The Lying Life of Adults

by Elena Ferrante

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  We got to the Modernissimo, I don’t remember what movie was showing—maybe it will come to me later. Tonino paid for all the tickets and bought candy, ice cream. We went in eating, the lights were still on. We sat down, first Tonino, then Angela, Giuliana, and me. At first we paid no attention to three boys sitting right behind us, high-school kids like Angela’s and my classmates, sixteen at most. We just heard them talking, laughing, while we girls were already cutting out Tonino, chatting without paying attention to anything.

  It was precisely our ignoring them that caused the three boys to get restless. I really became aware of them only when the one who was maybe the boldest said in a loud voice: come and sit here next to us, we’ll show you the film. Angela burst out laughing and turned around, maybe she was nervous, and the boys laughed, too, the bold one made some more inviting remarks. I turned around and changed my mind about them, they weren’t like our classmates, they reminded me of Corrado or Rosario, slightly improved by school. I turned to Giuliana: she was older, I was expecting a sympathetic smile. Instead she was serious, rigid, her eyes fixed on Tonino, who seemed deaf, staring, impassive, at the blank screen.

  The ads began, the bold kid caressed Giuliana’s hair and whispered, how nice, and one of the others shook Angela’s seat. She tugged Tonino’s arm and said: these guys are bothering me, make them stop. Giuliana murmured: forget it, I don’t know if she was talking to Angela or directly to her brother. Anyway, Angela ignored her and said to Tonino, peeved: I’m not going out with you anymore, I’m fed up, I’m pissed. The bold kid exclaimed instantly: good for you, we told you so, come on over, plenty of room here. Someone else in the audience went sssh. Tonino said slowly, drawing out the words: let’s sit a little farther down, we’re not comfortable here. He got up, and his sister did the same so promptly that I did, too. Angela remained seated for a few more seconds, then she got up and said to Tonino: you’re ridiculous.

  We settled ourselves in the same order a few rows ahead, Angela started whispering in Tonino’s ear: she was angry, I realized that she was taking advantage of the moment to get rid of him. The innumerable ads were finally over, the lights went on again. The three kids were having fun, I heard them laughing, I turned. They had stood up and were climbing noisily over one two three rows, and in an instant they were sitting behind us again. Their spokesman said: you let that shit order you around, we’re insulted, we can’t stand to be treated like that, we want to watch the movie with you.

  Then it was a matter of seconds. The lights went out, the film began clamorously. The boy’s voice was drowned out by the music, we were all reduced to flashes of light. Angela said to Tonino in a loud voice: did you hear, he called you a shit? Laughter from the boys, sssh from the audience, Tonino jumped up unexpectedly, Giuliana said: no, Tonì. But he slapped Angela so violently that her head banged against my cheekbone, it hurt. The boys shut up, disoriented, Tonino twisted around like an open door banging in a gust of wind, and unrepeatable obscenities came out of his mouth in a sustained rhythm. Angela burst into tears, Giuliana grabbed my hand, she said: we have to go, let’s get him out of here. Get her brother out of there by force, she meant, as if the person in danger weren’t Angela or the two of us but him. By now the boys’ spokesman had recovered from his surprise, and said: oh, I’m real scared, we’re shaking, you clown, you only know how to fight with girls, come on. Giuliana seemed to want to erase his voice as she cried, Tonì, they’re kids. The seconds passed, with one hand Tonino grabbed the boy by the head—maybe by an ear, I wouldn’t swear—grabbed it and pulled it toward him as if to detach it. Instead he hit him under the chin with the other hand closed in a fist, and the boy flew backward, he sat in his seat again with his mouth bleeding. The other two wanted to help their friend, but when they saw that Tonino meant to climb over the seats, they looked frantically for the exit. Giuliana grabbed her brother to keep him from going after them, the music of the film’s opening was blaring, the audience was shouting, Angela weeping, the wounded kid shrieking. Tonino shoved his sister aside, started taking it out again on the kid, who had fallen in tears and groans and curses on the seat. He slapped and punched him, insulting him in a dialect incomprehensible to me it was so fast and loaded with fury, one word exploding inside the next. Now everyone in the theater was shouting, turn on the lights, call the police, and Giuliana and I, and Angela, too, grabbed hold of Tonino’s arms yelling: let’s go, that’s enough, let’s go. Finally, we managed to pull him away and get to the exit. Go, Tonì, run, Giuliana shouted, hitting him on the back, and he repeated twice, in dialect: it’s not possible that, in this city, a respectable person can’t watch a film in peace. He spoke mainly to me, to see if I agreed. To calm him down I agreed, and he ran away toward Piazza Dante, handsome in spite of his wild eyes, his blue lips.

