The Lying Life of Adults

by Elena Ferrante

  From there we started a conversation that unsettled me because it demonstrated his willingness to talk to me about personal matters. He said that he loved Giuliana, that the only thing that could keep him from marrying her would be that she didn’t want to marry him. I assured him that Giuliana wanted it more than anything, but I added that she was insecure, she was afraid of losing him, afraid that he would fall in love with someone else. He answered that he knew that and did everything possible to reassure her. I believe you, I said, but now you’re going abroad, you might meet another girl: if you discover that Giuliana doesn’t understand anything about you and your work, while that other person does, what will you do? He gave me a long answer. He began with Naples, Pascone, his childhood there. He talked about them as of marvelous places, very different from the way I saw them. He said that he had contracted a debt there and had to repay it. He tried to explain to me that his love for Giuliana, born on those streets, was like a reminder, the constant memory of that debt. And when I asked him what he meant by debt he explained that he owed a spiritual compensation to the place where he was born, and a lifetime wouldn’t be sufficient to restore the balance. So I replied: you want to marry her as if you were marrying Pascone? He seemed embarrassed, he said that he was grateful to me because I was forcing him to reflect, and he struggled to articulate his thoughts: I want to marry her because she is the very incarnation of my debt. He maintained a low tone, although occasionally he uttered a solemn phrase like “we can’t be saved by ourselves alone.” Sometimes I seemed to be talking to one of my classmates: he chose elementary constructions, and that made me feel at ease, but also upset me. At times I suspected he was mimicking behavior suitable to what I was, a girl, and for a moment I thought that maybe with that Michela he would have talked with greater richness and complexity. On the other hand what claim did I have? I thanked him for the conversation, he thanked me for letting him talk about Giuliana and for the friendship I had demonstrated for both of them. I said without thinking:

  “Tonino left, she’s suffering a lot, she’s alone.”

  “I know and I’ll try to remedy that. It was a real pleasure to talk to you.”

  “For me, too.”

  11.

  I reported every word to Giuliana, she regained some color, and she needed it. It didn’t seem to me that things got noticeably worse when Roberto left for London. She said that he called her, had written her a wonderful letter, and she never mentioned Michela. She cheered up when he told her he’d just had a new article published in an important review. She seemed proud of him, she was happy, as if she had written the article. But she complained, laughing, that she could boast about it only to me: Vittoria, her mother, Corrado couldn’t appreciate it; and Tonino, the only one who would have understood, was far away, working as a waiter, who knew if he was still studying.

  “Will you let me read it?” I asked.

  “I don’t have the review.”

  “But you read it?”

  She realized I took it for granted that he had her read everything he wrote, and I did: my father had had my mother read everything, sometimes he had even made me read pages that he liked. She darkened, I saw in her eyes that she would have liked to answer yes, I’ve read them, she automatically gave a nod of assent. But then she looked down, looked up again angrily, said:

  “No, I haven’t read them, and I don’t want to.”

  “Why.”

  “I’m afraid I won’t understand.”

  “Maybe you should try anyway, it must be important to him.”

  “If it was important, he would give them to me. But he hasn’t, and so he’s sure I can’t understand.”

  I remember we were out walking on Toledo, it was hot. The schools were closing, soon the grades would be coming out. The street was crowded with kids, boys and girls, it was nice not to have homework, to be outside. Giuliana looked at them as if she didn’t understand the reason for all that energy. She ran her fingers over her forehead, I sensed she was getting depressed, I said quickly:

  “It’s because you live apart, but when you’re married, you’ll see, he’ll want you to read everything.”

  “He has Michela read everything.”

  The news hurt me, too, but I didn’t have time to react. Right at the end of that sentence a powerful male voice called us, I heard first Giuliana’s name, then mine. We turned at the same time and saw Rosario in the doorway of a café across the street. Giuliana made a gesture of irritation, she hit the air with her hand, she wanted to keep going as if she hadn’t heard. But I had already nodded in greeting, and he was crossing the street to join us.

  “Do you know the lawyer Sargente’s son?” Giuliana said.

  “Corrado introduced me.”

  “Corrado’s an idiot.”

  Meanwhile Rosario was crossing the street and, naturally, laughing; he seemed very happy to have met us.

  “It’s fate,” he said, “to run into you so far from Pascone. Come on, let me get you something.”

  Giuliana replied stiffly:

  “We’re in a hurry.”

  He had an expression of exaggerated worry.

  “What’s the matter, you don’t feel well today, you’re nervous?”

  “I’m very well.”

  “Your fiancé is jealous? He said you shouldn’t talk to me?”

  “My fiancé doesn’t even know you exist.”

  “But you know, right? You know, and you’re always thinking of me, but you don’t tell your fiancé. And yet you should tell him, you should tell him everything. Between fiancés there shouldn’t be secrets, otherwise the relationship doesn’t work and you suffer. I see you’re suffering, I look at you and I think: she’s so skinny, what a pity. You were so round and soft, and you’re turning into a broomstick.”

  “You’re the good-looking one.”

  “Better than your fiancé. Giannì, come on, you want a sfoglia­tella?”

