The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  38.

  Lila had dedicated herself to the children body and soul. And it could not have been easy to wake them in time in the morning, get them washed and dressed, give them a solid but quick breakfast, take them to school in the Via Tasso neighborhood amid the morning chaos of the city, pick them up punctually in that same turmoil, bring them back to the neighborhood, feed them, supervise their homework, and keep up with her job, her domestic tasks. But, when I questioned Dede and Elsa closely, it became clear that she had managed very well. And now for them I was a more inadequate mother than ever. I didn’t know how to make pasta with tomato sauce the way Aunt Lina did, I didn’t know how to dry their hair and comb it with the skill and gentleness she had, I didn’t know how to perform any task that Aunt Lina didn’t approach with a superior sensitivity, except maybe singing certain songs that they loved and that she had admitted she didn’t know. To this it should be added that, especially in Dede’s eyes, that marvelous woman whom I didn’t visit often enough (Mamma, why don’t we go see Aunt Lina, why don’t you let us sleep at her house more, don’t you have to go away anymore?) had a specific quality that made her unequalled: she was the mother of Gennaro, whom my older daughter usually called Rino, and who seemed to her the most wonderful person of the male sex in the world.

  At the moment I was hurt. My relations with the children were not wonderful and their idealization of Lila made things worse. Once, at yet another criticism of me, I lost my patience, I yelled: O.K., go to the market of mothers and buy another one. That market was a game of ours that generally served to alleviate conflicts and reconcile us. I would say: Sell me at the market of mothers if I’m no good for you; and they would answer, no, Mamma, we don’t want to sell you, we like you the way you are. On that occasion, however, maybe because of my harsh tone, Dede answered: Yes, let’s go right now, we can sell you and buy Aunt Lina.

  That was the atmosphere for a while. And certainly it wasn’t the best one for telling the children that I had lied to them. My emotional state was complicated: shameless, shy, happy, anxious, innocent, guilty. And I didn’t know where to begin, the conversation was difficult: children, I thought I didn’t want another child, but I did, and in fact I’m pregnant, you’ll have a little brother or maybe another sister, but the father isn’t your father, the father is Nino, who already has a wife and two children, and I don’t know how he’ll take it. I thought about it, thought about it again, and put it off.

  Then out of the blue came a conversation that surprised me. Dede, in front of Elsa, who listened in some alarm, said in the tone she took when she wanted to explain a problem full of perils:

  “You know that Aunt Lina sleeps with Enzo, but they’re not married?”

  “Who told you?”

  “Rino. Enzo isn’t his father.”

  “Rino told you that, too?”

  “Yes. So I asked Aunt Lina and she explained to me.”

  “What did she explain?”

  She was tense. She observed me to see if she was making me angry.

  “Shall I tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aunt Lina has a husband just as you do, and that husband is Rino’s father, his name is Stefano Carracci. Then she has Enzo, Enzo Scanno, who sleeps with her. And the exact same thing happens with you: you have Papa, whose name is Airota, but you sleep with Nino, whose name is Sarratore.”

  I smiled to reassure her.

  “How did you ever learn all those surnames?”

  “Aunt Lina talked to us about it, she said that they’re stupid. Rino came out of her stomach, he lives with her, but he’s called Carracci like his father. We came out of your stomach, we live much more with you than with Papa, but we’re called Airota.”

  “So?”

  “Mamma, if someone talks about Aunt Lina’s stomach he doesn’t say this is Stefano Carracci’s stomach, he says this is Lina Cerullo’s stomach. The same goes for you: your stomach is Elena Greco’s stomach, not Pietro Airota’s.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “That it would be more correct for Rino to be called Rino Cerullo and us Dede and Elsa Greco.”

  “Is that your idea?”

  “No, Aunt Lina’s.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think the same thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  But Elsa, since the atmosphere seemed favorable, tugged at me and intervened:

  “It’s not true, Mamma. She said that when she gets married she’ll be called Dede Carracci.”

  Dede exclaimed furiously: “Shut up, you’re a liar.”

  I turned to Elsa:

  “Why Dede Carracci?”

  “Because she wants to marry Rino.”

  I asked Dede:

  “You like Rino?”

  “Yes,” she said in an argumentative tone, “and even if we don’t get married I’ll sleep with him just the same.”

  “With Rino?”

  “Yes. Like Aunt Lina with Enzo. And also like you with Nino.”

  “Can she do that, Mamma?” Elsa asked, dubiously.

  I didn’t answer, I was evasive. But that exchange improved my mood and initiated a new phase. It didn’t take much, in fact, to recognize that with this and other conversations about real and pretend fathers, about old and new last names, Lila had managed to make the living situation into which I had cast Dede and Elsa not only acceptable in their eyes but even interesting. In fact almost miraculously my daughters stopped talking about how they missed Adele and Mariarosa; they stopped saying, when they returned from Florence, that they wanted to go and stay forever with their father and Doriana; they stopped making trouble for Mirella, the babysitter, as if she were their worst enemy; they stopped rejecting Naples, the school, the teachers, their classmates, and, above all, the fact that Nino slept in my bed. In short, they seemed more serene. And I noted those changes with relief. However vexing it might be that Lila had entered the lives of my daughters, binding them to her, the last thing I could accuse her of was not having given them the utmost affection, the utmost care, assistance in reducing their anxieties. That was the Lila I loved. She could emerge unexpectedly from within her very meanness, surprising me. Suddenly every offense faded—she’s malicious, she always has been, but she’s also much more, you have to put up with her—and I acknowledged that she was helping me do less harm to my daughters.

