But the difficulties hammered at me every day, cracks were continually opening up. The city hadn’t improved at all, its malaise wore me out immediately. Via Tasso turned out to be inconvenient. Nino got me a used car, a white Renault 4 that I immediately became attached to, but then I was always stuck in traffic, and I soon gave it up. I struggled to meet the endless demands of daily life much more than I ever had in Florence, Genoa, Milan. From the first day of school Dede hated her teacher and her classmates. Elsa, now in first grade, always came home depressed, her eyes red, and refused to tell me what had happened to her. I began to scold them both. I said they didn’t know how to deal with adversity, they didn’t know how to assert themselves, they didn’t know how to adapt, and they had to learn. As a result the two sisters joined forces against me: they began to speak of their grandmother Adele and aunt Mariarosa as if they were divinities who had organized a happy world made just for them, they mourned them in an increasingly explicit way. When, in an attempt to win them back, I drew them to me, cuddled them, they hugged me unwillingly, and sometimes pushed me away. And my work? It became more and more evident that, especially in that successful period, I would have done better to stay in Milan and find a job at a publisher’s. Or even settle in Rome, since I had met people on my promotional tours who had offered to help me. What were my daughters and I doing in Naples? Were we there just to make Nino happy? Was I lying to myself when I portrayed myself as free and autonomous? And was I lying to my audience when I played the part of someone who, with her two small books, had sought to help every woman confess what she couldn’t say to herself? Were they mere formulas that it was convenient for me to believe in while in fact I was no different from my more traditional contemporaries? In spite of all the talk was I letting myself be invented by a man to the point where his needs were imposed on mine and those of my daughters?
I learned to avoid myself. It was enough for Nino to knock on the door and the bitterness vanished. I said to myself: Life now is this and can’t be other. Meanwhile I tried to give myself some discipline, I didn’t resign myself, I tried to be assertive, sometimes I even managed to feel happy. The house shone with light. From my balcony I saw Naples stretching to the edges of the yellow-blue reflection of the sea. I had taken my daughters away from the temporariness of Genoa and Milan, and the air, the colors, the sounds of the dialect in the streets, the cultured people Nino brought to see me even late into the night gave me confidence, made me cheerful. I took the girls to see Pietro in Florence and was pleased when he came to see them in Naples. Over Nino’s protests I let him stay in my house. I made him a bed in the girls’ room; their affection for him was a performance, as if they wanted to keep him with them through a display of how much they loved him. We tried to have a casual relationship, I inquired about Doriana, I asked about his book, which was always about to be published when further details emerged that had to be examined. When the children held tight to their father, ignoring me, I took a little break. I went down through the Arco Mirelli and walked along Via Caracciolo, beside the sea. Or I went up to Via Aniello Falcone and came to the Floridiana. I chose a bench, I read.
31.
From Via Tasso the old neighborhood was a dim, distant rockpile, indistinguishable urban debris at the foot of Vesuvius. I wanted it to stay that way: I was another person now, I would make sure that it did not recapture me. But in that case, too, the purpose I tended to attribute to myself was fragile. A mere three or four days after the first harried arrangement of the apartment I gave in. I dressed the children carefully, dressed up myself, and said: Now let’s go see Grandmother Immacolata and Grandfather Vittorio and the uncles.
We left early in the morning and at Piazza Amedeo took the metro; the children were excited by the violent wind produced by the train’s arrival, which ruffled their hair, pasted their dresses to their bodies, took away their breath. I hadn’t seen or talked to my mother since the scene in Florence. I was afraid she would refuse to see me and maybe for that reason I didn’t telephone to announce my visit. But I have to be honest, there was another, more obscure reason. I was reluctant to say to myself: I am here for this or that other reason, I want to go here or I want to go there. The neighborhood for me, even more than my family, was Lila: to plan that visit would also mean asking myself how I wanted to arrange things with her. And I still didn’t have definite answers, and so leaving it to chance was better. In any case, since it was possible that I would run into her, I had devoted the greatest attention to the children’s appearance and to my own. If it happened, I wanted her to realize that I was a lady of refinement and that my daughters weren’t suffering, weren’t falling apart, were doing very well.
It turned out to be an emotionally charged day. I went through the tunnel, I avoided the gas pump where Carmen worked with her husband, Roberto, and crossed the courtyard. My heart pounding, I climbed the crumbling stairs of the old building where I was born. Dede and Elsa were very excited, as if they were heading into some unknown adventure; I arrayed them in front of me and rang the bell. I heard the limping gait of my mother, she opened the door, she widened her eyes as if we were ghosts. I, too, in spite of myself, showed astonishment. The person I expected to see had come unglued from the one who was in fact before me. My mother was very changed. For a fraction of a second she seemed to be a cousin of hers whom I had seen a few times as a child, and who resembled her, although she was six or seven years older. She was much thinner, the bones of her face, her nose, her ears seemed enormous.
