I felt blocked. For a while I couldn’t work on my thesis, I looked at the pages of the books without seeing the lines of type. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, I interrogated myself on what to do. Give up right at the end, return to the neighborhood. Get my degree, teach in middle school. Professor. Yes. More than Oliviero. Equal to Galiani. Or maybe not, maybe a little less. Professor Greco. In the neighborhood I would be considered an important person, the daughter of the porter who since she was a child had known everything. I alone, who had been to Pisa, who had met important professors, and Pietro, Mariarosa, their father—I would have understood very clearly that I hadn’t gone very far. A great effort, many hopes, wonderful moments. I would miss the time with Franco Mari my whole life. How lovely the months, the years with him had been. At the moment I hadn’t understood their importance, and now here I was, growing sad. The rain, the cold, the snow, the scents of spring along the Arno and on the flowering streets of the city, the warmth we gave each other. Choosing a dress, glasses. His pleasure in changing me. And Paris, the exciting trip to a foreign country, the cafés, the politics, the literature, the revolution that would soon arrive, even though the working class was becoming integrated. And him. His room at night. His body. All finished. I tossed nervously in my bed, unable to sleep. I’m lying to myself, I thought. Had it really been so wonderful? I knew very well that at that time, too, there had been shame. And uneasiness, and humiliation, and disgust: accept, submit, force yourself. Is it possible that even happy moments of pleasure never stand up to a rigorous examination? Possible. The blackness of the Maronti quickly extended to Franco’s body and then to Pietro’s. I escaped from my memories.
At a certain point I began to see Pietro less frequently, with the excuse that I was behind and was in danger of not finishing my thesis in time. One morning I bought a graph-paper notebook and began to write, in the third person, about what had happened to me that night on the beach near Barano. Then, still in the third person, I wrote what had happened to me on Ischia. Then I wrote a little about Naples and the neighborhood. Then I changed names and places and situations. Then I imagined a dark force crouching in the life of the protagonist, an entity that had the capacity to weld the world around her, with the colors of the flame of a blowtorch: a blue-violet dome where everything went well for her, shooting sparks, but that soon came apart, breaking up into meaningless gray fragments. I spent twenty days writing this story, a period during which I saw no one, I went out only to eat. Finally I reread some pages, I didn’t like them, and I forgot about it. But I found that I was calmer, as if the shame had passed from me to the notebook. I went back into the world, I quickly finished my thesis, I saw Pietro again.
His kindness, his thoughtfulness moved me. When he graduated the whole family came, along with many Pisan friends of his parents. I was surprised to find that I no longer felt resentful of what awaited Pietro, of the plan of his life. In fact I was happy that he had such a good future and was grateful to the whole family, who invited me to the party afterward. Mariarosa in particular looked after me. We had a heated discussion of the fascist coup in Greece.
I graduated in the following session. I avoided telling my parents, I was afraid that my mother would feel it her duty to come and celebrate me. I presented myself to the professors in one of the dresses that Franco had given me, the one that still seemed acceptable. After such a long time, I really was pleased with myself. I wasn’t yet twenty-three and I had obtained a degree in literature with the highest grade. My father hadn’t gone beyond fifth grade in elementary school, my mother had stopped at second, none of my forebears, as far as I knew, had learned to read and write fluently. It had been an astonishing effort.
Besides some of my schoolmates, I found that Pietro had come to congratulate me. I remember that it was very hot. After the usual student rituals, I went to my room to freshen up and leave my thesis there. He was waiting for me downstairs, he wanted to take me to dinner. I looked at myself in the mirror, I had the impression that I was pretty. I took the notebook with the story I had written and put it in my purse.
It was the first time that Pietro had taken me to a restaurant. Franco had often done so, and had taught me everything about the arrangement of the silverware, the glasses.
He asked me, “Are we engaged?”
I smiled, I said, “I don’t know.”
He took a package out of his pocket, gave it to me. He murmured, “For this whole year I thought so. But if you have a different opinion consider it a graduation present.”
I unwrapped the package, and there was a green case. Inside was a ring with little diamonds.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
I tried it on, the size was right. I thought of the rings that Stefano had given Lila, much more elaborate than that. But it was the first jewel I had received, Franco had given me many gifts but never jewelry, the only jewelry I had was my mother’s silver bracelet.
“We’re engaged,” I said, and, leaning across the table, kissed him on the lips. He turned red, he said, “I have another present.”
He gave me an envelope, it was the proofs of his thesis-book. How fast, I thought, with affection and even some joy.
“I also have a little present for you.”
“What is it?”
“Something foolish, but I don’t know what else to give you that is truly mine.”
I took the notebook out, I gave it to him.
“It’s a novel,” I said, “a one of a kind: only copy, only attempt, only capitulation. I’ll never write another one.” I added, laughing, “There are even some rather racy parts.”
He seemed bewildered. He thanked me, he placed the notebook on the table. I was immediately sorry I had given it to him. I thought: he’s a serious student, he has great traditions behind him, he’s about to publish an essay on the Bacchic rites that will be the basis of a career; it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have embarrassed him with a little story that’s not even typewritten. And yet even then I didn’t feel uneasy, he was he, I was I. I told him that I had applied to enter teachers’ training college, I told him that I would return to Naples, I told him, laughing, that our engagement would have a difficult life, I in a city in the south, he in one in the north. But Pietro remained serious, he had everything clear in his mind, he laid out his plan: two years to establish himself at the university and then he would marry me. He even set the date: September, 1969. When we went out he forgot the notebook on the table. I pointed it out in amusement: “My gift?” He was confused, he ran back to get it.
We walked for a long time. We kissed, we embraced on the Lungarno, I asked him, half serious, half joking, if he wanted to sneak into my room. He shook his head, he went back to kissing me passionately. There were entire libraries separating him and Antonio, but they were similar.
116.
My return to Naples was like having a defective umbrella that suddenly closes over your head in a gust of wind. I arrived in the middle of summer. I would have liked to look for a job right away, but my condition as a graduate meant that it was unsuitable for me to go looking for little jobs like the ones I used to have. On the other hand I had no money, and it was humiliating to ask my father and mother, who had already sacrificed enough for me. I became nervous. Everything irritated me, the streets, the ugly façades of the houses, the stradone, the gardens, even though at first every stone, every smell had moved me. If Pietro finds someone else, I thought, if I don’t get in to the teachers’ college, what will I do? It’s not possible that I could remain forever a prisoner of this place and these people.
My parents, my siblings were very proud of me, but, I realized, they didn’t know why: what use was I, why had I returned, how could they demonstrate to the neighbors that I was the pride of the family? If you thought about it I only complicated their life, further crowding the small apartment, making more arduous the arrangement of beds at night, getting in the way of
a daily routine that by now didn’t allow for me. Besides, I always had my nose in a book, standing up, sitting in one corner or another, a useless monument to study, a self-important, serious person whom they all made it their duty not to disturb, but about whom they also wondered: What are her intentions?
My mother resisted for a while before questioning me about my fiancé, whose existence she had deduced more from the ring that I wore on my finger than from my confidences. She wanted to know what he did, how much he earned, when he would introduce himself at our house with his parents, where I would live when I was married. At first I gave her some information: he was a professor at the university, for now he earned nothing, he was publishing a book that was considered very important by the other professors, we would get married in a couple of years, his parents were from Genoa, probably I would go to live in that city or anyway wherever he established himself. But from her intent look, from the way she kept asking the same questions, I had the impression that, too much in the grip of her preconceptions, she wasn’t listening. I was engaged to someone who hadn’t come and wasn’t coming to ask for my hand, who lived very far away, who taught but wasn’t paid, who was publishing a book but wasn’t famous? She became upset as usual, even though she no longer got angry at me. She tried to contain her disapproval, maybe she didn’t even feel capable of communicating it to me. Language itself, in fact, had become a mark of alienation. I expressed myself in a way that was too complex for her, although I made an effort to speak in dialect, and when I realized that and simplified the sentences, the simplification made them unnatural and therefore confusing. Besides, the effort I had made to get rid of my Neapolitan accent hadn’t convinced the Pisans but was convincing to her, my father, my siblings, the whole neighborhood. On the street, in the stores, on the landing of our building, people treated me with a mixture of respect and mockery. Behind my back they began to call me the Pisan.
In that period I wrote long letters to Pietro, who answered with even longer ones. At first I expected that he would make at least some reference to my notebook, then I forgot about it myself. We said nothing concrete, I still have those letters: there is not a single useful detail for reconstructing the daily life of the time, what was the price of bread or a ticket to the movies, how much a porter or a professor earned. We focused, let’s say, on a book he had read, on an article of interest for our studies, on some reflection of his or mine, on unrest among certain university students, on the neo-avant-garde, which I didn’t know anything about but which he was surprisingly well acquainted with, and which amused him to the point of inspiring him to write: “I would like to make a book out of crumpled-up pieces of paper: you start a sentence, it doesn’t work, and you throw the page away. I’m collecting a few, I would have the pages printed just as they are, crumpled, so the random pattern of the creases is interwoven with the tentative, broken-off sentences. Maybe this is, in fact, the only literature possible today.” That last note struck me. I suspected, I remember, that that was his way of communicating to me that he had read my notebook and that that literary gift of mine seemed to him a product that had arrived too late.
In those weeks of enervating heat I felt as if the weariness of years had poisoned my body, and I had no energy. Here and there I picked up news of Maestra Oliviero’s state of health, I hoped that she was well, that I might see her and gain some strength from her satisfaction in my scholastic success. I knew that her sister had come to get her and had taken her back to Potenza. I felt very alone. I even missed Lila, and our turbulent meeting. I felt a desire to find her and measure the distance between us now. But I didn’t. I confined myself to an idle, petty investigation into what people in the neighborhood thought of her, into the rumors that were circulating.
In particular I looked for Antonio. He wasn’t there, it was said that he had remained in Germany, some claimed that he had married a beautiful German, a fat, blue-eyed platinum blonde, and that he was the father of twins.
So I talked to Alfonso. I went often to the shop on Piazza dei Martiri. He had grown really handsome, he looked like a refined Spanish nobleman, he spoke in a cultivated Italian, with pleasing inserts of dialect. The Solaras’ shop, thanks to him, was thriving. His salary was satisfactory, he had rented a house in Ponte di Tappia, and he didn’t miss the neighborhood, his siblings, the odor and grease of the grocery stores. “Next year I’ll get married,” he announced, without too much enthusiasm. The relationship with Marisa had lasted, had become stable, there was only the final step. I went out sometimes with them, they got along well; she had lost her old liveliness, her effusiveness, and now seemed above all careful not to say anything that might annoy him. I never asked her about her father, her mother, her brothers and sister. I didn’t even ask about Nino nor did she mention him, as if he were gone forever out of her life, too.
I also saw Pasquale and Carmen: he still worked on construction jobs around Naples and the provinces, she continued to work in the new grocery. But the thing they were eager to tell me was that both had new loves: Pasquale was secretly seeing the oldest, though very young, daughter of the owner of the notions shop; Carmen was engaged to the gas-station man on the stradone, a nice man of forty who loved her dearly.
I also went to see Pinuccia, who was almost unrecognizable: slovenly, nervous, extremely thin, resigned to her fate, she bore the marks of the beatings that Rino continued to give her, taking revenge on Stefano, and, in her eyes and in the deep creases around her mouth, even more obvious traces of an unhappiness with no outlet.
Finally I got up my courage and tracked down Ada. I imagined I’d find her more distressed than Pina, humiliated by her situation. Instead she lived in the house that had been Lina’s and was beautiful, and apparently serene; she had just given birth to a girl she had named Maria. Even during my pregnancy I didn’t stop working, she said proudly. And I saw with my own eyes that she was the real mistress of the two groceries, she hurried from one to the other, she took care of everything.
Each of my childhood friends told me something about Lila, but Ada seemed to be the best informed. And it was she who spoke of her with greater understanding, almost sympathy. Ada was happy, happy with her baby, her comforts, her work, Stefano, and it seemed to me that for all that happiness she was sincerely grateful to Lila.
She exclaimed, admiringly, “I did things like a madwoman, I realize it. But Lina and Enzo behaved in an even crazier way. They were so careless of everything, even of themselves, that they frightened me, Stefano, and even that piece of shit Michele Solara. You know that she took nothing with her? You know that she left me all her jewelry? You know that they wrote on a piece of paper where they were going, the precise address, number, everything, as if to say: come find us, do what you like, who gives a damn?”
I wanted the address, I took it down. While I was writing she said, “If you see her, tell her that I’m not the one keeping Stefano from seeing the child: he has too much to do and although he’s sorry, he can’t. Also tell her that the Solaras don’t forget anything, especially Michele. Tell her not to trust anyone.”
117.
Enzo and Lila moved to San Giovanni a Teduccio in a used Fiat 600 that he had just bought. During the whole journey they said nothing, but battled the silence by talking to the child, Lila as if she were addressing an adult, and Enzo with monosyllables like well, what, yes. She scarcely knew San Giovanni. She had gone there once with Stefano, they had stopped in the center for coffee and she had had a good impression. But Pasquale, who often came there for construction work and for political activities had once talked to her about it with great dissatisfaction, both as a worker and as a militant. “It’s a filthy place,” he had said, “a sewer: the more wealth it produces, the more poverty increases, and we can’t change anything, even if we’re strong.” But Pasquale was always critical of everything and so not very reliable. Lila, as the car traveled along bumpy streets, past crumbling buildings and big, newly constructed
apartment houses, preferred to tell herself that she was taking the child to a pretty little town near the sea and thought only of the speech that, to clarify things, out of honesty, she wanted to make to Enzo right away.
But because she was thinking about it she didn’t do it. Later, she said to herself. So they arrived at the apartment that Enzo had rented, on the third floor of a new building that was already shabby. The rooms were half-empty, he said he had bought what was indispensable but that starting the next day he would get everything she needed. Lila reassured him, he had already done too much. Only when she saw the double bed she decided that it was time to speak: she said in an affectionate tone: “I’ve had great respect for you, Enzo, since we were children. You’ve done a thing I admire: you studied by yourself, you got a diploma, and I know the determination it takes, I’ve never had it. You’re also the most generous person I know, no one would have done what you’re doing for Rinuccio and for me. But I can’t sleep with you. It’s not because we’ve seen each other alone at most two or three times. And it’s not that I don’t like you. It’s that I have no feelings, I’m like this wall or that table. So if you can live in the same house with me without touching me, good; if you can’t I understand and tomorrow morning I’ll look for another place. Know that I’ll always be grateful for what you’ve done for me.”
Enzo listened without interrupting. At the end he said, pointing to the bed: “You go there, I’ll settle on the cot.”
“I prefer the cot.”
“And Rinuccio?”
“I saw there’s another cot.”
“He sleeps by himself?”
“Yes.”
“You can stay as long as you like.”
“You’re sure?”
“Very sure.”
“I don’t want ugly things that could ruin our friendship.”
The Neapolitan Novels Page 74