The Lying Life of Adults

by Elena Ferrante

  VII

  1.

  My mother wasn’t home when I got there. I didn’t eat anything, I got in bed and fell asleep right away. The house in the morning hours seemed empty and silent, I went to the bathroom, went back to bed and fell asleep again. But after a while I woke up with a start, Nella was sitting on the edge of the bed and shaking me.

  “Everything all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s enough sleeping.”

  “What time is it?”

  “One-twenty.”

  “I’m really hungry.”

  She asked me distractedly about Milan, I told her just as distractedly about the places I’d seen, the Duomo, La Scala, the Galleria, the Navigli. Then she said she had good news: the principal had called my father and told him I had been promoted with excellent grades, including a nine in Greek.

  “The principal called Papa?”

  “Yes.”

  “The principal is stupid.”

  My mother smiled, she said:

  “Get dressed, Mariano’s in the other room.”

  I went into the kitchen barefoot, disheveled, in my pajamas. Mariano, who was already sitting at the table, jumped up, he wanted to congratulate me on my promotion, hugging and kissing me. He confirmed that I was now grown up, more grown up than the last time he’d seen me, and he said: how pretty you’ve gotten, Giovanna, one of these nights we’ll go to dinner just you and me and have a nice chat. Then he turned to my mother in a tone of fake regret and exclaimed: how can it be that this young lady is a friend of Roberto Matese, one of our most promising young men, and talks to him about who knows how many interesting things, while I who’ve known her since she was a child can’t even have a conversation with her. My mother nodded with an expression of pride, but it was clear that she knew nothing about Roberto, so I deduced it was my father who had spoken to Mariano of Roberto as a good friend of mine.

  “I barely know him,” I said.

  “Is he nice?”

  “Very.”

  “Is it true he’s Neapolitan?”

  “Yes, but not from the Vomero, he’s from down below.”

  “Still, he’s Neapolitan.”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s he working on?”

  “On compunction.”

  He looked at me in bewilderment.

  “Compunction?”

  He seemed disappointed and yet curious. Already a remote area of his brain was thinking that perhaps compunction was a subject it was urgent to reflect on.

  “Compunction,” I confirmed.

  Mariano turned to my mother, laughing:

  “You understand, Nella? Your daughter says she barely knows Roberto Matese and then we discover that he has talked to her about compunction.”

  I ate a lot; every so often I touched my hair to see if it was solidly planted in my scalp, I caressed it with my fingers, I pulled it a little. At the end of the meal, I jumped up and said I had to go and wash. Mariano, who until that moment had been stringing together sentence after sentence in the conviction that he was entertaining both me and Nella, assumed a worried expression, he said:

  “Do you know about Ida?”

  I shook my head no, my mother spoke:

  “She was failed.”

  “If you have time,” said Mariano, “see her. Angela was promoted and yesterday morning left for Greece with a boyfriend of hers. Ida needs company and comfort, all she does is read and write. That’s why she failed: she reads and writes and doesn’t study.”

  I couldn’t bear their grieved faces. I said:

  “Comfort for what? If you don’t turn it into a calamity, you’ll see that Ida won’t need comfort.”

  I shut myself in the bathroom, and when I came out the house was absolutely silent. I put my ear to my mother’s door, not even a sigh. I opened it a little way, nothing. Nella and Mariano had evidently considered me rude and had gone out without even a cry of bye, Giovanna. So I called Ida, my father answered.

  “Good for you,” he exclaimed happily, as soon as he heard my voice.

  “Good for you: the principal is a spy in your service.”

  He laughed with satisfaction.

  “She’s a fine person.”

  “Of course.”

  “I heard you were in Milan, a guest of Matese’s.”

  “Who told you?”

  He took some time to answer.

  “Vittoria.”

  I exclaimed, in disbelief:

  “You phone each other?”

  “More: yesterday she came here. Costanza has a friend who needs care night and day and we thought of her.”

