The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

She went to bed and waited. She waited all night, but Nino didn’t come back, not the morning after or the one after that.

  92.

  What I am now recounting I learned from various people at various times. I begin with Nino, who left the house in Campi Flegrei and took refuge with his parents. His mother treated him better, much better, than the prodigal son. With his father, on the other hand, he was quarreling within an hour, the insults flew. Donato yelled at him in dialect that he could either leave home or stay there, but the thing he absolutely could not do was to disappear for a month without telling anyone and then return only to swipe some money as if he had earned it himself.

  Nino retreated to his room and had many arguments with himself. Although he already wanted to run back to Lina, ask her pardon, cry to her that he loved her, he assessed the situation and became convinced that he had fallen into a trap, not his fault, not Lina’s fault, but the fault of desire. Now, for example, he thought, I can’t wait to go back to her, cover her with kisses, assume my responsibilities; but a part of me knows perfectly well that what I did today on a wave of disappointment is true and right: Lina isn’t right for me, Lina is pregnant, what’s in her womb scares me; so I must absolutely not return, I have to go to Bruno, borrow some money, leave Naples as Elena did, study somewhere else.

  He deliberated all night and all the next day, now pierced by a need for Lila, now clinging to chilling thoughts that evoked her crude ingenuousness, her too intelligent ignorance, the force with which she drew him into her thoughts, which seemed like insights but were, instead, muddled.

  In the evening he telephoned Bruno and, in a frenzy, left to go see him. He ran through the rain to the bus stop, barely caught the right bus before it left. But suddenly he changed his mind and got off at Piazza Garibaldi. He took the metro to Campi Flegrei, he couldn’t wait to embrace Lila, take her standing up, right away, as soon as he was in the house, against the entrance wall. That now seemed the most important thing, then he would think what to do.

  It was dark, he walked with long strides in the rain. He didn’t even notice the dark silhouette coming toward him. He was shoved so violently that he fell down. A long series of blows began, punching and kicking, kicking and punching. The person who hit him kept repeating, but not angrily:

  “Leave her, don’t see her and don’t touch her again. Repeat: I will leave her. Repeat: I won’t see her and I won’t touch her again. You piece of shit: you like it, eh, taking other men’s wives. Repeat: I was wrong, I’ll leave her.”

  Nino repeated obediently, but his attacker didn’t stop. He fainted more out of fear than out of pain.

  93.

  It was Antonio who beat up Nino, but he reported almost none of this to his boss. When Michele asked if he had found Sarratore’s son he answered yes. When he asked with evident anxiety if that track had led to Lila he said no. When he asked him if he had had information about Lila he said he couldn’t find her and the only thing he could absolutely rule out was that Sarratore’s son had anything to do with Signora Carracci.

  He was lying, of course. He had found Nino and Lila fairly soon, by chance, the night he had had the job of brawling with the Communists. He had smashed a few faces and then had left the fight to follow the two who had fled. He had discovered where they lived, he had understood that they were living together, and in the following days he had studied everything they did, how they lived. Seeing them he had felt both admiration and envy. Admiration for Lila. How is it possible, he had said to himself, that she abandoned her house, a beautiful house, and left her husband, the groceries, the cars, the shoes, the Solaras, for a student without a cent who keeps her in a place almost worse than the old neighborhood? What is it with that girl: courage, or madness? Then he concentrated on his envy of Nino. What hurt him most was that Lila and I both liked the skinny, ugly bastard. What was it about the son of Sarratore, what was his advantage? He had thought about it night and day. He was gripped by a kind of morbid obsession that affected his nerves, especially in his hands, so that he was constantly interlacing them, pressing them together as if he were praying. Finally he had decided that he had to free Lila, even if at that moment, perhaps, she had no desire to be freed. But—he had said to himself—it takes time for people to understand what’s good and what’s bad, and helping them means doing for them what in a particular moment of their life they aren’t capable of doing. Michele Solara hadn’t ordered him to beat up Sarratore’s son, no: he had not told Michele the most important thing and so there was no reason to go that far; beating him up had been his own decision, and he had made it partly because he wanted to get Nino away from Lila and give her back what she had incomprehensibly thrown away, and partly for his own enjoyment, because of an exasperation he felt not toward Nino, an insignificant limp agglomerate of effeminate flesh and bone, too long and breakable, but toward what we two girls had attributed and did attribute to him.

