After his long swims Donato lay beside me to dry in the sun and read his newspaper, Roma, the only thing he read. I was struck by the fact that someone who wrote poems, who had even collected them in a volume, never opened a book. He hadn’t brought any with him and was never curious about mine. At times he read aloud to me some passage from an article, words and sentiments that would have made Pasquale extremely angry and certainly Professor Galiani, too. But I was silent, I didn’t feel like arguing with such a kind and courteous person, and spoiling the great esteem he had for me. Once he read me an entire article, from beginning to end, and every two lines he turned to Lidia smiling, and Lidia responded with a complicit smile. At the end he asked me, “Did you like it?”
It was an article on the speed of train travel as opposed to the speed of travel in the past, by horse carriage or on foot, along country lanes. It was written in high-flown sentences that he read with great feeling.
“Yes, very much,” I said.
“See who wrote it: what do you read here?”
He held it out toward me, put the paper under my eyes. With emotion, I read: “Donato Sarratore.”
Lidia burst out laughing and so did he. They left me on the beach to keep an eye on Ciro while they swam in their usual way, staying close to each other and whispering. I looked at them, I thought, Poor Melina, but without bitterness toward Sarratore. Assuming that Nino was right and that there really had been something between the two of them; assuming, in other words, that Sarratore really had betrayed Lidia, now, even more than before—now that I knew him somewhat—I couldn’t feel that he was guilty, especially since it seemed to me that not even his wife felt he was guilty, although at the time she had compelled him to leave the neighborhood. As for Melina, I understood her, too. She had felt the joy of love for that so far from ordinary man—a conductor on the railroad but also a poet, a journalist—and her fragile mind had been unable to readjust to the rough normality of life without him. I was satisfied with these thoughts. I was pleased with everything, in those days, with my love for Nino, with my sadness, with the affection that I felt surrounded by, with my own capacity to read, think, reflect in solitude.
34.
Then, at the end of August, when that extraordinary period was about to come to an end, two important things happened, suddenly, on the same day. It was the twenty-fifth, I remember with precision because my birthday fell on that day. I got up, I prepared breakfast for everyone, at the table I said, “Today I’m fifteen,” and as I said it I remembered that Lila had turned fifteen on the eleventh, but, in the grip of so many emotions, I hadn’t remembered. Although customarily it was the saint’s day that was celebrated—birthdays were considered irrelevant at the time—the Sarratores and Nella insisted on having a party, in the evening. I was pleased. They went to get ready for the beach, I began to clear the table, when the postman arrived.
I stuck my head out the window, the postman said there was a letter for Greco. I ran down with my heart pounding. I ruled out the possibility that my parents had written to me. Was it a letter from Lila, from Nino? It was from Lila. I tore open the envelope. There were five closely written pages, and I devoured them, but I understood almost nothing of what I read. It may seem strange today, and yet it really was so: even before I was overwhelmed by the contents, what struck me was that the writing contained Lila’s voice. Not only that. From the first lines I thought of The Blue Fairy, the only text of hers that I had read, apart from our elementary-school homework, and I understood what, at the time, I had liked so much. There was, in The Blue Fairy, the same quality that struck me now: Lila was able to speak through writing; unlike me when I wrote, unlike Sarratore in his articles and poems, unlike even many writers I had read and was reading, she expressed herself in sentences that were well constructed, and without error, even though she had stopped going to school, but—further—she left no trace of effort, you weren’t aware of the artifice of the written word. I read and I saw her, I heard her. The voice set in the writing overwhelmed me, enthralled me even more than when we talked face to face: it was completely cleansed of the dross of speech, of the confusion of the oral; it had the vivid orderliness that I imagined would belong to conversation if one were so fortunate as to be born from the head of Zeus and not from the Grecos, the Cerullos. I was ashamed of the childish pages I had written to her, the overwrought tone, the frivolity, the false cheer, the false grief. Who knows what Lila had thought of me. I felt contempt and bitterness toward Professor Gerace, who had deluded me by giving me a nine in Italian. The first effect of that letter was to make me feel, at the age of fifteen, on the day of my birthday, a fraud. School, with me, had made a mistake and proof was there, in Lila’s letter.
Then, slowly, the contents reached me as well. Lila sent me good wishes for my birthday. She hadn’t written because she was pleased that I was having fun in the sun, that I was comfortable with the Sarratores, that I loved Nino, that I liked Ischia so much, the beach of the Maronti, and she didn’t want to spoil my vacation with her terrible stories. But now she had felt an urge to break the silence. Immediately after my departure Marcello Solara, with the consent of Fernando, had begun to appear at dinner every night. He came at eight-thirty and left exactly at ten-thirty. He always brought something: pastries, chocolates, sugar, coffee. She didn’t touch anything, she kept him at a distance, he looked at her in silence. After the first week of that torture, since Lila acted as if he weren’t there, he had decided to surprise her. He showed up in the morning with a big fellow, all sweaty, who deposited in the dining room an enormous cardboard box. Out of the box emerged an object that we all knew about but that very few in the neighborhood had in their house: a television, an apparatus, that is, with a screen on which one saw images, just as at the cinema, but the images came not from a projector but rather from the air, and inside the apparatus was a mysterious tube that was called a cathode. Because of that tube, mentioned continuously by the large sweaty man, the machine hadn’t worked for days. Then, after various attempts, it had started, and now half the neighborhood, including my mother, my father, and my sister and brothers, came to the Cerullo house to see the miracle. Not Rino. He was better, the fever had definitely gone, but he no longer spoke to Marcello. When Marcello showed up, he began to disparage the television and after a while he either went to bed without eating or went out and wandered around with Pasquale and Antonio until late at night. Lila said that she herself loved the television. She especially liked to watch it with Melina, who came every night and sat silently for a long time, completely absorbed. It was the only moment of peace. Otherwise, everyone’s anger was unloaded on her: her brother’s anger because she had abandoned him to his fate as the slave of their father while she set off on a marriage that would make her a lady; the anger of Fernando and Nunzia because she was not nice to Solara but, rather, treated him like dirt; finally the anger of Marcello, who, although she hadn’t accepted him, felt increasingly that he was her fiancé, in fact her master, and tended to pass from silent devotion to attempts to kiss her, to suspicious questions about where she went during the day, whom she saw, if she had had other boyfriends, if she had even just touched anyone. Since she wouldn’t answer, or, worse still, teased him by telling him of kisses and embraces with nonexistent boyfriends, he one evening had whispered to her seriously, “You tease me, but remember when you threatened me with the knife? Well, if I find out that you like someone else, remember, I won’t merely threaten you, I’ll kill you.” So she didn’t know how to get out of this situation and she still carried her weapon, just in case. But she was terrified. She wrote, in the last pages, of feeling all the evil of the neighborhood around her. Rather, she wrote obscurely, good and evil are mixed together and reinforce each other in turn. Marcello, if you thought about it, was really a good arrangement, but the good tasted of the bad and the bad tasted of the good, it was a mixture that took your breath away. A few evenings earlier, something had happened that had r
eally scared her. Marcello had left, the television was off, the house was empty, Rino was out, her parents were going to bed. She was alone in the kitchen washing the dishes and was tired, really without energy, when there was an explosion. She had turned suddenly and realized that the big copper pot had exploded. Like that, by itself. It was hanging on the nail where it normally hung, but in the middle there was a large hole and the rim was lifted and twisted and the pot itself was all deformed, as if it could no longer maintain its appearance as a pot. Her mother had hurried in in her nightgown and had blamed her for dropping it and ruining it. But a copper pot, even if you drop it, doesn’t break and doesn’t become misshapen like that. “It’s this sort of thing,” Lila concluded, “that frightens me. More than Marcello, more than anyone. And I feel that I have to find a solution, otherwise, everything, one thing after another, will break, everything, everything.” She sent me many more good wishes, and, even if she wished the opposite, even if she couldn’t wait to see me, even if she urgently needed my help, she hoped I would stay in Ischia with kind Signora Nella and never return to the neighborhood again.
35.
This letter disturbed me greatly. Lila’s world, as usual, rapidly superimposed itself on mine. Everything that I had written in July and August seemed to me trivial, I was seized by a frenzy to redeem myself. I didn’t go to the beach, I tried immediately to answer her with a serious letter, one that had the essential, pure yet colloquial tone of hers. But if the other letters had come easily to me—I dashed off pages and pages in a few minutes, without ever correcting—this I wrote, rewrote, rewrote again, and yet Nino’s hatred of his father, the role that the affair of Melina had had in the origin of that ugly sentiment, my entire relationship with the Sarratore family, even my anxiety about what was happening to her, came out badly. Donato, who in reality was a remarkable man, on the page became a banal family man; and, as far as Marcello was concerned, I was capable only of superficial advice. In the end all that seemed true was my disappointment that she had a television at home and I didn’t.
In other words I couldn’t answer her, even though I deprived myself of the sea, the sun, the pleasure of being with Ciro, with Pino, with Clelia, with Lidia, with Marisa, with Sarratore. Thankfully Nella, at some point, came to keep me company on the terrace, bringing me an orzata. And when the Sarratores came back from the beach, they were sorry that I had stayed home and began celebrating me again. Lidia herself wanted to make a cake filled with pastry cream, Nella opened a bottle of vermouth, Donato Sarratore began singing Neapolitan songs, Marisa gave me an oakum seahorse she had bought at the Port the night before.
I grew calmer, yet I couldn’t get out of my mind Lila in trouble while I was so well, so celebrated. I said, in a slightly dramatic way, that I had received a letter from a friend, that my friend needed me, and so I was thinking of leaving before the appointed time. “The day after tomorrow at the latest,” I announced, but without really believing it. In fact I said it only to hear Nella say how sorry she was, Lidia how Ciro would suffer, Marisa how desperate she would be, and Sarratore exclaim sadly, “How will we manage without you?” All this moved me, making my birthday even happier.
Then Pino and Ciro began to nod and Lidia and Donato took them to bed. Marisa helped me wash the dishes, Nella said that if I wanted to sleep a little later in the morning she would get up to make breakfast. I protested, that was my job. One by one, they withdrew, and I was alone. I made my bed in the usual corner, I looked around to see if there were cockroaches, if there were mosquitoes. My gaze fell on the copper pots.
How evocative Lila’s writing was; I looked at the pots with increasing distress. I remembered that she had always liked their brilliance, when she washed them she took great care in polishing them. On them, not coincidentally, four years earlier, she had placed the blood that spurted from the neck of Don Achille when he was stabbed. On them now she had deposited that sensation of threat, the anguish over the difficult choice she had, making one of them explode like a sign, as if its shape had decided abruptly to cede. Would I know how to imagine those things without her? Would I know how to give life to every object, let it bend in unison with mine? I turned off the light. I got undressed and got in bed with Lila’s letter and Nino’s blue bookmark, which seemed to me at that moment the most precious things that I possessed.
From the window the white light of the moon rained down. I kissed the bookmark as I did every night, I tried to reread my friend’s letter in the weak glow. The pots shone, the table creaked, the ceiling weighed oppressively, the night air and the sea pressed on the walls. Again I felt humbled by Lila’s ability to write, by what she was able to give form to and I was not, my eyes misted. I was happy, yes, that she was so good even without school, without books from the library, but that happiness made me guiltily unhappy.
Then I heard footsteps. I saw the shadow of Sarratore enter the kitchen, barefoot, in blue pajamas. I pulled up the sheet. He went to the tap, he took a glass of water, drank. He remained standing for a few seconds in front of the sink, put down the glass, moved toward my bed. He squatted beside me, his elbows resting on the edge of the sheet.
“I know you’re awake,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Don’t think of your friend, stay.”
“She’s in trouble, she needs me.”
“It’s I who need you,” he said, and he leaned over, kissed me on the mouth without the lightness of his son, half opening my lips with his tongue.
I was immobilized.
He pushed the sheet aside, continuing to kiss me with care, with passion, and he sought my breast with his hand, he caressed me under the nightgown. Then he let go, descended between my legs, pressed two fingers hard over my underpants. I said, did nothing, I was terrified by that behavior, by the horror it created, by the pleasure that I nevertheless felt. His mustache pricked my upper lip, his tongue was rough. Slowly he left my mouth, took away his hand.
“Tomorrow night we’ll take a nice walk, you and I, on the beach,” he said, a little hoarsely. “I love you and I know that you love me very much. Isn’t it true?”
I said nothing. He brushed my lips again with his, murmured good night, got up and left the kitchen. I didn’t move, I don’t know for how long. However I tried to distance the sensation of his tongue, his caresses, the pressure of his hand, I couldn’t. Nino had wanted to warn me, did he know what would happen? I felt an uncontainable hatred for Donato Sarratore and disgust for myself, for the pleasure that lingered in my body. However unlikely it may seem today, as long as I could remember until that night I had never given myself pleasure, I didn’t know about it, to feel it surprised me. I remained in the same position for many hours. Then, at first light, I shook myself, collected all my things, took apart the bed, wrote two lines of thanks to Nella, and left.
The island was almost noiseless, the sea still, only the smells were intense. Using the money that my mother had left me more than a month before, I took the first departing ferry. As soon as the boat moved and the island, with its tender early-morning colors, was distant enough, I thought that I finally had a story to tell that Lila could not match. But I knew immediately that the disgust I felt for Sarratore and the revulsion that I had toward myself would keep me from saying anything. In fact this is the first time I’ve sought words for that unexpected end to my vacation.
36.
I found Naples submerged in a stinking, devastating heat. My mother, without saying a word about how I had changed—the acne gone, my skin sun-darkened—reproached me because I had returned before the appointed time.
“What have you done,” she said, “you���ve behaved rudely, did the teacher’s friend throw you out?”
It was different with my father, whose eyes shone and who showered me with compliments, the most conspicuous of which, repeated a hundred times, was: “Christ, what a pretty daughter I have.” As for my siblings, they said with a cert
ain contempt, “You look like a negro.”
I looked at myself in the mirror and I also marveled: the sun had made me a shining blonde, but my face, my arms, my legs were as if painted with dark gold. As long as I had been immersed in the colors of Ischia, amid sunburned faces, my transformation had seemed suitable; now, restored to the context of the neighborhood, where every face, every street had a sick pallor, it seemed to me excessive, anomalous. The people, the buildings, the dusty, busy stradone had the appearance of a poorly printed photograph, like the ones in the newspapers.
As soon as I could I hurried to find Lila. I called her from the courtyard, she looked out, emerged from the doorway. She hugged me, kissed me, gave me compliments, so that I was overwhelmed by all that explicit affection. She was the same and yet, in little more than a month, she had changed further. She seemed no longer a girl but a woman, a woman of at least eighteen, an age that then seemed to me advanced. Her old clothes were short and tight, as if she had grown inside them in the space of a few minutes, and they hugged her body more than they should. She was even taller, more developed, her back was straight. And the pale face above her slender neck seemed to me to have a delicate, unusual beauty.
She seemed nervous, she kept looking around on the street, behind her, but she didn’t explain. She said only, “Come with me,” and wanted me to go with her to Stefano’s grocery. She added, taking my arm, “It’s something I can only do with you, thank goodness you’ve come back. I thought I’d have to wait till September.”
My Brilliant Friend Page 21