The Neapolitan Novels

119.

Lila told Enzo in detail about her husband’s visits. He listened attentively and almost never made comments. He continued to be restrained in every expression of himself. He didn’t even tell her what sort of work he did in the factory and if it suited him or not. He went out at six in the morning and returned at seven in the evening. He ate dinner, he played a little with the boy, he listened to her conversation. As soon as Lila mentioned some urgent need of Rinuccio’s, the next day he brought the necessary money. He never told her to ask Stefano to contribute to the maintenance of his child, he didn’t tell her to find a job. He simply looked at her as if he lived only to get to those evening hours, to sit with her in the kitchen, listening to her talk. At a certain point he got up, said goodnight, and went into the bedroom.

One afternoon Lila had an encounter that had significant consequences. She went out alone, having left Rinuccio with the neighbor. She heard an insistent horn behind her. It was a fancy car, someone was signaling to her from the window.

“Lina.”

She looked closely. She recognized the wolfish face of Bruno Soccavo, Nino’s friend.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I live here.”

She said almost nothing about herself, since at that time such things were difficult to explain. She didn’t mention Nino, nor did he. She asked instead if he had graduated, he said he had decided to stop studying.

“Are you married?”

“Of course not.”

“Engaged?”

“One day yes, the next no.”

“What do you do?”

“Nothing, there are people who work for me.”

It occurred to her to ask him, almost as a joke: “Would you give me a job?”

“You? What do you need a job for?”

“To work.”

“You want to make salami and mortadella?”

“Why not.”

“And your husband?”

“I don’t have a husband anymore. But I have a son.”

Bruno looked at her attentively to see if she was joking. He seemed confused, evasive. “It’s not a nice job,” he said. Then he talked volubly about the problems of couples in general, about his mother, who was always fighting with his father, about a violent passion he himself had had recently for a married woman, but she had left him. Bruno was unusually talkative, he invited her to a café, continuing to tell her about himself. Finally, when Lila said she had to go, he asked, “Did you really leave your husband? You really have a child?”

“Yes.”

He frowned, wrote something on a napkin.

“Go to this man, you’ll find him in the morning after eight. And show him this.”

Lila smiled in embarrassment.

“The napkin?”

“Yes.”

“It’s enough?”

He nodded yes, suddenly made shy by her teasing tone. He murmured, “That was a wonderful summer.”

She said, “For me, too.”