The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  I didn’t see him on the stairs, in the crush of students, and in the street I couldn’t find him. He was among the last to come out, and his expression was more morose than usual. I went to meet him, cheerfully waving the paper, and I poured out a profusion of words, all exaggerated. He listened to me frowning, then he took the piece of paper, angrily crumpled it up, and threw it away.

  “Galiani said it’s no good,” he mumbled.

  I was confused.

  “What’s no good about it?”

  He scowled unhappily and made a gesture that meant forget about it, it’s not worth talking about.

  “Anyway, thank you,” he said in a somewhat forced manner, and suddenly he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

  Since the kiss on Ischia we had had no contact, not even a handshake, and that way of parting, utterly unusual at the time, paralyzed me. He didn’t ask me to walk a little distance with him, he didn’t say goodbye: everything ended there. Without energy, without voice, I watched him walk away.

  At that point two terrible things happened, one after the other. First, a girl came out of a narrow street, a girl certainly younger than me, at most fifteen, whose pure beauty was striking: she had a nice figure, and smooth black hair that hung down her back; every gesture or movement had a gracefulness, every item of her spring outfit had a deliberate restraint. She met Nino, he put an arm around her shoulders, she lifted her face, offering him her mouth, and they kissed: a kiss very different from the one he had given me. Right afterward I realized that Antonio was at the corner. He was supposed to be at work and instead he had come to get me. Who knew how long he had been there.

  14.

  It was hard to convince him that what he had seen with his own eyes was not what he had for a long time imagined but only a friendly gesture, with no other purpose. “He’s already got a girlfriend,” I said, “you saw it yourself.” But he must have caught a trace of suffering in those words, and he threatened me, his lower lip and his hands began to tremble. Then I muttered that I was tired of this, I wanted to leave him. He gave in, and we made up. But from that moment on he trusted me even less, and the anxiety of departure for military service was welded conclusively to the fear of leaving me to Nino. More and more often he abandoned his job to be in time, he said, to meet me. In reality his aim was to catch me in the act and prove, to himself above all, that I really was unfaithful. What he would do then not even he knew.

  One afternoon his sister Ada saw me passing the grocery, where she now worked, to her great satisfaction and to Stefano’s. She ran out to see me. She wore a greasy white smock that covered her to below the knees, but she was still very pretty and it was clear from her lipstick, her made-up eyes, the pins in her hair that, under the smock, she was dressed as if for a party. She said she wanted to talk to me, and we agreed to meet in the courtyard before dinner. She arrived breathless from the grocery, along with Pasquale, who had picked her up.

  They spoke to me together, an embarrassed phrase from one, an embarrassed phrase from the other. I understood that they were worried: Antonio lost his temper for no reason, he no longer had patience with Melina, he was absent without warning from work. And even Gallese, the owner of the shop, was upset, because he had known him since he was a boy and had never seen him like this.

  “He’s afraid of military service,” I said.

  “So if they call him, of course he has to go,” Pasquale said, “otherwise he becomes a deserter.”

  “When you’re around, it all goes away,” said Ada.

  “I don’t have much time,” I said.

  “People are more important than school,” said Pasquale.

  “Spend less time with Lina, and you’ll see, you’ll find the time,” said Ada.

  “I do what I can,” I said, offended.

  “His nerves are fragile,” Pasquale said.

  Ada concluded abruptly, “I’ve been taking care of a crazy person since I was a child—two would really be too much, Lenù.”

  I was annoyed, and scared. Filled with a sense of guilt, I went back to seeing Antonio often, even though I didn’t want to, even though I had to study. It wasn’t enough. One night at the ponds he began to cry, he showed me a card. He hadn’t received an exemption, he was to leave with Enzo, in the fall. And at a certain point he did something extremely upsetting. He fell on the ground and in a frenzy began sticking handfuls of dirt in his mouth. I had to hold him tight, say that I loved him, wipe the dirt out of his mouth with my fingers.

  What kind of mess am I getting myself into, I thought later, in bed, unable to sleep, and I discovered that suddenly the wish to leave school—to accept myself for what I was, to marry him, to live at his mother’s house with his siblings, pumping gas—had faded. I decided that I had to do something to help him and, when he recovered, get myself out of that relationship.

  The next day I went to Lila’s, really frightened. I found her overly cheerful; during that period we were both unsettled. I told her about Antonio, and the card, and I told her that I had made a decision: in secret from him, because he would never give me permission, I intended to go to Marcello or even Michele to ask if they could get him out of his predicament.

  I was exaggerating my determination. In reality I was confused: on the one hand it seemed to me that I was obliged to try, since I was the cause of Antonio’s suffering; on the other, I was consulting Lila precisely because I took it for granted that she would tell me not to. But I was so absorbed by my own emotional chaos that I hadn’t taken into account hers.

  Her reaction was equivocal. First she teased me, she said I was a liar, she said I must really love my boyfriend if I was willing to go in person and humble myself with the Solaras, even though I knew that, given all that had happened, they would not lift a finger for him. Immediately afterward, however, she began nervously going in circles, she laughed, became serious, laughed again. Finally she said: all right, go, let’s see what happens. And then she added:

  “After all, Lenù, where’s the difference between my brother and Michele Solara or, let’s say, between Stefano and Marcello?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that maybe I should have married Marcello.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “At least Marcello isn’t dependent on anyone, he does as he likes.”

  “Are you serious?”

  She quickly denied that she was, laughing, but she didn’t convince me. She can’t possibly be reconsidering Marcello, I thought: all that laughter isn’t real, it’s just a sign of ugly thoughts, of suffering because things aren’t going well with her husband.

  I had proof of that immediately. She became thoughtful, she narrowed her eyes to cracks, she said, “I’m going with you.”

  “Where.”

  “To the Solaras.”

  “To do what?”

  “To see if they can help Antonio.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll make Stefano angry.”

  “Who gives a damn. If he goes to them, I can, too, I’m his wife.”

  15.

  I couldn’t stop her. One Sunday—on Sundays Stefano slept until noon—we were going out for a walk and she pressed me to go to the Bar Solara. When she appeared on the new street, still white with lime, I was astonished. She was extravagantly dressed and made up: she was neither the shabby Lila of long ago nor the Jackie Kennedy of the glossy magazines but, based on the films we liked, maybe Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun, maybe Ava Gardner in The Sun Also Rises.

  Walking next to her I felt embarrassment and also a sense of danger. It seemed to me that she was risking not only gossip but ridicule, and that both reflected on me, a sort of colorless but loyal puppy who served as her escort. Everything about her—the hair, the earrings, the close-fitting blouse, the tight skirt, the way she walked—was unsuitable for
the gray streets of the neighborhood. Male gazes, at the sight of her, seemed to start, as if offended. The women, especially the old ones, didn’t limit themselves to bewildered expressions: some stopped on the edge of the sidewalk and stood watching her, with a laugh that was both amused and uneasy, as when Melina did odd things on the street.

  And yet when we entered the Bar Solara, which was crowded with men buying the Sunday pastries, there was only a respectful ogling, some polite nods of greeting, the truly admiring gaze of Gigliola Spagnuolo behind the counter, and a greeting from Michele, at the cash register—an exaggerated hello that was like an exclamation of joy. The verbal exchanges that followed were all in dialect, as if tension prevented any engagement with the laborious filters of Italian pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax.

  “What would you like?”

  “A dozen pastries.”

  Michele shouted at Gigliola, this time with a slight hint of sarcasm:

  “Twelve pastries for Signora Carracci.”

  At that name, the curtain that opened onto the bakery was pushed aside and Marcello looked out. At the sight of Lila right there, in his bar and pastry shop, he grew pale and retreated. But a few seconds later he came out again and greeted her. He mumbled, to my friend, “It’s a shock to hear you called Signora Carracci.”

  “To me, too,” Lila said, and her amused half-smile, her total absence of hostility, surprised not only me but the two brothers as well.

  Michele examined her carefully, his head inclined to one side, as if he were looking at a painting.

  “We saw you,” he said, and called to Gigliola. “Right, Gigliò, didn’t we see her yesterday afternoon?”

  Gigliola nodded yes, unenthusiastically. And Marcello agreed—saw, yes saw—but without Michele’s sarcasm, rather as if he had been hypnotized at a magic show.

  “Yesterday afternoon?” Lila asked.

  “Yesterday afternoon,” Michele confirmed, “on the Rettifilo.”

  Marcello came to the point, irritated by his brother’s tone of voice. “You were on display in the dressmaker’s window—there’s a photograph of you in your wedding dress.”

  They talked a little about the photograph, Marcello with devotion, Michele with irony, both asserting in different ways how perfectly it captured Lila’s beauty on her wedding day. She seemed annoyed, but playfully: the dressmaker hadn’t told her she would put the picture in the window, otherwise she would never have given it to her.

  “I want my picture in the window,” Gigliola cried from behind the counter, imitating the petulant voice of a child.

  “If someone marries you,” said Michele.

  “You’re marrying me,” she replied darkly, and went on like that until Lila said seriously:

  “Lenuccia wants to get married, too.”

  The attention of the Solara brothers shifted reluctantly to me; until then I had felt invisible, and hadn’t said a word.

  “No.” I blushed.

  “Why not, I’d marry you, even if you are four-eyed,” said Michele, catching another black look from Gigliola.

  “Too late, she’s already engaged,” said Lila. And slowly she managed to lead the two brothers around to Antonio, evoking his family situation, including a vivid picture of how much worse it would be if he had to go into the Army. It wasn’t just her skill with words that struck me, that I knew. What struck me was a new tone, a shrewd dose of impudence and assurance. There she was, her mouth flaming with lipstick. She made Marcello believe that she had put a seal on the past, made Michele believe that his sly arrogance amused her. And, to my great amazement, toward both she behaved like a woman who knows what men are, who has nothing more to learn on the subject and in fact would have much to teach: and she wasn’t playing a part, the way we had as girls, imitating novels in which fallen ladies appeared; rather, it was clear that her knowledge was true, and this did not embarrass her. Then abruptly she became aloof, she sent out signals of refusal, I know you want me but I don’t want you. Thus she retreated, throwing them off balance, so that Marcello became self-conscious and Michele darkened, irresolute, with a hard gaze that meant: Watch it, because, Signora Carracci or not, I’m ready to slap you in the face, you whore. At that point she changed her tone again, again drew them toward her, appeared to be amused and amused them. The result? Michele didn’t commit himself, but Marcello said: “Antonio doesn’t deserve it, but Lenuccia’s a good girl, so to make her happy I can ask a friend and find out if something can be done.”

  I felt satisfied, I thanked him.

  Lila chose the pastries, was friendly toward Gigliola and also toward her father, the pastry maker, who poked his head out of the bakery to say: Hello to Stefano. When she tried to pay, Marcello made a clear gesture of refusal, and his brother, if less decisively, seconded him. We were about to leave when Michele said to her seriously, in the slow tone he assumed when he wanted something and ruled out any disagreement:

  “You look great in that photograph.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The shoes are very conspicuous.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I remember and I want to ask you something.”

  “You want a photo, too, you want to put it up here in the bar?”

  Michele shook his head with a cold little laugh.

  “No. But you know that we’re getting the shop ready in Piazza dei Martiri.”

  “I don’t know anything about your affairs.”

  “Well, you should find out, because our affairs are important and we all know that you’re not stupid. I think that if that photograph is useful to the dressmaker as an advertisement for a wedding dress, we can make much better use of it as an advertisement for Cerullo shoes.”

  Lila burst out laughing, she said, “You want to put that photograph in the window in Piazza dei Martiri?”

  “No, I want it enlarged, huge, in the shop.”

  She thought about it for a moment, then made a gesture of indifference.

  “Don’t ask me, ask Stefano, he’s the one who decides.”

  I saw the brothers exchange a puzzled glance, and I understood that they had already discussed the idea and had assumed that Lila would never agree, so they couldn’t believe that she hadn’t been indignant, that she hadn’t immediately said no, but had surrendered without argument to the authority of her husband. They didn’t recognize her, and, right then, even I didn’t know who she was.

  Marcello went to the door with us. Outside, he became solemn, and said, “This is the first time in a long while that we’ve spoken, Lina, and it’s disturbing. You and I didn’t go with each other—all right, that’s the way it is. But I don’t want anything between us to remain unclear. And especially I don’t want blame that I don’t deserve. I know that your husband goes around saying that as an insult I claimed those shoes. But I swear to you in front of Lenuccia: he and your brother gave me the shoes to demonstrate that there was no more bad feeling. I had nothing to do with it.”

  Lila listened without interrupting, a sympathetic expression on her face. Then, as soon as he had finished, she became herself again. She said with contempt, “You’re like children, accusing each other.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “No, Marcè, I believe you. But what you say, what they say, I don’t give a damn about it anymore.”

  16.

  I dragged Lila into our old courtyard, I couldn’t wait to tell Antonio what I had done for him. I confided to her, trembling with excitement: as soon as he calms down a little, I’ll leave him, but she had no comment, she seemed distracted.

  I called. Antonio looked out, came down, serious. He said hello to Lila, apparently without noticing how she was dressed, how she was made up, in fact trying to look at her as little as possible, maybe because he was afraid that I would read in his face some male agitation. I told him that I couldn’t stay,
I had only time to give him some good news. He listened, but as I was speaking I realized that he was pulling back as if before the point of a knife. He promised he’ll help you, I said anyway, emphatically, enthusiastically, and asked Lila to confirm it.

  “Marcello said so, right?”

  Lila confined herself to assenting. But Antonio had turned very pale, he lowered his eyes. He muttered, in a strangled voice:

  “I never asked you to talk to the Solaras.”

  Lila said right away, lying, “It was my idea.”

  Antonio answered without looking at her. “Thank you, it wasn’t necessary.”

  He said goodbye to her—said goodbye to her, not to me—turned his back, and vanished into the doorway.

  I felt sick to my stomach. Where was my mistake, why had he gotten angry like that? On the street I exploded, saying to Lila that Antonio was worse than his mother, Melina, the same unstable blood, I couldn’t take it anymore. She let me speak and meanwhile wanted me go to her house with her. When we got there, she asked me to come in.

  “Stefano’s there,” I objected, but that wasn’t the reason. I was upset by Antonio’s reaction and wanted to be alone, to figure out where I had made the mistake.

  “Five minutes and you can go.”

  I went up. Stefano was in his pajamas, disheveled, unshaved. He greeted me politely, glanced at his wife, at the package of pastries.

  “You were at the Bar Solara?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dressed like that?”

  “I don’t look nice?”

  Stefano shook his head ill-humoredly, opened the package.

  “Would you like a pastry, Lenù?”

  “No, thank you, I have to go and eat.”

  He bit into a pastry, turned to his wife. “Who did you see at the bar?”

  “Your friends,” said Lila. “They paid me a lot of compliments. Isn’t that true, Lenù?”