  I murmured:

  “You’ve made peace.”

  “No, peace with Vittoria is impossible. But the years pass, we get older. And then you, slowly, shrewdly, acted as a bridge, good for you. You’re clever, you’re like me.”

  “I’ll seduce principals, too?”

  “That and much else. How did it go with Matese?”

  “Get Mariano to tell you, I already told him.”

  “Vittoria gave me his address, I want to write to him. These are disastrous times, right-thinking people have to stay in touch. Do you have his phone number?”

  “No. Let me talk to Ida.”

  “Not even a goodbye?”

  “Bye, Andrea.”

  He was silent for a long second.

  “Bye.”

  I heard him call Ida in the same tone of voice in which years before, when I was wanted on the phone, he called me. Ida arrived right away, she said, despondent, almost in a whisper:

  “Give me a reason to get out of this house.”

  “Let’s meet in an hour in the Floridiana.”

  2.

  I waited for Ida at the park entrance. She arrived all sweaty, her brown hair tied in a ponytail, much taller than a few months earlier and thin and frail as a blade of grass. She carried a big, overstuffed black bag and was wearing a miniskirt, also black, and a black-and-white striped T-shirt. She had a very pale face that was leaving childhood behind, a full mouth, large round cheekbones. We looked for a bench in the shade. She said she was happy she’d been failed, she wanted to leave school and only write. I reminded her that I had also been failed, but I hadn’t been happy about it, I had suffered. She responded, eyes defiant:

  “You were ashamed, I’m not ashamed.”

  I said:

  “I was ashamed because my parents were ashamed.”

  “I don’t give a damn about my parents’ shame, they have plenty of other things to be ashamed of.”

  “They’re scared. They’re afraid we won’t be worthy of them.”

  “I don’t want to be worthy, I want to be unworthy, I want to turn out badly.”

  She told me that to be as unworthy as possible she had overcome her disgust and had met with a man who for a while had worked in the garden of the house in Posillipo, married, with three children.

  “How was it?” I asked.

  “Horrible. His saliva was like sewer water and he was constantly saying bad words.”

  “But at least you got it over with.”

  “Yes, that.”

  “But now calm down and try to feel good.”

  “How?”

  I proposed that we go to Venice to see Tonino. She replied that she would prefer another place, Rome. I insisted on Venice, I understood that it wasn’t the city that was the problem but Tonino. In effect it emerged that Angela had told her about the slap, the rage that had seized that young man and caused him to lose control. He hurt my sister, she said. Yes, I admitted, but I like the effort he makes to behave well.

  “He didn’t manage with my sister.”

  “But he was much more committed than she was.”

  “You want to lose
your virginity to Tonino?”

  “No.”

  “Can I think about it and let you know?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to go someplace where I’m comfortable and can write.”

  “You want to write the story of the gardener?”

  “I already did, but I won’t read it to you because you’re still a virgin and it would stifle any desire.”

  “Then read me something else.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s one I’ve wanted to read to you for a long time.”

  She dug in her bag, she pulled out notebooks and loose pages. She chose a notebook with a red cover, found what she was looking for. It was just a few pages, the story of a long unfulfilled desire. Two sisters had a friend who often slept at their house. The friend was more the friend of the older sister than of the younger. The older waited for the younger to fall asleep to switch to the guest’s bed and sleep with her. The younger tried to fight off sleep, pained by the idea that the two excluded her, but in the end she gave in. One time, though, she had pretended to be asleep, and so, in silence, in solitude, she had listened to their whispers and their kisses. From then on, she had kept on faking it so she could spy on them, and when, finally, the two older girls fell asleep she always wept a little, because it seemed that nobody loved her.

  Ida read without emotion, quickly but pronouncing the words precisely. She never looked up from her notebook, she didn’t look me in the face. At the end, she burst out crying, just like the suffering little girl of the story. I looked for a handkerchief, I dried her tears. I kissed her on the mouth even though two mothers were passing nearby, pushing baby carriages and chatting.

