I did nothing to hide the fact that I was angry, that Costanza annoyed me with her sweet attentions, that Angela had insulted me and I didn’t want to have anything to do with her, that I couldn’t stand the many displays of affection with which Ida tried to placate me. I felt a meanness inside that needed to be expressed at all costs: surely it’s in my eyes and my whole face, I thought, alarmed at myself. I went so far as to whisper to Ida: it’s your birthday and Mariano’s not here, there must be a reason, maybe you’re too whiny, maybe you’re too clingy. Ida stopped speaking to me, her lower lip trembled, as if I had slapped her.
This couldn’t go unnoticed. My father realized that I had said something mean to Ida and, interrupting some polite chat with Angela, he turned to me, reproachful: please, Giovanna, don’t be rude, stop it. I said nothing, I smiled in a way that irritated him even more, so that he added forcefully: do we understand each other? I nodded yes, careful not to laugh. I waited a while and said, my face burning red: I’m going to the bathroom.
I locked myself in, and washed my face in a frenzy to remove that burning anger. He thinks he can hurt me, but I can do that, too. Before I went back to the dining room, I made up my eyes again as Costanza had done after her tears, I fished the bracelet out of my pocket and put it on my wrist, and returned to the table. Angela widened her eyes in wonder, she said:
“Why do you have Mamma’s bracelet?”
“She gave it to me.”
She turned to Costanza:
“Why did you give it to her, I wanted it.”
“I liked it, too,” Ida murmured.
My father intervened, ashen:
“Giovanna, give back the bracelet.”
Costanza shook her head, she, too, seemed suddenly drained.
“No, the bracelet is Giovanna’s, I gave it to her.”
“Why?” Ida asked.
“Because she’s a good, studious girl.”
I looked at Angela and Ida, they were unhappy. My sense of revenge faded, their unhappiness made me unhappy. Everything was sad and bleak, there was nothing, nothing at all that I could be pleased about, the way I’d been as a child, when they, too, were children. But now—I gave a start—they’re so wounded, so distressed, that to make themselves feel better they’ll say they know a secret of mine, they’ll say that I was held back, that I don’t learn, that I’m stupid by nature, I have only bad qualities, I don’t deserve the bracelet. I said to Costanza, in a rush:
“I’m not good or studious. Last year I was failed, now I’m repeating.”
Costanza looked uncertainly at my father, he coughed faintly, said reluctantly but making light of it, as if to curb an exaggeration:
“It’s true, but this year she’s doing really well and she’ll probably do two years in one. Come on, Giovanna, give the bracelet to Angela and Ida.”
I said:
“The bracelet is my grandmother’s, I can’t give it to strangers.”
My father then dug up from the depths of his throat his terrible voice, the one full of ice and disdain:
“I know damn well who that bracelet belongs to, take it off immediately.”
I tore it off my wrist and hurled it at one of the kitchen cabinets.
9.
My father drove me home. I left the Posillipo apartment unexpectedly victorious, but exhausted by tension. In my backpack I carried the bracelet and a piece of cake for my mother. Costanza got angry with my father, she had gone to pick the bracelet up off the floor. After making sure that it wasn’t broken, she repeated, articulating her words, without taking her eyes off his, that the bracelet was irrevocably mine and she didn’t want any more discussion. So in an atmosphere where it was no longer possible even to feign good cheer, Ida had blown out her candles, the party had ended, Costanza had ordered me to take some cake to her former friend—this is for Nella—and Angela, depressed, had cut a big piece and diligently wrapped it. Now my father was driving to the Vomero, but he was upset, I’d never seen him like that. His features were very different from the ones I was used to, his eyes were very clear, the skin of his face stretched over the bones, and he uttered a confusion of words, twisting his mouth as if he couldn’t articulate them except with extreme effort.