I tried to hug her, she drew back. My father wasn’t there, nor were Peppe and Gianni. To find out anything about them was impossible, for a good hour she barely spoke a word to me. With the children she was affectionate. She praised them mightily and then, enveloping them in large aprons, she began making sugar candies with them. For me it was very awkward; the whole time she acted as if I weren’t there. When I tried to say to the children that they were eating too many candies, Dede quickly turned to her grandmother:
“Can we have some more?”
“Eat as many as you want,” my mother said, without looking at me.
The same scene was repeated when she told her grandchildren that they could go play in the courtyard. In Florence, in Genoa, in Milan I had never let them go out alone. I said:
“No, girls, you can’t, stay here.”
“Grandma, can we go?” my daughters asked, almost in unison.
“I told you yes.”
We remained alone. I said to her anxiously, as if I were still a child: “I moved. I’ve taken an apartment on Via Tasso.”
“Good.”
“Three days ago.”
“Good.”
“I’ve written another book.”
“What do I care?”
I was silent. With an expression of disgust, she cut a lemon in two and squeezed the juice into a glass.
“Why are you having a lemonade?” I asked.
“Because seeing you turns my stomach.”
She added water to the lemon, put in some bicarbonate of soda, drank the foamy effervescence in one gulp.
“Are you not well?”
“I’m very well.”
“It’s not true. Have you been to the doctor?”
“Imagine if I’ll throw away money on doctors and medicine.”
“Elisa knows you don’t feel well?”
“Elisa is pregnant.”
“Why didn’t you or she tell me anything?”
She didn’t answer. She placed the glass on the sink with a long, tired sigh, wiped her lips with the back of her hand. I said:
“I’ll take you to the doctor. What else do you feel?”
“Everything that you brought on. Because of you a vein in my stomach ruptured.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yes, you’ve killed this body.”
“I love you very much, Mamma.”
&nb
sp; “Not me. You’ve come to stay in Naples with the children?”
“Yes.”
“And your husband’s not coming?”
“No.”
“Then don’t ever show up in this house again.”
“Ma, today it’s not like it used to be. You can be a respectable person even if you leave your husband, even if you go with someone else. Why do you get so angry with me when you don’t say anything about Elisa, who’s pregnant and not married?”
“Because you’re not Elisa. Did Elisa study the way you did? From Elisa did I expect what I expected from you?”
“I’m doing things you should be happy about. Greco is becoming an important name. I even have a little reputation abroad.”
“Don’t boast to me, you’re nobody. What you think you are means nothing to normal people. I’m respected here not because I had you but because I had Elisa. She didn’t study, she didn’t even graduate from middle school, but she’s a lady. And you who have a university degree—where did you end up? I’m just sorry for the two children, so pretty and they speak so well. Didn’t you think of them? With that father they were growing up like children on television, and you, what do you do, you bring them to Naples?”
“I’m the one who brought them up, Ma, not their father. And wherever I take them they’ll still grow up like that.”
“You are presumptuous. Madonna, how many mistakes I made with you. I thought Lina was the presumptuous one, but it’s you. Your friend bought a house for her parents, did you do that? Your friend orders everyone around, even Michele Solara, and who do you order around, that piece of shit son of Sarratore?”
At that point she began to sing Lila’s praises: Ah, how pretty Lina is, how generous, now she’s got her own business, no less, she and Enzo—they’ve known how to get ahead. I understood that the greatest sin she charged to me was forcing her to admit, with no way out, that I was worth less than Lila. When she said she wanted to cook something for Dede and Elsa, deliberately excluding me, I realized that it would pain her to invite me to lunch and, taking the children, I went away bitterly.
32.
Once on the stradone I hesitated: wait at the gate for my father’s return, wander the streets in search of my brothers, see if my sister was home? I found a telephone booth, I called Elisa, I dragged the girls to her big apartment, from which you could see Vesuvius. My sister showed no signs yet of pregnancy, and yet I found her very changed. The simple fact of being pregnant must have made her expand suddenly, but distorting her. She was as if coarsened in her body, in her words, in her voice. She had an ashy complexion and was so poisoned by animosity that she welcomed us reluctantly. Not for a moment did I find any trace of the affection nor the slightly childish admiration she had always had for me. And when I mentioned our mother’s health she took an aggressive tone that I wouldn’t have thought her capable of, at least with me. She exclaimed:
“Lenù, the doctor said she’s fine, it’s her soul that suffers. Mamma is very healthy, she has her health, there’s nothing to treat except sorrow. If you hadn’t disappointed her the way you have she wouldn’t be in this state.”
“What sort of nonsense is that?”
She became even more rancorous.
