My Brilliant Friend

by Elena Ferrante

  I looked at Lila. Now I saw another face, a face of bewilderment. She must have realized that I was looking at her, and she immediately disappeared from the window. Meanwhile the cart started off. Keeping to the wall, without a goodbye to anyone, Lidia and the four youngest children slunk toward the gate, while Nino seemed unwilling to leave, as if hypnotized by the waste of fragile objects against the asphalt.

  Last I saw flying out the window a sort of black spot. It was an iron, pure steel. When I still had Tina and played in the house, I used my mother’s, which was identical, prow-shaped, pretending it was a ship in a storm. The object plummeted down and with a sharp thud made a hole in the ground, a few inches from Nino. It nearly—very nearly—killed him.

  12.

  No boy ever declared to Lila that he loved her, and she never told me if it grieved her. Gigliola Spagnuolo received proposals to be someone’s girlfriend continuously and I, too, was much in demand. Lila, on the other hand, wasn’t popular, mostly because she was skinny, dirty, and always had a cut or bruise of some sort, but also because she had a sharp tongue. She invented humiliating nicknames and although in front of the teacher she showed off Italian words that no one knew, with us she spoke a scathing dialect, full of swear words, which cut off at its origin any feeling of love. Only Enzo did a thing that, if it wasn’t exactly a request to be her boyfriend, was nevertheless a sign of admiration and respect. Some time after he had cut her head with the rock and before, it seems to me, he was rejected by Gigliola Spagnuolo, he ran into us on the stradone and, before my incredulous eyes, held out to Lila a garland of sorb apples.

  “What do I do with it?”

  “You eat them.”

  “Bitter?”

  “Let them ripen.”

  “I don’t want them.”

  “Throw them away.”

  That was it. Enzo turned his back and hurried off to work. Lila and I started laughing. We didn’t talk much, but we had a laugh at everything that happened to us. I said only, in a tone of amusement:

  “I like sorb apples.”

  I was lying, it was a fruit I didn’t like. I was attracted by their reddish-yellow color when they were unripe, their compactness that gleamed on sunny days. But when they ripened on the balconies and became brown and soft like small wrinkled pears, and the skin came off easily, displaying a grainy pulp not with a bad taste but spongy in a way that reminded me of the corpses of rats along the stradone, then I wouldn’t even touch them. I made that statement almost as a test, hoping that Lila would offer them to me: here, take them, you have them. I felt that if she had given me the gift that Enzo had given her I would be happier than if she had given me something of hers. But she didn’t, and I still recall the feeling of betrayal when she brought them home. She herself put a nail at the window. I saw her hang the garland on it.

  13.

  Enzo didn’t give her any other gifts. After the fight with Gigliola, who had told everyone about the declaration he had made to her, we saw him less and less. Although he had proved to be extremely good at doing sums in his head, he was lazy, so the teacher didn’t suggest that he take the admissions test for the middle school, and he wasn’t sorry about it, in fact he was pleased. He enrolled in the trade school, but in fact he was already working with his parents. He got up very early to go with his father to the fruit-and-vegetable market or to drive the cart through the neighborhood, selling produce from the countryside, and so he soon quit school.

  We, instead, toward the end of fifth grade, were told that it would be suitable for us to continue in school. The teacher summoned in turn my parents and those of Gigliola and Lila to tell them that we absolutely had to take not only the test for the elementary school diploma but also the one for admission to middle school. I did all I could so that my father would not send my mother, with her limp, her wandering eye, and her stubborn anger, but would go himself, since he was a porter and knew how to be polite. I didn’t succeed. She went, she talked to the teacher, and returned home in a sullen mood.

  “The teacher wants money. She says she has to give some extra lessons because the test is difficult.”

  “But what’s the point of this test?” my father asked.

  “To let her study Latin.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they say she’s clever.”

  “But if she’s clever, why does the teacher have to give her lessons that cost money?”

  “So she’ll be better off and we’ll be worse.”

  They discussed it at length. At first my mother was against it and my father uncertain; then my father became cautiously in favor and my mother resigned herself to being a little less against it; finally they decided to let me take the test, but always provided that if I did not do well they would immediately take me out of school.

  Lila’s parents on the other hand said no. Nunzia Cerullo made a few somewhat hesitant attempts, but her father wouldn’t even talk about it, and in fact hit Rino when he told him that he was wrong. Her parents were inclined not to go and see the teacher, but Maestra Oliviero had the principal summon them, and then Nunzia had to go. Faced with the timid but flat refusal of that frightened woman, Maestra Oliviero, stern but calm, displayed Lila’s marvelous compositions, the brilliant solutions to difficult problems, and even the beautifully colored drawings that in class, when she applied herself, enchanted us all, because, pilfering Giotto’s pastels, she portrayed in a realistic style princesses with hairdos, jewels, clothes, shoes that had never been seen in any book or even at the parish cinema. When the refusal persisted, the teacher lost her composure and dragged Lila’s mother to the principal as if she were a student to be disciplined. But Nunzia couldn’t yield, she didn’t have permission from her husband. As a result she kept saying no until she, the teacher, and the principal were overcome by exhaustion.

