The Neapolitan Novels

48.

At home that same night I made a long call to Pietro, telling him in detail all Lila’s troubles and how important it was to me to help her. He listened patiently. At a certain point he even exhibited a spirit of collaboration: he remembered a young Pisan Greek scholar who was obsessed with computers and imagined that they would revolutionize philology. I was touched by the fact that, although he was a person who was always buried in his work, on this occasion, for love of me, he made an effort to be useful.

“Find him,” I begged him, “tell him about Enzo, you never know, maybe some job prospects might turn up.”

He promised he would and added that, if he remembered correctly, Mariarosa had had a brief romance with a young Neapolitan lawyer: maybe he could find him and ask if he could help.

“To do what?”

“To get your friend’s money back.”

I was excited.

“Call Mariarosa.”

“All right.”

I insisted: “Don’t just promise, call her, please.”

He was silent for a moment, then he said: “Just then you sounded like my mother.”

“In what sense?”

“You sounded like her when something is very important to her.”

“I’m very different, unfortunately.”

He was silent again.

“You’re different, fortunately. But in these types of things there’s no one like her. Tell her about that girl and you’ll see, she’ll help you.”

I telephoned Adele. I did it with some embarrassment, which I overcame by reminding myself of all the times I had seen her at work, for my book, in the search for the apartment in Florence. She was a woman who liked to be busy. If she needed something, she picked up the telephone and, link by link, put together the chain that led to her goal. She knew how to ask in such a way that saying no was impossible. And she crossed ideological borders confidently, she respected no hierarchies, she tracked down cleaning women, bureaucrats, industrialists, intellectuals, ministers, and she addressed all with cordial detachment, as if the favor she was about to ask she was in fact already doing for them. Amid a thousand awkward apologies for disturbing her, I told Adele in detail about my friend, and she became curious, interested, angry. At the end she said:

“Let me think.”

“Of course.”

“Meanwhile, can I give you some advice?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t be timid. You’re a writer, use your role, test it, make something of it. These are decisive times, everything is turning upside down. Participate, be present. And begin with the scum in your area, put their backs to the wall.”

“How?”

“By writing. Frighten Soccavo to death, and others like him. Promise you’ll do it?”

“I’ll try.”

She gave me the name of an editor at l’Unità.