The Lying Life of Adults

by Elena Ferrante

  2.

  It happened just like that, Roberto and I became friends. I don’t want to exaggerate, he didn’t come to Naples often; the occasions for meeting were rare. But bit by bit we established a little routine that, without becoming really regular, resulted in our finding a way of talking even just for a few minutes, when the opportunity arose, and always in the company of Giuliana.

  At first, I have to admit, I was very anxious. Every time we met I thought I’d overdone it, that trying to keep up with him—he was ten years older than me, I was a high-school student, he taught at the university—was a presumption, that surely I had made myself ridiculous. I went over in my mind, countless times, what he had said, what I had answered, and was ashamed of every word. I heard the frivolity with which I had dismissed complicated questions and in my breast grew a sense of unease very similar to what I’d felt as a child when I did something impulsively that would certainly displease my parents. I doubted that I could have inspired any fondness on his part. In my memory, his ironic tone spilled over into explicit mockery. I recalled a contemptuous attitude I’d taken, certain parts of the conversation where I had tried to impress, and I felt cold, nauseated, I wanted to expel myself from myself as if I were about to vomit myself.

  In fact, however, it wasn’t like that. Each of those encounters improved me, Roberto’s words immediately set off a need for reading and information. The days became a race to arrive at a future meeting more prepared, with complex questions on the tip of my tongue. I began to look through the books my father had left at home to find some that might be helpful for understanding. But understanding what, or whom? The Gospels, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, transcendence and silence, the tangle of faith and the absence of faith, the radical nature of Christ, the horrors of inequality, violence, always carried out against the weakest, the savage, boundless world of the capitalist system, the advent of robots, the urgent need for Commu­nism? Though his perspective was broad, Roberto was constantly moving beyond it. He held together heaven and earth, he knew everything, he blended together minor examples, stories, quotations, theories, and I tried to keep up, alternating between the certainty that I’d sounded like a girl who talks pretending to know and the hope that I’d soon have another chance to prove I was better than that.

  3.

  During that time, I often turned to either Giuliana or Angela to settle myself. Giuliana seemed for obvious reasons closer, more comforting. There was the thought of Roberto that gave us a reason to spend time together and, during his long absences, we wandered around the Vomero talking about him. I observed her: she radiated a charming freshness, she always wore my aunt’s bracelet on her wrist, men rested their eyes on her and turned for a last look as if they couldn’t bear to deprive themselves of her image. I didn’t exist, beside her, and yet a knowing tone on my part or an arcane word was enough to sap her energy, so that she seemed without vitality. Once she said to me:

  “You read so many books.”

  “I like that better than homework.”

  “I get tired right away.”

  “It’s a matter of habit.”

  I admitted that the passion for reading wasn’t my thing, that it came from my father: it was he who had convinced me as a child of the importance of books and the enormous value of intellectual activity.

  “Once that idea gets in your mind,” I said, “you can’t free yourself from it.”

  “Thank goodness. Intellectuals are good people.”

  “My father isn’t good.”

  “But Roberto is, and you, too.”

  “I’m not an intellectual.”

  “You are. You study, you know how to talk about everything, and you’re open with everyone, even Vittoria. I’m not up to it and I lose patience right away.”

  I was pleased—I have to admit—with those declarations of respect. Since that was how she imagined intellectuals, I tried to live up to her expectations, partly because she didn’t like it if I merely chatted casually, as if with her fiancé I gave the best of myself and with her I limited myself to ordinary things. In fact, she urged me to speak on complex subjects, she wanted me to talk about books I had enjoyed or was enjoying. She said: tell me about them. And she showed the same anxious curiosity about films, music. Not even Angela and Ida, until then, had let me talk so much about what I loved, what to me was not an obligation but a pastime. School had never taken notice of the disorderly jumble of interests that came from reading, and none of my classmates had ever wanted me to recount—just to give an example—the plot of Tom Jones. So we got along well, in that phase. We met often, I waited for her at the exit of the Montesanto funicular, she came up to the Vomero as if it were a foreign country where she was happily on vacation. We went from Piazza Vanvitelli to Piazza degli Artisti and back, paying no attention to the people on the street, the traffic, the shops, because I became absorbed in the pleasure of beguiling her with names, titles, stories, and she seemed to see only what I had seen, reading or at the movies or listening to music.

