The Neapolitan Novels

39.

She woke at five in the morning, in a sweat; she no longer had a fever. At the factory gate she found not the students but the fascists. Same automobiles, same faces as the day before: they were shouting slogans, handing out leaflets. Lila felt that more violence was planned and she walked with her head down, hands in pockets, hoping to get into the factory before the fighting started. But Gino appeared in front of her.

“You still know how to read?” he asked in dialect, holding out a leaflet. Keeping her hands in her pockets, she replied:

“I do, yes, but when did you learn?”

Then she tried to go by, in vain. Gino obstructed her, he jammed the leaflet into her pocket with a gesture so violent that he scratched her hand with his nail. Lila crumpled it up calmly.

“It’s not even good for wiping your ass,” she said and threw it away.

“Pick it up,” the pharmacist’s son ordered her, grabbing her by the arm. “Pick it up now and you listen to me: yesterday afternoon I asked that cuckold your husband for permission to beat you up and he said yes.”

Lila looked him straight in the eye:

“You went to ask my husband for permission to beat me up? Let go of my arm right now, you shit.”

At that moment Edo arrived, and instead of pretending not to notice, as was to be expected, he stopped.

“Is he bothering you, Cerù?”

It was an instant. Gino punched him in the face, Edo ended up on the ground. Lila’s heart jumped to her throat, and everything began to speed up. She picked up a rock and gripping it solidly struck the pharmacist’s son right in the chest. There was a long moment. While Gino shoved her back against a light pole, while Edo tried to get up, another car appeared on the unpaved road, raising dust. Lila recognized Pasquale’s broken-down car. Here, she thought, Armando listened to me, maybe Nadia, too, they’re well-brought-up people, but Pasquale couldn’t resist, he’s coming to make war. In fact the doors opened, and five men got out, including him. They were men from the construction sites, carrying knotty clubs, and they began hitting the fascists with a methodical ferocity; they didn’t get angry, they planted a single, precise blow intended to knock down the adversary. Lila immediately saw that Pasquale was heading toward Gino, and since Gino was still a few steps away from her she grabbed one of his arms with both hands and said, laughing: You’d better go or they’ll kill you. But he didn’t go; rather, he pushed her away again and rushed at Pasquale. Lila helped Edo get up, and tried to drag him into the courtyard, but it was difficult; he was heavy, and he was writhing, shouting insults, bleeding. He calmed down a little only when he saw Pasquale hit Gino with his stick and knock him to the ground. The confusion increased: debris the men picked up along the side of the street flew like bullets, men were spitting and screaming insults. Pasquale, leaving Gino unconscious, had rushed into the courtyard, with a man wearing only an undershirt and loose blue pants streaked with cement. Both were now bludgeoning Filippo’s booth; he was locked inside, terrorized. Shouting obscenities, they smashed the windows, while the wail of a police siren grew louder. Lila noticed yet again the anxious pleasure of violence. Yes, she thought, you have to strike fear into those who wish to strike fear into you, there is no other way, blow for blow, what you take from me I take back, what you do to me I do to you. But while Pasquale and his people were getting back in the car, while the fascists did the same, carrying off Gino bodily, while the police siren got closer, she felt, terrified, that her heart was becoming like the too tightly wound spring of a toy, and she knew that she had to find a place to sit down as soon as possible. Once she was inside, she collapsed in the hallway, her back against the wall, and tried to calm down. Teresa, the large woman in her forties who worked in the gutting room, was looking after Edo, wiping the blood off his face, and she teased Lila.

“First you pull off his ear, then you help him? You should have left him outside.”

“He helped me and I helped him.”

Teresa turned to Edo, incredulous:

“You helped her?”

He stammered:

“I didn’t like to see a stranger beating her up, I want to do it myself.”

The woman said:

“Did you see how Filippo shat himself?”

“Serves him right,” Edo muttered, “too bad all they broke was the booth.”

Teresa turned to Lila and asked her, with a hint of malice:

“Did you call the Communists? Tell the truth.”

Is she joking, Lila wondered, or is she a spy, who’ll go running to the owner.

“No,” she answered, “but I know who called the fascists.”

“Who?”

“Soccavo.”