The Neapolitan Novels

96.

Enzo did wait under Lila and Stefano’s windows the night he took her home, and, if Stefano had beaten her, he probably would have gone up and killed him. But Stefano didn’t beat her; he welcomed her into her home, which was clean and tidy. He behaved as if his wife really had gone to stay with me in Pisa, even if there was no evidence that that was what had happened. Lila, on the other hand, did not take refuge in that excuse or any other. The following day, when she woke up, she said reluctantly, “I’m pregnant,” and he was so happy that when she added, “The baby isn’t yours,” he burst out laughing, with genuine joy. When she angrily repeated that phrase, once, twice, three times, and even tried to hit him with clenched fists, he cuddled her, kissed her, murmuring, “Enough, Lina, enough, enough, I’m too happy. I know that I’ve treated you badly but now let’s stop, don’t say mean things to me,” and his eyes filled with tears of joy.

Lila knew that people tell themselves lies to defend against the truth of the facts, but she was amazed that her husband was able to lie to himself with such joyful conviction. On the other hand she didn’t care, by now, about Stefano or about herself, and after again repeating for a while, without emotion, “The baby isn’t yours,” she withdrew into the lethargy of pregnancy. He prefers to put off the pain, she thought, and all right, let him do as he likes: if he doesn’t want to suffer now, he’ll suffer later.

She went on to make a list of what she wanted and what she didn’t want: she didn’t want to work in the shop in Piazza dei Martiri or in the grocery; she didn’t want to see anyone, friends, relatives, especially the Solaras; she wished to stay home and be a wife and mother. He agreed, sure that she would change her mind in a few days. But Lila secluded herself in the apartment, without showing any interest in Stefano’s business, or that of her brother and her father, or in the affairs of his relatives or of her own relatives.

A couple of times Pinuccia came with her son, Fernando, whom they called Dino, but she didn’t open the door.

Once Rino came, very upset, and Lila let him in, listened to all his chatter about how angry the Solaras were about her disappearance from the shop, about how badly things were going with Cerullo shoes, because Stefano thought only of his own affairs and was no longer investing. When at last he was silent, she said, “Rino, you’re the older brother, you’re a grownup, you have a wife and son, do me a favor: live your life without constantly turning to me.” He was hurt and he went away depressed, after a complaint about how everyone was getting richer while he, because of his sister, who didn’t care about the family, the blood of the Cerullos, but now felt she was a Carracci, was in danger of losing the little he had gained.

It happened that even Michele Solara went to the trouble of coming to see her—in the beginning even twice a day—at times when he was sure that Stefano wouldn’t be there. But she never let him in, she sat silently in the kitchen, almost without breathing, so that once, before he left, he shouted at her from the street: “Who the fuck do you think you are, whore, you had an agreement with me and you didn’t keep it.”

Lila welcomed willingly only Nunzia and Stefano’s mother, Maria, both of whom followed her pregnancy closely. She stopped throwing up but her complexion remained gray. She had the impression of having become large and inflated inside rather than outside, as if within the wrapping of her body every organ had begun to fatten. Her stomach seemed a bubble of flesh that was expanding because of the baby’s breathing. She was afraid of that expansion, she feared that the thing she was most afraid of would happen: she would break apart, overflow. Then suddenly she felt that the being she had inside, that absurd modality of life, that expanding nodule that at a certain point would come out of her sex like a puppet on a string—suddenly she loved it, and through it the sense of herself returned. Frightened by her ignorance, by the mistakes she could make, she began to read everything she could find about what pregnancy is, what happens inside the womb, how to prepare for the birth. She hardly went out at all in those months. She stopped buying clothes or objects for the house, she got in the habit instead of having her mother bring at least a couple of newspapers and Alfonso some journals. It was the only money she spent. Once Carmen showed up to ask for money and she told her to ask Stefano, she had none; the girl went away discouraged. She didn’t care about anyone anymore, only the baby.

The experience wounded Carmen, who became even more resentful. She still hadn’t forgiven Lila for breaking up their alliance in the new grocery. Now she couldn’t forgive her for not opening her purse. But mainly she couldn’t forgive her because—as she began to gossip to everyone—she had done as she liked: she had vanished, she had returned, and yet she continued to play the part of the lady, to have a nice house, and now even had a baby coming. The more of a slut you are, the better off you are. She, on the other hand, who labored from morning to night with no gratification—only bad things happened to her, one after the other. Her father died in jail. Her mother died in that way she didn’t even want to think about. And now Enzo as well. He had waited for her one night outside the grocery and told her that he didn’t want to continue the engagement. Just like that, very few words, as usual, no explanation. She had run weeping to her brother, and Pasquale had met Enzo to ask for an explanation. But Enzo had given none, so now they didn’t speak to each other.

When I returned from Pisa for Easter vacation and met Carmen in the gardens, she vented. “I’m an idiot,” she wept, “waiting for him the whole time he was a soldier. An idiot slaving from morning to night for practically nothing.” She said she was tired of everything. And with no obvious connection she began to insult Lila. She went so far as to ascribe to her a relationship with Michele Solara, who had often been seen wandering around the Carracci house. “Adultery and money,” she hissed, “that’s how she gets ahead.”

Not a word, however, about Nino. Miraculously, the neighborhood knew nothing of that. During the same period, Antonio told me about beating him up, and about how he had sent Enzo to retrieve Lila, but he told only me, and I’m sure that for his whole life he never spoke a word to anyone else. But I learned something from Alfonso: insistently questioned, he told me he had heard from Marisa that Nino had gone to study in Milan. Thanks to them, when on Holy Saturday I ran into Lila on the stradone, completely by chance, I felt a subtle pleasure at the idea that I knew more than she about the facts of her life, and that from what I knew it was easy to deduce how little good it had done her to take Nino away from me.

Her stomach was already quite big, it was like an excrescence on her thin body. Even her face didn’t show the florid beauty of pregnant women; it was ugly, greenish, the skin stretched over the prominent cheekbones. We both tried to pretend that nothing had happened.

“How are you?”

“Well.”

“Can I touch your stomach?”

“Yes.”

“And that matter?”

“Which?”

“The one on Ischia.”

“It’s over.”

“Too bad.”

“What are you doing?”

“I study, I have a place of my own and all the books I need. I even have a sort of boyfriend.”

“A sort?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Franco Mari.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s also a student.”

“Those glasses really suit you.”

“Franco gave them to me.”

“And the dress?”

“Also him.”

“He’s rich?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad.”

“And how is the studying going?”

“I work hard, otherwise they’ll send me away.”

“Be careful.”

“I’m careful.”

“Lucky you.”

“Well.”

She said her due date was in July. She had a doctor, the one who had sent her to bathe in the sea. A doctor, not the obstetrician in the neighborhood. “I’m afraid for the baby,” she said. “I don’t want to give birth at home.” She had read that it was better to go to a clinic. She smiled, she touched her belly. Then she said something that wasn’t very clear.

“I’m still here just for this.”

“Is it nice to feel the baby inside?”

“No, it repulses me, but I’m pleased to carry it.”

“Was Stefano angry?”

“He wants to believe what’s convenient for him.”

“That is?”

“That for a while I was a little crazy and ran away to you in Pisa.”

I pretended not to know anything, feigning amazement: “In Pisa? You and me?”

“Yes.”

“And if he asks, should I say that’s what happened?”

“Do as you like.”

We said goodbye, promising to write. But we never wrote and I did nothing to find out about the birth. Sometimes a feeling stirred in me that I immediately repressed to keep it from becoming conscious: I wanted something to happen to her, so the baby wouldn’t be born.