At the house I talked to Nella for a while, I told her that we might all be returning to Naples that night and I wanted to say goodbye.
“A pity that you’re going.”
“Ah yes.”
“Eat with me.”
“I can’t, I have to go.”
“But if you don’t go, swear that you’ll come again and not so short next time. Stay with me for a day, or even overnight, since you know there’s the bed. I have so many things to tell you.”
“Thanks.”
Sarratore interrupted, he said, “We count on it, you know how much we love you.”
I fled, also because there was a relative of Nella’s who was going to the Port in a car and I didn’t want to miss the ride.
Along the way Sarratore’s words, surprisingly, even if I only rejected them, began to dig into me. No, maybe he hadn’t lied. He knew how to see beyond appearances. He had really had a means of observing his son’s gaze on me. And if I was pretty, if Nino seriously found me attractive—and I knew it was so: in the end he had kissed me, he had held my hand—it was time I looked at the facts for what they were: Lila had taken him from me; Lila had separated him from me to win him for herself. Maybe she hadn’t done it on purpose, but still she had done it.
I decided suddenly that I had to find him, see him at all costs. Now that our departure was imminent, now that the force of seduction that Lila had exercised over him would no longer have a chance to fascinate him, now that she herself had decided to return to the life that was hers, the relationship between him and me could begin again. In Naples. In the form of friendship. At least we could meet to talk about her. And then we would return to our conversations, to our reading. I would demonstrate that I could get interested in his interests better than Lila, certainly, maybe even better than Nadia. Yes, I had to speak to him right away, tell him I’m leaving, tell him: let’s see each other in the neighborhood, in Piazza Nazionale, in Mezzocannone, wherever you want, but as soon as possible.
I found a minicab, I took it to Forio, to Bruno’s house. I called, no one looked out. I wandered through the town feeling more and more depressed, then I set out to walk along the beach. And this time chance apparently decided in my favor. I had been walking for a long time when I saw before me Nino: he was happy we had met, a barely controlled happiness. His eyes were too bright, his gestures excited, his voice overwrought.
“I looked for the two of you yesterday and today. Where’s Lina?”
“With her husband.”
He took an envelope out of his pants pocket, he shoved it into my hand too forcefully.
“Can you give her this?”
I was annoyed. “It’s pointless, Nino.”
“Give it to her.”
“Tonight we’re leaving, we’ll go back to Naples.”
He had an expression of suffering, he said hoarsely, “Who decided?”
“She did.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true, she told me last night.”
He thought for a moment, pointed to the envelope.
“Please, give her that anyway, right away.”
“All right.”
“Swear that you will.”
“I told you, yes.”
He walked with me for a long way, saying spiteful things about his mother and his brothers and sister. They tormented me, he said, luckily they went back to Barano. I asked him about Bruno. He made a gesture of irritation, he was studying, he said mean things about him as well.
“And you’re not studying?”
“I can’t.”
His head sank between his shoulders, he grew melancholy. He began to talk about the mistakes one makes because a professor, as a result of his own problems, leads you to believe you’re smart. He realized that the things he wanted to learn had never really interested him.
“What do you mean? Suddenly?”
“A moment is enough to change the direction of your life completely.”
What was happening to him, with these banal words, I no longer recognized him. I vowed I would help him return to himself.
“You’re upset now, and you don’t know what you’re saying,” I said in my best sensible tone. “But as soon as you return to Naples we can see each other, if you want, and talk.”
He nodded yes, but right afterward cried angrily, “I’m finished with the university, I want to find a job.”
63.
He came with me almost to the house, so that I was afraid of meeting Stefano and Lila. I said goodbye in a hurry and went up the stairs.
“Tomorrow morning at nine,” he shouted.
I stopped.
“If we leave I’ll see you in the neighborhood. Look for me there.”
Nino made a sign of no, decisively.
“You won’t leave,” he said, as if he were giving a threatening order to fate.
I gave him a final wave and hurried up the stairs sorry that I hadn’t had a chance to examine what was in the envelope.
In the house I found an unpleasant atmosphere. Stefano and Nunzia were whispering together. Lila must be in the bathroom or the bedroom. When I went in they both looked at me resentfully. Stefano said grimly, without preamble, “Will you tell me what you and she are getting up to?”
