The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  “Finally you’re doing something good.”

  “What?”

  “A friendship with Marcello Solara.”

  “There’s no friendship, Papa.”

  “Then it means you were a fool and a fool you remain.”

  Fernando wanted to say that something was changing and that his son, whatever he wanted to call that thing with the Solaras, would do well to encourage it. He was right. Marcello returned a couple of days later with his grandfather’s shoes to resole; then he invited Rino to go for a drive. Then he urged him to apply for a license, assuming the responsibility for getting him to practice in the 1100. Maybe it wasn’t friendship, but the Solaras certainly had taken a liking to Rino.

  When Lila, ignorant of these visits, which took place entirely at the shoemaker’s shop, where she never went, heard about them, she, unlike her father, felt an increasing worry. First she remembered the battle of the fireworks and thought: Rino hates the Solaras too much, it can’t be that he’ll let himself be taken in. Then she had had to observe that Marcello’s attentions were seducing her older brother even more than her parents. She now knew Rino’s fragility, but still she was angry at the way the Solaras were getting into his head, making him a kind of happy little monkey.

  “What’s wrong with it?” I objected once.

  “They’re dangerous.”

  “Here everything is dangerous.”

  “Did you see what Michele took out of the car, in Piazza dei Martiri?”

  “No.”

  “An iron bar.”

  “The others had sticks.”

  “You don’t see it, Lenù, but the bar was sharpened into a point: if he wanted he could have thrust it into the chest, or the stomach, of one of those guys.”

  “Well, you threatened Marcello with the shoemaker’s knife.”

  At that point she grew irritated and said I didn’t understand. And probably it was true. It was her brother, not mine; I liked to be logical, while she had different needs, she wanted to get Rino away from that relationship. But as soon as she made some critical remark Rino shut her up, threatened her, sometimes beat her. And so things, willy-nilly, proceeded to the point where, one evening in late June—I was at Lila’s house, I was helping her fold sheets, or something, I don’t remember—the door opened and Rino entered, followed by Marcello.

  He had invited Solara to dinner, and Fernando, who had just returned from the shop, very tired, at first was irritated, and then felt honored, and behaved cordially. Not to mention Nunzia: she became agitated, thanked Marcello for the three bottles of good wine that he had brought, pulled the other children into the kitchen so they wouldn’t be disruptive.

  I myself was involved with Lila in the preparations for dinner.

  “I’ll put roach poison in it,” Lila said, furious, at the stove, and we laughed, while Nunzia shut us up.

  “He’s come to marry you,” I said to provoke her, “he’s going to ask your father.”

  “He is deceiving himself.”

  “Why,” Nunzia asked anxiously, “if he likes you do you say no?”

  “Ma, I already told him no.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It’s true,” I said in confirmation.

  “Your father must never know, otherwise he’ll kill you.”

  At dinner only Marcello spoke. It was clear that he had invited himself, and Rino, who didn’t know how to say no to him, sat at the table nearly silent, or laughed for no reason. Solara addressed himself mainly to Fernando, but never neglected to pour water or wine for Nunzia, for Lila, for me. He said to him how much he was respected in the neighborhood because he was such a good cobbler. He said that his father had always spoken well of his skill. He said that Rino had an unlimited admiration for his abilities as a shoemaker.

  Fernando, partly because of the wine, was moved. He muttered something in praise of Silvio Solara, and even went so far as to say that Rino was a good worker and was becoming a good shoemaker. Then Marcello started to praise the need for progress. He said that his grandfather had started with a cellar, then his father had enlarged it, and today the bar-pastry shop Solara was what it was, everybody knew it, people came from all over Naples to have coffee, eat a pastry.

  “What an exaggeration,” Lila exclaimed, and her father gave her a silencing look.

  But Marcello smiled at her humbly and admitted, “Yes, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but just to say that money has to circulate. You begin with a cellar and from generation to generation you can go far.”

  At this point, with Rino showing evident signs of uneasiness, he began to praise the idea of making new shoes. And from that moment he began to look at Lila as if in praising the energy of the generations he were praising her in particular. He said: if someone feels capable, if he’s clever, if he can invent good things, which are pleasing, why not try? He spoke in a nice, charming dialect and as he spoke he never stopped staring at my friend. I felt, I saw that he was in love as in the songs, that he would have liked to kiss her, that he wanted to breathe her breath, that she would be able to make of him all she wanted, that in his eyes she embodied all possible feminine qualities.

  “I know,” Marcello concluded, “that your children made a very nice pair of shoes, size 43, just my size.”

  A long silence fell. Rino stared at his plate and didn’t dare look up at his father. Only the sound of the goldfinch at the window could be heard. Fernando said slowly, “Yes, they’re size 43.”

  “I would very much like to see them, if you don’t mind?”

  Fernando stammered, “I don’t know where they are. Nunzia, do you know?”

  “She has them,” Rino said, indicating his sister.

  “I did have them, yes, I had put them in the storeroom. But then Mamma told me to clean it out the other day and I threw them away. Since no one liked them.”

  Rino said angrily, “You’re a liar, go and get the shoes right now.”

  Fernando said nervously, “Go get the shoes, go on.”

  Lila burst out, addressing her father, “How is it that now you want them? I threw them away because you said you didn’t like them.”

  Fernando pounded the table with his open hand, the wine trembled in the glasses.

  “Get up and go get the shoes, right now.”

  Lila pushed away her chair, stood up.

  “I threw them away,” she repeated weakly and left the room.

  She didn’t come back.

  The time passed in silence. The first to become alarmed was Marcello. He said, with real concern, “Maybe I was wrong, I didn’t know that there were problems.”

  “There’s no problem,” Fernando said, and whispered to his wife, “Go see what your daughter is doing.”

  Nunzia left the room. When she came back she was embarrassed, she couldn’t find Lila. We looked for her all over the house, she wasn’t there. We called her from the window: nothing. Marcello, desolate, took his leave. As soon as he had gone Fernando shouted at his wife, “God’s truth, this time I’m going to kill your daughter.”

  Rino joined his father in the threat, Nunzia began to cry. I left almost on tiptoe, frightened. But as soon as I closed the door and came out on the landing Lila called me. She was on the top floor, I went up on tiptoe. She was huddled next to the door to the terrace, in the shadows. She had the shoes in her lap, for the first time I saw them finished. They shone in the feeble light of a bulb hanging on an electrical cable. “What would it cost you to let him see them?” I asked, confused.

  She shook her head energetically. “I don’t even want him to touch them.”

  But she was as if overwhelmed by her own extreme reaction. Her lower lip trembled, something that never happened.

  Gradually I persuaded her to go home, she couldn’t sta
y hiding there forever. I went with her, counting on the fact that my presence would protect her. But there were shouts, insults, some blows just the same. Fernando screamed that on a whim she had made him look foolish in the eyes of an important guest. Rino tore the shoes out of her hand, saying that they were his, the work had been done by him. She began to cry, murmuring, “I worked on them, too, but it would have been better if I’d never done it, you’ve become a mad beast.” It was Nunzia who put an end to that torture. She turned pale and in a voice that was not her usual voice she ordered her children, and even her husband—she who was always so submissive—to stop it immediately, to give the shoes to her, not to venture a single word if they didn’t want her to jump out the window. Rino gave her the shoes and for the moment things ended there. I slipped away.

  28.

  But Rino wouldn’t give in, and in the following days he continued to attack his sister with words and fists. Every time Lila and I met I saw a new bruise. After a while I felt that she was resigned. One morning he insisted that they go out together, that she come with him to the shoemaker’s shop. On the way they both sought, with wavy moves, to end the war. Rino said that he loved her but that she didn’t love anyone, neither her parents nor her siblings. Lila murmured, “What do you mean by love, what does love mean for our family? Let’s hear.” Step by step, he revealed to her what he had in mind.

  “If Marcello likes the shoes, Papa will change his mind.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Yes, he will. And if Marcello buys them, Papa will understand that your designs are good, that they’re profitable, and he’ll have us start work.”

  “The three of us?”

  “He and I and maybe you, too. Papa is capable of making a pair of shoes, completely finished, in four days, at most five. And I, if I work hard, I’ll show you that I can do the same. We make them, we sell them, and we finance ourselves.”

  “Who do we sell them to, always Marcello Solara?”

  “The Solaras market them; they know people who count. They’ll do the publicity for us.”

  “They’ll do it free?”

  “If they want a small percentage we’ll give it to them.”

  “And why should they be content with a small percentage?”

  “They’ve taken a liking to me.”

  “The Solaras?”

  “Yes.”

  Lila sighed. “Just one thing: I’ll tell Papa and see what he thinks.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “This way or not at all.”

  Rino was silent, very nervous.

  “All right. Anyway, you speak, you can speak better.”

  That evening, at dinner, in front of her brother, whose face was fiery red, Lila said to Fernando that Marcello not only had shown great curiosity about the shoe enterprise but might even be interested in buying the shoes for himself, and that in fact, if he was enthusiastic about the matter from a commercial point of view, he would advertise the product in the circles he frequented, in exchange, naturally, for a small percentage of the sales.

  “This I said,” Rino explained with lowered eyes, “not Marcello.”

  Fernando looked at his wife: Lila understood that they had talked about it and had already, secretly, reached a conclusion.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll put your shoes in the shop window. If someone wants to see them, wants to try them, wants to buy them, whatever fucking thing, he has to talk to me, I am the one who decides.”

  A few days later I passed by the shop. Rino was working, Fernando was working, both heads bent over the work. I saw in the window, among boxes of shoe polish and laces, the beautiful, elegant shoes made by the Cerullos. A sign pasted to the window, certainly written by Rino, said, pompously: “Shoes handmade by the Cerullos here.” Father and son waited for good luck to arrive.

  But Lila was skeptical, sulky. She had no faith in the ingenuous hypothesis of her brother and was afraid of the indecipherable agreement between her father and mother. In other words she expected bad things. A week passed, and no one showed the least interest in the shoes in the window, not even Marcello. Only because he was cornered by Rino, in fact almost dragged to the shop, did Solara glance at them, but as if he had other things on his mind. He tried them, of course, but said they were a little tight, took them off immediately, and disappeared without even a word of compliment, as if he had a stomachache and had to hurry home. Disappointment of father and son. But two minutes later Marcello reappeared. Rino jumped up, beaming, and took his hand as if some agreement, by that pure and simple reappearance, had already been made. But Marcello ignored him and turned directly to Fernando. He said, all in one breath:

  “I have very serious intentions, Don Fernà. I would like the hand of your daughter Lina.”

  29.

  Rino reacted to that turn with a violent fever that kept him away from work for days. When, abruptly, the fever went down, he had disturbing symptoms: he got out of bed in the middle of the night, and, while still sleeping, silent, and extremely agitated, he went to the door and struggled to open it, with his eyes wide open. Nunzia and Lila, frightened, dragged him back to bed.

  Fernando, however, who with his wife had immediately guessed Marcello’s true intentions, spoke with his daughter calmly. He explained to her that Marcello Solara’s proposal was important not only for her future but for that of the whole family. He told her that she was still a child and didn’t have to say yes immediately, but added that he, as her father, advised her to consent. A long engagement at home would slowly get her used to the marriage.

  Lila answered with equal tranquility that rather than be engaged to Marcello Solara and marry him she would go and drown herself in the pond. A great quarrel arose, but she didn’t change her mind.

  I was stunned by the news. I knew that Marcello wanted to be Lila’s boyfriend at all costs, but it would never have entered my mind that at our age one could receive a proposal of marriage. And yet Lila had received one, and she wasn’t yet fifteen, she hadn’t yet had a secret boyfriend, had never kissed anyone. I sided with her immediately. Get married? To Marcello Solara? Maybe even have children? No, absolutely no. I encouraged her to fight that new war against her father and swore I would support her, even if he had already lost his composure and now was threatening her, saying that for her own good he would break every bone in her body if she didn’t accept a proposal of that importance.

  But I couldn’t stay with her. In the middle of July something happened that I should have thought of but that instead caught me unawares and overwhelmed me. One late afternoon, after the usual walk through the neighborhood with Lila, discussing what was happening to her and how to get out of it, I came home and my sister Elisa opened the door. She said in a state of excitement that in the dining room was her teacher, that is, Maestra Oliviero. She was talking to our mother.

  I looked timidly into the room, my mother stammered, in annoyance, “Maestra Oliviero says you need to rest, you’re worn out.”

  I looked at the teacher without understanding. She seemed the one in need of rest, she was pale and her face was puffy. She said to me, “My cousin responded just yesterday: you can go to her in Ischia, and stay there until the end of August. She’ll be happy to have you, you just have to help a little in the house.”

  She spoke to me as if she were my mother and as if my mother, the real one, with the injured leg and the wandering eye, were only a disposable living being, and as such not to be taken into consideration. Nor did she go away after that communication, but stayed another hour showing me one by one the books that she had brought to lend to me. She explained to me which I should read first and which after, she made me swear that before reading them I would make covers for them, she ordered me to give them all back at the end of the summer without a single dog-ear. My mother endured all this patiently. She sat attentively, even though her wandering eye g
ave her a dazed expression. She exploded only when the teacher, finally, took her leave, with a disdainful farewell and not even a caress for my sister, who had counted on it and would have been proud. She turned to me, overwhelmed by bitterness for the humiliation that it seemed to her she had suffered on my account. She said, “The signorina must go and rest on Ischia, the signorina is too exhausted. Go and make dinner, go on, or I’ll hit you.”

  Two days later, however, after taking my measurements and rapidly making me a bathing suit—I don’t know where she copied it from—she herself took me to the ferry. Along the street to the port, while she bought me the ticket, and then while she waited for me to get on, she besieged me with warnings. What frightened her most was the crossing. “Let’s hope the sea isn’t rough,” she said almost to herself, and swore that when I was a child she had taken me to Coroglio every day, so my catarrh would dry out, and that the sea was beautiful and I had learned to swim. But I didn’t remember Coroglio or the sea or learning to swim, and I told her. And her tone became resentful, as if to say that if I drowned it would not be her fault—that what she was supposed to do to avoid it she had done—but because of my own forgetfulness. Then she ordered me not to go far from the shore even when the sea was calm, and to stay home if it was rough or there was a red flag. “Especially,” she said, “if you have a full stomach or your period, you mustn’t even get your feet wet.” Before she left she asked an old sailor to keep an eye on me. When the ferry left the wharf I was terrified and at the same time happy. For the first time I was leaving home, I was going on a journey, a journey by sea. The large body of my mother—along with the neighborhood, and Lila’s troubles—grew distant, and vanished.