The Neapolitan Novels

30.

That equilibrium, already precarious, changed when Pasquale reappeared. He was working at a construction site in the area and had come to San Giovanni a Teduccio for a meeting of the local section of the Communist Party. He and Enzo met on the street, by chance, and immediately regained their old intimacy. They ended up talking about politics, and manifested the same dissatisfaction. Enzo expressed himself cautiously at first, but Pasquale, surprisingly, although he had an important local post—secretary of the section—proved to be anything but cautious, and he criticized the party, which was revisionist, and the union, which too often closed both eyes. The two spent so long talking that Lila found Pasquale in the house at dinnertime and had to feed him as well.

The evening began badly. She felt herself observed, and had to make an effort not to get angry. What did Pasquale want, to spy on her, report to the neighborhood how she was living? What right did he have to come there to judge her? He didn’t speak a single friendly word, he brought no news of her family—of Nunzia, of her brother Rino, of Fernando. Instead he gave her male looks, the kind she got in the factory, appraising, and if she became aware of them he turned his eyes elsewhere. He must have found that she had grown ugly. Surely he was thinking, How could I, as a boy, have fallen in love with this woman, I was a fool. And without a doubt he considered her a terrible mother, since she could have brought up her son in the comfort of the Carracci grocery stores and instead she had dragged him into that poverty. At a certain point Lila said huffily to Enzo, you clean up, I’m going to bed. But Pasquale, to her surprise, assumed a grandiose tone and said to her, with some emotion: Lina, before you go I have to tell you one thing. There is no woman like you, you throw yourself into life with a force that, if we all had it, the world would have changed a long time ago. Then, having broken the ice in this way, he told her that Fernando had gone back to resoling shoes, that Rino had become Stefano’s cross to bear, and was constantly begging him for money, that Nunzia he rarely saw, she never left the house. But you did well, he repeated: no one in the neighborhood has kicked the Carraccis and the Solaras in the face as much as you, and I’m on your side.

After that he showed up often, which cut into their studying. He would arrive at dinnertime with four hot pizzas, playing his usual role of someone who knows all about how the capitalist and anti-capitalist world functions, and the old friendship grew stronger. It was clear that he lived without emotional ties; his sister Carmen was engaged and had little time for him. But he reacted to his solitude with an angry activism that Lila liked, that interested her. Although crushed by hard labor at the construction sites, he was involved in union activities: he threw blood-red paint at the American consulate, if there were fascists to be beaten up he was always on the front lines, he was a member of a worker-student committee where he continuously quarreled with the students. Not to mention the Communist Party: because of his critical position he expected at any moment to lose his post as secretary of the section. With Enzo and Lila he spoke freely, mixing personal resentments and political arguments. They tell me I’m an enemy of the party, he complained, they tell me I make too much of a fuss, I should calm down. But they are the ones who are destroying the party, they are the ones turning it into a cog in the system, they are the ones who’ve reduced anti-fascism to democratic oversight. But do you know who’s been installed as the head of the neighborhood fascists? The pharmacist’s son, Gino, an idiot slave of Michele Solara. And must I put up with the fact that the fascists are raising their heads again in my neighborhood? My father—he said, with emotion—gave his entire self to the party, and why: for this watered-down anti-fascism, for this shit we have today? When that poor man ended up in jail, innocent, completely innocent, he got angry—he didn’t murder Don Achille—the party abandoned him, even though he had been a loyal comrade, even though he had taken part in the Four Days of Naples, and fought at the Ponte della Sanità, even though after the war, in the neighborhood, he had been more exposed than anyone else. And Giuseppina, his mother? Had anyone helped her? As soon as he mentioned his mother, Pasquale picked up Gennaro and sat him on his lap, saying: See how pretty your mamma is, do you love her?

Lila listened. At times it occurred to her that she should have said yes to that youth, the first who had noticed her, rather than aiming Stefano and his money, rather than getting herself in trouble with Nino: stayed in her place, not committed the sin of pride, pacified her mind. But at other times, because of Pasquale’s tirades, she felt gripped again by her childhood, by the ferocity of the neighborhood, by Don Achille, by his murder, which she, as a child, had recounted so often and with so many invented details that now it seemed to her that she had been present. So she remembered the arrest of Pasquale’s father, and how much the carpenter had shouted, and his wife, and Carmen, and she didn’t like that, true memories mingled with false ones, she saw the violence, the blood. Then she roused herself, uneasily, escaped from the flood of Pasquale’s bitterness, and to soothe herself she urged him to recall, I don’t know, Christmas and Easter in his family, his mother Giuseppina’s cooking. He quickly realized what was going on and maybe he thought that Lila missed the affections of her family, as he missed his. The fact is that one day he showed up without warning and said gaily: Look who I brought you. He had brought her Nunzia.

Mother and daughter embraced, Nunzia cried for a long time, and gave Gennaro a Pinocchio ragdoll. But as soon as she started to criticize her daughter’s decisions, Lila, who at first had appeared happy to see her, said: Ma, either we act as if nothing happened or it’s better that you go. Nunzia was offended, she played with the child, and kept saying, as if she really were talking to the boy: If your mamma goes to work, what about you, poor thing, where does she leave you? At that point Pasquale realized he had made a mistake, he said it was late and they had to go. Nunzia got up and spoke to her daughter, partly threatening her, partly entreating her. You, she complained. First you had us living the life of rich people and then you ruined us: your brother felt abandoned and doesn’t want to see you anymore, your father has effaced you; Lina, please, I’m not telling you to make peace with your husband, that’s not possible, but at least clear things up with the Solaras; they’ve taken everything because of you, and Rino, your father, we Cerullos, now once again we’re nothing.

Lila listened and then she practically pushed her out, saying: Ma, it’s better if you don’t come back. She shouted the same thing to Pasquale as well.