  I have to admit that when, some time afterward, he told me that story I seemed to understand his motivations. It moved me, I caressed his cheek to console him for his savage feelings. And he reddened, he was flustered; to show me that he wasn’t a beast he said, “Afterward I helped him.” He had picked up Sarratore’s son, taken him, half dazed, to a pharmacy, left him at the entrance, and returned to the neighborhood to talk to Pasquale and Enzo.

  They had agreed to meet him reluctantly. They no longer considered him a friend, especially Pasquale, even though he was his sister’s fiancé. But Antonio didn’t care, he pretended not to notice, he behaved as if their hostility because he had sold himself to the Solaras were a gripe that made no dent in their friendship. He said nothing about Nino, he focused on the fact that he had found Lila and that they had to help her.

  “Do what?” Pasquale had asked, aggressively.

  “Go home to her own house: she didn’t go to see Lenuccia, she’s living in a shitty place in Campi Flegrei.”

  “By herself?”

  “Yes.”

  “And why in the world did she decide to do that?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t talk to her.”

  “Why?”

  “I found her on behalf of Michele Solara.”

  “You’re a shit fascist.”

  “I’m nothing, I did a job.”

  “Bravo, now what do you want?”

  “I haven’t told Michele that I found her.”

  “And so?”

  “I don’t want to lose my job, I have to think of earning a living. If Michele finds out that I lied to him he’ll fire me. You go get her and bring her home.”

  Pasquale had insulted him grossly again, but even then Antonio scarcely reacted. He became upset only when his future brother-in-law said that Lila had done well to leave her husband and all the rest: if she had finally gotten out of the Solaras’ shop, if she realized that she had made a mistake in marrying Stefano, he certainly wouldn’t be the one who brought her back.

  “You want to leave her in Campi Flegrei by herself?” Antonio asked, bewildered. “Alone and without a lira?”

  “Why, are we rich? Lina is a grownup, she knows what life is: if she made that decision she has her reasons, let’s leave her in peace.”

  “But she helped us whenever she could.”

  At that reminder of the money Lila had given them Pasquale was ashamed. He had stammered some trite stuff about rich and poor, about the condition of women in the neighborhood and outside it, about the fact that if it was a matter of giving her money he was ready. But Enzo, who until then had been silent, broke in with a gesture of annoyance, and said to Antonio, “Give me the address, I’m going to see what she intends to do.”

  94.

  He did go, the next day. He took the metro, got out at Campi Flegrei, and looked for the street, the building.

  Of Enzo at that time I knew only that he couldn’t tolerate anything anymore: the whining of his mother, the bu
rden of his siblings, the Camorra in the fruit-and-vegetable market, the rounds with the cart, which earned less and less, Pasquale’s Communist talk, and even his engagement to Carmen. None of it. But since he was reserved by nature, it was difficult to get an idea of what type of person he was. From Carmen I had learned that he was secretly studying on his own, he wanted to get an engineering diploma. It must have been on the same occasion—Christmas?—that Carmen told me he had kissed her only four times since he returned from military service, in the spring. She added, with irritation, “Maybe he’s not a man.”