  I answered:

  “It’s late, we have to go.”

  “I’ll drive you in the car. First we’ll take Giuliana to Pascone and then we’ll go up to Rione Alto.”

  He dragged us to the bar, but once there he completely ignored Giuliana, who sat in a corner near the door staring at the street and the passersby. He talked continuously while I ate the sfogliatella, standing so close to me that every so often I had to move a little. He whispered racy compliments in my ear and aloud praised, I don’t know, my eyes, my hair. He went so far as to ask in a whisper if I was still a virgin and I laughed nervously, I said yes.

  “I’m going,” Giuliana grumbled, and left the bar.

  Rosario mentioned his house on Via Manzoni, the number, the floor, he said it had a view of the sea. Finally, he said:

  “You’re always welcome, you want to come over?”

  “Now?” I said, pretending to be amused.

  “Whenever you want.”

  “Not now,” I said seriously, I thanked him for the sfogliatella and joined Giuliana in the street. She exclaimed angrily:

  “Don’t give that shit any leeway.”

  “I didn’t, he took it.”

  “If your aunt sees you together she’ll kill you and him.”

  “I know.”

  “Did he tell you about Via Manzoni?”

  “Yes, what do you know about it?”

  Giuliana shook her head hard, as if she wanted with that gesture of negation to get rid of the images that came to mind.

  “I’ve been there.”

  “With Rosario?”

  “Who else?”

  “Now?”

  “What do you mean, I was younger than you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was even more of an idiot than I am now.”

  I would have liked her to tell me about it, but she said there was nothing to tell. Rosario was a
nobody, but because of the father he had—the ugly Naples, Giannì, the terrible Italy that no one can change, least of all Roberto with the fine words he speaks and writes—he thought he was hot shit. He was so stupid he thought that since they had sometimes been together he had the right to remind her of it on every occasion. Her eyes became wet with tears:

  “I have to get out of Pascone, Giannì, I have to get out of Naples. Vittoria wants to keep me here, she likes being at war all the time. And Roberto deep down sees it the way she does, he told you he has a debt. But what debt? I want to get married and live in Milan in a nice house of my own, in peace.”

  I looked at her in bewilderment.

  “Even if for him it’s important to come back here?”

  She shook her head hard, began to cry. We stopped in Piazza Dante. I said:

  “Why are you acting like this?”

  She dried her eyes with her fingertips, murmured:

  “Would you go with me to see Roberto?”

  I answered immediately:

  “Yes.”

  12.

  Margherita summoned me Sunday morning, but I didn’t go directly to her house, I went first to Vittoria’s. I was sure she was behind the decision to ask me to take Giuliana to see Roberto and I imagined that she would cancel the assignment if I didn’t show myself affectionately subordinate. During that entire time, I had barely glimpsed her when I went to see Giuliana, and she had been ambivalent as usual. I’d become convinced over time that when she recognized herself in me she was overwhelmed with affection, while if she perceived something of my father she suspected that I might do to her and the people she was attached to what her brother had done to her in the past. Besides, I was the same. I found her extraordinary when I imagined myself becoming a combative adult, and repulsive when I recognized in her traits of my father’s. That morning something suddenly occurred to me that seemed intolerable and yet funny: neither Vittoria nor my father nor I could cut out our common roots, and so, depending on the situation, it was always ourselves we ended up loving or hating.

  It turned out to be a lucky day, Vittoria seemed happy to see me. I let her hug and kiss me with her usual clingy intensity. I love you so much, she said, and we left quickly for Margherita’s. On the way, she revealed to me what I already knew but pretended not to, that the very rare times when Giuliana had been allowed to see Roberto in Milan, Tonino had gone with her. But now he had left for Venice, abandoning the family—Vittoria’s eyes filled with tears in a mixture of suffering and contempt—and since Corrado absolutely couldn’t be trusted, they had thought of me.

  “I’ll do it happily,” I said.

  “But you have to do it right.”

  I decided to duel a little, when she was in a good mood she liked it. I asked:

  “In what sense?”

  “Giannì, Margherita is timid but not me, and so I will tell you straight: you must assure me that Giuliana will always be with you, night and day. You understand what that means?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good for you. Men—keep it in mind—want one thing only. But Giuliana mustn’t give him that thing before she gets married, otherwise he won’t marry her.”

  “I don’t think Roberto is that type of man.”

  “They’re all that type of man.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “If I say all, Giannì, it’s all.”

  “Even Enzo?”

  “Enzo more than others.”

  “Why did you give him that thing?”

  Vittoria looked at me with pleased surprise. She burst out laughing, she clasped me around the shoulders hard, gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  “You’re like me, Giannì, and even worse, that’s why I like you. I gave it to him because he was already married, he had three children, and if I didn’t give it to him I would have to give him up. But I couldn’t, because I loved him too much.”

  I pretended to be satisfied with that answer, even if I would have liked to show her that she was a twisted person, that the thing that is most important to males you don’t grant on the basis of opportunistic evaluations, that Giuliana was a grownup and could do what she liked, that she and Margherita, in short, had no right to keep a young woman of twenty under surveillance. But I was silent because my only desire was to go to Milan and see Roberto, see with my own eyes where and how he lived. And then I knew that I shouldn’t take things too far with Vittoria, while I’d made her laugh now, a small affront would be enough for her to throw me out. So I chose the path of consent and we reached Margherita’s house.

  There I assured Giuliana’s mother that I would diligently watch over the fiancés, and Vittoria, while I spoke in a good Italian to give myself authority, whispered often to her goddaughter: get it, you and Giannina have to be together at all times, the main thing is you have to sleep together, and Giuliana nodded distractedly, and the only one who annoyed me with his teasing looks was Corrado. He offered several times to take me to the bus, and when all the pacts with Vittoria were ratified—we were to return Sunday night, absolutely, Roberto would pay for the train tickets—I left and he came with me. On the street and while we were waiting at the bus stop, all he did was mock me, making offensive remarks as if he were joking. Mostly he kept asking me explicitly to do again the things I had done in the past.

  “A blow job,” he said to me in dialect, “and then that’s all: there’s an old abandoned building near here.”

  “No, you make me sick.”

  “If I find out you did it with Rosario, I’ll tell Vittoria.”

  “I don’t give a fuck,” I answered, in a dialect that made him laugh hard, it was so badly pronounced.

  I felt like laughing, too. I didn’t want to fight even with Corrado, I was too glad to be going away. On the way home I concentrated on what lie I would have to tell my mother to explain a trip to Milan. But soon I convinced myself that I didn’t owe her even the effort of lying, and at dinner I said to her, in the tone of one who considers the thing irrefutable, that Giuliana, Vittoria’s goddaughter, was going to visit her fiancé in Milan and I had promised to go with her.

  “This weekend?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Saturday is your birthday, I’ve organized a party, your father is coming, Angela and Ida are coming.”

  For a few seconds my chest felt empty. How attached I’d been to my birthday as a child, and yet this time it had gone right out of my mind. I had the impression that I had wronged myself even more than my mother. I couldn’t assign myself value, I was becoming a background figure, a shadow beside Giuliana, the ugly chaperone of the princess who goes to the prince. For that role was I willing to give up a long, pleasant family tradition, candles to blow out, surprising presents? Yes, I admitted, and proposed to Nella:

  “Let’s celebrate when I get back.”

  “You’re upsetting me.”

  “Mamma, don’t make a big deal out of nothing.”

  “Your father will be hurt, too.”

  “You’ll see, he’ll be glad: Giuliana’s fiancé is someone really smart, Papa respects him.”

  She made a grimace of displeasure, as if he were responsible for my inadequate emotions.

  “Are you going to be promoted?”

  “Mamma, that’s my thing, don’t interfere.”

  She muttered:

  “We don’t count for you at all anymore.”

  I said that wasn’t true and yet I thought: Roberto counts more.

  13.

  On Friday night began one of the most senseless enterprises of my adolescence.

  The night journey to Milan was very boring. I tried to make conversation with Giuliana, but, especially after I told her that I would be sixteen the next day, she seemed embarrassed, an embarrassment she’d displayed the moment she arrived at the station with an enormous red suitcase and overstuffed p
urse, and realized that I had only a small suitcase with a few essentials. I’m sorry she said, to drag you with me and ruin the day, and that brief exchange was it, we couldn’t find the right tone or the ease that leads to intimacy. At one point, I announced that I was hungry and wanted to explore the train to find something to eat. Giuliana listlessly took out of her bag some good things her mother had prepared, but she ate only a few mouthfuls of frittata di pasta; I ate the rest. The compartment was crowded, we settled ourselves uncomfortably in the berths. She seemed dulled by anguish, I heard her tossing and turning, she never went to the bathroom.

  But at least an hour before we arrived she shut herself in for a long time and returned with her hair fixed and light makeup put on; she had even changed her clothes. We stood in the corridor, outside a pale day was dawning. She asked if anything was excessive or out of place. I reassured her, and at that point she seemed to relax a little, and spoke to me with an affectionate candor.

  “I envy you,” she said.

  “Why.”

  “You don’t fix yourself up, you’re happy the way you are.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is. You have something inside that’s only yours and it’s enough for you.”

  “I don’t have anything, you have everything.”

  She shook her head, murmured:

  “Roberto says you’re really intelligent, that you have a great sensibility.”

  My face was burning.

  “He’s wrong.”

  “It’s true. When Vittoria didn’t want to let me go, he’s the one who suggested that I ask you to come with me.”

  “I thought my aunt had decided.”

  She smiled. Of course, she’d made the decision, nothing was done without Vittoria’s consent. But the idea had come from Roberto; Giuliana without mentioning her fiancé had talked to her mother, and Margherita had consulted with Vittoria. I was overwhelmed—so it was he who wanted me in Milan—and I answered Giuliana, who now wanted to talk, in monosyllables, I couldn’t calm down. Soon I would see him again and the whole day I would be with him, in his house, at lunch, at dinner, sleeping. Gradually, I became less agitated, I said: