I avoided any comment. I went to the wedding with Marisa and Alfonso; he seemed to be just waiting for these worldly occasions to become someone else, not my usual classmate but a young man graceful in manner and appearance, with black hair, a heavy bluish beard showing on his cheeks, languid eyes, a suit that wasn’t ill-fitting, as happened to other men, but showed off his slender yet sculpted body.
In the hope that Nino would be obliged to take his sister, I had very carefully studied his article and all of Cronache Meridionali. But by now Alfonso was Marisa’s knight, he went to pick her up, he brought her home, and Nino didn’t appear. I stayed close to the two of them, I wanted to avoid being alone with Lila.
In the church I glimpsed her in the first row, between Stefano and Maria; she was so beautiful, it was impossible to avoid looking at her. Later, at the wedding lunch, in the same restaurant on Via Orazio where her own reception was held, scarcely more than a year earlier, we met just once and exchanged wary words. Then I ended up at a table over on the side, with Alfonso, Marisa, and a fair-haired boy around thirteen, while she sat with Stefano at the bride and bridegroom’s table, with the important guests. How many things had changed in a short time. Antonio wasn’t there, Enzo wasn’t there, both still doing their military service. The clerks from the groceries, Carmen and Ada, had been invited, but not Pasquale, or maybe he had chosen not to come, in order not to mix with people whom, as local gossip had it, partly joking, partly serious, he planned to murder with his own hands. His mother, Giuseppina Peluso, was also absent, as were Melina and her children. Instead, the Carraccis, the Cerullos, and the Solaras, business partners in various combinations, all sat together at the head table, along with the relatives from Florence, that is to say the metal merchant and his wife. I saw Lila talking to Michele, laughing in an exaggerated fashion. Every so often she looked in my direction, but I immediately turned away, with a mixture of irritation and distress. How much she laughed, too much. I thought of my mother: the way Lila was playing the married woman, the vulgarity of her manners, her dialect. She held Michele’s attention completely, though next to him was his fiancée, Gigliola, pale and furious at being neglected. Only Marcello from time to time spoke soothingly to his future sister-in-law. Lila, Lila: she wanted to exceed and with her excesses make us all suffer. I noticed that Nunzia and Fernando also gave their daughter long, apprehensive looks.
The day went smoothly, apart from two episodes that apparently had no repercussions. Here’s the first. Among the guests was Gino, the pharmacist’s son, because he had recently become engaged to a second cousin of the Carraccis, a thin girl with brown hair worn close to her head and violet shadows under her eyes. As he got older he had become more detestable; I couldn’t forgive myself for having been his girlfriend when I was younger. He had been devious then, and he remained devious, and, besides, he was in a situation that made him even more untrustworthy: he had failed his exams again. He hadn’t even said hello to me for a long time, but he had continued to hang around Alfonso, at times he was friendly, at others he teased him with insults that always had sexual overtones. That day, maybe out of envy (Alfonso had passed with good marks and, besides, was with Marisa, who was pretty, whose eyes sparkled), he was particularly unbearable. The fair-haired boy seated at our table, who was nice-looking and very shy, was the son of a relative of Nunzia’s who had emigrated to Germany and married a German. I was very nervous and didn’t give him much encouragement to talk, but both Alfonso and Marisa had tried to put him at his ease. Alfonso in particular engaged him in conversation, did all he could if the waiters neglected him, and even took him out to the terrace for a view of the sea. Just as they came in and returned to the table, joking, Gino, with a laugh, left his fiancée, who tried to restrain him, and came to sit with us. He spoke to the boy in a low voice, indicating Alfonso:
“Watch out for that guy, he’s a fag: this time he took you out to the terrace, next time it’ll be the bathroom.”
Alfonso turned fiery red but didn’t react, he half-smiled, helplessly, and said nothing. It was Marisa who got angry:
“How dare you say such a thing!”
“I dare because I know.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Then listen to what I’m telling you.”
“Go ahead.”
“My fiancée’s brother stayed at the Carraccis’ house once and had to sleep in the same bed with him.”
“So?”
“He touched him.”
“He who?”
“Him.”
“Where’s your fiancée?”
“Here she is.”
“Tell that bitch I can prove that Alfonso likes girls, and I certainly don’t know if she can say the same about you.”
And at that point she turned to her boyfriend and kissed him on the lips: a passionate, public kiss—I would never have dared to do a thing like that in front of all those people.
Lila, who continued to look in my direction as if she were monitoring me, was the first to see that kiss and she clapped her hands with spontaneous enthusiasm. Michele, too, applauded, laughing, and Stefano gave his brother a vulgar compliment, which was immediately expanded on by the metal merchant. All sorts of banter, in other words, but Marisa pretended not to notice. Squeezing Alfonso’s hand tightly—her knuckles were white—she hissed at Gino, who had stared at the kiss with a blank expression, “Now get out of here, or I’ll smack you.”
