The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  54.

  It was a disastrous afternoon followed by an even more disastrous evening. I found that Pinuccia was really packing her bags and that Nunzia was unable to quiet her.

  “You mustn’t worry,” she said to her soothingly, “Rino knows how to wash his underwear, he knows how to cook, and then there is his father, his friends. He doesn’t think you’re here to have fun, he understands that you’re here to rest so that you’ll have a fine healthy baby. Come, I’ll help you tidy up everything. I never went on vacation, but today there’s money, thank God, and although you mustn’t waste it, a little comfort isn’t a sin, you can afford it. So Pinù, please, child: Rino worked all week, he’s tired, he’s about to arrive. Don’t let him find you like this, you know him, he’ll worry, and when he worries he gets angry, and if he gets angry what’s the result? The result is that you want to leave to stay with him, he has left to be with you, and now when you’ll be together, and you ought to be happy, instead you’re torturing each other. Does that seem nice to you?”

  But Pinuccia was impervious to the arguments that Nunzia rattled off. Then I began to enumerate them, too, since we had reached the point where we were taking her many things out of the suitcases and she was putting them in, she cried, she calmed down, she started again.

  Eventually Lila returned. She leaned against the doorpost and stood looking, with a frown, a long horizontal crease across her brow, at that disheveled image of Pinuccia.

  “Everything all right?” I asked her.

  She nodded yes.

  “You’re such a good swimmer now.”

  She said nothing.

  She had the expression of someone who is forced to repress joy and fear at the same time. It was evident that the spectacle of Pinuccia was becoming increasingly intolerable to her. Her sister-in-law was again displaying her intention to depart, farewells, regret that she had forgotten this object or that, sighs for her Rinuccio, all interwoven, in a contradictory fashion, with regret for the sea, the smells of the gardens, the beach. And yet Lila said nothing, not one of her mean statements or even a sarcastic remark. Finally, the words came out of her mouth, not a call to order but the announcement of an imminent event that threatened us all: “They’re about to arrive.”

  At that point Pinuccia collapsed disconsolate on the bed, next to the closed suitcases. Lila grimaced, went off to dress. She returned soon afterward in a clinging red dress, her black hair pulled back. She was the first to recognize the sound of the Lambrettas, she looked out the window, waved enthusiastically. Then, becoming serious, she turned to Pinuccia and in her most scornful voice hissed: “Go wash your face and take off that bathing suit.”

  Pinuccia looked at her without reacting. Something passed rapidly between the two girls, their secret feelings darted invisibly, infinitesimal particles shot at each other from the depths of themselves, a jolt and a trembling that lasted a long second; I caught it, bewildered, but couldn’t understand, while they did, they understood, in something they recognized each other, and Pinuccia knew that Lila knew, understood and wished to help her, even with contempt. So she obeyed.

  55.

  Stefano and Rino burst in. Lila was even more affectionate than the week before. She embraced Stefano, let him embrace her, gave a cry of joy when he took a case out of his pocket and she opened it and found a gold necklace with a pendant in the shape of a heart.

  Naturally Rino, too, had brought a present for Pinuccia, who did her best to react as her sister-in-law had, but her painful fragility was visible in her eyes. So Rino’s kisses and embraces and the gift had soon swept away the form of the happy wife within which she had so hastily enclosed herself. Her mouth started to tremble, the fountain of tears erupted, and she said, in a choked voice, “I’ve packed my bags. I don’t want to stay here a minute longer, I want to be with you and only you, always.”

  Rino smiled, he was moved by all that love, he laughed. Then he said, “I also want to be with you and only you, always.” Finally he understood that his wife was not just communicating how much she missed him, and how much she would always miss him, but that she really wanted to leave, that everything was ready for departure, and she was insisting on that decision with a real, unbearable grief.

