The Neapolitan Novels

97.

In that period I often dreamed of Lila. Once she was in bed in a lacy green nightgown, her hair was braided, which was something she had never done, she held in her arms a little girl dressed in pink, and she kept saying, in a sorrowful voice, “Take a picture but only of me, not of the child.” Another time she greeted me happily and then called her daughter, who had my name. “Lenù,” she said, “come and say hello to your aunt.” But a fat old giantess appeared, and Lila ordered me to undress her and wash her and change her diaper and swaddling. On waking I was tempted to look for a telephone and try to call Alfonso to find out if the baby had been born without any problems, if she was happy. But I had to study or maybe I had exams, and I forgot about it. When, in August, I was free of both obligations, it happened that I didn’t go home. I wrote some lies to my parents and went with Franco to Versilia, to an apartment belonging to his family. For the first time I wore a two-piece bathing suit: it fit in one fist and I felt very bold.

It was at Christmas that I heard from Carmen how difficult Lila’s delivery had been.

“She almost died,” she said, “so in the end the doctor had to cut open her stomach, otherwise the baby couldn’t be born.”

“She had a boy?”

“Yes.”

“Is he well?”

“He’s lovely.”

“And she?”

“She’s lost her figure.”

I learned that Stefano wanted to give his son the name of his father, Achille, but Lila was opposed to it, and the yelling of husband and wife, which hadn’t been heard for a long time, echoed throughout the clinic, so that the nurses had reprimanded them. In the end the child was called Gennaro, that is, Rino, like Lila’s brother.

I listened, I didn’t say anything. I felt unhappy, and to cope with my unhappiness I imposed on myself an attitude of reserve. Carmen noticed:

“I’m talking and talking, but you don’t say a word, you make me feel like the TV news. Don’t you give a damn about us anymore?”

“Of course I do.”

“You’ve gotten pretty, even your voice has changed.”

“Did I have an ugly voice?”

“You had the voice that we have.”

“And now?”

“You have it less.”

I stayed in the neighborhood for ten days, from Decem­ber 24, 1964, to January 3, 1965, but I never went to see Lila. I didn’t want to see her son, I was afraid of recognizing in his mouth, in his nose, in the shape of his eyes or ears something of Nino.

At my house now I was treated like an important person who had deigned to stop by for a quick hello. My father observed me with pleasure. I felt his satisfied gaze on me, but if I spoke to him he became embarrassed. He didn’t ask what I was studying, what was the use of it, what job I would have afterward, and not because he didn’t want to know but out of fear that he wouldn’t understand my answers. My mother instead moved angrily through the house, and, hearing her unmistakable footsteps, I thought of how I had been afraid of becoming like her. But, luckily, I had outdistanced her, and she felt it, she resented me for it. Even now, when she spoke to me, it was as if I were guilty of terrible things: in every situation I perceived in her voice a shadow of disapproval, but, unlike in the past, she never wanted me to do the dishes, clean up, wash the floors. There was some uneasiness also with my sister and brothers. They tried to speak to me in Italian and often corrected their own mistakes, ashamed. But I tried to show them that I was the same as ever, and gradually they were persuaded.

At night I didn’t know how to pass the time, my old friends were no longer a group. Pasquale had terrible relations with Antonio and avoided him at all costs. Antonio didn’t want to see anyone, partly because he didn’t have time (he was constantly being sent here and there by the Solaras), partly because he didn’t know what to talk about: he couldn’t talk about his work and he didn’t have a private life. Ada, after the grocery, either hurried home to take care of her mother and siblings or was tired and depressed, and went to bed, so that she hardly ever saw Pasquale, and this made him very anxious. Carmen now hated everything and everyone, maybe even me: she hated the job in the new grocery, the Carraccis, Enzo, who had left her, her brother, who had confined himself to quarreling about it and hadn’t beaten him up. Yes, Enzo. Enzo, finally—whose mother, Assunta, was now seriously ill, and who, when he wasn’t laboring to earn money during the day, was taking care of her, and at night, too, and yet, surprisingly, had managed to get his engineer’s diploma—Enzo was never around. I was curious at the news that he had accomplished that very difficult goal of getting a diploma by studying on his own. Who would have imagined, I thought. Before returning to Pisa I made a big effort and persuaded him to take a short walk. I was full of congratulations for his achievement, but he had only a disparaging expression. He had reduced his vocabulary so far that I did all the talking, he said almost nothing. I remember only one phrase, which he uttered before we separated. I hadn’t mentioned Lila until that moment, not even a word. And yet, as if I had talked exclusively about her, he said suddenly,

“Anyway, Lina is the best mother in the whole neighborhood.”

That anyway put me in a bad mood. I had never thought of Enzo as particularly sensitive, but on that occasion I was sure that, walking beside me, he had felt—felt as if I had proclaimed it aloud—the long mute list of wrongs that I attributed to our friend, as if my body had angrily articulated it without my knowing.