I’ve burned a few CDs with compilations of my favorite songs. I don’t want to listen to songs chosen at random by a radio network on this journey. I love the English word compilation, it evokes my first high school crushes and my summers at the beach all at once. My generation was the last one to be able to make compilations on tape cassettes, and to have the thrill of watching them demagnetize the first time you leave them on the car dashboard.
My compilations are completely anarchic, with no other criterion than my own personal taste. Here’s what we have today:
“Romeo and Juliet”
DIRE STRAITS
“Through the Barricades”
SPANDAU BALLET
“Meraviglioso”
DOMENICO MODUGNO
“Yesterday”
THE BEATLES
“Rain and Tears”
APHRODITE’S CHILD
“Un giorno credi”
EDOARDO BENNATO
“Can’t Smile Without You”
BARRY MANILOW
“In My Room”
BEACH BOYS
“Father and Son”
CAT STEVENS
“Good-bye My Lover”
JAMES BLUNT
I realize midway through listening to the playlist that they’re all pretty gloomy hits. I eject the CD and tune in to a local radio station doing prank calls. We’re heading for Molise, which is more or less Italy’s Liechtenstein, a beautiful region that is overlooked by the tourist guidebooks. There are no famous monuments and no one famous was born there, unless you count Robert De Niro’s grandparents. Just one statistic to give you an idea of how much better life is around here: there are 72 inhabitants per square kilometer here, while in Latium there are 330; in Lombardy, 412; and in Campania, 429. There’s elbow room, a value we’ve forgotten we ever had.
The hotel we choose is a family-run place with just five rooms, only one of which looks out over the beach. I gladly give the kids that room. Paola and I take the “Gardenia Suite” with a view of the largely deserted beachfront promenade. The proprietors are a couple in their seventies, Sabino and Alba, who run the place with the assistance of their three children and a couple of grandchildren. Sabino tells us that he inherited the place from his father and he’s managed to talk his descendants into coming to work and live together. A lucky man in this age when family ties and emotions are scattered to the four winds.
“If you’re interested, there’s a dance contest tonight in town,” Sabino says, with the tone of someone offering me a ticket to the World Cup finals.
“What kind of dance?” I inquire.
“All kinds. It’s an overall contest. The mayor’s on the jury, and so is a guy whose name I can’t remember, but he danced with Carla Fracci.”
“How do you sign up?”
Paola breaks in: “I don’t think that dancing is a very—”
I don’t let her finish, and I repeat the question: “How do you sign up?”
“Directly in the piazza, my brother-in-law is there taking names and issuing numbers. Three euros, plus you get a beer. If the signora doesn’t want to dance, there’s also a market with stalls: it’s the festival of the town’s patron saint. My wife doesn’t dance either because three months ago she slipped on a rock and broke her thigh. She’s still doing physical therapy.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think we’ll go,” my spouse says brusquely, definitely sour toned today. “The trip was a long one, my husband listens to terrible music, and the children are exhausted.”
“In any case, it starts at nine-thirty,” says Sabino with a smile that reveals he doesn’t see the dentist very often.
* * *
Two hours later, I’m with Lorenzo and Eva at the table, signing all four of us up for the contest. We voted democratically, 3 to 1, and Paola was forced to come with us. Among other things, the hotel kitchen is closed because the whole happy family that normally runs it will be competing, aside from Alba, who, now that I notice, does limp slightly. Sabino is thrilled we came.
“Which are the couples? You have to sign up by couples.”
“I think I’ll dance with my wife, and the kids will dance together.”
“No, I’m not dancing,” Paola breaks in, “I came but I won’t dance. Anyway, Lorenzo doesn’t seem particularly interested.”
My young firstborn heir is already standing by a foosball table where the local kids are having a tournament.
I turn to Eva: “Shall we dance, just you and I?”
“But I don’t know how to dance, Papà.”
My sage young daughter doesn’t have dance skills among her many gifts, though it would only do her good to learn of folly and lack of inhibition that’s an intrinsic part of dancing.
“I’ll teach you,” I venture as if I were Nureyev and not Baloo the Bear.
We’re the only couple with a two-foot height difference. We don’t pass unobserved. I understand that in this town the contest is taken seriously. At the end of each dance, the jury casts its votes, in a brief and mysterious conclave.
At first Eva is a little cautious: we improvise a shy version of the twist. I look around and there are a few couples who look as if they came straight out of Dirty Dancing.
When it’s time to do the mazurka I’m already sweating to an embarrassing extent. Paola wanders through the market stalls, shooting us a glance every now and then. Lorenzo cheerfully ignores us, by now completely absorbed in the challenge of a furious foosball match.
Ten minutes later Eva and I abandon the piazza entirely. Speaking metaphorically, let it be clear. My little girl and I are dancing alone on a mountaintop, and all around is nothing but snow and silence. We dance wildly, effortlessly, almost breathlessly. A state of euphoria unlike anything I’ve experienced in years and that I imagine my daughter’s never felt before in her life. I’ve never seen her as happy as she was during the rock ’n’ roll sequence, as I slid her through my arms, remembering the old moves from my high school dances. She’s light, and that’s a good thing. We go on dancing, paying no attention to the world around us. It’s just the two of us. Me and my small, out-of-control princess.
Before I can have a complete cardiocirculatory collapse, a voice over a megaphone comes to my rescue.
“Stop dancing! The winners will be announced in five minutes!”
I let myself flop down onto a bench, next to my partner.
“Were we good, Papà?”
“We were outstanding.”
“Do you think we’ll win?”
“I don’t think so—they wouldn’t let an outsider win,” I say, cushioning the blow, sensing in advance a less than stellar ranking.
Paola and Lorenzo catch up with us. I discover that they were cheering us on during the last few dances. My wife hands us two slices of cool watermelon. I love her for that too.
With our faces plunged into the fiery red pulp we listen as the jury proclaims the winning couple. It’s the mayor himself who does the announcing, to a chorus of whistles and applause.
“The couple of Sabino and Gabriella Antinori wins with one hundred twenty-eight points.”
The winner is Sabino with his daughter. Seeing that the woman’s husband is one of the contest organizers, my suspicion of an Italian-style con job is more than legitimate. The two of them celebrate as if they’d just won an Oscar.
“Here’s the chart with the overall rankings,” concludes the mayor.
Eva immediately runs to see. I don’t have the strength to go with her. She comes back thirty seconds later, all dejected.
“We came in last,” she reports.
“For sure they cheated,” I comment. “The next time we’ll practice and it’ll go better. You want another slice of watermelon?”
She replies with an enthusiastic yes, instantly forgetting the terrible contest results. I take her hand and we run to the watermelon stand, under Paola’s worried gaze.
“But now you need to get some rest.”
I ignore her and I order two more super megaslices of watermelon. I’m a very satisfied father. Today Eva learned to let loose and to accept losing. Two things that will come in very handy in the future. I try to decipher from her features the woman she will become. A very beautiful woman who will turn the heads of all the men lucky enough to meet her. I’m struck by the thought that I’ll never see her get married. I’ll never get to walk her to the altar. That was supposed to be my job.
A tear rolls down my cheek.
“Are you crying, Papà?”
“No,” I assure her, “that’s just sweat.”
Then I hand her the super megaslice. With a smile.