The Neapolitan Novels

40.

I talked to Lila. She started laughing, she said she would go to the doctor only if I swore that I wasn’t angry with her.

“All right.”

“Swear.”

“I swear.”

“Swear on your brothers, swear on Elisa.”

I said that going to the doctor wasn’t a big deal, but that if she didn’t want to go I didn’t care, she should do as she liked. She became serious.

“You don’t swear, then.”

“No.”

She was silent for a moment, then she admitted, eyes lowered, “All right, I was wrong.”

I made a grimace of irritation. “Go to the doctor and let me know.”

“You won’t come?”

“If I don’t go in the bookseller will fire me.”

“I’ll hire you,” she said ironically.

“Go to the doctor, Lila.”

Maria, Nunzia, and Pinuccia took her to the doctor. All three insisted on being present at the examination. Lila was obedient, disciplined: she had never submitted to that type of examination, and the whole time she kept her lips pressed together, eyes wide. When the doctor, a very old man who had been recommended by the neighborhood obstetrician, said knowingly that everything was in order, her mother and mother-in-law were relieved, but Pinuccia darkened, asked:

“Then why don’t children come and if they come why aren’t they born?”

The doctor noticed her spiteful tone and frowned.

“She’s very young,” he said. “She needs to get a little stronger.”

Get stronger. I don’t know if the doctor used exactly that verb, yet that was reported to me and it made an impression. It meant that Lila, in spite of the strength she displayed at all times, was weak. It meant that children didn’t come, or didn’t last in her womb, not because she possessed a mysterious power that annihilated them but because, on the contrary, she was an inadequate woman. My resentment faded. When, in the courtyard, she told me about the torture of the medical examination, using vulgar expressions for both the doctor and the three who accompanied her, I gave no signs of annoyance but in fact took an interest: no doctor had ever examined me, not even the obstetrician. Finally she said, sarcastically:

“He tore me with a metal instrument, I gave him a lot of money, and to reach what conclusion? That I need strengthening.”

“Strengthening of what sort?”

“I’m supposed to go to the beach and go swimming.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The beach, Lenù, sun, salt water. It seems that if you go to the beach you get stronger and children come.”

We said goodbye in a good mood. We had seen each other again and all in all we had felt good.

She came back the next day, affectionate toward me, irritated with her husband. Stefano wanted to rent a house at Torre Annunziata and send her there for all July and all August with Nunzia and Pinuccia, who also wanted to get stronger, even though she didn’t need to. They were already thinking how to manage with the shops. Alfonso would take care of Piazza dei Martiri, with Gigliola, until school began, and Maria would replace Lila in the new grocery. She said to me, desperate, “If I have to stay with my mother and Pinuccia for two months I’ll kill myself.”

“But you’ll go swimming, lie in the sun.”

“I don’t like swimming and I don’t like lying in the sun.”

“If I could get stronger in your place, I’d leave tomorrow.”

She looked at me with curiosity, and said softly, “Then come with me.”

“I have to work at Mezzocannone.”

She became agitated, she repeated that she would hire me, but this time she said it without irony. “Quit,” she began to press me, “and I’ll give you what the bookseller gives you.” She wouldn’t stop, she said that if I agreed, it would all become tolerable, even Pinuccia, with that bulging stomach that was already showing. I refused politely. I imagined what would happen in those two months in the burning-hot house in Torre Annunziata: quarrels with Nunzia, tears; quarrels with Stefano when he arrived on Saturday night; quarrels with Rino when he appeared with his brother-in-law, to join Pinuccia; quarrels especially with Pinuccia, continuous, muted or dramatic, sarcastic, malicious, and full of outrageous insults.

“I can’t,” I said firmly. “My mother wouldn’t let me.”

She went away angrily, our idyll was fragile. The next morning, to my surprise, Nino appeared in the bookstore, pale, thinner. He had had one exam after another, four of them. I, who fantasized about the airy spaces behind the walls of the university where well-prepared students and old sages discussed Plato and Kepler all day, listened to him spellbound, saying only, “How clever you are.” And as soon as the moment seemed apt, I volubly if somewhat inanely praised his article in Cronache Meridionali. He listened to me seriously, without interrupting, so that at a certain point I no longer knew what to say to show him that I knew his text thoroughly. Finally he seemed content, he exclaimed that not even Professor Galiani, not even Armando, not even Nadia had read it with such attention. And he started to talk to me about other essays he had in mind on the same subject. I stood listening to him in the doorway of the bookshop, pretending not to hear the owner calling me. After a shout that was sharper than the others, Nino muttered, What does that shit want; he stayed a little longer, with his insolent expression, and, saying that he was leaving for Ischia the next day, held out his hand to me. I shook it—it was slender, delicate—and he immediately drew me toward him, just slightly, leaned over, brushed my lips with his. It was a moment, then he left me with a light gesture, a caress on the palm with his fingers, and went off toward the Rettifilo. I stood watching as he walked away without turning, walked like a distracted chieftain who feared nothing in the world because the world existed only to submit to him.

That night I didn’t close my eyes. In the morning I got up early, I hurried to the new grocery. I found Lila just as she was pulling up the gate, Carmen hadn’t yet arrived. I said nothing about Nino, I said only, in the tone of someone who is asking the impossible and knows it:

“If you go to Ischia instead of Torre Annunziata, I’ll quit and come with you.”