The Lying Life of Adults

by Elena Ferrante

  I waited anxiously for the principal to respond. She did so in a devout voice, she called him professor, she was so enthralled that I was ashamed to have been born female, to be destined to be treated like that by a man even if I was well educated, even if I occupied an important position. Yet instead of screaming with rage, I felt very pleased. The principal didn’t want to let my father go, and it was clear that she kept asking him questions just to hear his tone of voice again and, who knows, maybe hoping for further compliments or the start of a friendship with a courteous and refined person who had considered her worthy of his brilliant reflections.

  Even before she made up her mind to let us go, I was sure that as soon as we were in the courtyard my father would make me laugh, mimicking the tone of her voice, the way she made sure her hair was in order, the expression with which she reacted to his compliments. That is exactly what happened.

  “Did you see how she batted her eyelashes? And the move with her hand, to smooth her hair? And her voice? Oh yes, uh-huh, professor, of course.”

  I laughed, really like a child, my old childish admiration for that man was returning. I laughed loudly, but in embarrassment. I didn’t know whether to let go or remind myself that he didn’t deserve that admiration and scold him: you told her that men are always wrong and should assume their responsibilities, but you have never done that with Mamma, or with me. You’re a liar, Papa, a liar who frightens me just because of that good will you can draw out when you want to.

  13.

  His overexcitement at the success of his mission lasted until we were in the car. While he was still settling himself behind the wheel, my father rolled out pompous remarks one after another.

  “Take this as a lesson. Anyone can be made to behave properly. You can be sure that for the rest of your high-school years that woman will be on your side.”

  I couldn’t restrain myself and I said:

  “Not on mine, on yours.”

  He noticed the animosity, he seemed ashamed of his self-praise. He didn’t start the car, he ran both hands over his face, from the forehead to the chin, as if to erase what he had been until a moment earlier.

  “Would you prefer to face everything by yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t like the way I behaved?”

  “You were great. If you asked her to be your girlfriend, she’d say yes.”

  “What should I have done, in your view?”

  “Nothing, mind your own business. You left, you have another wife and other daughters, forget Mamma and me.”

  “Your mother and I love each other. And you are my only, beloved daughter.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  My father had a flash of rage in his eyes, he seemed offended. I thought, here’s where I got the energy to hit Silvestro. But the rush of blood lasted an instant, he said gently:

  “I’ll take you home.”

  “Mine or yours?”

  “Wherever you want.”

  “I don’t want anything. Everyone always does what you want, Papa, you know how to get inside people’s heads.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Here again the surge of blood, I saw it in his pupils: I really could, if I wanted, make him lose his calm. But he’ll never go so far as to hit me, I thought, he doesn’t need to. He could annihilate me with words, he knows how to do it, he’s been trained since he was a boy, that’s how he destroyed Vittoria and Enzo’s love. And surely he’s trained me, too, he wanted me to be like him, until I disappointed him. But he won’t attack me even with words, he thinks he loves me and he’s afraid of hurting me. I changed my tone.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t want you to worry about me, I don’t want you to waste time doing things you don’t want to do because of me.”

  “Then behave yourself. Why in the world did you hit that boy? It’s not done, it’s not right. That’s the way my sister acted and she didn’t get past fifth grade.”

  “I’ve decided to make up my lost year.”

  “That’s good news.”

  “And I’ve decided not to see Aunt Vittoria anymore.”

  “If it’s your decision, I’m glad.”

  “But I’ll still see Margherita’s children.”

  He looked at me in bewilderment.

  “Who’s Margherita?”

  For a few seconds I thought he was pretending, then I changed my mind. While his sister knew obsessively even his most secret decisions, after the break he hadn’t wanted to know anything more about her. He had fought with Vittoria for decades, but of her life he was ignorant, with a proud indifference that was an important element of his hatred. I explained to him:

  “Margherita is a friend of Aunt Vittoria’s.”

  He made a gesture of irritation.

  “Oh, that’s right, I didn’t remember her name.”

  “She has three children: Tonino, Giuliana, and Corrado. Giuliana is the best of all. I’m very fond of her, she’s five years older than me and she’s really intelligent. Her fiancé studies in Milan, he graduated there. I met him and he’s really smart.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Roberto Matese.”

  He looked at me uncertainly.

  “Roberto Matese?”

  When my father used that tone of voice there was no doubt: someone had come to mind for whom he had genuine admiration and a barely perceptible envy. In fact, his curiosity increased, he wanted to know in what circumstances I’d met him, and was immediately sure that my Roberto was the same as a young scholar who wrote very remarkable essays in an important journal published by the Catholic University. I felt my face burning with pride, with a sense of revenge. I thought: you read, you study, you write, but he’s much better than you, you also know it, right now you’re admitting it. He asked, in amazement:

  “You met in Pascone?”

