The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  Here she stopped suddenly, confused, and said in a low voice, “You have to go, Lina, because if you don’t I’ll kill the child.”

  Lila managed to respond only, “You’re behaving like your mother, Ada.”

  Those were the words. I imagine her voice now: she wasn’t capable of emotional tones, she must have spoken as usual with cold malice, or with detachment. And yet years later she told me that, seeing Ada in the house in that state, she had remembered the cries of Melina, the abandoned lover, when the Sarratore family left the neighborhood, and she had seen again the iron that flew out the window and almost killed Nino. The long flame of suffering, which then had much impressed her, was flickering again in Ada; only now it wasn’t the wife of Sarratore feeding it but her, Lila. A cruel game of mirrors that at the time escaped us all. But not her, and so it’s likely that instead of resentment, instead of her usual determination to do harm, bitterness was triggered in her, and pity. Certainly she tried to take her hand, she said, “Sit down, I’ll make you a cup of chamomile tea.”

  But Ada, in all Lila’s words, from first to last, and above all in that gesture, saw an insult. She withdrew abruptly, she rolled her eyes in a striking way, showing the white, and when the pupils reappeared she shouted, “Are you saying that I’m mad? That I’m mad like my mother? Then you had better pay attention, Lina. Don’t touch me, get out of the way, make yourself a chamomile. I’m going to clean up this disgusting house.”

  She swept, she washed the floors, she remade the bed, and she didn’t say another word.

  Lila followed her with her gaze, afraid that she would break, like an artificial body subjected to excessive acceleration. Then she took the child and went out, she walked around the new neighborhood for a long time, talking to Rinuccio, pointing out things, naming them, inventing stories. But she did it more to keep her anguish under control than to entertain the child. She went back to the house only when, from a distance, she saw Ada go out the front door and hurry off as if she were late.

  112.

  When Ada returned to work, out of breath and extremely agitated, Stefano, menacing but calm, asked her, “Where have you been?” She answered, in the presence of the customers waiting to be served, “To clean up your house, it was disgusting.” And addressing the audience on the other side of the counter: “There was so much dust on the night table you could write in it.”

  Stefano said nothing, disappointing the customers. When the shop emptied and it was time to close, Ada cleaned, swept, always watching her lover out of the corner of her eye. Nothing happened, he did the accounts sitting at the cash register, smoking heavily aromatic American cigarettes. Once the last butt was out, he grabbed the handle to lower the shutter, but he lowered it from the inside.

  “What are you doing?” Ada asked, alarmed.

  “We’ll go out on the courtyard side.”

  After that, he struck her in the face so many times, first with the palm of his hand, then the back, that she leaned against the counter in order not to faint. “How dare you go to my house?” he said in a voice strangled by the will not to scream. “How dare you disturb my wife and my son?” Finally he realized that his heart was nearly bursting and he tried to calm down. It was the first time he had hit her. He stammered, trembling, “Don’t ever do it again.” And he went out, leaving her bleeding in the shop.

  The next day Ada didn’t go to work. Battered as she was, she appeared at Lila’s house, and Lila, when she saw the bruises on her face, told her to come in.

  “Make me the chamomile,” said Melina’s daughter.

  Lila made it for her.

  “The baby is cute.”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like Stefano.”

  “No.”

  “He has the same eyes and the same mouth.”

  “No.”

  “If you have to read your books, go ahead, I’ll take care of the house and Rinuccio.”

  Lila stared at her, this time almost amused, then she said, “Do what you like, but don’t go near the baby.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything to him.”

  Ada set to work: she straightened, washed the clothes, hung them in the sun, cooked lunch, prepared dinner. At one point she stopped, charmed by the way Lila was playing with Rinuccio.

  “How old is he?”

  “Two years and four months.”

  “He’s little, you push him too much.”

  “No, he does what he can do.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true.”

  “With Stefano?”

  “Of course.”

  “Does he know?”

  “No.”

  Lila then understood that her marriage really was almost over, but, as usual when she became aware that change was imminent, she felt neither resentment nor anguish nor worry. When Stefano arrived, he found his wife reading in the living room, Ada playing with the baby in the kitchen, the apartment full of good smells and shining like a large, single precious object. He realized that the beating had been of no use, he turned white, he couldn’t breathe.

  “Go,” he said to Ada in a low voice.

  “No.”

  “What’s got into your head?”

  “I’m staying here.”

  “You want me to go mad?”

  “Yes, that makes two of us.”

  Lila closed the book, took the baby without saying anything and withdrew into the room where, a long time earlier, I had studied, and where Rinuccio now slept. Stefano whispered to his lover, “You’ll ruin me, like this. It’s not true that you love me, Ada, you want me to lose all my customers, you want to reduce me to a pauper, and you know that circumstances are already not good. Please, tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”

  “I want to be with you always.”

  “Yes, but not here.”

  “Here.”

  “This is my house, there’s Lina, there’s Rinuccio.”

  “From now on I’m here, too: I’m pregnant.”

