The Neapolitan Novels

105.

I didn’t close my eyes. In the morning I resigned myself to the date with Eleonora; we were to meet at ten at the hotel. Don’t do the stupid thing—I ordered myself—of asking her if her husband began to read it: Nino is busy, it will take time; you mustn’t think about it, at least a week will go by.

But at precisely nine, when I was about to leave, the phone rang and it was him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m on my way to the library and I can’t telephone until tonight. Sure I’m not bothering you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“I read it.”

“Already?”

“Yes, and it’s really excellent. You have a great capacity for research, an admirable rigor, and astonishing imagination. But what I envy most is your ability as a narrator. You’ve written something hard to define, I don’t know if it’s an essay or a story. But it’s extraordinary.”

“Is that a flaw?”

“What?”

“That it’s not classifiable.”

“Of course not, that’s one of its merits.”

“You think I should publish it as it is?”

“Absolutely yes.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you, now I have to go. Be patient with Eleonora, she seems aggressive but it’s only timidity. Tomorrow morning we return to Naples, but I’ll be back after the elections and if you want we can talk.”

“It would be a pleasure. Will you come and stay with us?”

“You’re sure I won’t bother you?”

“Not at all.”

“All right.”

He didn’t hang up, I heard him breathing.

“Elena.”

“Yes.”

“Lina, when we were children, dazzled us both.”

I felt an intense uneasiness.

“In what sense?”

“You ended up attributing to her capacities that are only yours.”

“And you?”

“I did worse. What I had seen in you, I then stupidly seemed to find in her.”

I was silent for several seconds. Why had he felt the need to bring up Lila, like that, on the telephone? And what was he saying to me? Was it merely compliments? Or was he trying to communicate to me that as a boy he would have loved me but that on Ischia he had attributed to one what belonged to the other?

“Come back soon,” I said.