“And he?”
“He yes.”
“Is he in love with her?”
“Very much.”
“And you, from the outside, do you think that everything’s fine between them?”
“With Lina things are never fine.”
“Meaning?”
“They had problems from the first day of their marriage, but it was because of Lina, who couldn’t adjust.”
“And now?”
“Now it’s going better.”
“I don’t believe it.”
He went around and around that point with growing skepticism. But I insisted: Lila never had loved her husband as in that period. And the more incredulous he appeared the more I piled it on. I told him plainly that between them nothing could happen, I didn’t want him to delude himself. This, however, was of no use in exhausting the subject. It became increasingly clear that the more I talked to him in detail about Lila the more pleasant for him that day between sea and sky would be. It didn’t matter to him that every word of mine made him suffer. It mattered that I should tell him everything I knew, the good and the bad, that I should fill our minutes and our hours with her name. I did, and if at first this pained me, slowly it changed. I felt, that day, that to speak of Lila with Nino could in the weeks to come give a new character to the relationship between the three of us. Neither she nor I would ever have him. But both of us, for the entire time of the vacation, could gain his attention, she as the object of a passion with no future, I as the wise counselor who kept under control both his folly and hers. I consoled myself with that hypothesis of centrality. Lila had come to me to tell me about Nino’s kiss. He, starting out from the confession of that kiss, talked to me for an entire day. I would become necessary to both.
In fact Nino already couldn’t do without me.
“You think she’ll never be able to love me?” he asked at one point.
“She made a decision, Nino.”
“What?”
“To love her husband, to have a child with him. She’s here just for that.”
“And my love for her?”
“When one is loved one tends to love in return. It’s likely that she’ll feel gratified. But if you don’t want to suffer more, don’t expect anything else. The more Lina is surrounded by affection and admiration, the crueler she can become. She’s always been like that.”
We parted at sunset and for a while I had the impression of having had a good day. But as soon as I was on the road home the anguish returned. How could I even think of enduring that torture, talking about Lila with Nino, about Nino with Lila, and, from tomorrow, witnessing their flirtations, their games, the clasps, the touching? I reached the house determined to announce that my mother wanted me back home. But as soon as I came in Lila assailed me harshly.
“Where have you been? We came to look for you. We need you, you’ve got to help us.”
I discovered that they had not had a good day. It was Pinuccia’s fault, she had tormented everyone. In the end she had cried that if her husband didn’t want her at home it meant that he didn’t love her and so she preferred to die with the child. At that point Rino had given in and taken her back to Naples.
58.
I understood only the next day what Pinuccia’s departure meant. That evening her absence struck me as positive: no more whining, the house quieted down, time slithered away silently. When I withdrew into my little room and Lila followed me, the conversation was apparently without tension. I held my tongue, careful to say nothing of what I truly felt.
“Do you understand why she wanted to leave?” Lila asked me, speaking of Pinuccia.
“Because she wants to be with her husband.”
She shook her head no, she said seriously, “She was becoming afraid of her own emotions.”
“Which means?”
“She fell in love with Bruno.”
I was amazed, I had never thought of that possibility.
“Pinuccia?”
“Yes.”
“And Bruno?”
“He had no idea.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Bruno’s interested in you.”
“Nonsense.”
“Nino told me yesterday.”
“He didn’t say anything to me today.”
“What did you do?”
“We rented a boat.”
“You and he alone?”
“Yes.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Everything.”
“Even about the thing I told you about?”
“What thing?”
“You know.”
“The kiss?”
“Yes.”
“No, he didn’t tell me anything.”
Although I was dazed by the hours of sun and swimming, I managed not to say the wrong thing. When Lila went to bed I felt that I was floating on the sheet and that the dark little room was full of blue and reddish lights. Pinuccia had left in a hurry because she was in love with Bruno? Bruno wanted not her but me? I thought back to the relationship between Pinuccia and Bruno, I listened again to remarks, tones of voice, I saw again gestures, and I was sure that Lila was right. I suddenly felt great sympathy for Stefano’s sister, for the strength she had shown in forcing herself to leave. But that Bruno was interested in me I wasn’t convinced. He had never even looked at me. Beyond the fact that, if he had had the intention that Lila said, he would have come to the appointment and not Nino. Or at least they would have come together. And anyway, true or not, I didn’t like him: too short, too curly-haired, no forehead, wolflike teeth. No and no. Stay in the middle, I thought. That’s what I’ll do.
The next day we arrived at the beach at ten and discovered that the boys were already there, walking back and forth along the shore. Lila explained Pinuccia’s absence in a few words: she had to work, she had left with her husband. Neither Nino nor Bruno showed the least regret and this disturbed me. How could someone vanish like that, without leaving a void? Pinuccia had been with us for two weeks. We had all five walked together, we had talked, joked, gone swimming. In those fifteen days something had certainly happened that had marked her, she would never forget that first vacation. But we? We, who in different ways had meant a lot to her, in fact didn’t feel her absence. Nino, for example, made no comment on that sudden departure. And Bruno confined himself to saying, gravely, “Too bad, we didn’t even say goodbye.” A minute later we were already speaking of other things, as if she had never come to Ischia, to Citara.