  Stefano sat down. In silence he gazed at Ada’s stomach as she stood before him, as if he were seeing through her dress, her underpants, her skin, as if he were seeing the baby already formed, a living being, all ready, about to jump out. Then there was a knock at the door.

  It was a waiter from the Bar Solara, a boy of sixteen who had just been hired. He told Stefano that Michele and Marcello wanted to see him right away. Stefano roused himself, at that moment he considered the demand a salvation, given the storm he had in the house. He said to Ada, “Don’t move.” She smiled, she nodded yes. He went out, got in the Solaras’ car. What a mess I’ve got myself into, he thought. What should I do? If my father were alive he would break my legs with an iron bar. Women, debts, Signora Solara’s red book. Something hadn’t worked. Lina. She had ruined him. What the fuck do Marcello and Michele want, at this hour, so urgently?

  They wanted, he discovered, the old grocery. They didn’t say it but they let him understand it. Marcello spoke merely of another loan that they were willing to give him. But, he said, the Cerullo shoes have to come definitively to us, we’re finished with that lazy brother-in-law of yours, he’s not reliable. And we need a guarantee, an activity, a property, you think about it. That said, he left, he said he had things to do. At that point Stefano was alone with Michele. They talked for a long time to see if Rino and Fernando’s factory could be saved, if he could do without what Marcello had called the guarantee.

  But Michele shook his head, he said, “We need guarantees, scandals aren’t good for business.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I know what I mean. Who do you love more, Lina or Ada?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “No, Ste’, when it’s a question of money your business is my business.�
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  “What can I tell you: we’re men, you know how it works. Lina is my wife, Ada is another thing.”

  “So you love Ada more?”

  “Yes.”

  “Resolve the situation and then we’ll talk.”

  Many very dark days passed before Stefano found a way of getting out of that chokehold. Quarrels with Ada, quarrels with Lila, work gone to hell, the old grocery often closed, the neighborhood that watched and committed to memory and still remembers. The handsome engaged couple. The convertible. Soraya is going by with the Shah of Persia, Jack and Jackie are going by. Finally Stefano resigned himself and said to Lila, “I’ve found you a nice place, suitable for you and Rinuccio.”

  “How generous you are.”

  “I’ll come twice a week to see the baby.”

  “As far as I’m concerned you don’t have to come see him, since he’s not your son.”

  “You’re a bitch, you’re going to make me smash your face.”

  “Smash my face when you want, I’ve got a callus there. But you take care of your child and I’ll take care of mine.”

  He fumed, he got angry, he really tried to hit her. Finally he said, “The place is on the Vomero.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll take you tomorrow and show it to you, in Piazza degli Artisti.”

  Lila remembered in a flash the proposal Michele Solara had made long ago: “I’ve bought a house on the Vomero, in Piazza degli Artisti. If you want I’ll drive you there now, I’ll show it to you, I took it with you in mind. There you can do what you like: read, write, invent things, sleep, laugh, talk, and be with Rinuccio. I’m interested only in being able to look at you and listen to you.”

  She shook her head in disbelief, she said to her husband, “You really are a piece of shit.”

  113.

  Now Lila is barricaded in Rinuccio’s room, thinking what to do. She’ll never go back to her mother and father’s house: the weight of her life belongs to her, she doesn’t want to become a child again. She can’t count on her brother: Rino is beside himself, he’s angry with Pinuccia in order to get revenge on Stefano, and has begun to quarrel also with his mother-in-law, Maria, because he’s desperate, he has no money and a lot of debts. She can count only on Enzo: she trusted and trusts him, even though he never showed up and in fact he seems to have disappeared from the neighborhood. She thinks: he promised that he’ll get me out of here. But sometimes she hopes he won’t keep his promise, she’s afraid of making trouble for him. She’s not worried about a possible fight with Stefano, her husband has now given her up, and then he’s a coward, even if he has the strength of a wild beast. But she is afraid of Michele Solara. Not today, not tomorrow, but when I’m not even thinking about it anymore he’ll appear and if I don’t submit he’ll make me pay, and he’ll make anyone who’s helped me pay. So it’s better for me to go away without involving anyone. I have to find a job, anything, enough to earn what I need to feed him and give him a roof.

  Just thinking of her son saps her strength. What ended up in Rinuccio’s head: images, words. She worries about the voices that reach him, unmonitored. I wonder if he heard mine, while I carried him in my womb. I wonder how it was imprinted in his nervous system. If he felt loved, if he felt rejected, was he aware of my agitation. How does one protect a child. Nourishing him. Loving him. Teaching him things. Acting as a filter for every sensation that might cripple him forever. I’ve lost his real father, who doesn’t know anything about him and will never love him. Stefano, who isn’t his father and yet loved him a little, sold us for love of another woman and a more genuine son. What will happen to this child. Now Rinuccio knows that when I go into another room he won’t lose me, I am still there. He maneuvers with objects and fantasies of objects, the outside and the inside. He knows how to eat with a fork and spoon. He handles things and forms them, transforms them. From words he has moved on to sentences. In Italian. He no longer says “he,” he says “I.” He recognizes the letters of the alphabet. He puts them together so as to write his name. He loves colors. He’s happy. But all this rage. He has seen me insulted and beaten. He’s seen me break things and shout insults. In dialect. I can’t stay here any longer.

