100 Days of Happiness by Fausto Brizzi Page B

and humiliation of the medical spiral. It’s a round robin of treatments that puts money in the pockets of private clinics and leads the patient by the hand into the afterlife, but only after emptying his pockets. I’m not falling for that. I promise.
    â€œThis afternoon I’m having another CAT scan. Then we can decide,” I say, in the plural to make it clear to her that the importance of acting as a couple is still fundamental to me. Paola says nothing. I don’t know how to make her feel better when I’m feeling so miserable myself. So I say nothing.
    I take out the Dino Zoff notebook and I write in red ink:
    Get Paola to forgive me.
    I’m going to have two chief objectives. If I manage to beat the cancer but Paola won’t forgive me, I’m a dead man anyway.

−94
    I ’ve just received the results from the new CAT scan.
    I don’t have the nerve to open them.
    I go out.
    I decide to go see my friend Roberto, a bookseller. Well, maybe friend is too strong a word. Acquaintance. A close acquaintance. I haven’t been to see him in months, because I’ve been too busy with the countless troubles you’ve been hearing about.
    Roberto, looking good at age fifty-five, has a little shop selling books and graphic novels in a small street around the corner from Campo de’ Fiori. A hole in the wall, a dusty picture window where you can see the latest bestsellers on display, from Giorgio Faletti to Dan Brown, side by side with classics in dated, yellowed versions. Over the years, with his help, I’ve managed to complete my collection of Diabolik comic books, my favorite. He sells everything at cover price. Even if the books were printed fifty years ago, and the cover price is 150 lire, Roberto converts the price to euros—say, 25 cents—and gives you exact change, down to the last penny. Best of all, in a corner there’s a shelf with a few very special books. These are novels that Roberto has written over the past thirty years, between one customer and the next. There are dozens of them. Every one of them spiral-bound, each individually typewritten. Every book is a unique copy. Fixed price: 20 euros. If he sells one, the contents are gone forever. The first time he told me, I was positive he was just kidding me.
    â€œWait, really? You write novels and give them away without even photocopying them?”
    â€œWhy on earth should I copy them?”
    â€œWell, I don’t know . . . so you don’t lose them for good? To make a little more money on them?”
    â€œWho cares! I was happy while I wrote them. I was elsewhere. The twenty euros is just to cover costs, to pay for paper and typewriter ribbon.”
    It struck me as an incredibly poetic folly. Writing for the pleasure of writing, without dreams of glory, hopes of bestsellers or literary prizes.
    Today I leaf through one with a blue cover, an adventure story in the style of Jules Verne. Then I look at another one, a bodice ripper set against the background of the First World War, like something the Italian romance novelist Liala might have written. In his career, Roberto has worked in every style, depending on his mood and his whims. Books that no one’s every heard of, books that will never become classics. They’ve only been perused by a select group of his personal customers who’ve been lucky enough to buy them. I bought a few, over the years, about a dozen, and I always enjoyed them enormously. They’re nothing special—let’s be clear about it—but they’re enjoyable reads, and in any case, the magic of reading (and owning) the only copy of a novel is priceless.
    I sit there listening to the clickety-clack of his Olivetti typewriter for several minutes, as enchanted as if I were watching Chopin performing live. Then I preorder his next bestseller. The entire print run sells out in less than a second, a spectacular success.
    After the walk I go back