  7.

  We got out of there fast, too, heading toward the basilica of the Spirito Santo, and slowed down only when we felt protected by the crowd in the Pignasecca market. Then I became aware of my fear. Angela, too, was terrified, and so was Giuliana, who seemed to have taken part in the brawl herself, her hair was disheveled, the collar of her jacket half torn. I looked to see if she still had the bracelet on her wrist, and it was there, but it wasn’t shining.

  “I have to get home right away,” Giuliana said, speaking to me.

  “Go, and call me, let me know how Tonino is.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, Tonino usually controls himself, but sometimes he just can’t see straight.”

  Angela interrupted, her eyes filled with tears:

  “I was scared, too.”

  Giuliana turned pale with rage, she almost yelled:

  “Shut up, you better just shut up.”

  I had never seen her so furious. She kissed me on the cheeks and left.

  Angela and I reached the funicular. I was confused, the phrase was impressed on me: sometimes he just can’t see straight anymore. All the way home, I listened distractedly to my friend’s complaints. She was in despair: I was stupid, she said. But then she touched her red, swollen cheek, her neck hurt, she cried: how could he dare, he slapped me, me, not even my father and mother ever slap me, I don’t want to see him ever ever again. She wept, then started in with another grievance: Giuliana hadn’t said goodbye to her, she had said goodbye only to me. It’s not right to put all the blame on me, she muttered, how was I supposed to know that Tonino was a beast. When I left her at her house, she admitted: all right, it’s my fault, but Tonino and Giuliana aren’t well brought up, I never would have expected it, his hitting me, he could have killed me, he could have killed those boys, too, I was wrong to love an animal like that. I said: you’re wrong, Tonino and Giuliana are very well brought up, but there can be times when you really can’t see straight anymore.

  I walked back home, slowly. I couldn’t get that expression—unable to see straight—out of my mind. Everything seems in order, hello, see you soon, make yourself at home, what can I give you to drink, could you lower the volume a little, thank you, you’re welcome. But there’s a black veil that can drop at any moment. It’s a sudden blindness, you don’t know how to keep your distance, you crash into things. Does it happen only to some people or to everybody that, once a certain level is passed, they can’t see straight anymore? And was it truer when you saw everything clearly or when the strongest and deepest feelings—hatred, love—blinded you? Had Enzo, blinded by Vittoria, been unable to see Margherita? Had my father, blinded by Costanza, been unable to see my mother? Had I, blinded by the insult of my classmate Silvestro, been unable to see straight? Was Roberto also someone who could be blinded? Or was he always able—in every circumstance, under the pressure of whatever emotional impulse—to remain clear and serene?

  The apartment was dark, very silent. My mother must have decided to spend Saturd
ay evening out. The phone rang, I answered it immediately, sure that it would be Giuliana. It was Tonino, who said slowly, with a calm that I liked because now it seemed to be his own rich invention:

  “I wanted to apologize and say goodbye to you.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Venice.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Why did you decide that.”

  “Because otherwise I’ll throw my life away.”

  “What does Giuliana say.”

  “Nothing, she doesn’t know, nobody knows.”

