The Neapolitan Novels

32.

A few days later the trouble began. Lila arrived at work early in the morning, worn out by her innumerable tasks and completely unprepared for what was about to happen. It was very cold, she’d had a cough for days, it felt like flu coming on. At the entrance she saw a couple of kids, they must have decided to skip school. One of them greeted her with some familiarity and gave her not a flyer as sometimes happened but a pamphlet several pages long. She responded to his greeting but she was bewildered; she had seen the boy at the committee meeting on Via dei Tribunali. Then she put the pamphlet in her coat pocket and passed Filippo, the guard, without deigning to look at him, so he shouted after her: Not even a good morning, eh.

She worked extremely hard as usual—at that time she was in the gutting section—and forgot about the boy. At lunchtime she went into the courtyard with her lunchbox to find a sunny corner, but as soon as Filippo saw her he left the guard booth and joined her. He was a man of about fifty, short, heavy, full of the most disgusting obscenities but also inclined to a sticky sentimentality. He had recently had his sixth child, and he easily became emotional, pulling out his wallet to show off a picture of the baby. Lila thought he had decided to show it to her as well, but no. The man pulled the pamphlet out of his jacket pocket and said to her in an extremely aggressive tone:

“Cerù, listen carefully to what I’m telling you: if you said to these shits the things that are written here, you’ve got yourself in deep trouble, you know?”

She answered coldly:

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, let me eat.”

Filippo, angrily throwing the pamphlet in her face, snapped:

“You don’t know, eh? Read it, then. We were all happy and in harmony here, and only a whore like you could spread these things. I turn on the ‘partial’ as I please? I put my hands on the girls? I, the father of a family? Look out, or don Bruno will make you pay, and dearly, or by God I’ll smash your face myself.”

He turned and went back to the guard booth.

Lila calmly finished eating, then she picked up the pamphlet. The title was pretentious: “Investigation Into the Condition of Workers in Naples and the Provinces.” She scanned the pages, and found one devoted entirely to the Soccavo sausage factory. She read word for word everything that had come out of her mouth at the meeting on Via dei Tribunali.

She pretended it was nothing. She left the pamphlet on the ground, she went inside without even looking at the guard booth and returned to work. But she was furious with whoever had gotten her into that mess, and without even warning her, especially saintly Nadia. Surely she had written that stuff, it was all tidily in order and full of maudlin emotion. As she worked the knife on the cold meat and the odor made her sick and her rage increased, she felt around her the hostility of the other workers, male and female. They had all known one another a long time, they knew they were complicit victims, and they had no doubt about who the whistleblower was: she, the only one who behaved from the start as if the need to work didn’t go hand in hand with the need to be humiliated.

In the afternoon Bruno appeared and soon afterward he sent for her. His face was redder than usual, and he had the pamphlet in his hand.

“Was it you?”

“No.”

“Tell me the truth, Lina: there are already too many people out there making trouble, you’ve joined them?”

“I told you no.”

“No, eh? There is no one here, however, who has the ability and the impudence to make up all these lies.”

“It must have been one of the office workers.”

“The office workers least of all.”

“Then what do you want from me, little birds sing, get mad at them.”

He snorted, he seemed truly strained. He said:

“I gave you a job. I said nothing when you joined the union, my father would have kicked you out. All right, I did something foolish, there in the drying room, but I apologized, you can’t say I persecuted you. And you, what do you do, you take revenge by casting a bad light on my factory and setting it down in black and white that I take my women workers into the drying room? For chrissake, when? Me, the workers, are you mad? You’re making me regret the favor I did you.”

“The favor? I work hard and you pay me a few cents. It’s more the favor I do you than what you do for me.”

“You see? You talk like those shits. Have the courage to admit that you wrote this crap.”

“I didn’t write anything.”

Bruno twisted his mouth, he looked at the pages in front of him, and she understood that he was hesitating, he couldn’t make up his mind: move to a harsher tone, threaten her, fire her, retreat and try to find out if there were other initiatives like that being prepared? She made up her mind, and said in a low voice—reluctantly but with a small charming expression that clashed with the memory of his violence, still vivid in her body—three conciliatory phrases:

“Trust me, I have a small child, I honestly didn’t do this thing.”

He nodded yes, but he also muttered, unhappily: “You know what you’re forcing me to do?”

“No, and I don’t want to know.”

“I’ll tell you just the same. If those are your friends, warn them: as soon as they come back and make a scene out front here, I’ll have them beaten to a pulp. As for you, be careful: stretch the cord too far and it will snap.”

But the day didn’t end there. On the way out, when Lila passed, the red light of the partial went on. It was the usual ritual: every day the guard cheerfully chose three or four victims, the shy girls, eyes lowered, let him feel them up, the savvy older women laughed, saying: Filì, if you have to touch go on, but hurry up, I’ve got to go make dinner. This time, Filippo stopped only Lila. It was cold, a strong wind was blowing. The guard came out of his booth. Lila shivered, she said: “If you so much as brush me, by God I’ll murder you or have you murdered.”

Filippo, grim, pointed to a small café table that was always next to the booth.

“Empty your pockets one at a time, put the stuff there.”

Lila found a fresh sausage in her coat, with disgust she felt the soft meat inside the casing. She pulled it out and burst into laughter, saying, “What shits you people are, all of you.”