The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  109.

  Around Christmas vacation in 1966 I got a very bad flu. I telephoned a neighbor of my parents—finally even in the old neighborhood many people had a telephone—and told them I wasn’t coming home for the vacation. Then I sank into desolate days of fever and coughing, while the college emptied, became silent. I ate nothing, I even had trouble drinking. One morning when I had fallen into an exhausted half-sleep, I heard loud voices, in my dialect, as when in the neighborhood the women leaned out the windows, arguing. From the darkest depths of my mind came the known footsteps of my mother. She didn’t knock, she opened the door, she entered, loaded down with bags.

  It was unimaginable. She had hardly ever left the neighborhood, at most to go to the center of the city. Outside of Naples, as far as I knew, she had never been. And yet she had got on the train, had traveled all night, and had come to my room to heap on me Christmas food that she had prepared ahead of time, quarrelsome gossip in a loud voice, orders that were supposed, as if by magic, to bring me back to health and allow me to leave with her in the evening: because she had to go, at home she had other children and my father.

  She depleted me more than the fever. She shouted so much, moving objects, carelessly rearranging things, that I was afraid the dean would come. At one point I felt I was fainting, I closed my eyes, hoping she wouldn’t follow me into the nauseating darkness I was being dragged into. But she didn’t stop at anything. Always in motion through the room, helpful and aggressive, she told me about my father, my siblings, the neighbors, friends, and, naturally, about Carmen, Ada, Gigliola, Lila.

  I tried not to listen but she pursued me: Do you understand what she did, do you understand what happened? And she shook me, touching an arm or a foot buried under the covers. I discovered that, in the state of fragility caused by the illness, I was more sensitive to everything I couldn’t stand about her. I got angry—and I told her this—at how, with every word, she wanted to demonstrate that all my contemporaries, compared to me, had failed. “Stop it,” I muttered. She paid no attention, she kept repeating, You, on the other hand.

  But what wounded me most was to sense behind her pride as a mother the fear that things would suddenly change and I would again lose points, no longer give her occasion to boast. She did not much trust the stability of the world. So she force-fed me, dried the sweat, made me take my temperature I don’t know how many times. Was she afraid I would die, depriving her of my trophy existence? Was she afraid that, being ill, I would give in, be in some way demoted, have to return home without glory? She spoke obsessively about Lila. She was so insistent that I suddenly perceived how highly she had regarded her since she was a child. Even she, I thought, even my mother, realized that Lila is better than me and now she is surprised that I’ve left her behind, she believes and doesn’t believe it, she’s afraid of losing her position as luckiest mother in the neighborhood. Look how combative she is, look at the arrogance in her eyes. I felt the energy she gave off, and I thought that her lameness had required her to have greater strength than normal, in order to survive, imposing on her the ferocity with which she moved inside and outside the family. What, on the other hand, was my father? A weak little man, trained to be obliging, to hold out his hand discreetly to pocket small tips: certainly he would never have managed to overcome all the obstacles and arrive at this austere building. She had done it.

  When she left and the silence returned, on the one hand I felt relieved, on the other, because of the fever, I was moved. I thought of her alone, asking every passerby if this was the right direction for the train station, her, walking, with her lame leg, in an unknown city. She would never spend the money for a bus, she was careful not to waste even five lire. But she would make it: she would buy the right ticket and take the right trains, traveling overnight on the uncomfortable seats, or even standing, all the way to Naples. There, after another long walk, she would arrive in the neighborhood, and start polishing and cooking, she would cut up the eel, and prepare the insalata di rinforzo, and the chicken broth, and the struffoli, without resting for a moment, filled with rage, but consoling herself by saying, in some part of her brain, “Lenuccia is better than Gigliola, than Carmen, than Ada, than Lina, than all of them.”

  110.

  It was because of Gigliola, according to my mother, that Lila’s situation had become even more intolerable. Everything began on a Sunday in April when the daughter of Spagnuolo the pastry maker invited Ada to the parish cinema. The following evening, after the stores closed, she again went to her and said, “What are you doing all alone? Come watch television at my parents’ house and bring along Melina.” One thing led to another, and she ended up dragging her along on evening outings with Michele Solara, her boyfriend. Five of them often went to the pizzeria: Gigliola, her younger brother, Michele, Ada, Antonio. The pizzeria was in the center, at Santa Lucia. Michele drove, Gigliola sat beside him, all dressed up, and in the back seat were Lello, Antonio, and Ada.

  Antonio didn’t like spending his free time with his boss, and at first he tried to tell Ada that he was busy. But when Gigliola reported that Michele was angry that he didn’t show up, he sank his head between his shoulders and obeyed. The conversation was almost always between the two girls; Michele and Antonio didn’t exchange a word, in fact Solara often left the table and went to talk to the owner of the pizzeria, with whom he had various dealings. Gigliola’s brother ate pizza and was quietly bored.

  The girls’ preferred subject was the love between Ada and Stefano. They talked about the presents he had given her and was gaving her, of the wonderful trip to Stockholm in August the year before (how many lies Ada had had to tell poor Pasquale), how in the grocery he treated her better than if she had been the owner. Ada softened, she talked and talked. Gigliola listened and every so often said things like “The Church, if you want, can annul a marriage.”

  Ada interrupted, scowling, “I know, but it’s difficult.”

  “Difficult, not impossible. You have to go to the Sacra Rota.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but the Sacra Rota can wipe out everything.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I read it.”

  Ada was very happy about that unexpected friendship. She had been living her story in silence, among many fears and much remorse. Now she discovered that talking about it did her good, proved she was right, erased her guilt. The only thing that spoiled her relief was her brother’s hostility, and in fact when they got home all they did was quarrel. Once Antonio nearly hit her, he shouted at her, “Why the fuck do you tell your business to everybody? Do you realize you look like a whore and I’m the pimp?”

  She said in the most antagonistic tone she was capable of: “You know why Michele Solara comes to dinner with us?”

  “Because he’s my boss.”

  “Oh yes, sure.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because I’m with Stefano, who’s important. If I waited for you, the daughter of Melina I would be and the daughter of Melina I would remain.”

  Antonio lost control, he said: “You’re not with Stefano, you’re Stefano’s whore.”

  Ada burst into tears. “It’s not true, Stefano loves only me.”

  One night things got even worse. They were at home, dinner was over. Ada was doing the dishes, Antonio was staring into space, their mother was humming an old song while she swept the floor too energetically. At some point Melina accidentally swept the broom over her daughter’s feet. It was terrible. There was at the time a superstition—I don’t know if it still exists—that if you sweep the broom over the feet of an unmarried girl she’ll never get married. Ada saw her future in a flash. She leaped back as if she had been touched by a cockroach and the plate she was holding fell to the floor.

  “You swept over my feet,” she shrieked, leaving her mother astonished.

  “She didn’t do it on purpose,” Anton
io said.

  “She did do it on purpose. You don’t want me to get married, it’s too useful for you to have me work for you, you want to keep me here my whole life.”

  Melina tried to embrace her daughter, saying no no, but Ada repulsed her rudely, so that she retreated, bumped into a chair, and fell on the floor amid the fragments of the broken plate.

  Antonio rushed to help his mother, but Melina now was screaming in fear, fear of her son, of her daughter, of the things around her. And Ada screamed louder in return, saying, “I’ll show you who I’m going to marry, and soon, because if Lina doesn’t get out of the way by herself, I’ll get her out, and off the face of the earth.”

  Antonio left the house, slamming the door. More desperate than usual, in the following days he tried to escape from that new tragedy in his life, he made an effort to be deaf and dumb, he avoided going past the old grocery, and if by chance he ran into Stefano Carracci he looked in another direction before the wish to beat him up overpowered him. His mind was troubled, he couldn’t understand what was right and what wasn’t. Had it been right not to hand Lila over to Michele? Had it been right to tell Enzo to take her home? If Lila hadn’t returned to her husband, would his sister’s situation be different? Everything happens by chance, he reasoned, without good and without ill. But at that point his brain got stuck and on the first occasion, as if to free himself from bad dreams, he went back to quarreling with Ada. He shouted at her, “He is a married man, bitch: he has a small child, you are worse than our mother, you don’t have any sense of things.” Ada then went to Gigliola, confided to her: “My brother is crazy, my brother wants to kill me.”

  So it was that one afternoon Michele called Antonio and sent him to do a long-term job in Germany. He didn’t object, in fact he obeyed willingly, he left without saying goodbye to his sister or even to Melina. He took it for granted that in a foreign country, among people who spoke like the Nazis at the church cinema, he would be stabbed, or shot, and he was content. He considered it more tolerable to be murdered than to continue to observe the suffering of his mother and Ada without being able to do anything.

  The only person he wanted to see before setting off on the train was Enzo. He found him busy: at the time he was trying to sell everything, the mule, the cart, his mother’s little shop, a garden near the railroad. He wanted to give part of the proceeds to a maiden aunt who had offered to take care of his siblings.

  “And you?” Antonio asked.

  “I’m looking for a job.”

  “You want to change your life?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a good thing.”

  “It’s a necessity.”

  “I, on the other hand, am what I am.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “It’s true, but it’s all right. Now I have to leave and I don’t know when I’ll be back. Every so often, please, could you cast an eye on my mother, my sister, and the children?”

  “If I stay in the neighborhood, yes.”

  “We were wrong, Enzù, we shouldn’t have taken Lina home.”

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s all a mess, you never know what to do.”

  “Yes.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  They didn’t even shake hands. Antonio went to Piazza Garibaldi and got the train. He had a long, difficult journey, night and day, with many angry voices running through his veins. He felt extremely tired after just a few hours, his feet were tingling; he hadn’t traveled since he returned from military service. Every so often he got out to get a drink of water from a fountain, but he was afraid the train would leave. Later he told me that at the station in Florence he felt so depressed that he thought: I’ll stop here and go to Lenuccia.

  111.

  With the departure of Antonio the bond between Gigliola and Ada became very tight. Gigliola suggested to her what the daughter of Melina had had in mind for some time, that is, that she shouldn’t wait any longer, the matrimonial situation of Stefano should be resolved. “Lina has to get out of that house,” she said, “and you have to go in: if you wait too long, the enchantment will be broken and you’ll lose everything, even the job in the grocery, because she’ll regain ground and force Stefano to get rid of you.” Gigliola went so far as to confide to her that she was speaking from experience, she had the same problem with Michele. “If I wait for him to make up his mind to marry me,” she whispered, “I’ll get old; so I’m tormenting him: either we marry by the spring of 1968 or I’m leaving and fuck him.”

  Thus Ada went on to envelop Stefano in a net of true, sticky desire that made him feel special, and meanwhile she murmured between kisses, “You have to decide, Ste’, either me or her; I’m not saying you have to throw her out in the street with the child, that’s your son, you have responsibilities; but do what lots of actors and important people do today: give her some money and that’s it. Everybody in the neighborhood knows that I’m your real wife, so I want to stay with you, always.”

  Stefano said yes and hugged her tight in the uncomfortable narrow bed on the Rettifilo, but then he didn’t do much, except return home to Lila and yell, because there were no clean socks, or because he had seen her talking to Pasquale or someone else.

  At that point Ada began to despair. One Sunday morning she ran into Carmen, who spoke to her in accusatory tones of the working conditions in the two groceries. One thing led to another, they began to talk venomously about Lila, whom both of them, for different reasons, considered the origin of their troubles. Finally Ada couldn’t resist and recounted her romantic situation, forgetting that Carmen was the sister of her former fiancé. And Carmen, who couldn’t wait to be part of the network of gossip, listened willingly, often interrupted to fan the flames, tried with her advice to do as much damage to Ada, who had betrayed Pasquale, and to Lila, who had betrayed her. But, I should say, apart from the resentments, there was the pleasure of having something to do with a person, her childhood friend, who found herself in the role of lover of a married man. And although since childhood we girls of the neighborhood had wanted to become wives, growing up we had almost always sympathized with the lovers, who seemed to us more spirited, more combative, and, especially, more modern. On the other hand we hoped that the legitimate wife would get gravely ill and die (in general she was a very wicked or at least unfaithful woman), and that the lover would stop being a lover and crown her dream of love by becoming a wife. We were, in short, on the side of the violation, but only because it reaffirmed the value of the rule. As a result Carmen, although amid much devious advice, ended up by passionately taking Ada’s side, her feelings were genuine, and one day she said to her, in all honesty: “You can’t go on like this, you have to get rid of that bitch, marry Stefano, give him your own children. Ask the Solaras if they know anyone in the Sacra Rota.”

  Ada immediately added Carmen’s suggestions to Gigliola’s and one night, in the pizzeria, she turned directly to Michele: “Can you get to this Sacra Rota?”

  He answered ironically, “I don’t know, I can ask, one always finds a friend. But just take what’s yours, that’s the most urgent thing. And don’t worry about anything: if someone gives you trouble, send him to me.”

  Michele’s words were very important, Ada felt supported, never in her life had she felt so surrounded by approval. Yet Gigliola’s hammering, Carmen’s advice, that unexpected promise of protection on the part of an important male authority, and even her anger at the fact that in August Stefano wouldn’t take a trip abroad as he had the year before but had only gone to the Sea Garden a few times, were not enough to push her to attack. It took a true, concrete new fact: the discovery that she was pregnant.

  The pregnancy made Ada furiously happy, but she kept the news to herself, she didn’t speak of it even to Stefano. One afternoon she took off her smock, left the grocery as if to go out for some fresh air, and instead went to Lila’s hous
e.

  “Did something happen?” Signora Carracci asked in bewilderment as she opened the door.

  Ada answered, “Nothing has happened that you don’t already know.”

  She came in and told her everything, in the presence of the child. She began calmly, she talked about actors and also cyclists, she called herself a kind of “white lady”—like the lover of the famous cyclist Fausto Coppi—but more modern, and she mentioned the Sacra Rota to demonstrate that even the Church and God in certain cases where love is very strong would dissolve a marriage. Since Lila listened without interrupting, something that Ada would never have expected—rather, she hoped that she would say just half a word, so that she could beat her bloody—she got nervous and began to walk around the apartment, first to demonstrate that she had been in the house often and knew it well, and, second, to reproach her: “Look at this mess, dirty dishes, the dust, socks and underwear on the floor, it’s not possible that that poor man has to live like this.” Finally, in an uncontrollable frenzy, she began to pick the dirty clothes up off the bedroom floor, shrieking, “Starting tomorrow I’m coming here to tidy up. You don’t even know how to make the bed, look here, Stefano can’t bear the sheet to be folded like this, he told me he’s explained it to you a thousand times and you pay no attention.”