  In Roberto’s absence, and in the company of his fiancée, I played at being the custodian of vast learning, and Giuliana hung on my words as if she asked nothing more than to recognize how superior I was, in spite of the difference in our ages, in spite of her beauty. But at times I felt that something wasn’t quite right for her, there was an uneasiness that she forcibly repressed. And I was alarmed, I remembered the quarrelsome voice of Vittoria on the phone: “Why do you put yourself between Giuliana and her fiancé? Are you worse than my brother? Tell me, I’m listening: are you more arrogant than your father?” I just wanted to be a good friend, and I was afraid that, thanks to Vittoria’s terrible arts, Giuliana would be persuaded of the contrary and push me away.

  4.

  Angela often joined us—she was offended if we excluded her. But the two didn’t get on well, and Giuliana’s uneasiness became more obvious. Angela, who was very chatty, tended to make fun of me and also of her, to provocatively say mean things about Tonino, to dismantle with her sarcasm every attempt at serious conversation. I didn’t get mad, but Giuliana darkened, she defended her brother and sooner or later responded to Angela’s facetious remarks with bursts of aggressive dialect.

  In other words, what with me was latent with Angela became open, and there was always the risk of a serious break. When it was just Angela and me, Angela showed that she knew a lot about Giuliana and Roberto, even though, after the meeting in Piazza Amedeo, she had completely given up poking her nose in their business. When she backed off, I was both relieved and irritated. Once when she came to my house I asked:

  “You don’t like Roberto?”

  “Sure, I like him.”

  “Then what is it that bothers you.”

  “Nothing. But if you and he are talking to each other there’s no space for anyone else.”

  “There’s Giuliana.”

  “Poor Giuliana.”

  “What do you mean.”

  “You know how bored she is in the midst of you professors.”

  “She’s not at all bored.”

  “She’s bored, but she pretends, to hold on to her position.”

  “What position?”

  “Of fiancée. Does it seem to you that someone like Giuliana, secretary in a dentist’s office, listens to you two talk about reason and faith, and really isn’t bored?”

  I burst out:

  “You think the only fun thing is talking about necklaces and bracelets and underpants and bras?”

  She was offended:

  “That’s not all I talk about.”

  “Not before, but lately it is.”

  “That’s not true.”

  I apologized, she replied: all right, but you’ve been devious. And naturally she started up again with intensified malice:

  “Luckily she goes to see him now and then in Milan.”

  “Wha
t do you mean?”

  “That finally they’re going to bed and doing what they should.”

  “Tonino always goes to Milan with Giuliana.”

  “You think Tonino keeps watch day and night?”

  I grumbled:

  “You think if two people love each other they have to sleep together?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ask Tonino if they sleep together, and we’ll see.”

  “I already have, but Tonino says nothing about these things.”

  “It means that he has nothing to say.”

  “It means that he also thinks love can do without sex.”

  “Who else thinks that?”

  She answered with a small, unexpectedly sad smile:

  “You.”

  5.

  According to Angela, I had nothing amusing to say anymore on that subject. Now, it was true that I had cut out the vulgar stories, but only because it had seemed to me childish to exaggerate my few experiences and I didn’t have any more substantial material. Since my relationship with Roberto and Giuliana had solidified, I had been fending off my schoolmate Silvestro, who after the episode of the pencil had become fond of me and had several times proposed that we go out secretly. But I had been very harsh with Corrado, who continued his propositions, and cautious but firm with Rosario, who at fixed intervals appeared outside school suggesting that I go with him to an attic apartment he had on Via Manzoni. Now those three suitors of mine seemed to belong to a debased humanity that I had unfortunately been part of. Angela, on the other hand, seemed to have become someone else: she cheated on Tonino and didn’t spare Ida and me any detail of the occasional relations she had with classmates and even with a teacher over fifty; she herself had a grimace of disgust when she talked about him.

  That disgust struck me, it was genuine. I knew it and wanted to say: I see it in your face, let’s talk about it. But we never did, it seemed that sex had to be exciting by definition. I didn’t want to admit, to Angela or even to Ida, that I would prefer to be a nun rather than smell Corrado’s toilet stink again. I also didn’t like Angela’s interpretation of my lack of enthusiasm as an act of devotion toward Roberto. And then, of course, the truth was difficult. Disgust had its ambiguities, difficult to put into words. What disgusted me about Corrado might not have disgusted me if it had been Roberto. So I confined myself to pointing out contradictions, I’d say:

  “Why do you stay with Tonino, if you do those things with other guys?”

  “Because Tonino is a good guy and the others are pigs.”

  “And you do it with pigs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like the way they look at me.”

  “Make Tonino look at you the same way.”

  “He doesn’t do that.”

  “Maybe he’s not a man,” Ida said once.

  “Oh no, he’s very much a man.”

  “So?”

  “He’s not a pig, that’s all.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Ida. “There are no men who aren’t pigs.”

  “Yes, there are,” I said thinking of Roberto.

  “Yes, there are,” said Angela, citing with inventive expressions Tonino’s erections when he touched her.

  I think it was then, as she was talking, enjoying herself, that I felt the lack of a serious discussion on the subject, not with them but with Roberto and Giuliana. Would Roberto avoid it? No, I was sure he would answer me and would find a way even in this case to make very articulate arguments. The problem was the risk of seeming inappropriate in Giuliana’s eyes. Why bring up that subject in the presence of her fiancé? Altogether we had seen each other six times, apart from the meeting in Piazza Amedeo, and almost never for very long. Objectively, then, we weren’t that intimate. Although he always tended to use very concrete examples when he was discussing big questions, I wouldn’t have had the courage to ask: why, if you dig even a little, do you find sex in all things, even the most elevated; why, to describe sex, is a single adjective not sufficient, why does it take many—embarrassing, bland, tragic, happy, pleasant, repulsive—and never one at a time but all together; is it possible that a great love can exist without sex, is it possible that sexual practices between male and female don’t spoil the need to love and be loved in return? I imagined these and other questions, in a detached tone, maybe slightly solemn, so that he and Giuliana wouldn’t think I wanted to spy on their private life. But I knew I would never do it. Instead I persevered with Ida.

  “Why do you think there aren’t any men who aren’t pigs?”

  “I don’t think, I know.”

  “So even Mariano is a pig?”

  “Of course, he goes to bed with your mother.”

  I started, I said coldly:

  “They see each other sometimes, but it’s friendship.”

  “I think they’re just friends, too,” Angela intervened.

  Ida shook her head energetically, repeated decisively: they’re not just friends. And she exclaimed:

  “I won’t kiss a man, it’s disgusting.”

  “Not even a nice one like Tonino?” asked Angela.

  “No, I’ll only kiss women. You want to hear a story I wrote?”

  “No,” said Angela.

  I stared in silence at Ida’s shoes, which were green. I remembered that her father had looked at my cleavage.

  6.

  We often returned to the subject of Roberto and Giuliana; Angela extracted information from Tonino just for the fun of reporting it to me. One day she called because she found out that there had been yet another argument, this time between Vittoria and Margherita. They had quarreled because Margherita didn’t share Vittoria’s idea that Roberto should marry Giuliana right away and come to live in Naples. My aunt as usual made a lot of noise, Margherita as usual objected calmly, and Giuliana was quiet as if the matter didn’t concern her. Then suddenly Giuliana had started shouting, she began breaking plates, soup bowls, glasses, and not even Vittoria, who was very strong, was able to stop her. She cried: I’m leaving immediately, I’m going to live with him, I can’t stand all of you anymore. Tonino and Corrado had to intervene.

  That story confused me. I said:

  “It’s Vittoria’s fault, she never minds her own business.”

  “It’s the fault of them all, apparently Giuliana is very jealous. Tonino says he’d bet his life on Roberto, he’s a fair and faithful person. But when Tonino goes to Milan with her, she makes scenes, because she can’t bear, I don’t know, that some girl student is too friendly, some colleague is too flirtatious, and so on and so on.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “You’re wrong. Giuliana seems serene, but Tonino told me she has nervous exhaustion.”

  “Meaning?”

  “When she feels bad, she doesn’t eat, she cries and screams.”

  “Now how is she?”

  “Fine. Tonight she’s coming to the movies with Tonino and me, why don’t you come, too?”

  “If I come I’m sitting with Giuliana, don’t leave me with Tonino.”

  Angela laughed.

  “I’m inviting you just so you can free me from Tonino, I can’t take it anymore.”

  I went, but the day didn’t go well: first the afternoon and then the evening were particularly distressing. The four of us met in Piazza del Plebiscito, in front of Caffè Gambrinus, and we set off on Via Toledo toward the Modernissimo cinema. I wasn’t able to exchange even a word with Giuliana, I noticed only her agitated gaze, her bloodshot eyes, and the bracelet on her wrist. Angela immediately took her by the arm, I was a few paces back with Tonino. I asked him:

  “Everything O.K.?”

  “O.K.”

  “I know you often take your sister to see Roberto.”

  “No, not often.”

 
“Sometimes we get together.”

  “Yes, Giuliana told me.”

  “They’re a handsome couple.”

  “They are.”

  “I hear that when they get married they’re going to move to Naples.”

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  I couldn’t get anything else out of him: he was a polite young man and wanted to entertain me, but not on that subject. So after a while I let him talk to me about a friend of his in Venice, he was planning to visit him and figure out if he could move there.

  “What about Angela?”

  “Angela isn’t happy with me.”