He began with phrases of this type: I understand, you think I destroyed your mother’s life and now you want to get revenge by destroying mine, Costanza’s, Angela’s, and Ida’s. The tone appeared good-natured, but I felt all his tension and was frightened, I was afraid that at any moment he would hit me, that we would end up crashing into a wall or another car. He noticed, he muttered: you’re afraid of me, I lied, I said no, I exclaimed that it wasn’t true, I didn’t want to ruin him, I loved him. But he insisted, he poured out a river of words, dumped them on me. You’re afraid of me, he said, I don’t seem what I was, and maybe you’re right, maybe every so often I become the person I never wanted to be, I’m sorry if I frighten you, give me time, you’ll see, I’ll go back to being the way you know me, this is a difficult period, everything’s falling apart, I had an idea that it would turn out this way, and you mustn’t apologize if you have bad feelings, it’s normal, but don’t forget that you’re my only daughter, you’ll always be my only daughter, and your mother, I’ll always love her, you can’t understand now, but you will, it’s hard, I was faithful to your mother for a long time, but I’ve loved Costanza since before you were born, and yet between us there was never anything, I thought of her as the sister I would have liked to have, the opposite of your aunt, the exact opposite, intelligent, cultured, sensitive, for me she was my sister the way Mariano was my brother, a brother to study with, talk to, confide in, and I knew everything about Mariano, he has always betrayed Costanza, now you’re old enough, I can tell you these things, Mariano had other women and he liked telling me all his affairs, and I thought poor Costanza, I felt sorry for her, I would have liked to protect her from her own fiancé, from her own husband, I thought my involvement came from being like brother and sister, but instead once, by chance, yes, by chance, we went on a trip together, a work trip, a teacher thing, it was very important to her, it was important to me, too, but innocent, I swear to you I had never betrayed your mother—I’ve loved your mother since our school days and I love her now, too, I love you and her—but we had dinner, Costanza and I and a lot of other people, and we talked a lot, we talked in the restaurant, then on the street, then all night in my room, lying on the bed as we also used to do when Mariano and your mother were there, then we were four young people, we cuddled with each other and talked, you can understand, can’t you, the way you and Ida and Angela talk about everything, but now in the room it was only Costanza and me, and we discovered that ours wasn’t the love of brother and sister, it was another type of love, we were amazed ourselves, it’s impossible to know how and why these things happen, what the deep reasons are and the superficial ones, but don’t believe that we continued afterward, no, it was only an intense and inescapable feeling, I’m so sad, Giovanna, I’m sorry, I’m sorry also about the bracelet, I always considered it Costanza’s, I saw it and said to myself: you know how she’d like it, you know how beautiful it would look, that was why when my mother died I wanted it no matter what, I hit Vittoria because of her insistence that it was hers, and when you were born I said to her: give it to the child, and for once she listened to me, but I gave it right away to Costanza, the bracelet belonging to my mother who never loved me, never, maybe the good I wanted to do her did harm, I don’t know, we perform acts that seem like acts but in fact they’re symbols, you know what symbols are, that’s something I should explain to you, good becomes evil without your realizing it, you understand, I didn’t wrong you, you were a newborn, I would have wronged Costanza, in my mind I had already given her the bracelet long before.
He went on like that the whole way, even more chaotically than in this summary of mine. I never understood how a man so devoted to reflection and stud
y, capable of conceiving the most gleaming sentences, could at times, when he was overwhelmed by emotions, make such muddled speeches. I tried to interrupt him several times. I said: I understand Papa. I said: this doesn’t concern me, it’s between you and Mamma, it’s between you and Costanza, I don’t want to know. I said: I’m sorry you feel bad, I feel bad, too, Mamma feels bad, and doesn’t it seem a little ridiculous that all this feeling bad means you love us.