“In what sense?”
“She says she’s tired of Ischia, she wants to go to Amalfi.”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
Nunzia intervened but not in her usual motherly way.
“Lenù, don’t put wrong ideas in her head, you can’t throw money out the window. What does Amalfi have to do with anything? We’ve paid to stay here until September.”
I got mad, I said, “You are both mistaken: it’s I who do what Lina wants, not the opposite.”
“Then go and tell her to be reasonable,” Stefano muttered. “I’ll be back next week, we’ll be together for the mid-August holiday and you’ll see, I’ll show you a good time. But now I don’t want to hear any nonsense. Shit. You think I’ll take you to Amalfi? And if you don’t like Amalfi, where do I take you, to Capri? And then? Cut it out, Lenù.”
His tone intimidated me.
“Where is she?” I asked.
Nunzia indicated the bedroom. I went to Lila sure that I would find the suitcases packed and her determined to leave, even at the risk of a beating. Instead she was in her slip, and was sleeping on the unmade bed. All around was the usual disorder, but the suitcases were piled in a corner, empty. I shook her.
“Lila.”
She started, asked me right away with a look veiled by sleep: “Where have you been, did you see Nino?”
“Yes. This is for you.”
I gave her the envelope reluctantly. She opened it, took out a sheet of paper. She read it and in a flash became radiant, as if an injection of stimulants had swept away drowsiness and despair.
“What does it say?” I asked cautiously.
“To me nothing.”
“So?”
“It’s for Nadia, he’s leaving her.”
She put the letter back in the envelope and gave it to me, urging me to keep it carefully hidden.
I stood, confused, with the envelope in my hands. Nino was leaving Nadia? And why? Because Lila had asked him to? So she would win? I was disappointed. He was sacrificing the daughter of Professor Galiani to the game that he and the wife of the grocer were playing. I said nothing, I stared at Lila while she got dressed, put on her makeup. Finally I said, “Why did you ask Stefano that absurd thing, to go to Amalfi? I don’t understand you.”
She smiled.
“I don’t, either.”
We left the room. Lila kissed Stefano affectionately, rubbing against him happily, and we decided to go with him to the Port, Nunzia and I in the minicab, he and Lila on the Lambretta. We ha
d some ice cream while we waited for the boat. Lila was nice to her husband, gave him a thousand bits of advice, promised to telephone every night. Before he started up the gangplank he put an arm around my shoulders and whispered in my ear:
“I’m sorry, I was really angry. Without you I don’t know how it would have ended, this time.”
It was a polite statement, and yet I felt in it a sort of ultimatum that meant: Tell your friend, please, that if she goes too far again, it’s all over.
64.
At the head of the letter was Nadia’s address in Capri. As soon as the boat left the shore carrying Stefano away, Lila propelled us cheerfully to the tobacconist, bought a stamp, and, while I kept Nunzia busy, recopied the address onto the envelope and mailed it.
We wandered through Forio, but I was too nervous, and kept talking to Nunzia. When we returned to the house I drew Lila into my room and spoke plainly to her. She listened to me in silence, but with a distracted air, as if on the one hand she felt the gravity of the things I was saying and on the other had abandoned herself to thoughts that made every word meaningless. I said to her, “Lila, I don’t know what you have in mind, but in my view you’re playing with fire. Now Stefano has left happy and if you telephone him every night he’ll be even happier. But be careful: he’ll be back in a week and will stay until August 20th. Do you think you can go on like this? Do you think you can play with people’s lives? Do you know that Nino doesn’t want to study anymore, he wants to find a job? What have you put in his head? And why did you make him leave his girlfriend? Do you want to ruin him? Do you want to ruin both of you?”
