Sweet Dreams by Massimo Gramellini

highlight more and more with each reading, until the pages were completely colored in orange.
    I learned the following by heart:
    â€“ Björn Borg’s opening speech at a tennis course run by the Swedish Tennis Association: “If you lack self-confidence, you’re going to lose control of your movements”;
    â€“ Kipling’s “If ”: “If you can dream—and not make dreams your master / If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim”;
    â€“ the anonymous poem “Found in Old St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore,” which touched upon the same themes but with less literary style: “Do not be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is perennial as the grass.” As if on cue, the flower bed outside my apartment block had just been concreted over.
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    I even managed to turn The Great Gatsby into a self-help manual, identifying with the likeable crooked hero of thenovel tangled up with an unsuitable woman. Ever since childhood, Gatsby had been trying to improve himself, filling his pockets with reminders: “No more smoking or chewing; read one improving book or magazine per week.”
    I started to fill my own pockets too: “Do eleven sessions of press-ups a day and learn Spanish.”
    The two volumes for Commercial Law on my desk remained unopened, but for a month I studied Spanish and did a lot of press-ups.
    Then suddenly, without warning, I packed that in, like a stage set being dismantled, and abruptly put up another: “Listen to the whole of Mozart and read the complete works of Jung. After eleven weeks, give Alessia a call.”
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    But not even two weeks had gone by when Sveva burst into my room, shutting the volume of Jung and turning Mozart off.
    â€œDo you think I can’t see how you’re leading your father on? You’re not following your courses, you do the exams only when you feel like it—you may even have stopped taking them. Someone with your abilities—you should be ashamed of yourself.”
    She burst into tears.
    â€œI don’t think I deserve your tears,” I replied sententiously, but secretly pleased.
    â€œYour father and I are splitting up. He says he wants his freedom back. In a few years he’ll be as old as your grandfather was when he died, and he wants to make the most of the time left to him.”
    â€œDad’s scared of dying, and I’m scared of living. Perhaps we could swap.”
    â€œHe says we should leave him in peace and he’d be all right.”
    â€œAnd what do you want me to do about it?”
    â€œStudy! He says he’s unhappy because you won’t get on and take your degree. You’re a disappointment to him: he’s lost his faith in the future because of you.”
    â€œWe’re quits then. Can’t you see he’s just using me as an alibi to get his own way?”
    â€œIf I were your mother, I’d give you a good smack. I just hope that wherever she is now she can’t see the state you’ve got yourself into!”
    â€œDon’t even mention my mom, OK? Get out! Or I’ll go instead. That way you can get at each other’s throats without putting me in the middle.”
    That was it. I’d managed to break the last thread of human kindness in my life.
    Belfagor must have been really proud of my progress.I thought I heard him murmuring his usual instructions in my head:
    â€œYou’ll always be different from the others; no one will ever really love you.”
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    I remembered it was summertime. I fetched the Canadian tent from the cellar and went off to join my engineering chums on a campsite on the Adriatic. But if you’re sick in your soul, you can’t solve your problems just by changing hospital. I hated my friends, I hated the camping site, I hated the Adriatic and every other sea in the world. I hated myself.
    One morning I woke up with an