  114.

  Lila came cautiously out of the room only when Stefano wasn’t there, when Ada wasn’t. She made something to eat for Rinuccio, she ate something herself. She knew that the neighborhood gossiped, that rumors were spreading. One late afternoon in November the telephone rang.

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  She recognized him and without much surprise she answered, “All right.” Then: “Enzo.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not obliged.”

  “I know.”

  “The Solaras are involved.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about the Solaras.”

  He arrived exactly ten minutes later. He came up, she had put her things and the child’s in two suitcases and had left on the night table in the bedroom all her jewelry, including her engagement ring and her wedding ring.

  “It’s the second time I’ve left,” she said, “but this time I’m not coming back.”

  Enzo looked around, he had never been in that house. She pulled him by the arm. “Stefano might arrive suddenly, sometimes he does that.”

  “Where’s the problem?” he answered.

  He touched objects that looked expensive to him, a vase for flowers, an ashtray, the sparkling silver. He leafed through a pad where Lila had written down what she needed for the baby and for the house. Then he gave her an inquiring glance, asked her if she was sure of her choice. He said he had found work in a factory in San Giovanni a Teduccio and had taken an apartment there, three rooms, the kitchen was a little dark. “But the things Stefano gave you,” he added, “you won’t have anymore: I can’t give you those.”

  He said to her: “Maybe you’re afraid, because you’re not completely sure.”

  “I’m sure,” she said, picking up Rinuccio with a gesture of impatience, “and I’m not afraid of anything. Let’s go.”

  He still delayed. He tore a piece of paper off the shopping list and wrote something. He left the piece of paper on the table.

  “What did you write?”

  “The address in San Giovanni.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re not playing hide-and-seek.”

  Finally he picked up the suitcases and started down the stairs. Lila locked the door, left the key in the lock.

  115.

  I knew nothing about San Giovanni a Teduccio. When they told me that Lila had gone to live in that place with Enzo, the only thing that came to mind was the factory owned by the family of Bruno Soccavo, Nino’s friend, which produced sausages, and was in that area. The association of ideas annoyed me. I hadn’t thought of the summer on Ischia for a long time: and it made me realize that the happy phase of that vacation had faded, while its unpleasant side had expanded. I discovered that every sound from that time, every scent was repugnant to me, but what in memory, surprisingly, seemed most insupportable, and caused me long crying spells, was the night at the Maronti with Donato Sarratore. Only my suffering for what was happening between Lila and Nino could have driven me to consider it pleasurable. At this distance I understood that that first experience of penetration, in the dark, on the cold sand, with that banal man who was the father of the person I loved had been degrading. I was ashamed of it and that shame was added to other shames, of a different nature, that I was experiencing.

  I was working night and day on my thesis, I harassed Pietro, reading aloud to him what I had written. He was kind, he shook his head, he fished in his memory of Virgil and other authors for passages that might be useful to me. I noted down every word he uttered, I worked hard, but in a bad mood. I went back and forth between two feelings. I sought help and it humiliated me to ask for it, I was grateful and at the
same time hostile, in particular I hated that he did his best not to let his generosity weigh on me. What caused me the greatest anxiety was to find myself—together with him, before him, after him—submitting my research to the assistant professor who was following the progress of both of us, a man of around forty, earnest, attentive, sometimes even sociable. I saw that Pietro was treated as if he already had a professorship, I as a normal brilliant student. Often I decided not to talk to the teacher, out of rage, out of pride, out of fear of having to be aware of my constitutional inferiority. I have to do better than Pietro, I thought, he knows so many more things than I do, but he’s gray, he has no imagination. His way of proceeding, the way that he gently tried to suggest to me, was too cautious. So I undid my work, I started again, I pursued an idea that seemed to me original. When I returned to the professor I was listened to, yes, I was praised, but without seriousness, as if my struggle were only a game well played. I soon grasped that Pietro Airota had a future and I didn’t.

  Then, there was my naiveté. The assistant professor treated me in a friendly way, one day he said, “You’re a student of great sensitivity. Do you think you’ll teach, after your degree?”

  I thought he meant teach at the university and my heart jumped for joy, my cheeks turned red. I said that I loved both teaching and research, I said that I would like to continue to work on the fourth book of the Aeneid. He immediately realized that I had misunderstood and was embarrassed. He strung together some trite phrases on the pleasure of studying for one’s whole life and suggested a civil-service exam that would take place in the fall, for a few positions to be won in the teaching institutes.

  “We need,” he urged me, his tone rising, “excellent professors who will train excellent teachers.”

  That was it. Shame, shame, shame. This overconfidence that had grown in me, this ambition to be like Pietro. The only thing I had in common with him was the small sexual exchanges in the dark. He panted, he rubbed against me, he asked nothing that I wouldn’t give him spontaneously.