The Neapolitan Novels

96.

She said to me this and some other fragmented things: Congratulations, you have an intelligent and handsome husband, he speaks as if he were religious even if he’s not a believer, he knows ancient and modern facts, in particular he knows a lot of things about Naples, I’m ashamed, I’m Neapolitan but I don’t know anything. Gennaro is growing up, my mother takes care of him more than I do, he’s smart in school. With Enzo things are good, we work a lot, we rarely see each other. Stefano has ruined himself with his own hands: the carabinieri found stolen goods in the back of the shop, I don’t know what, he was arrested; now he’s out but he has to be careful, he has nothing anymore, I give him money, not the other way around. You see how things change: if I had remained Signora Carracci I would be ruined, I would have ended up with my ass on the ground like all the Carraccis; instead I am Raffaella Cerullo and I’m the technical director for Michele Solara at four hundred and twenty thousand lire a month. The result is that my mother treats me like a queen, my father has forgiven me for everything, my brother sucks money out of me, Pinuccia says she loves me so much, their children call me Auntie. But it’s a boring job, completely the opposite of what it seemed at first: still too slow, you waste a lot of time, let’s hope that the new machines get here soon—they’re a lot faster. Or no. Speed consumes everything, as when photographs come out blurry. Alfonso used that expression, he used it in fun, he said that he came out blurry, without clear outlines. Lately he’s been talking to me constantly about friendship. He wants to be my friend, he would like to copy me on copying paper, he swears that he would like to be a girl like me. What sort of girl, I said to him, you’re a male, Alfò, you don’t know anything about what I’m like, and even if we’re friends and you study me and spy on me and copy me, you’ll never know anything. So—he was having a good time—what do I do, I suffer being the way I am. And he confessed to me that he has always loved Michele—yes, Michele Solara—and he wishes Michele would like him the way he thinks Michele likes me. You understand, Lenù, what happens to people: we have too much stuff inside and it swells us, breaks us. All right, I said, we’re friends, but get out of your mind that you can be a woman like me, all you’d succeed in being is what a woman is according to you men. You can copy me, make a portrait as precise as an artist, but my shit will always remain mine, and yours will be yours. Ah, Lenù, what happens to us all, we’re like pipes when the water freezes, what a terrible thing a dissatisfied mind is. You remember what we did with my wedding picture? I want to continue on that path. The day will come when I reduce myself to diagrams, I’ll become a perforated tape and you won’t find me anymore.

Nonsense, that’s all. That talk in the hall confirmed to me that our relationship no longer had any intimacy. It had been reduced to succinct information, scant details, mean remarks, hot air, no revelation of facts and thoughts for me alone. Lila’s life was now hers and that was all, it seemed that she didn’t want to share it with anyone. Pointless to persist with questions like: What do you know about Pasquale, where did he end up, what do you have to do with Soccavo’s death, the kneecapping of Filippo, what led you to accept Michele’s offer, what do you make of his dependence on you. Lila had retreated into the unconfessable, any questions of mine could not become conversation, she would say: What are you thinking, you’re crazy, Michele, dependence, Soccavo, what are you talking about? Even now, as I write, I realize that I don’t have enough information to move on to Lila went, Lila did, Lila met, Lila planned. And yet, as I was returning in the car to Florence, I had the impression that there in the neighborhood, between backwardness and modernity, she had more history than I did. How much I had lost by leaving, believing I was destined for who knows what life. Lila, who had remained, had a very new job, she earned a lot of money, she acted in absolute freedom and according to schemes that were indecipherable. She was very attached to her son, she had been extremely devoted to him in the first years of his life, and she still kept an eye on him; but she seemed capable of being free of him as and when she wanted, he didn’t cause her the anxieties my daughters caused me. She had broken with her family, and yet she took on their burden and the responsibility for them whenever she could. She took care of Stefano who was in trouble, but without getting close to him. She hated the Solaras and yet she submitted to them. She was ironic about Alfonso and was his friend. She said she didn’t want to see Nino again, but I knew it wasn’t so, that she would see him. Hers was a life in motion, mine was stopped. While Pietro drove in silence and the children quarreled, I thought a lot about her and Nino, about what might happen. Lila will take him back, I fantasized, she’ll manage to see him again, she’ll influence him the way she knows how, she’ll get him away from his wife and son, she’ll use him in her war I no longer know against whom, she’ll induce him to get divorced, and meanwhile she’ll escape from Michele after taking a lot of money from him, and she’ll leave Enzo, and finally she’ll make up her mind to divorce Stefano, and maybe she’ll marry Nino, maybe not, but certainly they’ll put their intelligences together and who can say what they will become.

Become. It was a verb that had always obsessed me, but I realized it for the first time only in that situation. I wanted to become, even though I had never known what. And I had become, that was certain, but without an object, without a real passion, without a determined ambition. I had wanted to become something—here was the point—only because I was afraid that Lila would become someone and I would stay behind. My becoming was a becoming in her wake. I had to start again to become, but for myself, as an adult, outside of her.