma’s a lovely name.’

  ‘Oh, yes, not bad.’

  ‘Right, Eleonora, I’ll have to leave you,’ I exclaim and open the door. ‘If you need anything, you know where to find me.’

  ‘Cesare?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can I call you if anyone else wants to see the house? The estate agent is phoning me every two minutes to give me advice I don’t want.’

  You see, you try to be nice and you find yourself embroiled in things that are none of your business.

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘What he wants?’ she says. ‘The other evening he told me without much beating around the bush that I should tidy up the flat a little or else potential buyers will be discouraged. Of course, I couldn’t tell him that was exactly my intention.’ And she smiles.

  ‘I see. And why wasn’t he there today as well?’

  ‘He’s been and gone again, but he’ll show up again in a few days’ time, you’ll see. If you were there it would be different. It’s always different if a man’s there. He wouldn’t dare mention the condition of the house. If he does it again I’ll be forced to throw him out, and then what’s my niece going to say?’

  ‘OK, call me.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I close the door behind me and sniff the air in the hallway to reassure myself that the stench hasn’t invaded my house as well. Only then do I slip off my coat and go into the kitchen, shaking my head with disapproval. The fact is that I’ve really grown too old to allow a name to ruin my day.

  Even if Emma isn’t just any old name.

  Chapter Five

  Two Circus Performers

  Rossana deserves a different life. In the sense that she should be happier, while instead she seems to be missing tricks. Perhaps because she spends her days bringing joy to her customers, and there isn’t much left for her. People who make other people happy deserve gratitude and respect. Even a prostitute. Even Rossana. If she didn’t exist, I would be a worse person, more nervous, perhaps a little more solitary, certainly more repressed.

  Each person in a normal couple plays their own part, offers their partner what they can, however little or however much they have. Yet no one ever gives anything to Rossana – nothing except money. But money doesn’t buy you care and attention.

  ‘So, why don’t we go out for a bite to eat one evening?’

  I’ve been seeing Rossana for two years and the place furthest from the bed where we’ve exchanged a word has been the kitchen. I know her stretch marks much better than her taste in food, I could connect her moles like the dots in a puzzle magazine, and I don’t even know if she has a sister. She mentioned her son one evening when I turned up with a five-euro bottle of Prosecco bought in a hovel behind her house. She talked and I drank; she drank and I stared at the ceiling. I’ve never been much of a talker.

  ‘To eat?’

  ‘Well, yes. In a restaurant.’

  ‘What’s happened, Mr Annunziata? Is there something you need to ask me?’

  No one trusts me, that’s the truth – not even my children, not even a prostitute. And yet I don’t think I seem devious. Yes, perhaps, as Caterina said, I concentrate on myself a bit too much, but that doesn’t mean I like deceiving my fellow man.

  ‘Why? Can’t I invite you out to dinner without a hidden purpose?’

  ‘Hmm. I’ve known you for too long. Try it on with someone who hasn’t met you!’

  There’s nothing to be done – I give up. Over the past few years I’ve been so busy giving out a negative image of myself that there’s now no turning back. I’ll die a cynic and a grump.

  ‘We could go to a nice little place and eat fish and drink wine and talk about us for a while. Basically, we’ve known each other for a long time, but I don’t know anything about you.’

  Rossana is standing with her back to me; I’m still lying on the bed with a glass of wine in my hand, studying the old harridan’s bottom. She has paused with her knickers in her hand – the suggestion must have been so shocking that it prevented her from performing so simple an action as putting on a pair of pants.

  ‘So, what do you think? Do you like my little plan?’

  Her sole response is to sit on the edge of the bed and lower her head. I go on looking at her back, and the problem is that I can no longer see her bottom. I’m aware that you have to be careful with words. It’s like a crossword puzzle: one word out of place can create chaos.

  ‘OK, if you don’t feel like it it’s not a problem. I’m not at all offended.’

  Rossana doesn’t turn round and silence falls in the room, allowing my angry gut to steal the scene with a series of loud rumbles. I go into a fake coughing fit to drown out the noise, but in reality, if I could, I would let rip a loud fart which would sort everything out straight away. I set the empty glass down on the bedside table and sit up. It seems clear to me that I’ve said something wrong; the problem is working out what. The fact is that I’ve lost my edge with women. Caterina died five years ago. I still remember my last lover, with her black pubic hair. And Rossana – well, I didn’t have to make much of an effort to conquer her. It’s the well-known negative side of what happens when you’ve been with a prostitute for too long: you forget the preambles, the preliminaries, good manners, kindness, all the things you need to
get a ‘normal’ woman into bed.

  I light a cigarette and covertly notice a tear falling down her face, before she manages to wipe it furiously away. Goodness, the last woman I saw crying was that colleague of mine – what was her name? – who told me she wanted to get serious with me. I wiped her eyes and hightailed it out of there. No, in fact, she wasn’t the last one. Caterina was the last one. Except that she wept not for me, but for her ailing body. And yet even then I was only able to intervene with pointless, artificial gestures. Sometimes I start awake at night and I still think she’s by my side, and then I whisper to the cold wall what I should have said to her: ‘You’re not alone. I’m here.’

  I told her I didn’t love her, but not a day goes by when I don’t ask forgiveness for what I did.

  ‘I’m sorry…’ Rossana whispers.

  I slide over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. Her skin is cold and covered with little spots, and yet a few minutes ago it seemed as velvety and scented as a virgin’s. In such moments I’m capable of seeing what I want to see.

  ‘It’s just that it’s so many years since anyone asked me out to dinner.’

  ‘Well, if this is the effect it has I’ll withdraw the suggestion straight away!’

  She smiles and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.

  ‘It’s silly of me. I wasn’t expecting it. And anyway I’m going through a difficult time right now.’

  There, we’ve got to the nub. Now I should get up, put on my trousers, leave the money and disappear. She’s a prostitute; I’m a client. Our relationship should end there, with mutual satisfaction. But with a woman, even when you’re paying, if you spend too much time in her bed things get bloody complicated. So I’m obliged to formulate the question that she is silently waiting for: ‘Has something happened? Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘Come off it. I don’t want to bother you with my problems – you’ve got enough of your own. And besides, you come here to relax, not to listen to other people’s troubles.’

  That’s right: I come here to relax, I pay and I don’t want to hear anybody’s problems. Quite right. But, who knows why, this evening I’m curious about Rossana’s difficulties. And I haven’t listened to anyone’s problems for ages.