  They shut themselves in the bedroom to discuss it, but the discussion didn’t last long, Rino came out, shouting at his mother, “Mamma, I want to know what happened.” And without waiting for an answer, he turned aggressively to his sister: “If it’s your fault by God I’ll smash your face.” Then he shouted at his wife, “That’s enough, you’re a pain in the ass, come out now, I’m tired, I want to eat.”

  Pinuccia reappeared with swollen eyes. When Stefano saw her, he made a playful attempt to defuse the situation, embracing his sister, and sighing, “Ah, love, you women drive us crazy for it.” Then, as if suddenly recalling the primary cause of his own craziness, he kissed Lila on the lips, and in observing the unhappiness of the other couple he felt happy at how unexpectedly happy they were.

  We all sat down at the table and Nunzia served us, one by one, in silence. But this time it was Rino who couldn’t bear it, he yelled that he wasn’t hungry anymore, he hurled the plate of spaghetti and clams into the middle of the kitchen. I was frightened, Pinuccia began to cry again. And even Stefano lost his composure and said to his wife, sharply: “Let’s go, I’ll take you to a restaurant.” Amid the protests of Nunzia and even of Pinuccia they left the kitchen. In the silence that followed we heard the Lambretta setting off.

  I helped Nunzia clean the floor. Rino got up, went to the bedroom. Pinuccia locked herself in the bathroom, but then she came out and joined her husband. She closed the door. Only then did Nunzia explode, forgetting her role of tolerant mother-in-law.

  “Do you see how that bitch is making Rinuccio suffer? What’s happened to her?”

  I said I didn’t know, and it was true, but I spent the evening consoling her by romanticizing Pinuccia’s feelings. I said that if I were carrying a child in my belly I, like her, would have wanted to be with my husband always, to feel protected, to be sure that my responsibility as a mother was shared by his as a father. I said that if Lila was there to have a child, and it was clear that the cure was right, that the sea was doing her good—you had only to look at the happiness that lighted up her face when Stefano arrived—Pinuccia instead was already full of love and wished to give all that love to Rino every minute of the day and night, otherwise it weighed on her and she suffered.

  It was a sweet hour, Nunzia and I in the kitchen that was tidy now, the dishes and the pots shining because of the care with which they had been washed. She said to me, “How well you speak, Lenù, it’s clear that you’ll have a wonderful future.” Tears came to her eyes, she murmured that Lila should have gone to school, it was her destiny. “But my husband didn’t want it,” she added, “and I didn’t know how to oppose him: there wasn’t the money then, and yet she could have done as you did; instead she got married, she chose a different path and one can’t go back, life takes us where it wants.” She wished me happiness, “with a fine young man who has studied like you.” She asked if I really liked the son of Sarratore. I denied it, but I confided to her that I was going the next day to climb the mountain with him. She was glad, she helped me make some sandwiches with salami and provolone. I wrapped them in paper, put them in the bag with my towel for swimming, and everything else I needed. She urged me to be prudent as always and we said good night.

  I went to my room, read a little, but I was distracted. How lovely it would be to go out early in the morning, with the cool air, the scents. How much I loved the sea, and even Pinuccia, her tears, the evening’s quarrel, the conciliatory love that, week by week, was increasing between Lila and Stefano. And how much I desired Nino. And how pleasant it was to have there with me, every day, him and my friend, the three of us content despite misunderstandings, despite the bad feelings that did not always remain sile
nt in the dark depths.

  I heard Stefano and Lila return. Their voices and laughter were muffled. Doors opened, closed, opened again. I heard the tap, the flush. Then I turned off the light, I listened to the faint rustle of the reeds, the scurrying in the henhouse, I fell asleep.

  But I woke immediately, there was someone in my room.

  “It’s me,” Lila whispered.

  I felt her sitting on the edge of the bed, I was about to turn on the light.

  “No,” she said, “I’ll stay only a moment.”

  I turned it on anyway, I sat up.

  She was wearing a pale pink nightgown. Her skin was so darkened by the sun that her eyes seemed white.

