A Lucky Man

“Hello, yeah? Tell me, Iole. Did you order the outfit? You did the right thing. The birthday of the twins? Yes, of course I remember the cake. Your husband? Did he get any disability points? Um … how many? So many, but eh, wow … “

Why had that “wow” come out of her so drawn and envious, Tilde wondered, and what was that sudden melancholy? “Well, well, I’m happy for you.” She put the phone down with a growing sense of discontent.

“Tilde, love …”

From the bedroom, Gino, her husband, threw her a kiss on the tips of his fingers and smiled with his beautiful teeth. He had just repudiated the tennis shorts in favor of the jogging suit. “I’m going out, love.”

“Yes, go, go.”

Tilde Tacconi went in search of a handkerchief because she knew that soon the lump in her throat would evolve into bitter tears. She leaned out of the window and looked at Gino who, as soon as he came out of the door, was already beginning to run. She stared at him with all possible attention, shielded the sun with her open hand, squinted to see better.

No way. Gino was hopelessly young, handsome and healthy.

Every day, pounding like a colt at the start, he punched out at the stroke of five p.m. A few minutes after, he was already on the tennis court, where he never missed a shot. The idol of friends, jumped and darted on the playground, while from the edge the ladies threw eager glances at his muscles.

Tilde wasn’t jealous, no. Tilde was ashamed.

A man who earned a thousand euros a month was ridiculous with that sailboat tan. The clerks, the scribblers lost in the basement of the company like him, do not have the audacity to be beautiful and happy as if they owned yachts and racing cars.

The tears overflowed, hot and inexorable. How lucky were her friends, Iole, Vanda, Sirte, to have those bald and asthmatic husbands, pot-bellied and colitic, who walked around with the digestive in their pocket and the pressure pills in their wallet. All the fortunes happened to the others.

The husband of that gossiper Iole had raised his bronchitis like a little child, until he had a first rate emphysema, capable of giving him all those points of disability in one fell swoop. Now, you know, in a month’s time he would have made a big step forward and then Iole would have bragged about their new position! Damn her, damn her husband and those beasts of her twins.

What would it have cost Gino to get a little sick, maybe just a little to make her happy, to snatch a few points from the annual company checkup?

Nothing.

Each time the doctor complimented: “Congratulations, Tacconi, you have hawk eyes, perfect lungs and an athlete’s heart.”

And that idiot Gino would return home happy. “The doctor assured me that I am healthy as a horse,” he informed her, squeezing her so tightly as to take her breath away, not understanding that for her those words were a stab.

Ah, but her mother had always said that Gino would never lift a finger to make a career! In those days, she, blinded by love, hadn’t given that any thought. She believed that in the end Gino would settle down, he would work hard to earn more.

Instead, nothing. Tennis and jogging, jogging and gym, gym and swimming pool. A life sentence.

In the evening, after dinner, Tilde told Gino what that had happened to Iole Grimaldi. She told him how sad and unhappy she felt. She reminded him of his duties as a father. She explained that the children at school were ashamed, having to confess to the children of lawyers and engineers that their father was a very modest corporate employee.

“But, love”, Gino defended himself, “the children grow up well, we have no debts, the house is our. We are happy even so. “

“You!” roared Tilde, “you are happy! You are as happy as a clam with that miserable job, with these poor clothes, with the rags your wife is wearing. Oh, sure, because the young gentleman has a good game of tennis and a run in the park. Ah, but my mother was right! Why didn’t I listen to her? “

For hours Tilde cried, screamed, appealed to a sense of duty, revived the magic of their first meeting, threatened divorce. Finally, around midnight, a dazed and sleepy Gino admitted that, perhaps, it was a bit immature for a man of thirty-five to still be so athletic and healthy.

Tilde, then, got up from the sofa and disappeared for a few moments. She returned with a mysterious package, which she lovingly unwrapped. A bottle appeared and she held it up with trembling hands, like a relic. “Here, honey.”

