The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  Lila herself told me, happily, about that act of love. She told me the day she took me to see the new house. What splendor: floors of polished majolica tile, the tub in which you could have a bubble bath, the inlaid furniture in the dining room and the bedroom, a refrigerator and even a telephone. I wrote down the number, with great excitement. We had been born and lived in small houses, without our own rooms, without a place to study. I still lived like that, soon she would not. We went out on the balcony that overlooked the railroad and Vesuvius, and I asked her warily:

  “Do you and Stefano come here by yourselves?”

  “Yes, sometimes.”

  “And what happens?”

  She looked at me as if she didn’t understand.

  “In what sense?”

  I was embarrassed.

  “Do you kiss?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “And then?”

  “That’s all, we’re not married yet.”

  I was confused. Was it possible? So much freedom and nothing? So much gossip in the neighborhood, the Solaras’ obscenities, and there had been only a few kisses?

  “But he doesn’t ask you?”

  “Why, does Antonio ask you?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, he doesn’t. He agrees that we should be married first.”

  But she seemed struck by my questions, much as I was struck by her answers. So she yielded nothing to Stefano, even if they went out in the car by themselves, even if they were about to get married, even if they already had a furnished house, a bed with a mattress, still in its packing. And I, who certainly would not get married, had long ago gone beyond kissing. When she asked me, genuinely curious, if I gave Antonio the things he asked for, I was ashamed to tell her the truth. I said no and she seemed content.

  52.

  I made the dates at the ponds less frequent, partly because school was about to start again. I was sure that Lila, because of my classes, my homework, would keep me out of the wedding preparations, she had got used to my disappearance during the school year. But it wasn’t to be. The conflicts with Pinuccia had intensified over the summer. It was no longer a matter of dresses or hats or scarves or jewelry. One day Pinuccia said to her brother, in Lila’s presence and unambiguously, that either his betrothed came to work in the grocery, if not immediately then at least after the honeymoon—to work as the whole family always had, as even Alfonso did whenever school allowed him to—or she would stop working. And this time her mother supported her outright.

  Lila didn’t blink, she said she would start immediately, even tomorrow, in whatever role the Carracci family wanted. That answer, as Lila’s answers always were, always had been, though intended to be conciliatory, had something arrogant, scornful, about it, which made Pinuccia even angrier. It became clear that the two women saw the shoemaker’s daughter as a witch who had come to be the mistress, to throw money out the window without lifting a finger to earn it, to subdue the master by her arts, making him act unjustly against his own flesh and blood, that is to say against his sister and even his mother.

  Stefano, as usual, did not respond immediately. He waited until his sister’s outburst was over, then, as if the problem of Lila and her placement in the small family business had never been raised, said calmly that it would be better if Pinuccia, rather than work in the grocery, would help his fiancée with the preparations for the wedding.

  “You don’t need me anymore?” she snapped.

  “No: starting tomorrow I have Ada, Melina’s daughter, coming to replace you.”

  “Did she suggest it?” cried his sister, pointing to Lila.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “Did you hear that, Ma? Did you hear what he said? He thinks he’s the absolute boss in here.”

  There was an unbearable silence, then Maria got up from the seat behind the cash register and said to her son, “Find someone for this place, too, because I’m tired and I don’t want to work anymore.”

  Stefano at that point yielded a little. “Calm down, I’m not the boss of anything, the business of the grocery doesn’t have to do with me alone but all of us. We have to make a decision. Pinù, do you need to work? No. Mammà, do you need to sit back there all day? No. Then let’s give work to those who need it. I’ll put Ada behind the counter and I’ll think about the cash register. Otherwise, who will take care of the wedding?”

  I don’t know for sure if Lila was behind the expulsion of Pinuccia and her mother from the daily running of the grocery, behind the hiring of Ada (certainly Ada was convinced of it and so, especially, was Antonio, who began referring to our friend as a good fairy). Of course, she wasn’t pleased that her sister-in-law and mother-in-law had a lot of free time to devote to her wedding. The two women complicated life, there were conflicts about every little thing: the guests, the decoration of the church, the photographer, the cake, the wedding favors, the rings, even the honeymoon, since Pinuccia and Maria considered it a poor thing to go to Sorrento, Positano, Ischia, and Capri. So all of a sudden I was drawn in, apparently to give Lila an opinion on this or that, in reality to support her in a difficult battle.

  I was starting my third year of high school, I had a lot of new, hard subjects. My usual stubborn diligence was already killing me, I studied relentlessly. But once, coming home from school, I ran into Lila and she said to me, point-blank, “Please, Lenù, tomorrow will you come and give me some advice?”

  I didn’t even know what she meant. I had been tested in chemistry and hadn’t done well, and was suffering.

  “Advice about what?”

  “Advice about my wedding dress. Please, don’t say no, because if you don’t come I’ll murder my sister-in-law and mother-in-law.”

  I went. I joined her, Pinuccia, and Maria uneasily. The shop was on the Rettifilo and I remember I had stuck some books in a bag, hoping to find some way of studying. It was impossible. From four in the afternoon to seven in the evening we looked at styles, we fingered fabrics, Lila tried on the wedding dresses displayed on the shop mannequins. Whatever she put on, her beauty enhanced the dress, the dress enhanced her beauty. Stiff organza, soft satin, airy tulle became her. A lace bodice, puff sleeves became her. A full skirt and a narrow skirt became her, a long train and a short one, a flowing veil and a short one, a crown of rhinestones, of pearls, of orange blossoms. And she, obediently, examined styles or tried on the models that were flattering on the mannequins. But occasionally, when she could no longer bear the fussiness of her future relatives, the old Lila rose up and, looking me straight in the eye, said, alarming mother-in-law, sister-in-law, “What if we chose a beautiful green satin, or a red organza, or a nice black tulle, or, better still, yellow?” It took my laughter to indicate that the bride was joking, to return to serious, rancorous consideration of fabrics and styles. The dressmaker merely kept repeating enthusiastically, “Please, whatever you choose, bring me the wedding pictures so that I can display them in the shop window, and say: I dressed that girl.”

  The problem, however, was choosing. Every time Lila preferred a style, a fabric, Pinuccia and Maria lined up in favor of another style, another fabric. I said nothing, stunned by all those discussions and by the smell of new fabric. Finally Lila asked me in vexation:

  “What do you think, Lenù?”

  There was silence. I suddenly perceived, with a certain astonishment, that the two women had been expecting that moment and feared it. I set in motion a technique I had learned at school, which consisted of this: whenever I didn’t know how to answer a question, I was lavish in setting out premises in the confident voice of someone who knows clearly where he wishes to end up. I said first—in Italian—that I liked very much the styles favored by Pinuccia and her mother. I launched not into praise but into arguments that demonstrated how suitable they were to Lila’s figure. At the moment when, as in class with the teachers, I felt I had the admiration,
the sympathy of mother and daughter, I chose one of the styles at random, truly at random, careful not to pick one of those that Lila favored, and went on to demonstrate that it incorporated the qualities of the styles favored by the two women, and the qualities of the ones favored by my friend. The dressmaker, Pinuccia, the mother were immediately in agreement with me. Lila merely looked at me with narrowed eyes. Then her gaze returned to normal and she said that she agreed, too.

  On the way out both Pinuccia and Maria were in a very good mood. They addressed Lila almost with affection and, commenting on the purchase, kept dragging me in with phrases like: as Lenuccia said, or, Lenuccia rightly said. Lila maneuvered so that we were a little behind them, in the evening crowd of the Rettifilo. She asked me:

  “You learn this in school?”

  “What?”

  “To use words to con people.”

  I felt wounded. I murmured, “You don’t like the style we chose?”

  “I like it immensely.”

  “So?”

  “So do me the favor of coming with us whenever I ask you.”

  I was angry. I said, “You want to use me to con them?”

  She understood that she had offended me, she squeezed my hand hard. “I didn’t intend to say something unkind. I meant only that you are good at making yourself liked. The difference between you and me, always, has been that people are afraid of me and not of you.”

  “Maybe because you’re mean,” I said, even angrier.

  “Maybe,” she said, and I saw that I had hurt her as she had hurt me. Then, repenting, I added immediately, to make up: “Antonio would get himself killed for you: he said to thank you for giving his sister a job.”

  “It’s Stefano who gave the job to Ada,” she replied. “I’m mean.”

  53.

  From then on, I was constantly called on to take part in the most disputed decisions, and sometimes—I discovered—not at Lila’s request but Pinuccia and her mother’s. I chose the favors. I chose the restaurant, in Via Orazio. I chose the photographer, persuading them to include a film in super 8. In every circumstance I realized that, while I was deeply interested in everything, as if each of those questions were practice for when my turn came to get married, Lila, at the stations of her wedding, paid little attention. I was surprised, but that was certainly the case. What truly engaged her was to make sure, once and for all, that in her future life as wife and mother, in her house, her sister-in-law and her mother-in-law would have no say. But it wasn’t the ordinary conflict between mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law. I had the impression, from the way she used me, from the way she handled Stefano, that she was struggling to find, from inside the cage in which she was enclosed, a way of being, all her own, that was still obscure to her.

  Naturally I wasted entire afternoons settling their affairs, I didn’t study much, and a couple of times ended up not even going to school. The result was that my report card for the first trimester was not especially brilliant. My new teacher of Latin and Greek, the greatly respected Galiani, had a high opinion of me, but in philosophy, chemistry, and mathematics I barely passed. Then one morning I got into serious trouble. Since the religion teacher was constantly delivering tirades against the Communists, against their atheism, I felt impelled to react, I don’t really know if by my affection for Pasquale, who had always said he was a Communist, or simply because I felt that all the bad things the priest said about Communists concerned me directly as the pet of the most prominent Communist, Professor Galiani. The fact remains that I, who had successfully completed a theological correspondence course, raised my hand and said that the human condition was so obviously exposed to the blind fury of chance that to trust in a God, a Jesus, the Holy Spirit—this last a completely superfluous entity, it was there only to make up a trinity, notoriously nobler than the mere binomial father-son—was the same thing as collecting trading cards while the city burns in the fires of hell. Alfonso had immediately realized that I was overdoing it and timidly tugged on my smock, but I paid no attention and went all the way, to that concluding comparison. For the first time I was sent out of the classroom and had a demerit on my class record.

  Once I was in the hall, I was disoriented at first—what had happened, why had I behaved so recklessly, where had I gotten the absolute conviction that the things I was saying were right and should be said?—and then I remembered that I had had those conversations with Lila, and saw that I had landed myself in trouble because, in spite of everything, I continued to assign her an authority that made me bold enough to challenge the religion teacher. Lila no longer opened a book, no longer went to school, was about to become the wife of a grocer, would probably end up at the cash register in place of Stefano’s mother, and I? I had drawn from her the energy to invent an image that defined religion as the collecting of trading cards while the city burns in the fires of hell? Was it not true, then, that school was my personal wealth, now far from her influence? I wept silently outside the classroom door.

  But things changed unexpectedly. Nino Sarratore appeared at the end of the hall. After the new encounter with his father, I had all the more reason to behave as if he didn’t exist, but seeing him in that situation revived me, I quickly dried my tears. He must have realized that something was wrong, and he came toward me. He was more grown-up: he had a prominent Adam’s apple, features hollowed out by a bluish beard, a firmer gaze. It was impossible to avoid him. I couldn’t go back into the class, I couldn’t go to the bathroom, either of which would have made my situation more complicated if the religion teacher looked out. So when he joined me and asked why I was outside, what had happened, I told him. He frowned and said, “I’ll be right back.” He disappeared and reappeared a few minutes later with Professor Galiani.

  Galiani was full of praise. “But now,” she said, as if she were giving me and Nino a lesson, “after the full attack, it’s time to mediate.” She knocked on the door of the classroom, closed it behind her, and five minutes later looked out happily. I could go back provided I apologized to the professor for the aggressive tone I had used. I apologized, wavering between anxiety about probable reprisals and pride in the support I had received from Nino and from Professor Galiani.

  I was careful not to say anything to my parents, but I told Antonio everything, and he proudly reported the incident to Pasquale, who ran into Lila one morning and, so overcome by his love for her that he could barely speak, seized on my adventure like a life vest, and told her about it. Thus I became, in the blink of an eye, the heroine both of my old friends and of the small but seasoned group of teachers and students who challenged the lectures of the teacher of religion. Meanwhile, aware that my apologies to the priest were not enough, I made an effort to regain credit with him and with his like-minded colleagues. I easily separated my words from myself: toward all the teachers who had become hostile to me I was respectful, helpful, cooperative, so that they went back to thinking of me as a person who came out with odd, but forgivable, assertions. I thus discovered that I was able to behave like Professor Galiani: present my opinions firmly and, at the same time, soften them, and regain respect, through my irreproachable behavior. Within a few days it seemed to me that I had returned, along with Nino Sarratore, who was in his fifth year and would graduate, to the top of the list of the most promising students in our shabby high school.

  It didn’t end there. A few weeks later, unexpectedly, Nino, with his shadowy look, asked me if I could quickly write half a page recounting the conflict with the priest.

  “To do what with?”

  He told me that he wrote for a little journal called Naples, Home of the Poor. He had described the incident to the editors and they had said that if I could write an account in time they would try to put it in the next issue. He showed me the journal. It was a pamphlet of fifty pages, of a dirty gray. In the contents he appeared, first name and last name, with an article entitled “The Numbers of Poverty
.” I thought of his father, and the satisfaction, the vanity with which he had read to me at the Maronti the article he’d published in Roma.

  “Do you also write poetry?” I asked.

  He denied it with such disgusted energy that I immediately promised: “All right, I’ll try.”

  I went home in great agitation. My head was already churning with the sentences I would write, and on the way I talked about it in great detail to Alfonso. He became anxious for me, he begged me not to write anything.

  “Will they sign it with your name?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lenù, the priest will get angry again and fail you: he’ll get chemistry and mathematics on his side.”

  He transmitted his anxiety to me and I lost confidence. But, as soon as we separated, the idea of being able to show the journal, with my little article, my name in print, to Lila, to my parents, to Maestra Oliviero, to Maestro Ferraro, got the upper hand. I would mend things later. It had been very energizing to win praise from those who seemed to me better (Professor Galiani, Nino) taking sides against those who seemed to me worse (the priest, the chemistry teacher, the mathematics teacher), and yet to behave toward the adversaries in such a way as not to lose their friendship and respect. I would make an effort to repeat this when the article was published.