The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine like this. If by chance feeling returns to you, you know where I am.”

  118.

  Feeling did not return to her; rather, a sense of alienation increased. The heavy air of the rooms. The dirty clothes. The bathroom door that didn’t close properly. I imagine that San Giovanni seemed to her an abyss on the edge of our neighborhood. Although she had reached safety, she hadn’t been careful where she put her feet down, and had fallen into a deep hole.

  Rinuccio immediately worried her. The child, in general serene, began to have tantrums during the day, calling for Stefano, and to wake up crying at night. The attentions of his mother, her way of playing, calmed him, yes, but no longer fascinated him, in fact began to annoy him. Lila invented new games, his eyes lighted up, the child kissed her, he wanted to put his hands on her chest, he shrieked with joy. But then he pushed her away, he played by himself or napped on a blanket on the floor. And on the street he got tired after ten steps, he said his knee hurt, he demanded to be picked up, and if she refused he fell on the ground screaming.

  At first Lila resisted, then slowly she began to give in. Since at night he would quiet down only if she let him come into her bed, she let him sleep with her. When they went out to do the shopping she carried him, even though he was a well nourished, heavy child: on one side the bags, on the other him. She returned exhausted.

  She rediscovered what life without money was. No books, no journals or newspapers. Rinuccio grew before her eyes, and the things she had brought no longer fit him. She herself had very few clothes. But she pretended it was nothing. Enzo worked all day, he gave her the money she needed, but he didn’t earn much, and besides he had to give money to the relatives who were taking care of his siblings. So they barely managed to pay the rent, the electricity, and the gas. But Lila didn’t seem worried. The money she had had and had wasted were all one, in her imagination, with the poverty of childhood, it was without substance when it was there and when it wasn’t. She was much more worried about the possible undoing of the education she had given her son and she devoted herself to making him energetic, eager, receptive, as he had been until recently. But Rinuccio now seemed to be content only when she left him on the landing to play with the neighbor’s child. He fought, got dirty, laughed, ate junk, appeared happy. Lila observed him from the kitchen, from there she could see him and his friend framed by the door to the stairs. He’s smart, she thought, he’s smarter than the other child, who’s a little older: maybe I should accept that I can’t coddle him, that I’ve given him what’s necessary but from now on he’ll manage by himself, now he needs to hit, take things away from other children, get dirty.

  One day, Stefano appeared on the landing. He had left the grocery and decided to come and see his son. Rinuccio greeted him joyfully, Stefano played with him for a while. But Lila saw that her husband was bored, he couldn’t wait to leave. In the past it had seemed that he couldn’t live without her and the child; instead here he was, looking at his watch, yawning, almost certainly he had come because his mother or even Ada had sent him. As for love, jealousy, it had all passed, he wasn’t agitated anymore.

  “I’ll take the child for a walk.”

  “Watch out, he always wants to be picked up.”

  “I’ll carry him.”

  “No, make him walk.”

  “I’ll do as I like.”

  They went out, he returned half an hour later, he said he had to hurry back to the grocery. He swore that Rinuccio hadn’t complained, hadn’t asked to be picked up. Before he left he said, “I see that here you’re known as Signora Cerullo.”

  “That’s what I am.”

  “I didn’t kill you and I won’t kill you only because you’re the mother of my son. But you and that shit friend of yours are taking a big risk.”

  Lila laughed, she provoked him, saying, “You’re only tough with people who can’t crack your head open, you bastard.”

  Then she realized that her husband was alluding to Solara and she yelled at him from the landing, as he was going down the stairs: “Tell Michele that if he shows up here I’ll spit in his face.”

  Stefano didn’t answer, he disappeared into the street. He returned, I think, at most four or five more times. That last time he met his wife he yelled at her, furiously, “You are the shame of your family. Even your mother doesn’t want to see you anymore.”

  “It’s clear that they never understood what a life I had with you.”

  “I treated you like a queen.”

  “Better a beggar, then.”

  “If you have another child you’d better abort it, because you have my surname and I don’t want it to be my child.”

  “I’m not going to have any more children.”

  “Why? Have you decided not to screw anymore?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Anyway, I warned you.”

  “Rinuccio isn’t your son, and yet he has your surname.”

  “Whore, you keep saying it so it must be true. I don’t want to see you or him anymore.”

  He never really believed her. But he pretended, because it was convenient. He preferred a peaceful life that would vanquish the emotional chaos she caused him.

  119.

  Lila told Enzo in detail about her husband’s visits. He listened attentively and almost never made comments. He continued to be restrained in every expression of himself. He didn’t even tell her what sort of work he did in the factory and if it suited him or not. He went out at six in the morning and returned at seven in the evening. He ate dinner, he played a little with the boy, he listened to her conversation. As soon as Lila mentioned some urgent need of Rinuccio’s, the next day he brought the necessary money. He never told her to ask Stefano to contribute to the maintenance of his child, he didn’t tell her to find a job. He simply looked at her as if he lived only to get to those evening hours, to sit with her in the kitchen, listening to her talk. At a certain point he got up, said goodnight, and went into the bedroom.

  One afternoon Lila had an encounter that had significant consequences. She went out alone, having left Rinuccio with the neighbor. She heard an insistent horn behind her. It was a fancy car, someone was signaling to her from the window.

  “Lina.”

  She looked closely. She recognized the wolfish face of Bruno Soccavo, Nino’s friend.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I live here.”

  She said almost nothing about herself, since at that time such things were difficult to explain. She didn’t mention Nino, nor did he. She asked instead if he had graduated, he said he had decided to stop studying.

  “Are you married?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Engaged?”

  “One day yes, the next no.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Nothing, there are people who work for me.”

  It occurred to her to ask him, almost as a joke: “Would you give me a job?”

  “You? What do you need a job for?”

  “To work.”

  “You want to make salami and mortadella?”

  “Why not.”

  “And your husband?”

  “I don’t have a husband anymore. But I have a son.”

  Bruno looked at her attentively to see if she was joking. He seemed confused, evasive. “It’s not a nice job,” he said. Then he talked volubly about the problems of couples in general, about his mother, who was always fighting with his father, about a violent passion he himself had had recently for a married woman, but she had left him. Bruno was unusually talkative, he invited her to a café, continuing to tell her about himself. Finally, when Lila said she had to go, he asked, “Did you really leave your husband? You really have a child?”

  “Yes.”


  He frowned, wrote something on a napkin.

  “Go to this man, you’ll find him in the morning after eight. And show him this.”

  Lila smiled in embarrassment.

  “The napkin?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s enough?”

  He nodded yes, suddenly made shy by her teasing tone. He murmured, “That was a wonderful summer.”

  She said, “For me, too.”

  120.

  All this I found out later. I would have liked to use the address in San Giovanni that Ada had given me right away, but something crucial happened to me as well. One morning I was lazily reading a long letter from Pietro and at the end of the last page I found a few lines in which he told me that he had had his mother read my text (that’s what he called it). Adele had found it so good that she had typed it and had sent it to a publisher in Milan for whom she had done translations for years. They had liked it and wanted to publish it.

  It was a late autumn morning, I remember a gray light. I sat at the kitchen table, the same one on which my mother was ironing the clothes. The old iron slid over the material with energy, the wood vibrated under my elbows. I looked at those lines for a long time. I said softly, in Italian, only to convince myself that the thing was real: “Mamma, here it says that they are going to publish a novel I wrote.” My mother stopped, lifted the iron off the material, set it down upright.

  “You wrote a novel?” she asked in dialect.

  “I think so.”

  “Did you write it or not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will they pay you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I went out, ran to the Bar Solara, where you could make long-distance phone calls in some comfort. After several attempts—Gigliola called from the bar, “Go on, talk”—Pietro answered but he had to work and was in a hurry. He said that he didn’t know anything more about the business than he had written me.

  “Did you read it?” I asked, in agitation.

  “Yes.”

  “But you never said anything.”

  He stammered something about lack of time, studying, responsibilities.

  “How is it?”

  “Good.”

  “Good and that’s all?”

  “Good. Talk to my mother, I’m a philologist, not a literary person.”

  He gave me the number of his parents’ house.

  “I don’t want to telephone, I’m embarrassed.”

  I sensed some irritation, rare in him who was always so courteous. He said, “You’ve written a novel, you take responsibility for it.”

  I scarcely knew Adele Airota, I had seen her four times and we had exchanged only a few formal remarks. In all that time I had been sure she was a wealthy, cultivated wife and mother—the Airotas never said anything about themselves, they acted as if their activities in the world were of scant interest, yet took it for granted that these activities were known to everyone—and only now began to realize that she had a job, that she was able to exercise power. I telephoned anxiously, the maid answered, gave her the phone. I was greeted cordially, but she used the formal lei and I did, too. She said that at the publishing house they were all very excited about how good the book was and, as far as she knew, a draft of the contract had already been sent.

  “Contract?”

  “Of course. Have you dealt with other publishers?”

  “No. But I haven’t even reread what I wrote.”

  “You wrote only a single draft, all at once?” she asked, vaguely ironic.

  “Yes.”

  “I assure you that it’s ready for publication.”

  “I still need to work on it.”

  “Trust yourself: don’t touch a comma, there is sincerity, naturalness, and a mystery in the writing that only true books have.”

  She congratulated me again, although she accentuated the irony. She said that, as I knew, even the Aeneid wasn’t polished. She ascribed to me a long apprenticeship as a writer, asked if I had other things, appeared amazed when I confessed that it was the first thing I had written. “Talent and luck,” she exclaimed. She told me that there was an unexpected opening in the editorial list and my novel had been considered not only very good but lucky. They thought of bringing it out in the spring.

  “So soon?”

  “Are you opposed?”

  I quickly said no.

  Gigliola, who was behind the bar and had listened to the phone call, finally asked me, inquisitively, “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know,” I said and left.