“What is it, dear?” he asked, yawning.

Tilde kissed him devoutly on the cheek. “Oh, love, it’s nothing. It’s a little thing that I kept in store for you, for when you made up your mind. You don’t know how much I paid it, Gino. “

“Yes, but what is it?”

“But, nothing, I told you. It’s … it’s just raving acid. “

Gino opened his eyes wide, jumped so much that he catapulted the cat off the sofa. “Raving acid! But it’s paralyzing! You’ve gone crazy, you won’t want me to take that stuff! “

Tilde had reached the height of patience. Such ingratitude on Gino’s part seemed cruel to her. She tried to keep her tone calm. “Come on, Gino, you won’t feel anything. It will be a moment. It will give you a very slight deficit, and you will get some points. Come on, do it for me, open your mouth, look, I’ll put sugar in it too, be a good boy! “

Gino rolled his eyes, shook his head, pursed his lips, so much so that Tilde was forced to make him the stink eyes and remind him that, if he didn’t decide to open that damned mouth, she would ask for custody of the children.

Before swallowing the sugar, wet with three drops of raving acid, Gino hugged his wife tightly. “I love you so much, Tilde. I love you and the boys.“

The next morning he woke up with all the symptoms of a facial hemiparesis. His beautiful left eye, of a spectacular blue, now stood there, half closed and encrusted with milky cispa. His mouth had dropped down a few feet, his tongue protruded a little at the corner of his lips.

The friends were very surprised and disappointed, the doctors did not understand the misfortune. He immediately applied and obtained the disability points. The advancement was automatic in his administration.

Not being able to play tennis, because of the eye that didn’t frame the ball as before, Gino stayed longer in the office. The boss was pleased with his new zeal. They bought the fridge with the ice crusher. Tilde bought some new clothes for herself and the children.

A few peaceful months passed, then, one evening, Tilde mentioned an apartment she had visited in the afternoon. It was in the historic center, she said, and also very bright. The boys would have separate bedrooms as they wished.

“But, love, we can’t afford it,” smiled Gino.

“No, of course, with what you earn now, we just can’t, but if you could take another small step forward …”

Half an hour after Gino was there, with his tongue out, swallowing five drops of raving acid. During the night he had an epileptic seizure and they took him to the hospital. He healed quickly but his arm and leg were impeded. They immediately entrusted him with a sector of his own to direct. He got a mahogany desk and a secretary to replace his hand.

They moved into the new apartment, the children were enrolled in a private school and Tilde bought herself a fur. On Sundays they would go out for a walk on the Corso, Tilde strut in the new mink, while Gino trailed his leg behind like a broom.

And then his career continued. Every year Gino got a blow that crippled an arm, an eye, his speech, according to the number of drops his caring wife poured on the sugar.

Stroke after stroke, Gino Tacconi rose to the top of the company administration.

As every morning, Miss Elizabeth pushed the director’s wheelchair into his pharaonic office. She lit a branded cigar for him and poured the pills into the glass. The director rolled his eyes, moaned thanks and swallowed a sip of water with a tablet.

“If you doesn’t need me anymore, I’ll go, sir.”

“Uuuughh …”

“Good work to you too, sir”.

Director Tacconi was left alone. He inhaled a few mouthfuls of the cigar, fighting the phlegm that clogged his larynx. Rolling his eyes, he could see the side of the desk where his family pictures were on display. His boys, now grown up, smiled proudly in their graduation hats. With maturity, Tilde had become, if possible, even more beautiful. The mountain outfit suited her, in the photo taken in Cortina with the ski instructor. He was really proud of his family.

Really, Gino Tacconi could be called a lucky man.

The cigar unglued from his lips and fell into his lap. He fidgeted in his chair just enough to slide it to the floor before it burned his pants. A tear, a single one, followed the outline of his nose before reaching his chin, where it swayed, undecided.

His hands were unable to dry it.