The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  “Can I have this, too?” I asked without much enthusiasm.

  “You’re not in it.”

  “I’m here, from the back.”

  “All right, if you want it I’ll have it printed for you.”

  I abruptly changed my mind.

  “No, forget it.”

  “Really, go ahead.”

  “No.”

  But the acquisition that most impressed me was the projector. The movie of the wedding had finally been developed; the photographer came one night to show it to the newlyweds and their relatives. Lila found out how much the machine cost, she had one delivered to her house and invited me to watch the film. She put the projector on the dining-room table, took a painting of a stormy sea off the wall, expertly inserted the film, lowered the blinds, and the images began to flow over the white wall. It was a marvel: the movie was in color, just a few minutes long. I was astonished. Again I saw her enter the church on Fernando’s arm, come out into the church square with Stefano, their happy walk through the Parco delle Rimembranze, ending with a long kiss, the entrance into the restaurant, the dance that followed, the relatives eating or dancing, the cutting of the cake, the handing out of the favors, the goodbyes addressed to the lens, Stefano happy, she grim, both in their traveling clothes.

  The first time I saw it I was struck most of all by myself. I appeared twice. First in the church square, beside Antonio: I looked awkward, nervous, my face taken up by my glasses. The second time, I was sitting at the table with Nino, and was barely recognizable: I was laughing, hands and arms moved with casual elegance, I adjusted my hair, toyed with my mother’s bracelet—I seemed to myself refined and beautiful.

  Lila in fact exclaimed, “Look how well you came out.”

  “Not really,” I lied.

  “You look the way you do when you’re happy.”

  The second time we watched (I said to her, Play it again, she didn’t have to be asked twice), what struck me instead was the Solaras’ entrance into the restaurant. The cameraman had caught the moment that had registered most profoundly in me: the moment Nino left the room and Marcello and Michele burst in. The two brothers entered side by side, in their dress clothes; they were tall and muscular, thanks to the time they spent in the gym lifting weights; meanwhile Nino, slipping out, head lowered, just bumped Marcello’s arm, and as Marcello abruptly turned, with a mean, bullying look, he vanished, indifferent, without looking back.

  The contrast seemed violent. It wasn’t so much the poverty of Nino’s clothes, which clashed with the opulence of the Solaras’, with the gold they wore on their necks and their wrists and their fingers. It wasn’t even his extreme thinness, which was accentuated by his height—he was at least three inches taller than the brothers, who were tall, too—and which suggested a fragility opposed to the virile strength that Marcello and Michele displayed with smug satisfaction. Rather, it was the indifference. While the Solaras’ arrogance could be considered normal, the haughty carelessness with which Nino had bumped into Marcello and kept going was not at all normal. Even those who detested the Solaras, like Pasquale, Enzo, or Antonio, had, one way or another, to reckon with them. Nino, on the other hand, not only didn’t apologize but didn’t so much as glance at Marcello.

  The scene provided documentary proof of what I had intuited as I was experiencing it in reality. In that sequence Sarratore’s son—who had grown up in the run-down buildings of the old neighborhood just like us, and who had seemed so frightened when it came to defeating Alfonso in the school competitions—now appeared completely outside the scale of values at whose peak stood the Solaras. It was a hierarchy that visibly did not interest him, that perhaps he no longer understood.

  Looking at him, I was seduced. He seemed to me an ascetic prince who could intimidate Michele and Marcello merely by means of a gaze that didn’t see them. And for an instant I hoped that now, in the image, he would do what he had not done in reality: take me away.

  Lila noticed Nino only then, and said, curious, “Is that the same person you sat with at the table with Alfonso?”

  “Yes. Didn’t you recognize him? It’s Nino, the oldest son of Sarratore.”

  “He’s the one who kissed you when you were on Ischia?”

  “It was nothing.”

  “Just as well.”

  “Why just as well?”

  “He’s a person who thinks he’s somebody.”

  As if to excuse that impression I said, “This year he graduates and he’s the best in the whole school.”

  “You like him because of that?”

  “No.”

  “Forget him, Lenù, Antonio is better.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes. He’s skinny, ugly, and most of all really arrogant.”

  I heard the three adjectives like an insult and was on the point of saying: it’s not true, he’s handsome, his eyes sparkle, and I’m sorry you don’t realize it, because a boy like that doesn’t exist in the movies or on television or even in novels, and I’m happy that I’ve loved him since I was little, and even if he’s out of my reach, even if I’m going to marry Antonio and spend my life pumping gas, I will love him more than myself, I’ll love him forever.

  Instead, unhappy again, I said, “I used to like him, in elementary school: I don’t anymore.”

  12.

  The months that followed were packed with small events that tormented me a great deal, and even today I find it difficult to put them in order. Although I imposed on myself an appearance of self-assurance and an iron discipline, I gave in continuously, with painful pleasure, to waves of unhappiness. Everything seemed to be against me. At school I couldn’t get the grades I used to, even though I had begun to study again. The days passed without even a moment during which I felt alive. The road to school, the one to Lila’s house, the one to the ponds were colorless backdrops. Tense, discouraged, I ended up, almost without realizing it, blaming Antonio for a good part of my troubles.