I didn’t intend to be sarcastic. Part of me really wished, at that point, to discuss with him the bad that, while you seem to be good, gradually or suddenly spreads through your mind, your stomach, your whole body. Where does it come from, Papa—I wanted to say to him—how do you control it, and why does it not sweep away the good but, rather, coexists with it. At that moment it seemed to me that, although he was talking mainly about love, he knew the bad better than Aunt Vittoria, and since I felt bad in myself, too, felt that it kept advancing, I would have liked to talk about it. But it was impossible, he noticed only the sarcastic edge of my words and continued anxiously to pile up justifications, accusations, a frenzy of self-denigration and a frenzy to redeem himself by listing his grand reasons, his pain and suffering. When we got home I kissed him on the side of his mouth and ran away, he had an acid smell that disgusted me.
My mother asked without interest:
“How did it go?”
“Fine. Costanza sent you a piece of cake.”
“You eat it.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Not even for breakfast tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Then throw it away.”
10.
Some time passed, and Corrado showed up again. I was just outside school, about to go in, I heard someone call me, but even before I heard his voice, before I turned and saw him in the crowd of students, I’d known that I would meet him that morning. I was glad, it seemed a presentiment, but I have to admit that I’d been thinking of him for a while, especially during the boring afternoons of studying, when my mother went out and I was alone in the house and hoped he’d show up suddenly like the other time. I never believed it was a question of love, I had something else in mind. I was worried because if Corrado didn’t come that might mean that my aunt would appear in person to demand the bracelet, and the letter I had composed would be useless, I would have to deal with her directly, which terrified me.
But there was something else. A very violent need for degradation was growing inside me—a fearless degradation, a yearning to feel heroically vile—and it seemed to me that Corrado had sensed that need and was ready to support it without a fuss. So I was waiting for him, I wanted him to appear, and there he was, finally. He asked me, in that way of his that hovered between serious and humorous, not to go to school, and I immediately agreed, in fact I pulled him away from the entrance for fear that the teachers would see him, and I proposed going to the Floridiana, I dragged him there happily.
He started joking to make me laugh, but I stopped him, I took out the letter.
“You’ll give it to Vittoria?”
“And the bracelet?”
“It’s mine, I’m not giving it to her.”
“Look, she’ll be angry, she’s harassing me, you don’t know how important it is to her.”
“And you don’t know how important it is to me.”
“You had a mean look. It was nice, I really liked it.”
“It’s not just a look, I’m all mean, by nature.”
“All?”
We had moved off the paths, and were hidden among trees and bushes that gave off the sweet scent of living leaves. This time he kissed me, but I didn’t like his tongue, it was gross, rough, he seemed to want to thrust mine into the back of my throat. He kissed me and touched my breasts, but roughly, he squeezed them too hard, first on top of the shirt, then he tried to stick his hand in one of the cups of my bra, but without real interest, and he quickly got tired of it. He abandoned my breasts but went on kissing me, he pulled up my skirt and with the palm of his hand pushed violently against the crotch of my underpants and rubbed me for a few seconds. Laughing, I muttered: enough, and I didn’t have to insist, he seemed glad to be spared that duty. He looked around, unzipped his fly, pulled my hand inside his pants. I assessed the situation. If he touched me, he hurt me, he bothered me; I started feeling like I wanted to go home and go to sleep. I decided to act myself, as a way of keeping him from acting. I took it out cautiously, I asked him in a whisper: can I give you a blow job. I knew only the word, nothing else, I pronounced it in an unnatural dialect. I imagined that you had to suck hard, as if you were attached greedily to a large nipple, or maybe lick. I hoped he would explain what to do, and, whatever it was, it would be better than the contact with his raspy tongue. I felt lost, why am I here, why do I want this thing. I felt no desire, it didn’t seem like a fun game, I wasn’t even curious, the smell that came from that large, tense, compact excrescence was unpleasant. Anxious, I hoped that someone—a mother taking her children out for a walk—would see us from the path and shout reproaches and insults. But there was no one, and since he didn’t say anything, in fact to me he seemed in a daze, I decided on a light kiss, a light touch of the lips. Luckily, it was enough. He immediately put his thing back into his pants and let out a short, hoarse cry. Afterward we walked through the Floridiana, but I was bored. Corrado had lost the desire to make me laugh, and was talking now in a serious, affected tone, making an effort to use Italian while I would have preferred dialect. Before we separated he asked me:
“You remember Rosario, my friend?”