The pharmacist’s son got up without saying a word and went back to his table, where his girlfriend immediately whispered in his ear with an aggressive look. Marisa gave them both a last glance of contempt.
From that moment my opinion of her changed. I admired her courage, the stubborn capacity for love, the seriousness of her attachment to Alfonso. Here was another person I’ve neglected, I thought with regret, and wrongly so. How much my dependence on Lila had closed my eyes. How frivolous her applause had been, how it fit with the boorish amusement of Michele, of Stefano, of the metal merchant.
The second episode had as its protagonist Lila herself. The reception was now almost over. I had gotten up to go to the bathroom and was passing the bridal table when I heard the wife of the metal merchant laughing loudly. I turned. Pinuccia was standing and was shielding herself, because the woman was pulling up her wedding dress, baring her large, strong legs, and saying to Stefano, “Look at your sister’s thighs, look at that butt and that stomach. You men of today like girls who resemble toilet brushes, but it’s the ones like our Pinuccia whom God made just for bearing you children.”
Lila, who was bringing a glass to her mouth, without a second’s hesitation threw the wine in her face and on her silk dress. As usual, I thought, immediately anxious, she thinks she’s entitled to do anything, and now all hell’s going to break loose. I went out to the bathroom, locked myself in, stayed there as long as possible. I didn’t want to see Lila’s fury, I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to stay outside it, I was afraid of being dragged into her suffering, I was afraid of feeling obligated, out of long habit, to ally myself with her. Instead, when I came out, everything was calm. Stefano was chatting with the metal merchant and his wife, who was sitting stiffly in her stained dress. The orchestra played, couples danced. Only Lila wasn’t there. I saw her outside the glass doors, on the terrace. She was looking at the sea.
39.
I was tempted to join her, I immediately changed my mind. She must be very upset and would surely be mean to me, which would make things even worse between us. I decided to return to my table when Fernando, her father, came up to me and asked timidly if I’d like to dance.
I didn’t dare refuse, we danced a waltz in silence. He led me confidently around the room, among the tipsy couples, holding my hand too tight with his sweaty hand. His wife must have entrusted him with the task of telling me something important,
but he couldn’t get up his courage. Finally, at the end of the waltz, he muttered, addressing me, surprisingly, with formality: “If it’s not too much trouble for you, talk to Lina a little, her mother is worried.” Then he added awkwardly, “When you need shoes, come by, don’t stand on ceremony,” and he returned quickly to his table.
That hint at a kind of reward for my possibly devoting time to Lila bothered me. I asked Alfonso and Marisa to go, which they were happy to do. I felt Nunzia’s gaze on me right up until we left the restaurant.
As the days passed, I began to lose confidence. I had thought that working in a bookstore meant having a lot of books available to me and time to read them, but I was unlucky. The owner treated me like a servant, he couldn’t stand my being still for a moment: he forced me to unload boxes, pile them up, empty them, arrange the new books, rearrange the old ones, dust them, and he sent me up and down a ladder just so he could look under my skirt. Besides, Armando, after that first foray when he had seemed so friendly, hadn’t showed up again. And Nino hadn’t reappeared, either with Nadia or by himself. Had their interest in me been so short-lived? I began to feel solitude, boredom. The heat, the work, disgust at the bookseller’s looks and his coarse remarks depressed me. The hours dragged. What was I doing in that dark cave, while along the sidewalk boys and girls filed past on their way to the mysterious university building, a place where I would almost certainly never go? Where was Nino? Had he gone to Ischia to study? He had left me the review, his article, and I had studied them as if for an examination, but would he ever come back to examine me? Where had I gone wrong? Had I been too reserved? Was he expecting me to seek him out and for that reason did not look for me? Should I talk to Alfonso, get in touch with Marisa, ask her about her brother? And why? Nino had a girlfriend, Nadia: What point was there in asking his sister where he was, what he was doing. I would make myself ridiculous.
Day by day the sense of myself that had so unexpectedly expanded after the party diminished, I felt dispirited. Get up early, hurry to Mezzocannone, slave all day, go home tired, the thousands of words learned in school packed into my head, unusable. I got depressed not only when I recalled conversations with Nino but also when I thought of the summers at the Sea Garden with the stationer’s daughters, with Antonio. How stupidly our affair had ended, he was the only person who had truly loved me, there would never be anyone else. In bed at night, I recalled the odor of his skin, the meetings at the ponds, our kissing and petting at the old canning factory.
