The Neapolitan Novels

25.

I hadn’t seen either Pasquale or Enzo for a long time, but they got right to the point—they had come for Lila and began talking about her immediately. Pasquale had grown a Che Guevara-style beard and it seemed to me that it had improved him. His eyes seemed bigger and more intense, and the thick mustache covered his bad teeth even when he laughed. Enzo, on the other hand, hadn’t changed, as silent, as compact, as ever. Only when we were in Pasquale’s old car did I realize how surprising it was to see them together. I had been sure that no one in the neighborhood wanted to have anything to do with Lila and Enzo. But it wasn’t so: Pasquale often went to their house, he had come with Enzo to get me, Lila had sent them together.

It was Enzo who in his dry and orderly way told me what had happened: Pasquale, who was working at a construction site near San Giovanni a Teduccio, was supposed to stop for dinner at their house. But Lila, who usually returned from the factory at four-thirty, still hadn’t arrived at seven, when Enzo and Pasquale got there. The apartment was empty, Gennaro was at the neighbor’s. The two began cooking, Enzo fed the child. Lila hadn’t shown up until nine, very pale, very nervous. She hadn’t answered Enzo and Pasquale’s questions. The only thing she said, in a terrified tone of voice, was: They’re pulling out my nails. Not true, Enzo had taken her hands and checked, the nails were in place. Then she got angry and shut herself in her room with Gennaro. After a while she had yelled at them to find out if I was at home, she wanted to speak to me urgently.

I asked Enzo:

“Did you have a fight?”

“No.”

“Did she not feel well, was she hurt at work?”

“I don’t think so, I don’t know.”

Pasquale said to me:

“Now, let’s not make ourselves anxious. Let’s bet that as soon as Lina sees you she’ll calm down. I’m so glad we found you—you’re an important person now, you must have a lot to do.”

I denied it, but he cited as proof the old article in l’Unità and Enzo nodded in agreement; he had also read it.

“Lila saw it, too,” he said.

“And what did she say?”

“She was really pleased with the picture.”

“But they made it sound like you were still a student,” Pasquale grumbled. “You should write a letter to the paper explaining that you’re a graduate.”

He complained about all the space that even l’Unità was giving to the students. Enzo said he was right, and they held forth with arguments not so different from those I had heard in Milan, only the vocabulary was cruder. It was clear that Pasquale especially wanted to entertain me with arguments worthy of someone who, though she was their friend, appeared in l’Unità with a photograph. But maybe they did it to dispel the anxiety, theirs and mine.

I listened. I quickly realized that their relationship had solidified precisely because of their political passion. They often met after work, at party or some sort of committee meetings. I listened to them, I joined in out of politeness, they replied, but meanwhile I couldn’t get Lila out of my mind, Lila consumed by an unknown anguish, she who was always so resistant. When we reached San Giovanni they seemed proud of me, Pasquale in particular didn’t miss a single word of mine, and kept checking on me in the rear-view mirror. Although he had his usual knowing tone—he was the secretary of the local section of the Communist Party—he ascribed to my agreement on politics the power to sanction his position. So that, when he felt clearly supported, he explained to me, in some distress, that, with Enzo and some others, he was engaged in a serious fight within the party, which—he said, frowning, pounding his hands on the wheel—preferred to wait for a whistle from Aldo Moro, like an obedient dog, rather than stop procrastinating and join the battle.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“It’s as you say,” I said.

“You’re clever,” he praised me then, solemnly, as we were going up the dirty stairs, “you always were. Right, Enzo?”

Enzo nodded yes, but I understood that his worry about Lila was increasing at every step, as it was in me, and he felt guilty for being distracted by that chatter. He opened the door, said aloud, We’re here, and pointed to a door whose top half was of frosted glass, and through which a faint light shone. I knocked softly and went in.