The Neapolitan Novels

101.

I hoped that Nino would call right away, the next day. I started every time the phone rang. Instead, an entire week slipped by without news from him. I felt as if I had a terrible cold. I became idle, I stopped my reading and my notes, I got angry at myself for that senseless expectation. Then one afternoon Pietro returned home in an especially good mood. He said that Nino had come by the department, that they had spent some time together, that there was no way to persuade him to come to dinner. He invited us to go out tomorrow evening, he said, the children, too: he doesn’t want you to go to the trouble of cooking.

The blood began to flow more quickly, I felt an anxious tenderness for Pietro. As soon as the girls went to their room I embraced him, I kissed him, I whispered words of love. I hardly slept that night, or rather I slept with the impression of being awake. The next day, as soon as Dede came home from school, I put her in the bathtub with Elsa and washed them thoroughly. Then I moved on to myself. I took a long pleasant bath, I shaved my legs, I washed my hair and dried it carefully. I tried on every dress I owned, but I was getting more and more nervous, nothing looked right, and I didn’t like the way my hair had turned out. Dede and Elsa were right there, pretending to be me. They posed in front of the mirror, they expressed dissatisfaction with clothes and hairdos, they shuffled around in my shoes. I resigned myself to being what I was. After I scolded Elsa too harshly for getting her dress dirty at the last minute, we got in the car and drove to pick up Pietro and Nino, who were at the university. I drove apprehensively, constantly reprimanding the girls, who were singing nursery rhymes of their own invention based on shit and pee. The closer I got to the place where we were to meet, the more I hoped that some last-minute engagement would keep Nino from coming. Instead I saw the two men right away, talking. Nino had enveloping gestures, as if he were inviting his interlocutor to enter into a space designed just for him. Pietro seemed as usual clumsy, the skin of his face flushed, he alone was laughing and in a deferential way. Neither of the two showed particular interest in my arrival.

My husband sat in the back seat with the two girls, Nino sat beside me to direct me to a place where the food was good and—he said, turning to Dede and Elsa—they made delicious frittelle. He described them in detail, getting the girls excited. A long time ago, I thought, observing him out of the corner of my eye, we held hands as we walked, and twice he kissed me. What nice fingers. To me he said only Here go right, then right again, then left at the intersection. Not an admiring look, not a compliment.

At the trattoria we were greeted in a friendly but respectful way. Nino knew the owner, the waiters. I ended up at the head of the table between the girls, the two men sat opposite each other, and my husband began talking about the difficulties of life in the university. I said almost nothing, attending to Dede and Elsa, who usually at the table were very well behaved but that night kept causing trouble, laughing, to attract Nino’s attention. I thought uneasily: Pietro talks too much, he’s boring him, he doesn’t leave him space. I thought: We’ve lived in this city for seven years and we have no place of our own where we could take him in return, a restaurant where the food is good, as it is here, where we’re recognized as soon as we enter. I liked the owner’s courtesy, he came to our table often, and even went so far as to say to Nino: Tonight I won’t give you that, it’s not fit for you and your guests, and he advised something else. When the famous frittelle arrived, the girls were elated, and so was Pietro, they fought over them. Only then Nino turned to me.

“Why haven’t you had anything else published?” he asked, without the frivolity of dinner conversation, and an interest that seemed genuine.

I blushed, I said indicating the children:

“I did something else.”

“That book was really good.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s not a compliment, you’ve always known how to write. You remember the article about the religion teacher?”

“Your friends didn’t publish it.”

“There was a misunderstanding.”

“I lost faith.”

“I’m sorry. Are you writing now?”

“In my spare time.”

“A novel?”

“I don’t know what it is.”

“But the subject?”

“Men who fabricate women.”

“Nice.”

“We’ll see.”

“Get busy, I’d like to read you soon.”

And, to my surprise, he turned out to be very familiar with the works by women I was concerned with: I had been sure that men didn’t read them. Not only that: he cited a book by Starobinski that he had read recently, and said there was something that might be useful to me. He knew so much; he had been like that since he was a boy, curious about everything. Now he was quoting Rousseau and Bernard Shaw, I broke in, he listened attentively. And when the children, nerve-rackingly, began tugging at me to order more frittelle, he signaled to the owner to make us some more. Then, turning to Pietro, he said:

“You should leave your wife more time.”

“She has all day available.”

“I’m not kidding. If you don’t, you’re guilty not only on a human level but also on a political one.”

“What’s the crime?”

“The waste of intelligence. A community that finds it natural to suffocate with the care of home and children so many women’s intellectual energies is its own enemy and doesn’t realize it.”

I waited in silence for Pietro to respond. My husband reacted with sarcasm.

“Elena can cultivate her intelligence when and how she likes, the essential thing is that she not take time from me.”

“If she doesn’t take it from you, then who can she take it from?”

Pietro frowned.

“When the task we give ourselves has the urgency of passion, there’s nothing that can keep us from completing it.”

I felt wounded, I whispered with a false smile:

“My husband is saying that I have no true interest.”

Silence. Nino asked:

“And is that true?”

I answered in a rush that I didn’t know, I didn’t know anything. But while I was speaking, with embarrassment, with rage, I realized that my eyes were filled with tears. I lowered my gaze. That’s enough fritelle, I said to the children in a scarcely controlled voice, and Nino came to my aid, he exclaimed: I’ll eat just one more, Mamma also, Papa, too, and you can have two, but then that’s it. He called over the owner and said solemnly: I’ll be back here with these two young ladies in exactly thirty days and you’ll make us a mountain of these exquisite fritelle, all right?

Elsa asked: “When is a month, when is thirty days?”

And I, having managed to repress my tears, stared at Nino and said:

“Yes, when is a month, when is thirty days?”

We laughed—Dede more than us adults—at Elsa’s vague idea of time. Then Pietro tried to pay, but he discovered that Nino had already done it. He protested. He drove, I sat in the back between the two girls, who were half asleep. We took Nino to the hotel and all the way I listened to their slightly tipsy conversation. Once we were there Pietro, euphoric, said:

“It doesn’t make sense to throw away money: we have a guest room, next time you can come and stay with us, don’t stand on ceremony.”

Nino smiled:

“Less than an hour ago we said that Elena needs time, and now you want to burden her with my presence?”

I interrupted wearily: “It would be a pleasure for me, and also for Dede and Elsa.”

But as soon as we were alone I said to my husband:

“Before making certain invitations you might at least consult me.”

He started the car, looked at me in the rearview mirror, stammered:

“I thought it would please you.”