Read Online 100 Days of Happiness by Fausto Brizzi - Free Book Online Page B

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?”
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œBe my guest.”
    With his beak, the bird breaks off a slightly darker chunk and swallows it.
    â€œWhat kind of work did your girlfriend do?” I ask, my curiosity piqued.
    â€œShe 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.”
    â€œAnd then what happened?”
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œI’m sorry to hear that—”
    â€œThat’s life. Can I have another piece? I’ll take it to the little ones.”
    â€œGo 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.

−99
    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