  One morning I woke up and thought of her without hostility for the first time in a long while. I remembered when she got married, her first pregnancy: she was sixteen, only seven or eight years older than Dede. My daughter would soon be the age of the ghosts of our girlhood. I found it inconceivable that in a relatively small amount of time, my daughter could wear a wedding dress, as Lila had, end up brutalized in a man’s bed, lock herself into the role of Signora Carracci; I found it equally inconceivable that, as had happened to me, she could lie under the heavy body of a grown man, at night, on the Maronti, smeared with dark sand, damp air, and bodily fluids, just for revenge. I remembered the thousands of odious things we had gone through and I let the solidarity regain force. What a waste it would be, I said to myself, to ruin our story by leaving too much space for ill feelings: ill feelings are inevitable, but the essential thing is to keep them in check. I grew close to Lila again with the excuse that the children liked seeing her. Our pregnancies did the rest.

  39.

  But we were two very different pregnant women. My body reacted with eager acceptance, hers with reluctance. And yet from the beginning Lila emphasized that she had wanted that pregnancy, she said, laughing: I planned it. Yet there was something in her body that, as usual, put up resistance. Thus while I immediately felt as if a sort of rose-colored light flickered inside me, she became greenish, the whites of her eyes turned yellow, she detested certain smells, she threw up continuously. What should I do, she s
aid, I’m happy, but that thing in my belly isn’t, it’s mad at me. Enzo denied it, he said: Come on, he’s happier than anyone. And according to Lila, who made fun of him, he meant: I put it in there, trust me, I saw that it’s good and you mustn’t worry.

  When I ran into Enzo I felt more liking for him than usual, more admiration. It was as if to his old pride a new one had been added, which was manifested in a vastly increased desire to work and, at the same time, in a vigilance at home, in the office, on the street, all aimed at defending his companion from physical and metaphysical dangers and anticipating her every desire. He took on the task of giving Stefano the news; he didn’t blink, he half grimaced and withdrew, maybe because by now the old grocery made almost nothing and the subsidies he got from his ex-wife were essential, maybe because every connection between him and Lila must have seemed to him a very old story, what did it matter to him if she was pregnant, he had other problems, other desires.

  But, mainly, Enzo took on the job of telling Gennaro. Lila in fact had reasons to feel embarrassment with her son that were no different from mine—but certainly more justified—for feeling embarrassed with Dede and Elsa. Gennaro wasn’t a child and childish tones and words couldn’t be used with him. He was a boy in the full crisis of puberty who couldn’t find an equilibrium. Failed twice in a row in high school, he had become hypersensitive, unable to hold back tears, or emerge from his humiliation. He spent days wandering the streets or in his father’s grocery, sitting in a corner, picking at the pimples on his broad face and studying Stefano in every gesture and expression, without saying a word.

  He’ll take it really badly, Lila worried, but meanwhile she was afraid that someone else would tell him, Stefano for example. So one evening Enzo took him aside and told him about the pregnancy. Gennaro was impassive, Enzo urged him: Go hug your mother, let her know that you love her. The boy obeyed. But a few days later Elsa asked me in secret:

  “Mamma, what’s a tramp?”

  “A beggar.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rino told Dede that Aunt Lina is a tramp.”

  Problems, in other words. I didn’t talk to Lila about it, that seemed pointless. And then I had my own difficulties: I couldn’t bring myself to tell Pietro, I couldn’t tell the children, mainly I couldn’t tell Nino. I was sure that when Pietro found out I was pregnant he would be resentful, even though he now had Doriana, and would turn to his parents, would induce his mother to make trouble for me in every way possible. I was sure that Dede and Elsa would become hostile again. But my real worry was Nino. I hoped that the birth of the child would bind him definitively to me. I hoped that Eleonora, once she found out about that new fatherhood, would leave him. But it was a feeble hope, usually fear predominated. Nino had told me clearly: he preferred that double life—even though it caused all sorts of problems, anxieties, tensions—to the trauma of an absolute break with his wife. I was afraid he would ask me to have an abortion. So every day I was on the point of telling him and every day I said to myself: No, better tomorrow.

  Instead everything began to sort itself out. One night I telephoned Pietro and told him: I’m pregnant. There was a long silence, he cleared his throat, he said softly that he expected it. He asked:

  “Have you told the children?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want me to tell them?”

  “No.”

  “Be careful.”

  “All right.”

