The Neapolitan Novels

56.

I decided to complete my exploratory tour. I walked to Mergellina and when I reached Piazza dei Martiri the black sky was so low that it seemed to be resting on the buildings. I hurried into the elegant Solara shoe store certain that the storm would burst at any moment. Alfonso was even more handsome than I remembered, with his big eyes and long lashes, his sharply drawn lips, his slender yet strong body, his Italian made slightly artificial by the study of Latin and Greek. He was genuinely happy to see me. The arduous years of middle school and high school we’d spent together had created an affectionate bond, and even though we hadn’t seen each other for a long time, we picked up again right away. We started joking. We talked easily, the words tumbling out, about our academic past, the teachers, the book I had published, his marriage, mine. It was I, naturally, who brought up Lila, and he became flustered, he didn’t want to speak ill of her, or of his brother, or Ada. He said only:

“It was predictable that it would end like this.”

“Why?”

“You remember when I told you that Lina scared me?”

“Yes.”

“It wasn’t fear, I understood much later.”

“What was it?”

“Estrangement and belonging, an effect of distance and closeness at the same time.”

“Meaning what?”

“It’s hard to say: you and I became friends immediately, you I love. With her that always seemed impossible. There was something tremendous about her that made me want to go down on my knees and confess my most secret thoughts.”

I said ironically: “Great, an almost religious experience.”

He remained serious: “No, only an admission of inferiority. But when she helped me study, that was great, yes. She would read the textbook and immediately understand it, then she’d summarize it for me in a simple way. There have been, and still are today, moments when I think: If I had been born a woman I would have wanted to be like her. In fact, in the Carracci family we were both alien bodies, neither she nor I could endure. So her faults never mattered to me, I always felt on her side.”

“Is Stefano still angry with her?”

“I don’t know. Even if he hates her, he has too many problems to be aware of it. Lina is the least of his troubles at the moment.”

The statement seemed sincere and, above all, well founded. I put Lina aside. I went back instead to asking him about Marisa, the Sarratore family, finally Nino. He was vague about all of them, especially Nino, whom no one—by Donato’s wishes, he said—had dared to invite to the intolerable wedding that was in store for him.

“You’re not happy to be getting married?” I ventured.

He looked out the window: there was lightning and thunder but still no rain. He said: “I was fine the way I was.”

“And Marisa?”

“No, she wasn’t fine.”

“You wanted her to be your fiancée for life?”

“I don’t know.”

“So finally you’ve satisfied her.”

“She went to Michele.”

I looked at him uncertainly. “In what sense?”

He laughed, a nervous laugh.

“She went to him, she set him against me.”

I was sitting on a pouf, he was standing, against the light. He had a tense, compact figure, like the toreador in a bullfighting film.

“I don’t understand: you’re marrying Marisa because she asked Solara to tell you that you had to do it?”

“I’m marrying Marisa in order not to upset Michele. He put me in here, he trusted my abilities, I’m fond of him.”

“You’re crazy.”

“You say that because you all have the wrong idea about Michele, you don’t know what he’s like.” His face contracted, he tried vainly to hold back tears. He added, “Marisa is pregnant.”

“Ah.”

So that was the real reason. I took his hand, in great embarrassment I tried to soothe him. He became quiet with a great effort, and said:

“Life is a very ugly business, Lenù.”

“It’s not true: Marisa will be a good wife and a fine mother.”

“I don’t give a damn about Marisa.”

“Now don’t overdo it.”

He fixed his eyes on me, I felt he was examining me as if to understand something about me that left him bewildered. He asked: “Lina never said anything even to you?”

“What should she have said?”

He shook his head, suddenly amused.

“You see I’m right? She is an unusual person. Once I told her a secret. I was afraid and I needed to tell someone the reason for my fear. I told her and she listened attentively, and I calmed down. It was important for me to talk to her, it seemed to me that she listened not with her ears but with an organ that she alone had and that made the words acceptable. At the end I didn’t ask her, as one usually does: swear, please, not to betray me. But it’s clear that if she hasn’t told you she hasn’t told anyone, not even out of spite, not even in the period that was hardest for her, when my brother hated her and beat her.”

I didn’t interrupt him. I felt only that I was sorry because he had confided something to Lila and not to me, although I had been his friend forever. He must have realized that and he decided to make up for it. He hugged me tight, and whispered in my ear:

“Lenù, I’m a queer, I don’t like girls.”

When I was about to leave, he said softly, embarrassed: I’m sure you already knew. This increased my unhappiness; in fact it had never occurred to me.