  “Not even Roberto?”

  “No, if he knew what I did tonight he’d never speak to me again.”

  “Giuliana will tell him.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Send me your address?”

  “As soon as I have one, I’ll write to you.”

  “Why are you calling me?”

  “Because you’re someone who understands.”

  I hung up, I felt sad. I went into the kitchen, got some water, went back out to the hall. But the day wasn’t over. The door of the bedroom that once had been my parents’ opened and my mother appeared. She wasn’t wearing her usual clothes, but was dressed up. She said in a natural tone:

  “Weren’t you supposed to go to the movies?”

  “We didn’t go.”

  “Now we’re going: how is it outside, do I need a coat?”

  From the same room—he, too, nicely dressed—Mariano appeared.

  8.

  That was the last stage of the long crisis in my house and, at the same time, an important moment in my arduous approach to the adult world. I learned—just at that moment, when I decided to appear cordial, and reply to my mother that the evening was warm, and accept Mariano’s habitual kiss on the cheeks as well as the usual glance at my breasts—that it was impossible to stop growing up. When the two closed the door behind them, I went to the bathroom and took a long shower as if to wash them off me.

  As I dried my hair in front of the mirror, I felt like laughing. I had been deceived in everything, not even my hair was beautiful, it was pasted to my skull and I couldn’t give it volume and splendor. As for my face, it had no harmony, just like Vittoria’s. But the mistake had been to make it a tragedy. If you looked even just for a moment at those who had the privilege of a beautiful, refined face, you discovered that it hid infernos no different from those expressed by coarse, ugly faces. The splendor of a face, enhanced even by kindness, harbored and promised suffering still more than a dull face.

  Angela, for example, after the episode of the movie and the disappearance of Tonino from her life, grew sad, became mean. She talked to me at length on the phone, accusing me of not being on her side, of having let a man hit her, of having supported Giuliana. I tried to deny it, but it was useless. She said she had told the story to Costanza, and even to my father. Costanza had sided with her, but Andrea had done more: once he understood who Tonino was, whose son he was, where he was born and grew up, he had become very angry, not so much with her as with me. She reported that my father had said literally: Giovanna knows very well what sort of people they are, she should have protected you. But you didn’t protect me, she cried, and I imagined that her sweet harmonious seductive face, there in the house in Posillipo, as she held the white receiver to her ear, had become at that moment uglier than mine. I said to her: please, from now on leave me alone—confide in Andrea and Costanza, they understand you better. And I hung up.

  Right afterward I intensified my relations with Giuliana. Angela tried often to make up, she’d say to me: let’s go out together. I always answered, even if it wasn’t true: I have a date, I’m seeing Giuliana. And I let her understand or said explicitly: you can’t come with me, she can’t stand you.

  I also reduced to a minimum my relations with my mother. I was curt, saying things like: I won’t be here today, I’m going to Pascone, and when she asked why, I answered, because I feel like it. I behaved like that certainly to feel free from all the old bonds, to make it clear that I didn’t care anymore about the judgment of relatives and friends, their values, their wanting me to be consistent with what they imagined themselves to be.

  9.

  Undoubtedly, I became closer to Giuliana in order to cultivate my friendship with Roberto, I won’t deny it. But it also seemed to me that Giuliana really needed me, now that Tonino had left without explanation, leaving her alone to fight with Vittoria and her bullying. One afternoon she called me, extremely upset, to tell me that her mother—egged on by my aunt, naturally—wanted her to tell Roberto: either you marry me immediately and we come and live in Naples or the engagement is off.

  “But I can’t,” she said desperately, “he’s really busy, he’s doing some work that’s important for his career. I would be crazy to say to him: marry me immediately. And anyway I want to get away from this city, forever.”

  She was sick of everything. I advised her to explain Roberto’s problems to Margherita and Vittoria and, after much hesitation, she did that, but the two women weren’t convinced and went on to corrode her brain with countless insinuations. They are ignorant people, she said desperately, and want to persuade me that if Roberto puts his problems as a professor first and our wedding second it means he doesn’t love me enough and is only wasting my time.

