The Lying Life of Adults

by Elena Ferrante

  4.

  Every morning the three of us went to school, my parents to teach, I to learn. My mother usually got up first: she needed time to make breakfast, to dress and put on her makeup. My father instead got up only when breakfast was ready, because as soon as he opened his eyes he started reading, and writing in his notebooks, and he continued even in the bathroom. I got up last, although—ever since that story began—I’d demanded to do as my mother did: wash my hair frequently, put on makeup, choose with care everything I wore. The result was that both of them were continuously rushing me: Giovanna, how far along are you; Giovanna, you’ll be late and we’ll be late. And meanwhile they rushed each other. My father pressed: Nella, hurry, I need the bathroom, my mother answered calmly, it’s been free for half an hour, you haven’t gone yet? But those were not the mornings I preferred. I loved the days when my father had to be at school for the first period and my mother for the second or third or, even better, when she had the day free. Then she simply made breakfast, from time to time called, Giovanna, hurry up, devoted herself serenely to her many domestic duties and the stories she corrected and often rewrote. On those days, everything was easier for me: my mother washed last and I had more time in the bathroom; my father was always late and, apart from the usual jokes with which he kept me laughing, left in a hurry, dropped me at school, and drove off without the watchful lingering of my mother, as if I were grown up and could face the city by myself.

  I did some calculations and discovered with relief that the morning of the 23rd was of this second type: it would be my father’s turn to take me to school. The night before I got out my clothes for the next day (I eliminated pink), something that my mother always urged me to do but that I never did. And I woke up very early in the morning, in a nervous state. I ran to the bathroom, made myself up very carefully, put on, after some hesitation, the bracelet with blue leaves and pearls, appeared in the kitchen when my mother had barely got up. How in the world are you already up, she asked. I don’t want to be late, I said, I have Italian homework, and, seeing that I was agitated, she went to hurry my father.

  Breakfast went smoothly, they joked with each other as if I weren’t there and they could gossip about me freely. They said that if I wasn’t sleeping well and couldn’t wait to get to school, surely I was in love, I gave them little smiles that said neither yes nor no. Then my father disappeared into the bathroom, and this time it was I who shouted to him to hurry up. He—I have to say—didn’t waste time, except when he didn’t find clean socks or forgot books he needed and ran back into his study. In short, I remember that it was exactly seven-twenty, my father was at the end of the hall with his bag loaded, I had just given the obligatory kiss to my mother, when the doorbell rang violently.

  It was surprising that someone should ring at that hour. My mother quickly shut herself in the bathroom with a vexed expression, and said: open the door, see who it is. I opened it, and found myself facing Vittoria.

  “Hi,” she said, “lucky you’re ready, come on, we’ll be late.”

  I felt my heart burst in my breast. My mother saw her sister-in-law in the frame of the door and cried—yes, it was really a cry—Andrea, come here, it’s your sister. At the sight of Vittoria—his eyes widening in surprise, his mouth incredulous—he exclaimed: what are you doing here? Fearful of what would happen in a moment, in a minute, I felt weak, I was covered with sweat, I didn’t know what to say to my aunt, I didn’t know how to explain to my parents, I thought I was dying. But it was all over in a moment and in a way as surprising as it was clarifying.

  Vittoria said in dialect:

  “I’m here to get Giannina, it’s seventeen years today since I met Enzo.”

  She added nothing else, as if my parents should understand immediately the good reasons for her appearance and were obliged to let me go without protesting. My mother, however, objected in Italian.

  “Giovanna has to go to school.”

  My father, instead, without addressing either his wife or his sister, asked me in his cold tone:

  “Did you know about this?”

  I stood with my head down staring at the floor and he insisted, without changing his tone:

  “Did you have a date, do you want to go with your aunt?”

  My mother said slowly:

  “Are you serious, Andrea, of course she wants to go, of course they had a date, otherwise your sister wouldn’t be here.”

