The Lying Life of Adults

by Elena Ferrante

  Once I was outside, in the square, the fresh air made me dizzy. I looked around as if I had come out of a theater after a powerfully absorbing movie. Not only did I not know how to get home but I didn’t care about getting there. I would have stayed here forever: slept under the portico, neither eating nor drinking, letting myself die thinking of Roberto. At that moment, no other affection or desire mattered to me in the least.

  But I heard someone calling my name: it was Vittoria, and she joined me. She used her most cloying tones to try to keep me, until she gave up and explained what I had to do to get back to San Giacomo dei Capri: the metro takes you to Piazza Amedeo and there you get the funicular, then once you’re at Piazza Vanvitelli you know how to go. When she saw me in a daze—what is it, you didn’t understand?—she offered to take me home in the 500, even though she had to go to lunch at Margherita’s. I politely refused, she started talking to me in exaggeratedly sentimental dialect, smoothing my hair, holding my arm, kissing me on the cheek a couple of times with wet lips, and I was even more convinced that she wasn’t a vengeful gorgon but a poor, lonely woman who wanted affection and who at that moment loved me especially because I had made her look good in Roberto’s eyes. You were great, she said, I’m studying this, I’m reading this other thing, great, great great. I felt guilty toward her, at least as much as my father surely did, and I wanted to make up for it, I reached into the pocket where I had the bracelet and offered it to her.

  “I didn’t want to give it to you,” I said, “it seemed to me that it was mine, but it belongs to you and no one but you should have it.”

  She wasn’t expecting my gesture, she looked at the bracelet with evident annoyance, as if it were a little snake or a bad omen. She said:

  “No, I gave it to you, for me it’s enough if you love me.”

  “Take it.”

  In the end, she accepted it, unwillingly, but she didn’t put it on her wrist. She stuck it in her purse and stood at the bus stop holding me tight, laughing, singing, until the bus arrived. I went up the steps as if each one were conclusive and I were about to make a surprise entrance into another story of mine and another life.

  I’d been on the bus for a few minutes, sitting next to the window, when I heard insistent honking. I saw that Rosario’s convertible had pulled up beside the bus in the passing lane. Corrado was waving, shouting, get off, Giannì, come on. They had been waiting for me, patiently hiding somewhere or other, all the time imagining that I would satisfy their every desire. I looked at them with sympathy, they seemed tenderly insignificant as they went by in the wind. Rosario, driving, gestured to me slowly to get off, Corrado continued to shout: we’ll wait for you at the next stop, we’ll have fun, and meanwhile he cast commanding glances at me, hoping that I would obey him. When I smiled absently and didn’t respond, Rosario, too, looked up to figure out what I meant to do. I shook my head no only to him, told him, moving my lips: I can’t.

  The convertible accelerated, leaving the bus behind.

  3.

  My mother was surprised that the trip to Caserta had lasted such a short time. What in the world, she asked idly, you’re already back, did something bad happen, did you fight? I could have not answered, gone to shut myself in my room as usual, put on some loud music, read and read and read about lost time or anything, but I didn’t. I confessed to her right away that I hadn’t gone to Caserta but to see Vittoria, and when I saw that she turned yellow with disappointment, I did something I hadn’t done for several years: I sat on her lap with my arms around her neck and kissed her lightly on her eyes. She resisted. She murmured that I was grown up and was heavy, she chastised me for the lie I’d told, for how I was dressed, the vulgar makeup, holding me tight around the waist with her thin arms. After a while, she asked me about Vittoria.

  “Did she do something that scared you?”

  “No.”

  “You seem upset.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “But your hands are cold, you’re sweaty. Are you sure nothing happened?”

  “Very sure.”

  She was surprised, she was alarmed, she was pleased, or maybe it was I who was mixing happiness, bewilderment, and worry thinking that they were her reactions. I never mentioned Roberto, I didn’t think I’d find the right words, and then I’d hate myself. Instead I explained to her that I’d heard some talks in the church that I’d liked.

  “Every Sunday,” I told her, “the priest invites this really smart friend of his, they set up a table at the end of the central nave, and he talks.”

  “About what?”

  “I can’t repeat it now.”

  “You see, you’re upset?”

  I wasn’t upset, or rather I was in a state of happy agitation, and that condition didn’t go away even when she said uneasily that a few days earlier, completely by chance, she had met Mariano and, knowing I was on an outing to Caserta, had invited him for coffee that afternoon.

  Not even that news could change my mood, I asked:

  “Do you want to be with Mariano?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why is it that you all can never tell the truth?”

