The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  “It’s late.”

  He was kind, but with an undertone of sadness. He murmured, “Stay a little longer.” He said that the next day he had to leave very early, to attend a family celebration. He announced that he would be gone until Monday and those days without me would be a torment. He took my hand delicately, said that he loved me and other things like that. I gently took my hand away, he didn’t try for any other contact. Instead, he spoke at length about his feelings for me, he who in general said little, and I had trouble interrupting him. When I did I said, “I really have to go,” then, in a louder voice, “Lila, please come, it’s quarter after ten.”

  Some minutes passed, the two reappeared. Nino and Bruno took us to a taxi, Bruno said goodbye as if he were going not to Naples for a few days but to America for the rest of his life. On the way home Lila, her tone pointed, as if she were delivering important news: “Nino told me that he has a lot of admiration for you.”

  “Not me,” I answered right away, in a rude voice. And then I whispered: “What if you get pregnant?”

  She said in my ear: “There’s no danger. We’re just kissing and holding.”

  “Oh.”

  “And anyway I don’t stay pregnant.”

  “It happened once.”

  “I told you, I don’t stay pregnant. He knows how to manage.”

  “He who?”

  “Nino. He would use a condom.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know, he called it that.”

  “You don’t know what it is and you trust it?”

  “It’s something that he puts over it.”

  “Over where?”

  I wanted to force her to name things. I wanted her to understand what she was saying. First she assured me that they were only kissing, then she spoke of him as someone who knew how not to get her pregnant. I was enraged, I expected that she would be ashamed. Instead she seemed pleased with everything that had happened to her and that would happen to her. So much so that when we got home she was nice to Nunzia, pointed out that we had returned early, got ready for bed. But she left her door open and when she saw me going to my room she called me, she said, “Stay here a minute, close the door.”

  I sat on the bed, but trying to make it clear that I was tired of her and everything.

  “What do you have to tell me?”

  She whispered, “I want to go and sleep at Nino’s.”

  I was astonished.

  “And Nunzia?”

  “Wait, don’t get mad. There’s not much time left, Lenù. Stefano will arrive on Saturday, he’ll stay for ten days, then we go back to Naples. And everything will be over.”

  “Everything what?”

  “This, these days, these evenings.”

  We discussed it for a long time, she seemed very lucid. She murmured that nothing like this would ever happen to her again. She whispered that she loved him, that she wanted him. She used that verb, amare, that we had found only in books and in the movies, that no one used in the neighborhood, I would say it at most to myself, we all preferred voler bene. She no, she loved. She loved Nino. But she knew very well that that love had to be suffocated, every occasion for it to breathe had to be removed. And she would do it, she would do it starting Saturday night. She had no doubts, she would be capable of it, and I had to trust her. But the very little time that remained she wished to devote to Nino.

  “I want to stay in a bed with him for a whole night and a whole day,” she said. “I want to sleep holding him and being held, and kiss him when I feel like it, caress him when I feel like it, even while he’s sleeping. Then that’s it.”

  “It’s impossible.”

  “You have to help me.”

  “How?”

  “You have to convince my mother that Nella has invited us to spend two days at Barano and that we’ll spend the night there.”

  I was silent for a moment. So she already had a project, she had a plan. Clearly she had worked it out with Nino, maybe he had even sent Bruno away on purpose. For how long had they been deciding the how, the where? No more speeches on neocapitalism, on neocolonialism, on Africa, on Latin America, on Beckett, on Bertrand Russell. Mere doodles. Nino no longer talked about anything. Their brilliant minds now were exercised only on how to deceive Nunzia and Stefano, using me.

  “You’re out of your mind,” I said, furiously, “even if your mother believes you your husband never will.”

  “You persuade her to send us to Barano and I’ll persuade her not to tell Stefano.”

  “No.”

  “Aren’t we friends anymore?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not Nino’s friend anymore?”

  “No.”

  But Lila knew how to draw me in. And I was unable to resist: on the one hand I said that’s enough, on the other I was depressed at the idea of not being part of her life, of the means by which she invented it for herself. What was that deception but another of her fantastic moves, which were always full of risks? The two of us together, allied with each other, in the struggle against all. We would devote the next day to overcoming Nunzia’s opposition. The day after that we would leave early, together. At Forio we would separate. She would go to Bruno’s house with Nino, I would take the boat for the Maronti. She would spend the whole day and the whole night with Nino, I would be at Nella’s and sleep in Barano. The next day I would return to Forio for lunch, we would see each other at Bruno’s, and together would return home. Perfect. The more her mind was ignited as, in minute detail, she planned how to make every part of the ruse add up, the more skillfully she ignited mine, too, and she hugged me, begged me. Here was a new adventure, together. Here was how we would take what life didn’t want to give us. Here. Or would I rather that she be deprived of that joy, that Nino should suffer, that both should lose the light of reason and end up not capably managing their desire but being dangerously overwhelmed by it? There was a moment, that night, when, by following her along the thread of her arguments, I came to think that to support her in this undertaking, besides being an important milestone for our long sisterhood, was also the way of manifesting my love—she said friendship, but I desperately thought: love, love love—for Nino. And it was at that point that I said:

  “All right, I’ll help you.”