  He said only: if that’s the case, go, and with his fingertips signaled to his sister to move aside. Vittoria moved aside—she was a mask of impassivity set atop the yellow patch of a light dress—and my father, looking ostentatiously at his watch, ignored the elevator and took the stairs without saying goodbye, not even to me.

  “When will you bring her back,” my mother asked her sister-in-law.

  “When she’s tired.”

  They coldly negotiated the time and agreed on one-thirty. Vittoria held out her hand, I gave her mine as if I were a child, it was cold. She held me tight, maybe she was afraid I would escape and run home. Meanwhile, with her free hand she called the elevator under the eyes of my mother, who, standing in the doorway, couldn’t bring herself to close the door.

  A word more, a word less, that’s how it went.

  5.

  Our second encounter left an even deeper impression than the first. Just to start with, I discovered that I had a space inside me that could swallow up every feeling in a very short time. The weight of the lie discovered, the disgrace of the betrayal, all the pain for the pain I had surely caused my parents lasted until the moment when, through the glass doors of the iron cage of the elevator, I saw my mother close the door of the apartment. But as soon as I was in the hall and then in Vittoria’s car, sitting next to her as, immediately, she lighted a cigarette with trembling hands, something happened that very often occurred later in my life, sometimes bringing me relief, other times demoralizing me. The bond with known spaces, with secure affections, yielded to curiosity about what might happen. The proximity of that threatening and enveloping woman captivated me, and here I was, already observing her every move. Now she was driving a repugnant car that stank of smoke, not with my father’s firm, decisive control or my mother’s serenity but in a way that was either distracted or overanxious, made up of jerks, alarming screeches, abrupt braking, mistaken starts on account of which the engine almost always stalled and insults rained down from impatient drivers to which, with the cigarette between her fingers or her lips, she responded with obscenities that I had never heard uttered by a woman. In other words, my parents were relegated effortlessly to a corner, and the wrong I’d done them by making an arrangement with their enemy vanished from my mind. In the space of a few minutes I no longer considered myself guilty, I felt no worry even about how I would confront them in the afternoon, when all three of us returned to the house on Via San Giacomo dei Capri. Of course, anxiety continued to dig away at me. But the certainty that they would always love me no matter what, the helter-skelter motion of the little green car, the increasingly unknown city that we were crossing, and Vittoria’s jumble of words forced me to an attention, to a tension, that functioned like an anesthetic.

  We went up along the Doganella, parked after a violent quarrel with an illegal parking attendant who wanted money. My aunt bought red roses and white daisies, complained about the price, and once the bouquet was made changed her mind and obliged the flower seller to undo it and make two bunches. She said to me: I’ll bring this one, you this one, he’ll be pleased. She alluded naturally to her Enzo, and, from the moment we got in the car, despite the endless interruptions, she did nothing but talk about him with a sweetness that contrasted with her fierce manner of confronting the city. She continued to talk about him even as we went in among the burial niches and monumental tombs, old and new, along paths and stairs that always went down, as if we were in the upper-class neighborhoods of the dead and to find Enzo’s to
mb we had to descend. I was struck by the silence, by the gray of the rust-streaked niches, by the smell of rotting earth, by certain dark cross-shaped cracks in the marble that seemed to have been left for the breathing of those who no longer had breath.

  Until that moment, I had never been in a cemetery. My father and mother had never taken me, nor did I know if they had ever been, certainly they didn’t go on All Souls’ Day. Vittoria realized this right away and took advantage of it to again fault my father. He’s afraid, she said, he’s always been like that, he’s afraid of illness and death: all proud people, Giannì, all those who think they’re something, pretend that death doesn’t exist. Your father—when your grandmother may she rest in peace died—didn’t even show up at the funeral. And he did the same with your grandfather, two minutes and he was gone, because he’s a coward, he didn’t want to see them dead so he wouldn’t have to feel that he, too, would die.

  I tried to respond, but prudently, that my father was very brave, and to defend him I recalled what he had once told me, and that is that the dead are objects that have broken, a television, the radio, the mixer, and the best thing is to remember them as they were when they were working, because the only acceptable tomb is memory. But she didn’t like that answer, and since she didn’t treat me like a child with whom words must be measured, she scolded me, said I was parroting my father’s bullshit, your mother does that, too, and I, too, as a girl, did the same. But once she met Enzo, she had erased my father from her head. E-rased, she articulated and, finally stopping in front of a wall of niches, pointed to one low down that had a small fenced flower bed, a lighted lamp in the shape of a flame, and two pictures in oval frames. This is it, she said, we’re here. Enzo is the one on the left, the other is his mother. But, instead of taking a solemn or remorseful attitude as I expected, she grew angry because some paper and dead flowers had been left a few steps away. She gave a long, unhappy sigh, handed me her flowers, said: wait here, don’t move, in this shit place if you don’t get mad nothing works, and left me.

  I stood with the two bunches of flowers in my hand, staring at Enzo as he appeared in a black-and-white photo. He didn’t look handsome and that disappointed me. He had a round face and was smiling, with white, wolf-like teeth. His nose was large, his eyes very lively, his forehead low and framed by wavy black hair. He must have been stupid, I thought, at my house a broad forehead—my mother, my father, I had one like that—was considered a sure sign of intelligence and noble sentiments, while a low forehead, my father said, was characteristic of imbeciles. But, I said to myself, eyes are meaningful, too (this my mother claimed): the more they sparkle, the smarter the person is. Enzo’s eyes shot arrows of happiness, and so I was confused by a gaze that was in evident contradiction with the forehead.

  In the silence of the cemetery, Vittoria’s loud voice could be heard battling with someone, which worried me, I was afraid they would beat her or have her arrested, and on my own I wouldn’t have known how to get out of that place, which all seemed the same, with its rustling sounds, small birds, rotting flowers. But she returned quickly with a mopey old man who opened up a metal-framed chair with striped fabric and right away started sweeping the path. She watched him with a hostile expression and asked me:

  “What do you say about Enzo? He’s handsome, isn’t he handsome?”

  “He’s handsome,” I lied.

  “He’s very handsome,” she corrected me. And as soon as the old man left, she took the faded flowers out of the vases, threw them to one side along with the stagnant water, ordered me to go get fresh water at a fountain that I would find just around the corner. I was afraid of getting lost, so I hesitated, and she chased me away, waving her hand: go, go.

  I went, I found the fountain, which had a feeble jet. With a shudder I imagined that Enzo’s ghost was whispering affectionate words to Vittoria from the cross-shaped slits. How I liked that bond that had never been broken. The water gave a hiss, slowly lengthening its stream into the metal vases. If Enzo was an ugly man, well, his ugliness suddenly moved me, or rather the word lost meaning, dissolved in the gurgle of the water. What truly counted was the capacity to inspire love, even if one was ugly, even if spiteful, even if stupid. I felt there was some grandeur in that, and hoped that, whatever face was coming to me, I would have that capacity, as Enzo surely had, and Vittoria had. I went back to the tomb with the two vases full of water, hoping that my aunt would continue to talk to me as if I were a grownup and tell me in detail, in her brazen semi-dialect, about that supreme love.

  But as soon as I turned onto the path I got scared. Vittoria was sitting, legs spread, on the folding chair the old man had brought and was bent over, her face in her hands, her elbows on her thighs. She was talking—she was talking to Enzo, it wasn’t a fantasy, I heard her voice but not what she was saying. She really maintained relations with him, even after death, and that dialogue of theirs filled me with emotion. I advanced as slowly as possible, stamping on the dirt path with the soles of my feet so she’d hear me. But she didn’t seem to notice me until I was beside her. At that point she took her hands away from her face, sliding them slowly over her skin: a painful movement that was intended to wipe away the tears and at the same time deliberately show me her grief, without embarrassment but, rather, as a medal. Eyes red and shining, wet at the corners. At my house, it was a duty to hide your feelings, not to seemed impolite. Whereas she, after seventeen years—what seemed an eternity to me—was still in despair, wept in front of the tomb, spoke to the marble, addressed bones she couldn’t even see, a man who no longer existed. She took just one of the vases and said wearily: you arrange your flowers and I will do mine. I obeyed, placing my vase on the ground, unwrapping the flowers, while she, sniffling, unwrapped hers and grumbled:

