The Neapolitan Novels

52.

Eventually she became quieter, but she spent the evening sulking, as if we had somehow offended her. When she was rude even to Nunzia, brusquely criticizing the way the pasta was cooked, Lila flared up and, breaking into a fierce dialect, dumped on her all the fantastic insults she was capable of. Pina decided to sleep with me that night.

She tossed and turned in her sleep. And with two people in the room the heat made it almost impossible to breathe. Soaked with sweat, I resigned myself to opening the window and was tormented by the mosquitoes. Then I couldn’t sleep at all, I waited for dawn, I got up.

Now I, too, was in a bad mood, I had three or four disfiguring bites on my face. I went to the kitchen, Nunzia was washing our dirty clothes. Lila, too, was already up, she had had her bread-and-milk, and was reading another of my books, who knows when she had stolen it from me. As soon as she saw me, she gave me a searching glance and asked, with a genuine concern that I didn’t expect: “How is Pinuccia?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you angry?”

“Yes, I didn’t sleep a wink, and look at my face.”

“You can’t see anything.”

“You can’t see anything.”

“Nino and Bruno won’t see anything, either.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“You still like Nino?”

“I’ve told you no a hundred times.”

“Calm down.”

“I am calm.”

“Let’s think about Pinuccia.”

“You think about her, she’s your sister-in-law, not mine.”

“You’re angry.”

“Yes, I am.”

The day was even hotter than the one before. We went to the beach apprehensively, the bad mood traveled from one to the other like an infection.

Halfway there Pinuccia realized she had forgotten her towel and had another attack of nerves. Lila kept going, head down, without even turning around.

“I’ll go get it,” I offered.

“No, I’m going back to the house, I don’t feel like the beach.”

“Do you feel sick?”

“I’m perfectly fine.”

“Then what?”

“Look at the belly I’ve got.”

I looked at her belly, I said to her without thinking: “What about me? Don’t you see these bites on my face?”

She started yelling, she called me an idiot, and ran away to catch up with Lila.

Once at the beach she apologized, muttering, You’re so good that sometimes you make me mad.

“I’m not good.”

“I meant that you’re clever.”

“I’m not clever.”

Lila, who was trying in any case to ignore us, staring at the sea in the direction of Forio, said coldly, “Stop it, they’re coming.”

Pinuccia started. “The long and the short of it,” she murmured, with a sudden softness in her voice, and she put on some lipstick even though she already had enough.

The boys’ mood was just as bad as ours. Nino had a sarcastic tone, he said to Lila, “Tonight the husbands arrive?”

“Of course.”

“And what nice things will you do?”

“We’ll eat, drink, and sleep.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow we’ll eat, drink, and sleep.”

“Do they stay Sunday night, too?”

“No, on Sunday we eat, drink, and sleep only in the afternoon.”

Hiding behind a tone of self-mockery, I forced myself to say, “I’m free: I’m not eating or drinking or going to sleep.”

Nino looked at me as if he were becoming aware of something he had never noticed, so that I passed a hand over my right cheek, where I had an especially big mosquito bite. He said to me seriously, “Good, we’ll meet here tomorrow morning at seven and then climb the mountain. When we get back, the beach till late. What do you say?”

I felt in my veins the warmth of elation, I said with relief, “All right, at seven, I’ll bring food.”

Pinuccia asked, unhappily, “And us?”

“You have husbands,” he said, and pronounced “husbands” as if he were saying toads, snakes, spiders, so that she got up abruptly and went to the water’s edge.

“She’s a little oversensitive at the moment,” I said in apology, “but it’s because of her interesting condition, usually she’s not like that.”

Bruno said in his patient voice, “I’ll take her to get some coconut.”

We watched him as, small but well proportioned, his chest powerful, his thighs strong, he moved over the sand at a steady pace, as if the sun had neglected to burn the grains he walked on. When Bruno and Pina set off for the beach bar, Lila said, “Let’s go swimming.”