  He, too, was very upset. He wanted to see me continuously, sometimes he left work and I found him waiting for me, self-conscious, on the sidewalk across from the school entrance. He was worried about the crazy behavior of his mother, Melina, and was frightened by the possibility that he wouldn’t be exempted from military service. He had submitted, in time, application after application to the recruiting office documenting the death of his father, the condition of his mother’s health, his role as the sole support of his family, and it seemed that the Army, overwhelmed by the papers, had decided to forget about him. But now he had learned that Enzo Scanno was to leave in the autumn and he was afraid that his turn would come, too. “I can’t leave my mother and Ada and the other children with no money and no protection,” he said in despair.

  One day he appeared at school out of breath: he had learned that the carabinieri had come to get information about him.

  “Ask Lina,” he said anxiously, “ask her if Stefano had an exemption because his mother is widowed or for some other reason.”

  I soothed him, tried to distract him. I organized an evening for him at the pizzeria with Pasquale and Enzo and their girlfriends, Ada and Carmela. I hoped that, seeing his friends, he would calm down, but it didn’t help. Enzo, as usual, showed not the least emotion about his departure, he was sorry only because, while he was in the Army, his father would have to go back to walking the streets with the cart, and his health wasn’t good. As for Pasquale, he revealed somewhat morosely that he had been rejected for military service because of an old tubercular infection. But he said that he regretted it, one ought to be a soldier, though not to serve the country. People like us, he muttered, have a duty to learn to use weapons, because soon the time will come when those who should pay will pay. From there we went on to discuss politics, or, to be exact, Pasquale did, and in a very intolerant way. He said that the Fascists wanted to return to power with the help of the Christian Democra
ts. He said that the police and the Army were on their side. He said that we had to be prepared, and he spoke in particular to Enzo, who nodded assent and, though he was generally silent, said, with a little laugh, don’t worry, when I get back I’ll show you how to shoot.

  Ada and Carmela appeared very impressed by that conversation, and pleased to be the girlfriends of such dangerous men. I would have liked to speak, but I knew little or nothing of alliances between Fascists, Christian Democrats, and police, in my head I had not even a thought. Every so often I looked at Antonio, hoping that he would get excited about the subject, but he didn’t, he just kept trying to go back to what was torturing him. He asked over and over what it was like in the Army, and Pasquale, even though he hadn’t been there, answered: a real shithole, if you don’t knuckle under they break you. Enzo was silent, as if the question didn’t concern him. Antonio, on the other hand, stopped eating, and, playing with the pizza on his plate, kept saying things like: They don’t know who they’re dealing with, let them just try, I’ll break them.

  When we were alone he said to me, all of a sudden, in a depressed tone of voice, “I know if I leave you won’t wait for me, you’ll go with someone else.”

  At that point I understood. The problem wasn’t Melina, wasn’t Ada, wasn’t his other brothers and sisters, who would be left without a means of support, and it wasn’t even the harassments of Army life. The problem was me. He didn’t want to leave me, even for a minute, and it seemed that no matter what I said or did to reassure him he wouldn’t believe me. I decided to take the offensive. I told him to follow the example of Enzo: He’s confident, I whispered, if he has to go he goes, he doesn’t whine, even if he’s just gotten engaged to Carmela. Whereas you’re complaining for no reason, yes, for no reason, Antò, especially since you won’t go, because if Stefano Carracci got an exemption as the son of a widowed mother, certainly you will, too.

  That slightly aggressive, slightly affectionate tone eased him. But before saying goodbye he repeated, in embarrassment, “Ask your friend.”

  “She’s your friend, too.”

  “Yes, but you ask.”

  The next day I talked to Lila about it, but she didn’t know anything about her husband’s military service; reluctantly she promised that she would find out.

  She didn’t do it immediately, as I’d hoped. There were constant tensions with Stefano and with Stefano’s family. Maria had told her son that his wife spent too much money. Pinuccia made trouble about the new grocery, she said that she wasn’t going to be involved, if anyone it should be her sister-in-law. Stefano silenced his mother and sister, but in the end he reproached his wife for her excessive spending, and tried to find out whether she might if necessary be willing to work in the new store.

  Lila in that period became, even in my eyes, particularly evasive. She said that she would spend less, she readily agreed to work in the grocery, but meanwhile she spent more than before and if previously she had stopped in at the new shop out of curiosity or duty she no longer did even that. Now that the bruises on her face were gone, she had an urgent desire to go out, especially in the morning, when I was at school.

  She would go for a walk with Pinuccia, and they vied to see who was better dressed, who could buy more useless things. Usually Pina won, mainly because, with a lot of coyly childish looks, she managed to get money from Rino, who felt obliged to prove that he was more generous than his brother-in-law.

  “I work all day,” said the fiancé to the fiancée. “Have fun for me, too.”

  And proudly casual, in front of the workers and his father, he pulled out of his pants pocket a crumpled fistful of money, offered it to Pina, and immediately afterward made a teasing gesture of giving some to his sister, too.

  His behavior irritated Lila, like a gust of wind that causes a door to slam and knocks objects off a shelf. But she also saw signs that the shoe factory was finally taking off, and all in all she was pleased that Cerullo shoes were now displayed in many shops in the city, the spring models were selling well, the reorders were increasing. As a result Stefano had taken over the basement under the factory and had transformed it into a warehouse and workshop, while Fernando and Rino had had to hire another assistant in a hurry and sometimes even worked at night.

  Naturally there were disputes. The shoe store that the Solaras had undertaken to open in Piazza dei Martiri had to be furnished at Stefano’s expense, and he, alarmed by the fact that no written contract had ever been drawn up, squabbled a lot with Marcello and Michele. But now it seemed that they were arriving at a private agreement that would set out in black and white the figure (slightly inflated) that Carracci intended to invest in the furnishings. And Rino was very satisfied with the result: while his brother-in-law put down the money, he acted like the boss, as if he had done it himself.

  “If things continue like this, next year we’ll get married,” he promised his fiancée, and one morning Pina decided to go to the same dressmaker who had made Lila’s dress, just to look.

  The dressmaker welcomed them cordially, then, since she was crazy about Lila, asked her to describe the wedding in detail, and insisted on having a large photograph of her in the wedding dress. Lila had one printed for her and she and Pina went to give it to her.

  As they were walking on the Rettifilo, Lila asked her sister-in-law how it happened that Stefano hadn’t done his military service: if the carabinieri had come to verify his status as the son of a widowed mother, if the exemption had been communicated by mail from the recruiting office or if he had had to find out in person.

  Pinuccia looked at her ironically.

  “Son of a widowed mother?”

  “Yes, Antonio says that if you’re in that situation they don’t make you go.”

  “I know that the only certain way not to go is to pay.”

  “Pay whom?”

  “The people in the recruiting office.”

  “Stefano paid?”

  “Yes, but you mustn’t tell anyone.”

  “And how much did he pay?”

  “I don’t know. The Solaras took care of everything.”

  Lila froze.

  “Meaning?”

  “You know, don’t you, that neither Marcello nor Michele served in the Army. They got out of it owing to thoracic insufficiency.”

  “Them? How is that possible?”

  “Contacts.”

  “And Stefano?”

  “He went to the same contacts as Marcello and Michele. You pay and the contacts do you a favor.”

  That afternoon my friend reported everything to me, but it was as if she didn’t grasp how bad the information was for Antonio. She was electrified—yes, electrified—by the discovery that the alliance between her husband and the Solaras did not originate in the obligations imposed by business but were of long standing, preceding even their engagement.

  “He deceived me from the start,” she repeated, with a kind of satisfaction, as if the story of military service were the definitive proof of Stefano’s true nature and now she felt somehow liberated. It took time before I was able to ask her, “Do you think that if the recruiting office doesn’t give Antonio an exemption the Solaras would do a favor for him, too?”

  She gave me her mean look, as if I had said something hostile, and cut me off: “Antonio would never go to the Solaras.”

  13.

  I did not report a single word of that conversation to my boyfriend. I avoided meeting him, I told him I had too much homework and a lot of class oral exams coming up.

  It wasn’t an excuse, school was really hell. The local authority harassed the principal, the principal harassed the teachers, the teachers harassed the students, the students tormented each other. A large number of us couldn’t stand the load of homework, but we were glad that there was class on alternate days. There was a minority, however, who were angry about the decrepit state of the school
building and the loss of class time, and who wanted an immediate return to the normal schedule. At the head of this faction was Nino Sarratore, and this was to further complicate my life.

  I saw him whispering in the hall with Professor Galiani; I passed by hoping that the professor would call me over. She didn’t. So then I hoped that he would speak to me, but he didn’t, either. I felt disgraced. I’m not able to get the grades I used to, I thought, and so in no time I’ve lost the little respect I had. On the other hand—I thought bitterly—what do I expect? If Nino or Professor Galiani asked my opinion on this business of the unused classrooms and too much homework, what would I say? I didn’t have opinions, in fact, and I realized it when Nino appeared one morning with a typewritten sheet of paper and asked abruptly, “Will you read it?”

  My heart was beating so hard that I said only, “Now?”

  “No, give it back to me after school.”

  I was overwhelmed by my emotions. I ran to the bathroom and read in great agitation. The page was full of figures and discussed things I knew nothing of: plan for the city, school construction, the Italian constitution, certain fundamental articles. I understood only what I already knew, which was that Nino was demanding an immediate return to the normal schedule of classes.

  In class I showed the paper to Alfonso.

  “Forget it,” he advised me, without even reading it. “We’re at the end of the year, we’ve got final examinations, that would get you in trouble.”

  But it was as if I had gone mad, my temples were pounding, my throat was tight. No one else, in the school, exposed himself the way Nino did, without fear of the teachers or the principal. Not only was he the best in every subject but he knew things that were not taught, that no student, even a good one, knew. And he had character. And he was handsome. I counted the hours, the minutes, the seconds. I was in a hurry to give him back his page, to praise it, to tell him that I agreed with everything, that I wanted to help him.