At that last question she roused herself and burst out laughing, but somewhat artificially. She sounded amused, but who knows. She said I ought to be proud of her, she had made me look good. Why? Because she had been considered in every way finer than the very fine daughter of my professor. Because the smartest boy in my school and maybe in Naples and maybe in Italy and maybe in the world—according to what I said, naturally—had just left that very respectable young lady, no less, to please her, the daughter of a shoemaker, elementary-school diploma, wife of Carracci. She spoke with increasing sarcasm and as if she were finally revealing a cruel plan of revenge. I must have looked angry, she realized it, but for several minutes she continued in that tone, as if she couldn’t stop herself. Was she serious? Was that her true state of mind at that moment? I exclaimed:
“Who are you putting on this show for? For me? Do you want to make me believe that Nino is ready to do anything, however crazy, to please you?”
The laughter disappeared from her eyes, she darkened, abruptly changed her tone.
“No, I’m lying, it’s completely the opposite. I’m the one who’s prepared to do anything, and it’s never happened to me with anyone, and I’m glad that it’s happening now.”
Then, overcome by embarrassment, she went to bed without even saying goodnight.
I fell into a nervous half sleep, during which I convinced myself that the last little trickle of words was truer than the torrent that had preceded it.
During the week that followed I had the proof. First of all, as early as Monday I realized that Bruno, after Pinuccia’s departure, really had begun to focus on me, and he now considered that the moment had arrived to behave toward me as Nino behaved with Lila. While we were swimming he clumsily pulled me toward him to kiss me, so that I swallowed a mouthful of water and had to return to the shore coughing. I was annoyed, he saw it. When he came to lie down in the sun next to me, with the air of a beaten dog, I made a kind but firm little speech, whose sense was: Bruno, you’re very nice, but between you and me there can’t be anything but a fraternal feeling. He was sad but he didn’t give up. The same night, after the phone call to Stefano, we all went to walk on the beach and then we sat on the cold sand and stretched out to look at the stars, Lila resting on her elbows, Nino with his head on her stomach, I with my head on Nino’s stomach, Bruno with his head on my stomach. We gazed at the constellations, praising the portentous architecture of the sky with trite formulas. Not all of us, Lila didn’t. She was silent, but when we had exhausted the catalogue of worshipful wonder, she said that the spectacle of night frightened her, she saw no structure but only random shards of glass in a blue pitch. This silenced us all, and I was vexed: she had that habit of speaking last, which gave her time to reflect and allowed her to disrupt with a single remark everything that we had more or less thoughtlessly said.
“How can you be afraid,” I exclaimed. “It’s beautiful.”
Bruno immediately agreed. Nino instead encouraged her: with a slight movement he signaled me to free his stomach, he sat up and began to talk to her as if they were alone. The sky, the temple, order, disorder. Finally they got up and, still talking, disappeared into the darkness.
I was lying down but leaning on my elbows. I no longer had Nino’s warm body as a pillow, and the weight of Bruno’s head on my stomach was irritating. I said excuse me, touching his hair. He sat up, grabbed me by the waist, pressed his face against my chest. I muttered no, but he pushed me down on the sand and searched for my mouth, pressing one hand hard against my breast. Then I shoved him away, forcefully, crying, Stop it, and this time I was unpleasant, I hissed, “I don’t like you, how do I have to tell you?” He stopped, embarrassed, sat up. He said in a low voice: “Is it possible that you don’t like me even a little?” I tried to explain that it wasn’t a thing that could be measured, saying, “It’s not a matter of more beauty or less, more liking or less; it’s that some people attract me and others don’t, it’s nothing to do with how they are really.”
“You don’t like me?”
I said impatiently, “No.”
But as soon as I uttered that monosyllable I burst into tears, while stammering things like “See, I’m crying for no reason, I’m an idiot, I’m not worth wasting time on.”
He touched my cheek with his fingers and tried again to embrace me, murmuring: I want to give you so many presents, you deserve them, you’re so pretty. I pulled away angrily, and shouted into the darkness, my voice cracking, “Lila, come back right now, I want to go home.”
The two friends went with us to the foot of the stairs, then they left. As Lila and I went up I said in exasperation, “Go where you like, do what you like, I’m not going with you anymore. It’s the second time Bruno has put his hands on me: I don’t want to be alone with him anymore, is that clear?”
65.
There are moments when we resort to senseless formulations and advance absurd claims to hide straightforward feelings. Today I know that in other circumstances, after some resistance, I would have given in to Bruno’s advances. I wasn’t attracted to him, certainly, but I hadn’t been especially attracted to Antonio, either. One becomes affectionate toward men slowly, whether they coincide or not with whomever in the various phases of life we have taken as the model of a man. And Bruno Soccavo, in that phase of his life, was courteous and generous; it would have been easy to harbor some affection for him. But the reasons for rejecting him had nothing to do with anything really disagreeable about him. The truth was that I wanted to restrain Lila. I wanted to be a hindrance to her. I wanted her to be aware of the situation she was getting into and getting me into. I wanted her to say to me: Yes, you’re right, I’m making a mistake, I won’t go off in the dark with Nino anymore, I won’t leave you alone with Bruno; starting now I will behave as befits a married woman.
Naturally it didn’t happen. She confined herself to saying, “I’ll talk to Nino about it and you’ll see, Bruno won’t bother you anymore.” So day after day we continued to meet the boys at nine in the morning and separated at midnight. But on Tuesday night after the call to Stefano, Nino said, “You’ve never been to see Bruno’s house. You want to come over?”
I immediately said no, I pretended I had a stomachache and wanted to go home. Nino and Lila looked uncertainly at each other, Bruno said nothing. I fel
t the weight of their discontent and added, embarrassed, “Maybe another night.”
Lila said nothing but when we were alone she exclaimed, “You can’t make my life unhappy, Lenù.” I answered, “If Stefano finds out that we went alone to their house, he’ll be angry not just at you but also at me.” And I didn’t stop there. At home I stirred up Nunzia’s displeasure and used it to urge her to reproach her daughter for too much sun, too much sea, staying out till midnight. I even went so far as to say, as if I wished to make peace between mother and daughter, “Signora Nunzia, tomorrow night come and have ice cream with us, you’ll see we’re not doing anything wrong.” Lila became furious, she said that she had had a miserable life all year, always shut up in the grocery, and now she had the right to a little freedom. Nunzia also lost her temper: “Lina, what are you saying? Freedom? What freedom? You are married, you must be accountable to your husband. Lenuccia can want a little freedom, you can’t.” Her daughter went to her room and slammed the door.
But the next day Lila won: her mother stayed home and we went to telephone Stefano. “You must be here at eleven on the dot,” Nunzia said, grumpily, addressing me, and I answered, “All right.” She gave me a long, questioning look. By now she was alarmed: she was our guard but she wasn’t guarding us; she was afraid we were getting into trouble, but she thought of her own sacrificed youth and didn’t want to keep us from some innocent amusement. I repeated to reassure her: “At eleven.”
The phone call to Stefano lasted a minute at most. When Lila came out of the booth Nino asked, “Are you feeling well tonight, Lenù? Come see the house?”
“Come on,” Bruno urged me. “You can have a drink and then go.”
Lila agreed, I said nothing. On the outside the building was old, shabby, but inside it had been renovated: the cellar white and well lighted, full of wine and cured meats; a marble staircase with a wrought-iron banister; sturdy doors on which gold handles shone; windows with gilded fixtures. There were a lot of rooms, yellow couches, a television; in the kitchen, cupboards painted aquamarine and in the bedrooms wardrobes that were like gothic churches. I thought, for the first time clearly, that Bruno really was rich, richer than Stefano. I thought that if ever my mother had known that the student son of the owner of Soccavo mortadella had courted me, and that I had been, no less, a guest at his house, and that instead of thanking God for the good fortune he had sent me and seeking to marry him I had rejected him twice, she would have beaten me. On the other hand it was precisely the thought of my mother, of her lame leg, that made me feel unfit even for Bruno. In that house I was intimidated. Why was I there, what was I doing there? Lila acted nonchalant, she laughed often; I felt as if I had a fever, a nasty taste in my mouth. I began to say yes to avoid the embarrassment of saying no. Do you want a drink of this, do you want to put on this record, do you want to watch television, do you want some ice cream. When, finally, I realized that Nino and Lila had disappeared, I was worried. Where had they gone? Was it possible that they were in Nino’s bedroom? Possible that Lila was willing to cross even that limit? Possible that—I didn’t want to think about it. I jumped up, I said to Bruno:
The Neapolitan Novels Page 57
