The Neapolitan Novels

60.

The days that followed clarified the situation further. Usually Nino arrived with a newspaper, a book: no more. Ani­mated conversations about the human condition faded, were reduced to distracted phrases that sought an opening for more private words. Lila and Nino got in the habit of swimming far out together, until they were indistinguishable from the shore. Or they compelled us to long walks that consolidated the division into couples. And never, absolutely never, was I beside Nino, nor was Lila with Bruno. It became natural for the two of them to be behind. Whenever I turned around suddenly I had the impression of having caused a painful laceration: hands, mouths springing backward as if because of some nervous tic.

I suffered but, I have to admit, with a permanent undercurrent of disbelief that caused the suffering to come in waves. It seemed to me that I was watching a performance without substance: they were playing at being together, both knowing well that they were not and couldn’t be: the one already had a girlfriend, the other was actually married. I looked at them at times like fallen divinities: once so clever, so intelligent, and now so stupid, involved in a stupid game. I planned to say to Lila, to Nino, to both of them: who do you think you are, come back to earth.

I couldn’t do it. In the space of two or three days things changed further. They began to hold hands without hiding it, with an offensive shamelessness, as if they had decided that with us it wasn’t worth pretending. They often quarreled jokingly, then grabbed each other, hit each other, held each other tight, tumbled on the sand together. When we were walking, if they spotted an abandoned hut, an old bath house reduced to its foundations, a path that got lost among the wild vegetation, they decided like children to go exploring and didn’t invite us to follow. They went off with him in the lead, she behind, in silence. When they lay in the sun, they lessened the distance between them as much as possible. At first they were satisfied with the slight contact of shoulders, their arms, legs, feet just grazing. Later, returning from that interminable daily swim, they lay beside each other on Lila’s towel, which was bigger, and soon, with a natural gesture, Nino put his arm around her shoulders, she rested her head on his chest. They even, once, went so far as to kiss on the lips, a light, quick kiss. I thought: she’s mad, they’re mad. If someone from Naples who knows Stefano sees them? If the supplier who got the house for us passes by? Or if Nunzia, now, should decide to make a visit to the beach?

I couldn’t believe such recklessness, and yet time and time again they crossed the limit. Seeing each other during the day no longer seemed sufficient; Lila decided that she had to call Stefano every night, but she rudely rejected Nunzia’s offer to go with us. After dinner she obliged me to go to Forio. She made a quick phone call to her husband and then we went walking, she with Nino, I with Bruno. We never returned home before midnight and the two boys came with us along the dark beach.

On Friday night, that is, the day before Stefano returned, she and Nino argued, unexpectedly, not in fun but seriously. We were eating ice cream at the table, Lila had gone to telephone. Nino, grim-faced, took out of his pocket a number of pages with writing on both sides and began to read, giving no explanation, but isolating himself from the dull conversation between Bruno and me. When she returned, he didn’t even glance at her, he didn’t put the pages back in his pocket, but went on reading. Lila waited half a minute, then asked in a lighthearted tone:

“Is it so interesting?”

“Yes,” Nino said, without looking up.

“Then read aloud, we want to hear it.”

“It’s my business, it has nothing to do with the rest of you.”

“What is it?” Lila asked, but it was clear that she knew already.

“A letter.”

“From whom?”

“From Nadia.”

With a sudden, lightning-like move, she reached out and tore the pages from his grasp. Nino started, as if a giant insect had stung him, but he made no effort to get the letter back, even when Lila began to read it to us in declamatory tones, in a loud voice. It was a rather childish love letter, carrying on from line to line with sentimental variations on the theme of missing. Bruno listened silently, with an embarrassed smile, and I, seeing that Nino showed no sign of taking the thing as a joke, but was staring darkly at his sandaled, suntanned feet, whispered to Lila, “That’s enough, give it back to him.”

As soon as I spoke she stopped reading, but her expression of amusement lingered, and she didn’t give the letter back.

“You’re embarrassed, eh?” she asked. “You’re the one to blame. How can you have a girlfriend who writes like that?”

Nino said nothing, he went on staring at his feet. Bruno interrupted, also lightheartedly: “Maybe, when you fall in love with someone, you don’t make her take an exam to see if she can write a love letter.”

But Lila didn’t even turn to look at him, she spoke to Nino as if they were continuing in front of us one of their secret conversations:

“Do you love her? And why? Explain it to us. Because she lives on Corso Vittorio Emanuele in a house full of books and old paintings? Because she speaks in a simpering little voice? Because she’s the daughter of the professor?”

Finally Nino roused himself and said abruptly, “Give me back those pages.”

“I’ll only give them back if you tear them up immediately, here, in front of us.”

Countering Lila’s tone of amusement Nino uttered grave monosyllables, with obvious aggressive undertones. “And then?”

“Then we’ll all write Nadia a letter together in which you tell her you’re leaving her.”

“And then?”

“We’ll mail it tonight.”

He said nothing for a moment, then he agreed. “Let’s do it.”

Lila pointed to the pages in disbelief.

“You’re really going to tear them up?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll leave her?”

“Yes. But on one condition.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“That you leave your husband. Now. Let’s all of us go together to the phone and you’ll tell him.”

Those words provoked in me a violent emotion. At the time I didn’t know why. As he spoke he raised his voice so unexpectedly that it cracked. And Lila’s eyes, as she listened to him, suddenly narrowed to slits, following a mode of behavior that I knew well. Now she would change her tone. Now, I thought, she’ll turn mean. She said to him, in fact: How dare you. She said to him: To whom do you think you’re speaking. She said to him: “How can you think of putting this letter, your foolishness with that whore from a good family, on the same plane as me, my husband, my marriage and everything that is my life? You really think you’re something, but you don’t get the joke. In fact you don’t understand a thing. Nothing, you heard me, and don’t make that face. Let’s go to bed, Lenù.”