  I wandered around the neighborhood overwhelmed by an incredulous joy, my temples pounding. My answer to Gigliola hadn’t been a hostile way of cutting her off, I really didn’t know. What was that unexpected announcement: a few lines from Pietro, long-distance words, nothing certainly true? And what was a contract, it meant money, it meant rights and duties, was I in danger of getting in some trouble? In a few days I’ll find out that they’ve changed their mind, I thought, the book won’t be published. They’ll reread the story, those who found it good will find it pointless, those who haven’t read it will be angry with those who were eager to publish it, they’ll all be angry with Adele Airota, and Adele Airota herself will change her mind, she’ll feel humiliated, she’ll blame me for disgracing her, she’ll persuade her son to leave me. I passed the building where the old neighborhood library was: how long it had been since I’d set foot in it. I went in, it was empty, it smelled of dust and boredom. I moved absentmindedly along the shelves, I touched tattered books without looking at title or author, just to feel them with my fingers. Old paper, curled cotton threads, letters of the alphabet, ink. Volumes, a dizzying word. I looked for Little Women, I found it. Was it possible that it was really about to happen? Possible that what Lila and I had planned to do together was happening to me? In a few months there would be printed paper sewn, pasted, all covered with my words, and on the cover the name, Elena Greco, me, breaking the long chain of illiterates, semi-literates, an obscure surname that would be charged with light for eternity. In a few years—three, five, ten, twenty—the book would end up on those shelves, in the library of the neighborhood where I was born, it would be catalogued, people would ask to borrow it to find out what the daughter of the porter had written. I heard the flush of the toilet, I waited for Maestro Ferraro to appear, just as when I was a diligent girl: the same fleshless face, perhaps more wrinkled, the crew-cut hair white but still thick over the low forehead. Here’s someone who could appreciate what was happening to me, who would more than justify my burning head, the fierce pounding in my temples. But from the bathroom a stranger emerged, a small rotund man of around forty.

  “Do you want to take out books?” he asked. “Do it quickly because I’m about to close.”

  “I was looking for Maestro Ferraro.”

  “Ferraro is retired.”

  Do it quickly, he was about to close.

  I left. Just now that I was becoming a writer, there was no one in the entire neighborhood capable of saying: What an extraordinary thing you’ve done.

  121.

  I didn’t imagine that I would earn money. But I received the draft of the contract and discovered that, surely thanks to Adele’s support, the publisher was giving me an advance of two hundred thousand lire, a hundred on signing and a hundred on delivery. My mother was speechless, she couldn’t believe it. My father said, “It takes months for me to earn that much money.” They both began to brag in the neighborhood and outside: our daughter has become rich, she’s a writer, she’s marrying a university professor. I flourished again, I stopped studying for the teachers’ college exam. As soon as the money arrived I bought a dress, some makeup, went for the first time in my life to the hairdresser, and left for Milan, a city unknown to me.

  At the station I had trouble orienting myself. Finally I f
ound the right metro, and arrived nervously at the door of the publishing house. I gave a thousand explanations to the porter, who hadn’t asked me anything, and who in fact, while I spoke, continued to read the newspaper. I went up in the elevator, I knocked, I went in. I was struck by how neat and tidy it was. My head was crowded with all that I had studied and I wanted to display it, to demonstrate that even if I was a woman, even if you could see my origins, I was a person who at twenty-three, had won the right to publish that book, and now, nothing nothing nothing about me could be called into question.

  I was greeted politely, led from office to office. I talked with the editor who was working on my manuscript, an old man, bald, with a very pleasant face. We talked for a couple of hours, he praised me, he cited Adele Airota often, with great respect, he showed me some revisions that he suggested, he left me a copy of the text and his notes. As he was saying goodbye he added, in a serious voice, “The story is good, a contemporary story very well expressed, the writing is always surprising; but that’s not the point. It’s the third time I’ve read the book and on every page there is something powerful whose origin I can’t figure out.” I turned red, thanked him. Ah, how much I had been able to do, and how rapid it all was, how well liked I was and how likable I had become, I could speak about my studies, where I had done them, about my thesis on the fourth book of the Aeneid: I replied with courteous precision to courteous observations, mimicking perfectly the tones of Professor Galiani, of her children, of Mariarosa. A pretty, amiable woman named Gina asked if I needed a hotel and, at my nod of assent, found me one on Via Garibaldi. To my great amazement I discovered that everything was charged to the publisher, everything that I spent on food, the train tickets. Gina told me to present a record of expenses, I would be reimbursed, and she asked me to say hello to Adele for her. “She called me,” she said. “She’s very fond of you.”

  The next day I left for Pisa, I wanted to embrace Pietro. On the train I considered one by one the editor’s notes and, satisfied, I saw my book with the eyes of one who praised it and was working to make it even better. I arrived very pleased with myself. My fiancé found me a place to sleep at the house of an old assistant professor of Greek literature whom I also knew. In the evening he took me to dinner and to my surprise showed me my manuscript. He, too, had a copy and had made some notes, we looked at them together one by one. They bore the imprint of his usual rigor and had to do mostly with the vocabulary.