She recounted every word the Solaras had said to her, except the matter of Antonio, that is to say the real reason we had gone to the bar, the reason that, I thought, she had decided to go with me. Then she concluded, in a tone of deliberate satisfaction, “Michele wants to put an enlargement of the photograph in the store in Piazza dei Martiri.”
“And you told him it was all right?”
“I told him they had to speak to you.”
Stefano finished the pastry in a single bite, then licked his fingers. He said, as if this were what had upset him most, “See what you force me to do? Tomorrow, because of you, I have to go and waste time with the dressmaker on the Rettifilo.” He sighed, he turned to me: “Lenù, you who are a respectable girl, try to explain to your friend that I have to work in this neighborhood, that she shouldn’t make me look like a jerk. Have a good Sunday, and say hello to Papa and Mamma for me.”
He went into the bathroom.
Lila behind his back made a teasing grimace, then went with me to the door.
“I’ll stay if you want,” I said.
“He’s a son of a bitch, don’t worry.”
She repeated, in a heavy male voice, words like try to explain to your friend, she shouldn’t make me look like a jerk, and the caricature made her eyes light up.
“If he beats you?”
“What can beatings do to me? A little time goes by and I’m better than before.”
On the landing she said again, again in a masculine voice: Lenù, I have to work in this neighborhood, and then I felt obliged to do Antonio, I whispered, Thank you, but there was no need, and suddenly it was as if we saw ourselves from the outside, both of us in trouble with our men, standing there on the threshold, actors in a recital of women, and we started laughing. I said: The minute we move we’ve done something wrong, who can understand men, ah, how much trouble they are. I hugged her warmly, and left. But I hadn’t even reached the bottom of the stairs when I heard Stefano shouting odious curses. Now he had the voice of an ogre, like his father’s.
17.
Already on the way home I began to worry both about her and about me. If Stefano killed her? If Antonio killed me? I was racked by anxiety, I walked quickly, in the dusty heat, along Sunday streets that were beginning to empty as lunchtime approached. How difficult it was to find one’s way, how difficult it was not to violate any of the incredibly detailed male regulations. Lila, perhaps based on secret calculations of her own, perhaps only out of spite, had humiliated her husband by going to flirt in front of everyone—she, Signora Carracci—with her former wooer Marcello Solara. I, without intending to, in fact convinced that I was doing good, had gone to argue the case of Antonio with those who years before had insulted his sister, who had beaten him up, whom he in turn had beaten up. When I entered the courtyard, I heard someone calling me, I started. It was him, he was at the window waiting for me to return.
He came down and I was afraid. I thought: he must have a knife. Instead, the whole time he spoke with his hands sunk in his pockets as if to keep them prisoner, calmly, his gaze distant. He said that I had humiliated him in front of the people he despised most in the world. He said I had made him look like someone who sends his woman to ask a favor. He said that he would not go down on his knees to anyone and that he would be a soldier not once but a hundred times, that in fact he would die in the Army rather than go and kiss the hand of Marcello Solara. He said that if Pasquale and Enzo should find out, they would spit in his face. He said that he was leaving me, because he had had the proof, finally, that I cared nothing about him and his feelings. He said that I could say and do with the son of Sarratore what I liked, he never wanted to see me again.
I couldn’t reply. Suddenly he took his hands out of his pockets, pulled me inside the doorway and kissed me, pressing his lips hard against mine, searching my mouth desperately with his tongue. Then he pulled away, turned his back, and left.
I went up the stairs in confusion. I thought that I was more fortunate than Lila, Antonio wasn’t like Stefano. He would never hurt me, the only person he could hurt was himself.
18.
I didn’t see Lila the next day, but, surprisingly, I was compelled to see her husband.
