My Brilliant Friend

by Elena Ferrante

  “What did you call me? I didn’t get it, repeat, what did you call me? Did you hear, Pascà, what he called me?”

  Our laughter abruptly turned to fear. Lila first of all hurled herself at her brother before he started kicking the young man on the ground and dragged him off, with an expression of disbelief, as if a thousand fragments of our life, from childhood to this, our fourteenth year, were composing an image that was finally clear, yet which at that moment seemed to her incredible.

  We pushed Rino and Pasquale away, while the girl in the bowler helped her boyfriend get up. Lila’s incredulity meanwhile was changing into fury. As she tried to get her brother off she assailed him with the coarsest insults, pulled him by the arm, threatened him. Rino kept her away with one hand, a nervous laugh on his face, and meanwhile he turned to Pasquale:

  “My sister thinks this is a game, Pascà,” he said in dialect, his eyes wild, “my sister thinks that even if I say it’s better for us not to go somewhere, she can do it, because she always knows everything, she always understands everything, as usual, and she can go there like it or not.” A short pause to regain his breath, then he added, “Did you hear that shit called me ‘hick’? Me a hick? A hick?” And still, breathless, “My sister brought me here and now she sees if I’m called a hick, now she sees what I do if they call me a hick.”

  “Calm down, Rino,” Pasquale said, looking behind him every so often, in alarm.

  Rino remained agitated, but subdued. Lila, however, had calmed down. We stopped at Piazza dei Martiri. Pasquale said, almost coldly, addressing Carmela: “You girls go home now.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Carmè, I don’t want to discuss it: go.”

  “We don’t know how to get there.”

  “Don’t lie.”

  “Go,” Rino said to Lila, trying to contain himself. “Take some money, buy an ice cream on the way.”

  “We left together and we’re going back together.”

  Rino lost patience again, gave her a shove: “Will you stop it? I’m older and you do what I tell you. Move, go, in a second I’ll bash your face in.”

  I saw that he was ready to do it seriously, I dragged Lila by the arm. She also understood the risk: “I’ll tell Papa.”

  “Who gives a fuck. Walk, come on, go, you don’t even deserve the ice cream.”

  Hesitantly we went up past Santa Caterina. But after a while Lila had second thoughts, stopped, said that she was going back to her brother. We tried to persuade her to stay with us, but she wouldn’t listen. Just then we saw a group of boys, five, maybe six, they looked like the rowers we had sometimes admired on Sunday walks near Castel dell’Ovo. They were all tall, sturdy, well dressed. Some had sticks, some didn’t. They quickly passed by the church and headed toward the piazza. Among them was the young man whom Rino had struck in the face; his V-necked sweater was stained with blood.

  Lila freed herself from my grip and ran off, Carmela and I behind her. We arrived in time to see Rino and Pasquale backing up toward the monument at the center of the piazza, side by side, while those well-dressed youths chased them, hitting them with their sticks. We called for help, we began to cry, to stop people passing, but the sticks were frightening, no one helped. Lila grabbed the arm of one of the attackers but was thrown to the ground. I saw Pasquale on his knees, being kicked, I saw Rino protecting himself from the blows with his arm. Then a car stopped and it was the Solaras’ 1100.

  Marcello got out immediately. First he helped Lila up and then, incited by her, as she shrieked with rage and shouted at her brother, threw himself into the fight, hitting and getting hit. Only at that point Michele got out of the car, opened the trunk in a leisurely way, took out something that looked like a shiny iron bar, and joined in, hitting with a cold ferocity that I hope never to see again in my life. Rino and Pasquale got up furiously, hitting, choking, tearing—they seemed like strangers, they were so transformed by hatred. The well-dressed young men were routed. Michele went up to Pasquale, whose nose was bleeding, but Pasquale rudely pushed him away and wiped his face with the sleeve of his white shirt, then saw that it was soaked red. Marcello picked up a bunch of keys and handed it to Rino, who thanked him uneasily. The people who had kept their distance before now came over, curious. I was paralyzed with fear.

  “Take the girls away,” Rino said to the two Solaras, in the grateful tone of someone who makes a request that he knows is unavoidable.

  Marcello made us get in the car, first Lila, who resisted. We were all jammed in the back seat, sitting on each other’s knees. I turned to look at Pasquale and Rino, who were heading toward the Riviera, Pasquale limping. I felt as if our neighborhood had expanded, swallowing all Naples, even the streets where respectable people lived. In the car there were immediate tensions. Gigliola and Ada were annoyed, protesting that the ride was uncomfortable. “It’s impossible,” they said. “Then get out and walk,” Lila shouted and they were about to start hitting each other. Marcello braked, amused. Gigliola got out and went to sit in front, on Michele’s knees. We made the journey like that, with Gigliola and Michele kissing each other in front of us. I looked at her and she, though kissing passionately, looked at me. I turned away.

  Lila said nothing until we reached the neighborhood. Marcello said a few words, his eyes looking for her in the rear-view mirror, but she never responded. They let us out far from our houses, so that we wouldn’t be seen in the Solaras’ car. The rest of the way we walked, the five of us. Apart from Lila, who seemed consumed by anger and worry, we all admired the behavior of the two brothers. Good for them, we said, they behaved well. Gigliola kept repeating, “Of course,” “What did you think,” “Naturally,” with the air of one who, working in the pastry shop, knew very well what first-rate people the Solaras were. At one point she asked me, but in a teasing tone:

  “How’s school?”

  “Great.”

  “But you don’t have fun the way I do.”

  “It’s a different type of fun.”

  When she, Carmela, and Ada left us at the entrance of their building, I said to Lila:

  “The rich people certainly are worse than we are.”

  She didn’t answer. I added, cautiously, “The Solaras may be shit, but it’s lucky they were there: those people on Via dei Mille might have killed Rino and Pasquale.”

  She shook her head energetically. She was paler than usual and under her eyes were deep purple hollows. She didn’t agree but she didn’t tell me why.

  27.

  I was promoted with nines in all my subjects, I would even receive something called a scholarship. Of the forty we had been, thirty-two remained. Gino failed, Alfonso had to retake the exams in three subjects in September. Urged by my father, I went to see Maestra Oliviero—my mother was against it, she didn’t like the teacher to interfere in her family and claim the right to make decisions about her children in her place—with the usual two packets, one of sugar and one of coffee, bought at the Bar Solara, to thank her for her interest in me.

  She wasn’t feeling well, she had something in her throat that hurt her, but she was full of praise, congratulated me on how hard I had worked, said that I looked a little too pale and that she intended to telephone a cousin who lived on Ischia to see if she would let me stay with her for a little while. I thanked her, but said nothing to my mother of that possibility. I already knew that she wouldn’t let me go. Me on Ischia? Me alone on the ferry traveling over the sea? Not to mention me on the beach, swimming, in a bathing suit?

  I didn’t even mention it to Lila. Her life in a few months had lost even the adventurous aura associated with the shoe factory, and I didn’t want to boast about the promotion, the scholarship, a possible vacation in Ischia. In appearance things had improved: Marcello Solara had stopped following her. But after the violence in Piazza dei Martiri something completely
unexpected happened that puzzled her. He came to the shop to ask about Rino’s condition, and the honor conferred by that visit perturbed Fernando. But Rino, who had been careful not to tell his father what had happened (to explain the bruises on his face and his body he made up a story that he had fallen off a friend’s Lambretta), and worried that Marcello might say one word too many, had immediately steered him out into the street. They had taken a short walk. Rino had reluctantly thanked Solara both for his intervention and for the kindness of coming to see how he was. Two minutes and they had said goodbye. When he returned to the shop his father had said:

  “Finally you’re doing something good.”

  “What?”

  “A friendship with Marcello Solara.”

  “There’s no friendship, Papa.”

  “Then it means you were a fool and a fool you remain.”

  Fernando wanted to say that something was changing and that his son, whatever he wanted to call that thing with the Solaras, would do well to encourage it. He was right. Marcello returned a couple of days later with his grandfather’s shoes to resole; then he invited Rino to go for a drive. Then he urged him to apply for a license, assuming the responsibility for getting him to practice in the 1100. Maybe it wasn’t friendship, but the Solaras certainly had taken a liking to Rino.

  When Lila, ignorant of these visits, which took place entirely at the shoemaker’s shop, where she never went, heard about them, she, unlike her father, felt an increasing worry. First she remembered the battle of the fireworks and thought: Rino hates the Solaras too much, it can’t be that he’ll let himself be taken in. Then she had had to observe that Marcello’s attentions were seducing her older brother even more than her parents. She now knew Rino’s fragility, but still she was angry at the way the Solaras were getting into his head, making him a kind of happy little monkey.

  “What’s wrong with it?” I objected once.

  “They’re dangerous.”

  “Here everything is dangerous.”

  “Did you see what Michele took out of the car, in Piazza dei Martiri?”

  “No.”

  “An iron bar.”

  “The others had sticks.”

  “You don’t see it, Lenù, but the bar was sharpened into a point: if he wanted he could have thrust it into the chest, or the stomach, of one of those guys.”

  “Well, you threatened Marcello with the shoemaker’s knife.”

  At that point she grew irritated and said I didn’t understand. And probably it was true. It was her brother, not mine; I liked to be logical, while she had different needs, she wanted to get Rino away from that relationship. But as soon as she made some critical remark Rino shut her up, threatened her, sometimes beat her. And so things, willy-nilly, proceeded to the point where, one evening in late June—I was at Lila’s house, I was helping her fold sheets, or something, I don’t remember—the door opened and Rino entered, followed by Marcello.

  He had invited Solara to dinner, and Fernando, who had just returned from the shop, very tired, at first was irritated, and then felt honored, and behaved cordially. Not to mention Nunzia: she became agitated, thanked Marcello for the three bottles of good wine that he had brought, pulled the other children into the kitchen so they wouldn’t be disruptive.

  I myself was involved with Lila in the preparations for dinner.

  “I’ll put roach poison in it,” Lila said, furious, at the stove, and we laughed, while Nunzia shut us up.

  “He’s come to marry you,” I said to provoke her, “he’s going to ask your father.”

  “He is deceiving himself.”

  “Why,” Nunzia asked anxiously, “if he likes you do you say no?”

  “Ma, I already told him no.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It’s true,” I said in confirmation.

  “Your father must never know, otherwise he’ll kill you.”

  At dinner only Marcello spoke. It was clear that he had invited himself, and Rino, who didn’t know how to say no to him, sat at the table nearly silent, or laughed for no reason. Solara addressed himself mainly to Fernando, but never neglected to pour water or wine for Nunzia, for Lila, for me. He said to him how much he was respected in the neighborhood because he was such a good cobbler. He said that his father had always spoken well of his skill. He said that Rino had an unlimited admiration for his abilities as a shoemaker.

  Fernando, partly because of the wine, was moved. He muttered something in praise of Silvio Solara, and even went so far as to say that Rino was a good worker and was becoming a good shoemaker. Then Marcello started to praise the need for progress. He said that his grandfather had started with a cellar, then his father had enlarged it, and today the bar-pastry shop Solara was what it was, everybody knew it, people came from all over Naples to have coffee, eat a pastry.

  “What an exaggeration,” Lila exclaimed, and her father gave her a silencing look.

  But Marcello smiled at her humbly and admitted, “Yes, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but just to say that money has to circulate. You begin with a cellar and from generation to generation you can go far.”

  At this point, with Rino showing evident signs of uneasiness, he began to praise the idea of making new shoes. And from that moment he began to look at Lila as if in praising the energy of the generations he were praising her in particular. He said: if someone feels capable, if he’s clever, if he can invent good things, which are pleasing, why not try? He spoke in a nice, charming dialect and as he spoke he never stopped staring at my friend. I felt, I saw that he was in love as in the songs, that he would have liked to kiss her, that he wanted to breathe her breath, that she would be able to make of him all she wanted, that in his eyes she embodied all possible feminine qualities.

  “I know,” Marcello concluded, “that your children made a very nice pair of shoes, size 43, just my size.”

  A long silence fell. Rino stared at his plate and didn’t dare look up at his father. Only the sound of the goldfinch at the window could be heard. Fernando said slowly, “Yes, they’re size 43.”

  “I would very much like to see them, if you don’t mind?”

  Fernando stammered, “I don’t know where they are. Nunzia, do you know?”

  “She has them,” Rino said, indicating his sister.

  “I did have them, yes, I had put them in the storeroom. But then Mamma told me to clean it out the other day and I threw them away. Since no one liked them.”

  Rino said angrily, “You’re a liar, go and get the shoes right now.”

  Fernando said nervously, “Go get the shoes, go on.”

  Lila burst out, addressing her father, “How is it that now you want them? I threw them away because you said you didn’t like them.”

  Fernando pounded the table with his open hand, the wine trembled in the glasses.

  “Get up and go get the shoes, right now.”

  Lila pushed away her chair, stood up.

  “I threw them away,” she repeated weakly and left the room.

  She didn’t come back.

  The time passed in silence. The first to become alarmed was Marcello. He said, with real concern, “Maybe I was wrong, I didn’t know that there were problems.”

  “There’s no problem,” Fernando said, and whispered to his wife, “Go see what your daughter is doing.”

  Nunzia left the room. When she came back she was embarrassed, she couldn’t find Lila. We looked for her all over the house, she wasn’t there. We called her from the window: nothing. Marcello, desolate, took his leave. As soon as he had gone Fernando shouted at his wife, “God’s truth, this time I’m going to kill your daughter.”

  Rino joined his father in the threat, Nunzia began to cry. I left almost on tiptoe, frightened. But as soon as I closed the door and came out
on the landing Lila called me. She was on the top floor, I went up on tiptoe. She was huddled next to the door to the terrace, in the shadows. She had the shoes in her lap, for the first time I saw them finished. They shone in the feeble light of a bulb hanging on an electrical cable. “What would it cost you to let him see them?” I asked, confused.

  She shook her head energetically. “I don’t even want him to touch them.”

  But she was as if overwhelmed by her own extreme reaction. Her lower lip trembled, something that never happened.

  Gradually I persuaded her to go home, she couldn’t stay hiding there forever. I went with her, counting on the fact that my presence would protect her. But there were shouts, insults, some blows just the same. Fernando screamed that on a whim she had made him look foolish in the eyes of an important guest. Rino tore the shoes out of her hand, saying that they were his, the work had been done by him. She began to cry, murmuring, “I worked on them, too, but it would have been better if I’d never done it, you’ve become a mad beast.” It was Nunzia who put an end to that torture. She turned pale and in a voice that was not her usual voice she ordered her children, and even her husband—she who was always so submissive—to stop it immediately, to give the shoes to her, not to venture a single word if they didn’t want her to jump out the window. Rino gave her the shoes and for the moment things ended there. I slipped away.

  28.

  But Rino wouldn’t give in, and in the following days he continued to attack his sister with words and fists. Every time Lila and I met I saw a new bruise. After a while I felt that she was resigned. One morning he insisted that they go out together, that she come with him to the shoemaker’s shop. On the way they both sought, with wavy moves, to end the war. Rino said that he loved her but that she didn’t love anyone, neither her parents nor her siblings. Lila murmured, “What do you mean by love, what does love mean for our family? Let’s hear.” Step by step, he revealed to her what he had in mind.

  “If Marcello likes the shoes, Papa will change his mind.”