The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  “It’s true.”

  “Then stay home, I’d be glad to have you at home.”

  “I don’t want to stay home, either.”

  He was close to losing his calm, the only way he knew to expel anxiety.

  “If you don’t want to stay home, either, am I allowed to know what the fuck you want?”

  Lila answered, “I want to go.”

  “Go where?”

  “I don’t want to stay with you anymore, I want to leave you.”

  The only thing Stefano could do was start laughing. Those words seemed to him so enormous that for a few minutes he seemed relieved. He pinched her cheek, he said with his usual half smile that they were husband and wife and that husband and wife don’t leave each other, he promised that the following Sunday he would take her to the Amalfi Coast, so they could relax a little. But she answered calmly that there was no reason to stay together, that she had been wrong from the start, that even when they were engaged she had liked him only a little, that she now knew clearly that she had never loved him and that to be supported by him, to help him make money, to sleep with him were things that she could no longer tolerate. It was at the end of that speech that she received a blow that knocked her off her chair. She got up while Stefano moved to grab her, she ran to the sink, seized the knife that she had put under the dishtowel. She turned to him just when he was about to hit her again.

  “Do it and I’ll kill you the way they killed your father,” she said.

  Stefano stopped, stunned by that reference to the fate of his father. He muttered things like “All right, kill me, do what you want.” And he made a gesture of boredom and yawned, an uncontrollable yawn, his mouth wide open, that left his eyes bright and shining. He turned his back on her and, still muttering resentfully—“Go on, go, I’ve given you everything, I’ve yielded in every way, and you repay me like this, me, who raised you out of poverty, who made your brother rich, your father, and your whole shitty family”—went to the table and ate another pastry.

  Then he left the kitchen, retreated to the bedroom, and from there he cried suddenly, “You can’t even imagine how much I love you.”

  Lila placed the knife on the sink, she thought: he doesn’t believe that I’m leaving him; he wouldn’t even believe that I have someone else, he can’t. Yet she got up her courage and went to the bedroom to confess to him about Nino, to tell him she was pregnant. But her husband was sleeping, he had fallen asleep as if wrapped in a magic cape. So she put on her coat, took the suitcase, and left the apartment.

  89.

  Stefano slept all day. When he woke up and realized that his wife wasn’t there he pretended not to notice. He had behaved like that since he was a boy, when his father terrorized him by his mere presence and he, in reaction, had trained himself to that half smile, to slow, tranquil gestures, to a controlled distance from the world around him, to keep at bay both fear and the desire to tear open his chest with his bare hands and, pulling it apart, rip out the heart.

  In the evening he went out and did something rash: he went to Ada’s windows, and though he knew she was supposed to be at the movies or somewhere with Pasquale, he called her, kept calling her. Ada looked out, both happy and alarmed. She had stayed home because Melina was raving more than usual and Antonio, ever since he had gone to work for the Solaras, was always out, he didn’t have a schedule. Her fiancé was there keeping her company. Stefano went up just the same, and, without ever mentioning Lila, spent the evening at the Cappuccio house talking politics with Pasquale and about matters connected to the grocery with Ada. When he got home he pretended that Lila had gone to her parents’ and before he went to bed he shaved carefully. He slept heavily all night.

  The trouble began the next day. The assistant at Piazza dei Martiri told Michele that Lila hadn’t shown up. Michele telephoned Stefano and Stefano told him that his wife was sick. The illness lasted for days, so Nunzia stopped by to see if her daughter needed her. No one opened the door, she went back in the evening, Stefano had just returned from work and was sitting in front of the television, which was at high volume. He swore, he went to open the door, invited her in. As soon as Nunzia said, “How is Lina?” he answered that she had left him, then he burst into tears.

  Both families hurried over: Stefano’s mother, Alfonso, Pinuccia with the baby, Rino, Fernando. For one reason or another they were all frightened, but only Maria and Nunzia were openly worried about Lila’s fate and wondered where she had gone. The others quarreled for reasons that had little to do with her. Rino and Fernando, who were angry at Stefano because he had done nothing to prevent the closing of the shoe factory, accused him of having never understood Lila and said he had been very wrong to send her to the Solaras’ shop. Pinuccia got angry and yelled at her husband and her father-in-law that Lila had always been a hothead, that she wasn’t Stefano’s victim, Stefano was hers. When Alfonso ventured that they should turn to the police, ask at the hospitals, feelings flared up even more, they all criticized him as if he had insulted them: Rino in particular cried that the last thing they needed was to become the laughingstock of the neighborhood. It was Maria who said softly, “Maybe she’s gone to stay with Lenù for a while.” That hypothesis caught on. They continued to quarrel, but they all pretended, except Alfonso, to believe that Lila, because of Stefano, and the Solaras, had decided to go to Pisa. “Yes,” Nunzia said, calming down, “she always does that, as soon as she has a problem she goes to Lenù.” At that point, they all started to get angry about that reckless journey, all by herself, on the train, far away, without telling anyone. And yet that Lila was with me seemed so plausible and at the same time so reassuring that it immediately became a fact. Only Alfonso said, “I’ll leave tomorrow and go see,” but he was immediately checked by Pinuccia, “Where are you going when you have to work,” and by Fernando, who muttered, “Leave her alone, let her calm down.”

