I kept going, exhausted, day and night; I no longer slept. If my husband tormented me, Nino in his way did no less. When he heard me worn out by tension and worries, instead of consoling me he became irritable, he said: You think it’s easier for me, but it’s an inferno here, just as much as for you, I’m afraid for Eleonora, I’m afraid for what she could do, so don’t think that I’m not in as much trouble as you, maybe even worse. And he exclaimed: But you and I together are stronger than anyone else, our union is an inevitable necessity, is that clear, tell me, I want to hear it, is it clear. It was clear to me. But those words weren’t much help. I drew all my strength, rather, from imagining the moment when I would finally see him again and we would fly to France. I had to hold out until then, I said to myself, afterward we’ll see. For now I aspired only to a suspension of the torture, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I said to Pietro, at the end of a violent quarrel in front of Dede and Elsa:
“That’s enough. I’m leaving for five days, just five days, then I’ll return and we’ll see what to do. All right?”
He turned to the children:
“Your mother says she will be absent for five days, but do you believe it?”
Dede shook her head no, and so did Elsa.
“They don’t believe you, either,” Pietro said then. “We all know that you will leave us and never return.”
And meanwhile, as if by an agreed-on signal, both Dede and Elsa hurled themselves at me, throwing their arms around my legs, begging me not to leave, to stay with them. I couldn’t bear it. I knelt down, I held them around the waist, I said: All right, I won’t go, you are my children, I’ll stay with you. Those words calmed them, slowly Pietro, too, calmed down. I went to my room.
Oh God, how out of order everything was: they, I, the world around us: a truce was possible only by telling lies. It was only a couple of days until the departure. I wrote first a long letter to Pietro, then a short one to Dede with instructions to read it to Elsa. I packed a suitcase, I put it in the guest room, under the bed. I bought all sorts of things, I loaded the refrigerator. I prepared for lunch and dinner the dishes that Pietro loved, and he ate gratefully. The children, relieved, began again to fight about everything.
122.
Nino, meanwhile, now that the day of departure was approaching, had stopped calling. I tried to call him, hoping that Eleonora wouldn’t answer. The maid answered and at the moment I felt relieved, I asked for Professor Sarratore. The answer was sharp and hostile: I’ll give you the signora. I hung up, I waited. I hoped that the telephone call would become an occasion for a fight between husband and wife and Nino would find out that I was looking for him. Minutes later the phone rang. I rushed to answer, I was sure it was him. Instead it was Lila.
We hadn’t talked for a long time and I didn’t feel like talking to her. Her voice annoyed me. In that phase even just her name, as soon as it passed through my mind, serpentlike, confused me, sapped my strength. And then it wasn’t a good moment to talk: if Nino had telephoned he would find the line busy and communication was already very difficult.
“Can I call you back?” I asked.
“Are you busy?”
“A little.”
She ignored my request. As usual it seemed to her that she could enter and leave my life without any worries, as if we were still a single thing and there was no need to ask how are you, how are things, am I disturbing you. She said in a weary tone that she had just heard some terrible news: the mother of the Solaras had been murdered. She spoke slowly, attentive to every word, and I listened without interrupting. And the words drew behind them, as if in a procession, the loan shark all dressed up, sitting at the newlyweds’ table at Lila and Stefano’s wedding, the haunted woman who had opened the door when I was looking for Michele, the shadow woman of our childhood who had stabbed Don Achille, the old woman who had a fake flower in her hair and fanned herself with a blue fan as she said, bewildered: I’m hot, aren’t you, too? But I felt no emotion, even when Lila mentioned the rumors that had reached her and she listed them in her efficient way. They had killed Manuela by slitting her throat with a knife; or she had been shot five times with a pistol, four in the chest and once in the neck; or they had beaten and kicked her, dragging her through the apartment; or the killers—she called them that—hadn’t even entered the house, they had shot her as soon as she opened the door, Manuela had fallen face down on the landing and her husband, who was watching television, hadn’t even realized it. What is certain—Lila said—is that the Solaras have gone crazy, they are competing with the police to find the killer, they’ve called people from Naples and outside, all their activities have stopped, I myself today am not working, and it’s frightening here, you can’t even breathe.