  “Giovanna, I swear to you, it is the truth: there is nothing and never was anything between me and him. But since your father has started to see him again, why shouldn’t I?”

  That last bit of information upset me. My mother told me briefly that it was a recent change, the two former friends had met once when Mariano came to see his daughters and, for love of the children, they had spoken politely. I burst out:

  “If my father has re-established relations with a friend he betrayed, why doesn’t he examine his conscience and re-establish relations with his sister?”

  “Because Mariano is a civilized person and Vittoria isn’t.”

  “That’s ridiculous. It’s because Mariano teaches at the university, makes him feel good, gives him a certain status, while Vittoria makes him feel like what he is.”

  “You realize how you’re speaking of your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then stop it.”

  “I’m saying what I think.”

  I went to my room, taking refuge in the thought of Roberto. It was Vittoria who had introduced me to him. He was part of my aunt’s world, not my parents’. Vittoria spent time with him, appreciated him, had approved, if not encouraged, his engagement to Giuliana. In my eyes that made her more sensitive, more intelligent than the people my parents had spent their lives with, Mariano and Costanza at the top of the list. I shut myself in the bathroom in a state of nervous tension, I carefully took off my makeup, I put on a pair of jeans and a white shirt. What would Roberto say, if I told him what had happened in my house, my parents’ behavior, that recomposition in the midst of the rot of an old friendship. The violent buzz of the intercom startled me. A few minutes passed, I heard Mariano’s voice, my mother’s, I hoped she wouldn’t assert herself and summon me. She didn’t, I started studying, but there was no escape, I heard her call: Giovanna, come and say hello to Mariano. I huffed, closed the book, went.

  I was struck by how thin Angela and Ida’s father was, he was a match for my mother. Seeing him I felt sorry for him, but it didn’t last. I was irritated that his excited gaze fell immediately on my breasts, just like Corrado and Rosario, even if this time my chest was completely covered by the shirt.

  “You’ve grown so much,” he exclaimed, with emotion, and wanted to hug me, kiss me on the cheeks.

  “Want a chocolate? Mariano brought them.”

  I refused, I said I had to study.

  “I know you’re busy making up for your lost year,” he said.

  I nodded yes, I muttered: I’m going. Before leaving I felt his gaze on me again and I was ashamed. I thought how Roberto had looked only at my eyes.

  4.

  I soon understood what had happened: I had fallen in l
ove at first sight. I had read enough about that type of love, but, I don’t know why, I never used that expression to myself. I preferred to consider Roberto—his face, his voice, his hands around mine—a sort of miraculous consolation for my agitated days and nights. Naturally, I wanted to see him again, but after the first upheaval—that unforgettable moment when seeing him had coincided with a violent need for him—a sort of calm realism had taken over. Roberto was a man, I a girl. Roberto loved someone else, who was very beautiful and good. Roberto was inaccessible, he lived in Milan, I didn’t know anything about what was important to him. The only possible contact was Vittoria, and Vittoria was a complicated person, apart from the fact that every attempt to see her would be painful to my mother. So I let the days pass, uncertain what to do. Then I thought that I surely had the right to a life of my own without having to constantly worry about my parents’ reactions, especially since they weren’t worrying at all about mine. And I couldn’t resist, one afternoon when I was alone in the house I called my aunt. I regretted not having accepted her invitation to lunch, I seemed to have wasted an important opportunity, and I wanted to cautiously find out when I could go and visit her with some certainty of seeing Roberto. I was sure I would be warmly welcomed, after giving back the bracelet, but Vittoria wouldn’t let me get a word in. I learned from her that the day after the lie about Caserta my mother had called her to say, in her feeble way, that she was to leave me alone, that she wasn’t ever to see me again. In light of which she was now furious. She insulted her sister-in-law, shouted that she would wait outside the house to stab her. She yelled: how could she dare to say that I am doing all I can to steal you from her when it’s all of you taking away from me every reason for living, you, your father, your mother, and you, too, you thought that all you had to do was give me back the bracelet and everything would be fine. She shouted: if you’re on your parents’ side don’t call me ever again, get it? And, breathless, she went on to gasp a series of obscenities about her brother and sister-in-law, after which she hung up.

