The Neapolitan Novels

16.

I dragged Lila into our old courtyard, I couldn’t wait to tell Antonio what I had done for him. I confided to her, trembling with excitement: as soon as he calms down a little, I’ll leave him, but she had no comment, she seemed distracted.

I called. Antonio looked out, came down, serious. He said hello to Lila, apparently without noticing how she was dressed, how she was made up, in fact trying to look at her as little as possible, maybe because he was afraid that I would read in his face some male agitation. I told him that I couldn’t stay, I had only time to give him some good news. He listened, but as I was speaking I realized that he was pulling back as if before the point of a knife. He promised he’ll help you, I said anyway, emphatically, enthusiastically, and asked Lila to confirm it.

“Marcello said so, right?”

Lila confined herself to assenting. But Antonio had turned very pale, he lowered his eyes. He muttered, in a strangled voice:

“I never asked you to talk to the Solaras.”

Lila said right away, lying, “It was my idea.”

Antonio answered without looking at her. “Thank you, it wasn’t necessary.”

He said goodbye to her—said goodbye to her, not to me—turned his back, and vanished into the doorway.

I felt sick to my stomach. Where was my mistake, why had he gotten angry like that? On the street I exploded, saying to Lila that Antonio was worse than his mother, Melina, the same unstable blood, I couldn’t take it anymore. She let me speak and meanwhile wanted me go to her house with her. When we got there, she asked me to come in.

“Stefano’s there,” I objected, but that wasn’t the reason. I was upset by Antonio’s reaction and wanted to be alone, to figure out where I had made the mistake.

“Five minutes and you can go.”

I went up. Stefano was in his pajamas, disheveled, unshaved. He greeted me politely, glanced at his wife, at the package of pastries.

“You were at the Bar Solara?”

“Yes.”

“Dressed like that?”

“I don’t look nice?”

Stefano shook his head ill-humoredly, opened the package.

“Would you like a pastry, Lenù?”

“No, thank you, I have to go and eat.”

He bit into a pastry, turned to his wife. “Who did you see at the bar?”

“Your friends,” said Lila. “They paid me a lot of compliments. Isn’t that true, Lenù?”

She recounted every word the Solaras had said to her, except the matter of Antonio, that is to say the real reason we had gone to the bar, the reason that, I thought, she had decided to go with me. Then she concluded, in a tone of deliberate satisfaction, “Michele wants to put an enlargement of the photograph in the store in Piazza dei Martiri.”

“And you told him it was all right?”

“I told him they had to speak to you.”

Stefano finished the pastry in a single bite, then licked his fingers. He said, as if this were what had upset him most, “See what you force me to do? Tomorrow, because of you, I have to go and waste time with the dressmaker on the Rettifilo.” He sighed, he turned to me: “Lenù, you who are a respectable girl, try to explain to your friend that I have to work in this neighborhood, that she shouldn’t make me look like a jerk. Have a good Sunday, and say hello to Papa and Mamma for me.”

He went into the bathroom.

Lila behind his back made a teasing grimace, then went with me to the door.

“I’ll stay if you want,” I said.

“He’s a son of a bitch, don’t worry.”

She repeated, in a heavy male voice, words like try to explain to your friend, she shouldn’t make me look like a jerk, and the caricature made her eyes light up.

“If he beats you?”

“What can beatings do to me? A little time goes by and I’m better than before.”

On the landing she said again, again in a masculine voice: Lenù, I have to work in this neighborhood, and then I felt obliged to do Antonio, I whispered, Thank you, but there was no need, and suddenly it was as if we saw ourselves from the outside, both of us in trouble with our men, standing there on the threshold, actors in a recital of women, and we started laughing. I said: The minute we move we’ve done something wrong, who can understand men, ah, how much trouble they are. I hugged her warmly, and left. But I hadn’t even reached the bottom of the stairs when I heard Stefano shouting odious curses. Now he had the voice of an ogre, like his father’s.