The Neapolitan Novels

50.

It was a dull Sunday. I suffered from the heat all night, I didn’t dare open the window for fear of the mosquitoes. I fell asleep, woke up, fell asleep again. Go to Barano? With what result? Spend the day playing with Ciro, Pino, and Clelia, while Nino took long swims or sat in the sun without saying a word, in mute conflict with his father. I woke up late, at ten, and as soon as I opened my eyes a sensation of loss, as if from a great distance, came over me and pained me.

I learned from Nunzia that Pinuccia and Rino had already gone to the beach, while Stefano and Lila were still sleeping. I soaked my bread in the caffelatte without wanting it, I conclusively gave up going to Barano. I went to the beach, anxious and sad.

I found Rino sleeping in the sun, his hair wet, his heavy body lying, stomach down, on the sand, and Pinuccia walking back and forth on the shore. I invited her to go toward the fumaroles, she refused rudely. I walked for a long time alone in the direction of Forio to calm myself.

The morning passed slowly. When I came back I went swimming, then lay in the sun. I had to listen to Rino and Pinuccia, who, as if I weren’t there, were murmuring to each other phrases such as:

“Don’t go.”

“I have to work: the shoes have to be ready for the fall. Did you see them, do you like them?”

“Yes, but the things Lina made you add are ugly, take them off.”

“No, they look good.”

“You see? What I say counts for nothing with you.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s very true, you don’t love me anymore.”

“I do love you, and you know how much I want you.”

“No way, look at the belly I have.”

“I’d give that belly ten thousand kisses. For the whole week all I do is think about you.”

“Then don’t go to work.”

“I can’t.”

“Then I’ll leave tonight, too.”

“We’ve already paid our share, you have to have your vacation.”

“I don’t want it anymore.”

“Why?”

“Because as soon as I fall asleep I have terrible dreams and I’m awake all night.”

“Even when you sleep with my sister?”

“Even more, if your sister could kill me, she would.”

“Go sleep with my mamma.”

“Your mamma snores.”

Pinuccia’s tone of voice was unbearable. All day I tried to figure out the reasons for her complaints. That she didn’t sleep much or very well was true. But that she wanted Rino to stay, or that she really wanted to leave with him, seemed to me a lie. At one point I was convinced that she was trying to tell him something that she herself didn’t know and so could express only in the form of peevishness. But then I forgot about it, I had other things to think about. Lila’s exuberance, first of all.

When she appeared at the beach with her husband, she seemed happier than the night before. She wanted to show him how she had learned to swim, and together they headed away from the shore—out where it’s deep, Stefano said, even though it was really only a few meters from the shore. With her elegant and precise strokes, and the rhythmic turn of the head to breathe that she had by now learned, moving her mouth away from the water, she immediately left him behind. Then she stopped to wait for him, laughing, until he caught up, clumsily flailing his arms, his head straight up, as he snorted at the water that sprayed in his face.

She was even livelier in the afternoon, when they went for a ride on the Lambretta. Rino wanted to drive around, too, and since Pinuccia refused—she was afraid of falling and losing the baby—he said to me, “You come, Lenù.” It was my first such experience, with Stefano in the lead, Rino following, and the wind, and the fear of falling or crashing, and the increasing excitement, the strong odor that came from the sweaty back of Pinuccia’s husband, and the swaggering self-confidence that pushed him to violate every rule and to respond to any protests according to the habits of the neighborhood, braking suddenly, threatening, always ready to fight to assert his right to do as he pleased. It was fun, a return to those feelings of a bad girl, very different from the ones Nino inspired in me when he appeared on the beach, in the afternoon, with his friend.

In the course of that Sunday I named the two boys often: I especially liked saying the name of Nino. I quickly noticed that both Pinuccia and Lila acted as if it hadn’t been the three of us who spent time with Bruno and Nino, but only me. As a result, when their husbands said goodbye, hurrying off to catch the ferry, Stefano asked me to say hello to Soccavo’s son for him, as if I were the only one who would have the opportunity to see him, and Rino teased me, with remarks like: Who do you like more, the son of the poet or the son of the mortadella maker? Who do you think is handsomer? as if his wife and sister had no basis for forming their own opinions.

Finally, the reactions of both to the departure of their husbands annoyed me. Pinuccia became cheerful, she wanted to wash her hair, which—she said aloud—was full of sand. Lila lounged about the house listlessly, then she lay down on her unmade bed, paying no attention to the mess in the room. When I went to say good night I saw that she hadn’t even undressed: she was reading the book about Hiroshima, frowning, eyes narrowed. I didn’t reproach her, I said only, perhaps a little sharply:

“How is it that you suddenly feel like reading again?”

“It’s none of your business,” she answered.