  That was what we often said, we girls, when someone didn’t care much about us: that he wasn’t a man. Enzo was, wasn’t he? I didn’t know anything about the dark depths that men could have, none of us did, and so for any confusing manifestation we had recourse to that formula. Some, like the Solaras, like Pasquale, Antonio, Donato Sarratore, even Franco Mari, my boyfriend at the Normale, wanted us in ways that were different—aggressive, subordinate, heedless, attentive—but that they wanted us there was no doubt. Others, like Alfonso, Enzo, Nino, had—according to equally diverse attitudes—an aloof self-possession, as if between us and them there were a wall and the work of scaling it were our job. In Enzo, after the Army, this characteristic had become accentuated, and he not only did nothing to please women but did nothing to please the entire world. He was short, and yet his body seemed to have become even smaller, as if through a sort of self-compression: it had become a compact block of energy. The skin over the bones of his face was stretched like an awning, and he had reduced motion to the pure compass of his legs, no other part of him moved, not arms or neck or head, not even his hair, which was a reddish-blond helmet. When he decided to go and see Lila he told Pasquale and Antonio, not in order to discuss it but in the form of a brief statement that served to cut off any discussion. Nor when he arrived at Campi Flegrei did he display any uncertainty. He found the street, found the doorway, went up the stairs, and rang with determination at the right door.

  95.

  When Nino did not return in ten minutes or an hour or even the next day, Lila turned spiteful. She felt not abandoned but humiliated, and although she had admitted to herself that she wasn’t the right woman for him, she still found it unbearable that he, disappearing from her life after only twenty-three days, had brutally confirmed it. In a rage she threw away everything he had left: books, underwear, socks, a sweater, even a pencil stub. She did it, she regretted it, she burst into tears. When finally the tears stopped, she felt ugly, swollen, stupid, cheapened by the bitter feelings that Nino, Nino whom she loved and by whom she believed she was loved in return, was provoking. The apartment seemed suddenly what it was, a squalid place through whose walls all the noises of the city reached her. She became aware of the bad smell, of the cockroaches that came in under the stairwell door, the stains of dampness on the ceiling, and felt for the first time that childhood was clutching at her again, not the childhood of dreams but the childhood of cruel privations, of threats and beatings. In fact suddenly she discovered that one fantasy that had comforted us since we were children—to become rich—had evaporated from her mind. Although the poverty of Campi Flegrei seemed to her darker than in the neighborhood of our games, although her situation was worse because of the child she was expecting, although in a few days she had used up the money she had brought, she discovered that wealth no longer seemed a prize and a compensation, it no longer spoke to her. The creased and evil-smelling paper money—piling up in the drawer of the cash register when she worked in the grocery, or in the colored metal box of the shop in Piazza dei Martiri—that in adolescence replaced the strongboxes of our childhood, overflowing with gold pieces and precious stones, no longer functioned: any remaining glitter was gone. The relationship between money and the possession of things had disappointed her. She wanted nothing for herself or for the child she would have. To be rich for her meant having Nino, and since Nino was gone she felt poor, a poverty that no money could obliterate. Since there was no remedy for that new condition—she had made too many mistakes since she was a child, and they had all converged in that last mistake: to believe that the son of Sarratore couldn’t do without her as she couldn’t without him, and that theirs was a unique, exceptional fate, and that the good fortune of loving each other would last forever and would extinguish the force of any other necessity—she felt guilty and decided not to go out, not to look for him, not to eat, not to drink, but to wait for her life and that of the baby to lose their outlines, any possible definition, and she found that there was nothing left in her mind, not even a trace of the thing that made her spiteful, that is to say the awareness of abandonment.

  Then someone rang at the door.

  She thought it was Nino: she opened it. It was Enzo. Seeing him didn’t disappoint her. She thought he had come to bring her some fruit—as he had done many years earlier, as a child, after he was defeated in the competition created by the principal and Maestra Oliviero, and had thrown a stone at her—and she burst out laughing. Enzo considered the laughter a sign of illness. He went in, but left the door open out of respect, he didn’t want the neighbors to think she was receiving men like a prostitute. He looked around, he glanced at her disheveled state, and although he didn’t see what still didn’t show, that is, the pregnancy, he deduced that she really needed help. In his serious way, completely without emotion, he said, even before she managed to calm down and stop laughing:

  “We’re going now.”

  “Where?”

  “To your husband.”

  “Did he send you?”

  “No.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “No one sent me.”

  “I’m not coming.”

  “Then I’ll stay here with you.”

  “Forever?”

  “Until you’re persuaded.”

  “And your job?”

  “I’m tired of it.”

  “And Carmen?”

  “You are much more important.”

  “I’ll tell her, then she’ll leave you.”

  “I’ll tell her, I’ve already decided.”

  From then on he spoke distantly, in a low voice. She answered him laughing, in a teasing way, as if none of their words were real, as if they were speaking in fun of a world, of people, of feelings that hadn’t existed for a long time. Enzo realized that, and for a while he said nothing more. He went through the house, found Lila’s suitcase, filled it with the things in the drawers, in the closet. Lila let him do it, because she considered him not the flesh-and-blood Enzo but a shadow, in color, as in the movies, who although he spoke was nevertheless an effect of the light. Having packed the suitcase, Enzo confronted her again and made a very surprising speech. He said, in his concentrated yet detached way,

  “Lina, I’ve loved you since we were children. I never told you because you are very beautiful and very intelligent, and I am short, ugly, and worthless. Now return to your husband. I don’t know why you left him and I don’t want to know. I know only that you can’t stay here, you don’t deserve to live in filth. I’ll take you to the entrance of the building and wait: if he treats you badly, I’ll come up and kill him. But he won’t, he’ll be glad you’ve come back. But let’s make a pact: in the case that you can’t come to an agreement with your husband, I brought you back to him and I will come and get you. All right?”

  Lila stopped laughing, she narrowed her eyes, she listened to him attentively for the first time. Interactions between Enzo and her had been very rare until that moment, but the times I had been present they had always amazed me. There was something indefinable between them, originating in the confusion of childhood. She trusted Enzo, I think, she felt she could count on him. When the young man took the suitcase and headed toward the door, which had remained open, she hesitated a moment, then followed him.

  96.

  Enzo did wait under Lila and Stefano’s windows the night he
took her home, and, if Stefano had beaten her, he probably would have gone up and killed him. But Stefano didn’t beat her; he welcomed her into her home, which was clean and tidy. He behaved as if his wife really had gone to stay with me in Pisa, even if there was no evidence that that was what had happened. Lila, on the other hand, did not take refuge in that excuse or any other. The following day, when she woke up, she said reluctantly, “I’m pregnant,” and he was so happy that when she added, “The baby isn’t yours,” he burst out laughing, with genuine joy. When she angrily repeated that phrase, once, twice, three times, and even tried to hit him with clenched fists, he cuddled her, kissed her, murmuring, “Enough, Lina, enough, enough, I’m too happy. I know that I’ve treated you badly but now let’s stop, don’t say mean things to me,” and his eyes filled with tears of joy.

  Lila knew that people tell themselves lies to defend against the truth of the facts, but she was amazed that her husband was able to lie to himself with such joyful conviction. On the other hand she didn’t care, by now, about Stefano or about herself, and after again repeating for a while, without emotion, “The baby isn’t yours,” she withdrew into the lethargy of pregnancy. He prefers to put off the pain, she thought, and all right, let him do as he likes: if he doesn’t want to suffer now, he’ll suffer later.

  She went on to make a list of what she wanted and what she didn’t want: she didn’t want to work in the shop in Piazza dei Martiri or in the grocery; she didn’t want to see anyone, friends, relatives, especially the Solaras; she wished to stay home and be a wife and mother. He agreed, sure that she would change her mind in a few days. But Lila secluded herself in the apartment, without showing any interest in Stefano’s business, or that of her brother and her father, or in the affairs of his relatives or of her own relatives.

  A couple of times Pinuccia came with her son, Fernando, whom they called Dino, but she didn’t open the door.