That morning I had gone to school depressed: it was hot, I hadn’t studied, I had scarcely slept. The school day had been a disaster. I had looked for Nino outside, I would have liked to talk just a little, but I didn’t see him, maybe he was wandering through the city with his girlfriend, maybe he was in one of the movie theaters that were open in the morning, kissing her in the dark, maybe he was in the woods at Capodimonte having her do to him the things I had done to Antonio for months. In the first class I had been interrogated in chemistry and had given muddled or inadequate answers; who knows what grade I had received, and there wasn’t time to make it up, I was in danger of having to retake the exam in September. I had met Professor Galiani in the hall and she had given me a gentle speech whose meaning was: What is happening to you, Greco, why aren’t you studying anymore? And I had been unable to say anything but: Professor, I am studying, I’m studying all the time, I swear; she listened to me for a bit and then walked away and went into the teachers’ lounge. I had had a long cry in the bathroom, a cry of self-pity for how wretched my life was. I had lost everything: success in school; Antonio, whom I had always wanted to leave, and who in the end had left me, and already I missed him; Lila, who since she had become Signora Carracci was more removed every day. Worn out by a headache, I had walked home thinking of her, of how she had used me—yes, used—to provoke the Solaras, to get revenge on her husband, to show him to me in his misery as a wounded male, and the whole way I wondered: Is it possible that a person can change like that, that now there’s nothing to distinguish her from someone like Gigliola?
But at home there was a surprise. My mother didn’t attack me the way she usually did because I was late and she suspected I had been seeing Antonio, or because I had neglected one of the thousands of household tasks. She said to me instead, with a sort of gentle annoyance, “Stefano asked me if you could go with him this afternoon to the dressmaker’s on the Rettifilo.”
Befuddled by tiredness and discouragement, I thought I hadn’t understood. Stefano? Stefano Carracci? He wanted me to go with him to the Rettifilo?
“Why doesn’t he go with his wife?” my father joked from the other room. Formally he was taking a sick day but in reality he had to keep an eye on some of his indecipherable deals. “How do those two pass the time? Do they play cards?”
My mother made a gesture of annoyance. She said maybe Lila was busy, she said we ought to be nice to the Carraccis, she said some people were never satisfied with anything. In reality my father was more than satisfied: to have good relations with the grocer meant that one could buy food on credit and put off paying indefinitely. But he liked to be witty. Lately, whenever the occasion arose, he had found it amusing to make allusions to Stefano’s presumed sexual laziness. At the table every so often he would ask: What’s Carracci doing, he only likes television? And he laughed and it didn’t take much to guess the meaning of his question: how is it that the two of them don’t have any children, does Stefano function or not? My mother, who in those matters understood him immediately, answered seriously: It’s early, leave them alone, what do you expect? But in fact she enjoyed as much as or more than he the idea that the grocer Carracci, in spite of the money he had, didn’t function.
The table was already set; they were waiting for me. My father continued to joke, with a half-sly expression, saying to my mother: “Have I ever said to you, I’m sorry, tonight I’m tired, let’s play cards?”
“No, because you are not a respectable person.”
“And would you like me to become a respectable person?”
“A little, but don’t exaggerate.”
“So starting tonight I’ll be a respectable person like Stefano.”
“I said don’t exaggerate.”
How I hated those duets. They talked as if they were sure that my brothers and sister and I couldn’t understand; or maybe they took it for granted that we caught every nuance, but they considered that it was the proper way to teach us how to be males and how to be females. Exhausted by my problems, I felt like screaming—throw away the plate, run out, never see my family again, the dampness in the corners of the ceiling, the flaking walls, the odor of food, any of it. Antonio: how foolish I had been to lose him, I was already sorry, I wished he would forgive me. If they make me retake the exams in September, I said to myself, I won’t show up, I’ll fail, I’ll marry him right away. Then I thought of Lila, how she had dressed, the tone she had taken with the Solaras, what she had in mind, how spiteful humiliation and suffering were making her. My mind wandered like that all afternoon, with disconnected thoughts. A bath in the tub of the new house, anxiety about that request of Stefano’s, how to tell my friend, what her husband wanted from me. And chemistry. And Empedocles. And school. And quitting school. And finally a cold sadness. There was no escape. No, neither Lila nor I would ever become like the girl who had waited for Nino after school. We both lacked something intangible but fundamental, which was obvious in her even if you simply saw her from a distance, and which one possessed or did not, because to have that thing it was not enough to learn Latin or Greek or philosophy, nor was the money from groceries or shoes of any use.
