The Neapolitan Novels

68.

I was enraged, frightened, unhappy with my every word or gesture. As soon as Michele and Gigliola were far enough away I said to Lila, so that Nino could also hear me: “He saw you.”

Nino asked uneasily, “Who is he?”

“A shit Camorrist who thinks he’s God’s gift,” said Lila contemptuously.

I corrected her immediately, Nino should know: “He’s one of her husband’s partners. He’ll tell Stefano everything.”

“What everything,” Lila protested, “there’s nothing to tell.”

“You know perfectly well that they’ll tell on you.”

“Yes? And who gives a damn.”

“I give a damn.”

“Don’t worry. Because even if you won’t help me, things will go as they should go.”

And as if I weren’t present, she went on to make arrangements with Nino for the next day. But while she, precisely because of that encounter with Michele Solara, seemed to have multiplied her energies, he seemed like a windup toy that has run down. He murmured:

“Are you sure you won’t get yourself in trouble because of me?”

Lila caressed his cheek. “You don’t want to anymore?”

The caress seemed to revive him. “I’m just worried for you.”

We soon left Nino, we returned home. Along the way I sketched catastrophic scenarios—“Michele will talk to Stefano tonight, Stefano will rush over here tomorrow morning, he won’t find you at home, Nunzia will send him to Barano, he won’t find you at Barano, either, you’ll lose everything, Lila, listen to me, you’ll ruin not only yourself but you’ll ruin me, too, my mother will kill me”—but she confined herself to listening absent-mindedly, smiling, repeating in varying formulations a single idea: I love you, Lenù, and I will always love you; so I hope that you feel at least once in your life what I’m feeling at this moment.

Then I thought: so much the worse for you. We stayed home that night. Lila was nice to her mother, she wanted to cook, she wanted her to be served, she cleared, washed the dishes, sat on her lap, put her arms around her neck, resting her forehead against hers with an unexpected sadness. Nunzia, who wasn’t used to those kindnesses and must have found them embarrassing, at a certain point burst into tears and amid her tears uttered a phrase convoluted by anxiety: “Please, Lina, no mother has ever had a daughter like you, don’t make me die of sorrow.”

Lila made fun of her affectionately and took her to her room. In the morning she dragged me out of bed; part of me was so anguished that it didn’t want to get up and be conscious of the day. In the mini cab to Forio, I laid out other terrible scenarios that left her completely indifferent. “Nella’s gone”; “Nella really has guests and has no room for me”; “The Sarratores decide to come here to Forio to visit their son.” She continued to reply in a joking tone: “If Nella’s gone, Nino’s mother will welcome you”; “If there’s no room you’ll come back and sleep at our house”; “If the whole Sarratore family knocks at the door of Bruno’s house we won’t open it.” And we went on like that until, a little before nine, we arrived at our destination. Nino was at the window waiting, he hurried to open the door. He gave me a nod of greeting, he drew Lila inside.

What until that door could still be avoided from that moment became an unstoppable mechanism. In the same cab, at Lila’s expense, I was taken to Barano. On the way I realized that I couldn’t truly hate them. I felt bitterness toward Nino, I certainly had some hostile feelings toward Lila, I could even wish death on both of them, but almost as a kind of incantation that was capable, paradoxically, of saving all three of us. Hatred no. Rather, I hated myself, I despised myself. I was there, I was there on the island, the air stirred by the cab’s movement assailed me with the intense odors of the vegetation from which night was evaporating. But it was a mortified presence, submissive to the demands of others. I was living in them, unobtrusively. I couldn’t cancel out the images of the embraces, kisses in the empty house. Their passion invaded me, disturbed me. I loved them both and so I couldn’t love myself, feel myself, affirm myself with a need for life of my own, one that had the same blind, mute force as theirs. So it seemed to me.