  “Did you see how far I went?”

  “You were great, but I was worried.”

  She shook her head proudly and gave a little smile as if to say that the sea now belonged to her. Then she became serious.

  “I have to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “Nino kissed me,” she said, and she said it in one breath, like someone who, making a spontaneous confession, is trying to hide, even from herself, something more unconfessable. “He kissed me but I kept my lips closed.”

  56.

  The account was detailed. She, exhausted by the long swim and yet satisfied that she had proved how proficient she was, had leaned against him so that it would be less effort to float. But Nino had taken advantage of her closeness and had pressed his lips hard against hers. She had immediately compressed her mouth and although he had tried to open it with the tip of his tongue he hadn’t been able to. “You’re crazy,” she had said, pushing him away, “I’m married.” But Nino had answered, “I’ve loved you long before your husband, ever since we had that competition in class.” Lila had ordered him never to try it again and they had started swimming again toward the shore. “He pressed so hard he hurt my lips,” she concluded, “and they still hurt.”

  She waited for me to react, but I managed not to ask questions or comment. When she told me not to go to the mountain with him unless Bruno came, too, I said coldly that if Nino had kissed me, I wouldn’t have found anything bad about it, I wasn’t married and didn’t even have a boyfriend. “Only it’s a pity,” I added, “that I don’t like him: kissing him would be like putting my mouth on a dead rat.” Then I pretended to be unable to repress a yawn and she, after a look that seemed to be of affection and also of admiration, went to bed. I wept from the moment she left until dawn.

  Today I feel some uneasiness in recalling how much I suffered, I have no sympathy for myself of that time. But in the course of that night it seemed to me that I had no reason to live. Why did Nino behave in that way? He kissed Nadia, he kissed me, he kissed Lila. How could he be the same person I loved, who was so serious, so thoughtful. The hours passed, but it was impossible for me to accept that he was as profound in confronting the great problems of the world as he was superficial in feelings of love. I began to question myself, I had made a mistake, I was deluded. Was it possible that I—short, too full-figured, wearing glasses, I diligent but not intelligent, I who pretended to be cultured, informed, when I wasn’t—could have believed that he would like me even just for the length of a vacation? And, besides, had I ever really thought that? I examined my behavior scrupulously. No, I wasn’t able to tell myself what my desires were with any clarity. Not only was I careful to hide them from others but I admitted them to myself in a skeptical way, without conviction. Why had I never told Lila plainly what I felt for Nino? And now, why had I not cried to her the pain she had caused me with that confidence in the middle of the night, why hadn’t I revealed to her that, before kissing her, Nino had kissed me? What drove me to act like that? Did I keep my feelings muted because I was frightened by the violence with which, in fact, in my innermost self, I wanted things, people, praise, triumphs? Was I afraid that that violence, if I did not get what I wanted, would explode in my chest, taking the path of the worst feelings—for example, the one that had driven me to compare Nino’s beautiful mouth to the flesh of a dead rat? Why, then, even when I advanced, was I so quick to retreat? Why did I always have ready a gracious smile, a happy laugh, when things went badly? Why, sooner or later, did I always find plausible excuses for those who made me suffer?

  Questions and tears. It was daybreak when I felt that I understood what had happened. Nino had sincerely believed that he loved Nadia. Of course, aware of my reputation with Professor Galiani, he had looked at me for years with sincere respect and liking. But now, at Ischia, he had met Lila and had understood that she had been since childhood—and would be in the future—his only true love. Ah yes, surely it had happened that way. And how could one reproach him? Where was the fault? In their history there was something intense, sublime: elective affinities. I called on poems and novels as tranquilizers. Maybe, I thought, studying has been useful to me just for this: to calm myself. She had kindled the flame in his breast, he had preserved it for years without realizing it: now that that flame had flared up, what could he do but love her. Even if she was married and therefore inaccessible, forbidden: marriage lasts forever, beyond death. Unless one violates it, condemning oneself to the infernal whirlwind until Judgment Day. It seemed to me, when dawn broke, that I had gained some clarity. Nino’s love for Lila was an impossible love. Like mine for him. And only within that frame of unattainability did the kiss he had given her in the middle of the sea begin to seem utterable.