I was in this state of discouragement when, one evening, after dinner, Carmen, Ada, and Pasquale, who had one hand bandaged because he had injured it at work, came looking for me. We got ice cream, and ate it in the gardens. Carmen, coming straight to the point, asked me, somewhat aggressively, why I never stopped by the grocery anymore. I said I was working at Mezzocannone and didn’t have time. Ada said, coldly, that if one is attached to a person one finds the time, but if that’s how I was going to be, never mind. I asked, “Be how?” and she answered, “You have no feelings, just look how you treated my brother.” I reminded her with an angry snap that it was her brother who had left me, and she replied, “Yes, anyone who believes that is lucky: there are people who leave and people who know how to be left.” Carmen agreed: “Also friendships,” she said. “You think they break off because of one person and instead, if you look hard, it’s the other person’s fault.” At that point I got upset, I declared, “Listen, if Lina and I aren’t friends anymore, it’s not my fault.” Here Pasquale intervened, he said, “Lenù, it’s not important whose fault it is, it’s important for us to support Lina.” He brought up the story of his bad teeth, of how she had helped him, he talked about the money she still gave Carmen under the counter, and how she also sent money to Antonio, who, even if I didn’t know and didn’t want to know, was having a bad time in the Army. I tried cautiously to ask what was happening to my old boyfriend and they told me, in different tones of voice, some hostile, some less, that he had had a nervous breakdown, that he was ill, but that he was tough, he wouldn’t give in, he would make it. Lina, on the other hand.
“What’s wrong with Lina?”
“They want to take her to a doctor.”
“Who wants to take her?”
“Stefano, Pinuccia, relatives.”
“Why?”
“To find out why she’s only gotten pregnant once and then never again.”
“And she?”
“She acts like a madwoman, she doesn’t want to go.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “What can I do?”
“You take her.”
40.
I talked to Lila. She started laughing, she said she would go to the doctor only if I swore that I wasn’t angry with her.
“All right.”
“Swear.”
“I swear.”
“Swear on your brothers, swear on Elisa.”
I said that going to the doctor wasn’t a big deal, but that if she didn’t want to go I didn’t care, she should do as she liked. She became serious.
“You don’t swear, then.”
“No.”
She was silent for a moment, then she admitted, eyes lowered, “All right, I was wrong.”
I made a grimace of irritation. “Go to the doctor and let me know.”
“You won’t come?”
“If I don’t go in the bookseller will fire me.”
“I’ll hire you,” she said ironically.
“Go to the doctor, Lila.”
Maria, Nunzia, and Pinuccia took her to the doctor. All three insisted on being present at the examination. Lila was obedient, disciplined: she had never submitted to that type of examination, and the whole time she kept her lips pressed together, eyes wide. When the doctor, a very old man who had been recommended by the neighborhood obstetrician, said knowingly that everything was in order, her mother and mother-in-law were relieved, but Pinuccia darkened, asked:
“Then why don’t children come and if they come why aren’t they born?”
The doctor noticed her spiteful tone and frowned.
“She’s very young,” he said. “She needs to get a little stronger.”
Get stronger. I don’t know if the doctor used exactly that verb, yet that was reported to me and it made an impression. It meant that Lila, in spite of the strength she displayed at all times, was weak. It meant that children didn’t come, or didn’t last in her womb, not because she possessed a mysterious power that annihilated them but because, on the contrary, she was an inadequate woman. My resentment faded. When, in the courtyard, she told me about the torture of the medical examination, using vulgar expressions for both the doctor and the three who accompanied her, I gave no signs of annoyance but in fact took an interest: no doctor had ever examined me, not even the obstetrician. Finally she said, sarcastically:
“He tore me with a metal instrument, I gave him a lot of money, and to reach what conclusion? That I need strengthening.”
“Strengthening of what sort?”
“I’m supposed to go to the beach and go swimming.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The beach, Lenù, sun, salt water. It seems that if you go to the beach you get stronger and children come.”
We said goodbye in a good mood. We had seen each other again and all in all we had felt good.
She came back the next day, affectionate toward me, irritated with her husband. Stefano wanted to rent a house at Torre Annunziata and send her there for all July and all August with Nunzia and Pinuccia, who also wanted to get stronger, even though she didn’t need to. They were already thinking how to manage with the shops. Alfonso would take care of Piazza dei Martiri, with Gigliola, until school began, and Maria would replace Lila in the new grocery. She said to me, desperate, “If I have to stay with my mother and Pinuccia for two months I’ll kill myself.”
“But
you’ll go swimming, lie in the sun.”
“I don’t like swimming and I don’t like lying in the sun.”
“If I could get stronger in your place, I’d leave tomorrow.”
She looked at me with curiosity, and said softly, “Then come with me.”
“I have to work at Mezzocannone.”
She became agitated, she repeated that she would hire me, but this time she said it without irony. “Quit,” she began to press me, “and I’ll give you what the bookseller gives you.” She wouldn’t stop, she said that if I agreed, it would all become tolerable, even Pinuccia, with that bulging stomach that was already showing. I refused politely. I imagined what would happen in those two months in the burning-hot house in Torre Annunziata: quarrels with Nunzia, tears; quarrels with Stefano when he arrived on Saturday night; quarrels with Rino when he appeared with his brother-in-law, to join Pinuccia; quarrels especially with Pinuccia, continuous, muted or dramatic, sarcastic, malicious, and full of outrageous insults.
The Neapolitan Novels Page 48