How intensely she was able to give importance and depth to what was happening to her and around her: the murdered loan shark, the children undone, their henchmen ready to spill more blood, and her watchful person amid the surging tide of events. Finally she came to the real reason for her phone call:
“Tomorrow I’m sending you Gennaro. I know I’m taking advantage, you have your daughters, your things, but here, now, I can’t and don’t want to keep him. He’ll miss a little school, too bad. He’s attached to you, he’s fine with you, you’re the only person I trust.”
I thought for a few seconds about that last phrase: You’re the only person I trust. I felt like smiling, she still didn’t know that I had become untrustworthy. So that, faced with her request, which took for granted the immobility of my existence amid the most serene reasonableness, which seemed to assign to me the life of a red berry on the leafy branch of butcher’s broom, I had no hesitation, I said to her:
“I’m about to go, I’m leaving my husband.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My marriage is over, Lila. I saw Nino again and we discovered that we have always loved each other, ever since we were young, without realizing it. So I’m leaving, I’m starting a new life.”
There was a long silence, then she asked me:
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
It must have seemed impossible to her that I was inserting disorder into my house, my well-organized mind, and now she was pressing me by mechanically grasping at my husband. Pietro, she said, is an extraordinary man, good, extremely intelligent, you’re crazy to leave him, think of the harm you’re doing to your children. She talked, making no mention of Nino, as if that name had stopped in her eardrum without reaching her brain. It must have been I who uttered it again, saying: No, Lila, I can’t live with Pietro anymore because I can’t do without Nino, whatever happens I’ll go with him; and other phrases like that, displayed as if they were badges of honor. Then she began to shout:
“You’re throwing away everything you are for Nino? You’re ruining your family for him? You know what will happen to you? He’ll use you, he’ll suck your blood, he’ll take away your will to live and abandon you. Why did you study so much? What fucking use has it been for me to imagine that you would enjoy a wonderful life for me, too? I was wrong, you’re a fool.”
123.
I put down the receiver as if it were burning hot. She’s jealous, I said to myself, she’s envious, she hates me. Yes, that was the truth. A long procession of seconds passed; the mother of the Solaras didn’t return to my mind, her body marked by death vanished. Instead I wondered anxiously: Why doesn’t Nino call, is it possible that now that I’ve told everything to Lila, he’ll retreat and make me ridiculous? For an instant I saw myself exposed to her in all my possible pettiness as a person who had ruined herself for nothing. Then the telephone rang again. When I grabbed the receiver, I had words on my tongue ready for Lila: Don’t ever concern yourself with me again, you have no right to Nino, let me make my own mistakes. But it wasn’t her. It was Nino and I overwhelmed him with broken phrases, happy to hear him. I told him how things had been arranged with Pietro an
d the children, I told him that it was impossible to reach an agreement with calm and reason, I told him that I had packed my suitcase and couldn’t wait to hold him. He told me of furious quarrels with his wife, the last hours had been intolerable. He whispered: Even though I’m very frightened, I can’t think of my life without you.
The next day, while Pietro was at the university, I asked the neighbor if she would keep Dede and Elsa for a few hours. I put on the kitchen table the letters I had written and I left. I thought: Something great is happening that will dissolve the old way of living entirely and I’m part of that dissolution. I joined Nino in Rome, we met in a hotel near the station. Holding him tight, I said to myself: I’ll never get used to that nervous body, it’s a constant surprise, long bones, skin with an exciting smell, a mass, a force, a mobility completely different from what Pietro is, the habits we had.
