The Day Before Happiness by Erri De Luca

Author:Erri De Luca
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141394145
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

I want to go far, far away

So no one can find me, not even the wind

So no one can find me, not even the wind

Not even the sun, which travels far.

It was the nursery rhyme of a young peasant from the Marches who’d been in the next bunk over in the hold. After all his twenty years in Argentina, Don Gaetano remembered the voyage and the ocean. The wish of the boy who’d scaled the orphanage gate to go and see the lighted ships at anchor in the bay had been fulfilled.

‘A voyage is something you make by sea, in a ship – not in a train. The horizon must be empty and should separate sea and sky. There can’t be anything around, and the immensity must bear down on you. That’s a voyage.

‘Some of them cried. Although misery had compelled them to go, still their loss gnawed at them. Apart from a few – the worst ones – no one had any spirit of adventure. The money for their tickets had been collected from several families’ savings. It was an investment in the future, and the return would be the success of their relative, whose alarm at this overwhelming duty, the obligation to make a fortune, was as unnerving as the sea was vast. I told the ones who were crying that the sea was growing ever wider with the addition of their salty water. This voyage was meant to make them forget their point of departure. It lasted about a month, and at the end the men disembarked ready, their heads held high, noses in the air.’

And that Saturday I broke my nose. I’d thrown myself between all those feet to grab the ball. I was just in time but in the heat of the race, the other guy kicked anyway and got me in the face. I didn’t let go. The referee whistled a foul. When I put my hand to my nose I discovered it had shifted. It must have looked awful. The others were staring at me in alarm. A medical student took it between his fingers and straightened it with one brisk movement. The cartilage had been derailed and he put it back in place. He told me there was an indentation in the bone, a partial fracture. They put in a substitute and I held some ice to my nose to slow down the bleeding.

At the end of the game, my opponent came to apologize. I remembered a phrase from Don Gaetano’s stories and I said: ‘These sorts of things happen the day before.’

‘The day before what?’

‘The day before happiness.’

He went off, shaking his head.

I returned home with swollen, purple eyes. Don Gaetano made me a compress of salty water.

I slept, aching, in a flurry of dreams, and woke up while it was still dark. I felt nothing in my nose. It was plugged up with dried blood. I didn’t want to lose my nose around Anna. I wrapped

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