The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

  “How’s your mother?”

  “My mother?”

  “Fine.”

  “Dede told me she’s ill.”

  “She recovered.”

  “I called her this afternoon. Your mother has always been in good health.”

  I said nothing.

  How inopportune that man was. Here, already, the tears were returning. Oh good God, I was fed up, fed up. I heard him say calmly:

  “You think I’m blind and deaf. You think I didn’t realize it when you flirted with those imbeciles who came to the house before Elsa was born.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You know perfectly well.”

  “No, I don’t know. Who are you talking about? People who came to dinner a few times years ago? And I flirted with them? Are you crazy?”

  Pietro shook his head, smiling to himself. He waited a few seconds, then he asked me, staring at the railing: “You didn’t even flirt with the one who played the drums?”

  I was alarmed. He wasn’t retreating, he wasn’t giving in. I snorted.

  “Mario?”

  “See, you remember?”

  “Of course I remember, why shouldn’t I? He’s one of the few interesting people you brought home in seven years of marriage.”

  “Did you find him interesting?”

  “Yes, and so what? What’s got into you tonight?”

  “I want to know. Can’t I know?”

  “What do you want to know? All that I know, you do, too. It must be at least four years since we saw that man, and you come out now with this foolishness?”

  He stopped staring at the railing, he turned to look at me, serious.

  “Then let’s talk about more recent events. What is there between you and Nino?”

  117.

  It was a blow as violent as it was unexpected. He wanted to know what there was between Nino and me. That question, that name were enough to make the fountain flow again in my head. I was blinded by tears, I shouted at him, beside myself, forgetting we were outside, that people tired out by a day of sun and sea were sleeping: Why did you ask that question, you should have kept it to yourself, now you’ve spoiled everything and there’s nothing to do, it would have been enough for you to keep silent, instead you couldn’t, and now I have to go, now I have no choice but to go.

  I don’t know what happened to him. Maybe he was convinced he had made a mistake that now, for obscure reasons, risked ruining our relationship forever. Or he saw me suddenly as a crude organism that cracked the fragile surface of discourse and appeared in a pre-logical way, a woman in her most alarming manifestation. Certainly I must have seemed to him an intolerable spectacle: he jumped up, and went inside. But I ran after him and continued shouting all manner of things: my love for Nino since I was a child, the new possibilities of life that he revealed to me, the unused energy I felt inside me, and the dreariness in which he, Pietro, had plunged me for years, his responsibility for having kept me from living fully.

  When I had exhausted my strength and collapsed in a corner, I found him in front of me with hollow cheeks, his eyes sunk into violet stains, his tan a crust of mud. I understood only then that I had shocked him. The questions he had asked didn’t admit even hypothetical affirmative answers like: Yes, I flirted with the drummer and even more; Yes, Nino and I have been lovers. Pietro had formulated them only to be denied, to silence the doubts that had come to him, to go to bed more serene. Instead I had imprisoned him in a nightmare from which, now, he no longer knew how to escape. He asked, almost whispering, in search of safety:

  “Have you made love?”

  Again I felt pity for him. If I had answered affirmatively I would have started shouting again, I would have said: Yes, once while you were sleeping, a second time in his car, a third in our bed in Florence. And I would have uttered those sentences with the pleasure that that list provoked in me. Instead I shook my head no.

  118.

  We returned to Florence. We reduced the communication between us to what was indispensable and to friendly tones in the presence of the children. Pietro went to sleep in his study as he had in the time when Dede never closed her eyes, I in the bedroom. I thought and thought about what to do. The way Lila and Stefano’s marriage had ended didn’t constitute a model, it was something from other times, managed without the law. I counted on a civil procedure, according to the law, suited to the times and to our situation. But in fact I continued not to know what to do and so I did nothing. Especially since I had just returned and already Mariarosa was telephoning me to tell me that the French volume was progressing, she would send me the proofs, while the serious, punctilious editor at the Italian publishing house was raising various questions about the text. For a while I was pleased I tried to become interested again in my work. But I couldn’t, it seemed to me that I had problems much more serious than a passage interpreted incorrectly, or some awkward sentences.

  Then, one morning, the telephone rang, Pietro answered. He said hello, he repeated hello, he hung up. My heart began to beat madly, I got ready to rush to the phone ahead of my husband. It didn’t ring again. Hours passed, I tried to distract myself by rereading my book. It was a terrible idea: it seemed to me utter nonsense, and made me so weary that I fell asleep with my head on the desk. But then the phone rang again, my husband answered again. He shouted, frightening Dede: Hello, and slammed down the receiver as if he wanted to break it.

  It was Nino, I knew it, Pietro knew it. The date of the conference was approaching, surely he wanted to insist again that I come with him. He would aim at pulling me inside the materiality of desires. He would show me that our only chance was a secret relationship lived to exhaustion, amid evil actions and pleasures. The way was to betray, invent lies, leave together. I would fly in a plane for the first time, I would be next to him as it took off, as in films. And why not, after Montpellier we would go to Nanterre, we would see Mariarosa’s friend, I would talk to her about my book, I would agree on initiatives, I would introduce them to Nino. Ah yes, to be accompanied by a man I loved, who had a power, a force that no one failed to notice. The hostile feeling softened. I was tempted.

  The next day Pietro went to the university, I waited for Nino to telephone. He didn’t, and so, in an unreasonable outburst, I called him. I waited many seconds, I was very agitated, in my mind there was nothing but the urgent need to hear his voice. Afterward, I didn’t know. Maybe I would attack him, I would start crying again. Or I would shout: All right, I’ll come with you, I will be your lover, I will be until you’re tired of me. At that moment, however, I only needed him to answer.

  Eleonora answered. I snatched back my voice in time before it addressed the ghost of Nino, running breathlessly down the telephone line with who knows what compromising words. I subdued it to a cheerful tone: Hello, it’s Elena Greco, are you well, how was the vacation, and Albertino? She let me speak in silence, then she screamed: You’re Elena Greco, eh, the whore, the hypocritical whore, leave my husband alone and don’t dare telephone ever again, because I know where you live and as God is my witness I’ll come there and smash your face. After which she hung up.

  119.

  I don’t know how long I stayed beside the phone. I was filled with hatred, my head was spinning with phrases like: Yes, come, come right now, bitch, it’s just what I’d expect, where the fuck are you from, Via Tasso, Via Filangieri, Via Crispi, the Santarella, and you’re angry with me, you piece of garbage, you stinking nonentity, you don’t know who you’re dealing with, you are nothing. Another me wanted to rise up from the depths, where she had been buried under a crust of meekness; she struggled in my breast, mixing Italian and words from childhood, I was a turmoil. If Eleonora dared to show up at my door I would spit in her face, throw her down the stairs, drag her out to the street by the hair, shatter that head full of shit on the sidewalk. I had evil in my heart, my te
mples were pounding. Some work was being done outside our building, and from the window came the heat and the jangle of drilling and the dust and the irritating noise of some machine or other. Dede was quarreling with Elsa in the other room: You mustn’t do everything I do, you’re a monkey, only monkeys act like that. Slowly I understood. Nino had decided to speak to his wife and that was why she had attacked me. I went from rage to an uncontainable joy. Nino wanted me so much that he had told his wife about us. He had ruined his marriage, he had given it up in full awareness of the advantages that came from it, he had upset his whole life, choosing to make Eleonora and Albertino suffer rather than me. So it was true, he loved me. I sighed with contentment. The telephone rang again, I answered right away.

  Now it was Nino, his voice. He seemed calm. He said that his marriage was over, he was free. He asked me:

  “Did you talk to Pietro?”

  “I started to.”

  “You haven’t told him yet?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “You want to back out?”

  “No.”

  “Then hurry up, we have to go.”

  He had already assumed that I would go with him. We would meet in Rome, it was all arranged, hotel, tickets.

  “I have the problem of the children,” I said, but softly, without conviction.

  “Send them to your mother.”

  “Don’t even say that.”

  “Then take them with you.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “You would take me with you anyway, even with my daughters?”

  “Of course.”

  “You really love me,” I whispered.

  “Yes.”

  120.

  I discovered that I was suddenly invulnerable and invincible, as in a past stage of my life, when it had seemed to me that I could do anything. I had been born lucky. Even when fate seemed adverse, it was working for me. Of course, I had some good qualities. I was orderly, I had a good memory, I worked stubbornly, I had learned to use the tools perfected by men, I knew how to give logical consistency to any jumble of fragments, I knew how to please. But luck counted more than anything, and I was proud of feeling it next to me like a trusted friend. To have it again on my side reassured me. I had married a respectable man, not a person like Stefano Carracci or, worse, Michele Solara. I would fight with him, he would suffer, but in the end we would come to an agreement. Certainly breaking up the marriage, the family, would be traumatic. And since for different reasons we had no wish to tell our relatives, and would in fact keep it hidden as long as possible, we couldn’t even count, at first, on Pietro’s family, which in every situation knew what to do and whom to turn to in handling complex situations. But I felt at peace, finally. We were two reasonable adults, we would confront each other, we would discuss, we would explain ourselves. In the chaos of those hours one single thing, now, appeared irrevocable: I would go to Montpellier.

  I talked to my husband that evening, I confessed to him that Nino was my lover. He did everything possible not to believe it. When I convinced him that it was the truth, he wept, he entreated, he got angry, he lifted up the glass top of the coffee table and hurled it against the wall under the terrified gaze of the children, who had been awakened by the shouts and stood in disbelief in the living room doorway. I put Dede and Elsa back to bed, I soothed them, I waited for them to go to sleep. Then I returned to confront my husband: every minute became a wound. Meanwhile, Eleonora began to batter us with phone calls, day and night, insulting me, insulting Pietro because he didn’t know how to act like a man, telling me that her relatives would find a way of leaving us and our daughters with nothing, not even eyes to cry with.

  But I didn’t get discouraged. I was in a state of such exaltation that I couldn’t feel that I was wrong. In fact, it seemed to me that even the pain I caused, the humiliation and attacks I endured, were working in my favor. That unbearable experience not only would help me to become something I would be satisfied with but in the end, by inscrutable means, would also be useful to those who now were suffering. Eleonora would understand that with love there is nothing to be done, that it’s senseless to say to a person who wants to go away: No, you must stay. And Pietro, who surely in theory already knew that precept, would only need time to assimilate it and change it to wisdom, to the practice of tolerance.

  Only with the children did I feel that everything was difficult. My husband insisted that we tell them the reason we were quarreling. I was against it: They’re small, I said, what can they understand. But at a certain point he reproached me: If you have decided to go, you have to give your daughters an explanation, and if you don’t have the courage then stay, it means you yourself don’t believe in what you want to do. I said: Let’s talk to a lawyer. He answered: There’s time for lawyers. And treacherously he summoned Dede and Elsa, who as soon as they heard us shouting would shut themselves in their room, in a close alliance.

  “Your mother has something to tell you,” Pietro began, “sit down and listen.”

  The two girls sat quietly on the sofa and waited. I started:

  “Your father and I love each other, but we no longer get along and we have decided to separate.”

  “That’s not true,” Pietro interrupted calmly, “it’s your mother who has decided to leave. And it’s not true, either, that we love each other: she doesn’t love me anymore.”

  I became agitated:

  “Girls, it’s not so simple. People can continue to love one another even though they no longer live together.”

  He interrupted again.

  “That’s also not true: either we love each other, and then we live together and are a family; or we don’t love each other, and so we leave each other and are no longer a family. If you tell lies, what can they understand? Please, explain truthfully, clearly why we are leaving each other.”

  I said:

  “I am not leaving you, you are the most important thing I have, I couldn’t live without you. I only have problems with your father.”

  “What?” he pressed me. “Explain what those problems are.”

  I sighed, I said softly:

  “I love someone else and I wish to live with him.”

  Elsa glanced at Dede to understand how she should react to that news, and since Dede remained impassive, she, too, remained impassive. But my husband lost his composure, he shouted:

  “The name, say what this other person is called. You don’t want to? Are you ashamed? I’ll say it: you know that other person, it’s Nino, you remember him? Your mother wants to go and live with him.”

  Then he began to cry desperately, while Elsa, alarmed, whispered: Will you take me with you, Mamma? But she didn’t wait for my response. When her sister got up and almost ran out of the room, she immediately followed her.

  That night Dede cried out in her sleep, I woke with a jolt, hurried to her. She was sleeping, but she had wet her bed. I had to wake her, change her, change the sheets. When I put her back to bed, she whispered that she wanted to come to mine. I agreed, I held her next to me. Every so often she started in her sleep, and made certain I was there.

  121.

  Now the date of the departure was approaching, but things with Pietro didn’t improve, any agreement, even just for that trip to Montpellier, seemed impossible. If you go, he said, I’ll never let you see the children again. Or: If you take the children I’ll kill myself. Or: I’ll report you for abandonment of the conjugal home. Or: let’s the four of us go on a trip, let’s go to Vienna. Or: Children, your mother prefers Signor Nino Sarratore to you.

  I began to weaken. I recalled the resistance that Antonio had put up when I left him. But Antonio was a boy, he had inherited Melina’s unstable mind, and he had not had an upbringing like Pietro’s: he hadn’t been trained since childhood to distinguish rules in chaos. Maybe, I thought, I’ve given
too much weight to the cultivated use of reason, to good reading, to well controlled language, to political affiliation; maybe, in the face of abandonment, we are all the same; maybe not even a very orderly mind can endure the discovery of not being loved. My husband—there was nothing to be done—was convinced that he had to protect me at all costs from the poisonous bite of my desires, and so, to remain my husband, he was ready to resort to any means, even the most abject. He who had wanted a civil marriage, he who had always been in favor of divorce, demanded because of an uncontrolled internal movement that our bond should endure eternally, as if we had been married before God. And since I insisted on wanting to put an end to our relationship, first he tried all the paths of persuasion, then he broke things, he slapped himself, suddenly he began to sing.

  When he overdid it like that he made me angry. I insulted him. And he, as usual, changed suddenly, like a frightened beast, sat beside me, apologized, said he wasn’t upset with me, it was his mind that wasn’t functioning. Adele—he revealed one night amid tears—had always betrayed his father, it was a discovery he had made as a child. At six he had seen her kiss an enormous man, dressed in blue, in the big living room in Genoa that looked out on the sea. He remembered all the details: the man had a large mustache that was like a dark blade; his pants showed a bright stain that seemed like a hundred-lire coin; his mother, against that man, seemed a bow so tensed that it was in danger of breaking. I listened in silence, I tried to console him: Be calm, those are false memories, you know it, I don’t have to tell you. But he insisted: Adele wore a pink sundress, one strap had slid off her tan shoulder; her long nails seemed like glass; she had a black braid that hung down her back like a snake. He said, finally, moving from suffering to anger: Do you understand what you’ve done to me, do you understand the horror you’ve plunged me into? And I thought: Dede, too, will remember, Dede, too, will cry out something similar, as an adult. But then I pulled away, I convinced myself that Pietro was telling me about his mother only now, after so many years, deliberately to lead me to that thought and wound me and hold me back.