  66.

  The next day I told Nunzia many lies that were so disgraceful I was ashamed. At the center of the lies I placed Maestra Oliviero, who was in Potenza, in goodness knows what terrible conditions, and it was my idea, not Lila’s. “Yesterday,” I said to Nunzia, “I met Nella Incardo, and she told me that her cousin, who is convalescing, has come to stay with her for a vacation at the seaside that will finally restore her health. Tomorrow night Nella’s having a party for the teacher and she invited me and Lila, who were her best students. We would really like to go, but it will be late and so impossible. But Nella has said that we can sleep at her house.”

  “In Barano?” Nunzia asked, frowning.

  “Yes, the party is there.”

  “You go, Lenù, Lila can’t, her husband will get mad.”

  Lila threw in, “Let’s not tell him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mamma, he’s in Naples and I’m here, he’ll never find out.”

  “One way or another things are always found out.”

  “Well, no.”

  “Yes, and that’s enough. Lina, I don’t want to discuss it further: if Lenuccia wants to go, fine, but you stay here.”

  We went on for a good hour, I making the point that the teacher was very sick and this might be our last chance to show her our gratitude, and Lila pressing her like this: “How many lies have you told Papa, admit it, and not for bad reasons but for good ones, to have a moment to yourself, to do a just thing that he would never allow.” Wavering, Nunzia first said that she had never tol
d the tiniest lie to Fernando; then she admitted that she had told one, two, many; finally she cried with rage and at the same time maternal pride, “What happened when I conceived you, an accident, a hiccup, a convulsion, the lights went out, a bulb blew, the basin of water fell off the night table? Certainly there must have been something, if you were born so intolerable, so different from the others.” And here she grew sad, she seemed to soften. But soon she was indignant again, she said you don’t tell lies to a husband just to see a schoolteacher. And Lila exclaimed, “To Maestra Oliviero I owe the little I know, the only school I had was with her.” And in the end Nunzia gave in. But she insisted on a precise timetable: Saturday at exactly two o’clock we were to be home again. Not a minute later. “If Stefano arrives early and doesn’t find you? Really, Lina, don’t put me in an ugly situation. Clear?”

  “Clear.”

  We went to the beach. Lila was radiant, she embraced me, she kissed me, she said that she would be grateful for her whole life. But I already felt guilty about that evocation of Maestra Oliviero, whom I had placed at the center of a party, in Barano, imagining her as she was when, full of energy, she taught us, and not as, instead, she must be now, worse than when she was taken away in the ambulance, worse than when I had seen her in the hospital. My satisfaction in having invented an effective lie vanished, I lost the frenzy of complicity, I became resentful again. I asked myself why I supported Lila, why I covered for her: in fact she wanted to betray her husband, she wanted to violate the sacred bond of marriage, she wanted to tear off her condition of wife, she wanted to do a thing that would provoke Stefano, if he should find out, to bash her head in. Suddenly I remembered what she had done to the wedding-dress photograph and I felt sick to my stomach. Now, I thought, she is behaving in the same way, and not with a photograph but with the very person of Signora Carracci. And in this case, too, she pulls me in to help her. Nino is a tool, yes, yes. Like the scissors, the paste, the paint, he is being used to disfigure her. Toward what terrible act is she driving me? And why do I let myself be driven?

  We found him waiting for us at the beach. He asked anxiously: “So?”

  She said, “Yes.”

  They ran off to swim without even inviting me, and, besides, I wouldn’t have gone. I felt chilled by anxiety, and then why swim, to stay near the shore alone, with my fear of the deep water?

  There was some wind, some strips of cloud, the sea was a little rough. They dived in without hesitation, Lila with a long cry of joy. They were happy, full of their own romance, they had the energy of those who successfully seize what they desire, no matter the cost. Moving with determined strokes, they were immediately lost amid the waves.

  I felt chained to an intolerable pact of friendship. How tortuous everything was. It was I who had dragged Lila to Ischia. I had used her to pursue Nino, hopelessly. I had relinquished the money from the bookstore on Via Mezzocannone for the money that she gave me. I had put myself in her service and now I was playing the role of the servant who comes to the aid of her mistress. I was covering for her adultery. I was preparing it. I was helping her take Nino, take him in my place, be fucked—yes, fucked—fucked by him for a whole day and a whole night, give him blow jobs. My temples began to throb, I kicked the sand with my heel once, twice, three times, it was a thrill to hear echoing in my head childhood words, overloaded with sex imagined in ignorance. High school disappeared, the wonderful sonority of the books disappeared, of the translations from Greek and Latin. I stared at the sparkling sea, and the long livid array of clouds that was moving from the horizon toward the blue sky, toward the white streak of condensation, and I could barely see them, Nino and Lila, black dots. I couldn’t tell if they were swimming toward the mass of clouds on the horizon or turning back. I wished that they would drown and that death would take from them the joys of the next day.