  The next day that was the version that Stefano gave to anyone who asked about Lila: “She went to Pisa to see Lenù, she wants to rest.” But that afternoon Nunzia was gripped again by anxiety, she went to see Alfonso and asked if he had my address. He didn’t have it, no one did, only my mother. So Nunzia sent Alfonso to her, but my mother, out of her natural hostility toward everyone or to safeguard my studies from distraction, gave him an incomplete version (it’s likely that she herself had it that way: writing was hard for my mother, and we both knew that she would never use that address). In any case Nunzia and Alfonso together wrote me a letter in which they asked in a very roundabout way if Lila was with me. They addressed it to the University of Pisa, nothing else, only my name and surname, and its arrival was much delayed. I read it, I became even angrier with Lila and Nino, I didn’t answer.

  Meanwhile, the day after Lila’s so-called departure, Ada, in addition to working in the old grocery store, in addition to attending to her entire family and the needs of her fiancé, also began to tidy up Stefano’s house and to cook for him, which put Pasquale in a bad mood. They quarreled, he said to her, “You’re not paid to be a servant,” and she answered, “Better to be a servant than waste time arguing with you.” On the other hand, to keep the Solaras happy Alfonso was quickly sent to Piazza dei Martiri, where he felt at his ease: he left early in the morning dressed as if he were going to a wedding and returned at night very pleased: he liked spending the day in the center. As for Michele, who with the disappearance of Signora Carracci had become intractable, he called Antonio and said to him: “Find her for me.”

  Antonio muttered, “Naples is big, Michè, and so is Pisa, and even Italy. Where do I begin?”

  Michele answered, “With Sarratore’s oldest son.” Then he gave him the look he reserved for people he considered worth less than nothing and said, “Don’t you dare tell anyone about this search or I’ll put you in the insane asylum at Aversa and you’ll never get out. Everything you know, everything you see, you will tell me alone. Is that clear?”r />
  Antonio nodded yes.

  90.

  That people, even more than things, lost their boundaries and overflowed into shapelessness is what most frightened Lila in the course of her life. The loss of those boundaries in her brother, whom she loved more than anyone in her family, had frightened her, and the disintegration of Stefano in the passage from fiancé to husband terrified her. I learned only from her notebooks how much her wedding night had scarred her and how she feared the potential distortion of her husband’s body, his disfigurement by the internal impulses of desire and rage or, on the contrary, of subtle plans, base acts. Especially at night she was afraid of waking up and finding him formless in the bed, transformed into excrescences that burst out because of too much fluid, the flesh melted and dripping, and with it everything around, the furniture, the entire apartment and she herself, his wife, broken, sucked into that stream polluted by living matter.

  When she closed the door behind her and, as if she were inside a white cloud of steam that made her invisible, took the metro to Campi Flegrei, Lila had the impression that she had left a soft space, inhabited by forms without definition, and was finally heading toward a structure that was capable of containing her fully, all of her, without her cracking or the figures around her cracking. She reached her destination along desolate streets. She dragged the suitcase to the third floor of a working-class apartment building, and into a shoddy, dark two-room apartment furnished with old, cheap furniture, a bathroom where there was only a toilet and sink. She had done it all herself, Nino had to prepare for his exams and he was also working on a new article for Il Mattino and on transforming the other into an essay that had been rejected by Cronache Meridionali, but that a journal called Nord e Sud said it was eager to publish. She had seen the apartment, had rented it, had given three payments in advance. Now, as soon as she entered, she felt enormously cheerful. She discovered with surprise the pleasure of having abandoned those she thought would have to be part of her forever. Pleasure, yes, she wrote just that. She didn’t feel in the least the loss of the new neighborhood’s comforts, she didn’t smell the odor of mold, didn’t see the stain of dampness in a corner of the bedroom, didn’t notice the gray light that struggled to enter through the window, wasn’t depressed by a place that immediately foretold a return to the poverty of her childhood. Instead, she felt as if she had magically disappeared from a place where she suffered, and had reappeared in a place that promised happiness. She was again fascinated, I think, by erasing herself: enough with everything she had been; enough with the stradone, shoes, groceries, husband, Solaras, Piazza dei Martiri; enough even with me, bride, wife, gone elsewhere, lost. All that remained of her self was the lover of Nino, who arrived that evening.

  He was visibly overcome by emotion. He embraced her, kissed her, looked around disoriented. He barred doors and windows as if he feared sudden incursions. They made love, in a bed for the first time after the night in Forio. Then he got up, he started studying, he complained often about the weak light. She also got out of bed and helped him review. They went to sleep at three in the morning, after revising together the new article for Il Mattino, and they slept in an embrace. Lila felt safe, although it was raining outside, the windows shook, the house was alien to her. How new Nino’s body was, long, thin, so different from Stefano’s. How exciting his smell was. It seemed to her that she had come from a world of shadows and had arrived in a place where finally life was real. In the morning, as soon as she put her feet on the floor, she had to run to the toilet to throw up. She closed the door so that Nino wouldn’t hear.

  91.

  They lived together for twenty-three days. The relief at having left everything increased from moment to moment. She didn’t miss any of the comforts she had enjoyed after her marriage, and separation from her parents, her younger siblings, Rino, her nephew didn’t sadden her. She never worried that the money would run out. The only thing that seemed to matter was that she woke up with Nino and fell asleep with him, that she was beside him when he studied or wrote, that they had lively discussions in which the jumble of thoughts in her head poured out. At night they went to a movie together, or chose a book presentation, or a political debate, and often they stayed out late, returning home on foot, clinging to one another to protect themselves from the cold or the rain, squabbling, joking.

  Once they went to hear a writer named Pasolini, who also made films. Everything that had to do with him caused an uproar and Nino didn’t like him, he twisted his mouth, said, “He’s a fairy, all he does is make a lot of noise,” so he had resisted, he would have preferred to stay home and study. But Lila was curious and she dragged him there. The talk was held in the same club where I had gone once, in obedience to Professor Galiani. Lila was enthusiastic when she came out, she pushed Nino toward the writer, she wanted to talk to him. But Nino was nervous and did his best to get her away, especially when he realized that on the sidewalk across the street there were youths shouting insults. “Let’s go,” he said, worried, “I don’t like him and I don’t like the fascists, either.” But Lila had grown up amid violence, she had no intention of sneaking off; he tried to pull her toward an alley and she wriggled free, she laughed, she responded to the insults with insults. She gave in abruptly when, just as a real fight was starting, she recognized Antonio. His eyes and his teeth shone as if they were made of metal, but unlike the others he wasn’t shouting. He seemed too busy hitting people to be aware of her, but the thing ruined the evening for her anyway. On the way home she felt some tension with Nino: they didn’t agree about what Pasolini had said, they seemed to have gone to different places to hear different people. But it wasn’t only that. That night he regretted the long exciting period of the furtive meetings in the shop on Piazza dei Martiri and at the same time perceived that something about Lila disturbed him. She noticed his distraction, his irritation, and to avoid further tension did not say that among the attackers she had seen a friend of hers from the neighborhood, Melina’s son.

  From then on Nino seemed less and less inclined to take her out. First he said that he had to study, and it was true, then he let slip that on various public occasions she had been excessive.

  “In what sense?”

  “You exaggerate.”

  “Meaning?”

  He made a resentful list: “You make comments out loud; if someone tells you to be quiet you start arguing; you bother the speakers with your own monologues. It’s not done.”

  Lila had known that it wasn’t done, but she had believed that now, with him, everything was possible, bridging gaps with a leap, speaking face to face with people who counted. Hadn’t she been able to talk to influential types, in the Solaras’ shop? Hadn’t it been thanks to one of the customers that he had published his first article in Il Mattino? And so? “You’re too timid,” she said. “You still don’t understand that you’re better than they are and you’ll do much more important things.” Then she kissed him.

  But the following evenings Nino, with one excuse or another, began to go out alone. And if he stayed home instead and studied, he complained of how much noise there was in the building. Or he grumbled because he had to go and ask his father for money, and Donato would torment him with questions like: Where are you sleeping, what are you doing, where are you living, are you studying? Or, in the face of Lila’s ability to make connections between very different things, instead of being excited as usual he shook his head, became irritable.

  After a while he was in such a bad mood, and so behind with his exams, that in order to keep studying he stopped going to bed with her. Lila said, “It’s late, let’s go to sleep,” he answered with a distracted, “You go, I’ll come later.” He looked at the outline of her body under the covers and desired its warmth but was also afraid of it. I haven’t yet graduated, he thought, I don’t have a job; if I don’t want to throw my life away I have to apply myself; instead I’m here with this person who is married, who is pregnant,
who vomits every morning, who prevents me from being disciplined. When he found out that Il Mattino wouldn’t publish the article he was really upset. Lila consoled him, told him to send it to other newspapers. But then she added, “Tomorrow I’ll call.”

  She wanted to call the editor she had met in the Solaras’ shop and find out what was wrong. He stammered, “You won’t telephone anyone.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that shit was never interested in me but in you.”

  “It’s not true.”

  “It’s very true, I’m not a fool, you just make problems for me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I shouldn’t have listened to you.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You confused my ideas. Because you’re like a drop of water, ting ting ting. Until it’s done your way, you won’t stop.”

  “You thought of the article and wrote it.”

  “Exactly. And so why did you make me redo it four times?”

  “You wanted to rewrite it.”

  “Lina, let’s be very clear: choose something of your own that you like, go back to selling shoes, go back to selling salami, but don’t desire to be something you’re not by ruining me.”

  They had been living together for twenty-three days, a cloud in which the gods had hidden them so that they could enjoy each other without being disturbed. Those words wounded her deeply, she said, “Get out.”

  He quickly pulled his coat on over his sweater and slammed the door behind him.

  Lila sat on the bed and thought: he’ll be back in ten minutes, he left his books, his notes, his shaving cream and razor. Then she burst into tears: how could I have thought of living with him, of being able to help him? It’s my fault: to free my head, I even made him write something wrong.