The Neapolitan Novels

89.

She wouldn’t say anything else, she hung up, furious. I anxiously called my parents’ house, my mother answered.

“Every so often you remember we exist,” she said.

“Ma, what’s happening to Elisa?”

“What happens to girls today.”

“What?”

“She’s with someone.”

“She’s engaged?”

“Let’s put it like that.”

“Who is she with?”

The answer went right through my heart.

“Marcello Solara.”

That’s what Lila wanted me to know. Marcello, the handsome Marcello of our early adolescence, her stubborn, desperate admirer, the young man she had humiliated by marrying Stefano Carracci, had taken my sister Elisa, the youngest of the family, my good little sister, the woman whom I still thought of as a magical child. And Elisa had let herself be taken. And my parents and my brothers had not lifted a finger to stop him. And my whole family, and in some way I myself, would end up related to the Solaras.

“Since when?” I asked.

“How do I know, a year.”

“And you two gave your consent?”

“Did you ask our consent? You did as you liked. And she did the same thing.”

“Pietro isn’t Marcello Solara.”

“You’re right: Marcello would never let himself be treated by Elisa the way Pietro is treated by you.”

Silence.

“You could have told me, you could have consulted me.”

“Why? You left. ‘I’ll take care of you, don’t worry.’ Hardly. You’ve only thought of your own affairs, you didn’t give a damn about us.”

I decided to leave immediately for Naples with the children. I wanted to go by train, but Pietro volunteered to drive us, passing off as kindness the fact that he didn’t want to work. As soon as we came down from the Doganella and were in the chaotic traffic of Naples, I felt gripped by the city, ruled by its unwritten laws. I hadn’t set foot there since the day I left to get married. The noise seemed unbearable, I was irritated by the constant honking, by the insults the drivers shouted at Pietro when, not knowing the way, he hesitated, slowed down. A little before Piazza Carlo III I made him pull over. I got into the driver’s seat, and drove aggressively to Via Firenze, to the same hotel he had stayed in years before. We left our bags. I carefully dressed the two girls and myself. Then we went to the neighborhood, to my parents’ house. What did I think I could do, impose on Elisa my authority as the older sister, a university graduate, well married? Persuade her to break her engagement? Tell her: I’ve known Marcello since he grabbed my wrist and tried to pull me into the Fiat 1100, breaking Mamma’s silver bracelet, so trust me, he’s a vulgar, violent man? Yes. I felt determined, my job was to pull Elisa out of that trap.

My mother greeted Pietro affectionately and, in turn—This is for Dede from Grandma, this is for Elsa—she gave the two girls many small gifts that, in different ways, excited them. My father’s voice was hoarse with emotion, he seemed thinner, even more subservient. I waited for my brothers to appear, but I discovered that they weren’t home.

“They’re always at work,” my father said without enthusiasm.

“What do they do?”

“They work,” my mother broke in.

“Where?”

“Marcello arranged jobs for them.”

I remembered how the Solaras had arranged a job for Antonio, what they had made him into.

“Doing what?” I asked.

My mother answered in irritation:

“They bring money home and that’s enough. Elisa isn’t like you, Lenù, Elisa thinks of all of us.”

I pretended not to hear: “Did you tell her I was coming today? Where is she?”

My father lowered his gaze, my mother said curtly: “At her house.”

I became angry: “She doesn’t live here anymore?”

“No.”

“Since when?”

“Almost two months. She and Marcello have a nice apartment in the new neighborhood,” my mother said coldly.