The next morning, for the first time in my life, I boarded an airplane. I didn’t know how to fasten my seat belt, Nino helped me. How thrilling it was to squeeze his hand while the sound of the engines grew louder, louder, and louder, and the plane began its takeoff. How exciting it was to lift off from the ground with a jerk and see the houses that became parallelopipeds and the streets that changed into strips and the countryside that was reduced to a green patch, and the sea that inclined like a compact paving stone, and the clouds that fell below in a landslide of soft rocks, and the anguish, the pain, the very happiness that became part of a unique, luminous motion. It seemed to me that flying subjected everything to a process of simplification, and I sighed, I tried to lose myself. Every so often I asked Nino: Are you happy? And he nodded yes, kissed me. At times I had the impression that the floor under my feet—the only surface I could count on—was trembling.
THE STORY OF THE LOST CHILD
INDEX OF CHARACTERS
The Cerullo family (the shoemaker’s family):
Fernando Cerullo, shoemaker, Lila’s father.
Nunzia Cerullo, Lila’s mother.
Raffaella Cerullo, called Lina, or Lila. She was born in August, 1944, and is sixty-six when she disappears from Naples without a trace. At the age of sixteen, she marries Stefano Carracci, but during a vacation on Ischia she falls in love with Nino Sarratore, for whom she leaves her husband. After the disastrous end of her relationship with Nino, the birth of her son Gennaro (also called Rino), and the discovery that Stefano is expecting a child with Ada Cappuccio, Lila leaves him definitively. She moves with Enzo Scanno to San Giovanni a Teduccio, but several years later she returns to the neighborhood with Enzo and Gennaro.
Rino Cerullo, Lila’s older brother. He is married to Stefano’s sister, Pinuccia Carracci, with whom he has two sons.
Other children.
The Greco family (the porter’s family):
Elena Greco, called Lenuccia or Lenù. Born in August, 1944, she is the author of the long story that we are reading. After elementary school, Elena continues to study, with increasing success, obtaining a degree from the Scuola Normale, in Pisa, where she meets Pietro Airota. She marries him, and they move to Florence. They have two children, Adele, called Dede, and Elsa, but Elena, disappointed by marriage, begins an affair with Nino Sarratore, with whom she has been in love since childhood, and eventually leaves Pietro and the children.
Peppe, Gianni, and Elisa, Elena’s younger siblings. Despite Elena’s disapproval, Elisa goes to live with Marcello Solara.
The father, a porter at the city hall.
The mother, a housewife.
The Carracci family (Don Achille’s family):
Don Achille Carracci, dealer in the black market, loan shark. He was murdered.
Maria Carracci, wife of Don Achille, mother of Stefano, Pinuccia, and Alfonso. The daughter of Stefano and Ada Cappuccio bears her name.
Stefano Carracci, son of Don Achille, shopkeeper and Lila’s first husband. Dissatisfied by his stormy marriage to Lila, he initiates a relationship with Ada Cappuccio, and they start living together. He is the father of Gennaro, with Lila, and of Maria, with Ada.
Pinuccia, daughter of Don Achille. She is married to Lila’s brother, Rino, and has two sons with him.
Alfonso, son of Don Achille. He resigns himself to marrying Marisa Sarratore after a long engagement.
The Peluso family (the carpenter’s family):
Alfredo Peluso, carpenter and Communist, dies in prison.
Giuseppina Peluso, devoted wife of Alfredo, commits suicide after his death.
Pasquale Peluso, older son of Alfredo and Giuseppina, construction worker, militant Communist.
Carmela Peluso, called Carmen. Pasquale’s sister, she was the girlfriend of Enzo Scanno for a long time. She subsequently marries Roberto, the owner of the gas pump on the stradone, with whom she has two children.
Other children.
The Cappuccio family (the mad widow’s family):
Melina, a widow, a relative of Nunzia Cerullo. She nearly lost her mind after her relationship with Donato Sarratore ended.
Melina’s husband, who died in mysterious circumstances.
Ada Cappuccio, Melina’s daughter. For a long time the girlfriend of Pasquale Peluso, she becomes the lover of Stefano Carracci, and goes to live with him. From their relationship a girl, Maria, is born.
Antonio Cappuccio, her brother, a mechanic. He was Elena’s boyfriend.
Other children.
The Sarratore family (the railway-worker poet’s family):
Donato Sarratore, a great womanizer, who was the lover of Melina Cappuccio. Elena, too, at a very young age, gives herself to him on the beach in Ischia, driven by the suffering that the relationship between Nino and Lila has caused her.
Lidia Sarratore, wife of Donato.
Nino Sarratore, the oldest of the five children of Donato and Lidia, has a long secret affair with Lila. Married to Eleonora, with whom he has Albertino and Lidia, he begins an affair with Elena, who is also married and has children.
Marisa Sarratore, sister of Nino. Married to Alfonso Carracci. She becomes the lover of Michele Solara, with whom she has two children.
Pino, Clelia, and Ciro Sarratore, younger children of Donato and Lidia.
The Scanno family (the fruit-and-vegetable seller’s family):
Nicola Scanno, fruit-and-vegetable seller, dies of pneumonia.
Assunta Scanno, wife of Nicola, dies of cancer.
Enzo Scanno, son of Nicola and Assunta, also a fruit-and-vegetable seller. He was for a long time the boyfriend of Carmen Peluso. He takes on responsibility for Lila and her son, Gennaro, when she leaves Stefano Carracci, and takes them to live in San Giovanni a Teduccio.
Other children.
The Solara family (the family of the owner of the Solara bar-pastry shop):
Silvio Solara, owner of the bar-pastry shop.
Manuela Solara, wife of Silvio, moneylender. As an old woman, she is killed in the doorway of her house.
Marcello and Michele Solara, sons of Silvio and Manuela. Rejected by Lila, Marcello, after many years, goes to live with Elisa, Elena’s younger sister. Michele, married to Gigliola, the daughter of the pastry maker, takes Marisa Sarratore as his lover, and has two more children with her. Yet he continues to be obsessed with Lila.
The Spagnuolo family (the baker’s family):
Signor Spagnuolo, pastry maker at the Solaras’ bar-pastry shop.
Rosa Spagnuolo, wife of the pastry maker.
Gigliola Spagnuolo, daughter of the pastry maker, wife of Michele Solara and mother of two of his children.
Other children.
The Airota family:
Guido Airota, professor of Greek literature.
Adele Airota, his wife.
Mariarosa Airota, their daughter, professor of art history in Milan.
Pietro Airota, a very young university professor, Elena’s husband and the fa
ther of Dede and Elsa.
The teachers:
Ferraro, teacher and librarian.
Maestra Oliviero, teacher.
Professor Gerace, high-school teacher.
Professor Galiani, high-school teacher.
Other characters:
Gino, son of the pharmacist; Elena’s first boyfriend.
Nella Incardo, the cousin of Maestra Oliviero.
Armando, doctor, son of Professor Galiani. Married to Isabella, with whom he has a son named Marco.
Nadia, student, daughter of Professor Galiani, was Nino’s girlfriend. During a period of militant political activity, she becomes attached to Pasquale Peluso.
Bruno Soccavo, friend of Nino Sarratore and the heir to a sausage factory. He is killed in his factory.
Franco Mari, Elena’s boyfriend during her first years at the university, has devoted himself to political activism. He loses an eye in a Fascist attack.
Silvia, a university student and political activist. She has a son, Mirko, from a brief relationship with Nino Sarratore.
MATURITY
1.
From October 1976 until 1979, when I returned to Naples to live, I avoided resuming a steady relationship with Lila. But it wasn’t easy. She almost immediately tried to reenter my life by force, and I ignored her, tolerated her, endured her. Even if she acted as if there were nothing she wanted more than to be close to me at a difficult moment, I couldn’t forget the contempt with which she had treated me.
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