  I tried to call her back to tell her that I was on her side, that in fact I was extremely angry about that phone call of my mother’s, but she didn’t answer. I felt depressed, just then I needed her affection, I was afraid that without her I would never have the chance to see Roberto. And meanwhile time slipped away, days of grim unhappiness, then of bitter reflection. I began to think of him as of the silhouette of a very distant mountain, a bluish substance contained within heavy lines. Probably—I said to myself—no one in Pascone has ever seen him with the clarity I was capable of there in the church. He was born in that area, grew up there, is a childhood friend of Tonino. They all appreciate him as a particularly luminous fragment of that bleak background, and Giuliana herself must be in love with him not for what he really is but for their common origins and the aura of someone who, though he came from the foul-smelling Industrial Zone, went to school in Milan and has managed to distinguish himself. Except that—I persuaded myself—precisely the aspects of him that they’re able to love prevent them from seeing him seriously and recognizing his uniqueness. Roberto mustn’t be treated like an ordinary person with special abilities, Roberto must be protected. For example, if I were Giuliana, I would fight with all my strength to keep him from coming to lunch at my house, I would prevent Vittoria, Margherita, Corrado from spoiling him for me and spoiling the reasons he chose me. I would keep him outside that world, I would say to him: let’s run away, I’ll come to you in Milan. But Giuliana, in my view, isn’t truly aware of her good fortune. As far as I’m concerned, if I succeeded even just in becoming his friend, I would never make him waste his time with my mother, who is surely much more presentable than Vittoria and Margherita. And I would especially avoid any possible encounter with my father. The energy that Roberto gives off needs care in order not to be dissipated, and I feel that I would be able to assure him that care. Oh yes, become his friend, only that, and show him that, somewhere inside me unknown even to myself, I possess the qualities he needs.

  5.

  Around that time I began to think that if I wasn’t beautiful physically maybe I could be beautiful spiritually. But how? I had by now discovered that I didn’t have a good character, I inclined to malicious words and actions. If I had good qualities, I was suppressing them, deliberately, in order not to feel that I was a pathetic girl from a good family. Now I had the impression that I had found the path to my salvation but didn’t know how to take it and maybe didn’t deserve it.

  I was in that state when, one afternoon, completely by chance, I ran into Don Giacomo, the priest from Pascone. I was in Piazza Vanvitelli, I no longer remember why, I was walking along, thinking of my own affairs, and almost bumped into him. Giannina, he exclaimed. Finding him there cancelled out for a few seconds the square, the buildings, and threw me again into the church, sitting beside Vittoria, Roberto standing behind the table. When everything returned to its place, I was glad that the priest had recognized me and remembered my name. It made me so happy that I hugged him as if he were a friend from elementary school. Then I started to feel intimidated, I began to stammer and addressed him with the formal lei, but he insisted on the informal tu. He was going to take the Montesanto funicular, I offered to walk with him and immediately went on, too gaily, to declare my enthusiasm for the experience I’d had in the church.

  “When will Roberto come back to speak?” I asked.

  “Did you like his talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you notice how much he manages to pull out from the Gospel?”

  I didn’t remember anything—what did I know about the Gospels—only Roberto had remained stamped in my mind. But I nodded just the same, I said:

  “No teacher in school is absorbing the way he is, I’d come to hear him again.”

  The priest darkened, and only at that point I realized that, although he was the same person, something in his aspect had changed: he had a yellowish complexion, his eyes had reddened.

  “Roberto won’t be back,” he said, “and in church there won’t be any more initiatives of that type.”

  I was really upset.

  “Didn’t people like them?”

  “My superiors and some of the parishioners didn’t.”

  Now I was disappointed and angry, I said:

  “Isn’t your superior God?”

  “Yes, but it’s his lieutenants who call the shots.”

  “So you address him directly.”

  Don Giacomo made a gesture with his hand as if to signal an indeterminate distance, and I realized that on his fingers, on the back of his hand, and even on his wrist he had broad violet stains.

  “God is outside,” he said smiling.

  “And prayer?”

  “I’m worn out, apparently by now prayer is my trade. What about you? Have you been praying, even if you don’t believe in it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did it help?”

  “No, it’s a magic that ultimately isn’t successful.”

  Don Giacomo was silent. I realized I had said something wrong, I wanted to apologize.

  “Sometimes I say everything that goes through my head,” I muttered. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? You’ve brightened my day, lucky I ran into you.”

  He looked at his right hand as if it hid a secret.

  “Are you ill?” I asked.

  “I’ve just been to a doctor friend here on Via Kerbaker, it’s only a rash.”

  “What causes it?”

  “When you’re made to do things you don’t want to and you obey, it works on your mind, it works on everything.”

  “Obedience is a skin disease?”

  He looked at me for a moment in bewilderment, he smiled.

  “Good for you, it’s exactly that, a skin disease. And you are a good cure, don’t change, always say what comes to your mind. A little more conversa
tion with you and I bet I’ll improve.”

  I said impulsively:

  “I want to improve, too. What should I do?”