Stefano called from the courtyard. I hurried down and immediately saw in his face an expression of despair. He said he wanted me to go with him to retrieve the photograph that the dressmaker had displayed in her window without permission. Do me this kindness, he muttered, in a sentimental tone of voice. Then without a word he opened the door of the convertible, and we drove off, assailed by the hot wind.
As soon as we were out of the neighborhood he started talking and he didn’t stop until we got to the dressmaker’s. He spoke in a mild dialect, without cursing or joking. He began by saying that I must do him a favor, but he didn’t immediately explain what the favor was, he said only, stumbling over his words, that if I did it for him, it would be as if I were doing it for my friend. Then he went on to talk to me about Lila, how intelligent, how beautiful she was. But she is rebellious by nature, he added, and either you do things the way she says or she torments you. Lenù, you don’t know what I’m suffering, or maybe you do know, but all you know is what she tells you. Now, listen to me, too. Lina has a fixed idea that all I think about is money, and maybe it’s true, but I’m doing it for the family, for her brother, for her father, for all her relatives. Am I wrong? You are very educated, tell me if I’m wrong. What does she want from me—the poverty she comes from? Should only the Solaras make money? Do we want to leave the neighborhood in their hands? If you tell me I’m wrong, I won’t argue with you, I will immediately admit that I’m wrong. But with her I have to argue whether I want to or not. She doesn’t want me, she told me, she repeats it to me. Making her understand that I’m her husband is a battle, and ever since I got married life has been unbearable. To see her in the morning, in the evening, to sleep next to her and not be able to make her feel how much I love her, with the strength I’m capable of, is a terrible thing.
I looked at his broad hands gripping the steering wheel, his face. With tears in his eyes, he admitted that on their wedding night he had had to beat her, that he had been forced to do it, that every morning, every evening she drew slaps from his hands on purpose to humiliate him, forcing him to act in a way that he never, ever, ever would have wanted. Here he assumed an almost frightened tone: I had to beat her again, she shouldn’t have gone to the Solaras’ dressed like that. But she has a force inside that I can’t subdue. It’s an evil force that makes good manners—everything—useless. A poison. You see she’s not pregnant? Months pass and nothing happens. Relatives, friends, customers ask, and you can see the mockery on their faces: any news? And I have to say, what news, pretending not to understand. Because if I understood I would have to answer. And what can I answer? There are things you know that can’t be said. With that force she has, she murders the children inside, Lenù, and she does it on purpose to make people think I don’t know how to be a man, to show me up in front of everyone. What do you think? Am I exaggerating? You don’t know what a favor you’re doing to listen to me.
I didn’t know what to say. I was stunned, I had never heard a man talk about himself like that. The whole time, even when he spoke of his own brutality, he used a dialect full of feeling, defenseless, like the language of certain songs. I still don’t know why he behaved that way. Of course, afterward he revealed what he wanted. He wanted me to ally myself with him for the good of Lila. He said that she had to be helped to understand how necessary it was to behave like a wife and not like an enemy. He asked me to persuade her to help out in the second grocery and with the accounts. But for that purpose he didn’t have to confess to me in that way. Probably he thought that Lila had kept me minutely informed and therefore he had to give me his version of the facts. Or maybe he hadn’t counted on opening himself up so frankly to his wife’s best friend, and had done so only on the wave of emotion. Or he hypothesized that, if he moved me, I would then move Lila by reporting everything to her. Certainly I listened to him with increasing sympathy. I was pleased by that free flow of intimate confidences. But above all, I have to admit, what pleased me was the importance he attached to me. When in his own words he articulated a suspicion that I myself had always had, that is, that Lila harbored a force that made her capable of anything, even of keeping her body from conceiving children, it seemed that he was attributing to me a beneficent power, one that could win over Lila’s maleficent one, and this flattered me. We got out of the car, and arrived at the dressmaker’s shop. I felt consoled by that acknowledgment. I went so far as to say pompously, in Italian, that I would do everything possible to help them to be happy.
But as soon as we were in front of the dressmaker’s window I became nervous again. We both stopped to look at the framed photograph of Lila amid fabrics of many colors. She was seated, her legs crossed, her wedding dress pulled up a little to reveal her shoes, an ankle. She rested her chin on the palm of one hand, her gaze was solemn, intense, turned boldly toward the lens, and in her hair shone a crown of orange blossoms. The photographer had been fortunate. I felt that he had caught the force Stefano had talked about; it was a force—I seemed to grasp—against which not even Lila could prevail. I turned as if to say to him, in admiration and at the same time dismay, here’s what we were talking about, but he pushed open the door and let me go in first.
The tones he had used with me disappeared, and he was harsh with the dressmaker. He said that he was Lina’s husband, he used that precise construction. He explained that he, too, was in business, but that it would never occur to him to get publicity in that way. He went so far as to say: You are a good-looking woman, what would your husband say if I took a photograph of you and stuck it in amid the provolone and the salami? He asked for the photograph back.
The dressmaker was bewildered; she tried to defend herself, and finally she gave in. But she appeared very unhappy, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of her initiative and the basis of her regret, she told three or four anecdotes that later, over the years, became a small legend in the neighborhood. Among those who had stopped in to ask for information about the young woman in the wedding dress during the period in which the photograph was in the window were the famous singer Renato Carosone, an Egyptian prince, Vittorio De Sica, and a journalist from the paper Roma, who wanted to talk to Lila and send a photographer to do a story on bathing suits like the ones worn at beauty contests. The dressmaker swore that she had refused to give Lila’s address to anyone, even though, especially in the case of Carosone and of De Sica, the refusal had seemed to her very rude, given the status of those persons.
I noticed that the more the dressmaker talked the more Stefano softe
ned again. He became sociable, he wanted the woman to tell him in more detail about those episodes. When we left, taking with us the photograph, his mood had changed, and the monologue of the return did not have the anguished tone of the earlier one. Stefano was cheerful, he began to speak of Lila with the pride of someone possessing a rare object whose ownership confers great prestige. Of course, he asked again for my help. And before leaving me at my house he made me swear over and over that I would try to make Lila understand what was the right path and what was wrong. Yet Lila, in his words, was no longer a person who couldn’t be controlled but a sort of precious fluid stored in a container that belonged to him. In the following days Stefano told everyone, even in the grocery, about Carosone and De Sica, so that the story spread and Lila’s mother, Nunzia, as long as she lived, went around repeating to everyone that her daughter would have had the opportunity of becoming a singer and actress, appearing in the film Marriage Italian Style, going on television, even becoming an Egyptian princess, if the dressmaker of the Rettifilo had not been so reticent and if fate had not let her marry, at the age of sixteen, Stefano Carracci.
19.
The chemistry teacher was generous with me (or maybe it was Professor Galiani who went to the trouble to get her to be generous), and gave me a pass. I was promoted with average grades in literary subjects, low passing grades in scientific ones, a narrow pass in religion and, for the first time, a less than perfect grade in behavior, a sign that the priest and a great many of the teachers had never really forgiven me. I was sorry about it; I felt that my old dispute with the religion teacher on the role of the Holy Spirit had been presumptuous, and I regretted not having listened to Alfonso, who at the time had tried to restrain me. Naturally I did not get a scholarship, and my mother was enraged, saying that it was all because of the time I had wasted with Antonio. Her words infuriated me. I said I didn’t want to go to school anymore. She raised her hand to slap me, feared for my glasses, and hurried to get the carpet beater. Terrible days, in other words, and they got worse. The only thing that seemed positive was that, the morning I went to see the grades, the janitor came up and handed me a package left by Professor Galiani. It was books, but not novels: books full of arguments, a subtle sign of trust that still was not enough to bring me relief.
The Neapolitan Novels Page 39