  “Did you tell your father I told you about Enzo? And did he talk to you about him? Did he tell you the truth? Did he tell you that first he acted like his friend—he wanted to know everything about Enzo, tell me, he would say to him—and then he made him suffer, ruined him? Did he tell you how we fought over the house, our parents’ house, that pit of a house where I live now?”

  I shook my head no, and would have liked to explain to her that I wasn’t interested in their stories of fights, I just wanted her to tell me about love, I didn’t know anyone who could talk to me about it the way she could. But Vittoria wanted above all to say bad things about my father, and insisted that I listen, she wanted me to understand clearly why she was angry with him. So—sitting on the chair arranging her flowers, I doing the same, squatting nearby—she started in on the story of the fight over the house, the only thing left by the parents to their five children.

  It was a long story and was hurtful to me. Your father—she said—didn’t want to give in. He was adamant: the house belongs to all of us, it’s Papa and Mamma’s house, they bought it with their money, and I’m the only one who helped them, and to help them I put my money into it. I answered: it’s true, Andrea, but all of you are settled, one way or another you have jobs, but I have nothing, and the others agree about leaving it all to me. But he said that we had to sell the house and divide the proceeds among the five of us. If the others didn’t want their share, fine, but he wanted his. There was an argument that went on for months: your father on one side and the three others and I on the other. Since no solution could be found, Enzo intervened—look at him, with that face, those eyes, that smile. At the time, no one knew about our great love story but your father, who was his friend, my brother, and our adviser. Enzo defended me, he said: Andrea, your sister can’t compensate you, where would she get the money. And your father said to him: you shut up, you’re nobody, you don’t know how to put two words together, what do you have to do with my business and my sister. Enzo was too distressed, he said: all right, let’s have the house appraised and I’ll give you your share out of my own pocket. But your father started cursing, he yelled at him: how can you give me the money, you shit, you’re jus
t a cop, where would you find the money, and if you have it that means you’re a thief, a thief in a uniform. And so on like that, you see? Your father went so far as to tell him—listen carefully, he seems like a refined man but he’s crude—that he, Enzo, was not only screwing me but also wanted to screw the rest of us out of our parents’ house. So Enzo said if he kept on like that he’d take out his pistol and shoot him. He said “I’ll shoot you” so convincingly that your father turned white with fear, he shut up and left. But now, Giannì—here my aunt blew her nose, dried her wet eyes, began to twist her mouth to contain passion and fury—you must listen well to what your father did: he went straight to Enzo’s wife and in front of the three children said: Margherì, your husband is fucking my sister. He did that, he took that responsibility on himself, and he made a mess of my life, Enzo’s, Margherita’s, and the life of those three poor little kids.

  Now the sun had reached the flower bed and the flowers shone in the vases much brighter than the lamp in the shape of a flame: the light of day made the colors so vivid that the light of the dead seemed useless, appeared spent. I felt sad, sad for Vittoria, for Enzo, for his wife, Margherita, for the three small children. Was it possible that my father had behaved like that? I couldn’t believe it, he had always said: the worst thing, Giovanna, is to be a snitch. And yet, according to Vittoria, he had done that, and even though he must have had good reasons—I was sure—it wasn’t like him, no, I ruled it out. But I didn’t dare say so to Vittoria, it seemed offensive to claim that, on the seventeenth anniversary of their love, she was telling lies in front of Enzo’s tomb. So I said nothing, though I was unhappy that once again I wasn’t defending my father, and I looked at her uncertainly, while she, as if to soothe herself, cleaned with a tear-stained handkerchief the glass ovals that protected the photos. The silence weighed on me, and I asked her: