The Neapolitan Novels

94.

He did go, the next day. He took the metro, got out at Campi Flegrei, and looked for the street, the building.

Of Enzo at that time I knew only that he couldn’t tolerate anything anymore: the whining of his mother, the burden of his siblings, the Camorra in the fruit-and-vegetable market, the rounds with the cart, which earned less and less, Pasquale’s Communist talk, and even his engagement to Carmen. None of it. But since he was reserved by nature, it was difficult to get an idea of what type of person he was. From Carmen I had learned that he was secretly studying on his own, he wanted to get an engineering diploma. It must have been on the same occasion—Christmas?—that Carmen told me he had kissed her only four times since he returned from military service, in the spring. She added, with irritation, “Maybe he’s not a man.”

That was what we often said, we girls, when someone didn’t care much about us: that he wasn’t a man. Enzo was, wasn’t he? I didn’t know anything about the dark depths that men could have, none of us did, and so for any confusing manifestation we had recourse to that formula. Some, like the Solaras, like Pasquale, Antonio, Donato Sarratore, even Franco Mari, my boyfriend at the Normale, wanted us in ways that were different—aggressive, subordinate, heedless, attentive—but that they wanted us there was no doubt. Others, like Alfonso, Enzo, Nino, had—according to equally diverse attitudes—an aloof self-possession, as if between us and them there were a wall and the work of scaling it were our job. In Enzo, after the Army, this characteristic had become accentuated, and he not only did nothing to please women but did nothing to please the entire world. He was short, and yet his body seemed to have become even smaller, as if through a sort of self-compression: it had become a compact block of energy. The skin over the bones of his face was stretched like an awning, and he had reduced motion to the pure compass of his legs, no other part of him moved, not arms or neck or head, not even his hair, which was a reddish-blond helmet. When he decided to go and see Lila he told Pasquale and Antonio, not in order to discuss it but in the form of a brief statement that served to cut off any discussion. Nor when he arrived at Campi Flegrei did he display any uncertainty. He found the street, found the doorway, went up the stairs, and rang with determination at the right door.