The Lying Life of Adults

by Elena Ferrante

  9.

  At that time, without deciding to—on the contrary, as though I were resuming an old routine—I went back to studying, even though school seemed to me even more than before a place of crude banter. I started getting good grades and at the same time forced myself to be friendlier toward my classmates, and I began going out with them on Saturday nights, though I avoided establishing friendships. Naturally, I could never completely eliminate my sharp tones, aggressive outbursts, hostile silences. And yet it seemed to me that I could become better. Sometimes I stared at a pot, a glass, a spoon, or even a stone on the sidewalk, a dry leaf, and marveled at its shape, whether it was crafted or appeared in its natural state. Streets in Rione Alto that I had known since childhood I now examined as if I were seeing them for the first time, stores, passersby, eight-story buildings, balconies that were white stripes against ochre or green or blue walls. The black lava paving stones of Via San Giacomo dei Capri on which I had walked countless times, the old gray-pink or rust-colored structures, the gardens. The same thing happened with people: teachers, neighbors, shopkeepers, passersby on the streets of the Vomero. I was amazed by a gesture, a look, the expression on a face. These were moments when everything seemed to have a secret depth and it was up to me to discover it. But it didn’t last. Although I tried to resist, what prevailed was a sense of annoyance at everything, a tendency to scathing judgments, an urge to quarrel. I don’t want to be like that, I said to myself, especially in a state of half sleep, and yet I was that, and realizing that it was the only way I could express myself—harsh, mean—sometimes pushed me not to rectify things but, with a treacherous pleasure, to do worse. I thought: if I’m not lovable, fine, let them not love me; nobody knows what I carry inside me day and night, and I took refuge in the thought of Roberto.

  And yet, with pleasure, with surprise, I realized that, in spite of my outbursts, my classmates, both girls and boys, sought me out, invited me to parties, seemed to appreciate even my abusiveness. It was thanks to this new climate, I think, that I managed to keep Corrado and Rosario at bay. Of the two, the first to show up again was Corrado. He appeared outside school, he said:

  “Let’s take a walk in the Floridiana.”

  I wanted to refuse, but to interest the girls who were looking on I nodded agreement, though when he put his arm around my shoulders I slipped out. At first, he tried to make me laugh, and I laughed out of politeness, but when he tried to draw me off the paths, in among the bushes, I said no, first nicely, then decisively.

  “Aren’t we going together?” he asked, sincerely surprised.

  “No.”

  “What do you mean no? What about the things we did?”

  “What things?”

  He was embarrassed.

  “You know.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You said they were fun.”

  “I was lying.”

  To my surprise, he seemed intimidated. He kept insisting, trying, bewildered, to kiss me. Then he gave up, turned mopey, muttered: I don’t understand you, you’re insulting me. We went to sit on a white step, facing a Naples that seemed beautiful under a transparent dome, outside was the blue sky and inside were vapors, as if all the stones in the city were breathing.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said.

  “What mistake?”

  “You think you’re better than me, you don’t understand who I am.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Wait and see.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “The one who won’t wait, Giannì, is Rosario.”

  “What does Rosario have to do with it?”

  “He’s in love with you.”

  “Come on.”

  “It’s true. You led him on and now he’s sure you love him—he talks all the time about your boobs.”

  “He’s wrong, tell him I love somebody else.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  He insisted, I tried to change the subject, and he put an arm around my shoulders again.

  “Am I the other guy?”

  “No.”

  “You wouldn’t have done all those nice things if you didn’t love me.”

  “I’m telling you it’s true.”

  “Then you’re a slut.”

  “If I want, sure.”

  I thought of asking about Roberto, but I knew Corrado hated him, that he would cut the conversation short with a few offensive remarks, so I held off and tried to get there through Giuliana.

  “She’s so beautiful,” I said praising his sister.

  “Are you kidding, she’s getting so skinny she looks like a hollowed-out corpse, you’ve never seen her when she wakes up in the morning.”