  3.

  The next morning, without even trying to call first, I went straight to Margherita’s with the bracelet. I carefully avoided Vittoria’s house, first because I wanted to see Giuliana in private and second because, after her sudden and surely temporary reconciliation with my father, I seemed to have no more curiosity about her. But it was a pointless tactic, my aunt opened the door, as if Margherita’s house were hers. She greeted me with desolate good humor. Giuliana wasn’t there, Margherita had taken her to the doctor, she was tidying the kitchen.

  “But come, come in,” she said, “how pretty you look, keep me company.”

  “How’s Giuliana?”

  “She’s got a problem with her hair.”

  “I know.”

  “I know you know, and I also know how you helped her and how you were careful about everything. Good, good, good. Both Giuliana and Roberto love you a lot. I also love you. If your father made you like that, it means he’s not completely the piece of shit he seems.”

  “Papa told me you have a new job.”

  She was standing beside the sink, behind her was the photo of Enzo with the small lighted lamp. For the first time since I’d been seeing her I perceived a slight embarrassment pass through her eyes.

  “A very good one, yes.”

  “Are you going to move to Posillipo.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I’m a little sorry. I have to separate from Margherita, Corrado, Giuliana, and I’ve already lost Tonino. Sometimes I think your father did it on purpose, finding me this job. He wants to make me suffer.”

  I burst out laughing, but immediately recovered myself.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “I believe it: you can expect anything from my father.”

  She gave me a nasty look.

  “Don’t talk like that about your father or I’ll hit you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m the one who has to speak badly of him, not you, you’re his daughter.”

  “All right.”

  “Come here, give me a kiss. I love you, even if sometimes you make me mad.”

  I kissed her on the cheek, I dug in my purse.

  “I brought the bracelet back to Giuliana, it somehow ended up in my purse.”

  She blocked my hand.

  “What do you mean, somehow. Take it, I know you like it.”

  “Now it’s Giuliana’s.”

  “Giuliana doesn’t like it, and you do.”

  “Why did you give it to her, if she doesn’t like it?”

  She looked at me nervously, she seemed uncertain about the sense of my question.

  “Are you jealous?”

  “No.”

  “I gave it to her because I saw that she was anxious. But the bracelet has been yours since you were born.”

  “But it wasn’t a bracelet for a small child. Why didn’t you keep it? You could have worn it on Sunday to Mass.”

  She gave me a mean look, and exclaimed:

  “So now you’re the one who’s supposed to tell me what to do with my mother’s bracelet? Keep it and shut up. Giuliana, if you want to know the truth, doesn’t need it. She’s so full of light that the bracelet or any other piece of jewelry for her is too much. Now she has this problem with her hair, but it’s not serious, the doctor will give her a restorative treatment and it will pass. But you don’t know how to fix yourself up, Giannì, come here.”

  She was agitated, as if the kitchen were a close, airless space. She dragged me into Margherita’s bedroom, opened the doors of the wardrobe, I appeared in a long mirror. Vittoria ordered me: look at yourself. I looked, but mainly I saw her behind me. She said: you don’t dress, my dear, you hide yourself in your clothes. She pulled my skirt up around my waist, she exclaimed: look at those thighs, Heavenly Father, and turn around, yes, now that’s an ass. She forced me to turn around, she gave me a violent clap on the underpants, then she made me turn again toward the mirror. Madonna, what a figure—she exclaimed, caressing my hips—you’ve got to get to know yourself, you’ve got to make the most of yourself, your beautiful parts you need to let them be seen. Especially your bosom, oh what a bosom, you don’t know what a girl would do for a bosom like that. You punish it, you’re ashamed of your tits, you lock them up. Look how you should do. And at that point, while I pulled my skirt down, she stuck her hand in the neck of my shirt, first in one cup of my bra, then in the other, and arranged my bosom so that it became a swelling wave, high above the neckline. She was excited: see? We’re beautiful, Giannì, beautiful and smart. We were born well made and we shouldn’t waste ourselves. I want to see you settled even better than Giuliana, you deserve to rise up to the paradise in the heavens, not like that shit your father who’s remained on the earth but acts like he’s so important. But remember: this here—she touched me delicately for a fraction of a second between my legs—this here, I’ve told you countless times, hold it dear. Weigh the pros and cons before you give it, otherwise you’ll go nowhere. Rather, listen to me: if I find out you’ve wasted it, I’ll tell your father, and we’ll beat you to death. Now stop—this time she dug in my purse, took the bracelet, clasped it on my wrist—see how nice you look, see what it does for you?

