Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

by Elena Ferrante

  94.

  “Where have we ended up?” Pietro asked, half outraged and half amused, when, once the children had been put to bed, we closed the door of the room that Elisa had given us. He wanted to joke about the more incredible moments of the evening, but I attacked him, we quarreled in low voices. I was angry with him, with everyone, with myself. From the chaotic feeling I had inside, the desire that Lila would get sick and die was re-emerging. Not out of hatred, I loved her more and more, I wouldn’t have been capable of hating her. But I couldn’t bear the emptiness of her evasion. How could you possibly, I asked Pietro, agree to let them take our bags, bring them here, give them the authority to move us to this house? And he: I didn’t know what sort of people they were. No, I hissed, it’s that you’ve never listened to me, I’ve always told you where I come from.

  We talked for a long time, he tried to soothe me, I berated him. I said he had been too timid, that he had been put upon, that he knew how to insist only with the well-brought-up people of his world, that I no longer trusted him, that I didn’t even trust his mother, how could it be that my book had come out in Germany two years ago and the publisher had said nothing about it, what other countries had it been published in without my knowing, I wanted to get to the bottom of it, et cetera et cetera. To make me feel better, he agreed, and urged me to telephone his mother and the publisher the next morning. Then he declared a great liking for what he called the working-class environment I had been born and brought up in. He whispered that my mother was a generous and very intelligent person, he had kind words for my father, for Elisa, for Gigliola, for Enzo. But his tone changed abruptly when he came to the Solaras: he called them crooks, vicious scoundrels, smooth-talking criminals. And finally he came to Lila. He said softly: It’s she who disturbed me most. I noticed, I snapped, you talked to her the whole evening. Pietro shook his head energetically, he explained, surprisingly, that Lila had seemed to him the worst person. He said that she wasn’t at all my friend, that she hated me, that she was extraordinarily intelligent, that she was very fascinating, but her intelligence had been put to bad use—it was the evil intelligence that sows discord and hates life—and her fascination was the more intolerable, the fascination that enslaves and drives a person to ruin. Just like that.

  At first I pretended to disagree, but in fact I was pleased. I had been wrong then, Lila hadn’t affected him, Pietro was a man practiced in perceiving the subtext of every text and had easily picked up her unpleasant aspects. But soon it seemed to me that he was overdoing it. He said: I don’t understand how your relationship could have lasted so long, obviously you’ve carefully hidden from each other anything that could rupture it. And he added: either I haven’t understood anything about her—and it’s likely, I don’t know her—or I haven’t understood anything about you, and that is more upsetting. Finally he said the ugliest words: She and that Michele are made for each other, if they aren’t already lovers they will be. Then I revolted. I hissed that I couldn’t bear his pedantic overeducated bourgeois tone, that he must never again speak of my friend in that way, that he hadn’t understood anything. And as I was speaking I seemed to perceive something that at that moment not even he knew: Lila had affected him, seriously; Pietro had grasped her exceptionality so well that he was frightened by it and now felt the need to vilify her. He was afraid not for himself, I think, but for me and for our relationship. He was afraid that, even at a distance, she would tear me away from him, destroy us. And to protect me he overdid it, he slandered her, in a confused way he wanted me to be disgusted by her and expel her from my life. I whispered good night, and turned the other way.

  95.

  The next day I got up very early and packed the suitcases, I wanted to return to Florence right away. But I couldn’t. Marcello said he had promised his brother to take us to Acerra and since Pietro, although I let him know in every possible way that I wanted to leave, was willing, we left the children with Elisa and agreed to let that big man drive us to a long, low yellow building, a large shoe warehouse. The whole way I was silent, while Pietro asked questions about the Solaras’ business in Germany and Marcello equivocated, with disjointed phrases like: Italy, Germany, the world, Professò, I’m more Communist than the Communists, more revolutionary than the revolutionaries, for me if you could flatten everything and build it all again from the beginning I’d be in the first row. Anyway, he added, looking at me in the rear-view mirror in search of agreement, love for me comes before everything.

  When we got there, he led us into a low-ceilinged room, illuminated by neon lights. There was a strong odor of ink, of dust, of overheated insulators, mixed with that of uppers and shoe polish. Look, Marcello said, here’s the contraption Michele rented. I looked around, there was no one at the machine. The System 3 was completely unremarkable, an uninteresting piece of furniture backed up to a wall: metal panels, control knobs, a red switch, a wooden shelf, keyboards. I don’t understand anything about it, said Marcello, this is stuff that Lina knows, but she doesn’t have a schedule, she’s always in and out. Pietro carefully examined the panels, the control knobs, everything, but it was clear that modernity was disappointing him, all the more since Marcello answered every question with: This is my brother’s business, I have other problems on my mind.

  Lila showed up when we were about to leave. She was with two young women who were carrying metal containers. She seemed irritated, and ordered them around. As soon as she noticed us she changed her tone, she became polite but in a forced way, as if a part of her brain had broken free and were reaching toward urgent things to do with the job. She ignored Marcello, and addressed Pietro but as if she were also speaking to me. What do you care about this stuff, she said, teasing, if you’re really interested in it let’s make a deal: You work here and I’ll take up your things, novels, paintings, antiquities. Again I had the impression that she had aged before me, not only in her appearance but in her movements, her voice, her choice of a dull, vaguely bored manner in which to explain to us not only how the System 3 and the various machines worked but also the magnetic cards, the tapes, the five-inch disks, and other innovations that were on the way, like desktop computers that one could have at home for one’s personal use. She was no longer the Lila who on the telephone talked about the new job in childish tones, and she seemed far removed from Enzo’s enthusiasm. She acted like a super-competent employee on whom the boss has dumped one of the many headaches, the tourist visit. She wasn’t friendly toward me, she never joked with Pietro. Finally she ordered the girls to show my husband how the punch-card machine worked, then she pushed me into the hall, and said:

  “So? Did you congratulate Elisa? Does one sleep well in Marcello’s house? Are you glad the old witch is sixty?”

  I replied nervously: “If my sister wants it, what can I do, beat her over the head?”

  “You see? In the fairy tales one does as one wants, and in reality one does what one can.”

  “That’s not true. Who forced you to be used by Michele?”

  “I’m using him, not him me.”

  “You’re deceiving yourself.”

  “Wait and you’ll see.”

  “What do you want me to see, Lila, forget it.”

  “I repeat, I don’t like it when you act like that. You don’t know anything about us anymore, so it’s better if you say nothing.”

  “You mean I can criticize you only if I live in Naples?”

  “Naples, Florence: you aren’t doing anything anywhere, Lenù.”

  “Who says so?”

  “The facts.”

  “I know my facts, not you.”

  I was tense, she realized it. She gave me a conciliatory look.

  “You make me mad and I say things I don’t think. You did well to leave Naples, you did very well. But you know who’s back?”

  “Who?”

  “Nino.”

  The news burned my chest.

 
; “How do you know?”

  “Marisa told me. He got a professorship at the university.”

  “He didn’t like Milan?”

  Lila narrowed her eyes.

  “He married someone from Via Tasso who is related to half the Banco di Napoli. They have a child a year old.”

  I don’t know if I suffered, certainly I had trouble believing it.

  “He’s really married?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked at her to see what she had in mind.

  “Do you intend to see him?”

  “No. But if I happen to run into him, I want to tell him that Gennaro isn’t his.”

  96.

  She said to me this and some other fragmented things: Congratulations, you have an intelligent and handsome husband, he speaks as if he were religious even if he’s not a believer, he knows ancient and modern facts, in particular he knows a lot of things about Naples, I’m ashamed, I’m Neapolitan but I don’t know anything. Gennaro is growing up, my mother takes care of him more than I do, he’s smart in school. With Enzo things are good, we work a lot, we rarely see each other. Stefano has ruined himself with his own hands: the carabinieri found stolen goods in the back of the shop, I don’t know what, he was arrested; now he’s out but he has to be careful, he has nothing anymore, I give him money, not the other way around. You see how things change: if I had remained Signora Carracci I would be ruined, I would have ended up with my ass on the ground like all the Carraccis; instead I am Raffaella Cerullo and I’m the technical director for Michele Solara at four hundred and twenty thousand lire a month. The result is that my mother treats me like a queen, my father has forgiven me for everything, my brother sucks money out of me, Pinuccia says she loves me so much, their children call me Auntie. But it’s a boring job, completely the opposite of what it seemed at first: still too slow, you waste a lot of time, let’s hope that the new machines get here soon—they’re a lot faster. Or no. Speed consumes everything, as when photographs come out blurry. Alfonso used that expression, he used it in fun, he said that he came out blurry, without clear outlines. Lately he’s been talking to me constantly about friendship. He wants to be my friend, he would like to copy me on copying paper, he swears that he would like to be a girl like me. What sort of girl, I said to him, you’re a male, Alfò, you don’t know anything about what I’m like, and even if we’re friends and you study me and spy on me and copy me, you’ll never know anything. So—he was having a good time—what do I do, I suffer being the way I am. And he confessed to me that he has always loved Michele—yes, Michele Solara—and he wishes Michele would like him the way he thinks Michele likes me. You understand, Lenù, what happens to people: we have too much stuff inside and it swells us, breaks us. All right, I said, we’re friends, but get out of your mind that you can be a woman like me, all you’d succeed in being is what a woman is according to you men. You can copy me, make a portrait as precise as an artist, but my shit will always remain mine, and yours will be yours. Ah, Lenù, what happens to us all, we’re like pipes when the water freezes, what a terrible thing a dissatisfied mind is. You remember what we did with my wedding picture? I want to continue on that path. The day will come when I reduce myself to diagrams, I’ll become a perforated tape and you won’t find me anymore.

  Nonsense, that’s all. That talk in the hall confirmed to me that our relationship no longer had any intimacy. It had been reduced to succinct information, scant details, mean remarks, hot air, no revelation of facts and thoughts for me alone. Lila’s life was now hers and that was all, it seemed that she didn’t want to share it with anyone. Pointless to persist with questions like: What do you know about Pasquale, where did he end up, what do you have to do with Soccavo’s death, the kneecapping of Filippo, what led you to accept Michele’s offer, what do you make of his dependence on you. Lila had retreated into the unconfessable, any questions of mine could not become conversation, she would say: What are you thinking, you’re crazy, Michele, dependence, Soccavo, what are you talking about? Even now, as I write, I realize that I don’t have enough information to move on to Lila went, Lila did, Lila met, Lila planned. And yet, as I was returning in the car to Florence, I had the impression that there in the neighborhood, between backwardness and modernity, she had more history than I did. How much I had lost by leaving, believing I was destined for who knows what life. Lila, who had remained, had a very new job, she earned a lot of money, she acted in absolute freedom and according to schemes that were indecipherable. She was very attached to her son, she had been extremely devoted to him in the first years of his life, and she still kept an eye on him; but she seemed capable of being free of him as and when she wanted, he didn’t cause her the anxieties my daughters caused me. She had broken with her family, and yet she took on their burden and the responsibility for them whenever she could. She took care of Stefano who was in trouble, but without getting close to him. She hated the Solaras and yet she submitted to them. She was ironic about Alfonso and was his friend. She said she didn’t want to see Nino again, but I knew it wasn’t so, that she would see him. Hers was a life in motion, mine was stopped. While Pietro drove in silence and the children quarreled, I thought a lot about her and Nino, about what might happen. Lila will take him back, I fantasized, she’ll manage to see him again, she’ll influence him the way she knows how, she’ll get him away from his wife and son, she’ll use him in her war I no longer know against whom, she’ll induce him to get divorced, and meanwhile she’ll escape from Michele after taking a lot of money from him, and she’ll leave Enzo, and finally she’ll make up her mind to divorce Stefano, and maybe she’ll marry Nino, maybe not, but certainly they’ll put their intelligences together and who can say what they will become.

  Become. It was a verb that had always obsessed me, but I realized it for the first time only in that situation. I wanted to become, even though I had never known what. And I had become, that was certain, but without an object, without a real passion, without a determined ambition. I had wanted to become something—here was the point—only because I was afraid that Lila would become someone and I would stay behind. My becoming was a becoming in her wake. I had to start again to become, but for myself, as an adult, outside of her.

  97.

  I telephoned Adele as soon as I got home, to find out about the German translation that Antonio had sent me. It had come out of the blue, she didn’t know anything about it, either. She called the publisher. She called me back after a while to tell me that the book had been published not only in Germany but in France and Spain. So, I asked, what should I do? Adele answered in bewilderment: Nothing, be satisfied. Of course, I said, I’m very pleased, but from the practical point of view, I don’t know, should I go promote it abroad? She said affectionately: You don’t have to do anything, Elena, the book unfortunately didn’t sell anywhere.

  My mood got worse. I nagged the publisher, I asked for precise information about the translations, I was angry because no one cared to keep me informed, I ended up saying to an indifferent secretary: I found out about the German edition not from you but from a semiliterate friend: can you do your job or not? Then I apologized, I felt stupid. One after the other the French copy and the Spanish arrived, a copy in German without the crumpled look of the one sent by Antonio. They were ugly books: on the cover were women in black dresses, men with drooping mustaches and a cloth cap on their head, laundry hung out to dry. I leafed through them, I showed them to Pietro, I placed them on a bookshelf among other novels. Mute paper, useless paper.

  A time of weary discontent began. I called Elisa every day to find out if Marcello was still kind, if they had decided to get married. She responded to my apprehensions with carefree laughter and stories of a happy life, of trips by car or plane, of prosperity for our brothers, of well-being for our father and mother. Now, at times, I envied her. I was tired, irritable. Elsa was constantly getting sick, Dede required attention, Pietro lingered over his book wi
thout finishing it. I lost my temper for no reason. I scolded the children, I quarreled with my husband. The result was that all three were afraid of me. The girls, if I merely passed by their room, stopped playing and looked at me in alarm, and Pietro increasingly preferred the university library to our house. He went out early in the morning and came home at night. When he returned he seemed to have on him signs of the conflicts that I, now left out of all public activity, read about only in the newspapers: the fascists who knifed and killed, the comrades who did no less, the police who had by law a broad mandate to shoot and did so even here in Florence. Until what I had long been expecting happened: Pietro found himself at the center of a nasty episode that got a lot of attention in the papers. He failed a youth with an important surname, who was very active in the struggles. The young man insulted him in front of everyone and aimed a gun at him. Pietro, according to the story that an acquaintance told me, not him—nor was it a first-hand version, she wasn’t present—calmly recorded the failure, handed the exam book to the boy, and said more or less: Either be serious and shoot or you’d best get rid of that weapon immediately, because in a moment I’m going to go and report you. The boy aimed the gun at his face for long minutes, then he put it in his pocket, took the exam book, and fled. Pietro went to the carabinieri and the student was arrested. But it didn’t end there. The young man’s family went not to Pietro but to his father to persuade him to withdraw the charges. Professor Guido Airota tried to convince his son, and there were long phone calls, in the course of which, with some amazement, I heard the old man lose his temper, raise his voice. But Pietro wouldn’t give in. In great agitation, I confronted him, I asked: