The Neapolitan Novels

88.

Thus September passed, then October. I didn’t talk to anyone, not even Adele, who had a lot of work, or even Mariarosa, who had brought Franco to her house—an invalid Franco, in need of help, changed by depression—and who greeted me warmly, promised to say hello to him for me, but then broke off because she had too many things to do. Not to mention Pietro’s muteness. The world outside books burdened him increasingly, he went reluctantly into the regulated chaos of the university, and often said he was ill. He said he did it in order to work, but he couldn’t get to the end of his book, he rarely went into his study, and, as if to forgive himself and be forgiven, he took care of Elsa, cooked, swept, washed, ironed. I had to treat him rudely to get him to go back to teaching, but I immediately regretted it. Ever since the violence had struck people I knew, I was afraid for him. He had never given in, even though he got into dangerous situations, opposing publicly what, in a term that he preferred, he called the load of nonsense of his students and many of his colleagues. Although I was worried about him, in fact maybe just because I was worried, I never admitted he was right. I hoped that if I criticized him he would understand, would stop his reactionary reformism (I used that phrase), become more flexible. But, in his eyes, that drove me yet again to the side of the students who were attacking him, the professors who were plotting against him.

It wasn’t like that, the situation was more complicated. On the one hand I vaguely wanted to protect him, on the other I wanted to be on Lila’s side, defend the choices I secretly attributed to her. To the point where every so often I thought of telephoning her and, starting with Pietro, with our conflicts, get her to tell me what she thought about it and, step by step, bring her out into the open. I didn’t to it, naturally, it was absurd to expect sincerity on these subjects on the phone. But one night she called me, sounding really happy.

“I have some good news.”

“What’s happening?”

“I’m the head of technology.”

“In what sense?”

“Head of the IBM data-processing center that Michele rented.”

It seemed incredible to me. I asked her to repeat it, to explain carefully. She had accepted Solara’s proposal? After so much resistance she had gone back to working for him, as in the days of Piazza dei Martiri? She said yes, enthusiastically, and became more and more excited, more explicit: Michele had entrusted to her the System 3 that he had rented and placed in a shoe warehouse in Acerra; she would employ operators and punch-card workers; the salary was four hundred and twenty-five thousand lire a month.

I was disappointed. Not only had the image of the guerrilla vanished in an instant but everything I thought I knew of Lila wavered. I said:

“It’s the last thing I would have expected of you.”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“Refuse.”

“Why?”

“We know what the Solaras are.”

“And so what? It’s already happened, and I’m better off working for Michele than for that shit Soccavo.”

“Do as you like.”

I heard her breathing. She said:

“I don’t like that tone, Lenù. I’m paid more than Enzo, who is a man: What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.”

“The revolution, the workers, the new world, and that other bullshit?”

“Stop it. If you’ve unexpectedly decided to make a truthful speech I’m listening, otherwise let’s forget it.”

“May I point out something? You always use true and truthfully, when you speak and when you write. Or you say: unexpectedly. But when do people ever speak truthfully and when do things ever happen unexpectedly? You know better than I that it’s all a fraud and that one thing follows another and then another. I don’t do anything truthfully anymore, Lenù. And I’ve learned to pay attention to things. Only idiots believe that they happen unexpectedly.”

“Bravo. What do you want me to believe, that you have everything under control, that it’s you who are using Michele and not Michele you? Let’s forget it, come on. Bye.”

“No, speak, say what you have to say.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Speak, otherwise I will.”

“Then speak, let me listen.”

“You criticize me but you say nothing to your sister?”

I was astonished.

“What does my sister have to do with anything?”

“You don’t know anything about Elisa?”

“What should I know?”

She laughed maliciously.

“Ask your mother, your father, and your brothers.”