  That was it. He began to call more often. His tone was affectionate, he was worried about how the girls would react, he offered every time to talk to them about it. But in the end it was neither of us. It was Lila, who, although she had refused to tell her own son, convinced Dede and Elsa that it would be a wonderful thing to occupy themselves, when the time came, with the funny live doll that I had made with Nino and not with their father. They took it well. Since Aunt Lina had called it a doll, they began to use the same word. They were interested in my stomach, and every morning when they woke up they asked, Mamma, how’s the doll?

  Between telling Pietro and telling the girls, I finally confronted Nino. It went like this. One afternoon when I felt especially anxious I went to see Lila to complain, and asked her:

  “What if he wants me to have an abortion?”

  “Well,” she said, “then everything becomes perfectly clear.”

  “What’s clear?”

  “That his wife and children come first, then you.”

  Direct, brutal. Lila hid many things from me, but not her aversion to my union. I wasn’t sorry, in fact I knew that it did me good to speak explicitly. In the end she had said what I didn’t dare say to myself, that Nino’s reaction would provide proof of the solidity of our bond. I muttered something like: It’s possible, we’ll see. When, soon afterward, Carmen arrived with her children, and Lila drew her, too, into the conversation, the afternoon became like afternoons of our adolescence. We confided in each other, we plotted, we planned. Carmen got mad, she said that if Nino was opposed she was ready to go and speak to him in person. And she added: I don’t understand how it’s possible, Lenù, that a person at your level can let someone walk all over you. I tried to justify myself and to justify my companion. I said that his in-laws had helped and were helping him, that everything Nino and I could afford was possible only because, thanks to his wife’s family, he had a good income. I admitted that, with what I got from my books and from Pietro, the girls and I would have a hard time scraping by in a respectable way. And I added: Don’t get the wrong idea, though, Nino is very affectionate, he sleeps at my house at least four times a week, he has always avoided humiliating me in any way, when he can he takes care of Dede and Elsa as if they were his. But as soon as I stopped speaking Lila almost ordered me:

  “Then tell him tonight.”

  I obeyed. I went home and when he arrived we had dinner, I put the children to bed, and finally I told him that I was pregnant. There was a very long moment, then he hugged me, kissed me, he was very happy. I whispered with relief: I’ve known for a while, but I was afraid you would be angry. He reproached me, and said something that amazed me: We have to go with Dede and Elsa to my parents and give them this good news, too—my mother will be pleased. He wanted in that way to sanction our union, he wanted to make his new paternity official. I gave a halfhearted sign of agreement, then I said:

  “But you’ll tell Eleonora?”

  “It’s none of her business.”

  “You’re still her husband.”

  “It’s pure form.”

  “You’ll have to give your name to our child.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  I became agitated.

  “No, Nino, you won’t do it, you’ll pretend it’s nothing, as you’ve done up to now.”

  “Aren’t you happy with me?”

  “I’m very happy.”

  “Do I neglect you?”

  “No. But I left my husband, I came to live in Naples, I changed my life from top to bottom. You instead still have yours, and it’s intact.”

  “My life is you, your children, this child who’s about to arrive. The rest is a necessary background.”

  “Necessary to whom? To you? Certainly not to me.”

  He hugged me tight, he whispered:

  “Have faith.”

  The next day I called Lila and said to her: Everything’s fine, Nino was really happy.

  40.

  Complicated weeks followed; I often thought that if my body hadn’t reacted with such delighted naturalness to pregnancy, if I had been in Lila’s state of continuous physical suffering, I wouldn’t have held up. My publisher, after much resistance, finally brought out Nino’s collection of essays, and I—continuing to imitate Adele, in spite of our terrible relationship—took on the job of persuading both the few prominent people I knew to cover it in the newspapers, a
nd the many, very many, he knew, but out of pride refused to telephone. Around at the same time, Pietro’s book also was published, and he brought a copy to me himself when he came to Naples to see his daughters. He waited anxiously while I read the dedication (embarrassing: to Elena, who taught me to love with suffering), we were both excited, he invited me to a celebration in his honor in Florence. I had to go, if only to bring the children. But then I was forced to face not only the open hostility of my in-laws but also, before and after, Nino’s agitation: he was jealous of every contact with Pietro, angry about the dedication, surly because I had said that my ex-husband’s book was really good and was talked about with great respect within the academic world and outside it, unhappy because his volume was going completely unnoticed.

  How exhausting our relationship was, and how many hazards were concealed in every gesture, in every sentence that I uttered, that he uttered. He didn’t even want to hear Pietro’s name, he darkened if I recalled Franco, he became jealous if I laughed too much with some friend of his, yet he found it completely normal to divide himself between me and his wife. A couple of times I ran into him on Via Filangieri with Eleonora and the two children: the first time they pretended not to see me, and kept going; the second I stopped in front of them with a warm smile, I said a few words referring to my pregnancy, even though it wasn’t visible, I went off in a rage, with my heart pounding in my throat. When, later, he reproached me for what he called a needlessly provocative attitude, we quarreled (I didn’t tell her that you’re the father: all I said was I’m pregnant), I threw him out of the house, I welcomed him back.