The Neapolitan Novels

95.

When Nino did not return in ten minutes or an hour or even the next day, Lila turned spiteful. She felt not abandoned but humiliated, and although she had admitted to herself that she wasn’t the right woman for him, she still found it unbearable that he, disappearing from her life after only twenty-three days, had brutally confirmed it. In a rage she threw away everything he had left: books, underwear, socks, a sweater, even a pencil stub. She did it, she regretted it, she burst into tears. When finally the tears stopped, she felt ugly, swollen, stupid, cheapened by the bitter feelings that Nino, Nino whom she loved and by whom she believed she was loved in return, was provoking. The apartment seemed suddenly what it was, a squalid place through whose walls all the noises of the city reached her. She became aware of the bad smell, of the cockroaches that came in under the stairwell door, the stains of dampness on the ceiling, and felt for the first time that childhood was clutching at her again, not the childhood of dreams but the childhood of cruel privations, of threats and beatings. In fact suddenly she discovered that one fantasy that had comforted us since we were children—to become rich—had evaporated from her mind. Although the poverty of Campi Flegrei seemed to her darker than in the neighborhood of our games, although her situation was worse because of the child she was expecting, although in a few days she had used up the money she had brought, she discovered that wealth no longer seemed a prize and a compensation, it no longer spoke to her. The creased and evil-smelling paper money—piling up in the drawer of the cash register when she worked in the grocery, or in the colored metal box of the shop in Piazza dei Martiri—that in adolescence replaced the strongboxes of our childhood, overflowing with gold pieces and precious stones, no longer functioned: any remaining glitter was gone. The relationship between money and the possession of things had disappointed her. She wanted nothing for herself or for the child she would have. To be rich for her meant having Nino, and since Nino was gone she felt poor, a poverty that no money could obliterate. Since there was no remedy for that new condition—she had made too many mistakes since she was a child, and they had all converged in that last mistake: to believe that the son of Sarratore couldn’t do without her as she couldn’t without him, and that theirs was a unique, exceptional fate, and that the good fortune of loving each other would last forever and would extinguish the force of any other necessity—she felt guilty and decided not to go out, not to look for him, not to eat, not to drink, but to wait for her life and that of the baby to lose their outlines, any possible definition, and she found that there was nothing left in her mind, not even a trace of the thing that made her spiteful, that is to say the awareness of abandonment.

Then someone rang at the door.

She thought it was Nino: she opened it. It was Enzo. Seeing him didn’t disappoint her. She thought he had come to bring her some fruit—as he had done many years earlier, as a child, after he was defeated in the competition created by the principal and Maestra Oliviero, and had thrown a stone at her—and she burst out laughing. Enzo considered the laughter a sign of illness. He went in, but left the door open out of respect, he didn’t want the neighbors to think she was receiving men like a prostitute. He looked around, he glanced at her disheveled state, and although he didn’t see what still didn’t show, that is, the pregnancy, he deduced that she really needed help. In his serious way, completely without emotion, he said, even before she managed to calm down and stop laughing:

“We’re going now.”

“Where?”

“To your husband.”

“Did he send you?”

“No.”

“Who sent you?”

“No one sent me.”

“I’m not coming.”

“Then I’ll stay here with you.”

“Forever?”

“Until you’re persuaded.”

“And your job?”

“I’m tired of it.”

“And Carmen?”

“You are much more important.”

“I’ll tell her, then she’ll leave you.”

“I’ll tell her, I’ve already decided.”

From then on he spoke distantly, in a low voice. She answered him laughing, in a teasing way, as if none of their words were real, as if they were speaking in fun of a world, of people, of feelings that hadn’t existed for a long time. Enzo realized that, and for a while he said nothing more. He went through the house, found Lila’s suitcase, filled it with the things in the drawers, in the closet. Lila let him do it, because she considered him not the flesh-and-blood Enzo but a shadow, in color, as in the movies, who although he spoke was nevertheless an effect of the light. Having packed the suitcase, Enzo confronted her again and made a very surprising speech. He said, in his concentrated yet detached way,

“Lina, I’ve loved you since we were children. I never told you because you are very beautiful and very intelligent, and I am short, ugly, and worthless. Now return to your husband. I don’t know why you left him and I don’t want to know. I know only that you can’t stay here, you don’t deserve to live in filth. I’ll take you to the entrance of the building and wait: if he treats you badly, I’ll come up and kill him. But he won’t, he’ll be glad you’ve come back. But let’s make a pact: in the case that you can’t come to an agreement with your husband, I brought you back to him and I will come and get you. All right?”

Lila stopped laughing, she narrowed her eyes, she listened to him attentively for the first time. Interactions between Enzo and her had been very rare until that moment, but the times I had been present they had always amazed me. There was something indefinable between them, originating in the confusion of childhood. She trusted Enzo, I think, she felt she could count on him. When the young man took the suitcase and headed toward the door, which had remained open, she hesitated a moment, then followed him.