  “Yes, at the church, he was born there, but then he moved to Milan. Aunt Vittoria introduced me to him.”

  He seemed confused, as if in the space of a few sentences geography had become muddled and he had trouble keeping together Milan, the Vomero, Pascone, the house where he was born. But he quickly regained his usual understanding tone, part paternal, part professorial:

  “Good, I’m glad. You have the right and the duty to deepen your acquaintance with anyone who interests you. That’s how one grows. It’s too bad you’ve nearly cut off your relationship with Angela and Ida. You all have so many things in common. You should go back to being friends the way you used to be. You know Angela also has friends in Pascone?”

  It seemed that that name, in general uttered with annoyance, with bitterness, with contempt not only in my presence but probably also in Angela’s, to bring shame on his stepdaughter’s friendships, was pronounced this time in a much less resentful way. But maybe I exaggerated, I couldn’t control the impulse, which also hurt me, to cheapen it. I stared at the delicate hand that turned the key to start the car, I decided:

  “O.K., I’ll come to your house for a little while.”

  “No long face?”

  “No.”

  He cheered up, set off.

  “But it’s not my house, it’s also yours.”

  “I know,” I said.

  As we drove toward Posillipo, I asked him, after a long silence:

  “Do you talk to Angela and Ida a lot, do you have a good relationship?”

  “Fairly good.”

  “Better than their relationship with Mariano?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you love them more than me?”

  “What are you talking about? I love you much more.”

  14.

  It was a lovely afternoon. Ida wanted to read me some of her poems, which I found very beautiful. She hugged me tight when I responded enthusiastically; she complained about school
, which was boring and oppressive, the biggest obstacle to the free expression of her literary vocation; she promised she would let me read a long novel inspired by the three of us, if only she could find time to finish it. Angela couldn’t stop touching me, hugging me, as if she’d gotten unused to my presence and wanted to make sure I was really there. Out of the blue, she started talking about episodes of our childhood with great intimacy, sometimes laughing, sometimes with her eyes full of tears. I recalled almost nothing of what she evoked, but I didn’t tell her. I nodded yes, I laughed, and occasionally, hearing her so happy, I was seized by real nostalgia for a time that I nevertheless considered past forever and that had been imperfectly revived by her over-affectionate imagination.

  You speak so well, she said as soon as Ida went off unwillingly to study. I discovered that I wanted to tell her the same thing. I had moved into Vittoria’s territory, not to mention Corrado and Rosario’s, and had deliberately filled my speech with dialect and dialectal cadences. But here was our jargon again, coming mainly from bits of childhood reading that we didn’t even remember anymore. You left me alone—she complained but without reproach—and confessed, laughing, that she had almost always felt out of place, her normality was me. So in the end we became pleasantly reacquainted, and she seemed glad. I asked about Tonino, she answered:

  “I’m trying to stop seeing him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like him.”

  “He’s handsome.”

  “If you want I’ll give him to you.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You see? Even you don’t like him. I only liked him because I thought you liked him.”

  “Not true.”

  “Very true. If you like something, I always make myself like it.”

  I spent some words in favor of Tonino and his siblings, I praised him because he was a good young man and had proper ambitions. But Angela replied that he was always so serious, so pathetic with those short sentences that sounded like prophecies. A young man born old, she described him, too tied to the priests. The rare times they saw each other, all Tonino did was complain that Don Giacomo had been sent away from the parish because of the debates he organized, he’d been sent to Colombia. It was his only subject of conversation, he didn’t know anything about movies, television, books, singers. At most he sometimes talked about houses, he said human beings are snails that have lost their shells, but they can’t live long without a roof over their heads. His sister wasn’t like him, Giuliana had more character, and even though she was losing weight, she was beautiful.

  “She’s twenty,” she said, “but she seems young. She pays attention to whatever comes out of my mouth, as if I were really something. Sometimes she seems to be in awe of me. And you know what she said about you? She said you’re extraordinary.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true. She told me her fiancé said so, too.”

  Those remarks agitated me, but I didn’t let her see. Should I believe it? Giuliana considered me extraordinary, and so did Roberto? Or was it a way of being nice to make me happy and reinforce our relationship? I said to Angela that I felt like a rock with an elemental life hidden under it, anything but extraordinary, but if she went out with Tonino and Giuliana and even Roberto, I’d happily go for a walk with them.

  She seemed enthusiastic, and the following Saturday she called me. Giuliana wasn’t there, and naturally not her fiancé, but she had a date with Tonino and going out by herself with him bored her, she asked me to come along. I was happy to go, and we walked along the sea from Mergellina to the Palazzo Reale, Tonino in the middle, between Angela and me.