  He tossed out a lot of vulgar remarks, he said that Giuliana was now acting like a goody-goody, to hold on to her fiancé with his university degree, but there was nothing goody about her. If a person has a sister, he concluded, he loses the desire for women, because he knows you females are in every way worse than us males.

  “Then take your hands off me and don’t try to kiss me again.”

  “What does that have to do with it, I’m in love.”

  “And if you’re in love, you don’t see me?”

  “I see you but I forget you’re like my sister.”

  “It’s the same for Roberto: he doesn’t see Giuliana the way you see her, he sees her the way you see me.”

  He was annoyed, the subject irked him.

  “What do you care what Roberto sees, he’s blind, he doesn’t understand anything about women.”

  “Maybe, but when he talks everybody listens to him.”

  “You, too?”

  “Come on.”

  “Only people who are stupid like him.”

  “So your sister is stupid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only you are intelligent?”

  “Me, you, and Rosario. He wants to see you.”

  I thought for a moment then said:

  “I have a ton of homework.”

  “He’ll get mad, he’s the son of Sargente the lawyer.”

  “He’s important?”

  “Important and dangerous.”

  “I don’t have time, Corrà, you two don’t study, I do.”

  “You only want to be with people who study?”

  “No, but there’s a real difference between you and—just for example—Roberto. Imagine if he has time to spare, he’s always got his head in a book.”

  “Again? Are you in love?”

  “Are you kidding.”

  “If Rosario starts thinking you’re in love with Roberto, he’ll either kill him or have him killed.”

  I said I absolutely had to go. I didn’t mention Roberto again.

  10.

  Not long afterward Rosario showed up outside school. I saw him right away, leaning on his convertible, tall, thin, with his forced smile, dressed with a display of wealth that among my classmates was considered vulgar. He didn’t signal his presence, it was as if he believed that if not him, certainly his yellow car couldn’t go unnoticed. And he was right, everyone looked at it admiringly. And naturally noticed me when, unwillingly but as if following a distant order, I went over to him. Rosario sat at the wheel with ostentatious cool, with equal cool I got in next to him.

  “You have to take me home immediately,” I said.

  “You’re the boss and I’m the slave,” he said.

  He started the engine and set off nervously, honking to make a path through the crowd of students.

  “You remember where I live?” I asked, suddenly alarmed because he was going up the street leading to San Martino.

  “On San Giacomo dei Capri.”

  “But this isn’t the way to San Giacomo dei Capri.”

  �
�We’ll go later.”

  He stopped on a narrow street near Sant’Elmo, turned and looked at me, his face still cheerful.

  “Giannì,” he said seriously, “I liked you as soon as I saw you. I wanted to tell you in person, in a quiet place.”

  “I’m ugly, go find a pretty girl.”

  “You’re not ugly, you’re a certain type.”

  “A certain type means I’m ugly.”

  “Come on, not even statues have boobs like yours.”

  He leaned over to kiss me on the mouth, I pulled back, avoiding his face.

  “We can’t kiss,” I said, “you’ve got buck teeth and your lips are too thin.”

  “So why have plenty of other girls kissed me?”

  “Obviously they didn’t have teeth, go get kissed by them.”

  “Don’t play at insulting me, Giannì, that’s not fair.”

  “I’m not the one who’s playing, it’s you. You’re always laughing and then I feel like joking.”

  “You know it’s the shape of my mouth. Inside I’m very serious.”

  “So am I. You tell me I’m ugly, and I say you have buck teeth. Now we’re even, take me home because my mother gets worried.”

  But he didn’t retreat, he stayed very close to me. He repeated that I was a type, the type he liked, and he complained in a low voice that I hadn’t understood how serious his intentions were. Then suddenly he raised his voice and said anxiously:

  “Corrado is a liar, he says you did certain things with him but I don’t believe it.”

  I tried to open the car door, I said angrily:

  “I have to go.”

  “Wait: if you did them with him, why not with me?”

