The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  Just then Enzo returned, and she tried to be nice. They ate, but Lila had the impression that the food was struggling to get to her stomach, that it was scratching her chest. As soon as Gennaro fell asleep, they turned to the installments of the Zurich course, but Enzo soon got tired, and tried, politely, to go to bed. His attempts were vain, Lila kept going until it was late, she was afraid of shutting herself in her room, she feared that as soon as she was alone in the dark the symptoms she hadn’t admitted to Armando would appear, all together, and kill her. He asked her softly:

  “Will you tell me what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You come and go with Pasquale, why, what secrets do you have?”

  “It’s things to do with the union, he made me join and now I have to take care of them.”

  Enzo looked disheartened, and she asked:

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Pasquale told me what you’re doing in the factory. You told him and you told the people on the committee. Why am I the only one who doesn’t deserve to know?”

  Lila became agitated, she got up, she went to the bathroom. Pasquale hadn’t held out. What had he told? Only about the union seed that she wanted to plant at Soccavo or also about Gino, about her not feeling well at Via dei Tribunali? He hadn’t been able to stay silent—friendship between men had its unwritten but inviolable pacts, not like that between women. She flushed the toilet, returned to Enzo and said:

  “Pasquale is a spy.”

  “Pasquale is a friend. Whereas you, what are you?”

  His tone hurt, she gave in unexpectedly, suddenly. Her eyes filled with tears and she tried in vain to push them back, humiliated by her own weakness.

  “I don’t want to make more trouble for you than I already have,” she sobbed, “I’m afraid you’ll send me away.” Then she blew her nose and added in a whisper: “Can I sleep with you?”

  Enzo stared at her, in disbelief.

  “Sleep how?”

  “However you want.”

  “And do you want it?”

  Lila gazed at the water pitcher in the middle of the table, with its comical rooster’s head: Gennaro liked it. She whispered:

  “The crucial thing is for you to hold me close.”

  Enzo shook his head unhappily.

  “You don’t want me.”

  “I want you, but I don’t feel anything.”

  “You don’t feel anything for me?”

  “What do you mean, I love you, and every night I wish you would call me and hold me close. But beyond that I don’t want anything.”

  Enzo turned pale, his handsome face was contorted as if by an intolerable grief, and he observed:

  “I disgust you.”

  “No, no, no, let’s do what you want, right away, I’m ready.”

  He had a desolate smile, and was silent for a while. Then he couldn’t bear her anxiety, he muttered: “Let’s go to bed.”

  “Each in our own room?”

  “No, in my bed.”

  Lila, relieved, went to get undressed. She put on her nightgown, went to him trembling with cold. He was already in bed.

  “I’ll go here?”

  “All right.”

  She slid under the covers, rested her head on his shoulder, put an arm around his chest. Enzo remained motionless; she felt immediately that he gave off a violent heat.

  “My feet are cold,” she whispered, “can I put them near yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I caress you a little?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  Slowly the cold disappeared. The pain in her chest dissolved, she forgot the grip on her throat, she gave in to the respite of his warmth.

  “Can I sleep?” she asked, dazed by weariness.

  “Sleep.”

  43.

  At dawn she started: her body reminded her that she had to wake up. Immediately, the terrible thoughts arrived, all very clear: her sick heart, Gennaro’s regressions, the fascists from the neighborhood, Nadia’s self-importance, Pasquale’s untrustworthiness, the list of demands. Only afterward did she realize that she had slept with Enzo, but that he was no longer in the bed. She rose quickly, in time to hear the door closing. Had he arisen as soon as she fell asleep? Had he been awake all night? Had he slept in the other room with the child? Or had he fallen asleep with her, forgetting every desire? Certainly he had had breakfast alone and had left the table set for her and Gennaro. He had gone to work, without a word, keeping his thoughts to himself.

  Lila, too, after taking her son to the neighbor, hurried to the factory.

  “So did you make up your mind?” Edo asked, a little sulkily.

  “I’ll make up my mind when I like,” Lila answered, returning to her old tone of voice.

  “We’re a committee, you have to inform us.”

  “Did you circulate the list?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do the others say?”

  “Silence means consent.”

  “No,” she said, “silence means they’re shitting in their pants.”

  Capone was right, also Nadia and Armando. It was a weak initiative, a forced effort. Lila worked at cutting the meat furiously, she had a desire to hurt and be hurt. To jab her hand with the knife, let it slip, now, from the dead flesh to her own living flesh. To shout, hurl herself at the others, make them all pay for her inability to find an equilibrium. Ah, Lina Cerullo, you are beyond correction. Why did you make that list? You don’t want to be exploited? You want to improve your condition and the condition of these people? You’re convinced that you, and they, starting from here, from what you are now, will join the victorious march of the proletariat of the whole world? No way. March to become what? Now and forever workers? Workers who slave from morning to night but are empowered? Nonsense. Hot air to sweeten the pill of toil. You know that it’s a terrible condition, it shouldn’t be improved but eliminated, you’ve known it since you were a child. Improve, improve yourself? You, for example, are you improved, have you become like Nadia or Isabella? Is your brother improved, has he become like Armando? And your son, is he like Marco? No, we remain us and they are they. So why don’t you resign yourself? Blame the mind that can’t settle down, that is constantly seeking a way to function. Designing shoes. Getting busy setting up a shoe factory. Rewriting Nino’s articles, tormenting him until he did as you said. Using for your own purposes the installments from Zurich, with Enzo. And now demonstrating to Nadia that if she is making the revolution, you are even more. The mind, ah yes, the evil is there, it’s the mind’s discontent that causes the body to get sick. I’ve had it with myself, with everything. I’ve even had it with Gennaro: his fate, if all goes well, is to end up in a place like this, crawling to some boss for another five lire. So? So, Cerullo, take up your responsibilities and do what you have always had in mind: frighten Soccavo, eliminate his habit of fucking the workers in the drying room. Show the student with the wolf face what you’ve prepared. That summer on Ischia. The drinks, the house in Forio, the luxurious bed where I was with Nino. The money came from this place, from this evil smell, from these days spent in disgust, from this poorly paid labor. What did I cut, here? A revolting yellowish pulp spurted out. The world turns but, luckily, if it falls it breaks.

  Right before the lunch break she made up her mind, she said to Edo: I’m going. But she didn’t have time to take off her apron, the owner’s secretary appeared in the gutting room to tell her:

  “Dottor Soccavo wants you urgently in the office.”

  Lila thought that some spy had told Bruno what was coming. She stopped work, took the sheet of demands from the closet and went up. She knocked on the door of the office, and went in. Bruno was not alone in the room. Sitting in a chair, cigarette in his mouth, was Michele Solara.

  44.

  She had always known t
hat Michele would sooner or later reappear in her life, but finding him in Bruno’s office frightened her like the spirits in the dark corners of the house of her childhood. What is he doing here, I have to get out of here. But Solara, seeing her, stood up, spread his arms wide, seemed genuinely moved. He said in Italian: Lina, what a pleasure, how happy I am. He wanted to embrace her, and would have if she hadn’t stopped him with an unconscious gesture of revulsion. Michele stood for some instants with his arms outstretched, therefore, in confusion, with one hand he caressed his cheekbone, his neck, with the other he pointed to Lila, this time speaking in an artificial tone:

  “But really, I can’t believe it: right in the middle of the salamis, you were hiding Signora Carracci?”

  Lila turned to Bruno abruptly: “I’ll come back later.”

  “Sit down,” he said, darkly.

  “I prefer to stand.”

  “Sit, you’ll get tired.”

  She shook her head, remained standing, and Michele gave Bruno a smile of understanding:

  “She’s made like that, resign yourself, she never obeys.”

  To Lila it seemed that Solara’s voice had more power than in the past, he stressed the end of every word as if he had been practicing his pronunciation. Maybe to save her strength, maybe just to contradict him, she changed her mind and sat down. Michele also changed position, but so that he was turned completely toward her, as if Bruno were no longer in the room. He observed her carefully, affectionately, and said, in a tone of regret: your hands are ruined, too bad, as a girl you had such nice ones. Then he began to talk about the shop in Piazza dei Martiri in the manner of one imparting information, as if Lila were still his employee and they were having a work meeting. He mentioned new shelves, new light fixtures, and how he had had the bathroom door that opened onto the courtyard walled up again. Lila remembered that door and said softly, in dialect:

  “I don’t give a fuck about your shop.”

  “You mean our: we invented it together.”

  “Together with you I never invented anything.”

  Michele smiled again, shaking his head in a sign of mild dissent. Those who put in the money, he said, do and undo just the way those who work with their hands and their head do. Money invents scenarios, situations, people’s lives. You don’t know how many people I can make happy or ruin just by signing a check. And then he began chatting again, placidly; he seemed eager to tell her the latest news, as if they were two friends catching up. He began with Alfonso, who had done his job in Piazza dei Martiri well and now earned enough to start a family. But he had no wish to marry, he preferred to keep poor Marisa in the condition of fiancée for life and continued to do as he liked. So he, as his employer, had encouraged him, a regular life is good for one’s employees, and had offered to pay for the wedding celebration; thus, finally, in June the marriage would take place. You see, he said, if you had continued to work for me, rather than Alfonso, I would have given you everything you asked for, you would have been a queen. Then, without giving her time to answer, he tapped the ashes of his cigarette into an old bronze ashtray and announced that he, too, was getting married, also in June, and to Gigliola, naturally, the great love of his life. Too bad I can’t invite you, he complained, I would have liked to, but I don’t want to embarrass your husband. And he began to talk about Stefano, Ada, and their child, first saying nice things about all three, then pointing out that the two grocery stores weren’t doing as well as they used to. As long as his father’s money lasted, he explained, Carracci kept afloat, but commerce is a rough sea now, Stefano’s been shipping water for quite some time, he can’t manage things anymore. Competition, he said, had increased, new stores were constantly opening. Marcello himself, for example, had got it into his head to expand the late Don Carlo’s old store and transform it into one of those places where you can get anything, from soap to light bulbs, mortadella, and candy. And he had done it, the business was booming, it was called Everything for Everyone.

  “You’re saying that you and your brother have managed to ruin Stefano, too?”

  “What do you mean ruin, Lina, we do our job and that’s all, in fact, when we can help our friends we help them happily. Guess who Marcello has working in the new store?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your brother.”

  “You’ve reduced Rino to being your clerk?”

  “Well, you abandoned him, and that fellow is carrying all of them on his shoulders: your father, your mother, a child, Pinuccia, who’s pregnant again. What could he do? He turned to Marcello for help and Marcello helped him. Doesn’t that please you?”

  Lila responded coldly:

  “No, it doesn’t please me, nothing you do pleases me.”

  Michele appeared dissatisfied, and he remembered Bruno:

  “You see, as I was telling you, her problem is that she has a bad character.”

  Bruno gave an embarrassed smile that was meant to be conspiratorial.

  “It’s true.”

  “Did she hurt you, too?”

  “A little.”

  “You know that she was still a child when she held a shoemaker’s knife to my brother’s throat, and he was twice her size? And not as a joke, it was clear that she was ready to use it.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. That girl has courage, she’s determined.”

  Lila clenched her fists tightly. She detested the weakness she felt in her body. The room was undulating, the bodies of the dead objects and the living people were expanding. She looked at Michele, who was extinguishing the cigarette in the ashtray. He was putting too much energy into it, as if he, too, in spite of his placid tone, were giving vent to an uneasiness. Lila stared at his fingers, which went on squashing the butt, the nails were white. Once, she thought, he asked me to become his lover. But that’s not what he really wants, there’s something else, something that doesn’t have to do with sex and that not even he can explain. He’s obsessed, it’s like a superstition. Maybe he thinks that I have a power and that that power is indispensable to him. He wants it but he can’t get it, and it makes him suffer, it’s a thing he can’t take from me by force. Yes, maybe that’s it. Otherwise he would have crushed me by now. But why me? What has he recognized in me that’s useful to him? I mustn’t stay here, under his eyes, I mustn’t listen to him, what he sees and what he wants scares me. Lila said to Soccavo:

  “I’ve got something to leave for you and then I’ll go.”

  She got up, ready to give him the list of demands, a gesture that seemed to her increasingly pointless and yet necessary. She wished to place the piece of paper on the table, next to the ashtray, and leave that room. But Michele’s voice stopped her. Now it was definitely affectionate, almost caressing, as if he had intuited that she was trying to get away from him and wanted to do everything possible to charm her and keep her. He continued speaking to Soccavo:

  “You see, she really has a bad character. I’m speaking, but she doesn’t give a damn, she pulls out a piece of paper, says she wants to leave. But you forgive her, because she has many good qualities that make up for her bad character. You think you hired a worker? It’s not true. This woman is much, much more. If you let her, she’ll change shit into gold for you, she’s capable of reorganizing this whole enterprise, taking it to levels you can’t even imagine. Why? Because she has the type of mind that normally no woman has but also that not even we men have. I’ve had an eye on her since she was a child and it’s true. She designed shoes that I still sell today in Naples and outside, and I make a lot of money. And she renovated a shop in Piazza dei Martiri with such imagination that it became a salon for the rich people from Via Chiaia, from Posillipo, from the Vomero. And there are many—very many—other things she could do. But she has a crazy streak, she thinks she can always do what she wants. Come, go, fix, break. You think I fired her? No, one day, as if it were nothing, she didn�
�t come to work. Just like that, vanished. And if you catch her again, she’ll slip away again, she’s an eel. This is her problem: even though she’s extremely intelligent, she can’t understand what she can do and what she can’t. That’s because she hasn’t yet found a real man. A real man puts the woman in her place. She’s not capable of cooking? She learns. The house is dirty? She cleans it. A real man can make a woman do everything. For example: I met a woman a while ago who didn’t know how to whistle. Well, we were together for two hours only—hours of fire—and afterward I said to her: Now whistle. She—you won’t believe it—whistled. If you know how to train a woman, good. If you don’t know how to train her, forget about her, you’ll get hurt.” He uttered these last words in a very serious tone, as if they summed up an irrefutable commandment. But even as he was speaking, he must have realized that he hadn’t been able, and was still unable, to respect his own law. So suddenly his expression changed, his voice changed, he felt an urgent need to humiliate her. He turned toward Lila with a jolt of impatience and said emphatically, in a crescendo of obscenities in dialect: “But with her it’s difficult, it’s not so easy to kiss her off. And yet you see what she looks like, she has small eyes, small tits, a small ass, she’s just a broomstick. With someone like that what can you do, you can’t even get it up. But an instant is enough, a single instant: you look at her and you want to fuck her.”

  It was at that point that Lila felt a violent bump inside her head, as if her heart, instead of hammering in her throat, had exploded in her skull. She yelled an insult at him no less obscene than the words he had uttered, she grabbed from the desk the bronze ashtray, spilling out butts and ashes, and tried to hit him. But the gesture, in spite of her fury, was slow, powerless. And even Bruno’s voice—Lina, please, what are you doing—passed through her slowly. So maybe for that reason Solara stopped her easily and easily took away the ashtray, saying to her angrily:

  “You think you work for Dottor Soccavo? You think I’m no one here? You are mistaken. Dottor Soccavo has been in my mother’s red book for quite some time, and that book is a lot more important than Mao’s little book. So you don’t work for him, you work for me, you work for me and only me. And so far I’ve let you, I wanted to see what the fuck you were driving at, you and that shit you sleep with. But from now on remember that I have my eyes on you and if I need you, you better come running, got that?”