  How many times had I met him? Once, twice? I remembered him as awkward but pleasant, and in fact he was a tall young man, all sinews and muscles, with black hair, regular features, a timidity that caused him to measure out his words, his gestures. But soon I thought I could understand the reason for Angela’s impatience. Tonino seemed to weigh the consequences of every word, which made you want to finish his sentences for him or eliminate the useless ones, to yell at him: I get it, go on. I was patient. Unlike Angela, whose attention wandered—she looked at the sea, the buildings—I questioned him at length and found everything he said interesting. First, he talked about his secret studies, to be an architect, and he told me exhaustively, detail after detail, how he had taken a difficult exam and had passed brilliantly. Then he told me that, ever since Don Giacomo had had to leave the parish, Vittoria had become more unbearable than usual and made life difficult for everyone. Finally, at my cautious urging, he talked a lot about Roberto with great affection and a respect so boundless that Angela said: your sister shouldn’t be engaged to him, you should. But I liked that devotion that had not a hint of envy or malice. Tonino said things that moved me. Roberto was destined to a brilliant university career. Roberto had recently published an essay in a prestigious international journal. Roberto was good, he was modest, he had an energy that animated even the most disheartened people. Roberto inspired the best feelings. I listened without interrupting, I would have let that very slow accumulation of details go on into eternity. But Angela gave more and more signs of annoyance, and so the evening came to an end with just a little more conversation.

  “Are he and your sister going to live in Milan?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “After they get married.”

  “Giuliana would like to join him right away.”

  “Why doesn’t she?”

  “You know Vittoria, she has set our mother against it. And now they both want them to get married first.”

  “If Roberto comes to Naples, I’d love to talk to him.”

  “Of course.”

  “With him and Giuliana.”

  “Give me your number, I’ll have them call you.”

  When we parted, he said to me gratefully:

  “It was a lovely evening, thank you, I hope we’ll see each other soon.”

  “We have a lot of studying to do,” Angela cut him off.

  “Yes,” I said, “but we’ll find the time.”

  “You don’t come to Pascone anymore?”

  “You know what my aunt’s like, one time she’s loving, the next she’d like to kill me.”

  He shook his head, desolate.

  “She’s not a bad person, but if she goes on the way she is she’ll be alone. Not even Giuliana can stand her anymore.”

  He wanted to start talking about the cross—that was how he described Vittoria—that he and his siblings had had to bear since childhood, but Angela stopped him abruptly. He tried to kiss her, she avoided him. That’s enough—she almost shouted when we left him behind—did you see how exasperating he is, he always says the same thing in the same exact words, never a joke, never a laugh, he’s so lame.

  I let her vent, in fact I said several times that she was right. He’s a wet blanket, I said, but then I added: and yet he’s unusual, boys are all ugly and aggressive and stinking, instead he’s just a little too restrained, and even if talking to him is like watching paint dry don’t leave him, poor guy, where would you find another one like him.

  We laughed continuously. We laughed at words like lame, wet blanket, and especially that expression we’d heard as children, maybe from Mariano: watch the paint dry. We laughed because Tonino never looked a person in the eye, not Angela or anyone else, as if he had something to hide. We laughed, finally, because she told me that even though as soon as he embraced her his pants swelled up and she immediately moved her belly away in disgust, he never took the initiative, he had never even put a hand in her bra.

  15.

  The next day Giuliana called. She was cordial and yet very serious, as if she had an important purpose that wouldn’t allow a playful tone or frivolity. She said she had heard from Tonino my intention to call he
r and so she had gone ahead and called me, with joy. She wanted to see me, and so did Roberto. He was coming to Naples the following week for a conference, and they would both be really happy to get together.

  “See me?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, I’d love to see you, but him no, I’d be embarrassed.”

  “Why? Roberto is really friendly.”

  I agreed, naturally, I had waited a long time for such an opportunity. But to keep my agitation under control, maybe even to try to establish a good relationship with her beforehand, I proposed that we meet for a walk. She was glad, she said: even today. She was a secretary in a dentist’s office in Via Foria, and we met in the late afternoon, at the metro stop in Piazza Cavour, an area that I liked because it reminded me of the Museo grandparents, the genteel relatives of childhood.

  Just seeing Giuliana from a distance depressed me, though. She was tall, harmonious in her movements, she came toward me radiating confidence and pride. It was as if the composure I’d noticed earlier in church had spread into her clothes, her shoes, her gait, and now seemed innate. She greeted me with a cheerful chattiness to put me at my ease, and we walked without a destination. We passed the museum, and turned uphill onto Via Santa Teresa; I was at a loss for words, overwhelmed by how her extreme thinness, her light makeup, gave her a sort of ascetic beauty that instilled respect.