The Neapolitan Novels

33.

The preparations for Rino and Pinuccia’s wedding were carried out in a rush. I was not much concerned with it, I had my final class essays, the final oral exams. And then something else happened that caused me great agitation. Professor Galiani, who was in the habit of violating the teachers’ code of behavior with indifference, invited me—me and no one else in the school—to her house, to a party that her children were giving.

It was unusual enough that she lent me books and newspapers, that she had directed me to a march for peace and a demanding lecture. Now she had gone over the limit: she had taken me aside and given me that invitation. “Come as you like,” she had said, “alone or with someone, with your boyfriend or without: the important thing is to come.” Like that, a few days before the end of the school year, without worrying about how much I had to study, without worrying about the earthquake that it set off inside me.

I had immediately said yes, but I quickly discovered that I would never have the courage to go. A party at any professor’s house was unthinkable, imagine at the house of Professor Galiani. For me it was as if I were to present myself at the royal palace, curtsey to the queen, dance with the princes. A great pleasure but also an act of violence, like a yank: to be dragged by the arm, forced to do a thing that, although it appeals to you, you know is not suitable—you know that, if circumstances did not oblige you, you would happily avoid doing it. Probably it didn’t even occur to Professor Galiani that I had nothing to wear. In class I wore a shapeless black smock. What did she expect there was, the professor, under that smock: clothes and slips and underwear like hers? There was inadequacy, rather, there was poverty, poor breeding. I possessed a single pair of worn-out shoes. My only nice dress was the one I had worn to Lila’s wedding, but now it was hot, the dress was fine for March but not for the end of May. And yet the problem was not just what to wear. There was the solitude, the awkwardness of being among strangers, kids with ways of talking among themselves, joking, with tastes I didn’t know. I thought of asking Alfonso if he would go with me, he was always kind to me. But—I recalled—Alfonso was a schoolmate and Professor Galiani had addressed the invitation to me alone. What to do? For days I was paralyzed by anxiety, I thought of talking to the professor and coming up with some excuse. Then it occurred to me to ask Lila’s advice.

She was as usual in a difficult period, she had a yellow bruise under one cheekbone. She didn’t welcome the news.

“Why are you going there?”

“She invited me.”

“Where does this professor live?”

“Corso Vittorio Emanuele.”

“Can you see the sea from her house?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does her husband do?”

“A doctor at the Cotugno.”

“And the children are still in school?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want one of my dresses?”

“You know they don’t fit me.”

“You just have a bigger bust.”

“Everything of me is bigger, Lila.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I shouldn’t go?”

“It’s better.”

“O.K., I won’t go.”

She was visibly satisfied with that decision. I said goodbye, left the grocery, turned onto a street where stunted oleander bushes grew. But I heard her calling me, I turned back.

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

“Where?”

“To the party.”

“Stefano won’t let you.”

“We’ll see. Tell me if you want to take me or not.”

“Of course I want to.”

She became at that point so pleased that I didn’t dare try to make her change her mind. But already on the way home I felt that my situation had become worse. None of the obstacles that prevented me from going to the party had been removed, and that offer of Lila’s confused me even more. The reasons were tangled and I had no intention of enumerating them, but if I had I would have been confronted by contradictory statements. I was afraid that Stefano wouldn’t let her come. I was afraid that Stefano would let her. I was afraid that she would dress in an ostentatious fashion, the way she had when she went to the Solaras. I was afraid that, whatever she wore, her beauty would explode like a star and everyone would be eager to grab a fragment of it. I was afraid that she would express herself in dialect, that she would say something vulgar, that it would become obvious that school for her had ended with an elementary-school diploma. I was afraid that, if she merely opened her mouth, everyone would be hypnotized by her intelligence and Professor Galiani herself would be entranced. I was afraid that the professor would find her both presumptuous and naïve and would say to me: Who is this friend of yours, stop seeing her. I was afraid she would understand that I was only Lila’s pale shadow and would be interested not in me any longer but in her, she would want to see her again, she would undertake to make her go back to school.

For a while I avoided the grocery. I hoped that Lila would forget about the party, that the day would come and I would go almost secretly, and then I would tell her: you didn’t let me know. Instead she soon came to see me, which she hadn’t done for a long time. She had persuaded Stefano not only to take us but also to come and get us, and she wanted to know what time we were to be at the professor’s house.

“What are you going to wear?” I asked anxiously.

“Whatever you wear.”

“I’m going to wear a blouse and skirt.”

“Then I will, too.”

“And Stefano is sure that he’ll take us and then come and get us?”

“Yes.”

“How did you persuade him?”

She made a face, cheerfully, saying that by now she knew how to handle him. “If I want something,” she whispered, as if she herself didn’t want to hear, “I just have to act a little like a whore.”

She said it like that, in dialect, and added other crude, self-mocking expressions, to make me understand the revulsion her husband provoked in her, the disgust she felt at herself. My anxiety increased. I should tell her, I thought, that I’m not going to the party, I should tell her that I changed my mind. I knew, naturally, that behind the appearance of the disciplined Lila, at work from morning to night, there was a Lila who was anything but submissive; yet, in particular now that I was assuming the responsibility of introducing her into the house of Professor Galiani, the recalcitrant Lila frightened me, seemed to me increasingly spoiled by her very refusal to surrender. What would happen if, in the presence of the professor, something made her rebel? What would happen if she decided to use the language she had just used with me? I said cautiously:

“There, please, don’t talk like that.”

She looked at me in bewilderment. “Like what?”

“Like now.”

She was silent for a moment, then she asked, “Are you ashamed of me?”