  I lost my patience:

  “You’re really bugging me, Rosà, I don’t do anything with anyone.”

  “You’re in love with someone else.”

  “I’m not in love with anyone.”

  “Corrado says that since you saw Roberto Matese, you’ve turned stupid.”

  “I don’t even know who Roberto Matese is.”

  “I’m telling you: he’s someone who thinks he’s a big deal.”

  “Then it’s not the same Roberto I know.”

  “Trust me, it’s him. And if you don’t believe it, I’ll bring him right to you and we’ll see.”

  “You’ll bring him to me? You?”

  “Just say the word.”

  “And he’d come?”

  “No, not spontaneously. I’d have to force him.”

  “You’re ridiculous. No one forces the Roberto I know to do anything.”

  “Depends on the force. With the right force everybody does what they have to.”

  I looked at him, worried. He laughed, but his eyes were serious.

  “I don’t care about any Roberto or about Corrado or you,” I said.

  He looked intensely at my breasts, as if I were hiding something in my bra, then muttered:

  “Give me a kiss and I’ll take you home.”

  At that moment I was sure he would hurt me and yet, incongruously, I thought that, even if he was ugly, I liked him more than Corrado. For a second I saw him as a very bright demon who would grab my head in both hands and first forcibly kiss me, then beat me against the window until I was dead.

  “I’m not giving you anything,” I said. “Either you take me home or I get out and go.”

  He stared into my eyes for a very long time, then started the engine.

  “You’re the boss.”

  11.

  I discovered that the boys in my class also talked with interest about my large breasts. My deskmate, Mirella, told me, adding that a friend of hers who was a year ahead of us—his name was Silvestro, I remember, and he had a certain renown because he came to school on a motorbike that made everyone envious—had said in the courtyard, in a loud voice: her ass isn’t bad, either, just put a pillow over her face and you’d have a great fuck.

  I didn’t sleep that night, I wept in humiliation and rage. I felt like telling my father, an irritating thought left over from childhood, as a child I had imagined that he would confront any problem I had and solve it. But right afterward I thought of my mother, who had almost no bosom, and of Costanza, who had a round, full one, and said to myself that surely my father liked women’s breasts even more than Silvestro, Corrado, Rosario. He was like all men, and if I hadn’t been his daughter he would undoubtedly have talked about Vittoria in my presence with exactly the same contempt with which Silvestro had talked about me, he would have said she was ugly but had an enormous bosom, a firm ass, and Enzo must have put a pillow over her face. Poor Vittoria, to have my father for a brother: how rough men were, how brutal in every word they dedicated to love. They liked humiliating us, dragging us along their lewd path. I was discouraged, and in lightning flashes—even today, in moments of suffering I feel as if I had an electrical storm in my head—I went so far as to ask myself if Roberto was like that, if he expressed himself that way. It didn’t seem possible, and the mere fact that I had posed the question made me feel even worse. Surely, I thought, he speaks to Giuliana with gentle words and of course he desires her, but he desires her sweetly. I finally calmed down by imagining how gracious their relationship must be and vowing to find a way to love them both and all my life be the person to whom they would confide everything. Enough of bosom, ass, pillow. Who in the world was Silvestro, what did he know about me, he wasn’t even a brother who’d seen me as a child and knew the dailiness of my body, luckily I had no brothers. How could he have dared to talk like that, in front of everyone.

  I calmed down, but it took days for Mirella’s revelation to fade. One morning I was in class with my mind free of troubles. While I was sharpening a pencil, the bell for recess rang. I went into the hall and found myself facing Silvestro. He was a large kid, a lot taller than me, with very pale freckled skin. It was hot, he was wearing a short-sleeved yellow shirt. Without thinking I struck his arm with the point of my pencil, launching it with all my strength. And he screamed, a long scream like a seagull’s, and staring at his arm said: the point’s still in there. He started crying, I exclaimed, I was pushed, sorry, I didn’t do it on purpose. I looked at the pencil: I muttered, the point really broke, let me see.

  I was amazed. If I’d had a knife in my hands, what would I have done, would I have stuck it in his arm, or where? Silvestro, supported by his friends, dragged me to the principal, and I continued to defend myself even to her, swearing that someone had shoved me during the scuffle at recess. It seemed too humiliating to tell the story of the large bosom and the pillow, I couldn’t bear to seem like a girl who’s ugly and won’t admit it. When it was clear that Mirella wouldn’t speak up to explain my reasons I was really relieved. It was an accident, I repeated endlessly. The principal gradually got Silvestro to calm down, and summoned my parents.

  12.

  My mother took it in the worst way. She knew I had started studying again, and the decision I’d made to take the exam to make up my repeated year was important to her. This stupid matter seemed to her yet another betrayal, maybe it confirmed for her that, since my father’s departure, neither of us had been able to live with dignity. She murmured that we had to protect what we were, we had to be aware of ourselves. And she got angry, angry in a way she never was, but not with me, now she obsessively traced every trouble of mine back to Vittoria. She said that in this way I was supporting her, that my aunt wanted to make me like her in my behavior, in my words, in everything. Her small eyes sank further into her face, her bones seemed to be nearly breaking the skin. She said slowly: she wants to use you to prove that your father and I are all appearance, that while we have risen a little, you will plummet, and everything will even out. She then went to the telephone and reported everything to her ex-husband, but while with me she had lost her calm, with him she regained it. She spoke to him in a v
ery low voice, as if between them there were agreements from which the more I threatened to violate them with my bad behavior, the more forcefully I was excluded. I thought, with a sense of desolation: everything is so disconnected, I try to hold the pieces together and I can’t, there’s something about me that doesn’t work, we’ve all got something in us that doesn’t work, except Roberto and Giuliana. Meanwhile my mother was saying on the phone: please, you go. And she repeated it several times: all right, you’re right, I know you’re busy, but please, go. When she hung up I said bitterly:

  “I don’t want Papa to go to the principal.”

  She answered:

  “Quiet, you want what we want.”

  It was known that the principal, while she was indulgent toward those who listened to her little speeches in silence and said a few words of reproach to their offspring, became harsh with parents who defended their children. I was sure that I could trust my mother, she had always managed very well with the principal. But my father had stated on several occasions, sometimes even lightheartedly, that anything that had to do with the scholastic world irritated him—colleagues put him in a bad mood, he despised hierarchies, the rites of collegial bodies—and so he was always wary of setting foot in my school in the guise of parent, he knew that he would surely be harmful to me. But this time he was punctual, at the end of the school day. I saw him in the hall and joined him reluctantly. I muttered anxiously, with a deliberately Neapolitan cadence: Papa, I really didn’t do it on purpose, but it’s better if you put the blame on me, otherwise it will go badly. He told me not to worry and, once in the presence of the principal, he was very cordial. He listened to her attentively when she told him in detail how difficult it was to run a high school, he told her in turn a little story about the ignorance of the local superintendent, he complimented her out of the blue on how nice her earrings looked. The principal narrowed her eyes, pleased, struck the air lightly with her hand as if to chase him away, laughed, and with that same hand covered her mouth. Only when it seemed as if they would never stop the chitchat, my father returned abruptly to my bad behavior. To my astonishment, he said that certainly I had hit Silvestro on purpose, he knew me well, and if I had reacted like that I had a good reason for it, he didn’t know what that good reason was and didn’t want to know, but he had learned long ago that in the scuffles between boys and girls boys are always wrong and girls always right, and that even if that wasn’t the case this time, boys should still be brought up to assume their responsibilities, even when they appeared to have none. Naturally, this is an approximate summary, my father spoke at length and his phrases were fascinating and finely honed, the sort of discourse that is so elegantly formulated it amazes you, and at the same time it’s pronounced with unquestionable authority, and you understand that it admits no objections.