The Neapolitan Novels

74.

Once we were home Lila found words again, along with an overexcited expansiveness. Nunzia welcomed us, greatly relieved by our return and yet hostile. She said she hadn’t closed an eye, she had heard inexplicable noises in the house, had been afraid of ghosts and murderers. Lila embraced her and Nunzia almost pushed her away.

“Did you have fun?” she asked.

“A lot of fun, I want to change everything.”

“What do you want to change?”

Lila laughed. “I’ll think about it and let you know.”

“Let your husband know first of all,” Nunzia said, in an unexpectedly sharp tone.

Her daughter looked at her in amazement, a pleased, and perhaps slightly moved, amazement, as if the suggestion seemed to her right and urgent.

“Yes,” she said, and went to her room, then to the bathroom.

She came out after a while and, still in her slip, motioned me to come to her room. I went reluctantly. She gazed at me with feverish eyes, she spoke rapidly, almost breathlessly: “I want to study what he studies.”

“He’s at the university, the subjects are difficult.”

“I want to read the same books as him, I want to understand the things he thinks, I want to learn not for the university but for him.”

“Lila, don’t act crazy: we said that you would see him this time and that’s all. What’s wrong with you, calm down, Stefano is about to get here.”

“Do you think, if I work hard, I can understand the things he understands?”

I couldn’t take it anymore. What I already knew and what I nevertheless was hiding from myself became at that moment perfectly clear: she, too, now saw in Nino the only person able to save her. She had taken possession of my old feeling, had made it her own. And, knowing what she was like, I had no doubts: she would knock down every obstacle and continue to the end. I answered harshly.

“No. It’s complicated stuff, you’re too behind in everything, you don’t read a newspaper, you don’t know who’s in the government, you don’t even know who runs Naples.”

“And do you know those things?”

“No.”

“He thinks you know them, I told you, he thinks a lot of you.”

I felt myself flushing, I muttered, “I’m trying to learn, and when I don’t know I pretend to know.”

“Even pretending to know, one gradually learns. Can you help me?”

“No, and no, Lila, it’s not something you should do. Leave him alone, because of you he’s already saying that he wants to stop going to the university.”

“He’ll study, he was born for that. And yet there are a lot of things that even he doesn’t know. If I study the things he doesn’t know, I’ll tell him when he needs them and so I’ll be useful to him. I have to change, Lenù, immediately.”

I burst out again: “You’re married, you have to get him out of your head, you’re not right for what he needs.”

“Who is right?”

I wanted to wound her, I said, “Nadia.”

“He left her for me.”

“So everything’s fine? I don’t want to listen to you anymore, you’re both out of your minds, do what you like.”

I went to my room, consumed by unhappiness.