“Nonsense? I’ll just tell you this: my health is worse than Mamma’s. And anyway, now that you’re in Naples and you know more about doctors, you take care of her, don’t leave it all on my shoulders. Enough for you to give her a bit of attention and she’ll be healthy again.”
I tried to control myself, I didn’t want to quarrel. Why was she talking to me like that? Had I, too, changed for the worse, like her? Were our good times as sisters over? Or was Elisa, the youngest of the family, the outward sign that the life of the neighborhood was even more ruinous than in the past? I told the children, who sat obediently, in silence, but disappointed that their aunt paid them not the slightest attention, that they could finish the candies from their grandmother. Then I asked my sister:
“How are things with Marcello?”
“Very good, how should they be? If it weren’t for all the worries he’s had since his mother died, we’d really be happy.”
“What worries?”
“Worries, Lenù, worries. Go think about your books, life is something else.”
“Peppe and Gianni?”
“They work.”
“I never see them.”
“Your fault that you never come around.”
“I’ll come more often now.”
“Good for you. Then try to talk to your friend Lina, too.”
“What’s happening?”
“Nothing. But among Marcello’s many worries she’s one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ask Lina, and if she answers, tell her that she’d better stay where she belongs.”
I recognized the threatening reticence of the Solaras and I realized that we would never regain our old intimacy. I told her that Lila and I had grown apart, but I had just heard from our mother that she had stopped working for Michele and had set up on her own. Elisa muttered:
“Set up on her own with our money.”
“Explain.”
“What is there to explain, Lenù? She twists Michele around her finger. But not my Marcello.”
33.
Elisa didn’t invite us to lunch, either. Only when she led us to the door did she seem to become aware that she had been rude, and she said to Elsa: Come with your aunt. They disappeared for a few minutes, making Dede suffer; she clutched my hand in order not to feel neglected. When they reappeared Elsa had a serious expression but a cheerful gaze. My sister, who seemed worn out by being on her feet, closed the door as soon as we started down the stairs.
Once we were in the street the child showed us her aunt’s secret gift: twenty thousand lire. Elisa had given her money the way, when we were small, certain relatives did who were scarcely better off than we were. But at that time the money was only in appearance a gift for us children: we were bound to hand it over to my mother, who spent it on necessities. Elisa, too, evidently, had wanted to give the money to me rather than to Elsa, but for another purpose. With that twenty thousand lire—the equivalent of three books in quality bindings—she meant to prove to me that Marcello loved her and she led a life of luxury.
I calmed the children, who were squabbling. Elsa had to be subjected to persistent questioning in order to admit that, according to their aunt’s wishes, the money should be divided, ten thousand to her and ten thousand to Dede. They were still wrangling and tugging at each other when I heard someone calling me. It was Carmen, bundled up in a blue gas-station attendant’s smock. Distracted, I hadn’t taken a detour around the gas pump. Now she was making signs of greeting, her hair curly and black, her face broad.
It was hard to resist. Carmen closed the pump, wanted to take us to her house for lunch. Her husband, whom I had never met, arrived. He had gone to get the children at school: two boys, one the same age as Elsa, the other a year younger. He turned out to be a gentle, very cordial man. He set the table, getting the children to help him, he cleared, he washed the dishes. Until that moment I had never seen a couple of my generation get along so well, so obviously content to live together. Finally I felt welcomed, and I saw that my daughters, too, were at ease: they ate heartily, with maternal tones they devoted themselves to the two boys. In other words I felt reassured, I had a couple of hours of tranquility. Then Roberto hurried out to reopen the pump, and Carmen and I were alone.
She was discreet, she didn’t ask about Nino, if I had moved to Naples to live with him, even though she seemed to know everything. Instead she talked about her husband, a hard worker, and attached to the family. Lenù, she said, amid so much suffering he and the children are the only consolation. She recalled the past: the terrible story of her father, the sacrifices of her mother and her mother’s death, the period
when she worked in Stefano Carracci’s grocery store, and then when Ada replaced Lila and had tortured her. We even laughed a little about the time when she was Enzo’s girlfriend: What nonsense, she said. She didn’t mention Pasquale even once; I had to ask. But she stared at the floor, shook her head, jumped up as if to push away something she wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me.
“I’m going to call Lina,” she said. “If she knows we saw each other and I didn’t tell her she’ll never speak to me again.”
“Forget it, she’ll be working.”
“Come on, she’s the boss now and she does as she likes.”
I tried to keep her talking, and asked her cautiously about the relations between Lila and the Solaras. But she was embarrassed, she answered that she didn’t know much about it and went to call. I heard her announcing excitedly that my daughters and I were in her house. When she returned she said:
“She’s very pleased, she’ll be right over.”
From that moment I began to get nervous. And yet I felt well disposed, it was comfortable in that modest, respectable house, the four children playing in the other room. The bell rang, Carmen went to the door, there was Lila’s voice.
The Neapolitan Novels Page 127
