The Temptation to Be Happy by Lorenzo Marone

Author:Lorenzo Marone
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786072887
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2017-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

The Second of Three Unattainable Women

We think life never ends and there’s always something around the next corner that will change everything. It’s a kind of deception that we practise on ourselves, so that we don’t get too cross with ourselves for failures, lost opportunities, missed trains. For example, I spent forty years waiting to get close to Daria, a great flame of my youth that flickered alive after an evening talking politics in an old basement where we young people came together with the insalubrious notion of changing the world. The encounter didn’t change the world, but it did change our lives. At the time I was a boy full of ideas and with great self-esteem (which, in truth, I’ve never lost with the passing years), thanks to which I managed to win the trust of Daria, a woman with a sound head on her shoulders and a slightly posh family behind her. She was more cultivated and more elegant than me, but she lacked a fundamental requirement that I had: confidence. She wrote stories and was about to finish a novel about a group of young people fighting to make Italy a better country. A kind of autobiography. It certainly wasn’t an original idea, nor was it particularly well written, but I inspired her to believe in herself and finish the novel as soon as possible.

They say that only a real love has the power to change the course of people’s lives. Mine, after meeting Daria, underwent remarkable changes. She was the one who persuaded me to accept the job with Volpe, which would later lead me to bump into Caterina. I have her to thank for everything that happened later. Or to blame, perhaps. Either way, Daria gave me a bit of her common sense, and I swapped it for my tireless optimism and enthusiasm, two qualities which, unlike self-esteem, I have squandered away in the course of my life. Of those months that we spent together, I still carry within me her loud, infectious laughter, her cold little fingers that were easily clutched, her mandarin-orange perfume that I found on my clothes in the evening. We were happy, and yet – I don’t know why – we never kissed, perhaps convinced that we would be able to do it some time or other, or perhaps wishing to prolong the pleasure of waiting. In the end, we were savouring the best phase of a relationship, when you just have to touch the other person’s skin to feel your heart beating.

To cut a long story short, Daria finished her novel and went in search of a publisher. I remember that after the first few refusals she told me she was going to give up, and for a few days I tried to persuade her not to give up, and not to be put off by difficulties. It’s funny to think about it today, but I was just repeating to her what I said to myself in bed

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