  67.

  I heard someone calling me, I turned suddenly.

  “So I had good eyesight,” said a teasing male voice.

  “I told you it was her,” said a female voice.

  I recognized them immediately, I sat up. It was Michele Solara and Gigliola, along with her brother, a boy of twelve called Lello.

  I welcomed them warmly, even though I never said: Sit down. I hoped that for some reason they were in a hurry, that they would leave right away, but Gigliola spread her towel, along with Michele’s, carefully on the sand, placed her purse on it, cigarettes, lighter, said to her brother: lie down on the hot sand, because the wind’s blowing, your bathing suit’s wet and you’ll catch cold. What to do. I made an effort not to look toward the sea, as if in that way it wouldn’t occur to them to look at it, and I paid happy attention to Michele, who started talking in his usual unemotional, careless tone. They had taken a holiday, it was too hot in Naples. Boat in the morning, boat in the evening, good air. Since Pinuccia and Alfonso were in the shop on Piazza dei Martiri, or, rather, no, Alfonso and Pinuccia, because Pinuccia didn’t do much, while Alfonso was great. It was on Pina’s recommendation that they had decided to come to Forio. You’ll find them, she had said, just walk along the beach. And in fact, they had walked and walked, Gigliola had shouted: Isn’t that Lenuccia? And here we are. I kept saying what a pleasure, and meanwhile Michele got up absent-mindedly, with his sandy feet on Gigliola’s towel, so she reproached him—“Pay a little attention”—but in vain. Now that he had finished the story of why they were on Ischia, I knew that the real question was about to arrive, I read it in his eyes even before he said it:

  “Where’s Lina?”

  “She’s swimming.”

  “In this sea?”

  “It’s not too rough.”

  It was inevitable, both he and Gigliola turned to look at the sea, with its curls of foam. But they did it distractedly, they were settling themselves on the towels. Michele argued with the boy, who wanted to go swimming again. “Stay here,” he said, “you want to drown?” He stuck a comic book in his hand, adding, to his girlfriend, “We’re never taking him again.”

  Gigliola complimented me profusely: “How well you look, all tanned, and your hair is even lighter.”

  I smiled, I was self-deprecating, but I was thinking only: I’ve got to find a way to get them out of here.

  “Come rest at the house,” I said. “Nunzia’s there, she’ll be very happy.”

  They refused, they had to catch the boat in a couple of hours, they preferred to have a little more sun and then they would head off on their walk.

  “So let’s go to the bath house, we’ll get something to eat there,” I said.

  “Yes, but let’s wait for Lina.”

  As always in tense situations, I undertook to blot out the time with words, and I started off with a flurry of questions, anything that came into my head: How was Spagnuolo the pastry maker, how was Marcello, if he’d found a girlfriend, what did Michele think of the shoe designs, and what did his father think and what did his mamma think of them, and what did his grandfather think. At one point I got up, I said, “I’ll call Lina,” and I went down to the water’s edge, I began to shout: “Lina, come back, Michele and Gigliola are here,” but it was useless, she didn’t hear me. I went back, and started talking again to distract them. I hoped that Lila and Nino, returning to shore, would become aware of the danger before Gigliola and Michele saw them and avoid any intimate attitude. But though Gigliola listened to me, Michele wasn’t even polite enough to pretend. He had come to Ischia purposely to see Lila and talk to her about the new shoes, I was sure of it, and he cast long glances at the sea, which was getting rougher.

  Finally he saw her. He saw her as she came out of the water, her hand entwined in Nino’s, a handsome couple who would not pass unobserved, both tall, both naturally elegant, shoulders touching, smiles exchanged. They were so entranced with themselves that they didn’t immediately realize I had company. When Lila recognized Michele and pulled her hand away, it was too late. Maybe Gig
liola didn’t notice, and her brother was reading the comic book, but Michele saw and turned to look at me as if to read on my face the verification of what he had just had before his eyes. He must have found it, in the form of fear. He said gravely, in the slow voice that he assumed when he had to deal with something that required speed and decisiveness: “Ten minutes, just the time to say hello, and we’ll go.”

  In fact they stayed more than an hour. Michele, when he heard Nino’s last name—introducing him I placed great emphasis on the fact that he was our schoolmate in elementary school as well as my classmate in high school—asked the most irritating question:

  “You’re the son of the guy who writes for Roma and for Napoli Notte?”