“The one with the buck teeth?”
“Yes, he’s sort of ugly but nice.”
“He’s not ugly, he’s so-so.”
“Anyway I’m better-looking.”
“Well.”
“He has a car. Wanna come for a ride with us?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you show me a good time or not.”
“We’ll show you a good time.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
11.
Corrado called me a few days later to tell me about my aunt. Vittoria had ordered him to report to me word for word that if I dared to act the teacher as I had done with that letter, she would come to the house and hit me in front of that bitch my mother. For that reason—he urged me—take her the bracelet, please, she wants it absolutely next Sunday, she needs it, she has to show it off at some church event.
He didn’t merely summarize the message, he also told me how we were to organize ourselves for the occasion. He and his friend would come and pick me up in the car and drive me to Pascone. I would give back the bracelet—but listen to me, we’ll drop you off in the square: you can’t tell Vittoria that I came to get you in my friend’s car, remember, that’ll make her mad, you have to say you got there on the bus—and afterward we’ll go and have fun. O.K.?
In those days I was particularly restless; I didn’t feel well, I had a cough. I thought I was hideous and wanted to be more hideous. Before going to school, I’d stand in front of the mirror doing my best to look like a crazy person—my clothes, my hair. I wanted people not to want to be with me, exactly as I tried to let them know that I didn’t want to be with them. Everyone irritated me, neighbors, people on the street, classmates, teachers. My mother especially annoyed me, smoking continuously, drinking gin before going to bed, complaining lethargically about everything, assuming an expression both worried and disgusted as soon as I said I needed a notebook or a book. But mostly I couldn’t stand her because of the increasingly conspicuous devotion she now displayed toward everything my father did or said, as if he hadn’t betrayed her for at least fifteen years with a woman who was her friend, who was the wife of his best friend. In other words, she exasperated me. I’d recently gotten into the habit of erasing my expression of indifference a
nd shouting at her in my improvised Neapolitan, purposely, that she had to stop it, that she had to not care—go to the movies, Ma, go dancing, he’s not your husband anymore, consider him dead, he went to live in Costanza’s house, is it possible that he’s still all you’re concerned with, that he’s still all you think about? I wanted to let her know that I felt contempt for her, that I wasn’t like her and would never be like her. So once when my father telephoned and she started off in her docile fashion with phrases like “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” I began repeating her slavish locutions in a loud voice but mixing in insults and obscenities in a dialect I didn’t know well, didn’t pronounce well. She hung up immediately, so as to spare her ex-husband my vulgar voice, stared at me for a few seconds, then went into her study, obviously to cry. I’d had enough, I accepted Corrado’s proposal immediately. Better to confront my aunt and give blow jobs to the two of them than stay shut up here in San Giacomo dei Capri, in this shit life.
I told my mother I was going on a trip to Caserta with my classmates. I put on makeup, I wore the shortest skirt I had, I chose a tight, low-cut shirt, I stuck the bracelet in my purse in case I found myself in a situation where I was forced to give it back, and I hurried downstairs at nine in the morning, the time I had agreed on with Corrado. To my surprise I found waiting for me a yellow car of I don’t know what make—my father had no interest in cars and so I was completely ignorant—but to me it seemed so grand that I was sorry not to be more in touch with Angela and Ida, it would have been satisfying to boast about it. At the wheel was Rosario, in the back seat Corrado, and both were exposed to the air and the sun, because the car had no roof—it was a convertible.
When Corrado saw me come out the front door, he waved with exaggerated joviality, but when I started to get in next to Rosario he said assertively:
The Lying Life of Adults Page 15