Nor did I like a sort of rapid readjustment of roles. Nino, who had always talked to me and Lila together (in fact very often to me alone), immediately began talking only to her, as if it were no longer necessary, now that we were four, to take on the burden of entertaining both of us. Bruno, who until the preceding Saturday had been occupied with Pinuccia and nothing else, now focused on me, in the same timid and solicitous way, as if nothing distinguished us from each other, not even the fact that she was married and pregnant and I was not.
For the first walk that we took along the shore, we left as four, side by side. But soon Bruno spotted a shell turned up by a wave, said, “How pretty,” and bent down to pick it up. Out of politeness I stopped to wait for him, and he gave me the shell, which was nothing special. Meanwhile Nino and Lila continued to walk, which transformed us into two couples taking a walk on the water’s edge, the two of them ahead, the two of us behind, they talking animatedly, I trying to make conversation with Bruno while Bruno struggled to talk to me. I tried to hurry, he held me back, against my will. It was difficult to establish a real connection. His conversation was banal, I don’t know, about the sea, the sky, the seagulls, but it was evident that he was playing a role, the one that he thought was right for me. With Pinuccia he
must have talked about other things, otherwise it was hard to know how they had enjoyed spending so much time together. Besides, even if he had touched on more interesting subjects, it would have been hard to know what he was saying. If he was asking the time or for a cigarette or a drink of water, he had a direct tone of voice, clear pronunciation. But when he started with that role of the devoted young man (the shell, do you like it, look how pretty it is, I’ll give it to you), he got tangled up, he spoke neither in Italian nor in dialect, but in an awkward language that came to him in an undertone, mumbled, as if he were ashamed of what he was saying. I nodded my head yes but I didn’t understand much, and meanwhile I strained my ears to catch what Nino and Lila were saying.
I imagined that he was talking about the serious subjects he was studying, or that she was showing off the ideas she got from the books she had taken from me, and I often tried to catch up to join in their conversations. But every time I managed to get close enough to pick up some phrase, I was disoriented. He seemed to be telling her about his childhood in the neighborhood, using intense, even dramatic tones; she listened without interrupting. I felt intrusive, retreated, resolved to stay behind to be bored by Bruno.
Even when we all decided to go swimming, I wasn’t in time to restore the old trio. Bruno without warning pushed me into the water, I went under, got my hair wet when I didn’t want to get my hair wet. When I re-emerged, Nino and Lila were floating a few meters farther out and were continuing to talk, seriously. They stayed in the water much longer than we did, but without going too far from the shore. They must have been so involved in what they were talking about that they gave up even the luxury of the long swim.
In the late afternoon Nino spoke to me for the first time. He asked roughly, as if he himself expected a negative answer: “Why don’t we meet after dinner? We’ll come and get you and take you home.”
They had never asked us to go out in the evening. I gave Lila a questioning glance, but she looked away. I said, “Lila’s mamma is at home, we can’t leave her alone all the time.”
Nino didn’t answer nor did his friend intervene to help him out. But after the last swim, before parting, Lila said, “We’re going to Forio tomorrow night to telephone my husband. We could get an ice cream together.”
That remark of hers irritated me, but I was even more irritated by what happened next. As soon as the two boys had set off for Forio, and she was gathering up her things, she began to reproach me, as if I bore the blame for the entire day, hour by hour, micro-event upon micro-event, including that request of Nino’s, and the clear contradiction between my answer and hers, in some indecipherable yet indisputable way.
“Why were you always with Bruno?”
“I?”
“Yes, you. Don’t ever dare to leave me alone with that guy again.”
“What are you talking about? It was you two who rushed ahead without stopping to wait for us.”
“We? It was Nino who was rushing.”
“You could have said that you had to wait for me.”
“And you could have said to Bruno: Get going, otherwise we’ll lose them. Do me a favor: since you like him so much, go out on your own business at night. Then you’re free to say and do what you like.”
“I’m here for you, not for Bruno.”
“It doesn’t look as though you’re here for me, you’re always doing what you please.”
“If you don’t want me here anymore I’ll leave tomorrow morning.”
“Yes? And tomorrow night I have to go and get ice cream with those two by myself?”
“Lila, it was you who said you wanted to get ice cream with them.”
“Of necessity, I have to telephone Stefano, and what an impression we’d make if we meet them in Forio?”
We continued in this vein even at the house, after dinner, in Nunzia’s presence. It wasn’t a real quarrel, but an ambiguous exchange with spikes of malice in which we both tried to communicate something without understanding each other. Nunzia, who was listening in bewilderment, at a certain point said, “Tomorrow we’ll have dinner and then I’ll come, too, to get ice cream.”
“It’s a long way,” I said. But Lila interrupted abruptly: “We don’t have to walk. We’ll take a mini cab, we’re rich.”
59.
The next day, to adjust to the boys’ new schedule, we arrived at the beach at nine instead of ten, but they weren’t there. Lila became anxious. We waited, they didn’t appear at ten or later. Finally, in the early afternoon, they showed up, with a lighthearted conspiratorial air. They said that since they were going to spend the evening with us, they had decided to do their studying early. Lila’s reaction stunned me in particular: she sent them away. Slipping into a violent dialect, she hissed that they could go and study when they liked, afternoon, evening, night, no one was holding them back. And since Nino and Bruno made an effort not to take her seriously and continued to smile as if those words had been just a witty remark, she put on her sundress, impetuously grabbed her bag, and set off toward the road with long strides. Nino ran after her but returned soon afterward with a grim face. Nothing to do, she was really enraged and wouldn’t listen to reason.
“It will pass,” I said, pretending to be calm, and I went swimming with them. I dried in the sun eating a sandwich, I chattered weakly, then I announced that I, too, had to go home.
“And tonight?” Bruno asked.
“Lina has to call Stefano, we’ll be there.”
But the outburst had upset me greatly. What did that tone, that behavior mean? What right had she to get angry at an appointment not kept? Why couldn’t she control herself and treat the two young men as if they were Pasquale or Antonio or even the Solaras? Why did she behave like a capricious girl and not like Signora Carracci?
I got to the house out of breath. Nunzia was washing towels and bathing suits, Lila was in her room, sitting on the bed and, something that was also unusual, she was writing. The notebook was resting on her knees, her eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed, one of my books lying on the sheets. How long it was since I had seen her write.
“You overdid it,” I said.
She shrugged. She didn’t raise her eyes from the notebook, she continued to write all afternoon.
At night she decked herself out the way she did when her husband was arriving, and we drove to Forio. I was surprised that Nunzia, who never went out in the sun and was very white, had borrowed her daughter’s lipstick to give a little color to her lips and her cheeks. She wanted to avoid—she said—seeming dead already.
We immediately ran into the two boys, who were standing in front of the bar like sentries beside a sentry box. Bruno was still in shorts, he had only changed his shirt. Nino was wearing long pants, a shirt of a dazzling white, and his unruly hair so forcibly tamed that he seemed less handsome to me. When they noticed Nunzia’s presence, they stiffened. We sat under a canopy, at the entrance to the bar, and ordered spumoni. Nunzia, marveling at it, started talking and wouldn’t stop. She spoke only to the boys. She praised Nino’s mother, recalling how pretty she was; she told several stories of wartime, neighborhood events, and asked Nino if he remembered; when he said no, she replied, with absolute certainty, “Ask your mother, you’ll see that she remembers.” Lila soon gave signs of impatience, announced that it was time to telephone Stefano, and went into the bar, where the phone booths were. Nino grew silent and Bruno readily replaced him in the conversation with Nunzia. I noted, with annoyance, that he wasn’t awkward the way he was when he talked to me alone.
“Excuse me a moment,” Nino said suddenly. He got up, went into the bar.
Nunzia became agitated. She whispered in my ear, “He’s not going to pay is he? I’m the oldest, so it’s up to me.”
Bruno heard her and said that it was already paid for, he was hardly going to let a lady pay. Nunzia resigned herself, went on to inquire about his father’s sausage f
actory, bragged about her husband and son, who also had a factory—they had a shoe factory.
Lila didn’t return. I was worried. I left Nunzia and Bruno chatting, and I, too, went into the bar. When had a telephone call to Stefano ever lasted so long? The two telephone booths were empty. I looked around me, but, standing still like that, I just bothered the owner’s sons, who were waiting on the tables. I glimpsed a door left ajar to let in the air, opening onto a courtyard. I went out hesitantly, an odor of old tires mingled with the smell of the chicken coop. The courtyard was empty, but I noticed that on one side of the boundary wall there was an opening and, beyond it, a garden. I crossed the space, cluttered with rusty scrap iron, and before I entered the garden I saw Lila and Nino. The brightness of the summer night licked the plants. They were holding each other tight, they were kissing. He had one hand under her skirt, she was trying to push it away, but she went on kissing him.
I retreated quickly, trying not to make any noise. I went back to the bar, I told Nunzia that Lila was still on the telephone.
“Are they quarreling?”
“No.”
I felt as if I were burning up, but the flames were cold and I felt no pain. She is married, I said to myself, she’s been married scarcely more than a year.
Lila returned without Nino. She was impeccable, and yet I felt the disorder, in her clothes, in her body.
We waited a while, he didn’t show up, I realized that I hated them both. Lila got up, said, “Let’s go, it’s late.” When we were already in the cab that would take us back to the house, Nino arrived, running, and said goodbye cheerfully. “See you tomorrow,” he cried, friendly as I had never seen him. I thought: the fact that Lila is married isn’t an obstacle for him or for her, and that observation seemed to me so odiously true that it turned my stomach, and I brought a hand to my mouth.
Lila went to bed right away, I waited in vain for her to come and confess what she had done and what she proposed to do. Today, I believe that she didn’t know herself.
The Neapolitan Novels Page 55