  The next day, as we were going to school, Lila said to me in her usual tone: I’m going to take the test anyway. I believed her, to forbid her to do something was pointless, everyone knew it. She seemed the strongest of us girls, stronger than Enzo, than Alfonso, than Stefano, stronger than her brother Rino, stronger than our parents, stronger than all the adults including the teacher and the carabinieri, who could put you in jail. Although she was fragile in appearance, every prohibition lost substance in her presence. She knew how to go beyond the limit without ever truly suffering the consequences. In the end people gave in, and were even, however unwillingly, compelled to praise her.

  14.

  We were also forbidden to go to Don Achille’s, but she decided to go anyway and I followed. In fact, that was when I became convinced that nothing could stop her, and that every disobedient act contained breathtaking opportunities.

  We wanted Don Achille to give us back our dolls. So we climbed the stairs: at every step I was on the point of turning around and going back to the courtyard. I still feel Lila’s hand grasping mine, and I like to think that she decided to take it not only because she intuited that I wouldn’t have the courage to get to the top floor but also because with that gesture she herself sought the force to continue. So, one beside the other, I on the wall side and she on the banister side, sweaty palms clasped, we climbed the last flights. At Don Achille’s door my heart was pounding, I could hear it in my ears, but I was consoled by thinking that it was also the sound of Lila’s heart. From the apartment came voices, perhaps of Alfonso or Stefano or Pinuccia. After a very long, silent pause before the door, Lila rang the bell. There was silence, then a shuffling. Donna Maria opened the door, wearing a faded green housedress. When she spoke, I saw a brilliant gold tooth in her mouth. She thought we were looking for Alfonso, and was a bit bewildered. Lila said to her in dialect:

  “No, we want Don Achille.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We have to speak to him.”

  The woman shouted, “Achì!”

  More shuffling. A thickset figure emerg
ed from the shadows. He had a long torso, short legs, arms that hung to his knees, and a cigarette in his mouth; you could see the embers. He asked hoarsely:

  “Who is it?”

  “The daughter of the shoemaker with Greco’s oldest daughter.”

  Don Achille came into the light, and, for the first time, we saw him clearly. No minerals, no sparkle of glass. His long face was of flesh, and the hair bristled only around his ears; the top of his head was shiny. His eyes were bright, the white veined with small red streams, his mouth wide and thin, his chin heavy, with a crease in the middle. He seemed to me ugly but not the way I imagined.

  “Well?”

  “The dolls,” said Lila.

  “What dolls?”

  “Ours.”

  “Your dolls are of no use here.”

  “You took them down in the cellar.”

  Don Achille turned and shouted into the apartment:

  “Pinù, did you take the doll belonging to the shoemaker’s daughter?”

  “Me, no.”

  “Alfò, did you take it?”

  Laughter.

  Lila said firmly, I don’t know where she got all that courage:

  “You took them, we saw you.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “ ‘You’ me?”

  “Yes, and you put them in your black bag.”

  The man, hearing those words, wrinkled his forehead in annoyance.

  I couldn’t believe that we were there, in front of Don Achille, and Lila was speaking to him like that and he was staring at her in bewilderment, and in the background could be seen Alfonso and Stefano and Pinuccia and Donna Maria, who was setting the table for dinner. I couldn’t believe that he was an ordinary person, a little short, a little bald, a little out of proportion, but ordinary. So I waited for him to be abruptly transformed.

  Don Achille repeated, as if to understand clearly the meaning of the words:

  “I took your dolls and put them in a black bag?”

  I felt that he was not angry but unexpectedly pained, as if he were receiving confirmation of something he already knew. He said something in dialect that I didn’t understand, Maria cried, “Achì, it’s ready.”

  “I’m coming.”

  Don Achille stuck a large, broad hand in the back pocket of his pants. We clutched each other’s hand tightly, waiting for him to bring out a knife. Instead he took out his wallet, opened it, looked inside, and handed Lila some money, I don’t remember how much.

  “Go buy yourselves dolls,” he said.

  Lila grabbed the money and dragged me down the stairs. He muttered, leaning over the banister:

  “And remember that they were a gift from me.”

  I said, in Italian, careful not to trip on the stairs:

  “Good evening and enjoy your meal.”

  15.

  Right after Easter, Gigliola Spagnuolo and I started going to the teacher’s house to prepare for the admissions test. The teacher lived right next to the parish church of the Holy Family, and her windows looked out on the public gardens; from there you could see, beyond the dense countryside, the pylons of the railroad. Gigliola passed by my window and called me. I was ready, I ran out. I liked those private lessons, two a week, I think. The teacher, at the end of the lesson, offered us little heart-shaped cookies and a soft drink.

  Lila didn’t come; her parents had not agreed to pay the teacher. But, since we were now good friends, she continued to tell me that she would take the test and would enter the first year of middle school in the same class as me.

  “And the books?”

  “You’ll lend them to me.”

  Meanwhile, however, with the money from Don Achille, she bought a book: Little Women. She decided to buy it because she already knew it and liked it hugely. Maestra Oliviero, in fourth grade, had given the smarter girls books to read. Lila had received Little Women, along with the following comment: “This is for older girls, but it will be good for you,” and I got the book Heart, by Edmondo De Amicis, with not a word of explanation. Lila read both Little Women and Heart, in a very short time, and said there was no comparison, in her opinion Little Women was wonderful. I hadn’t managed to read it, I had had a hard time finishing Heart before the time set by the teacher for returning it. I was a slow reader, I still am. Lila, when she had to give the book back to Maestra Oliviero, regretted both not being able to reread Little Women continuously and not being able to talk about it with me. So one morning she made up her mind. She called me from the street, we went to the ponds, to the place where we had buried the money from Don Achille, in a metal box, took it out, and went to ask Iolanda the stationer, who had had displayed in her window forever a copy of Little Women, yellowed by the sun, if it was enough. It was. As soon as we became owners of the book we began to meet in the courtyard to read it, either silently, one next to the other, or aloud. We read it for months, so many times that the book became tattered and sweat-stained, it lost its spine, came unthreaded, sections fell apart. But it was our book, we loved it dearly. I was the guardian, I kept it at home among the schoolbooks, because Lila didn’t feel she could keep it in her house. Her father, lately, would get angry if she merely took it out to read.

  But Rino protected her. When the subject of the admissions test came up, quarrels exploded continuously between him and his father. Rino was about sixteen at the time, he was a very excitable boy and had started a battle to be paid for the work he did. His reasoning was: I get up at six; I come to the shop and work till eight at night; I want a salary. But those words outraged his father and his mother. Rino had a bed to sleep in, food to eat, why did he want money? His job was to help the family, not impoverish it. But he insisted, he found it unjust to work as hard as his father and not receive a cent. At that point Fernando Cerullo answered him with apparent patience: “I pay you already, Rino, I pay you generously by teaching you the whole trade: soon you’ll be able to repair a heel or an edge or put on a new sole; your father is passing on to you everything he knows, and you’ll be able to make an entire shoe, with the skill of a professional.” But that payment by instruction was not enough for Rino, and so they argued, especially at dinner. They began by talking about money and ended up quarreling about Lila.

  “If you pay me I’ll take care of sending her to school,” Rino said.

  “School? Why, did I go to school?”

  “No.”

  “Did you go to school?”

  “No.”

  “Then why should your sister, who is a girl, go to school?”

  The matter almost always ended with a slap in the face for Rino, who, one way or another, even if he didn’t intend to, had displayed a lack of respect toward his father. The boy, without crying, apologized in a spiteful tone of voice.

  Lila was silent during those discussions. She never said so, but I had the impression that while I hated my mother, really hated her, profoundly, she, in spite of everything, wasn’t upset with her father. She said that he was full of kindnesses, she said that when there were accounts to do he let her do them, she said that she had heard him say to his friends that his daughter was the most intelligent person in the neighborhood, she said that on her name day he brought her warm chocolate in bed and four biscuits. But what could you do, it didn’t enter into his view of the world that she should continue to go to school. Nor did it fall within his economic possibilities: the family was large, they all had to live off the shoe repair shop, including two unmarried sisters of Fernando and Nunzia’s parents. So on the matter of school it was like talking to the wall, and her mother all in all had the same opinion. Only her brother had different ideas, and fought boldly against his father. And Lila, for reasons I didn’t understand, seemed certain that Rino would win. He would get his salary and would send her to school with the money.

  “If there’s a fee to pay, he’ll pay it f
or me,” she explained.

  She was sure that her brother would also give her money for the school books and even for pens, pen case, pastels, globe, the smock and the ribbon. She adored him. She said that, after she went to school, she wanted to earn a lot of money for the sole purpose of making her brother the wealthiest person in the neighborhood.

  In that last year of elementary school, wealth became our obsession. We talked about it the way characters in novels talk about searching for treasure. We said, when we’re rich we’ll do this, we’ll do that. To listen to us, you might think that the wealth was hidden somewhere in the neighborhood, in treasure chests that, when opened, would be gleaming with gold, and were waiting only for us to find them. Then, I don’t know why, things changed and we began to link school to wealth. We thought that if we studied hard we would be able to write books and that the books would make us rich. Wealth was still the glitter of gold coins stored in countless chests, but to get there all you had to do was go to school and write a book.