The Neapolitan Novels

17.

It took me a while to focus on the lesson that was coming to us from France, on the tense confrontation between the two men. But I didn’t want to be silent. I wanted to say something about what I had read and thought about the events in Paris, the speech was twisting around in sentences that remained incomplete in my mind. And it amazed me that Mariarosa, so clever, so free, said nothing, that she confined herself to agreeing always and only with what Franco said, with pretty smiles, which made Juan nervous and occasionally insecure. If she doesn’t speak, I said to myself, I will, otherwise why did I agree to come here, why didn’t I go to the hotel? Questions to which I had an answer. I wanted to show those who had known me in the past what I had become. I wanted Franco to realize that he couldn’t treat me like the girl of long ago, I wanted him to realize that I had become a completely different person, I wanted him to say in front of Mariarosa that this other person had his respect. Therefore, since the baby was quiet, since Silvia had disappeared with him, since neither one had further need of me, I waited a little and finally found a way of disagreeing with my old boyfriend. It was an improvised disagreement: I wasn’t moved by solid convictions, the goal was to express myself against Franco and I did it, I had certain formulas in my mind, I combined them with false confidence. I said more or less that I was puzzled by the development of the class struggle in France, that I found the student-worker alliance for the moment very abstract. I spoke with decision, I was afraid that one of the two men would interrupt me to say something that would rekindle the argument between them. Instead, they listened to me attentively, all of them, including Silvia, who had returned almost on tiptoe, without the baby. And neither Franco nor Juan gave signs of impatience while I spoke, in fact the Venezuelan agreed when, two or three times, I uttered the word “people.” This annoyed Mari. You’re saying that the situation isn’t objectively revolutionary, he said emphatically, sarcastically, and I recognized that tone, it meant that he would defend himself by making fun of me. So the sentences piled up, mine on top of his and vice versa: I don’t know what objectively means; it means that to act is inevitable; so if it’s not inevitable, you sit on your hands; no, the task of the revolutionary is always to do what’s possible; in France the students have done the impossible, the mechanism of instruction is broken and will never be fixed; admit that things have changed and they will change; yes, but no one asked you or anyone else for certification on official paper or for a guarantee that the situation is objectively revolutionary, the students have acted and that’s all; it’s not true; it is true. And so on. Until at the same moment we were silent.

It was an odd exchange, not in its content but in its heated tones, the rules of etiquette abandoned. In Mariarosa’s eyes I glimpsed a flash of amusement: she understood that if Franco and I talked to each other like that there had been something more than a friendship between university colleagues. Come, give me a hand, she said to Silvia and Juan. She had to get a ladder, to find sheets for me, for Franco. The two followed her, Juan whispered something in her ear.

Franco stared at the floor for a moment, he pressed his lips together as if to restrain a smile, and said affectionately: “You’ve remained the petit bourgeois you always were.”

That was the way, years earlier, he had often made fun of me when I was afraid of being caught in his room. In the absence of the others, I said impetuously: “You’re the petit bourgeois, by origin, by education, by behavior.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended.”

“You’ve changed, you’ve become aggressive.”

“I’m the same as ever.”

“Everything all right at home?”

“Yes.”

“And that friend of yours who was so important to you?”

The question came with a logical leap that disoriented me. Had I talked to him about Lila in the past? In what terms? And why did she come to mind now? Where was the connection that he had seen somewhere and I hadn’t?

“She’s fine,” I said.

“What is she doing?”

“She works in a sausage factory on the outskirts of Naples.”

“Didn’t she marry a shopkeeper?”

“The marriage didn’t work.”

“When I come to Naples you must introduce me.”

“Of course.”

“Leave me a number, an address.”

“All right.”

He looked at me to assess what words would be least hurtful, and asked: “Has she read your book?”

“I don’t know, did you read it?”

“Of course.”

“How did it seem to you?”

“Good.”

“In what way?”

“There are wonderful passages.”

“Which ones?

“Those where you give the protagonist the capacity to put together the fragments of things in her own way.”

“And that’s all?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“No: it’s clear that you didn’t like it.”

“I told you it’s good.”

I knew him, he was trying not to humiliate me. That exasperated me, I said:

“It’s a book that’s inspired discussion, it’s selling well.”

“So good, no?”

“Yes, but not for you. What is it that doesn’t work?”

He compressed his lips again, and made up his mind: “There’s not much depth, Elena. Behind the petty love affairs and the desire for social ascent you hide precisely what it would be valuable to tell.”

“What?”

“Forget it, it’s late, we should go to sleep.” And he tried to assume an expression of benevolent irony, but in reality he had that new tone of someone who has an important task to complete and gives only sparingly to all the rest: “You did everything possible, right? But this, objectively, is not the moment for writing novels.”