  That hammering wasn’t without effect; I soon realized that sometimes even Giuliana doubted Roberto. Of course, in general she reacted angrily and got mad at Vittoria, who put terrible ideas in her mother’s head, but, repeated over and over, the terrible ideas were making progress even in her and saddening her.

  “You see where I live?” she said one afternoon when I had gone to see her and we were taking a walk on the bleak streets of her neighborhood. “While Roberto is in Milan, he’s always busy, he meets so many intelligent people, and sometimes he has so much to do I can’t even get him on the phone.”

  “That’s what his life is.”

  “I should be his life.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She got irritated.

  “No? So what is it: studying, talking to women colleagues and women students? Maybe Vittoria is right: he marries me or that’s it.”

  Things became more problematic when Roberto told her he had to go to London for ten days for work. Giuliana was more upset than usual, and gradually it became clear that the problem wasn’t so much the sojourn abroad—I knew he had gone away other times, although only for two or three days—as the fact that he wasn’t going by himself. Then I also became alarmed.

  “Who’s he going with?”

  “With Michela and two other professors.”

  “Who’s Michela?”

  “Someone who can’t leave him alone.”

  “You go, too.”

  “Where, Giannì? Where? Don’t think of how you grew up, think of how I grew up, think of Vittoria, think of my mother, think of this shitty place. It’s all easy for you, for me no.”

  It seemed unfair: if I made an effort to understand her problems, she had no idea of mine. But I pretended nothing was wrong, I let her vent, I devoted myself to calming her. At the center of my arguments was as usual the rare quality of her fiancé. Roberto wasn’t an ordinary person but a man of great spiritual force, very cultured, faithful. Even if that Michela had designs, he wouldn’t give in. He loves you, I said, and he’ll behave in an honest way.

  She burst out laughing, became bitter. The change was so sudden that I thought of Tonino and what had happened in the movie theater. She planted her anxious eyes in mine, abruptly stopped speaking her half-dialectal Italian, moved on to dialect alone.

  “How do you know he loves me?”

  “It’s not just me who knows it, everyone knows it, surely even this Michela.”

  “Men, good or not, you brush against them and they wa
nt to fuck.”

  “Vittoria told you that, but it’s nonsense.”

  “Vittoria says terrible things, but not nonsense.”

  “Anyway you have to trust Roberto, otherwise you’ll feel terrible.”

  “I already feel really terrible, Giannì.”

  At that point, I realized that Giuliana attributed to Michela not only the desire to go to bed with Roberto but the intention of taking him away from her and marrying him. It occurred to me that he, absorbed in his studies, probably didn’t even suspect that she could have those anxieties. And I thought maybe it would be enough to tell him: Giuliana is afraid of losing you, she’s very agitated, reassure her. Or anyway that was the reason I gave myself when I asked for the phone number of her fiancé.

  “If you want,” I said, “I’ll talk to him and try to find out how things are with this Michela.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Of course.”

  “But he mustn’t think you’re calling on my account.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “And you have to report to me everything you say and everything he says.”

  “Of course.”

  10.

  I wrote down the number in one of my notebooks, drawing a rectangle around it with a red crayon. One afternoon, feeling very nervous, I called, taking advantage of the fact that my mother wasn’t home. Roberto seemed surprised, even apprehensive. He must have thought that something had happened to Giuliana, it was his first question. I said she was fine, uttered a jumble of words, and then, suddenly discarding all the preambles I had thought of to give formality to the phone call, I said in an almost threatening tone:

  “If you promised to marry Giuliana and you don’t marry her, you’re irresponsible.”

  He was silent for a moment, then I heard him laugh.

  “I always keep my promises. Did your aunt tell you to call me?”

  “No, I do what I feel like doing.”