  At that moment, in the background of the mirror, Corrado appeared.

  “Hi,” he said.

  Vittoria turned, I did, too. She asked him, fanning herself with one hand because of the heat:

  “Giannina’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “Very beautiful.”

  4.

  I urged Vittoria over and over to say hello to Giuliana for me, to tell her I loved her and she shouldn’t worry about anything, everything would be for the best. Then I started toward the door, expecting Corrado to say: I’ll walk a ways with you. But he was silent, dawdling idly. It was I who said to him:

  “Corrà, will you walk me to the bus stop?”

  “Yes, go with her,” Vittoria ordered him, and he followed me reluctantly down the stairs, along the street, in the blinding sun.

  “What’s wro
ng?” I asked.

  He shrugged, muttered something I didn’t understand, said more clearly that he felt lonely. Tonino had left, Giuliana would get married soon, and Vittoria was about to move to Posillipo, which was another city.

  “I’m the idiot of the house, and I have to stay with my mother, who is more of an idiot than me,” he said.

  “You leave, too.”

  “Where to? To do what? And anyway I don’t want to go. I was born here and I want to stay here.”

  “So?”

  He tried to explain. He said he had always felt protected by Tonino’s presence, by Giuliana’s, and mainly by Vittoria’s. He muttered: Giannì, I’m like my mother, we’re two people who put up with everything because they don’t know how to do anything and don’t count for anything. But—you want to know something?—as soon as Vittoria goes, I’m taking down that photo of Papa in the kitchen, I’ve never been able to stand it, it scares me, and I already know that my mother will agree.”

  I encouraged him to do it, but I also told him that he shouldn’t kid himself, Vittoria would never leave for good, she would return and return and return, ever more aggrieved and ever more unbearable.

  “You should go live with Tonino,” I advised him.

  “We don’t get along.”

  “Tonino is someone who knows how to deal with life.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Maybe I’ll go to Venice and say hello.”

  “Good for you, say hello for me as well and tell him that he thought only of himself and didn’t give a fuck about Mamma, Giuliana, or me.”

  I asked for his brother’s address, but he had only the name of the restaurant where he worked. Now that he’d let off some steam he tried to return to his usual mask. He joked, mixing sweet talk with obscene proposals, so that I said laughing: get it through your head, Corrà, nothing else is going to happen between you and me. Then I turned serious and asked for Rosario’s phone number. He looked surprised, he wanted to know if I had decided to fuck his friend. I answered that I didn’t know and since he would have liked a decisive no, he was concerned, he took the tone of an older brother who wanted to protect me from dangerous choices. He went on like that for a while, and I realized that he really didn’t intend to give me the number. Then I threatened him: all right, I’ll find it myself, but I’ll tell Rosario that you’re jealous and wouldn’t give it to me. He capitulated immediately, continuing to mutter: I’ll tell Vittoria and she’ll tell your father, and some nasty things will happen. I smiled, I wanted to give him a kiss on the cheek, I said, as seriously as I could, Corrà, you’d only be doing me a favor, I’m the first to want Vittoria and my father to know, in fact I want you to swear to me that if it happens you’ll certainly tell them. Meanwhile the bus had arrived, and I left him there on the sidewalk, confused.