The Neapolitan Novels

54.

I began to pay attention to the “For rent” signs fixed to the building entrances, indicating apartments available. Meanwhile, an invitation to the wedding of Gigliola Spagnuolo and Michele Solara arrived, not for my family but for me. And a few hours later, by hand, came another invitation: Marisa Sarratore and Alfonso Carracci were getting married, and both the Solara family and the Carracci family addressed me with deference: egregia dottoressa Elena Greco. Almost immediately, I considered the two wedding invitations an opportunity to find out if it was a good idea to encourage Lila’s return to the neighborhood. I planned to go and see Michele, Alfonso, Gigliola, and Marisa, apparently to offer congratulations and to explain that I would not be in Naples when the weddings took place but in fact to discover if the Solaras and the Carraccis still wanted to torture Lila. It seemed to me that Alfonso was the only person capable of telling me in a dispassionate way how resentful Stefano still was. And with Michele, even though I hated him—perhaps above all because I hated him—I thought I could speak with composure about Lila’s health problems, letting him know that, even though he thought he was a big shot and teased me as if I were still a little girl, I now had sufficient power to complicate his life, and his affairs, if he continued to persecute my friend. I put both cards in my purse, I didn’t want my mother to see them and be offended at the respect shown to me and not to my father and her. I set aside a day to devote to these visits.

The weather wasn’t promising, so I carried an umbrella, but I was in a good mood, I wanted to walk, reflect, give a sort of farewell to the neighborhood and the city. Out of the habit of a diligent student, I started with the more difficult meeting, the one with Solara. I went to the bar, but neither he nor Gigliola nor even Marcello was there; someone said that they might be at the new place on the stradone. I stopped in and looked around with the attitude of someone with nothing better to do. Any memory of Don Carlo’s shop had been utterly erased—the dark, deep cave where as a child I had gone to buy liquid soap and other household things. From the windows of the building’s third floor an enormous vertical sign hung down over the wide entrance: Everything for Everyone. The store was brightly lit, even though it was day, and offered merchandise of every type, the triumph of abundance. I saw Lila’s brother, Rino, who had grown very fat. He treated me coldly, saying that he was the boss there, he didn’t know anything about the Solaras. If you’re looking for Michele, go to his house, he said bitterly, and turned his back as if he had something urgent to do.

I started walking again, and reached the new neighborhood, where I knew that the entire Solara family had, years earlier, bought an enormous apartment. The mother, Manuela, the loan shark, opened the door; I hadn’t seen her since the time of Lila’s wedding. I felt that she had been observing me through the spyhole. She looked for a long time, then she drew back the bolt and appeared in the frame of the door, her figure partly contained by the darkness of the apartment, partly eroded by the light coming from the large window on the stairs. She was as if dried up. The skin was stretched over her large bones, one of her pupils was very bright and the other as if dead. In her ears, around her neck, against the dark dress that hung loosely, gold sparkled, as if she were getting ready for a party. She treated me politely, inviting me to come in, have coffee. Michele wasn’t there, did I know that he had another house, on Posillipo, where he was to go and live after his marriage. He was furnishing it with Gigliola.

“They’re going to leave the neighborhood?” I asked.

“Yes, certainly.”

“For Posillipo?”

“Six rooms, Lenù, three facing the sea. I would have preferred the Vomero, but Michele does as he likes. Anyway, there’s a breeze, in the morning, and a light that you can’t imagine.”

I was surprised. I would never have believed that the Solaras would move away from the area of their trafficking, from the den where they hid their booty. But here was Michele, the shrewdest, the greediest of the family, going to live somewhere else, up, on the Posillipo, facing the sea and Vesuvio. The brothers’ craving for greatness really had increased, the lawyer was right. But at the moment the fact cheered me, I was glad that Michele was leaving the neighborhood. I found that this favored Lila’s possible return.