  The kiss.

  It hadn’t been a choice, it had happened: especially since Lila knew how to make things happen. Whereas I don’t, what will I do now. I’ll go to our meeting. We’ll climb Epomeo. Or no. I’ll leave tonight with Stefano and Rino. I’ll say that my mother wrote and needs me. How can I go climbing with him when I know that he loves Lila, that he kissed her. And how will I be able to see them together every day, swimming, going farther and farther out. I was exhausted, I fell asleep. I woke with a start, and found that the formulas running through my head really had tamed the suffering a little. I hurried to the meeting.

  57.

  I was sure that he wouldn’t come, but when I got to the beach he was already there, and without Bruno. But I realized that he had no desire to look for the road to the mountain, to set out on unknown paths. He said that he was ready to go, if I really wanted to, but he predicted that in this heat we’d get unbearably exhausted and dismissed the idea that we’d ever find anything as worthwhile as a good swim. I began to worry, I thought he was on the verge of saying that he was going to go back and study. Instead, to my surprise, he proposed renting a boat. He counted and recounted the money he had, I took out my few cents. He smiled, he said gently, “You’ve taken care of the sandwiches, I’ll do this.” A few minutes later we were on the sea, he at the oars, I sitting in the stern.

  I felt better. I thought maybe Lila had lied to me, that he hadn’t kissed her. But in some part of myself I knew very well that it wasn’t so: I sometimes lied, yes, even (or especially) to myself; she, on the other hand, as far as I could remember, had never done so. Besides, I had only to wait a while and it was Nino himself who explained things. When we were out on the water he let go of the oars and dived in, I did the same. He didn’t swim the way he usually did, mingling with the undulating surface of the sea. Instead he dropped toward the bottom, disappeared, reappeared farther on, sank again. I was alarmed by the depth, and swam around the boat, not daring to go too far, until I got tired and clumsily pulled myself in. After a while he joined me, grabbed the oars, began to row energetically, following a line parallel to the coast, toward Punta Imperatore. So far we had remarked on the sandwiches, the heat, the sea, how wise we had been not to take the mule paths up Epomeo. To my increasing wonder he hadn’t yet resorted to the subjects he was reading about in books, in journals, in newspapers, even though every so often, afraid of the silence, I threw out some remark that might set off his passion for the things of the world. But n
o, he had something else on his mind. And eventually he put down the oars, stared for a moment at a rock face, a flight of seagulls, then he said:

  “Did Lina say anything to you?”

  “About what?”

  He pressed his lips together uneasily, and said, “All right, I’m going to tell you what happened. Yesterday I kissed her.”

  That was the beginning. We spent the rest of the day talking about the two of them. We went swimming again, he explored cliffs and caves, we ate the sandwiches, drank all the water I had brought, he wanted to teach me to row, but as for talking we couldn’t talk about anything else. And what most struck me was that he didn’t try even once, as he normally tended to do, to transform his particular situation into a general situation. Only he and Lila, Lila and he. He said nothing about love. He said nothing about the reasons one ends up being in love with one person rather than another. He questioned me, instead, obsessively about her and her relationship with Stefano.

  “Why did she marry him?”

  “Because she was in love with him.”

  “It can’t be.”

  “I assure you it is.”

  “She married him for money, to help her family, to settle herself.”

  “If that was all she could have married Marcello Solara.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A guy who has more money than Stefano and was crazy about her.”

  “And she?”

  “Didn’t want him.”

  “So you think she married the grocer out of love.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what’s this business about going swimming to have children?”

  “The doctor told her.”

  “But does she want them?”

  “At first no, now I don’t know.”